Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

He put his back to cold stone again, his heart lurching each time the dragon yawned or stretched, each time Kelida stirred and the huge beast looked their way.

Dual chambered, the cavern held the small cave where Stanach sat now and the broad, high-ceilinged lair of the dragon. The separation of the chambers was marked only by a broadening of the stony floor and a sudden high leaping of the walls. The walls, he realized, did not soar to a ceiling but to what surely must be the sky. From the high entrance to the dragon’s lair, echoes of the wind sweeping the mountainside moaned in the caves.

His own natural dark-sight showed Stanach the dim red outline of the dragon where it lay in its lair. He tried to estimate the distance and thought that nearly fifty yards of rough stone floor lay between them and the beast. Aye, he thought, and it can cross that in an instant!

A smoldering fire burned from his right wrist to his shoulder. Realgar’s guards had not been gentle. Yet, for all the awakened fire in his arm and shoulder, Stanach’s hand, still bandaged, had no feeling at all. He now knew that he had not Kern’s salves to thank for the absence of pain. He would never again feel anything in that hand. No, not even pain. Broken bones, aye, even twisted bones, could be mended. Shredded muscle could never be healed.

Stanach saw the yellow, malevolent gleam of the dragon’s eyes. Its breathing quickened, like the pumping of a bellows. He felt its hunger as a dread deep within his bones, and he felt it waiting. It had been commanded not to dispatch Realgar’s prisoners yet, only to guard them. And so it waited.

Darknight, Realgar called it. Some time ago it had been brought two goats and a screaming calf to sate its appetite. Stanach still smelled the blood, a thick, coppery reek on its breath. Among the animal’s bones lay the shreds of the black and silver uniform of a Theiwar guard. Kelida stirred, a small moving of her hand, and fell still again. Too long, Stanach thought. She’s been unconscious too long. How much time had passed? He had only scattered memories of waking in this place deep below the cities. For a time his mind had been thick with confusion and the aftereffects of Realgar’s sleep spell. Then, as in dreams, time had little meaning. Even now, listening to the dragon breathing, Stanach only remembered the few moments after Darknight set down in a deep ravine below the Northgate ledge.

A squad of six Theiwar, Realgar at its head, had poured from the mouth of a cave like bats seeking the night. Each of the six had crossbows trained on Stanach and Kelida, bolts anchored and ready to be loosed at their thane’s command. Realgar had issued no such order. He bade the two dismount and they did, both expecting every minute to feel the shock of a bolt flying home.

Three of the guards had surrounded Stanach the moment his feet touched stone. They disarmed him neatly and in seconds. While one guard kept Stanach well in his bow’s range, two others grabbed his arms and hustled him toward the gaping hole of darkness that was the cave’s mouth. At the entrance, despite his captors’ holds, Stanach dug in his heels and wrestled himself around to see Kelida similarly surrounded. Realgar approached her, strange dark eyes alight, hands twitching restlessly as though anticipating the feel of Stormblade’s cool, golden hilt. His guards’ hands tightened on Stanach’s arms. They yanked his arms tightly behind him, sending white-hot bolts of pain shooting from his elbows to his shoulders. Stunned by the pain, Stanach watched Kelida’s disarming through a dizzying, red-shot haze.

Stanach’s stomach turned over as he remembered Realgar’s slow reach for the Kingsword, saw again how he almost touched the sapphired hilt, then drew back. He had motioned the guards away. Very gently, Realgar unbuckled the sword belt from Kelida’s waist.

Stanach closed his eyes now, trying not to hear again Kelida’s soft moan, trying not to hear his own cry of outrage and horror as Realgar buckled on the swordbelt and smiled.

Now, in an echo of that thin despairing moan, Kelida’s breath caught once in her throat. Stanach reached for her hand again, covered it, and leaned close to her.

“ Lyt chwaer ” he whispered, so low that he barely heard the words himself, “easy, now. I’m here.”

The cave was blacker than a moonless midnight and she, a human, had no dark-sight. Stanach felt her hand quivering in his.

Darknight rumbled deep in its chest and snaked its neck around, a baleful yellow light in its eyes as it observed the prisoners. Then, as though disinterested, the huge black dragon backed away. Kelida’s hand went cold and limp in Stanach’s as the rough sound of scales dragging on stone, dagger claws scraping, echoed in the cave.

Stanach closed his fingers around Kelida’s hand again, holding her still and silent until Darknight withdrew completely. How long would Realgar’s command hold the dragon?

Slowly, as silently as he could, Stanach shifted his position and released Kelida’s hand. She caught her breath and grabbed his arm, a drowning woman clinging to her only hold in a black, cold sea. Her voice was low and thin, tight with panic. “I can’t—I can’t see.”

“Oh, aye, you can, Kelida. You just can’t see here. Quietly, now, hold on to me and sit up.”

She moved slowly. She got the stone wall against her back and pushed herself straight.

“Better? How is your head? Hurts, I’ll wager.” He tried for as careless a tone as he could, hearing it ring false in his own ears. “Aye, it’s the sleep spell. All the headache of a good flask of dwarf spirits and none of the fun.”

In its lair, Darknight moaned low and deep, scales whispered again on stone. Kelida gasped, then held perfectly still.

“Just the dragon.” Stanach said as he might have said just the rabbit.

“We’re safe enough for the moment.”

“Where—where is it?”

Stanach shrugged. “In its lair, playing watchdog.” He lied smoothly.

“It’s not interested in us.”

Did she believe it? Stanach didn’t think so.

“Why can’t I see?”

Stanach snorted. “Because there’s no light. In the Outlands there’s always light. Even on the cloudiest night, it gets caught between the ground and the sky. Here, in the heart of the world, there’s no light unless we make it.”

“But—you can see me.”

Darknight sighed a gust of breath reeking with blood.

Stanach spoke quickly to still the panic he sensed rising in Kelida.

“All living things give off warmth. Things not having life, stone and mountain, those hold the day’s light. That’s what I see, the outline of that warmth. You’re a dimensionless form, but I see that very well. If you could see my eyes right now, I don’t think you’d like them. The pupils are so wide, expanding to get the little bit of light, that they look like bottomless pits.”

Kelida drew in a long breath and let it out in a slow, almost silent sigh.

“What’s going to happen to us?”

Stanach didn’t know how to answer. He shook his head, then remembered that she couldn’t see the gesture. “Lyt chwaer, I don’t know. Realgar has Stormblade now. I don’t know why he hasn’t killed us already.”

Kelida was silent for a long moment. Stanach felt her fingers tighten again around his hand. He knew what she’d say next.

“Then—then Hauk is dead.”

Stanach swallowed hard and said nothing.

“Stanach?”

“Aye,” he whispered. “Hauk’s dead.”

How could he read such grief, such pain, in a depthless outline of red light?

“Lyt chwaer” he whispered.

She buried her face in his shoulder. Stanach felt her tears warm on his neck as she silently wept. Lyt chwaer, he named her, little sister. She’d comforted him in his grief, cared for him after his maiming, her hands gentle, her ministrations tender as a sister’s.