Patricia Briggs - Masques

As she came to the outer caves, Aralorn slowed to a walk. There were too many people around for her to dodge at a faster speed. When she started down the path that led to the entrance, the first thing that she noticed was the sound of her own footsteps. It took her a minute to realize that the reason she could hear them was because the Uriah weren’t howling.

Sure enough, when she reached the entrance, there was no sign of the Uriah. The bonfire Myr had ordered laid near the entrance was still unlit.

She stepped out slowly, moving cautiously in case there were any lying in wait. After so many days in the caves, the sunlight nearly blinded her. The air smelled fresh and pure, without the distinctive odor that accompanied Uriah. Only the smell of burnt grass and other things marred the fragrance of the nearby pine.

It looked as if a ball of fire had been spewed from the cave’s mouth. A wide blackened path in the grass and soil began from the entrance and traveled in a straight line a fair distance before disappearing. Within the blackened area were ten or fifteen bodies of Uriah, burnt down to the bone. There were some that were less singed, but something had chewed on them.

Aralorn followed the blackened path up the mountain and found that the trail abruptly stopped on a wide, flat area. She started back and was several lengths down the slope when she realized that she might be thinking backward. What if the fireball hadn’t come from the cave but had been launched at it? Muttering to herself, she trotted back to where the trail stopped.

Tracking wasn’t her specialty, but it didn’t take her long to find what she sought. When she was looking for them, they were hard to miss—very large, reptilian footprints with marks beside them that could be trailing wings. Just like the ones she’d seen the day she’d been taken by the Uriah.

“Well, Myr,” she said thoughtfully, going back to examine one of the half-eaten corpses. She hadn’t looked too closely before, assuming that the Uriah had just been practicing their usual cannibalism. Upon closer examination, she could tell that something much bigger than a Uriah had been feeding. “I think I know what dragons eat when there aren’t any virgins chained to rocks.”

“Well, then,” said Myr in dry tones after Aralorn related her discovery. The main cave was almost empty. Myr had sent out a party to look for the hunters who’d been missing since just before the Uriah had come, and a second group out to find provisions. He’d sent a few of the remaining people to keep watches from the best lookout stations.

He rubbed his eyes and looked at her. “So what now? We’ve exchanged the Uriah for a dragon. The question that begs is, of course, is this a good thing?”

“The dragon’s quieter and smells better.” Aralorn leaned against the cave wall and watched Myr pace.

“At least we knew something about the Uriah,” Myr complained. “A dragon. There aren’t supposed to be any more dragons.” He broke off when the sounds of ragged cheers echoed into the cave, followed by the missing hunting party and the searchers—all of them looking cold and tired.

When the welcoming was done, Farsi, who’d led the party, told their tale. “We came upon a herd of mountain sheep and got two so we headed back. About halfway here we stumbled upon some tracks, as if an army were wandering around. We followed the trail, and pretty soon we could smell ’em and knew that they were Uriah. Since their path was the same one we were on, it was obvious that the things were coming here.

“Figuring that we were too late to make much difference, we worked our way up the side of the mountain until we could see the Uriah. We couldn’t see the cave, but the way they were swarming around showed that you must have found a way to keep them out. We decided that there was nothing we could do but wait. Our vantage point was far enough away that the chance of the Uriah seeing us wasn’t considerable.”

Farsi cleared his throat. “Late last night—just after the moon had set—I heard a cry like a swan makes, only deeper. I was on watch, and it wasn’t loud enough to wake anyone else up. Something big flew over us, but I couldn’t quite see it. Afterward, I saw a flash of golden fire down here and heard the Uriah step up their noise. Then it quieted down. I woke up a couple others, and we finally decided that we’d best wait until we had light to see what had happened.” He frowned, evidently still unhappy with that decision. “It was just that whatever it was—from the quiet that followed—it had already happened.”

Myr nodded at him. “Sensible and smart to wait until you could see, especially with Uriah running around.”

Farsi looked like someone had pulled a weight off his shoulders. “This morning, it looked like the Uriah had left, so we started home. The reason it took us so long to get here is that there are still a lot of Uriah scattered about. We were dodging two parties of the things, when we almost ran into a third. It’s a good thing that they smell so bad, or we wouldn’t have made it back at all.”

Over the next few days it became obvious that if the Uriah had been held in concert by the will of the ae’Magi, that was no longer true. It didn’t make them any less dangerous individually, but it did make it possible to kill them in small groups.

Wolf, when appealed to, produced a detailed map of the area on sheepskin, which was hung on a wall of the central chamber. Aralorn suspected he’d made it himself, either with magic or by hand, because it was accurate, with very specific landmarks. At Myr’s command, any sightings of Uriah were recorded on the map, giving them a rough idea where the things were.

Each group of hunters had a copy of the map, and if they ran into a group of Uriah, they would lead them to one of the traps Myr had placed in strategic places. The Uriah were slowed enough by the cold of the deepening fall that the humans could outrun them most of the time, especially since they were careful to go out only when it was coldest.

Haris suggested an adaptation of a traditional castle defense and created a tar trap that was one of the most effective of their traps. The easiest way to kill a Uriah was with fire, so pots of tar were hung here and there, kept warm by magic. Ropes were carefully rigged so that they would not easily be tripped by wild animals. When they were pulled, the pots tipped over, and the motion triggered a secondary spell—something Haris cooked up—that set the tar on fire—dousing the Uriah with flaming tar. The spells on the traps were simple enough that everybody, except for Myr, could do them after a little coaching from Wolf and Haris.

Aralorn watched the small group of refugees become a close-knit community, the grumblers fewer. Every evening, they would all sit down and talk. Complaints and suggestions were heard and decided upon by Myr. Looking at the scruffy bunch of peasants (the nobles, by that time, blended right in with the rest) consulting with their equally scruffy king, Aralorn compared it with the Rethian Grand Council that met once a year, and she hid a grin at the contrast.

Having an enemy they could fight—and defeat—put heart in them all. Even Aralorn, who understood that the Uriah were in truth a minor annoyance. Their real enemy, the ae’Magi, was out there somewhere—and he knew where they were. She suspected he was biding his time. The snow wasn’t accumulating yet, but it had become common to see a white coat on the dirt most mornings. A smart general didn’t attack the Northlands in the heart of winter but waited for spring.

Only Wolf was excluded from the camaraderie, by his own choice. He made them nervous, with his macabre voice and silver mask. Once he saw that they were intimidated by him, he went out of his way to make them more so. Sleeping somewhere deep in the caverns and spending most of his waking time in the library, he was seldom with the main body of the camp. Usually, he attended the nightly sessions with everyone else, but he kept his own counsel in the shadows of the caves’ recesses unless Myr asked him a question directly.