Anthology - Untold Adventures - A Dungeons and Dragons Anthology

This projection of himself, this imaginary eagle, was not capable of astonishment. Otherwise he would have been amazed to see the extent of the ruined city below his claws, the height of the crystal spires that soared up past him. The city lay at the edge of a sprawling forest that had overgrown it in a twisting mass of vines. What remained were buildings of prismatic stone, many of them perfect and untouched, as if the inhabitants had been called away momentarily to attend to something important, and left their doors standing open. But other parts of the city bore the traces of the powerful explosions that had destroyed it many years before, circular craters that contained structures not just ruined but pulverized, blasted to their foundations. Within these circles nothing lived, in contrast to the teeming life that overran the rest, life not just vegetable but animal as well: panthers and rodents and feral pigs, as well as monstrous insects, made huge, perhaps, by the lingering effects of a forgotten war.

There were no birds above him in the high, unnatural, purple and blue vault of the sky. Below, the eladrin were wrestling his body into a cart. He counted three of them besides the girl, and as they bound his arms behind him, he could tell they were nervous and unsure. He knew it from the language of their bodies, and because they were rougher than was necessary-he was offering them the resistance of a sack of potatoes, or perhaps a sack and a half. Nor could he explain their vicious pokes and jabs as merely their natural contempt for him. No, the eladrin were in a hurry, and the horses, also, were skittish and shy.

He could not judge the time of day from the color of the light, which was too unfamiliar. He could not see the sun. But as he sank down into his body, tried to imagine the reason for their haste as they pulled the horses over the jolting stones, down the Avenue of Gods-this name came to him intact, a memory from old maps. He knew that, like the corresponding street in the mortal realm, it cut across the city toward the eastern gate, and was embellished by its own double line of marble statues-many objects here, he knew, had their own pale resonance in the land he had left behind.

He lay trussed-up in the back of the cart, considering his options. Now that he had his bearings, it seemed to him that even without his totem stick, much could be done. Whatever these people were afraid of, he could use that fear against them. He started with a few small guttural evocations, which his captors might confuse with the sound of him coughing or spitting-they hadn’t blindfolded him or bound his mouth. No, they had underestimated him, which was why he’d not resisted them. But that would change now, he thought, staring at the girl’s beautiful face as she looked up into the sky.

The breeze had freshened, and tendrils of dark vapor moved across the sky, while at the same time the front wheels of the cart fetched up against a root, whose heavy knee had split the paving stones. The driver spoke his own less-effective evocation as a single tendril broke out of the bark and grasped at the wooden rim like a weak, small, pale green hand-it was enough. Before the horses could pull free, a half-dozen more had clutched the wheel, while vinelike clouds clutched at them from above-the Feywild, Haggar thought, was responsive to him. The force of nature was overwhelming here.

The sky darkened. Soon, he imagined, a bolt of lightning would spook the horses; already they refused to move, shivering with their ears back, while the driver hacked them with his whip. Two eladrin warriors leaped out of the cart, and one stood guard while the other bent to cut at the new creepers with his sword. Neither of them had yet thought to connect him with what was happening.

The girl, however, was wiser. Alone in the cart with him, she bent over him. Her yellow hair fell over her face and he could smell the scent of her, a perfume like cinnamon or clove. “Listen to me, you bird-brained pig,” she murmured. “Let me explain. In half an hour it will be dark. Sooner if you persist. Even in twilight, we won’t last ten minutes here. Lord Kannoth will open up the gates of his black palace, and he will hang our corpses from the trees. He has an army of undead soldiers who worship him as a god. Do you want to play your stupid games with him?”

“Free me,” Haggar croaked. His voice was ugly even to himself.

She bent lower, so that she could whisper softly in his ear. “You stinking lump of excrement.”

Above them the sky was black, and a foul mist had gathered. Rearing up, screaming with terror, the horses yanked at their traces and the cart fell to one side, kept from overturning by the swarming vines. The girl stepped to the ground and stood erect. She raised her cupped hands, filled now with a greenish light that ran down her naked arms and over her body, soaking her clothes until she herself was a radiant torch against the darkness. She drew her knife and cut the horses free of the vines, and in an instant they were quiet; they stood trembling, patient, their eyes wide, their nostrils rimmed with foam. Then she bent to hack at the creepers that held the wheel, and Haggar could feel the cold edge of the blade as if against his own skin.

He rolled down against the side of the cart, and there he found his totem stick discarded and wedged in a crevice between the knotted slats; the eladrin had thrown it there, not respecting him enough to keep it safe. Rolling against the wolf’s-head knob, pressing his shoulder into it, he snarled an evocation and felt his body change. He felt the bone absorb into his body. The ropes slackened, and he bit at them until they gave way.

He no longer suffered the edge of the girl’s knife. Instead, she’d turned away from him, walked a few paces down the road to illuminate a wider area. Her arms were upraised, and the knife glowed in her left hand. In the mist, Haggar could see she kept at bay an emaciated pale creature taller than herself, while the other eladrin, the two soldiers and the driver, cowered behind her. Shaking himself free of the last knots, he bounded from the cart and moved away into the darkness, only to turn when he heard one of the horses groan, a low gurgle deep in its chest.

Both animals had sunk to their knees on the stone road. A hideous spider, larger than a man, crouched above them. Snarling and cursing, Haggar did his best to clear the darkness he had made, conjuring up a wind to blow the mist away, break apart the clouds. But he knew that whatever he did, he would find the day had sunk to twilight. Whatever creatures lurked in the catacombs and forests of Cendriane, their feeding time had come.

But there was a full moon here, too, or almost full, brighter than its counterpart in the mortal world. By its light, and the light cast by the girl, he could watch the spider wrap its kill in pale cords as thick as a man’s wrist. In the other direction, toward the eastern gate, the way was blocked by a dozen or more of the undead, their bone-bleached skin luminous in the moonlight. Skeletal, with swollen heads and grinning jaws, they carried weapons of a type Haggar had never seen, swords that shone like crystal, and bows of yellow horn. One of them nocked a gleaming arrow, and in a moment the eladrin driver fell, shot through the eye.

Again Haggar paused, one forefoot upraised. This was not his fight. But then he saw another of the eladrin stumble to his knees, a sword through his belly. The final soldier was just a boy, and he fought bravely, his yellow hair matted with blood. But then one of the pale creatures pulled him down from behind, which left only the girl, twisting away from a behemoth with an axe, cutting him through the ribs and then shying back, her green fire diminished, almost extinct.

Haggar threw back his head and howled, and a single bolt of lightning hit the spike of the creature’s axe, sending him sprawling. A peal of thunder shook the ground, and then Haggar was upon them, snatching the thin bones of the skeletons’ legs. And when the girl fell, he seized hold of the collar of her shirt, gripping the fragile cloth in his narrow jaws, dragging her away. At the same time a miasma of fog seemed to spill out of the ground, and the creatures, disoriented, hacked and stabbed at shadows, while a freezing wind surrounded them in a sudden squall of snow. Haggar backed away from them, dragging the girl over the icy stones until they reached the gate at the base of the avenue, an enormous arch of carved and decorated marble, with friezes and embellishments of fighting beasts, and a squat stone eagle on each corner of the roof.