Don Bassingthwaite - The Grieving Tree

“His lair is in the middle of the Shadow Marches, Dandra,” said Singe. “There aren’t many kalashtar around here-look how much trouble he had to go through to lure you to him the first time.”

“We were test subjects. That much I know. Dah’mir told me that his work needed refining. His intent was to do more.” She wiped her free hand across her face. “I broke the binding stone, but Dah’mir might be able to start again with another dragonshard. We need to go-”

“Dandra.” Batul squeezed her hand. She turned to look into his eye. “Dandra, we can’t go back. It’s already too late.”

Dandra’s expression tightened. “Prophecy, Batul?” she asked.

The druid shook his head. “No,” he said, “just common sense. Look at us, Dandra.” He nodded to their group, huddled around the fire, and she looked.

Geth’s shining eyes had dark circles beneath them. Singe propped himself up as if he might topple over. Natrac was worn down. Ashi sagged. Krepis and Orshok looked half-asleep. Even Batul’s shoulders were slack and rounded. Dandra blinked as understanding caught up to her. Baul nodded.

“We’re exhausted,” the old orc said. “We need to rest and regroup. It was luck and very little else that enabled us to bring down Dah’mir after he revealed himself as a dragon. The orcs who came with us on the raid are either dead or fled and already making their way home. I saw survivors among Dah’mir’s creatures flee back into the mound when he vanished after Geth wounded him. Some of the Bonetree hunters still live, too. And Dah’mir-maybe he’s inside the mound, too. Maybe he retreated there as well to lick his wounds. Geth’s right-we don’t know where he is.” He squeezed her hand again. “We can’t go back. Not now.”

Dandra stared at him. He was right. For all the doubt that seethed in her, their exhaustion -her exhaustion-was inescapable. She clenched her fingers around Geth’s gauntlet. “I can’t just wait for Dah’mir to make me his prisoner again!” she said. “I have to do something, even if we can’t go back to the Bonetree mound. There must be some way to figure out what Dah’mir has been planning!”

“Maybe,” said Ashi, “there is.”

Dandra looked at her. “What?” she asked. “How?”

The hunter stared into the fire for a moment before she answered. “There is a story told among the Bonetree,” she said. “In the days of our ancestors, not long after Dah’mir came out of the east and gathered the clan together, he dispatched a group of hunters back into the east. When he came to us-” she bit her lip and corrected herself-“to the Bonetree, he’d left certain treasures behind in what the story calls che Haranait Koa , the Hall of the Revered. With the clan established, the hunters were sent to gather those treasures and bring them back to the ancestor mound.”

She glanced up at Dandra. “The story tells that one of the greatest treasures they brought back was a great, blue-black dragonshard. Dah’mir made the hunter who placed it in his hands the first huntmaster of the Bonetree. The shard was enormous, ‘the size of a crouching child’ according to the story.” She held up her hands to show the size.

Dandra drew a sharp breath as she realized what Ashi was describing. “The shard from the heart of Dah’mir’s device,” she said.

Ashi nodded.

Dandra sat back. “Il-Yannah! If the shard is real, then the story might be, too. If we can’t get back to the Bonetree mound, the place Dah’mir came from before might give us some answers.”

“Hold on!” Singe said. He looked across the fire at her. “We’re talking about a story-a story about some place Dah’mir might have been two hundred years ago.”

“The story is true,” Ashi told him stiffly. “How else would generations of storytellers have known about the shard? The Bonetree didn’t go inside the mound.”

Batul nodded in agreement. “Stories can hold much truth, Singe. The lore of the Gatekeepers tells little about Dah’mir, but it does tell that the Servant of Madness came to the Shadow Marches out of the east like a blight on the dawn.”

“We’d still be chasing a story two hundred years old on a hunch.” Singe looked to Geth for support, but shifter just shook his head.

“You’re asking the wrong person.” He patted the heavy, jagged blade of his Dhakaani sword. “I walked through a phantom fortress that’s been a story for thousands of years.”

“When I told you that Dah’mir had led the Bonetree for ten generations, you doubted me,” said Ashi. “That story was the truth.”

Singe grimaced and held up his hands in surrender. “Twelve moons! Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to look into it.”

New hope leaped in Dandra’s heart even as Tetkashtai shrank back further in her terror. “Where does the story say we can find the Hall of the Revered, Ashi?”

“Che Haranait Koa shenio otoio ches Ponhansit Itanchi,” the hunter said, the phrase rolling off her tongue like a formula. “The Hall of the Revered lies below the Spires of the Forge.”

“And where are the Spires of the Forge?” asked Singe.

Ashi opened her mouth, then froze and closed it again. She shook her head, the beads woven into her thick gold hair clacking softly with the motion. Singe cursed. “That’s not much help!”

“The Bonetree remembered the trials the hunters faced in their journey, not the route they took!” Ashi said between clenched teeth. “The story tells only Dah’mir’s instructions to the hunters: The Hall of the Revered lies below the Spires of the Forge. Enter the door above the tangled valley. Look neither left nor right. The riches there are not for you. Hold to the path that leads to the Hall and find what waits in the shade of the Grieving Tree.”

They all just stared at her. “Rat,” Geth grunted. “It’s like a riddle. I hate riddles.”

“It’s a start,” said Dandra firmly. She tried to think of something that might narrow their search. “Does the story say how long the hunters’ journey took? Did they cross open water at all? Did they cross mountains?”

Ashi shook her head again. “No, no water, no mountains. They walked. The story says they were gone for a season.”

“Half a season there and half a season back,” said Batul. “The Bonetree mound lies in the heart of the Marches. Travel half a season east and you’re in the west of Droaam.”

Geth’s eyebrows rose. “Grandmother Wolf. Dah’mir came to the Shadow Marches from the barrens?”

“It’s possible,” Singe said. “Go any further east and you would run into civilized lands.” He sat back, scratching the patch of beard that clung to his chin. “A place called the Spires of the Forge somewhere in the west of Droaam.”

Dandra looked at Batul. “Does Gatekeeper lore mention these Spires?”

The old druid shook his head. “No. But Gatekeepers of old had little concern for things outside the Marches.”

“We’d need to know where we were going,” said Geth. “We don’t want to just wander around in Droaam. That’s dangerous territory.”

Ashi grunted. “And the Shadow Marches aren’t, shifter?”

“We have you, Batul, Krepis, and Orshok to guide us here,” Geth growled back. “We’d need to find a guide who knows the land in Droaam, someone who might have heard of the Spires of the Forge.”

“A guide-or a historian,” said Singe. In spite of his earlier objections to the idea of seeking out the Hall of the Revered, Dandra recognized a gleam of curiosity in Singe’s eyes. “The story is two hundred years old.”

“Historian or guide, we’ll find someone in Zarash’ak,” said Natrac. “House Tharashk’s prospectors and bounty hunters often spend time in Droaam-and if they can’t help us, I know someone with an interest in history, who might be able to.”