The half-elf stopped chattering, her shoulders sagged, and she moved closer, wrapping her arms around his waist. “You made it nearly five days, lover, without one of these spells. Some day you’ll beat it.” She held him tight and felt his body tremble, a sympathetic tear sliding down her face. “You will beat it,” she told him. “I just know it. Everything will be all right. Here, concentrate on this.”
She held the rosy gem in front of his face, turning it this way and that as if to hypnotize him. He tried to fixate on it, staring unblinking, telling himself how beautiful it and Rikali were, how beautiful this vale was. But the heat on his leg, increasing now, was concentrated on the scale, and it was somehow worse, different from the times before.
He tried to swallow, but found his throat had gone utterly dry. He tried to move and found himself paralyzed, the strength vanishing from his legs.
“Lover?” the half-elf asked.
Dhamon reached for his thigh, where the scale was covered by the expensive black trousers gained from the merchant robbery. “Ow!” He pulled his fingers back. It was hot, practically scalding! He doubled over from the pain. “Riki…” was all he managed.
“I’m here.” She forgot the gems and threw her arms around his shoulders, brushed his cheek with her lips. “Ride it out. Just ride it out.”
Dhamon sucked in his lower lip, cursing himself for acting like a wounded child. There was an acrid taste in his mouth he couldn’t get rid of, and his lungs burned. He looked up so he could see over the half-elf’s shoulder, trying to find something to concentrate on—anything to occupy his mind and diminish the pain.
Then, suddenly, his mind was flooded with an image, and as if in a dream he saw in front of him a wall of gleaming copper plates that reflected his face back at him. Hundreds upon hundreds of Dhamon Grimwulfs. And all of those faces contorted in pain. “Riki…” he repeated, reaching up with his hand and turning her face and pointing. “Do you see it? The scales? The dragon?”
The half-elf looked up with a shudder, her eyes spotting something not in the air in front of her, where Dhamon’s eyes remained fixed, but in the sky far overhead. “Pigs, lover! There is a dragon! So high up in the sky. Hard to see it. Wouldn’t’ve noticed it if you didn’t…”
She pointed and Dhamon saw it, the image in his mind melting away. Dhamon squinted up into the bright summer sky and saw the form arcing over the valley, dipping lower, then climbing higher and higher and higher, finally disappearing altogether from view.
A heartbeat later, the agony in his leg dissipated.
“It was a copper dragon, Riki.”
She cocked her head. “It was too high to see what kind, the sun too bright.”
“It was a copper dragon,” he repeated.
“How do you…”
“I just know, that’s all.”
A moment later they emerged from the crevice, Dhamon a little shaky but intent on doing his share of harvesting the crystals.
Determined to keep his mind off the strange episode, Rikali pulled a wavy dagger from her belt, one taken from the slain Ergothian, and used it to pry free chunks of green peridot. She held one of the precious gems up to the light and began explaining to Dhamon, with a gemologist’s expertise, about imperfections and coloration in rough material.
Late the second morning Fetch sat in front of a piece of pale yellow quartz shaped like a rounded tombstone. Its large, flat facet reflected his doglike visage as if the kobold were staring into a tinted mirror.
He craned his neck this way and that, admiring his diminutive, craggy features, then he scowled when he saw the embroidered birds and mushrooms on his clothes reflected back at him. “Baby clothes,” he hissed. “I’m wearing human baby clothes.” After a moment, his scowl turned into a wide smile, revealing his uneven yellowed, pointy teeth. “A baby,” he whispered. “Goochie goochie goo.”
Fetch started humming, a scratchy, off-key tune mingled with occasional gargling sounds. His scale-covered fingers started dancing in the air, as if he were conducting an invisible orchestra. The air shimmered around him, the heat rising from the ground. The shimmering closed around him like a cocoon, until flashing and sparkling motes frolicked over his cheeks, growing and winking ever brighter. He swallowed a snicker, the sensation of the enchantment tickled him, and then he increased the tempo of his strange melody. Finally the music stopped and the motes disappeared, and the only sound was the wind playing against the crystals like distant chimes. Staring back from the mirrorlike quartz was the cherubic face of a young human boy with wispy blond hair and rosy cheeks. He opened his mouth to reveal two upper teeth cutting their way through petal-pink gums. “Goochie goochie goo!” Fetch stuck his thumb in his mouth, winked, and wriggled happily.
“Getting good at this,” Fetch congratulated himself. “Wish Maldred could see me.” The kobold twisted his neck around to make sure the big man was still in sight. “Good indeed!” Soon he was humming again, his crystal-gathering chores forgotten for a moment in favor of the magic. A few minutes later, a vacant-looking gully dwarf was reflected in the crystal. “Dwell, dwat do you dknow,” he said, imitating the nasally sound of gully talk. Next, an ancient kender with deep wrinkles and an impressive gray topknot appeared. “Most unfortunate I left my hoopak in the wagon. It would complete the image.” Try as he might, the kobold could not change the appearance of the clothes. He worked to see how long he could hold a face, guessing that almost ten minutes had passed before his own craggy countenance reappeared. “I am indeed getting much, much better,” he pronounced. “What next? Hmm. I know.”
He concentrated again, humming something now that sounded like a funeral dirge as his fingers twitched in the air along his jaw line. The motes sparkled with a darker light this time, concentrating around his brow, which was broadening, and his jaw, which appeared to melt in upon itself and widen. The scraggly clumps of reddish hair that dangled from his chin multiplied and thickened, growing longer and forming a dense, auburn beard. Heavy brows developed over eyes that were becoming larger and as blue as the sapphires he had stuffed in his canvas sack an hour ago. Fetch’s nose was swelling, taking on the bulbous shape of a large onion, and his scaly skin was turning a ruddy flesh color that made his blunt white teeth stand out. When the metamorphosis was complete, a stunted dwarf was reflected in the crystal.
“Too bad Rikali can’t see me,” he mused. “Says she’s had enough of dwarves. This’d give her a good chuckle.” The image’s eyes widened in surprise, and Fetch gulped. Above his mirrored face was the image of a real dwarf, one with narrowed steely gray eyes, and one with thick fingers wrapped around the haft of a battle-axe that was plunging down toward him.
“Mal!” the kobold sputtered as he whirled away.
The dwarf had swung his axe hard and missed Fetch only by inches, striking instead the crystal and shattering it.
Shards pelted Fetch as his image was melting off him like butter. The kobold rolled again, squealing when the axe sliced through his butterfly sleeve.
“Mal! Company, Mal!” The kobold sprang to his feet and started scrabbling down the mountainside, feet slipping on gravel as he went. A quarrel whizzed over his head as he ducked behind a hornblend spire. He risked a peek out the other side. “Th-th-there’s four of ‘em,” he sputtered. “Four very angry dwarves. And me without my hoopak.”
“This one must weigh close to three pounds, huh?” Rikali tossed over a pear-shaped crystal that was uniformly pale yellow in color.
“What is it?” Dhamon caught it and hefted it in his palm, then carefully placed it in his canvas sack. He was using the scraps of a shredded cloak to pad the crystals so they wouldn’t jostle against each other and chip. Three already-full canvas sacks sat at his feet. There were nearly three dozen more large sacks already loaded on the wagon.