The Rose and the Skull

29

"Come. We go now," Glabella hissed. "This way." She pointed at a narrow overhang of rock, under which the shadows seemed especially deep and dark, bespeaking the probability of a cave. Castle Slagd brooded above them like some great carrion bird or crag-faced gargoyle, hunched and watchful. Its black walls rose in impossibly slender towers not unlike fangs, from which fantastic minarets hung, suspended as though by magic. The stormy sea crashed thunderously below.

The rocks where the Knights huddled were slick with sea spray and rain, and the Knights themselves were all but soaked. Jessica's short brown locks clung to her face as she looked up at the castle above them, and she wondered how they'd ever get inside.

Glabella stomped her foot in impatience. Valian snarled at her, "We can't go anywhere until our weapons are free."

He pointed at the half-dozen stone draconians lying among the rocks at their feet, the Knights' swords protruding from their petrified bodies. They'd surprised the patrol of baaz guards and given urgent battle, among the boulders beside the sea, until no enemies remained alive. Jessica tended a cut on Lady Meredith's brow, and Valian's cloven shield lay in the sand, but this was all the damage they suffered.

Like all baaz draconians, when slain their bodies turned instantly to stone, trapping the weapons of their enemies. Only Lady Meredith had withdrawn hers in time. She wiped it clean of the black draconian blood and returned it to its sheath, but the others were forced to wait until the stone bodies turned to ash and released their swords. Sir Ellinghad had gone up the shelf of rock to keep watch for other patrols.

The silver dragons had deposited them at a sandy cove about three miles away, and for the last few hours, they'd scrambled across that hard, broken landscape to reach this point by the sea, where Glabella said the secret entrance lay. Now the only thing to do was wait and try to keep as dry as possible.

A storm such as few had ever witnessed was lashing the rugged coast. Huge waves pounded the rocky shoreline, tossing spray and foam hundreds of yards inland. Icy rain blown by gale winds stabbed like daggers at exposed skin, making the Knights thankful for their armor. Glabella enjoyed no such protection. Only the thick mat of her hair, which shed water like an otter's skin, protected her face from the storm's worst.

Earlier that morning, in the bleak darkness, they'd exited Castle uth Wistan with their packs, weapons, and supplies, and found three silver dragons waiting in the courtyard.

The three dragons had agreed to transport the group over the wild mountainous north of Sancrist Isle, to a place near the draconian castle, but they wouldn't be playing a part in any assault. Once the Knights were safely on the ground, the silver dragons were to return to keep watch on Pyrothraxus.

Sir Liam stood on the battlements and watched them rise into the air. The wind from their wings whipped his long Solamnic mustaches and stung his eyes to tears. He raised his hand in farewell. When they were no longer visible against the night sky, he paced the battlements, deep in thought, until sunrise.

Dawn rose in a glut of scarlet and crimson, promising a storm before the day was done. The mountains of Sancrist loomed before them jagged, wild, and merciless. Few but gnomes lived there anymore since the coming of Pyrothraxus, and so there was no one to see the three silver dragons passing, higher even than the clouds racing before the storm.

As fast as the dragons flew, the storm flew faster, and it crashed ashore before they reached the citadel of the draconians. As the lead dragon sighted Castle Slagd, a fork of lightning split the formation, forcing two of the dragons to veer left. For a few terrifying moments, they vanished into the black clouds, then they reappeared and all three glided along the shore until they spotted a sheltered cove, offering a place to land out of the wind.

The dragons had deposited them on the sand and hurried away before the full fury of the storm struck. The Knights set out, climbing a rocky slope, until at its summit, they saw the draconian castle in the distance, starkly illumined by a flash of lightning.

Now rain continued mercilessly as they huddled behind boulders, waiting for the dead draconians to turn to ash and free their trapped weapons. Thunder shook the skies and lightning leaped from the mountain tops, while the rising sea surged around their feet, washing the draconian bodies. It seemed possible that their weapons would be lost, but then one sword toppled over as the stone crumbled,then another and another, and the Knights waded out to retrieve them before the surf washed them away.

Finally, everyone was ready. Ellinghad descended from his watch, reporting no movement within sight. Glabella pointed up the hill at the cave, and wordlessly they climbed to it. They entered cautiously, with Valian in the lead, as his elvish eyes gave him the advantage in the dark. Glabella stalked beside him, one hand in her bag, ready to wield the mighty magics she promised were at her disposal. The others lit torches and followed.

Grand Master Iulus drummed his claws impatiently on the arm of his golden throne. The throne was a recent acquisition, taken from a minotaur galley sailing from the landless west. The minotaurs had died to the last bull without revealing the source of the throne or the place from whence they'd sailed, but to Iulus it didn't really matter. He wasn't an explorer or even an adventurer. He was a Grand Master of assassins, and so that meant he was an opportunist. The throne was an opportunity he could not resist.

To General Zen, however, the throne was a symbol of degeneration. He looked upon it with disgust, seeing his Grand Master slouching there like some filthy hobgoblin king, his mind filled with greed and petty desires.

"So, our little friend still won't talk, eh?" Iulus said. "We shall have to do something about that."

"My lord, I believe we are wasting our time with the miserable creature. It is obvious that he has told us everything. We should kill him and be done with it, as Lady Alya suggests," Zen said.

"Your job is not to think," Iulus purred dangerously, "nor to listen to the councils of humans, no matter how pretty. This gully dwarf knows more than he is telling."

"But he is only a gully dwarf," Zen protested.

Iulus rose from his throne. "Do you dare disagree with me?" he snarled. His twisted, malformed draconian face grew livid, the exposed veins and muscles pulsed, almost seeming to glow. "Who do you think you are? I am the master here. I trained you in the arts of assassination. I trained all of you. Without me, you'd still be a mercenary licking the boots of every hobgoblin chieftain with two more pennies than his rival."

The sivak general growled but held his tongue. "Forgive me, my lord," he said, bowing.

"Bring the gully dwarf here, and bring that self-proclaimed Highbulp, Mommamose. Perhaps young Uhoh would respond better if his dear old mother were under the lash," Iulus directed.

"Yes, my master," Zen said. He bowed and prepared to leave.

"Oh, and inform Lady Alya. I think she might enjoy this," Iulus laughed. "Tell her that if Uhoh refuses to talk this time, we'll kill him, but first we'll let him watch Mommamose die. That should pique her interest."

General Zen bowed once more, turned, and stalked from the chamber.

After he had gone, Iulus stared thoughtfully at the door.

He whispered to himself, "And I think, once this is done, that I shall teach you the final lesson of assassination, my old friend."

"It all comes of trusting a gully dwarf," Ellinghad snarled as he plucked a draconian arrow from his chain mail and tossed it aside. Pausing a moment to gauge the time between the blows that rained against the door, he threw back the bolt and jerked it open, slashing out with his sword and felling a draconian raising a mallet. Ellinghad then slammed the door shut and dropped the bolt back in place just as a dozen or so arrows struck the other side, sending splinters flying.

Beside him, Valian ground his teeth and nodded in agreement as he bound his wrist. He'd been pinked by a draconian sword, and he only hoped the blade wasn't poisoned. Lady Michelle hadn't been so lucky. She lay a few feet away, her eyes glazing, a poisoned arrow still lodged in her shoulder.

"This way is no good," Meredith shouted. She and Jessica pressed their bodies against another door. It shook under a storm of blows.

There was a third exit from the kitchen, but in their urgency to hold the first two against the draconians, no one had yet had the opportunity to investigate it. In any case, it seemed their mission was near failure. They'd already lost Lady Gabrielle in the initial encounter, and now Lady Michelle was dying as well. With draconians attacking from two quarters, they could not hold out for long.

It all came from trusting a gully dwarf. They'd wandered in the dark for hours, it seemed, taking one wrong route after another in the endless caverns that honeycombed the mountain. They'd not seen one door or stair indicating habitation of any sort, and they would have doubted the existence of the castle entirely had they not seen it with their own eyes, perched atop the mountain two thousand feet above the sea. Occasionally they stumbled across the bones of a long-dead fish or the bleached white shell of a crab, in some of the darker, wetter caverns, where the air was stale as though it had indeed been there since the Cataclysm. Strands of glowing algae still clung to the walls, giving off a weird phosphorescence. Once, they stumbled into a rank and fetid pool of sea water, though by their best guess they were by then many hundreds of feet above the sea. The pool stretched away into echoing darkness, bespeaking great size and depth, and the Knights shuddered to think what ancient monsters of the sea might still be lurking in its depths.

Despite Glabella's misdirections, they nonetheless climbed steadily upward. The sounds of the crashing sea had steadily diminished, and at the far end of one cavern, they came upon narrow stairs delved into the wall. The stairs followed a fault in the stone, past narrow outcroppings of rock that forced the Knights to squeeze by. At one of these places, Valian found a bronze-colored draconian scale wedged in a crack in the wall. He showed it to the others, proof-positive that they were on the right track.

The stair eventually led to an iron door. The Knights had climbed to it, exhausted and out of breath, finding it curiously unguarded. Lady Meredith called a rest, while Sir Valian cautiously opened the door and peered inside. He reported an empty torchlit corridor beyond.

Glabella, now confident of where she was, led them through a maze of dark and twisting corridors. They passed doors and passages all along the way, but she strode forward with such assurance, they'd trusted they were being guided to the dungeons where Uhoh was sure to be kept, if he was still alive.

At last, she brought them to another iron door, lit by only a single smoky torch. It looked exactly like the entrance to a dungeon should look, huge and forbidding, with its ironwork rusted and hanging with dank growths of moss. Upon opening it, they found themselves thrust into the middle of a draconian barracks, with several dozen of the evil creatures caught by surprise, staring back at them. From then on, it was a fighting retreat, and with each moment that slipped by, the hope of rescuing Uhoh dwindled. They began to doubt their own chances for survival.

Valian had been stabbed, causing him to drop his weapon, and Lady Gabrielle sacrificed herself to pull him to safety. She was cut down from behind by draconian swords. As they reached the kitchen, the draconians brought up archers. The Knights had managed to shut the doors, but not quickly enough to save Lady Michelle.

Meredith shouted to Glabella, "We need a way out! Check out that other door."

The gully dwarf was paralyzed with fear. She cowered on the floor under a table, unable to move.

"I can't abide the thought that I am going to die here, for nothing," Ellinghad shouted. "This was a fool's mission."

"Look out!" Valian shouted as the third door swung open. Jessica prepared for the worst, while Glabella screamed.

A gully dwarf wearing a tall white hat entered the room carrying a pottery bowl nearly as big as himself, white gruel caked in his beard. At sight of the Knights spinning round with swords drawn, faces set to meet their death, the gully dwarf dropped the bowl of porridge, turned, and fled the way he'd come.

"Follow him!" Meredith shouted triumphantly. "Go, all of you. Run. I'll hold this door. The rest of you go. Jessica, don't forget Glabella."

"I'll not leave you," Ellinghad said. Valian sprinted through the open door. Jessica followed him, the gully dwarf tucked under her arm.

"You will," Meredith answered. "I'll hold them at this door for a moment, then follow you."

With a final look of mute protest, Ellinghad Beauseant, Knight of the Sword, dashed after his companions.

Meredith stepped away from the door, drawing her sword. In moments, the wooden planks cracked. The door burst inward, and draconians poured into the room. Lady Meredith backed into the door. The draconians licked their swords and advanced.

A shout from the corridor brought them up short. They backed away angrily, making way for the entrance of a huge silver draconian. He was heavily armored and stood a good foot taller than his fellows. He strode into the kitchen, a long, wickedly curved blade in his clawed fist. Seeing only Lady Meredith before him, he laughed.

"The Lord High Clerist!" he said with apparent delight. "My name is Zen. I wanted you to know that before you die."

She answered him with the Knight's salute to an enemy. Then, with a battle cry surprising for her small stature, she charged, her sword lancing the air before her, her red hair flying.

Valian slipped for perhaps the thirtieth time in the refuse and offal that littered the halls. It seemed more like the dark and dirty alleys of some ancient city than the halls of a castle only a few years old, but he was, after all, in the gully dwarf quarter.

He'd chased the surprised cook for a few hundred yards before losing both the gully dwarf and himself in the maze of twisting passages. The halls of this castle followed no recognizable pattern, and their strangeness and nightmarish quality reminded him of something. The memory fled whenever he tried to grasp it. He tried to backtrack to the kitchen, but the way only seemed to lead him deeper into the heart of a stinking nightmare.

Hoots and howls echoed through the corridors, and gibberish like the ravings of madmen. The walls narrowed and became more uneven in their spacing, until above him they meshed together, overarching the way like the branches of trees. Occasionally, some warm wet hole opened to the right or left, but as Valian stopped and looked into these, trying to decide his way, he felt eyes staring back at him from the darkness, eyes hungry and at the same time frightened. As his elven eyes grew adjusted to the darkness, he saw the warm, red outlines of their bodies, sitting in huddled groups, shifting nervously.

With a shock of horror, Valian remembered. Those days and nights and weeks of terror in the twisted and ancient depths of Silvanesti, years ago now. He'd fought his way through, avoiding legions of dragonarmies and patrols of elves, to a place where he knew no one ever ventured anymore. He'd hoped to find some lost or forgotten enclave of elves, some memory of the beauty he'd once belonged to, if only to stand at their fringes unseen, or to die there.

At last, he'd found them. Hope lifted Valian's heart at the sight of the village through the trees. The war didn't seem to have reached this place. Here no one was preparing for battle or escape. He'd approached slowly, warily, for despite everything, he still bore the stigma of being cast from the light. If seen, these elves still had the right to kill him.

Some tickling of danger warned him as he'd neared the village, but he'd ignored it, so anxious was he to find contact with his race. As he drew closer, he saw that the elves of the village walked with hunched shoulders and bent backs, and their arms seemed unusually long. No elvish voice was raised in song, only brutish grunts and snarls sounded from their throats. When one turned, as though sensing Valian's presence in the trees, Valian nearly cried out in horror at the sight of the twisted, malformed elf. Long fangs thrust up from his bottom jaw like the tusks of a boar, and his almond-shaped eyes glowed red with hate. His hair, once smooth and silken, bristled like fur.

Valian was so stricken with anguish that day, he'd been unable to move, unable to resist, as they gathered round him, grunting, snarling, drooling and touching him with their horrid claws. They grabbed him and lifted him and carried him triumphantly into the village. They brought him to an altar, where wood was piled, wood soaked with tar and oil, and they tied him to the altar, all the while dancing around his prone body. Valian had felt himself outside his own body, as though looking down on the scene from some point high above. He watched them bring torches and light the wood of his pyre, and he watched the flames lick around his body, consume his hair, caress his limbs, sear his flesh.

He hadn't died. Valian awoke on the forest floor, with the ancient and crumbling stone buildings of his dream village all around him. The village had long been abandoned and forgotten, and the forest had reclaimed it, and Valian awoke with a vision of things to come. As he stood and his hair fell about his face, it was white as ash, burned by the fires of his nightmare.

Now, apish hands reached out to touch his body, caress his flesh. Small creatures crowded around him, grunting, snarling like ghouls over a fresh grave. Terror awakened in him, but he was able to move, able to respond. Valian lashed out, and the apes leaped screaming back to their dark lairs. Valian fled; he knew not where.