“Yes, allowed. You saw the relationship budding years ago, and you did not stop it.”
“Love takes its own course, Ancient. I tried to dissuade Gwydre. Indeed, I did. But her heart was set and immovable, and-”
“And you did not kill this monk.”
That took Dantanna’s breath away.
“Is the importance of this lost upon you?” Ancient Badden asked.
“No, Ancient. No.”
“Then why did you not recognize your duty and fulfill it long ago? It has been many months since the commencement of the unholy tryst and yet this Abellican still draws breath.”
“You ask me to murder a man?”
“Were you not so trained in the magic of poison? Do you think that training no more than an exercise in the hypothetical?”
Dantanna shook his head helplessly, his jaw hanging slack.
“Have you not the power to kill a single young monk?”
“I am no murderer,” the younger Samhaist whispered.
“Murderer, bah!” Ancient Badden huffed, and he waved his hand and walked to the lip of the glacier, looking down the thousand feet and more to the mist rising off the lake. “An ugly word for a noble task. How many lives would Dantanna have saved if he had mustered his courage and done as his duty demanded? This entire war could have been avoided, or surely minimized, if Dame Gwydre had not been smitten by a heretic Abellican, you fool!”
“The war was one of choice,” Dantanna dared to say.
Ancient Badden turned on him angrily. “Choice?” he roared. “You would cede the souls of thousands of Van-guardsmen to the heretic Abellicans?”
“We have our place…”
“Shut up,” Ancient Badden said simply, and he turned back to look out over the southland. “You have failed, in the one task which meant anything, the one action that might have avoided years of strife and carnage. The misery, the death, the rivers of blood are all upon you because you had not the courage to strike a single blow.”
“You cannot believe that,” Dantanna gasped.
“I suppose, though, that I should thank you,” Ancient Badden went on, as if he had not heard the comment. “The Ancient Ones saw fit to fill my divining pool with Images of the battle of Chapel Pellinor. And the screams and cries. It was glorious, indeed.”
“How can you say that?” Dantanna asked under his breath, despite himself and his fears.
“To hear men weeping like children!” Ancient Badden snickered. “To hear the cries of women who knew they were doomed for their heresy, who knew their children would be torn apart in retribution! Oh, the beauty of justice!
“And do you know the greatest victory of all?” Ancient Badden asked, spinning about and staring wild-eyed and wide-eyed at the stupefied younger Samhaist, who merely shook his head as if he was numb to it all.
“The captives!” Ancient Badden explained. “Lines of them, hundreds of them, perhaps, tethered together and marching for this very place.”
Dantanna turned about to regard the giants, lazily pounding home the wedge spikes. He viewed the hanging glacial trolls, their thin blood dripping down into the melt, hindering the refreezing of the glacier. Another platform had been constructed near to them, this one with a crank and a long, long rope, one that would deposit the anticipated sacrifices deep within the chasm, where the white worm waited. When Dantanna turned back to Ancient Badden, the man’s smug smile proved very revealing.
“They will feed D’no, and his frenzy and heat will facilitate the Severing,” Ancient Badden confirmed, using the sanctifying term he had coined for his work on the edge of the glacier. “As D’no burrows and further melts the ice, we will feed him more. We will make him stronger and swifter, that he will reach to the stones about the ice to join our efforts with the earth magic of the Ancient Ones.” He paused and regarded the younger Samhaist with a nod, one that seemed almost of approval. “I will allow you to offer many of them,” he said, and turned back to stare out-mostly to hide his grin at Dantanna’s horrified expression.
“Offer them?” Dantanna stammered. “You would murder them as food to further your ambitions here?”
“Murder,” Ancient Badden said with a dismissive laugh. “A word you use so easily. Their lives are forfeit, by their own actions. They sided with heretics and so we-you-will exact proper punishment. Perhaps if I teach you to better wield that knife you were awarded, you will be less likely to fail us in the future when you are called upon by all that is holy to put it to proper use.”
As he spoke, Ancient Badden summoned his magic to enhance his senses, and he clearly heard Dantanna’s approach. Thus, he was not surprised when the man, standing right behind him, gave a shout and shoved him hard. Nor did Ancient Badden resist that push, lifting his arms gloriously wide as he went off the edge of the glacier, plummeting toward the mist below.
Dantanna gave a gasp and even offered a contrite wail as the supreme master, the Ancient of the Samhaist religion, tumbled toward certain doom.
Ancient Badden heard it and smiled all the wider, knowing that he had pushed the young fool to abject desperation. He closed his eyes and felt the wind thrumming about his falling form, his robes flapping noisily.
He used that sensation of freedom from mortal boundaries to fall deeper into his magic.
Back up on the ledge Dantanna sobbed, his head in his hands, and so he did not immediately see the transformation as Ancient Badden assumed the most ancient form of all. His arms became leathery wings, his eyes turned yellow with a single line of black in the middle, and his face elongated into a snout, filled with fangs, and spearlike horns sprouted atop his head.
His shriek, the keen of a dragon, startled the sobbing Samhaist and those giants and other workers behind him-even one of the hanging glacial trolls, near death, looked up in horror. Dantanna sucked in his breath when he scanned far below to see a dragon swooping out from the mist, rising suddenly on the updrafts from the hot waters of the mystical Mithranidoon.
Dantanna scrambled to his feet and turned about, stumbling as he tried to flee. He got up but slipped again when he heard the sharp screech of the dragon. Seconds seemed to pass as minutes, every step became a chore- and most steps left him prostrate on the ice, trying to rise yet again.
Dantanna felt a thunderous slam against his back. He didn’t fly forward, though he surely would have, had not a large talon-tipped foot closed about him to hold him fast. Flailing and screaming, he went up into the air a dozen feet and more.
Then he was falling, landing hard against the ice.
Again he was scooped in dragon claws. Again Ancient Badden lifted him into the air. And again Ancient Badden dropped him, though higher up this time.
Dantanna screamed in pain when he hit, his leg snapping under his weight, ligaments tearing, bones breaking. He tried to curl to grasp the wound tightly.
But the dragon grabbed him again, carrying him even higher.
Down he fell, landing with a crunching impact, his breath blown away. He tried to crawl but his bones were shattered and he was too far from consciousness to begin to coordinate his movements, foolishly flailing about. Somewhere in the back of his rapidly fleeing thoughts, Dantanna expected to be hoisted again. But it didn’t happen, and he settled down into the deep, cold, gloomy recesses of darkness.
Sharp, agonizing stabs of pain in his shattered limbs awakened him some time later. He was hanging by his ankles from the very rope he had noted on the new platform suspended over the chasm. His hands were securely and tightly bound behind him.
“You failed,” he heard, distantly it seemed, though when Dantanna managed to turn his head, he saw that Ancient Badden was standing on the edge of the platform only a couple of feet to the side and above. At the man’s feet lay a sack, its contents of troll ears spilled. “A pity. I had thought to educate you. I had thought to build your resolve and your understanding.”