“Do you not see my amulet?” she demanded. “I am a waveservant, a priestess of Umberlee, who holds you all in the palm of her hand so long as you dwell in the midst of the sea. Now, who else wants to strike at me?”
None of them did, apparently.
“Good,” she said. “Which of you is in charge?”
The largest of the dragonkin snapped its leathery wings and sprang forward. Its hide was ocher with brownish spots and bands, and in addition to its spear, it wore a scimitara symbol of rank, perhaps. Its flesh had a dry, musky smell. She sensed it was leery of her but, even so, averse to appearing meek in front of its underlings.
“How you get here?” it growled.
“We swam.”
“Why?”
“I must see the master of this place. To deliver a message from the Queen of the Depths.”
The dragonkin grunted. “Not supposed to take strangers up mountain. Supposed to kill.”
“You cannot thwart the will of the greatest of all goddesses, but you are welcome to try. If I have to walk over your corpses to reach my destination, so be it.”
“Uh, no. We go up. No fish-woman come here before. Maybe Eshcaz or wearer of purple will want to see. Or maybe Eshcaz want to eat.” The creature waved its clawed hand at the trail snaking up the mountainside.
The cult enclave was larger than Anton had imagined it could be. He started to realize it during the hike up the mountain. In certain hollows, where no one out at sea could spot them, slaves toiled, tending crops, and dragonkin lashed them with whips and bastinadoes when they faltered. Perhaps some of the thralls had dwelled in the empty village on the beach before the wyrm worshipers staked their claim to Tan. Others must be captives purchased from the pirates of Mirg Isle. All were gaunt and haggard from hunger, ill treatment, and despair.
The actual stronghold was equally grim, and even more impressive. Anton had suspected a honeycomb of caverns inside the cone of the volcano but hadn’t dreamed they’d prove so extensive, so well populated, or so a-bustle with activity. Goldsmiths labored over glittering gems and precious metals, crafting intricate medallions too large for a human to wear. Sweating alchemists squinted into fiery kilns or supervised heated liquids as they bubbled, steamed, and streamed through twisting, forking mazes of glass pipe. Black-robed priests of Velsharoon, god of liches and necromancy, chanted before a sarcophagusor an altar carved in the shape of onein a chapel reeking of carrion. Wizards declaimed their own spells, invoking spirits Anton could glimpse at the periphery of his vision, but which vanished when he looked at them directly. Seers tossed bones and examined the patterns or stared into churning mirrors. The discharge of so much magic in a single place made the eyes water and the stomach squirm.
A smell somewhat like the body odor of their dragonkin escortthe reek of actual wyrms, Anton assumedlingered everywhere, and he spotted at least three of the colossal creatures, prowling restlessly through gloomy passageways or napping in unused galleries. As most dragons were powerful spellcasters, he assumed it was pride that kept them from pitching in to help with the arcane chores their worshipers had undertaken on their behalf.
He’d never seen a dragon before, not even from a distance, and the immense creatures were as frightening as he’d heard. But his predicament had already been about as dire as could be. Dragons only worsened it in a notional sort of way. Perhaps that was why he managed to cling to his composure until he and Tu’ala’keth reached what was evidently the end of their journey.
The dragonkin led them to a huge chamber near the apex of the volcano, where gaps in the walls admitted shafts of sunlight from the summer sky outside. Another breach in the rock, this one a chasm in the granite floor, quite possibly plunged all the way down to a reservoir of still-smoldering magma. Yet plenty of space remained for more slaves to pursue the prodigious, backbreaking task of chiseling a huge, complex geometric design and array of glyphs.
All this Anton observed in a moment, before movement at the far end of the cavern, atop a ledge midway up the wall, arrested his attention. He’d already noticed a shape hunkered there in the gloom, but had interpreted it as a protruding swell of rock. For surely it was too immense to be alive.
Alas, no. A gigantic wedge-shaped head, studded with horns on the beak and chin and larger ones sweeping backward from the brow, shot forward at the end of a serpentine neck. The striking motion carried it into a patch of sunlight, revealing the deep, glossy vermilion of the scales. The titan opened its jaws and roared. The echoing bellow shook the cave, brought bits of stone showering from the ceiling, and suffused the air with a stink of smoke and sulfur.
Everyone cowered, slaves and dragonkin overseers alike. Anton recoiled, somehow tangled his leg with one of the sea bags, and fell hard enough to evoke a jab of pain from his cuts and bruises. But he barely noticed the discomfort. He was too afraid.
Reds were the most terrible of all malevolent wyrms, and he hadn’t realized any dragon could grow so huge. It looked ancientand thus, powerfulas the volcano in which it made its lair.
He waited, petrified, for the red to annihilate him and everyone else, for at the moment he took it for death incarnate. Accordingly, it never occurred to him that it would do anything but kill.
But evidently the roar had served to take the edge off its ire for a little while, anyway, for it didn’t follow up with a burst of sorcery or a flare of fiery breath. It simply swiveled its head to glare down at the man beside it. Compactly built, clean shaven, and white haired, clad in a darklikely purplerobe, the cultist looked tiny as a beetle next to the object of his adoration.
“Why are they not finished?” the dragon snarled.
“It’s exacting work,” the cultist replied in a prim, well-educated baritone voicethe voice of a tutor or clerk. Some trick of the acoustics in the chamber enabled Anton to make out his softer tones even from dozens of yards away. “They have to cut the symbols precisely.”
“Sammaster promised that by now, I would already be a dracolich!”
“The First-Speaker said many things then wandered off and left me to perform the actual work. I’m doing the best I can. It’s partly a question of manpower. We need more slaves.” He hesitated. “Your hoard is greater than the wealth of many a prince. If you could spare just a small fraction, purely to help us bring about the consummation you desire”
“You dare,” the wyrm thundered, the noise so loud it made Anton feel as if someone had slammed him in the head with a club, “ask for my treasure? You dare?”
The cultist abased himself. “I’m a donkey. I beg forgiveness.”
“Know this,” said the red. “Should you fail me, you won’t die easily, not even if frenzy has me in its claws. I swear it by the thousand fangs of Tiamat.”
Anton realized his terror had ebbed to a degree. He’d stopped shaking, and his heart was slowing.
Maybe the example of the snowy-headed cultist, who was able to stand up to the colossal wyrm to a point, anyway, had shamed him. Maybe he’d found some encouragement in the fact that the madmen had yet to create a single dracolich, for surely the impatient red was first in line. Or perhaps it was simply his manhood reasserting itself. But in any case, he resolved that whatever happened next, he’d meet it with a fortitude worthy of even a paladin of Torm.
As he struggled to his feetno easy task with his hands tied behind him and the sea bags weighing him downhe looked over at Tu’ala’keth then sighed in grudging admiration. To all appearances, she was the one person who hadn’t flinched from the red’s display of temper. Her features composed behind the goggles, she still stood straight and tall.