Blind Tymora’s luck, Alias thought. Her back ached as though she had a sunburn, but no more. She abruptly shouted to the others, “Let’s get a move on!”
The newly rescued bard ambled up the hill with the mage. Akabar held his recovered tome pressed tightly under his arm and used his hand to hold open the battered scroll, scanning its contents as he approached Alias.
The halfling planted each foot firmly at shoulder-width, and stuck out her hand toward the swordswoman. “We haven’t been properly introduced. Ruskettle is the name, song and merriment the—”
“Not now,” hushed Alias. “Look. In about five minutes, ten minutes at most, the red reptile is going to check to be sure we’re dead. She’ll come lurching out of the cave entrance. It’s at least a mile to decent tree cover.…”
Dragonbait sniffed the air and growled. The halfling turned to the lizard and offered her still outstretched hand. Dragonbait backed away a step and bared his teeth. Ruskettle hastily lowered her arm.
“If we flee,” Alias said, “it’s likely we’ll be caught in the open and fried.” She arched her eyebrows and looked at the mage.
“Any suggestions?”
“Seal her in?” Akabar offered.
“Sure,” countered Alias. “Have an avalanche handy?”
“Mayhaps,” the Turmishman replied with a grin. He held up the scroll he’d been perusing. It was crammed with tightly calligraphed symbols. “This title says it is a spell to conjure a wall of stone.”
Alias’s eyes lit up. “Can you cast it?”
The magic-user nodded. “All I need do is use a simple trick to read the magic. That will evoke the powers locked within the text. Of course, it may not work.” He spread his hands in a gesture of uncertainty.
“Half a chance is better than none,” the warrior insisted. “Let’s try it out on the beast’s front door. Dragonbait!”
The lizard stopped staring at the halfling and followed the swordswoman and the mage over the scattered boulders that ringed the mountain. The halfling brought up the rear.
They don’t stand on ceremony much here, it occurred to Ruskettle moodily. As she walked, she pocketed her latest acquisitions, a ring and a small vial smelling of cinnamon.
By the time they reached the lair’s main entrance, steam was billowing from within. The cavern’s front opening was small but still quite wide enough for a dragon to pass through. From somewhere deep within, beyond their sight, a deep, throaty muttering rose and fell.
“Can the dragon use spells?” Akabar asked the halfling, concerned that the beast might have other, hidden talents.
“No. She’s just cursing,” the halfling explained. “The old girl talks to herself, deciding what she should do, where she should go, who she should eat, and so on. All that stuff.”
Alias said grimly, “Can we just seal her in and get out of here before she reaches a decision?”
Akabar held the scroll out at arm’s length and began intoning its spell in a low, melodic voice. Every so often, he would glance up at the entrance, then back to the paper.
Alias looked at her sword arm, but the symbols remained inert. Relief was quickly replaced by a sensation of horror as she spotted Ruskettle ambling over the stones directly toward the cavern’s mouth.
The small humanoid took up a position some twenty yards from the cavern and cupped her hands before her mouth. She bellowed, or at least shouted as loud as a small creature could, “Heyyy, Misty!”
All at once, the mutterings in the cavern stopped.
Alias held her breath. Akabar looked up and almost scrambled the spell by missing an inflection. He continued to read aloud, though faster than before. Alias looked for Dragonbait, but the lizard was bounding over the rock-strewn hillside toward the halfling.
Ruskettle continued her taunting. “We made it, you big sack of shoe leather! We got out, and I’m going to tell everyone you’re an oath-breaker! You jackass-faced salamander!”
Dragonbait was only halfway to the halfling’s position when a deep rumbling came from within the mountain, like the sound of an erupting volcano. The mage quickened his verbal pace yet again. Alias was torn between worrying that the mage’s speed would spoil the scroll’s spell and that the wall created wouldn’t be large enough to cover the lair’s entrance or strong enough to stop a dragon.
“Oath-breaker, Fight-faker!” brayed the halfling. Twin amber lights appeared far within the cavern, growing larger by the second. They framed a red, open mouth set with swordlike teeth.
“Flame-brain, Lame-brain, Tame-brain, oooff—” The halfling’s jeers were lost in a sharp exhalation as Dragonbait slammed into her, knocking her down the hillside for the second time in ten minutes.
The rising roar of the oncoming dragon now hurt Alias’s ears. Akabar was shouting as well, spitting out the last phrases of the incantation. The scroll itself was being consumed by the force of the magics and was burning bright yellow in the merchant-mage’s hands.
Everything broke loose in the span of a breath. Mist’s body appeared from the darkness, visible in the sunlight that shone only a little way into the cavern. The dragon was flying low and fast, about to shoot through the small opening, falling upon the party like a hawk among sparrows.
Then there was a great whooshing noise, and a huge wall of stone blocked the party’s view of the monster. They heard, however, a bone-crushing smash coming from the far side of the wall, and saw the barrier arc outward at its center, trying to contain the force of several tons of wyrm flying at top speed.
When the wall bulged, Alias was sure that the magical mortar would give. Astonishingly, it held, even losing half of the bulge by springing back some. Silence descended on the mountain meadow. Akabar collapsed by the burned remains of the scroll and put his head in his hands.
Ruskettle picked herself off the ground, scowled at the lizard, and shouted down at Alias, “That was hard work. When do we eat?”
6
Olive and the Crystal Elemental
For the next few miles, as they wound down the hillside and into the cover of deeper woods, Alias kept checking over her shoulder. Despite having sealed Mist in, the swordswoman half-expected the dragon to dive on them from the sky, bathing the entire forest in flames. Logic insisted that Mist had to be at least slightly injured from her sudden collision, and it would take her at least a day to dig her way out, but Alias felt more comfortable playing it safe by assuming that Mist was pursuing them.
The swordswoman made the party turn off the road onto the first trail into the woods, so it was nearly dusk by the time they reached the stone circle where she and Akabar and Dragonbait had spent the night before.
In the setting sunlight, the red hewn rock of the druid circle blazed as though the hillock on which it stood was afire. According to the map Dimswart had given Alias, this site had long been abandoned by the clerics of nature, yet the pines encircling the clearing showed no sign of encroaching and reclaiming the area. Alias wondered whether the trees were discouraged by the rocky, frost-cracked soil or thwarted by some lingering magic.
At any rate, the bare space discouraged her as well. Last night they had found the clearing too cold to use as a camping site. Twenty feet down the slope under the cover of the pine branches, on the soft carpet of pine needles, they were sheltered from the wind and considerably warmer. This night, the trees would also shelter them from Mist’s gaze. Alias was glad to have good reasons to avoid the stone circle. The giant columns, set in no detectable order, made her uncomfortable. She and Dragonbait hurriedly retrieved the party’s gear from its hiding place in the hollow at the foot of one of the sandstone rocks.