The Rite Read online

  Raryn sighed with relief. Surely the monks had constructed the bridge, which meant he and his friends had taken the right turns so far. Kara clasped his shoulder in congratulation.

  Striding with renewed energy, the seekers hurried forward. Chatulio spread his wings to fly across the chasm. Raryn gripped one of the guide ropes, made to step onto the bridge, then hesitated.

  “Hold on!” he said.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Dorn.

  “We figured something might be lurking along the way,” Raryn said, “the something that killed the monk. Well, it’s here, somewhere.”

  He didn’t know how he knew, but trusted the hunter’s intuition that had saved his life on more than one occasion.

  Chatulio’s nostrils flared. “I do smell something,” he said.

  A thick gray fog clotted the air. Kara started singing a spell, and Chatulio chanted his own words of power. Certain the mist was intended to mask a foe’s advance, Raryn came on guard with his harpoon and listened. From long experience, he knew Dorn must be doing the same thing, though he could barely see the half-golem, or any of his comrades, within the clammy vapor.

  Raryn heard a rapid scuttling. He pivoted toward the sound, and when the creature lunged out of the fog, the dwarf drove his harpoon into its chest. The beast—some sort of enormous reptile—retaliated with a snap of its dagger-sized fangs. He jumped back out of range and snatched his ice-axe free of the straps securing it to his pack.

  A second later, the fog disappeared as quickly as it had materialized. Raryn assumed Kara had wiped it from existence with a counterspell. The effect of Chatulio’s magic was to sear their assailant with a burst of flame.

  That creature, Raryn observed, appeared to be one of the wingless dragons called landwyrms, albeit a runtish, cave-dwelling variety he’d never encountered before. Its scales were a mottled gray that no doubt helped it hide in its environment of stone.

  Dorn set himself in front of it, iron limbs forward, sword cocked back. Kara sang a crackling flare of lightning into being to stab into its neck. Taking flight with a snap of his wings, Chatulio spat acid to sizzle and smoke along its spine, eliciting a roar of pain and fury. Raryn chopped at its flank. But while evading its sudden wheeling attacks, its attempts to trample him, claw him, or bash him with its tail, the dwarf did his best to keep watch, also. Landwyrms lacked breath weapons, and likewise the magical prowess of true wizards, and that made it unlikely that this particular creature had burned the unfortunate monk.

  A second reptile—a sinuous, narrow-winged drake with dark, lustrous scales—scrambled up out of the chasm. Evidently goaded by frenzy, it and the landwyrm had joined forces to slaughter whatever prey they could catch in their sunless domain.

  “Watch out!” Raryn called.

  A split second later, the dark dragon spat forth a plume of vapor.

  Chatulio and Kara were the targets, and both tried to dodge, the copper with a beat of his wings to carry him above the breath attack, and the bard by flinging herself to the side. Still, the streaming corrosive fumes blistered them both, and Kara dropped to her knees, coughing and retching.

  Raryn felt a stab of dismay. Then the landwyrm rounded on him, and he had no more time for thought.

  He landed two solid chops to its mask, but couldn’t quite score on an eye. He evaded several strikes and raking attacks. Then Dorn must have clawed or sliced the landwyrm badly, because it spun away from Raryn for another assault on the half-golem.

  Raryn risked another glance around. Kara lay on the cavern floor. The dark dragon thrashed and snarled, a swarm of stinging, pinching scorpions encrusting its body—or the semblance of scorpions, anyway. Actually, it was one of Chatulio’s illusions. The copper himself was swelling, returning to his original size, wobbling in flight as the transformation made him momentarily awkward.

  Raryn hacked at the landwyrm until it whirled toward him again, then scrambled backward, not quite quickly enough. Its forefoot leaped at him, and he wrenched himself aside.

  The last-second evasion turned what would otherwise have been a mortal blow into one that simply slashed his polar-bear hide armor and the skin above his ribs. Ordinarily, such a superficial wound wouldn’t balk him. But it made him instantly weak and light-headed, sick, as if the landwyrm’s claws were venomous.

  The dragon snapped at him. He managed to jump back out of range, but in so doing, lost his balance and fell on his rump. The landwyrm reared, perhaps intending to flop down and crush him.

  Then, however, it pivoted and lunged after Dorn, who must have attacked it ferociously indeed to distract it from making a kill—and who might pay for it with his life.

  Accordingly, Raryn had to get back into the fight, but it took all his stamina just to clamber back to his feet, after which, dizzy and panting, he had to pause to gather the strength for further exertion. At the same time, the landwyrm slammed one clanging talon slash after another into the iron half of Dorn’s body. The blows failed to penetrate the enchanted metal, but knocked the big man staggering and reeling, making it all but impossible for him to strike back.

  Raryn raised his ice-axe, took a step toward the landwyrm, and a wave of vertigo spun the cavern around him and nearly dumped him back on the floor. But if he couldn’t aid Dorn, maybe Chatulio could. He cast about, seeking the copper, then cursed.

  Because Chatulio couldn’t help. He was still busy fighting the slim dragon with the dark, shimmering scales. It had rid itself of the phantasmal scorpions, and the two wyrms wheeled beneath the cavern ceiling like pair of colossal bats, maneuvering, using stalactites for cover, blazing away at one another with bursts of conjured frost and flame, and spurts of their corrosive breath.

  It occurred to Raryn to use one of his ranger charms. He didn’t know whether it would counterattack the malaise engendered by the landwyrm’s touch, or even if he could articulate it properly in his dazed and feeble state, but it was worth a try.

  The landwyrm knocked Dorn down onto his back, then snapped at him. Dorn whipped his iron arm across his body in time for it, and not his flesh, to catch the dragon’s teeth. When the reptile’s jaws clashed shut on the spiked and bladed metal and it realized what it had, it snarled, bore down hard, and lashed its head back and forth and up and down, trying either to crumple the enchanted prosthesis into uselessness or jerk it away from the meat and bone to which it was anchored.

  It succeeded at neither, though the effort pounded Dorn against the floor. Finally the landwyrm hissed in frustration, then, as a notion seemingly struck it, laughed through clenched jaws. Dorn’s arm still clamped between its teeth, dragging the half-golem along, it scuttled toward the chasm, and Raryn realized it had decided to dispose of its well-armored foe by flinging him into the depths. Dorn stabbed at it with his sword, but without his feet planted, couldn’t exert the force to do any more than prick its rock-colored hide.

  The landwyrm had nearly reached the crevasse when Kara lurched up onto her knees, singing words of power. The final, sustained note swelled louder and louder until the stone beneath the landwyrm’s shattered into chips and pebbles, and it floundered in the treacherous footing. The conjuration had evidently taken all of Kara’s remaining strength, for she collapsed facedown.

  Still, she’d delayed the landwyrm long enough for Raryn to complete his own spell. For a moment, a fresh wind, smelling of verdure, gusted through the cave, and he felt connected, almost rooted, to the earth. Up the link surged an exhilarating wave of vitality that washed his sickness away.

  He bellowed a war cry to attract the landwyrm’s attention, then charged. His greatest fear was that it would go ahead and toss Dorn in the abyss before turning to face him. It was what Raryn would have done in its place. But maybe frenzy had eroded its battle sense at least a little, for, still dangling Dorn from its jaws, it pivoted.

  Raryn avoided two claw strikes, meeting the second with a counterattack that drew a spurt of blood and half-severed a toe. That was good as far as it went, but he
needed to get at the landwyrm’s vitals, not just its extremities. He retreated, and when it started to follow, instantly sprang forward. The maneuver brought him within striking distance of its chest and he swung with all his strength, trying to shear through scale and ribs to the heart and lungs.

  He drove in three blows before the reptile threw itself down, and he had to scurry to avoid being crushed beneath it. His feet slipped in the rubble shattered by Kara’s spell, and he nearly didn’t make it. The landwyrm tried to scramble back to its feet, but seemed to lack the strength to raise itself. The dozens of wounds it had suffered were taking their toll. It seemed surprised at its weakness, and before it could collect itself, Raryn lunged and buried his axe in the underside of its neck. The landwyrm collapsed.

  Raryn immediately looked around to find out how Chatulio was faring. For a second, he only saw the remaining cave-dwelling dragon, gliding, seeking its foe. Then the copper flapped out from behind a massive stalactite several yards ahead of it. The slender subterranean drake spat a plume of its roiling corrosive breath. Caught squarely by the burst, the target exploded into a flock of giggling, flatulent pixies.

  At the same moment, Raryn spotted the real Chatulio, no longer flying but walking upside down on the cavern ceiling as easily as a spider. Since the copper had distracted his adversary with a phantasm, he was able to smother the subterranean wyrm in a sheet of his own smoky breath. To Raryn’s surprise, the dark reptile’s scales didn’t char and bubble at its touch, but when the slender wyrm wheeled to face its attacker, the ranger perceived that the assault had nonetheless had an effect. The cave-dweller’s movements were slower than before.

  Conceivably it could have cleansed itself of the enchantment with a counterspell, but Chatulio didn’t give it the chance. He sprang from the ceiling and seized the other dragon in midair.

  Grappling and thus unable to fly, they plummeted to the cavern floor with a prodigious slam that, amazingly, stunned neither. Entwined, snarling, grunting, rolling to and fro, they tore at one another with fang and claw.

  His normal quickness unimpaired, Chatulio could rip more often than his adversary, and over the course of the next few heartbeats, the difference told. Finally he caught the cave-dweller’s sinuous neck in his jaws, and with one convulsive effort, bit it in two. Gore fountained from the stump.

  His exposed skin bruised and scraped, Dorn yanked his iron arm free of the landwyrm’s fangs, breaking one in the process, then clambered to his feet.

  “Are you all right?” Raryn asked.

  Dorn ignored the question to rush to Kara. Raryn followed.

  The half-golem rolled her over onto her back, and snarled at what he thus revealed. Kara’s lavender eyes peered groggily from a field of raw, seeping burns, and Raryn reckoned it exceptional luck that the dark wyrm’s breath hadn’t seared them blind as well. It had spattered her scalp, though, singeing patches of her moon-blond hair away and fouling her with the stink.

  Dorn extracted a healing draught from his belt pouch and held it for her to drink. But either she was too addled to understand or too feeble to swallow. She choked, and coughed the clear liquid out to run down her blistered chin.

  Then something gave a rumbling growl. Dorn and Raryn lurched around. Standing over the headless corpse of his erstwhile foe, Chatulio glared at them. Raryn realized the agitation of combat had brought madness bubbling up inside the copper’s mind.

  “Easy,” Raryn said, “easy. The fight’s over now, and we’re your friends. You don’t want to—”

  Chatulio roared and stalked forward.

  Raryn took hold of the vial in Dorn’s hand. “You’ve got to hold him back,” he said, “while I help Kara. Her magic’s the only thing that can calm him.”

  Dorn grabbed his sword, jumped up, and advanced. Chatulio pounced and slashed with his foreclaws. Dorn tried to twist aside. The talons still rang on the iron half of his body, and knocked him staggering.

  Raryn couldn’t watch whatever would happen next. He had to concentrate on Kara. He recited the charm that had augmented his own vigor, and as before, a forest-scented breeze gusted through the cavern. Kara shifted her limbs, and the dullness left her eyes.

  Raryn offered her the healing elixir. She guzzled, only to retch it out once more.

  A few yards away, Chatulio conjured a flare of yellow light that made Dorn shout in pain, then followed up with a sweep of his tail. The hunter barely managed to jump over the blow which would otherwise have shattered his leg of flesh and bone.

  “Drink slowly,” said Raryn to Kara. “It’s the only way you’ll get it down.”

  The bard gave a feeble nod.

  Chatulio clawed. The attack clanged on iron, failing to penetrate, but hurling Dorn back against a massive lump of a stalagmite. He sprawled atop it, waving his sword, seemingly unable to rise. The impact had knocked the wind out of him at the very least.

  Chatulio reared above him, throat swelling as he readied his breath weapon.

  Kara finally managed to swallow some of the potion. Smooth new skin flowed across some of her blemishes, and her breathing eased a little.

  “Prop me up,” she whispered, “so I can sing.”

  Raryn heaved her up into a sitting position, but wondered if she’d be able to sing even so. She was still so weak. But her vibrant voice emerged as rich, sweet, and precisely cadenced as ever, the melody charged with a power that supplanted the fear and desperation in the ranger’s mind with calmness and a profound feeling of good will toward his companions.

  Until the song broke off abruptly, in the middle of the fifth line. Kara slumped in Raryn’s arms, her head lolling.

  Still, she’d endured long enough. Her power had quelled Chatulio’s frenzy for a little longer, anyway.

  “I’m sorry!” the copper cried. “I’m so sorry. Dorn, are you all right?”

  The human demonstrated that he was by clambering off the stalagmite and turning to Raryn to ask, “How is she?”

  “Still alive,” said the dwarf, “but in need of more help than my charms and our elixirs can give. They’ll have real healers in the monastery.”

  “Then let’s move out,” said Dorn.

  They trekked onward through the stony labyrinth, Chatulio bearing Kara on his back. Raryn remained uncertain of their course. True, he’d guided his comrades correctly as far as the rope bridge, and maybe that was cause for optimism, but it was no guarantee that he wouldn’t stray from the right path eventually.

  As he peered for a sign, or paused to ponder a choice, he could feel Dorn’s urgency like heat from a fire. His friend was all but frantic to reach their destination. But the big man never demanded that he hurry. He knew a ranger needed time to exercise his craft.

  At last they wove their way through a field of stalagmites, rounded a sharp turn, and beheld an incline. At the top was a ledge, and at the back of that, a large, iron-bound door set into the cavern wall.

  Chatulio ran up the slope as easily as if he were loping on a flat surface. Unwilling to be left behind, Dorn scrambled up the incline as fast as he could, digging his iron claws into whatever handhold presented itself. Raryn brought up the rear.

  Dorn clambered past Chatulio’s dangling tail and up onto the shelf, where the copper had risen onto his hind legs to make more room for his companions.

  “I knocked,” Chatulio said, “and called out, but no one’s answered yet.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Dorn said as he pulled back his iron fist to punch the door.

  “No,” Kara groaned from her perch atop Chatulio’s spine.

  She sang an arpeggio that momentarily made Dorn feel a strange, poignant yearning to yield to her in some unfathomable way. The door did surrender itself, quivering and clanking as locks and latches disengaged. Spent, Kara seemed to slump back into semiconsciousness.

  Dorn thrust the door open to bang against the wall. On the other side was a shadowy corridor of worked stone, lit by a few magical lights set at regular intervals. Affixed
to the wall like torches in sconces, shining with their own steady golden luminescence, the enchanted lamps were roses sculpted from crystal.

  “Looks like a Monastery of the Yellow Rose to me,” Chatulio said.

  Dorn strode down the hallway bellowing that they needed a healer. His companions scurried after, Chatulio filling the passage. The seekers passed dozens of storerooms, and chambers filled with ranks of towering bookshelves, before a gangly, shaven-headed boy on the verge of manhood stepped from a doorway. He was dressed simply, all in gray, and had a wooden amulet carved in the form of bound hands—Ilmater’s emblem—dangling around his neck. He goggled at the strangers, his eyes widened in panic, and he whirled and ran.

  “Wait!” Dorn shouted. “We’re friendly!”

  It did no good. The youth had unexpectedly come face-to-face with a dragon—and a monstrosity with iron limbs—while wyrms had the monastery under siege. Naturally he believed the worst.

  Not wanting the novice to raise the entire fortress against them, Dorn gave chase, but realized almost immediately that he couldn’t overtake him. The boy was a good runner, and had too much of a lead.

  Then a shaft streaked past Dorn and hit the youth in the knee. It had been a tricky shot in the cramped confines of the corridor, especially with the half-golem between the bow and the target, but not impossible for an archer as adept as Raryn. The blunt fowling arrow knocked the boy down.

  Dorn sprinted and threw himself on top of the novice. The boy screamed until the hunter backhanded him.

  “Shut up!” Dorn snarled. “Shut up, look at us, and think, damn you! I’ve got you down helpless on the ground and I’ve got spikes and claws on my hand. If I wanted to kill you, I’d smash your skull and that would be that. The dwarf could have shot you with a sharp arrow. The drake could have sprayed you with his breath. But he’s a good dragon. A copper. If you try, you can see the color of his scales even in this light.”

  The monk peered, squinting, and some of the fear faded from his expression, which still left him looking too weary and care-worm for one so young.