Now Master Rus spoke firmly, the tone of a professional talking about his business. “You know what your master requires, Tania, and you shall provide it. Stay close behind me; be quick with what I ask for; and remember the most important thing artists like us must do, with excellence, at all times.” He prompted Cayce with a tilt of his head.
“Observe and be silent.” Cayce bobbed a quick bow and felt her eyes drying. Her master had a way of looking at Cayce that made her forget to blink. Also, she was unwilling to take her eyes off the old devil for long, lest he slip her a dose of something nasty. She forced herself to blink and felt a dry, sandy pop as her eyelids met.
“Very good.” Rus turned away and continued up the trail. The stout man quickly caught up to the soldiers without deigning to visibly rush. Cayce fell in behind her master, sticking close enough to hear his asides but well clear of his billowing satin cape.
The guides led them on, approaching the dragon’s lair from the south. Both the forest woman and the somber pixie assured them that though this path was steeper and more treacherous than the northern route, it was also more heavily wooded and would be shrouded in mist until midday. They could expect to climb halfway up the mountain before the dragon had any chance of spotting them… provided the party members all kept their footing and didn’t plummet to their deaths.
Cayce shifted her heavy pack and tucked a strand of long white hair back into her headdress. She had seen and done many strange things apprenticing with Master Rus, from harvesting graveyard mushrooms by moonlight to milking spiders with tweezers. Sometimes the things she saw and did came back to her while she slept, and she awoke with a half-strangled scream in her throat.
This trek up the mountain was something new, however. Even the lurid drudgery one found as a poisoner’s apprentice could not compare to participating in an actual dragon hunt. She had never imagined such a thing in her most fevered dreams, not even in those brought on by the most toxic fumes from her master’s cauldron.
In addition to her private misgivings, Cayce felt the guides were surely the most discouraging pair anyone had ever followed up a dark mountain. Vaan, the morose blue-haired pixie, had the body of a grown man at just under half the size. Alone, he seemed perfectly proportioned, handsome even, with his white eyes shimmering like smoke, but with someone beside him to provide a sense of scale, he was stunted and absurd.
Atypically for a pixie, Vaan spoke little, brooded often, and seemed perpetually on the verge of sighing. He seemed detached from his own quest for freedom—oddly disinterested in the mission he had hired them to perform. When they asked him why he and the forest woman had formed the party and were leading it to the dragon, Vaan muttered something about his people being conquered and generations of slavery under the wily old serpent’s cruel yoke. It was a listless tale told without enthusiasm, and it was neither inspiring nor convincing.
For all his good looks and purportedly noble motives, Cayce found Vaan empty and pathetic. To her, he seemed like a sad miniature statue, an artist’s study in melancholy done in sharp-cut gems and blue-tinged marble.
The female guide was named Kula, and while she was more formidable looking than the pixie, she was no more encouraging. Kula did all the talking once the journey was underway, and she seemed to know her way around the woods that surrounded the dragon’s mountain. A braided band of tough, woody vine held her hair tight against her broad skull, almost disappearing against the backdrop of her nut-brown skin. Kula claimed to be an anchorite, which she further defined as some sort of religious hermit.
Cayce was happy to agree. In fact, she was happy to grant Kula any title, so long as the huge woman didn’t wad Cayce up like a pinch of fresh bread and swallow her whole.
Cayce wasn’t only disconcerted by Kula’s size. Kula’s hulking form was a mild amusement compared to the reverential, almost trancelike state she entered when she spoke of killing dragons. As an anchorite, Kula claimed to be a student of nature and an agent of the natural order. Her role, she said, was to enforce the laws of the jungle. Confronting the dragon in its nest was a spiritual trial she was undertaking, a holy effort made to advance her on the path to enlightenment.
This peculiar attitude seemed to make Kula cold and aloof toward Cayce and her master. Cayce was not quite sure why. Some of the most effective poisons were completely organic, derived from the natural creatures and plants that lived in Kula’s forest.
The rest of the ten-member party was rounded out by a small squad of soldiers: one officer, four infantry, and one golem. The officer introduced himself as Captain Allav Hask, and though his face was dead and waxy, his eyes burned with cold fury. He wore one sword on his hip that seemed normal enough, and one strapped across his back that was clearly for special occasions. This grander, larger sword was sheathed in a gleaming golden scabbard and wrapped in multiple layers of fresh white linen. The wrappings came loose as they hiked, giving Cayce the chance to note the powerful runes carved into the swords scabbard and hilt. What would happen, she wondered, when the captain drew that enchanted blade?
Captain Hask always kept two of his infantry close by him at the front of the party, just behind the guides. The other two brought up the rear, both to protect them all from attack and to make sure the heavy golem kept up.
Kula was massive and Vaan was as dour as stone, but the golem was literally a massive statue. The soldiers called the stone man “it” or “the golem” when the captain was in earshot, but among themselves they called him “Boom.” He was carved in the rough outline of a man with only the vaguest and most rudimentary features. The reddish granite of his body glowed softly at the shoulder and neck joints, and his heavy brow jutted out over two hollow, smoking eye sockets. When he opened his mouth to acknowledge the captain’s orders Cayce could see, hear, and smell the inferno burning inside.
Boom the golem seemed mindless—utterly devoid of a personality or independent thought. Judging from what she had seen so far, Cayce guessed he wasn’t designed for such niceties. Along the route she had watched him crush a chunk of granite to powder beneath his feet and bend back a foot-thick evergreen as though it were a stalk of corn. No military or mechanical expert, Cayce nonetheless guessed Boom was built for close-quarters combat where brute power and durability were more important than speed and tactical thinking.
Of them all, Master Rus himself was the most familiar figure, but to Cayce he was alien and strange to begin with and thus seemed so in every context. Rus was dressed as always in inappropriate finery that managed to seem both formal and flamboyant. His wide-brimmed black hat was rimmed with a curtain of golden yarn strands that hung down over his eyes and danced against the tip of his round nose. He wore an ornate ruby ring and carried a polished hardwood walking stick with a sharp-faceted crystal skull on the handle. The purple satin lining of his cape glinted in the waning moonlight when the wind whipped it open.
Rus carried nothing but his cane, leaving Cayce to bear their food, water, and dozens of arcane substances carefully organized in jars, bottles, and pouches. Her master claimed to have bested dragons before, but Rus was such a liar and a braggart that Cayce never knew when he was being sincere and when he was just selling himself to a customer. In any case, she knew he had brought along his deadliest potions and powders, and the knowledge that they were at least well-armed lightened her load considerably.
Ahead, Kula motioned for the party to stop. They were approaching the edge of the tree line and, according to the anchorite, were “about to venture into the most exposed and dangerous part of the journey.” When outlining the plan at the base of the mountain, Kula had paused before adding, “Barring its end, of course, where battle with the dragon itself may prove more dangerous.” As she said this, Kula had almost swooned behind a dreamy, unfocused grin.