The Ruin Read online

  “Go!” Taegan shouted.

  The Hermit lunged at him, cutting off his view, then pressing him so fiercely he had no opportunity for another look. He couldn’t tell if his friend had heeded him or not.

  The corpse tearer snarled an incantation, and Taegan felt a pang of ache and dullness shoot through him. His magical augmentations to his innate capacities disappeared, stripped away by the Hermit’s counterspell. The reptile followed up by spewing a blast of its smoky breath, but with a beat of his pinions, Taegan jerked himself clear. The vapor’s stink churned his guts and set him shuddering even so. The linnorn lifted its talons to shred him before he could recover, but then it faltered. Perhaps Dorn or Raryn had given it a particularly painful wound.

  Regaining control of his limbs, Taegan thrust, dodged, and continued to evade. His heart hammered, and he panted.

  Were Kara and Jivex far enough away? Since he didn’t see them and couldn’t divert his attention from the Hermit to look about, he’d simply have to assume so, for Sune knew, he couldn’t continue this way much longer.

  He whispered an incantation, meanwhile continuing to defend with as much agility and vigor as before, for that was a bladesinger’s art. His swordsman’s magic was far more limited than the average wizard’s store of charms, but he could conjure and fence simultaneously.

  Talons lashed at him. He dived below the stroke and articulated the final word of his spell. Power prickled across his skin and momentarily turned the drifting fog a ghostly blue, but otherwise, nothing seemed to happen.

  He hadn’t known precisely what to expect, but he’d hoped for something. Perhaps the linnorn would hesitate, or leave itself vulnerable in some way. Instead, it simply kept on attacking, and, he suspected, there truly was no hope. For him, anyway. If he could keep the creature busy for a little longer, maybe one or two of his friends could escape.

  He evaded raking talons, cut the Hermit’s haunch, and the reptile growled words of power. Taegan’s body stiffened into absolute rigidity. Unable to flap his wings, he plummeted.

  He had little doubt the fall would kill him, but the Hermit evidently wanted to make sure. It plunged after him like a hawk swooping to catch a pigeon in its claws.

  But it didn’t use its talons to pierce him, nor its grip, painfully tight though it was, to crush him. Instead, leveling out of its descent, it recited another spell that gave him back the use of his body. Not that he could use it for much at the moment.

  “What did you do to me?” the Hermit snarled, its voice a rasping, discordant rumble like a scrape of blades and distant thunder muddled together. It spoke Elvish with an accent Taegan had never heard before. “I feel it squirming in my mind!”

  “Ah,” Taegan wheezed. With the enormous digits clamping his torso, he could scarcely draw sufficient breath to speak. “That would be the Rage. Phourkyn One-Eye taught me a spell to crumble any wyrm’s defenses instantaneously. I must compliment you. Most dragons, experiencing frenzy all of a sudden, go berserk. They certainly aren’t capable of conducting a civilized conversation.”

  “I’m no dragon. My kind and theirs diverged eons ago.”

  “Apparently,” said Taegan, “not quite far enough for comfort’s sake.”

  “Lift the curse!”

  “A wise request, for, left to fester, it will obliterate your reason. I haven’t actually mastered the charm for dampening it, but fortunately, Lady Karasendrieth—the song dragon—has. Once you agree to conduct yourself in a more hospitable manner, I’m sure she’ll be delighted to oblige you.”

  The Hermit glared. “I don’t succumb to threats. I’ll slaughter you all, raise you as my lifeless slaves, and command the song dragon to cleanse me of this taint.”

  “That would be ill-advised. Who can say with absolute certainty that an undead Kara would still recall the spell, or be able to cast it if she did? Even if it all worked out as you hoped, it wouldn’t save you for long. The Rage is waxing ever stronger. It would swallow you eventually in any case. My friends and I are exploring all the dreariest corners of the northlands to prevent such a calamity from befalling dragons—and dragonkind—everywhere. Thus, it truly is in your best interests to welcome us as the benefactors we are. You could make a start by easing the pressure on my ribs.”

  The Hermit didn’t release Taegan so much as toss him away like a piece of trash. Still, a couple wing beats turned his graceless tumble into directed flight, and he soared up in front of the linnorn’s huge, dark mask, oily with slime and with its seething tendrils, sickening to behold.

  “Shall we join the others?” the bladesinger asked.

  Kara had no idea why Taegan, Dorn, and the others had exhorted her and Jivex to flee. Perhaps they simply hoped that if the seekers split up, someone could escape, and they thought the dragons, with their wings and magical abilities, had the best chance.

  If so, that might be logical, but she couldn’t abandon Dorn or any of her friends. It wasn’t in her. But perhaps she’d succeeded in making the Hermit believe she was forsaking the field, and then had some slim hope of taking the creature from behind. Her wounds throbbing, chest aching with the effort to produce still more breath weapon, she wheeled. Jivex, his mirror-bright scales stained with a coating of his own blood, did the same.

  When they turned, though, they saw things had changed.

  Still floating dozens of feet above the ground, the Hermit clutched Taegan in its talons. It wasn’t hurting him, though, nor was it casting any more spells or spitting additional blasts of its noxious breath. It seemed to be palavering with its captive.

  That left Dorn, Pavel, Will, and Raryn free to deal with Brimstone, who, shrouded in sulphurous smoke, continued to attack. Bloody and reeling from the punishment they’d already taken, the hunters fended off the vampire as best they could.

  “Brimstone’s the greater threat now,” Kara said. “We have to deal with him.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jivex said. “He’s no match for me.”

  They dived. Jivex created blazes of dazzling light immediately in front of Brimstone’s crimson eyes and blares of deafening noise by his ears. Pained, startled, the smoke drake thrashed, and failed to notice Kara’s hurtling descent. Commencing a battle anthem at the last second, when it was too late for the reptile on the ground to dodge, she slammed down on top of him, dug her claws into his flanks and her fangs into his neck, wrapped her tail around him, and covered him with her wings, pinning him in place.

  Weapons raised, the hunters rushed forward. But before anyone could strike a blow, Brimstone’s body dissolved into smoke and embers. Kara fell through the cloud, which surged sideways as if a gale were blowing it. It coalesced back into solidity several yards away. Kara saw that Brimstone had a crooked leg and wing, and numerous rips in his mottled hide.

  Still avid to make the kill, the others swarmed after him. “Wait!” Brimstone snarled. “When I attacked you, I was acting under coercion, but now the linnorn has released me from its control.”

  Dorn’s only response was a sweep of his iron talons. Brimstone leaped backward, and the strike missed.

  “The Hermit has been casting priestly magic,” the smoke drake said, “and divines of a certain stripe can command the undead. You know it’s so, Pavel Shemov! Tell your comrades!”

  Pavel looked as if he would have liked nothing better than to ignore Brimstone’s plea and keep attacking. Still, he said, “Wait! It’s as he claims. The Hermit may well have forced him to turn against us. Though it’s the fundamental corruption inside him that makes it possible.”

  “But we knew he was a vampire when we agreed to work with him,” panted Will, “so I guess there’s no point complaining about it now.”

  Scowling, Dorn lowered his blade. “I don’t trust you,” he said to Brimstone, “but I suppose I do trust the strength of your hatred of Sammaster.”

  The smoke drake sneered. “Like recognizes like.”

  “It’s nice to see everyone getting along,” Taegan said. “Guests sho
uld behave with decorum in front of their host.”

  Kara looked up. Black pinions half furled, the avariel came gliding down to earth with the gigantic, wingless linnorn drifting behind him.

  With no spells left in his head, Pavel used his physician’s skills to tend everyone’s wounds as best he could, and they all drank their supply of healing elixirs dry. Otherwise, they would have been in no condition to attend to what the Hermit had to say.

  At that, slumped around the crackling, smoky fire Dorn had built, they remained a weary and battered lot, each with his bruises, blisters, and swaths of bloody bandages on display. Only Brimstone, whose vampiric body shed wounds with unnatural speed, looked little the worse for the recent ordeal.

  As if he’d discerned the tenor of Pavel’s thoughts, Will whispered, “If the Hermit decides to break its promise to the maestro, I imagine we’ll all wind up in its belly about a second and a half later.”

  “Should that occur,” Pavel said, “I can only hope you’ll sicken a corpse tearer as much as you’ve always nauseated me.” Thanks to the sting of his burns and abrasions, he hadn’t yet managed to get comfortable. He tried leaning back on his elbows, and it helped a little.

  “I gave you time to drink your draughts and apply your ointments,” the Hermit said. The greasy, lichen-spotted bulk of the creature loomed over everyone else, even Brimstone, and radiated not merely dislike but utter loathing, like an emperor forced to treat with beings made of dung. “Now ask your questions.”

  “As you wish,” said Kara, in human form once more, “As we’ve already said, we seek a remedy for the Rage.” She proceeded to explain with a succinct storyteller’s clarity what plague Sammaster had unleashed on dragonkind, how they knew about it, and how they hoped to cure it. “So you see, you must aid us, if only for your own sake. Perhaps frenzy never touched you before, but it has now, and will never let you go, because Sammaster somehow altered the enchantment.”

  “We suspect,” Pavel said, “he sought you out in the course of his explorations, though he may not have proffered his true name, or worn his true face, and you gave him information that advanced his schemes.”

  The Hermit crouched silent and motionless for what seemed a long while, only the fine cilia spouting from its scales squirming sluggishly, like sated grubs in decaying meat.

  At last it said, “A wizard did come, some years ago.”

  “Why would you help him?” asked Will. “Because he’s a lich, and you’re partial to the undead?”

  A cup of brandy cradled in his hand, managing a certain elegance even when half sitting, half lying on the ground, Taegan grinned. “No. Ghouls and phantoms are the linnorn’s slaves, not its friends. Sammaster had to compel cooperation, just as we did, and the shame of capitulation is the reason our new acquaintance is reluctant to discuss the incident. Isn’t that right, Lord Hermit?”

  The corpse tearer glared. “He persuaded me it would be more convenient to answer his questions than to destroy him, and did so without planting a seed of dementia in my mind. Do you find that amusing? Consider this, then: If I had difficulty, how will you mites fare when you come face to face with him?”

  “We’re hoping to duck that,” said Will. “We just want to break the curse, not fight its master.”

  “But if we have to,” said Dorn, his bastard sword naked and ready to hand in case the Hermit turned on them, “we have some of the most powerful dragons in Faerûn on our side. We’ll kill whomever we need to kill. Now, tell us what you told Sammaster.”

  “Very well,” said the linnorn. “As you surmised, he wanted to know all I could tell him of the age of the dragon kings, how they conquered, reigned, and finally fell.”

  “I gather,” whispered Brimstone, “you know a good deal.”

  The Hermit sneered. “Of course. I was there, watching from the shadows, reveling in their downfall. For the insanity didn’t touch me. Until tonight, I never dreamed it could.”

  Will cocked his head. “So you helped the elves fight your own kind? Why?”

  “I help no one, and dragons are not my ‘kind.’” The Hermit paused. “Once we might have claimed one another, but their race proved too greedy to share rulership of the world with us. The four-legs waged war against the linnorns, and at first we more than held our own. But their race was more fertile, more prolific, and over time, numbers told. They slaughtered the majority of us, and drove the rest into hiding.”

  Pavel suspected he’d just heard a singularly biased explanation of the cause of the conflict. Scholar though he was, he knew little about linnorns. He doubted anyone did. But every source that mentioned the species at all alluded to their boundless capacity for hatred, perversity, and destruction. Perhaps even the tyrannical wyrms of old had found them too abominable to tolerate.

  But he supposed it would accomplish nothing to challenge the Hermit’s account.

  “When I lost my own realm,” the creature continued, “the event was naturally an affront to my pride, though otherwise, I scarcely cared about it. I’d already come to see my subjects—tiny, scurrying, ephemeral vermin like you—for the contemptible things they were, and could take no more satisfaction in ruling them than one of you might take in lording it over an anthill. Indeed, all those with whom I shared this plane of existence so disappointed me that I might have lost my reason, or slain myself in revulsion and despair, had I not also managed to establish an intimacy with the only entities worth knowing and honoring in all this botched, sordid excuse for a cosmos. The four-legs could steal my throne, but they couldn’t take that.”

  “What ‘entities?’” Brimstone asked.

  “The powers behind darkness and undeath,” the Hermit said. “The forces that casually spawn your kind as a byproduct of their true business, the way a carpenter makes shavings when he planes a board.”

  Pavel felt a pang of disgust. “In other words, you became the priest of some evil deity.”

  “You aren’t capable of comprehending what my words actually mean,” the Hermit said. “Pray to your own little god that you never find out.”

  “I don’t care about your faith,” said Dorn. “Tell us about the coming of the Rage.”

  “All right. It was delightful. It was vengeance, if only vicariously, and to this day, I regret that, dwelling alone in the barrens, I missed the beginning of it. Soon enough, though, I sensed a change in the world, and started investigating. I discovered dragons everywhere running amok, laying waste to their own dominions, slaughtering their chattels and protectors, and in their wanton, reckless bloodlust, leaving themselves vulnerable to their foes. I picked off several myself, when I had the chance.”

  “You must,” said Kara, “have wondered about the cause, and tried to find out what it was.”

  “Of course. I suspected the elves had unleashed some manner of curse, for of all the slave races, they possessed the most powerful magic. But if they were responsible, they’d covered their tracks well. Those I put to the question had no knowledge of it, and I couldn’t approach the enchanters, diviners, and lords who might. They stood at the heads of mighty hosts assembled to assail the drakes, and would have made no distinction between a four-legged wyrm and myself.”

  “Still,” said Will, “you’re clever enough that you learned something, am I right?”

  “Yes, halfling. In the end, I found out the elves had raised a secret citadel high in the Novularond Mountains.”

  Raryn sat up straighter. “In the midst of the Great Glacier.”

  “Not then,” the Hermit said. “The ice formed thousands of years later. Still, it was a strange place for a fortress, remote from the rest of the Tel-quessir’s holdings, and of no strategic importance. Thus, I surmised it might have something to do with the Rage. But I knew it would be imprudent to approach and investigate further, and as the millennia passed, other matters claimed my attention.”

  “Until Sammaster jogged your memory,” said Will.

  “Yes,” the corpse tearer said. “If I’d
realized why he wanted to know—”

  “You wouldn’t have told him,” said Dorn. He turned to Raryn. “This has to be the place where the old mages and priests constructed their mythal. Can we scout the site and still be back in Thentia by the Feast of the Moon?”

  The dwarf nodded. “The Great Glacier’s dangerous traveling for any who weren’t born there. But follow my lead and we’ll be all right. It’s funny. I always thought I might go home again someday, but not like this.”

  “You’ll have no joy of it,” the Hermit snarled, its eyes like pits of burning ink. “Venture on the ice, and you’ll meet disaster.”

  The unexpected outburst shocked them all into silence. Then Taegan drawled, “I’m unclear, noble linnorn, whether you’re speaking prophecy, laying a curse on us, or simply attempting to compromise our morale. In any case, perhaps you’ve lost sight of the fact that if we fail, you’ll run mad as a pup in a hen house. Accordingly, more assistance and less menace might be in order.”

  “I’ve provided what you asked and more,” the linnorn said. “Now I’ll seek my own cure, with my own resources. Be gone from my lands by midday, and never seek me again, lest you find me.” It wheeled and half stalked, half crawled away. Despite its immensity, it melted into the night almost instantly.

  “Well,” said Jivex, “that last part was cheery.”

  Brimstone spread his wings and departed shortly after the Hermit. Despite his own considerable store of arrogance, the vampire evidently took the corpse tearer’s command to be gone by noon seriously. That meant he needed to leave forthwith, since he couldn’t travel while the sun was in the sky.

  With the night creature gone, Taegan grudgingly decided he ought to volunteer to take the first watch. Though he was every bit as weary as his companions, it was a fact of nature that elves required less rest than humans, and unlike either men or dragons, restored themselves by entering a dreamlike Reverie. He couldn’t lapse into that state involuntarily the way an exhausted sentry of another race might accidentally fall asleep.