“No. Your lovely namesake will be returning to Stormreach just as soon as her crew can push us off the gangplank, I imagine,” Sabira replied.
“We will do no such thing!” the Wayfinder protested.
“Aye,” the Lyrandar woman said with a wink and a grin. “We’ll make you jump.”
The half-elf hadn’t been joking. Zawabi’s Refuge had no docking tower; it had few actual buildings to speak of. Instead of a traditional berth, the Lyrandar navigated through a series of narrow canyons until she came to an outcropping on the gorge’s eastern rim, framed by curved pillars of stone reaching up into the sky like grasping fingers. A sizeable house surrounded by several improbably green trees sat back from the edge of the canyon beside the makeshift dock, and massive purple crystals grew out of the ground in the distance, blindingly bright in the morning sun.
But while the airship slowed, it didn’t stop at the house. Instead, the Lyrandar piloted the ship a bit farther down the canyon and then lowered the gangplank off the port side of the deck, away from the tree-framed house.
Sabira looked over the railing. Below them on the canyon floor, a field of sharp red rocks thrust out from the parched ground, each as big as a man.
“You can’t be serious.”
One of the crew, a sailor named Quilli, joined her at the railing. The halfling woman was a constant fixture on the airship’s deck, the youthful innocence of her face and voice belied by her sharp tongue and salty wit. Sabira had thought the dwarves undisputed masters of the curse until meeting the vulgar sailor. But given that the halfling had been able to make both Greddark and Skraad blush in the same breath, Sabira was no longer quite so sure.
“Not there, Marshal,” Quilli said, managing to pack a world of scorn into the title. “There.”
The halfling was pointing to a narrow ledge at the base of a tall rock pillar jutting up from the gorge’s western face. It was a good ten feet away from the end of the plank, and every now and then, a gust of wind blew through the canyon, making the wooden board quiver.
“Not to pry, but why exactly are we disembarking on a practically non-existent ledge on this side of the canyon when all the buildings-and, I’m assuming, the oasis-are on that side?” Greddark asked, gauging the distance to the ledge with a skeptical expression on his face.
“Zawabi refuses to allow Brannan’s caravans to stay within the refuge. They are camped on the top of the canyon wall, above us,” Kupper-Nickel responded, coming over to stand by the gangplank.
“So… why are we down here and not up there?” Greddark asked, his annoyed tone making it clear he didn’t think he should even have to be posing such a ridiculous question.
Just then, another strong gust of wind shrieked down the canyon, buffeting the airship and slamming the elemental ring into the rock wall. The dwarf, who’d had his feet planted firmly on the deck, swayed, but didn’t fall, the legendary immovability of his people serving him well. Sabira and the airship crew, including Kupper-Nickel, likewise stayed upright, though Sabira had to reach back a quick hand for her shard axe, drawing stability from the urgrosh’s enchanted haft.
The two other warforged were not so fortunate. Guisarme went down on one knee and the smaller, lighter Jester, who’d been standing beside Quilli looking at the rocks below, pitched forward over the railing with a decidedly human-sounding yelp. Quilli reached for him, but he wore no clothing for her to grab, and her hand slid ineffectually off metal and smooth wood.
Sabira reacted without thinking. Her urgrosh was out of its harness in an instant, and she was swinging the shard axe down toward the bard’s spine to a chorus of the crew’s shocked gasps. As the bard began to tumble headfirst into the gorge, Sabira snaked her weapon in, gouging his backplates and snagging his lyre strap behind the axe-head of the urgrosh. In the same motion, she twisted the haft in a two-handed grip while throwing her weight backward. The shard axe’s magical stability kept her from being yanked off the deck of the airship along with the falling bard, but it couldn’t keep her from sliding across the wooden surface on her backside. As she reached the railing, she braced her feet on adjoining balusters and bent her knees so she could bear more weight. Even so, the leather-wrapped haft was almost ripped from her grasp, and she knew she had mere moments before the lyre strap snapped.
“Little help here?” she grunted, even as Greddark and Kupper-Nickel reached over the side of the railing to grab Jester by the ankles and haul him back up onto the deck. Another spiteful gust shook the airship as they worked, threatening to send all four of them pitching over the railing. But the Lyrandar righted the ship in time, though the elemental ring took a chunk of rock the size of Sabira’s head out of the canyon wall in the process, and she barely avoided having it replace her flesh and bone one as it shot out across the deck, propelled by the unhappy union of air and earth. As it was, everyone on deck was showered with stone shrapnel, and a sliver the length of Sabira’s forearm embedded itself into the deck mere inches from her thigh.
She was surprised when a red-gold hand reached down to help her to her feet, and even more surprised when the arm attached to that hand gathered her into a rib-crushing hug.
“Thank you, my lady! Your quick thinking-and quicker action-kept me from ending up a pile of scrap metal and kindling at the bottom of this accursed gorge. I shall write an epic in your honor that will put those unimaginative dwarf bards to shame!” Sensing that Sabira was having trouble breathing-or perhaps tipped off by the blue tinge in her lips-the warforged released her from his embrace. As Sabira drew in great gulps of the dry desert air, Jester continued, the frown his face couldn’t show still evident in his voice. “But how did you know I’d had my lyre strap reinforced?”
She hadn’t, actually, but it had been an easy bet to take. Most bards spent more money on their instruments than their weapons, and held their music closer than their purse strings.
“Easy,” Greddark supplied with a nonchalant shrug, saving her from having to admit that, educated as it was, it had still been nothing more than a guess. “The strap doesn’t hang as loosely as it would if it were mere leather, and you can see metal showing through in places.”
Before either she or the warforged could answer the inquisitive, the Lyrandar pilot rounded on him in belated response to his earlier question.
“ That’s why we’re not up there,” the half-elf snarled, her face contorting with effort as she fought to calm the affronted air elemental and return the ship safely to the center of the gorge. “You think the wind’s bad down here, wait till you get up top. I’m not risking my ship-or my life-just to spare you lot some climbing.”
Fair enough. But that reminded Sabira of the question she really wanted answered.
“Why doesn’t Zawabi want the Wayfinder expedition inside the refuge?” she asked, frowning as she thought back on the warforged’s words. Kupper-Nickel had told her about the djinn who controlled the oasis from his circular prison at the eastern edge of the small settlement. The Wayfinder had, however, neglected to mention that the powerful creature and the man who was supposed to lead her to Tilde were at odds with each other.
“He believes nothing good can come of opening the pits of Khyber up to surface exploration.”
“You’ve seen the trouble Lailat’s caused,” Quilli piped up. “Can you blame him for being worried about what ir’Kethras might stir up?”
“Who is Lailat?” Sabira asked before the dwarf inquisitive could beat her to it. The two warforged and the orc gathered around to hear the answer.
It was Kupper-Nickel who responded.