Feril turned her back to the two men and concentrated on the warm wind playing across her skin. She was enduring the heat much better than her grumbling companions. A wild elf, she was inured to many of the vagaries of nature, and she savored rather than despised dramatic climates. She stared at the steadily dropping sun. A brilliant ball, it was painting the desert a pale orange-red. It was captivating, and she wished for a moment that Dhamon was alive and here to share it with her.
“At least we won’t be sweating when we get to Southern Ergoth,” Blister offered. She gingerly raised her gloved hands to her head and fussed with her braids. She sucked in her bottom Up when her fingers started to ache, and decided to leave her hair as it was. “Wonder how cold it’ll be there? Probably not as cold as it is hot here. I’m drowning in sweat”
The mariner smiled—his first smile since Shaon’s death. He emptied his second waterskin into his mouth, leaned back against the dune, and closed his eyes. He wondered what Shaon would think about him traipsing across the sand and looking for a hole in the ground where a dragon—the dragon who killed her—once lived.
The sound of flapping wings interrupted Rig’s thoughts. He glanced at a rise in the sand several yards away. A vulture had come to roost and was watching them; a few more birds circled high overhead.
Feril feverishly worked a lump of clay into a miniature sculpture of the bird. She concentrated on the smells and sounds of the desert around her and then felt her mind floating on the warm wind toward the vulture. She intensified her concentration until the connection was made across the distance and she had entered the vulture’s thoughts.
Dying soon? it cawed loudly, the shrill tones filling her head. My belly rumbles and you would fill it nicely.
She shook her head. I plan on living a long time.
Humans without camels do not live long in this heat, it cawed. Soon you will stumble and not get up. Soon you will smell sweetly of death and we will feast.
You like the smell of death. It was a statement, but Feril saw the bird bob its head in assent.
So sweet, it cawed.
Perhaps you know a place nearby where the smell of death hangs heavy?
Just as the stars winked into view, the quartet spotted an enormous rocky rise. It stretched across the sand like the spine of some half-buried beast, and it reached at least forty feet high in places.
“Rocks that touch the sky,” Feril whispered, remembering the curly-tailed lizard’s words. “The dragon laired here.”
Palin brushed by her and walked toward a cave entrance. It was incredibly wide and low to the ground. It looked like a great, dark shadow cast by the ridge above it and was practically hidden by the night sky. Even in daylight it might be difficult to spot because of the shadows.
The mariner raised an eyebrow. “I don’t see any dragon tracks.”
“The wind,” Feril said, pointing at the sand that blew at their feet. “It covered them, just as it’s covering ours.”
“If there were any tracks to cover,” Rig said. “Who knows if the vulture was telling you the truth? It probably wasn’t any smarter than the lizard.” He looked at the sorcerer. “It’s dark put here. It’s going to be darker in there.”
“We could wait until morning ” Feril suggested.
Palin was exhausted, but more than he wanted rest, he wanted to get this over with, return to the Anvil, and leave the hateful heat behind. The sorcerer dosed his eyes and concentrated, sensing the energy around him, feeling for the faint magical pulse of the land.
In his youth it was strong and powerful—godly-given and so easy to grasp, able to birth the greatest of spelts. But it was like a whisper on the wind now, only detectable by a skilled sorcerer. To craft great spells required much strength of will and perseverance. Palin’s mind grasped the natural energy and channeled it toward his open palm, shaping it, coaxing it, and Grafting a variation of a fire enchantment
“Wow!” Buster exclaimed.
The sorcerer opened his eyes. In his hand was a glowing orb of light, brilliant but no hotter than the desert air. It alternately pulsed white, orange, and scarlet, like the flickering flames of a campfire. The rudimentary spell worked better than any lantern. “Let’s see what the dragon left behind,” Palin said. He ted the way into the cave.
The still air inside was filled with the cloying scent of death. It was so strong that Palin’s eyes began to water. Near the entrance, broken bones and tufts of fur were scattered here and there. Palin knelt to examine them. “Camels,” he said. “Only something big could eat this many camels.”
He stood and moved deeper into the cave, where the air was stale, but not as foul smelling. Following the stone floor that sloped steeply downward, he entered a massive underground cave that was a few hundred feet across. The light from the globe in the sorcerer’s hands barely tit the walls and the ceiling, and it did nothing to chase away the shadows that clung to niches and other rock formations.
“I’ve never been in a cave so big!” Blister chirped. “Where to start, oh where to start. Palin, look at this!”
The kender stood near a rocky outcropping, pointing at a spot in the floor where a bit of sand had been brushed away. Palin could see deep gouges in the stone. They seemed to form a pattern. He brushed away more of the sand so he could see all of the design. Blister helped for a moment, then rushed away suddenly to investigate something else. Part of the etching looked familiar, like the written component of some transformation incantation Palin had seen before.
“Interesting that a dragon would rely on this type of magic,” he mused aloud. “Dragons have an innate arcane power.” He studied the pattern intently. The curved line represented change or rebirth. The wavy line that cut through it had gold dust sprinkled along its length and symbolized strength and energy, and the wax-filled circle that cut through the half moon meant—
“Palin!” Feril called to him from a dozen yards away. She and Blister were kneeling and staring at something in the sand. There was a crack in the cave roof directly above them, and the sorcerer saw traces of sand, like falling snowflakes, filtering down from it. “You’d better take a look at this ” There was an urgency in the Kagonesti’s voice, enough to pull Palin away from the diagram.
Rig, who had been preoccupied with taking in the size of the place, was quick to join them. “It’s part of a big footprint” he observed, leaning in over the Kagonesti’s shoulder. “It means your animal buddies were right. This really was that blue dragon’s lair. And that means I’m going to head deeper and look for the treasure. I told you this trip wasn’t going to take long.”
The Kagonesti scowled and pointed toward a depression. “That would be a mark from a talon, and from its position, I’d say it was the small talon of its right front paw.”
“Uh-oh ” the kender whispered.
“So the dragon had a very big talon,” Rig said. “So what? We knew that. We saw it up close when it killed Shaon. C’mon, Blister, I’ll need some help filling these.” He tugged a couple of leather bags free from his belt and held one out to the kender. Blister didn’t budge, she was engrossed in scrutinizing the footprint.
“This mark is too big ” Feril said. “The dragon that killed Shaon and Dhamon wasn’t nearly big enough to make this print. Believe it or not, I think we’re in the wrong lair”
“Uh-oh,” Blister repeated even more softly.