Michael Stackpole - When Dragons Rage

Erlestoke’s resistance to that last idea stayed his hand for a moment, but it did not matter. Starting far to the left and working right, little blasts suddenly opened holes in the wall, one after the other. Plaster and lath cracked and sprayed from four of the holes, and smoke rose from their blackened edges.

The fifth hole did not burn through the wall. Whatever magick had caused it had flown through the window and smashed the gibberer square in the back, lifting the creature from the floor. Erlestoke ducked as the gibberkin flew forward, one of its feet catching his left shoulder. The gibberer spun in the air, then its chest exploded, filling the air with a vapor of viscera, blood, and bone.

As his head came up, gibberer blood still running down his skin, Erlestoke caught sight of the white creature. From beneath the cloak it had produced a wand. The creature’s gaze locked with his for a moment, then the wand came up and, his sword abandoned, Erlestoke dove low for his quadnel.

The prince scooped the weapon up and quickly worked the lever that rotated the barrels, seating a loaded one against the firing mechanism. Above the metallic clicks and clanks of the gears, the report of another draconette rang out, then a terrific explosion shook the building. What little wall there had been a dozen feet away had vanished, carrying away the stairs, the landing, and splashing the wounded gibberer into a red stain over the debris.

With the automatic motions that had been trained into him through hours of drilling, Erlestoke primed the new barrel and rolled to his knees at the window. He drew a bead on the slender figure, noting already that its left shoulder was matted with blood, and that more ran in rivulets down its useless left arm.

Its right arm came up, however, and a fiery blue dart shot from the wand. It hit the snowy street three feet in front of Castleton, who had dropped into a crouch and was priming his quadnel. The explosion lifted the soldier and whirled him loose-limbed into the air. He crashed down into the snow twenty feet away, disappearing in a cloud of drifting powder snow.

Erlestoke shot and hit the creature high in the chest. A sharp jet of arterial blood squirted into the cold air, then the thing flopped back into the snow. It shook heavily and its limbs twitched violently. Then Ryswin reached it and beheaded it with a short stroke of a gibberer longknife.

The prince leaped from the window and landed in the snow with a crouch. “Ryswin, bring that thing with you!”

“Yes, sir.”

Erlestoke ran to where Castleton lay and turned him over. The blast had torn the Oriosan’s mask off and had taken with it most of his face. The man’s lipless mouth worked for a second, but produced only bloody froth, not words. His back bowed, then he slackened.

The prince reached down and closed the one remaining eye, then searched for the man’s quadnel. He slung the draconette over his shoulder, then returned to his fallen comrade and dragged his body off. Ryswin joined him quickly, and the two of them descended through hidden passages that opened before them and closed after, to reach their haven.

Erlestoke gave the two quadnels to their weapons-master, Verum. A couple of other people had taken Castleton’s body from him and, off in a corner, were busy washing him and sewing him into a shroud. Across the room, on a table that had seen many a use in their campaign, the raven-haired Harquelf Jilan-dessa and the meckanshü colonel from Murosa, Jancis Ironside, had stretched out the creature. Even without its head, it was tall enough that its feet hung off the edge.

The prince crossed to them. “What is it?”

The elf shook her head. “I’ve not seen its like before, nor have I heard of anything similar. I could make guesses, but I like them not at all.”

Erlestoke rested a hand on her shoulder. “It wields magick more capably than a vylaen. It took two quadnel shots and still did not cease moving until beheaded. It gave orders to gibberers and they obeyed instantly. It’s bad enough as it is. Your guessing can’t make it worse.”

The elf healer nodded, then ran her hand over the creature’s belly, rucking up its fur. Beneath the white fur she exposed pink flesh and then a dark tattoo of some arcane symbol. “Do you recognize that?”

“Not really, though I’ve seen similar on Vorquelves.”

“Exactly.” She pointed to the creature’s head. “I worked magick on the body, just a simple diagnostic spell to get a sense of it. There is vylaen there, clearly, but also elf. Elves don’t really differentiate in sense depending upon their homeland, but if one is talented, you can pick up slight variations. This creature has a Vorquellyn taint to it.”

The prince nodded. “I noticed the eyes.”

Jancis Ironside reached over with her left hand and pried one of the thing’s eyes open. Being a meckanshü —one of the warriors whose useless limbs had been replaced with mechanical parts—her left hand only had two fingers and a thumb, yet moved with a singular delicacy. “Very hard to miss, these eyes. The look of them sends a shiver through even my metal limbs.”

The creature’s eyes had begun to cloud in death, but Erlestoke could still imagine something lurking in their depths. He looked at the elf again. “You think these things come from Vorquellyn?”

She nodded. “You know that Yrulph Kirun, centuries ago, forcefully crossbred araftü with elves to create the Gyrkyme. I fear that Chytrine honors her master once more in creating these things. They feel as if they are a cross between vylaens and Vorquelves, born on Vorquellyn. She took the homeland, now she uses it to breed a population of warmages to lead her gibberers against us.”

That idea sent a chill down the prince’s spine. “Is there any way we can tell for certain?”

“I will make measurements, map the tattoos, look for other clues. If we had more of them, it might help.”

Erlestoke nodded. “I’ll see what we can do.”

Jancis hugged her flesh-and-blood hand to her mechanical shoulder. “Highness, we know Chytrine left a week ago, maybe twelve days, and we assumed she had found and carried away all the pieces of the DragonCrown.”

“Yes, that’s what we concluded. And we decided she kept troops here to prevent anyone from reoccupying the fortress and threatening her lines of supply.”

“Both logical assumptions. But why, then, would she bring creatures so adept at magick here?”

The prince adjusted his mask. “I see your point. If she has a reason for bringing them, it must be an important one. Perhaps she’s missing a piece of the Crown, or there is something else of value here. So, just as vital as learning what they are will be learning why they are here. Good thinking, Colonel Ironside; I would have missed that.”

Ryswin walked over and nodded to the prince. “Highness, Castleton is in his shroud. Nygal and I shall carry him deep into the tunnels and find a spot to wall him up.”

“Ryswin, come quick!” Nygal Tymtas, the young soldier from Savarre, shouted from the corner where Castleton had been laid. “Something very strange is going on.”

The elf and the prince dashed toward the corner, then stopped. The stones in the floor upon which Castleton’s body rested had begun to glow; heat pulsed out from them. Nygal leaped back and the tips of his boots smoked, though oddly the white canvas of the shroud showed not a scorch or wisp of vapor. The rock became fluid and a thin crust crumbled, revealing a red-gold puddle of stone. The body floated there for a moment, then began to sink, starting at the head and shoulders, then gradually settling in at the feet. His toes were the last to go and when they disappeared, a small golden wave of rock lapped over them, then the stone darkened and cooled.