Of Shadows and Dragons Read online

  Gruum followed Therian with his eyes roving over the trees that lined the pass on both sides of them. Someone or something had attacked the woman, that much was certain. He had no desire to meet her attacker unarmed and encumbered.

  They reached a fork in the road. The only indication of the fork’s existence was a weathered, snow-encrusted sign of ancient wood. Strange curling symbols were carved into it.

  “I can’t read the script, milord,” Gruum said, squinting up at the sign.

  “I would have been surprised if you could have. The script is Cederian.”

  “What’s it say?” Gruum asked.

  “Just a place-name. No doubt it is the lodging of the Duke, our benefactor.”

  “Benefactor?” Gruum snorted. “He looked as if he’d like to kill us last time we met.”

  “Just so,” Therian said, turning his horse with a jerk of the reins. The pony began plodding uphill down the side path, leaving behind the main road they traveled upon.

  “Wait!” Gruum said unhappily. “Do we have to go there, of all places?”

  Therian looked at him in surprise. “We have been invited.”

  “But sire, we are fugitives, and there is no greater representative of local law than the Duke himself. What if another comes up this mountain with a tale of nine dead men on the path which no others have traveled, save for us?”

  “Then we will show our hands, which bear no blood, and our blades, which are unstained and without notches,” Therian said with calm reason. “Who would suspect we two could have slain such a group of hardened men without so much as a scratch upon us?”

  “Perhaps we should wait out the storm instead,” Gruum said hopefully.

  Therian gave him a cold smile. “I think not. At least one of us would be dead by that time, if not all three.”

  Gruum heaved a sigh, and looked down upon the woman in his arms. He could see her face more clearly now. She was prettier than he had thought at first.

  “All right, but tell me one thing, milord.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “What is the name of the lodge we will be sharing with the Duke?”

  Therian looked back up at the sign. “It translates to: That which grips stone.”

  Gruum nodded. “Excellent,” he said, “sounds most inviting.”

  Therian ignored his sarcasm, or perhaps was not even aware of it. With a distant look in his eyes, the Hyborean continued up the side path. Gruum coerced his shaggy, worn-out pony to do the same. The horses plowed stoically through the drifts, following the snow-coated road into a deep grove of trees.

  -8-

  Night fell, and the snow fell more thickly than before. The storm closed over them, quiet, white and heavy on their backs. Layered, numbing drifts blew and swirled over every stone and fallen branch. Therian took the lantern, as Gruum carried the girl and had no hands free. Gruum followed his master, or rather the horse’s tail, which fluttered like a banner ahead of him. The trail grew ever less distinct as it wound up through the darkening trees into the mountains.

  The girl was heavy in Gruum’s arms, but when he hugged her to him he felt that her body was still warm, and he could not let her down. He would not allow the storm to cover her again.

  “Milord,” spoke Gruum at last, when he could barely see to follow his master. “We must stop and wait out this cursed storm.”

  Therian paused and turned back. “I think you are correct.”

  “Shall we make camp then?” asked Gruum in relief.

  “No.”

  “But milord, you said…” Gruum trailed off, baffled.

  “I meant that you were correct when you said the storm is cursed. But cursed storms do not pass easily. To sit and huddle here—is to die.”

  Gruum pawed at his eyes, which stung with flakes. “How can we continue? I cannot see, not even with the lantern you carry. We could walk off a cliff at any moment.”

  Therian did not answer him with words. Instead, he climbed down from his saddle and tugged at one black glove. He produced Seeker, and touched the tip of that ancient blade of Hyborean Kings to his exposed palm. A single, dark drop of blood fell, then another.

  Therian carefully wrapped the tiny wound and replaced his glove and sword. He stared down at the spot in the snow, aiming the lantern’s feeble yellow glow upon it.

  Gruum watched through squinting eyes as the King knelt near the place the blood had melted into the snows. Gruum’s horse sidestepped and nickered. Did the animal sense something wicked? Gruum felt the hairs on the back of his neck move as well.

  Therian waited, staring intently at the bloodspot on the pure white snows. Soon, enough fresh, fat snowflakes came down from the black skies to cover the bloodspot. A divot was left in the snow where the blood had melted a coin-sized circle.

  When the bloodspot showed no more red, only white, Therian took in a deep breath. He let strange words fall from his lips. They came out not with white plumes of steamy breath, but rather with dark, smoky gouts of vapor. This haze of frozen speech hung briefly, and then fell, rather than floating upward and vanishing. It was as if the breath Therian used to speak his sorcerous words was colder than even the blizzard that surrounded them. The words, frozen and dark, formed a surface resembling smoked glass over the snow-covered bloodspot.

  Gruum wanted to look away. As always when he faced sorcery, he felt the twin tugs of revulsion and fascination. This time fascination won out however, and he gazed on without blinking, despite the stinging snow that encrusted his eyes.

  The girl in his lap moaned then, and Gruum shifted his hold on her. She lives yet, he thought. When he looked again to see how Therian’s sorcery had gone, he gasped in shock.

  There was a thing rising up from the bloodspot. It was an anomaly—a shape of gossamer. Spherical and smoky at first, it quickly took on a more distinct shape. The exterior took on a veined, translucent quality, like that of a dragonfly’s wings. In moments Gruum realized, it had wings, wings that unfurled as he watched. He found his throat was unable to swallow.

  The wings were translucent, like those of an insect. The wings pumped, causing bright tendrils of blood to pulse in a tiny network of visible veins. No bigger than a sparrow, the rising thing stretched as if waking from a long sleep. The body and head were white, as white as ice, with two blue sapphires for eyes. The eyes flicked up to Gruum and met his stare with an alien curiosity of their own.

  “What is this tiny monster?” whispered Gruum.

  “It is a snow-wisp,” said Therian. “It will serve to guide us.”

  Therian instructed it briefly, and the creature took flight, buzzing. Gruum recoiled as any man might when a wasp came near his face. He wanted nothing more than to swat it, but restrained himself. Flying aloft at the level of their heads, he could see now the wisp gave off a distinctive, blue-white glow. Against the dark trees, it was quite visible.

  The wisp set off, buzzing ahead of the two men and their disgruntled ponies. They followed it through the heavy snowfall.

  An hour past, then three more came and went. Cold, bitter and biting… almost unbearable cold sank into Gruum’s body, weakening his arms. The horse kept his legs warm, the girl in his arms kept his chest warm, but his hands, even inside gloves, could no longer report feeling back to his mind.

  Gruum no longer bothered to direct his pony. The job of following the mountain trail was up to the beast itself, which seemed to know enough to keep the flickering flight of the snow wisp in sight. Gruum’s sole concern was not to drop the girl. His eyes were almost blinded by the snow, which no longer stung, but felt numbing and warm when it hit his frosted cheeks. He suspected vaguely that the wisp would yet lead them to their deaths, as no legend he’d ever heard told of a wisp that had done a good deed for a man. But he did not stop and lay down, nor did he let the girl fall from his arms. He did not embrace death for either of them, although that path would have been the easiest and it beckoned to him, like a ghost on a dead man’s mound.
/>   Long after midnight, Gruum had given up thoughts other than the dim glow of the wisp flittering ahead and the swaying of the horse under his clamped thighs.

  His mind dimmed and in his exhaustion—he dreamed.

  -9-

  Gruum dreamt of red fires. He was in a place of warmth, if not beauty. He climbed to his feet. The horse, Therian and the jewel-eyed wisp were all gone. But the girl was still in his arms, sleeping deeply. He carried her across hot stones that steamed at his feet.

  He looked this way and that, but saw no one he knew nor any landmark he recognized. The world was a blasted one, a place of heat and fire. There were only black rocks, ridges of stone in every direction, and smoking heat underfoot. Sweeping tall walls of stone stood in every direction, as if he were in a deep gully, or….

  Gruum knew where he was, with sudden certainty. He had walked along the cone of a volcano before. This was like that other, with the deep lake in its center. But the lake was gone, replaced only with hot stones at its bottom. He looked up and gauged the walls, the breadth of the crater. It seemed to him to be the same. He believed he walked at the bottom of the volcanic cone where he had first met Humusi. But the deep lake was gone now.

  Sweat tickled under his arms. Frost melted from his body and as he took another dozen steps, knowing not where he headed, he halted in shock. He could see now what lay ahead. A brilliant depth of lava. Orange-red and glowing like shimmering coals. There was the source of heat, a lake of lava so near he almost stepped into it.

  Gruum cursed in his old tongue, in the language of his father from the steppes. Something echoed that curse, sending the words back to his ears.

  The lava bubbled and flared, burning the air and sending up a hot gush of vapors. Gruum reeled back further. The girl in his arms still did not stir.

  The lava gave birth to something then, something most unexpected. A great head rose up and up, with a neck as long as a palm tree’s trunk, but much thicker. Two baleful eyes gazed down from the top of that neck. The head shook itself, and slagging lava flew like lather from a horse’s shoulders. Smoking bits of molten rock fell and sizzled on the ground.

  “What have you brought me, insect?” asked a voice so deep, so bass, Gruum had trouble understanding the words.

  “I have nothing to give, Lord Yserth,” Gruum replied, for he knew it to be the Red Dragon himself that he faced.

  A claw extended at the end of a foot so huge it resembled the root-work of a centuries-old tree. “What is that there? In your arms?”

  Gruum looked down at the girl in his arms. Such was his fright that he had forgotten her. “She is unknown to me.”

  The claw reversed itself, turning upward like a taxman’s palm, waiting to receive a payment. “Come then, give her to me.”

  Gruum looked at the steaming Dragon’s claw and then at the girl’s face. He looked back up at Yserth.

  “I can’t,” he said. “She is not mine to give.”

  “Well then, why did you come to this place?” Yserth the Red asked.

  “I do not truly know, lord,” Gruum said miserably.

  Yserth’s claw reached out and hovered over Gruum. It was so huge as to blot out the sky overhead. The claw-tips pinched together, and Gruum was lifted aloft by his cloak and tunic, as a mouse might be lifted by its tail. He clung to the girl in his arms, and knew he faced his final moments. The monster would eat them both now, due to his stubbornness.

  “Do not come back to my realm without a proper gift, mortal,” Yserth told him. Then he tossed them both through the air into the lake of fire.

  #

  Gruum awoke with a howl of terror.

  “What are you doing, man?” a voice asked sternly.

  Gruum stirred, struggling to rise. There was a weight across his chest. He realized dully he was lying on his back in a deep snowdrift, with the girl draped over him. A dark shape loomed close, but he could dimly see it was not Yserth. It was Therian, sitting on his horse.

  “Sorry, milord. I—I must have fallen asleep in the saddle. Perhaps if we took a short rest.”

  “Rise if you wish to stay among the living,” Therian said. He turned away his shaggy pony and continued on the path.

  Gruum struggled up to one elbow. He set the girl aside in the snow and it struck him how much she looked like a stone laying there. A still, gray shape on a perfectly white expanse.

  Therian and the wisp faded slowly from view. In another minute, Gruum knew he would be left behind forever in the cold darkness. He forced himself to stand. His feet tingled in his boots from the long ride and the bitter weather. He gazed down at the girl in the snow, and he pondered again whether or not he should leave her. He suspected that if he did, Therian would never speak a word of reproach to him.

  Heaving a sigh and wondering if he were only giving death yet another shot at him for his foolishness, he gathered her up into his arms and with great effort managed to climb back into the saddle. He was glad she weighed no more than a waif.

  Gruumn dug in his spurs and goaded his pony into a shambling trot. Soon, he was close enough to Therian to see the wisp flittering in front of him. The wisp turned in its bobbing, drifting flight and looked at him. It seemed to Gruum as if their eyes met—Gruum’s snow-crusted, squinting slits stared into the exquisitely bright blue gems of the wisp. Was that a tiny hint of a smile? Did the creature mock him? These thoughts served to strengthen Gruum’s resolve.

  “If we keep on much longer, it will be morning, milord,” Gruum said with cheerfulness he did not feel. “The going will be much easier then, and we can dispense with this slow-moving wisp.”

  His words earned him a second glance from the wisp. This time, however, the blue eyes seemed to sparkle with malice. Could it have understood his jibe?

  “There will be no need,” Therian said. “We have arrived.”

  Gruum stopped his horse and tore his eyes from the flickering wisp. There, to their right, an opening presented itself. There was a wide sward where the trees had been cut down. A broad blanket of snow led to dark walls of stone, which rose up a dozen feet or more. A crenulated parapet ran along the top of the wall. A single arched gateway of dark hardwood stood in the center of the wall.

  “There are no torches? No guards?” Gruum mused aloud. “What kind of a lodging is this?”

  “One that is quiet and sleeping, I would imagine,” Therian said. He approached the wall and the gate in the middle of it.

  Gruum came up behind him, staying in the saddle. If the need were about to rise for flight, he did not want to have to climb back up with the girl.

  Therian dismounted. His hand touched the heavy iron ring in the center of the gate.

  “A moment, sire,” said Gruum.

  Therian glanced at him. “What is it, man?”

  “Maybe we should move on. I don’t like the look of the place.”

  Therian snorted. “You would not make it to see the sunrise. This storm allows no option other than to beg refuge here.”

  “How can you be sure, milord?”

  “Because I have designed such things, and I know how they work. Just as a baker might recognize a trace flavor in a rival’s work, so can I see the handiwork of another sorcerer, and know his purpose.”

  Gruum licked his lips. He climbed down from the saddle and stepped forward to stand beside his King. “We shall do as we must, then.”

  Therian lifted the heavy, iron ring and he let it fall. It struck the wood with a deep, sonorous boom that made the stones around them echo. Snow shifted on the branches of trees and sloughed away, falling into heaps on the ground.

  -10-

  The gate did not open after the first knock, nor the seventh. After the iron ring had struck the wood perhaps a score of times, each causing a loud, booming report that rang out in the night, the lock finally rattled. Someone worked at the mechanism. They heard scraping sounds.

  Gruum swallowed hard, wondering who was about to greet them. He swayed in his saddle from fatigue and noted
something had changed about the world. He blinked and wondered what was different. Slowly, his fogged mind realized two things, almost at once. One, the snow had stopped. Two, the snow wisp had vanished.

  “Milord,” he said aloud, calling to his master.

  Therian never looked at him. He gestured for Gruum to be silent. The King lifted his lantern and adjusted the grille so that it cast a pool of yellow light downward.

  The door swung open. The space within was as black as a root cellar. A shadowy figure stood there.

  “Who might you be?” asked a gruff voice.

  Gruum was relieved to hear the human tones in the voice. He had suspected—but no, it was best not to mull over such thoughts.

  “I am Therian of Hyborea. Introduce me to your lord.”

  The other was quiet for a moment. Then the gate began to swing shut again, the bottom edge of it plowing through blown snow.

  “And I’m the chamberlain here. Come back in the morning for a proper introduction, sir,” said the man.

  Therian’s hand shot forward, instantly halting the gate’s progress.

  The chamberlain struggled to push it shut anyway, but it would not be budged.

  “I have an invitation,” Therian said quietly.

  The chamberlain stopped struggling with the gate. He leaned out with a lantern held high. He eyed the two men, the unconscious girl and their half-dead ponies. He huffed, clearly not impressed.

  “Very well,” he said. “You may enter. But be forewarned, my lord does not deal lightly with beggars nor highwaymen.”

  “Neither does mine,” said Gruum, becoming angry.

  The chamberlain showed them into the courtyard and led their horses away.

  “What’s wrong with the girl?” asked a voice from behind them.

  Gruum whirled around to find a familiar figure standing behind him. It was Duke Strad himself, standing resplendent in his blood red cloak.

  “She’s been attacked, milord,” Gruum said. “Her throat is a ruin, but she lives yet.”