“Why all the questions about the guardian?” the commander asked.
“Because I have to fight it,” said Kit glumly.
The kapak’s tongue flickered out of his mouth in astonishment. “You’re going to steal the orb from Feal-Thas?”
“No, I’m not going to steal it,” Kitiara said testily. “What would I want with a dragon orb? I wish I’d never heard of the damn thing. It’s cost me nothing but trouble.”
She halted in her pacing, turned to face the kapak. “If I had soldiers with me—”
The commander shook his head. “Not on your life, lady.”
“I’m a Dragon Highlord,” Kit said, scowling. “I could order you to assist me.”
“I take my orders from Highlord Feal-Thas,” said the commander, grinning again, “and I don’t think he’s going to order me to help you steal his dragon orb.”
“I’m not stealing it!” Kitiara protested. “I’m going to give it to the dragon for safekeeping.”
“Trust me, it’s being safely kept now,” the kapak said.
“I’m under orders,” said Kitiara. “Just tell me how to get there.”
The kapak shrugged. “It’s your funeral.”
He gave her instructions on how to find her way through the maze of tunnels, which he likened to the labyrinthine sewers of Palanthas, then he set out after his men. Kit saw him and his troops, armed with bows and arrows, trekking off.
Kitiara resumed her pacing and her thinking.
All right, so there was a guardian. How bad could it be? She didn’t for one minute believe the kapak’s nonsense about the dragon being afraid of it. Dragons are at the top of the food chain. They aren’t afraid of anything. The commander was just trying to scare her. That wild tale about snapped leg bones! He was probably out with his men having a good laugh over her gullibility.
Trying to guess what the guardian could be, so she could determine what weapons to use to fight it, Kit called to mind all the stories she’d ever heard of guardians set to watch over valuable treasure. Was it undead? A ghoul or a ghost? Certainly it was magical. Maybe a golem. It could be a frost giant, even though Feal-Thas had said it wasn’t. But the castle’s inhabitants would certainly know if there was a giant chained up in the basement. Kit thought of this monster and she thought of that, and suddenly she came to the realization that thinking wasn’t accomplishing anything except giving her a throbbing pain in her temples.
“Bugger it!” she said to herself wrathfully.
Clutching the furs around her, she went to rummage through the kapak’s weapon stash. She had her own sword, but she wanted a kapak weapon and she found one that suited her—a small, curve-bladed weapon that would fit into her belt—a couple of daggers and a spear. She was careful to keep from touching the blades of the draconian weapons, for kapaks licked the blades with their tongues to coat them with their poisoned saliva, which was the reason Kit wanted to use them. She picked up a shield on her way out.
Kit crossed the courtyard again to return to her room, first stopping in the library to have a few choice words with Feal-Thas. The elf was not there, however. The wolf was, and Kitiara did not linger. She found someone had brought food to her room in her absence. She ate a good meal and washed it down with a couple of swigs of dwarf spirits from her flask to warm her blood, then dumped the rest of the spirits onto the floor.
She put on her armor, cinched on her own sword belt holding her short sword in its sheath. She shoved the extra sword into the belt, along with the empty flask. She wrapped herself in the furs and went back out to the courtyard and filled up the flask with the presumably-holy waters of the fountain.
Feeling ready for anything from giants to zombies, Kitiara headed for the lower levels of the castle.
Kitiara had no fear of this guardian. She knew she would defeat it. She found it annoying she had to waste her time and energy on it. It was all stupidly ironic. She should be back in Solamnia slaughtering knights, and here she was, fighting a monster in order to keep some fool knight alive.
According to the kapak, glacial springs had carved out the first tunnels in the ice below the ruins of the castle. Feal-Thas had further enhanced the natural tunnels with his magic to carve out the chamber of the dragon orb. Upon her arrival, Sleet had established residence in a lair dug magically by some white dragon eons ago. Sleet had expanded the lair to her own liking, adding new entrances and exits and digging even more tunnels.
Kit would have no trouble finding her way down, according to the kapak. Portions of the glacier routinely broke off, exposing the tunnels to the open air.
She found one such entrance leading into what looked like a mole-run bored through solid ice. She started to make her cautious way down, walking gingerly, but almost immediately her feet slid out from underneath her. She dropped her shield and spear trying to break her fall, and ended up sliding halfway down the tunnel on her backside. The shield went clear to the bottom and crashed up against a wall with a clatter and bang that could have been heard in Flotsam.
Cursing all wizards everywhere, Kitiara crawled the rest of the way down the icy tunnel on her hands and knees. She retrieved her shield at the bottom and managed to regain her feet. The bright sun shone through the ice, illuminating the tunnels with an eerie green light. She stared at the walls.
Tired of losing his men in the maze, the kapak commander had told her he’d come up with a system for marking the tunnels so that anyone venturing down there stood a reasonable chance of finding his way back to the surface. The marks were carved into the ice and could be found at every intersection. Crude arrows showed the way back. A drawing with wings and a tail indicated the dragon’s lair. Tunnels leading to the orb’s chamber were marked with an ominous X.
Kitiara headed off in the direction of the dragon. Despite what the kapak had told her about the dragon fearing the guardian, Kit considered it would be worth her while to try to enlist the dragon’s aid. Kit had devised a lie about why she needed to destroy the guardian of the dragon orb. The lie was lame, not very convincing, but white dragons were not all that intelligent. Skie referred to whites as the gully dwarves of dragons. Kit figured that if the lie failed, she could bully the white into helping her.
As it turned out, she’d gone to the trouble for nothing.
Kit found Sleet’s lair, but no Sleet. The dragon had been here quite recently, to judge by a half-eaten caribou carcass. She was gone now, however. Disappointed, Kitiara turned to leave and bumped into Feal-Thas, who was standing right behind her.
“Quick reflexes,” remarked Feal-Thas, eyeing the dagger that seemed to leap into Kit’s hand.
“You’re lucky I didn’t slit your fool throat!” Kit snarled, angry that she’d let him sneak up on her like that. She wouldn’t have said it was possible for someone to break out in a sweat in these freezing temperatures, but she was proof it could be done.
“Were you looking for the dragon?” Feal-Thas asked mildly. “She’s not here. I sent her off with a message to our fellow Highlord in Khur. Sleet will be gone some time, I should think.” Feal-Thas smiled, tight-lipped. “I’m not convinced she knows where Khur is.”
He turned to leave, then turned back.
“Don’t be too disappointed. The dragon wouldn’t have been any use against the guardian, as you will soon find out. Good luck, Highlord.”
He walked off, moving with soundless ease over the slick floor. Kit’s hand clenched on the dagger’s hilt. She had to fight to resist the urge to bury it between the Highlord’s shoulder blades. She thrust the dagger back in her boot.
She left the dragon’s lair and made her way cautiously through the tunnels, following the X’s that were meant to warn people away. She wondered how she would know the chamber when she found it, but as it turned out, she had no trouble.
She came to an intersection where a narrow tunnel slanted off from the main one. There was no X here. No need. A rivulet of blood frozen in the ice ran from the small tunnel into the main one. Kit followed the grisly trail and found the scene of violent death that was just as the kapak commander had described it.