Jean Rabe - Betrayal

“The red one,” she told him. “Not that red one. The one with a spine the color of fresh blood. Yes, that’s it. The color of a red dragon. The three black ones at the top. Precious books. Mind your claws don’t scratch the bindings.”

Rolling his eyes, Ragh did as he was bid. A few of the books were bound in what appeared to be dragonhide. One was covered with charred and preserved human flesh.

“Put them on the table. Now, be a good creature and see that my sister comes over here.”

The draconian growled and headed toward Dhamon.

“Ragh, I…” Dhamon’s voice caught in his throat.

“You can have your sword back,” the sivak told him. “After you set that damned mirror down over by a bookcase so she can see herself.”

The draconian gave Dhamon only a passing glance. He was too absorbed in the contents of the room: a pedestal holding a section of a silver dragon’s egg, a rack at the far end of the room over which was draped part of the skin of a red dragon. He walked past Dhamon and toward a curio cabinet that displayed claws and eyeballs.

“Ragh.”

There was a crash, and the sivak and Maab whirled to see Dhamon lying amid the shattered mirror. He was twitching, his face and hands cut from the glass, his skin pink and feverish.

“No!” Maab wailed. “My sister! He’s chased away my dear sister!”

The old woman fell to her knees and howled. The sound grew so loud and shrill that glass vials shook in their holders. The sivak dropped Dhamon’s sword and threw his hands over his ears, looking behind him for the doorway they had entered through. All he saw were shelves upon shelves of books and artifacts.

The globe of light brightened and changed hue from yellow to orange and now to a red that painted everything with an abyssal glow. The spawn form melted from the sivak, as he could no longer concentrate on retaining it.

The air grew hot and dry, and breathing became very difficult.

“My sister!” Maab screeched. “I am all alone without my sister! You chased her away! Now you’ll die!”

Ragh’s keen hearing picked up other noises, a scrabble of feet above. No doubt whatever was on the street above or in other buildings had overheard the woman’s wail and was moving away from the ominous noise. He heard a vial shatter behind him, then another and another. There was a soft patter of mosaic tiles from the ceiling hitting the shaking floor.

Dhamon moaned.

“The shield,” Dhamon managed. “Show her the shield, Ragh.”

It took a minute for Ragh to realize what Dhamon was talking about and another few minutes for him reach beneath the table and grab the unmarked shield.

Maab’s cloak billowed away from her in a blistering hot wind that had arisen from nowhere. Spider web-fine white hair stood away from a wrinkled face etched in fury. Her eyes were wide and red now, no longer covered with the blue film, and her wail had changed to an indecipherable string of words. Bony fingers twirled madly in the air, illuminated and distorted by the blood-red orb that was still growing against the ceiling.

Ragh fought his way toward her, struggling through air that had become palpable, so thick he felt as if he were being smothered and baked by it.

“Your sister!” the sivak shouted, his hoarse voice somehow reaching the old woman. “I’ve found your sister! Look here!”

Instantly the air thinned and the red globe faded to yellow, then to white again and shrank. The old woman was still shaking, fingers smoothing at her thinning hair, as her ice-blue eyes locked onto the mirror-finish shield that Ragh held in front of him.

“My sister,” she said, breathing with relief. She struggled to her feet and touched the edges of the shield, moving her face this way and that so she could see her reflection more clearly. She pressed her ear close. “What’s that you say, Maab? Oh, you were here all along, I just lost sight of you. Yes, I was wrong to panic. Look at this mess I’ve made. All this glass to clean up. What? Of course we will tend to that young man’s cure first. Come along now.”

The old woman shuffled toward Dhamon, who lay so still he might have been dead.

“Can’t see him breathe,” she muttered. “This trip down here was maybe for nothing.”

“Dhamon is breathing,” the sivak told her. “Barely.”

She waggled her fingers at Ragh and pointed to the table with the slate top. “Put him on that. Mind yourself that you don’t get cut on all that glass.”

The sivak slipped the shield on his right arm and balanced Dhamon over the other shoulder. She kept an eye on her reflection for a moment more, then scurried away, plucking down a few more books and searching through the bone tubes until she found an especially thick one that was blackened on one end.

“Raistlin’s gift to me and my dear sister,” she whispered.

She hurried back to the table, which was long enough that Dhamon was laid out straight on it, her books arranged in a semicircle around his head. As she thumbed through them, the pages flaked at the edges. The thinnest volume, one bound in green dragonskin, was plagued by wormholes.

“The bugs ate too many of the good words,” she said, discarding the book and reaching for another.

“Ah, this one should do.”

The sivak looked over her shoulder. Despite all his years on Krynn, Ragh had never learned to read, but he was curious about what she was doing. She elbowed him away, making sure she could still see her reflection.

“You must help Dhamon,” Ragh entreated.

“Compassion for a human. Odd in your kind.”

“I don’t care a wit for him,” the sivak shot back. “I just want him cured. I am certain he will help me slay the naga. Nura Bint-Drax. You will tell me about her after you are finished, yes?”

“And if for some reason I can’t help your friend?” Maab wondered aloud.

“I will take his sword and find her, fight her alone. Maybe that is what I should be doing now anyway. Tell me what you know about Nura Bint-Drax.”

She shook her head. Her hair floated like a halo. “One creature against the naga that slithers through the dragon’s swamp? You haven’t a prayer, beast. No. I’ll not tell you now. Maybe I won’t tell you ever. You have nothing to pay us.”

The sivak propped the shield against a bookcase, angled toward the old woman so she could glance at it.

“Then I’ll die trying to find and slay her.”

“You exist for revenge,” she cackled lightly. “My sister says life has little meaning to a sivak without wings. Is she right?”

For the next few hours Ragh dozed lightly as Maab continued to page through the books, making notes in the air with her fingers and mumbling softly in an odd language. When he woke she was standing on one of the old sea chests, though she shouldn’t have been able to tug it from beneath the table given her size and age. Several small ceramic bowls were lined up by Dhamon’s side, each filled with a different colored powder. One was filled with what looked on first inspection, to be beads but that revealed themselves to the sivak as tiny lizard eyes. There was a small jar filled with a viscous green liquid and near it the curled foot of a raven. The draconian shook his head. Long ago he had decided that the trappings of a wizard were unfathomable. He watched her arrange the materials, consult a few pages that had fallen out of a book, then look over her shoulder at the shield.

“We are ready, sister.” To the draconian, she added, “You’ll have to rip his leggings for me. I don’t have much strength in my hands any more.”

The sivak did not reply but slid a talon along the fabric and tore it from ankle to hip, revealing Dhamon’s scales.

“Looks black to me,” Maab said. She was looking at her reflection in the scales. “From a black dragon.”