“Hey!” Verhanna said sharply. “What’re you—?”
Greenhands planted his feet and lifted. Horse and rider together came off the ground. The animal remained strangely calm, though its feet dangled in midair. Verhanna remained quiet as well; she was dumbstruck. With a few grunts and only the slightest evidence of strain, the green-fingered elf raised the enormous load off the rocky ground, turned a half-circle, and set it down on the trail behind him.
“Yow! Do that again!” cried the kender. Greenhands was already on his way, climbing the path.
Stunned, Verhanna called for him to stop. When he didn’t, she said, rather illogically, “Stop him, Rufus! Don’t let him go that way!”
The kender gave her a look of supreme disgust. “How do you reckon I’ll stop him, my captain? Shall I tell him a funny story?”
Verhanna spurred her horse after the rapidly disappearing elf. She rattled up the sloping path, and out came her longsword. She had no desire to hurt him, but his confounding actions and sudden display of strength had shamed her. Raising her weapon, the warrior maiden intended to use the flat of the blade to stun Greenhands.
When she was only yards from the elf, there was a sudden glare of blinding light. For an instant, the mountainside was as bright as noon. Rufus yelled shrilly, and Verhanna felt searing heat on her neck and upraised sword arm. A roar filled her ears, a sizzling sound hissed nearby, and all was white light and throbbing pain.
Eventually cool darkness returned, and Verhanna found herself looking up into the unhappy face of Greenhands.
“Are you all right, my captain?” he said worriedly.
“Y-Yes. Ow!”
Her sword arm burned and ached. “What hit me?”
“Nothing hit you,” said Rufus, his head showing over the kneeling elfs shoulder. “One of those fireballs blasted into the mountain just above your head. The strike flung you off your horse and did this.”
He tossed the stump of her sword down beside her. Verhanna numbly grasped the handle. It was still hot to the touch, and the blade had been melted off, leaving only a misshapen nub of iron above the crossguard.
“Where’s my horse?” she asked groggily.
Rufus shook his head sadly and glanced over his shoulder toward the precipitous drop down the side of the mountain. He quickly said, “You can have mine, though. It’s too big for me. I feel like a pea on a boar’s back.”
They hoisted the stiff Verhanna to her feet and showed her the furrow plowed over the slope by the fireball. The steaming slash was melted at the edges. It was a mere foot or so above where her head had been.
Verhanna peered down the steep slope where her mount had perished. Shaking her head, she whispered sadly, “Poor Sable. You were a brave warrior.” Greenhands was supporting her trembling body. When she stumbled over a stone, he steadied her effortlessly.
With a healthy boost from Greenhands, Verhanna was soon mounted on Rufus’s chestnut horse. Their mobility was severely reduced by the loss of an animal but the kender wasn’t heavy and his horse carried the two of them easily.
“Do you know this trail?” the warrior maiden asked Rufus as they rode away from Pax Tharkas.
“No, my captain, though it seems to lead higher into the mountains.” The kender scrutinized the stars through a screen of speeding meteors and announced they were headed south.
“Into Thorbardin,” Verhanna mused. She cradled her sword arm, still numb from the shock of the fireball’s near miss. For Greenhands’ benefit, she said loudly, “Your father wasn’t a dwarf, was he?”
Before the elf could reply, Rufus piped up, “Oh, that’s impossible, my captain. He’s much too good-looking.” Verhanna jabbed the kender in the stomach with her elbow—her sore elbow. Drawing in her breath sharply, she cursed and groaned, “Shut up, Wart.”
Like one of the famed towers of Silvanost, Black Stone Peak stood out against the starry sky, tall, cold, and imperious. The darker openings on its face were entrances to its web of caves, first carved out of the hard, black rock by wild dragons some two thousand years earlier. Ulvian halted his pony and stared up at the forbidding peak.
Dru had once more regained his human form. Now he pushed past the Qualinesti prince, eager to be home again.
“You’ll have to dismount,” said the sorcerer, his voice drifting back on the night air. “There’s no true path into the caves, only some hand-cut steps.”
Ulvian swung down and led the pony by the reins. The night was fiercely cold, and his worn clothes provided little protection. There was no wind around Black Stone Peak, unlike every other mountaintop Ulvian had ever visited. Here the air was still and pregnant with menace.
The trail ended, and the two started up an uneven set of steps chiseled from the living rock. The pony went along reluctantly, tugging at its halter as the steps became steeper and narrower. Ulvian warred with the frightened animal until the pony finally snatched the reins from his hand. It clattered over the steps and quickly fled down the steep, winding trail.
“It’s no matter, my prince.” Dru said genially. “There’s no place for the beast to go.”
Ulvian turned to continue his climb. In the darkness, he took a wrong step and slid off the rock stairway. His sudden gasp and the sound of scattering pebbles echoed loudly.
“We’ll break our necks trying to climb this in the dark!” Ulvian declared.
Dru held out his left hand. As the sorcerer muttered some words in an unknown tongue, Ulvian saw that the ring of black onyx lying in his palm had begun to glow faintly orange, then cherry red. In seconds, a crimson aura had enveloped the sorcerer. The prince, his cuts and bruises forgotten, shrank back as Dru turned toward him.
The sorcerer smiled. “Don’t be afraid, Highness. You wished for light, and I have provided it,” he said smoothly. He climbed higher, approaching the vertical side of the peak. In the glow of the amulet, an oval opening came into sight. Dru ducked into the low cave, and Ulvian, rather reluctantly, followed behind.
The cave smelled old and dry, with a faint background aroma of decay the prince couldn’t identify. A dragon’s den should smell fetid, he knew, but this one had been vacant for two millennia. The floor was remarkably smooth and doubly difficult to walk on since it sloped seamlessly up to join the walls and ceiling.
As they moved through the passage, the bloody glow surrounding Dru now and again illuminated some object on the tunnel floor: a dead, desiccated bird, a broken clay lamp, some tatters of cloth.
The two moved hunchbacked for some distance. Suddenly Ulvian saw Dru straighten. In a pace or two, the prince had emerged from the low tunnel into a vast cavern hollowed out of the very center of the stone spire. The sorcerer kicked among some debris near the wall and found a torch. He muttered a word of magic over it, and the ancient timber burst into flame. Dru circled the great chamber, lighting other torches still held in iron wall brackets decorated with metal spikes. The smell of burning tarry pine filled the cold air.
When at last all the torches were lit, Dru tossed his into a firepit in the center of the room. Some debris and wood there crackled into flame.
Lighted, the chamber was hardly less fearful than when dark. Most of the furnishings were wrecked, destroyed when the sorcerer’s stronghold fell to the dwarves and elves. Glancing upward, Ulvian could see a few stars through the smoke hole fifty feet above him.
A more gruesome sight met his gaze when he looked down again. Resting in niches around the circular wall were hundreds and hundreds of skulls—white, empty, dry skulls. Some belonged to animals: mountain bears, elk, lions. Others were more disturbing. The light, airy craniums of elves nestled beside the thicker, smaller skulls of dwarves. In fewer numbers were human heads, recognizable by their wide jaws and small eye sockets.
“Lovely décor,” the prince said, sarcasm masking his nervousness.