Overhead, the sun had passed its height, and was beginning the long slide toward sunset. As she squinted at it, Narm voiced the thought that had just come into her own mind.
“I’m not liking the idea of camping in this, somewhere on the side of a rockfall,” Narm said to Mirt. “How much farther is it to this gate of yours?”
“If we keep on steadily,” Mirt told him gravely, “we should reach it just before nightfall.”
Narm rolled his eyes. “Nightfall,” he said. “Of course.”
The old merchant—as usual, Delg reflected sourly—proved to be right. The sun was low and the depths of the ravines shrouded in purple shadows when Mirt pointed to a tiny spur of rock in the distance. Ton’s Irondrake,” he said simply, and hastened on. Despite the chill breezes of twilight, they were all sweating as they clambered up, over, down and through seemingly endless rocks.
Narm could well believe what he’d heard of brigands evading armies of Cormyr in this tortured land; half a hundred men could be waiting on the other side of every ridge, and you’d never know it until y—Suddenly wary, Narm swallowed and suspiciously checked the terrain around them.
Delg, who was climbing in his wake, grunted. “About time you started being scared, lad,” the dwarf said. His tones told Narm the dwarf had just deemed him not quite a complete idiot—but still damned-before-all-the-gods close. The young mage sighed and looked at Shandril. The sight of her always cheered him.
As it happened, there weren’t a hundred armed brigands waiting around the next ridge. Instead, a grassy meadow opened out in front of them, rising steeply up to tumbled rocks at the base of a lancelike pinnacle of stone. The fire of sunset blazed down one side of this rocky spire.
“Irondrake Rock,” Mirt announced as if he’d just put it there himself. “Named for a great wyrm that once laired here.”
“Once?” Delg asked suspiciously.
Mirt chuckled and pointed a thick finger at the base of the toothlike spire of stone. “Its grotto lies there, if ye’ve a mind for fool-headed poking about. Perhaps, if it’d make ye sleep easier, Shan’ll hurl a little spellfire in there—and singe whatever calls it home now.”
The dwarf squinted up at the stone spire. Save for the calls of birds in the trees below and behind them, all was quiet around it. The tall grass of the meadow, studded with weeds and wildflowers, looked as if nothing had disturbed it all this season. Even so, Delg didn’t care much for the way stony walls rose on either side of them to hem the meadow in, forming a great funnel that lead only upward to the Rock. But he could see no sign of danger. Yet.
Grumbling into his beard, Delg led the way up through the thick grass toward the rocky spire. “Where’s this gate of yours, then?”
Mirt grimaced. “At the very top—of course.”
“You’d need the luck of the gods to get to it in winter,” Delg replied, staring up at the crumbling flanks of Irondrake Rock.
Shandril followed his gaze, and swallowed. She’d have to climb that? She turned to Narm and found on his face the same growing alarm she felt. Without thinking, they threw comforting arms about each other.
“Last light,” Delg said sourly. “Little as I like camping anywhere in these lands, we’d never get more than halfway up before it’d be too dark to climb—even without the two lovejays, here.” He cocked his head at Narm and Shandril. They looked back at him with identical expressions that told Delg he might have problems getting them to climb Irondrake Rock even in full sun, and with a whole day to do it.
Delg turned back to Mirt. “Where exactly does this gate of yours take us, anyway?”
“A certain place in the High Forest, south of Stone Stand,” Mirt replied, his eyes on the cliffs around them. “Shall we look at the cave?”
Delg nodded. “After I’ve looked around behind the Rock first, and had a bit of a peer at those ledges above us, too—or we may find ourselves attacked both in front and behind.” He strode on through the grass.
“What a cheery fellow,” Mirt observed in the fluting, jolly tones of an effete courtier. Shandril stifled a laugh.
As the merchant strode forward, twilight laid deepening gloom on the meadow. Night came down swiftly on the Stonelands; before Delg had returned to them, it was fully dark. “A fire?” he asked, stumping up to Mirt. “You know better than I how dangerous that is here.”
The old merchant adventurer shrugged. “In the cave, we’ll need light and can have it. Out here—well, it could be seen a long way.” He rummaged in his magical sack for a moment and drew forth a stout, iron-caged lantern. Opening one of its glass panes, he sniffed, pronounced it “full” with a satisfied air, and extended it to Delg with a grand flourish.
The dwarf sighed, took it, and extended his other hand. “Another?” he snapped, looking from Mirt to his empty palm.
It was Mirt’s turn to sigh. He rummaged in his bag for a long time and finally held up—another lamp, identical to the first. It came to Delg accompanied by Mirt’s triumphant smile.
The dwarf merely snorted, thrust both lanterns into Narm’s grasp with a terse, “Here—hold these. No dropping,” and extended his empty hands again. “Flint and steel?”
Mirt raised an eyebrow. “Of course—but what happened to yer own, eh?”
Delg chuckled. “Just testing,” he replied, hands going to his belt. As he took one lamp from Narm and lit it, and Mirt did the same with the other, Shandril put her hands on her hips and demanded, “Are the two of you going to play these games all the way to Silverymoon?”
“Of course not,” a menacing voice purred out of the darkness near at hand. “They’d both have to stay alive to do that.”
Mirt spun around with an oath—in time to meet winged death swooping down on him from the night sky. He ducked aside, grabbing for his blades, and stony claws tore at him. The fat merchant turned and smashed the lantern to flaming ruin on a grotesque, leering horned face—and stony wings beat as the thing fled aloft, squalling.
“Patience,” Gathlarue said in that same purring voice. The rings on her fingers glowed with a faint blue light. “We’ll strike only when my winged ones get them really dancing.”
Mairara stared into the eyes of her mistress and saw a light in them that made her shiver. She looked hastily away, down over the edge of the cliff, to the battle below. “The soldiers, Lady?”
Gathlarue nodded. “Those with Tespril stay up here with us; send the others down. They’re getting restless; best give them some blood.” She laughed aloud.
Mairara shivered again as she hastened to pass on the orders.
“Gargoyles!” Delg shouted. “Only magic can harm them. Narm, ge-” The rest of his words were lost in the jarring impact of another winged form. The dwarf’s lantern fell to the grass, smoked—and then its flames caught dead weeds, and flared.
In the sudden, flickering blaze, Shandril and Narm saw Mirt turning toward them, glowing dagger in one hand and sword in the other. Above and behind him, the gargoyle that had attacked him was turning in the air, wings beating raggedly. Narm coolly raised his hands and blasted it with a bolt of force. The stony monster screamed thinly as it spun end over end away from them, clawing vainly at the air. Then it leveled, banked, and flew heavily on; Narm muttered a soft curse. He had no more such spells.
The other gargoyle was clawing at Delg, who rolled in the grass, cursing. Shandril lashed out at it with spellfire—a thin tongue of cutting blue-white flame that laid open the nearest shoulder and flank of the gargoyle, and sent it over on its back with a scream of pain.
Mirt was on it an instant later, bounding in with flailing blade and heavy knees, pinning it. The glowing dagger stabbed down, rose, and thrust again, viciously. Squalling, the thing convulsed.