Keith Baker - The fading dream

She paused by a dwarf dressed in the robes of a Kundarak banker. Glass still covered much of his body. His face was frozen behind its translucent mask. But the glass around his waist was cracked and broken away, and fragments were scattered all around him.

“Someone chiseled this away,” she said. “His belt’s been cut… to remove his pouch, I’m guessing. He’s missing a finger too.” The wound was jagged and rough, but there were no bloodstains, and the flesh was still fresh; it seemed that the glass wasn’t the only thing that prevented decomposition. “Looters.”

It made sense. They weren’t far from the Valenar border. And if there was anything truly worth stealing in that place, it would be in the coffers of the dragonmarked. Glancing around the plaza, she could see that a number of doors and windows had been forced open, glass shattered so the salvagers could get into buildings. The Orien house was among them. The unicorn seal of the house was carved on the door, but it had been scarred and cracked when the looters forced their way into the building.

“I suppose we should be grateful,” she said. “I left my glass-smashing tools in my other gloves.”

Drix paused fifteen feet from the entrance, staring. “I suppose,” he said. “But… where’s the sentry?”

“What sentry?”

“I passed through this plaza before. There was a guard at the Orien gate. Trapped in glass like the rest. Now there’s nothing there. Why would someone take his body?”

“I don’t think they did. Not all of it, at least.” Thorn approached the gate cautiously. Large slabs of glass were heaped around the doorway, refuse from the efforts to force the door. She carefully shifted a few pieces aside, revealing the shadow seen through the glass. A leather boot, still trapped in the glass, with a good part of a leg still in it. The body had been snapped with sheer brute force; it was the work of a sledgehammer or maul. She picked up a smaller shard and tossed it to Drix. “Take a look-links of chain mail in the glass. I think our looters were searching for keys or other ways to bypass security. They just shattered the body with a maul and picked out what they needed. As for the missing pieces, perhaps there’s predators we haven’t seen. We should certainly be prepared for anything. Can you sense anything unusual?”

“Unusual? Not really.”

It wasn’t Drix she’d been talking to. I believe you are correct. There are still residual traces of energies on the doorway… an old ward, broken when it was, well, broken. They likely hoped to find a key charm on the guard, and perhaps they did.

“Anything else?” Thorn said.

“Nothing you haven’t already figured out,” Drix said. “You’re very clever.”

Isn’t that sweet? Steel said. I’m sensing active auras within the building. Nothing specific, especially at this distance, but I’d be careful.

“Let me go in first. Stay back until I say it’s safe.” She made her way gingerly across the broken glass and slid Steel’s point inside the doorframe.

There’s no glass inside the building, he reported. The cold-fire lanterns are still burning. There are bodies, perfectly preserved, but I see no signs of life. Minor auras-the lanterns, environmental cooling charms-nothing threatening.

Thorn stepped through the door, setting her back against the wall as soon as she was inside. “Whatever happened to these people, it must have been off-peak hours,” she said. There were only four bodies in the lobby. A clerk lay slumped across the reception desk, a slip of paper still clutched in her hand and a few copper crowns scattered across the desk. A man had fallen to the floor before her, a package under his arm, ready to send by Orien courier. And there was a courier, coming out of the main hallway. All three were dead, though without a mark on them.

She leaned out the door and gestured to Drix. “Come in but stay behind me. I don’t think we’ll find anything alive in here. What are we looking for?”

“The main circle chamber. It shouldn’t be hard to find.”

House Orien bore the mark of passage, and transportation was their trade. The greatest minds of the house had developed many tools to channel the power of their dragonmark, from the saddle that lent speed to a mount to the lightning rail coaches that had become a vital part of the economic infrastructure of Khorvaire. Their most wondrous power was teleportation. Most Orien enclaves contained teleportation circles, and when the proper ritual was performed, goods or people could be transported from one circle to another in the blink of an eye. It was a far more efficient form of travel than the lightning rail or the Lyrandar airships, but the ritual that linked the circles was expensive, and it could be performed by only an Orien heir with a potent dragonmark. Thorn didn’t know how Drix planned to activate the circle without the mark, but it had been his idea, so she assumed he had a plan.

While she’d never been to that enclave, it was a place of business, and teleportation, a service offered. Signs on the walls pointed the way to different parts of the outpost, and it took only a moment to find the path to the teleportation circle.

“I’m the first around every corner,” she whispered to Drix. “You peer around and don’t follow until you see my signal. Do you understand?”

He shrugged. “I suppose. What are you worried about? Everyone’s dead and they wouldn’t have wards on the main chamber, would they?”

“We’re not taking any chances.” The fact of the matter was that the bodies had her on edge. They were too pristine, too clean; she couldn’t help but wait for one of them to stand up or for a hand to tighten around her ankle. She’d fought undead in the past; she still remembered the Koralat case in Karrnath, the madman’s manor filled with the walking corpses of his servants and kin, her own partner reaching for her throat with no sign of recognition in his glazed eyes. Perhaps the people of Ascalin were truly dead. And perhaps they weren’t.

She held Steel to the edge of the passage, tracing a cross on his hilt.

More bodies, he told her. I’m not sensing any wards. It appears to be safe.

“We’ll see.” She slipped around the corner. Something crunched under her foot, and she knelt down to examine it. It was a shard of glass, as long as her finger, loose on the floor. The looters must have brought it in with them, she thought. There were a few other chips scattered around. The air was still, the hall was silent. There was something… a smell, faint but unmistakable: blood.

The source of the scent was up and around the next corner. She moved cautiously, avoiding the scattered shards of glass and making no sound as she slipped across the hallway. The scent grew stronger as she drew closer to the corner. Drix ventured into the hallway behind her, his little crossbow in his hand. Thorn indicated that he should hold his position and slid Steel around the edge of the wall.

Four bodies, Steel told her. Messy business… blood on the walls and the floor. No one living. I can sense a few enchanted weapons, other minor magical auras… animated rope, pack of holding, Irian tears.

“Orien colors?” she whispered.

No uniforms. Dark clothing, painted armor, but no obvious insignia.

Sounds more like looters than guards, she thought. So what killed them?

The other bodies they’d found had been perfectly pristine. The victims might have simply fallen asleep. As such, the carnage Thorn found in the hallway was a shock.

“Messy business indeed,” she murmured.

Blood was spattered all over the walls and pooled around each of the corpses. There was an elf woman in dark chain mail, a short bow still clutched in her hand; a muscular half-orc; a human with a wand in his hand and two more tucked into his belt, and a vest covered with pockets that likely held components for spells and rituals. The last body, a dwarf in a long, leather coat, his beard soaked with blood, caught Thorn’s eye. She noticed the dragonmark on his forehead and the scarring around it. It was the Mark of Warding, and the branding was something she’d heard of but never actually seen. A dragonmark heir expelled from a house was called an excoriate; in the distant past, the houses had actually cut the mark from the flesh of the victim. That practice had been abandoned before the rise of Galifar, but she’d heard that there were branches of some houses that still engaged in ritual scarring or branding for excoriates whose crimes against the house were especially severe. The Mark of Warding was used to craft mystical wards, locks, and alarms. But a gifted heir could learn to use the mark to shatter wards or open locks, and Thorn guessed that’s exactly what the dwarf had done.