Bahrn did doubt and refused to ask how an imaginary dragon might have prepared against the fanatical cult or how Diadree would know about it, but he felt compelled to make some argument.
"I am not the same boy you chased with a broomstick, Diadree," he said.
"That's true. You didn't have this when you were a child." She thumped his armor beneath her knuckles.
"I didn't have it because I was a child. I left Orunn when I was thirteen."
The old woman shook her head impatiently. "I mean your father didn't pass it on to you. Norint was a farmer."
"Yes. I turned mercenary after he died."
Bahrn glanced back as he felt her hand rest on his shoulder. Her fingers absently traced two of the spiral designs on his shoulder plate, carved into the metal like a second set of eyes. Inlaid with lapis lazuli, the swirling patterns appeared in mottled blue-white pairs all across his armor, contrasting sharply with his darkly tanned face and black mustache. Frankly, he enjoyed the superstitious notion of having extra eyes to guard him, though the patterns resembled no human or elf orbs he'd ever seen.
Watching Diadree stare into them was uncannily like watching a child gazing at her reflection in a mirror.
"Why did you stay, when everyone else had left the village?" he asked quietly.
She looked up, and smiled. "Because I'm old. Bratlings and cult mages have driven me mad, and I'm too feeble to move on, no matter how hard the earth shakes my bones."
"The tremors could have killed you," Bahrn pointed out.
"Yes, but they were not her fault." Diadree sighed. "Be grateful at least one dragon managed to pass out of this world with so little fuss, boy."
"You believe Amrennathed's death caused the tremors?"
"Why not? The power of a dragon dying-one so old and tightly linked to the earth-is bound to be felt, no matter how gentle she tried to be."
"You wish to protect her memory." Bahrn shook his head. "Yet she destroyed Orunn-not in fact, but as a result of her death."
"It was her time, and she chose to go as her dignity-greater than an army of greed-driven cultists-demanded. I can only hope to be offered that same grace someday." Diadree tensed. "Careful now, the mountain's about to have another fit."
"What-? " Bahrn cursed as the rock beneath his fingertips shifted, and began to tremble. Metal armor rattled against stone, jarring both of them, but Diadree seemed at peace with it.
Hooking an arm around the thickest root he could reach, Bahrn pulled the old woman in close until the shaking slowed and finally subsided.
"How did you know?" he asked when the rock was firm beneath them again.
Diadree didn't answer. When he craned his head around to look at her she was gazing back down at her house. From the high vantage, Bahrn saw that a section of the roof had collapsed in on itself.
"Diadree," he pressed, and she blinked and turned away from the sight.
"Keep climbing," she said. "We're almost there."
Bahrn followed her eyes to a ledge snugged against the cliff several feet above them. At its back hung a tunnel.
Diadree slid off onto the ledge when they reached the top. There was enough room for both of them to stand comfortably outside the tunnel. Squinting into the darkness, Bahrn thought he caught the glimmer of tiny lights.
"Arlon!" he called out, but the lights didn't move. He slipped a torch from the pack on his shoulder and spent a moment lighting it. When he raised the flaming end inside the passage, Diadree was already several steps ahead of him, examining the tunnel walls. He caught a flash of colored light against the flame and blinked, thinking he'd imagined the sight.
"What is that?" he asked, then answered the question himself: "Amethyst."
He flattened his free hand against the stone. In the shadows, deeply embedded, the formations were a mural of sparkling purple and white, swirling designs not unlike his armor.
"Watch your step," Diadree cautioned as gravel and something firmer crunched under Bahrn's boot.
He stepped back quickly and shone the torchlight over a dirt-caked bone that had been snapped nearly in half under his weight. He noticed a skull lying nearby.
"Human," he said. The entire back portion of the skull was caved in. "Others have come here?"
"Several others," Arlon's voice echoed out of the darkness ahead of them. They heard the wizard's footsteps as he trotted into the torchlight. "There are other sets of remains in the larger cavern," he said, then shot the mercenary a look of triumph. "And two eyes," he added, motioning for them to follow him back down the tunnel.
The ground sloped downward for several feet, emptying into a dome-ceilinged chamber. Directly ahead of them loomed two identical, man-sized oval alcoves buried a hand-span into the wall.
The cavern was full of the sparkling amethyst. Crusts of it speared out from the wall and druzes carpeted the ground around his boots like a crystal maze in miniature.
Arlon moved his palm over the largest of the spears. Light haloed up from the crystal, illuminating the entire chamber in painful, lavender light.
Bahrn could pick out other glittering objects strewn about the floor-gems of varying colors and sizes amongst gold and silver coins.
"She was here," Arlon said. "These are remnants of her hoard. Tell me where she is!" he demanded, whirling on Diadree.
"Arlon." Bahrn casually pivoted between the pair, ignoring the dark look the wizard threw him. "You truly believe she's hiding Amrennathed in one of her pockets?"
"For a brief time, I thought she was the dragon." He spoke to Bahrn in that same easy manner, but the wizard's eyes followed Diadree's every step around the cavern with the glittering fascination of a man who does not realize he is being observed.
Bahrn was observing though, and Arlon's eyes told him more than enough. The mercenary's hand slid to his waist, where the handle of his morningstar waited.
"The others who returned from the mountain never found this cave," Arlon went on. "They claimed the only living soul on the mountain was one crazy old woman… a woman who refused to leave Amrennathed. They didn't know she was speaking of the dragon, the Queen of the Mountain. Only a very few know her by name."
Diadree paused and glared back at him, her hand raised at the ridge of one of the stone eyes.
Bahrn thought of Diadree's reflection in his armor. He shook the memory off. "That's absurd. She isn't a dragon, she-"
"I know that!" Arlon said. "But she knew the dragon's true name. She tried to get up here herself. Why?" The wizard scraped up a handful of coins, jewels, and dirt from the floor and hurled it at the wall inches from the old woman. "Not for this! You're not a looter, not an ore, are you, Diadree? However much you smell like one. Where is she? Where are the dragon's bones?" he shouted.
Silence reigned in the cavern. A single coin from the wizard's tantrum rolled to a stop at the toe of Bahrn's boot. The mercenary glanced down at it and caught movement out of the corner of his eye.
For a moment, Bahrn thought the left eye of the cavern had blinked, but it was only Diadree, shifting restlessly beneath the low-hanging stalactites suspended above the hollow in thick-set lashes. He opened his mouth to call her back to his side.
And one of the rocky spears broke away from the wall. Not a stalactite, Bahrn realized-at the same time his voice shouted to the old woman to move-and it wasn't falling. It was crawling down the wall.
Detaching from a cluster of stone, the thing shuffled down into the circle of purple light cast by the enspelled amethyst. Bahrn could make out an anvil-shaped head that swiped, pendulumlike, from side to side, and four stony feet dragging awkwardly across the ground.
Its body swung toward Diadree as she stumbled away.