Коллектив авторов - The Realms of the Dragons 2

And one of the rocky spears broke away from the wall. Not a stalactite, Bahrn realized-at the same time his voice shouted to the old woman to move-and it wasn't falling. It was crawling down the wall.

Detaching from a cluster of stone, the thing shuffled down into the circle of purple light cast by the enspelled amethyst. Bahrn could make out an anvil-shaped head that swiped, pendulumlike, from side to side, and four stony feet dragging awkwardly across the ground.

Its body swung toward Diadree as she stumbled away.

Bahrn drew his morningstar and ran forward to push her aside, but Diadree's ankle had already given out beneath her.

She slid to the ground as the creature charged by, raking her side with its stony belly. Diadree cried out as she was dragged forward, bare flesh caught on protruding shards of rock and crystal.

Bahrn swung the morningstar underhand at the creature's other side, taking both front feet out from under its body in a cloud of dust and shattering rock. The creature skittered wildly across the floor like a puppy on slick cobbles, allowing the old woman to fall free.

Bahrn wheeled around for another strike but checked the swing as Arlon's hands began cutting rapid patterns in the air. The coins and jewels and chunks of stone he'd hurled earlier rose up from the floor and shot toward the creature like a dozen tiny sling bullets. More pieces of the creature's stone body fell away as the pellets impacted. Stung, the beast swung its attention immediately to the wizard.

"Watch her." Arlon raised his hands again. "I don't want her dead yet," he snapped at the mercenary.

Diadree lay curled into a fetal ball against the cavern wall. Her shirt was shredded-stone and bits of sharp crystal were embedded in her side.

"She's protecting herself," Diadree moaned as Bahrn tried to tend the cuts in the dim light.

"Arlon will kill it," Bahrn soothed, adding silently, and perhaps he'll move on to us. "It appears your dragon left a few pets behind to guard her lair."

"No," Diadree said. "They're like children, only not, not really. She's left pieces of herself behind."

"That thing isn't alive, Diadree," Bahrn assured her. "It's made of mountain rock, and gold and gems. I pulled some out of your wound." He pointed to the bloodstained pieces of wealth on the floor beside him.

The old woman lifted her head from her hands and reached for him, her fingers finding and clutching an exposed bit of tunic. Her eyes, dulled by pain, focused on him, pleading.

"Could you take the rest?" she begged.

Bahrn's heart wrenched. "They're all gone, lady, I promise you."

"No, they're not. Amrennathed's not. The pieces are still there." She tapped her temple hard with a dirty nail. "It's not her fault I got some of them. I'm stubborn-I loved the mountain as much as she did. I wouldn't leave."

"What are you saying?" Bahrn gripped her shoulders as she began to tremble. "Where did Amrennathed go?"

"The mountain. She was old and didn't want to leave or be scavenged after her death. Would you, if you had lived half so long, want your bones looted for trophies? I didn't blame her. I watched it happen to Orunn. So she joined her body with the mountain. It upset the balance of… everything-shook the earth, these caverns. Everyone left the village except me. The mountain and I… somehow the pieces got mixed, and now I've got some of her in me and… and I just wanted to stay in my home, to be safe." Tears welled in her eyes. "Or maybe that's her voice, her wishes. I don't know anymore. But it doesn't matter if he kills it," she moaned. "There're still too many pieces."

"Gods, Diadree," Bahrn said, feeling helpless. He rubbed his hands over her shoulders as she cried, trying to calm her.

His hands stilled abruptly as her words sank in. Too many pieces.

Bahrn squinted at the walls of the cavern, letting his eyes become absorbed by the rocky fixtures and shadows. He remembered as a child lying on his back on the Fox Ear's shore, hunting for cloud shapes in the sky. As he looked, his eyes picked up more of the vaguely serpentine shapes sprouting out of the rock at various points around the cavern. They remained still and silent.

Behind them, Arlon dropped to his stomach as the stone wyrmling twisted, slamming its hindquarters into a rocky shelf jutting out from the far wall. It fell hard to the floor and shattered.

The wizard stood and said, "The amethyst dragons are powerful psions. I should have realized-wyrms animated from stone. Amrennathed allowed her body to waste away into the mountain, and her mental essence followed intact. But your proximity to her and the mountain-somehow a bit of that essence seeped into you."

He strode toward them, his expression frozen on Diadree in triumph as he began to mouth the words of another spell.

Bahrn wasn't about to wait to find out what magic it might be-at best, a spell to kill or contain them both, anything to keep Diadree's mind intact.

His hand moved to his weapon, but he hesitated. The wizard was too far away. If Arlon ducked, if he missed his target, he and Diadree were dead.

He scanned the wall, following the spines of serpentine, stone bodies, as if he could will them to move, to leap down upon the wizard.

Arlon raised his hands.

Bahrn smiled grimly and hurled his morningstar into the space between them.

Arlon's eyes bulged. His left hand trembled violently, but he continued to weave the gestures of his spell even as his right palm spasmed weakly, pinned between the cavern wall and the head of Bahrn's morningstar. Blood streamed down the rock into the dust, but he kept speaking, spitting the words of his spell with flecks of saliva.

He didn't see the rock shifting behind him, stirred awake by the impact of the morningstar on stone.

Two more serpentine bodies uncurled. They caught Arlon's movement as he completed the gestures of his spell.

"Stay behind me," Bahrn commanded as Diadree tried to raise herself up to a sitting position.

They watched as a tiny wisp of flame hovered into being above Arlon's unruined palm, flowing and expanding into a blue-orange sphere of fire.

"Get ready to run," he hissed, knowing that Diadree would never be able to get out of the way of the flowing missile.

The sphere burst in the air where it was forming as a third anvil-shaped head swung out from the wall next to Arlon's raised hand. It struck the glowing sphere and the wizard in the same movement.

The magic dissolved as the anvil drove Arlon's body into the uneven cavern wall as the morningstar had buried his hand. His head snapped back against the stone, and he slid, limp, to the floor.

Bahrn held himself rigid. He pressed Diadree behind him as the wyrmlings came down from the wall. They stalked the cavern with their sightless eyes, heads drifting from side to side as if they could scent the air like bloodhounds on a track.

Finally, finding nothing moving, they slowed and collapsed to the cavern floor in a pile of rock. After a moment, they became indistinguishable from the other stone formations.

"Is he dead?" Diadree asked, looking from behind Bahrn's back at Arlon's still form.

Bahrn nodded. "Are you ready to go home, Diadree?" he whispered, hardly daring to breathe for fear the stone dragons would awaken again. "Amrennathed is sleeping again."

"Not yet," Diadree answered. "I have to stay."

Somehow, he wasn't surprised. He doubted she was in any condition to make the jostling trek back down the mountain. Her eyes were glazed, staring at something far away, and the hollows of her cheeks seemed deeper sunk into her face. It struck Bahrn that despite all of these things she looked much the same as she always had, back to the time of his childhood. She had been old then and was old now. He could never recall a time when she was young. He wondered why he was just realizing that.