Balasar smelled a putrid odor. Instinct prompted him to pivot to the right and cut. His blade sliced something that gave a hissing screech. At the same time, he felt something sweep past his head as his foe’s attack, whatever it had been, just missed him.
Then amber radiance flared through the cave, revealing that their foes did indeed appear to be troglodytes, cave-dwelling reptilian savages like stunted parodies of dragonborn. But they had long necks like the creatures that had attacked Balasar and his companions beside the Methmere, skins that gleamed like quicksilver, and a quicksilver fluidity to their movements.
The cave started flickering from light to dark as Biri’s magic fought the power that sought to snuff her conjured glow. It made everything appear to move in a series of sickening, disorienting jerks.
Balasar had gashed his particular foe across the snout. It was hardly a mortal wound, and he followed up with a lunge. But the creature melted into shapelessness as if it really were made of liquid metal, flowed and splashed out of reach of the attack, and reformed itself. Its jaws opened.
Balasar abruptly remembered that the long-necked reptiles beside the Methmere had possessed breath weapons. He sidestepped, held his own breath, and lifted his buckler to cover his face.
A jet of vapor washed over him. His eyes burned and filled with tears. But in spite of them, and the flickering, he could just make out the troglodyte rushing him. He ducked a stroke of its flint-studded war club and thrust his point up under its ribs. It collapsed and Biri cried out behind him.
He turned. Two troglodytes had grabbed her by the arms, a tactic that deprived her of the use of any spell requiring mystical gestures, and were wrestling her toward the edge of the drop. She started shouting words of power, but Balasar doubted she could finish the incantation in the moment she had left.
He jerked his sword out of the creature he’d just killed, rushed Biri’s assailants, and slashed the throat of the one on the left. The other let go of her and pounced at him with raking claws and snapping fangs. He jumped out of the way, killed the thing with a cut to the spine, and only then recognized that he himself was teetering on the very lip of the drop. The wretched flickering was still playing tricks on his eyes. He heaved himself forward and banged down on his knees. It hurt but it was preferable to plunging to his death.
The ambient light belatedly grew brighter and steadier. Several paces away, Medrash had set the blade of his sword shining with Torm’s power. Peering around, Balasar was relieved to see that only a couple of his comrades were down. No doubt that was because there actually weren’t all that many quicksilver troglodytes, and those there were had only primitive weapons. Apparently they’d counted on their breath attacks and the explorers’ blindness to even the odds.
Well, you lose that wager, Balasar thought. He chose another foe, but before he could reach it, Khouryn stepped up behind the creature and chopped its head half off. Balasar oriented on still another just in time to watch Medrash drive his sword into its torso.
And that was the end of that. As the last troglodyte’s legs crumpled beneath it, Nellis and Jemleh clambered up into the chamber.
“Perfect timing,” Balasar said.
Nellis, who’d gotten used to his sense of humor, smiled and made an obscene gesture in response. Jemleh glowered. Biri giggled.
Peering down the passage that stretched away before them, Khouryn flung some of the gore from his axe with a snap of his wrist. “I’m now reasonably sure this is the right path,” he said. “Does anyone disagree?”
“It remains to be seen,” Jemleh said. “But I admit, the troglodytes were sentries. And you don’t post sentries where there’s nothing to protect.”
“And if I’m not mistaken,” Medrash said, “these sentries were akin to some of the creatures that served Skuthosin. The ones the giant shamans summoned with their talismans.”
Khouryn took a rag from the pouch on his belt and wiped more blood from his weapon. “We should rig some ropes,” he said, “so the rest of the company can climb up here without it taking all-look!”
Balasar peered down the new tunnel and felt a stab of alarm when he saw the dragon glaring back at him.
Crouching at the edge of the light, it gleamed like the quicksilver troglodytes. Its head had a pair of short horns curling forward under the jaws and two longer ones curving back behind the eyes. Its body was serpent-slim, and Balasar could just make out the lashing tail all but concealed behind its wings.
He and his fellow warriors came on guard. The wizards lifted their arcane implements and started chanting, at which point the wyrm fled-but not by turning and retreating up the tunnel. Instead, it dissolved and flowed sideways, pouring itself through a narrow crack in the granite. It took only a heartbeat, and then it was gone. The mages’ voices trailed off, leaving their incantations unfinished. The forces that had been accumulating around them dissipated in crackling showers of sparks.
“The real guardian of the way,” Biri said.
“And we scared it off,” said Nellis.
Balasar grinned. “Don’t feel too smug. I imagine we’ll see it again. It just means to fight us at a place and moment of its choosing.”
Still, he shared the wizard’s good humor because he and his comrades clearly had found Gestanius’s secret path, and the dragonborn had contended with wyrms before.
But when everyone had made the climb into the new cave and the expedition was arranging itself in the proper marching order, he noticed that not all of his comrades looked eager. Vishva had a clenched, dour set to her jaw.
That wouldn’t do. She was one of the mainstays of the Cadre, and if she lost her nerve, it might well prove contagious.
Balasar sauntered over to her and murmured, “Buck up. We beat Skuthosin, didn’t we?”
The cultist glowered. “I’m not afraid.”
“Then what is wrong?”
“From the description, the creature you saw down the tunnel was a quicksilver dragon. A metallic.”
Balasar shrugged. “If you say so.”
“Skuthosin and the dragons who served him were chromatics,” Vishva said. “Children of Tiamat. It made perfect sense that they were doing evil. But metallics are the children of Bahamut. So why is this one helping Gestanius?”
“Did you ever listen to the old stories and songs?” Balasar replied. “Our ancestors had all sorts of wyrms eating and enslaving them in the world that was.”
“I know that!” Vishva snapped. “I’m not an idiot. But those dragons didn’t know the gods. The ones here do. It ought to make a difference.”
Balasar didn’t know what to say to that. “Just promise me that when the quicksilver drake comes back, you’ll fight, whether you think it’s supposed to be friendly or not.”
“Of course.” Vishva shook her head, and the ropelike scales dangling at the back rattled together. “But truly, I don’t understand.”
SIX
20-22 E LEASIS, THE Y EAR OF THE A GELESS O NE
Aoth leveled his spear and spoke a word of command. With a sharp crack, a thunderbolt leaped from the point and split a skull-sized stone on the slope above him.
“Impressive,” said Jet dryly.
“Let’s hope they think so,” Aoth replied. Otherwise, orcs being orcs, they were likely to try to kill him, and he and his comrades would have to slaughter them when all he really wanted to do was talk.
He waved the leafy branch that signified peaceful intentions over his head. Then he and Jet clambered on toward the ruined little fortress. Aoth’s boots slipped in the scree. Flying would have been easier but maybe a little too impressive. People sometimes panicked when a huge, black griffon with blood red eyes swooped down at them.