Chapter 20

The mate was surprised, not for the first time, at how well his lungs had adjusted to the change in altitude. Breathing, though strenuous, was not nearly as difficult as it had been the previous day, though he still walked more slowly than he might have on lower ground.

Much of the rest of the company appeared similarly affected. Only Tashara walked with the same steady gait as she had maintained from the beginning of their journey.

They approached the pass’s summit cautiously. Twenty yards from the top, at a signal from Harfang, they drew weapons. They crouched slightly as if expecting a blow. The mate felt his heart pounding in his chest. This was it, perhaps. The culmination of twenty years of hunting. The thing that had driven him since that long-ago day when Tashara plucked him from the streets of Palanthas.

Spreading out in as wide a line as the pathway would permit, they formed two ranks, with the archers in the rear. Harfang and Tashara stood in the center, the captain a little before the others.

They came to the top of the pass and halted. Tashara turned to Harfang. “Tell me what you see.”

The mate kept his voice low. “There is a valley, just as the dwarf said. On the other side rises the white mountain, while the red and the black are on this side. Their ridges extend to one another, encircling the valley and cutting it off. The floor is flat and snow covered. There’s a stony slope that leads down from where we’re standing. The sides of the mountains are covered with snow. On the far side of the valley, I can see-”

“A dark hole, the mouth of a cave,” Tashara interrupted him. “Above it is a shelf of gray rock, and to one side stands a single pillar of black stone.”

The mate looked at her with astonishment.

“I have seen this place in my dreams,” she said. “For decades I have dreamed of the lair of my foe, and now I stand at its doorstep.” A tear trickled from one blind eye and froze on her cheek, leaving a trail like a pale scar. Her voice was sharp and decisive. “We will circle to the north and approach the cave that way. Keep a single file, weapons readied.”

The party turned and trekked north. To his surprise, Harfang found the path they had been walking along had turned into a paved road, its worn stones partly hidden beneath the snow. He wondered who in what ancient time had inhabited that remote, frightening place. If it had, in fact, been dwarves, as Ayshe had mentioned to him, they must have been of a hardy race that died out in some unforeseen catastrophe. If it was not made by dwarves, the road must have been fashioned by a people just as skilled in engineering, for its stones were still close-set and even.

The road wound along the sides of the surrounding mountains, dipping and rising. In a few places, it overlooked a steep descent to the floor of the valley, some hundred feet below, and Harfang was careful of his footing lest he slip and tumble. The silence and fear that hung like a mist over the valley oppressed them all, and they tried to avoid making noise for fear that it would arouse their foe.

The mate brooded on the coming fight. No battle plan had been discussed, but Dragonsbane had had enough experience fighting dragons to know what was expected of each of them. Yet they were short-handed and facing an opponent the like of which none had ever defeated. Tashara seemed, more than ever, to be trusting to her luck. One part of Harfang’s mind wished he had the leisure to again lay out the charon cards and see what they might tell him about the coming confrontation.

It was early afternoon when they came to the pillar Tashara had described from across the valley. It was perhaps twenty feet high, and clearly no work of nature. The pillar was of the same polished black stone that had been used for the base of the obelisk in the glen. Runes in the same unknown tongue encircled it, rising in a spiral to the top.

Harfang brushed away a light coating of snow, staring at the letters. “I can’t read them. What about you, Master Ayshe?”

The dwarf shook his head. “No. They aren’t in any Dwarvish dialect I recognize.” He hesitated a moment. “I think they might be similar to the carvings I saw at Donatta. Possibly they are in the language of whoever built this road.”

Harfang nodded. “There are a good many people who lived in this land long before humans and dwarves,” he observed. “It would seem they left this for us to wonder over.”

“Sir!” Anchallann called in a low voice. “Come look at this.”

A few yards farther was the entrance to the cavern, penetrating the slope of the white mountain. The doorway was huge, dwarfing. the yeti’s cave. It rose at least seventy feet at its highest point, forming an archway easily spanning a hundred feet, that had been carved and shaped with considerable skill. Above it, beneath the shelf of gray stone, was cut a bas-relief of a dragon rampant.

Harfang looked at it curiously. “You said,” he muttered to Ayshe, speaking so that the others could not hear, “there was some sort of cult of the wyrm among the draconians who captured you?”

The dwarf nodded.

“Well, I wonder if that cult is not rooted in something much older. Whoever carved this dragon and built this archway, it would seem, held dragons in reverence.”

The thought did not make him feel better.

They left some supplies just inside the entrance to the cave. In a fight, they wanted to be as unencumbered as possible. Most wore leather armor, which would provide little protection against the dragon but might save them from scrapes and bruises if they fell or were knocked down. Their weapons, cared for by Ayshe over the long months of their journey, were razor sharp and gleaming. Otha-nyar carried her wyrmbarb. Malshaunt bore his whip in one hand, but his eyes gleamed, and he seemed to have found a strength beyond any of the others. His body was drawn taut as a bowstring and quivered as he walked.

Tashara joined them last of all. While the others had made ready, she stood by the pillar, ceaselessly running her hands over the graven characters as if by mere touch she might translate them. At last she stopped and, unwrapping one of the bundles she had borne from the Starfinder, she donned the breastplate of B’ynn al’Tor. It glittered on her as though newly polished, despite the many days she had carried it wrapped in its cloth. From the other bundle, she drew Kuthendra’s sword and swung it hissing through the air.

The small band entered the cavern, moving quietly, in battle-ready formation. Harfang carried a torch. The elves and Ayshe relied on their ability to see in the dark. The cave plunged straight ahead and down, but fifty feet into the tunnel it was sealed by a smooth wall of the same black stone as the pillar with runes. The elves searched it, looking for some lever or device that would open it, but they could find nothing.

“Can we tunnel through this?” Harfang inquired of Ayshe. The dwarf studied the stone, tapping it and listening to it. Then he turned to the mate. “No. Not without better tools than we have here. And even then, I doubt it would do us much good.” Ayshe ran a hand over the surface. “There’s something odd about this. Something magical.”

“Aye,” added Alyssaran. The elf woman had looked increasingly unhappy as they went into the cave. She stood near the wall, looking at the smooth black wall with distaste. “Can’t you feel it? There’s some sort of magic emanating from it. It makes me feel… dirty. Ugh!” She twitched her shoulders in disgust.

The elves sank down before the wall, discouragement in every face. Since entering the Valley of the White Death, they had so anticipated the long-awaited battle that their nerves were keyed up to the snapping point. Frustration came hard.

Malshaunt stepped up to the wall. He passed his hands lightly over it, muttering to the air. Nothing happened. He made several more passes.

“Well, mage?” Harfang’s voice sounded loud and harsh in the stillness.

“Well?” Malshaunt did not deign to look at the man. His fingers were everywhere, probing, pushing, stroking the blank surface that confronted them.

“Can’t you find a way past the magic?”

“With time, yes. And if you are silent, possibly. This is a refined magic, unlike any I’ve seen before.” The mage’s face twisted in annoyance at Harfang’s sigh. “If you think you can do better by battering on it with your sword, be my guest!”

A shadow fell on the wall. Tashara had stood passively while her crew examined the barrier. Saying nothing, she ran her hands over the wall. She placed her cheek against its surface, her hands spread wide touching it. She rested there as if she were listening to the stone. Then she bent and, with her fingers twisted in an odd configuration, placed her hands together on a spot at the center of the wall.

She spoke a single word. Magical power flared from beneath her hands in a glow of blue and white light. The glow spread in thin lines across the wall. With a harsh grinding sound, the wall swung back, revealed as two doors, so closely aligned that when they were shut, no line or crack could be discerned between them.

Every member of the party sprang to his or her feet in astonishment. Malshaunt, for the first time since Ayshe had known him, was stunned into incoherence.

“How… how… ?” he stuttered.

Darkness flowed from the cave like a vapor. Tashara started forward, but the mate blocked her way.

“How did you do that?” Harfang demanded.

Ayshe noticed he had dropped the professional politeness with which he usually addressed his captain. His expression was angry.

“You can do magic! You kept that from me! All these years, you kept it from me! And from Dragonsbane. What else can you do, Captain Tashara? Could you have saved Jeannara? Could you have healed her? Could you have saved the others who’ve died on this mad escapade?”

Tashara looked at him with something very like scorn in her face, but her voice was neutral. “Power, Harfang, comes to those willing to take it. I claim such power as I need to destroy my enemy. I have power you have not seen, because unlike you, I am willing to accept it as my fate. It is my destiny to enter this cave. Therefore, the wall could not stand in my way, and I was fated to find the magic with which to open it. Nothing can stand in my way.”

Harfang stood his ground. “That’s nonsense, and you know it! Those who claim power in their own name desire it for their own ends. They may begin by wishing to do good, but they end as tyrants.”

Tashara stared at him with her blind eyes. “Is that what you think I have become, Harfang? A tyrant?” She gestured to the crew, who stood stock still, watching the confrontation. “Ask these good elves. Is there any one of them who did not willingly come with me? Are there any here whose hearts did not soar at the thought of destroying the White Wyrm? Their destiny is bound to mine, human! As is yours!”

Harfang shook his head. “Nay! I’m my own man.”

The captain snorted. “No one is his own, Harfang. I thought in our long years together you had at least learned that. Our fate is shaped for us from the day we are born. Each choice we make, each step we take, moves us farther along the road whose course is already set. Even these words you speak to me now have been foretold in the stars. Is it not true that when you lay out the charon cards, each time the last card is the White Wyrm?”

Harfang’s mouth opened. He had not mentioned the charon cards to anyone, least of all Tashara. How had she known?

“Yes, ma’am. But…”

The captain overrode him. “You see, Harfang. I am bound by fate to the wyrm, and you—all of you—through me. You have no choice but to walk this road with me.”

Harfang glared at her, and Ayshe waited for him to draw his sword. His hand hovered above the pommel, and the veins in his neck stood out. The air was heavy between them, and the elves stared at them in silence.

Malshaunt stepped forward, placing himself between the mate and the captain. “You have said enough!” he snapped. “You speak mutiny by questioning your captain. Do it again and you answer to me!”

The mate’s fingers closed on his sword, and the rest of Dragonsbane stood, awaiting the stroke. Then his hand eased from his hilt, and there was a faint sigh of relief from the onlookers. Defeat was in Harfang’s face, but he remained defiant.

“If I’m to walk behind you, ma’am,” he snarled to the captain, “I prefer not to do it blind!”

Malshaunt coiled in fury, but Tashara gave no sign of resenting the remark. “We shall go on,” she said and stepped around Harfang into the blackness of the tunnel.

The way forward was broad and the floor smooth, sloping downward at a gentle grade. The elves maintained their double line with Harfang and Ayshe—the dwarf seeing farther in the dark than any of the others—in the lead just behind Tashara.

The walls of the cave were worn smooth as if by the passage of some great beast. The way was straight and true. Ayshe listened intently but could hear nothing but the breathing of the elves and the gentler exhalations of the man by his side.

How long they continued that way was hard to say, since time in that place seemed suspended. All at once, the walls to either side fell away, and they found themselves in a vast space, the dimensions of which could not be guessed.

Harfang motioned to the others to wait while he, the mage, and Tashara slowly advanced across the floor. They stopped, and by the twinkling light of the mate’s torch, Ayshe could see they were sixty or seventy yards distant. They seemed to have encountered some object, but what it was he could not tell. Of one thing he was sure: the White Wyrm was not in the cavern. He felt none of the dragonfear he’d experienced the past two times he’d encountered the beast.

Without warning, a great light glowed in the center of the cave. It rose in a vast pillar to the ceiling of the room, which the company could see loomed at least three hundred feet above them. The walls of the cavern were, like those of the tunnel, smooth, but it was impossible to say if they were worked by mortal hands or not. They looked strange.

The light that illuminated the area was golden but without warmth. It came, they could see, from a pillar by which Tashara and Harfang stood, a pillar made of translucent stone. From within the rock shone the light that revealed every facet of the room.

The sheer size of the space made Ayshe’s spine tingle. From end to end, the diameter was no less than a thousand feet. There were other widely spaced pillars in the hall that also gave out glows, though none so intense as the one by the mate and the captain. There seemed no egress from the cave other than by the way they had traveled, and Ayshe wondered what the original purpose of so huge a space could have been. If it had been constructed, he marveled at the skill of the hands that had built it. Such a feat, he knew, was well beyond the skills of any race of dwarves living in Ansalon during his time.

Many of the elves seemed similarly awed by the space. Otha-nyar stared upward, her face drained of blood, her wyrmbarb slack in her hand. Omarro staggered as if dizzy. Ayshe had been in many strange places beneath the earth but never had any given him such a feeling of disorientation.

Harfang returned to the party, who still stood at the entrance. “The Dreamchamber,” he said grimly, “but out target isn’t home. Did the draconians say anything else about this place, Master Ayshe?”

The dwarf shook his head. “Nothing beyond what I told you before. Only that it’s here the beast sleeps and sends out her dreams.” He shivered.

Harfang alone seemed unaffected by the strange, vast room. “Scatter,” he ordered, “and examine this place. I want to know if there’s any other way in or out. Report in half an hour. Go!”

The elves moved out along the walls, tapping, listening, searching. Ayshe remained with Harfang.

“What did you do to turn on the light?” he asked.

“I? Nothing,” returned the mate. “When the captain touched the pillar, it began to glow.” His voice sank, though they were far from any of the others. “I tell you, Ayshe, it’s as if this damned place recognizes her. I don’t understand what’s going on. I’ve been by her side for years, and I’ve never seen her like this. That scene in the tunnel, now—that never would have happened before. But since we entered this damned land, she’s like a woman possessed!” He shook his head and turned away. Together he and the dwarf walked from pillar to pillar. All glowed, but the farther they went from the central pillar, the softer the glow became. As a result, the far reaches of the cavern were still shrouded in shadow.

All of a sudden, they heard a long, low moan. To Ayshe, in that dark, strange place, it was the most sorrowful sound he had ever heard, like a soul trapped forever in the Abyss.

“What’s that?” he whispered to Harfang, instinctively dropping his voice.

The moan came again, louder and more prolonged. Without answering Ayshe, Harfang lifted his torch and walked forward, skirting the stone wall.

The moan turned into a wail, ending in a shriek of maniacal laughter. By that time the elves were running toward the sound, swords drawn, faces grim. Ayshe and Harfang hurried forward.

A dark form huddled next to the wall, far from the nearest light, wailed again and turned its face to Harfang’s torch.

“It’s Omarro!” gasped Shamura.

The elf, dark hair scattered around his face, was breathing heavily. His eyes were shut, his brow was damp with sweat. Tears poured from beneath his closed lids and made dark tracks down his face.

“Oh, gods!” Shamura whispered. “He’s weeping blood!”

The elf lifted his face again and gave a wordless cry that echoed throughout the chamber. He turned and smashed his face against the rock wall. Hands grasped his shoulders to restrain him. He fought furiously, screaming and shouting in a language no one recognized. The words seemed twisted and poisonous and boomed through the air like shafts seeking their targets. Meanwhile the bloody tears continued to pour in streams down his face and pool on the cave’s floor.

“He’ll give us away,” snapped Harfang. “Gag him!”

One of the other elves tore a strip of cloth from Omarro’s shirt and bound it over his mouth. The elf continued to groan for a few minutes, then fell silent, though he still struggled with his captors. They finally had to tie his hands and feet and carry him back, writhing silently, to lay him on the floor near the central pillar where Tashara and Malshaunt stood, impassively observing the scene.

Alyssaran bent by him, trying to stanch the flow of blood from his eyes. After a short while, she stood and shook her head. “I don’t know what’s causing this,” she said. “What was there that he saw or heard or met that did this to him?”

Several of the other elves were looking unwell. Alyssaran herself was paler than usual and brushed a hand over her forehead.

Harfang looked about. “This is a Dreamchamber,” he said. “Perhaps the wyrm’s dreams are still about.” He glanced at Tashara then away. “Let’s go. There’s nothing more for us here. If we’re going to fight the wyrm, I’d rather do it in an open valley than in this cave.”

The captain did not resist, and the party left, carrying Omarro with them.

It had been late afternoon when they entered the tunnel that descended to the Dreamchamber, and Ayshe expected when they emerged to see stars. Instead he was startled to see the sun’s rays still glowing golden upon the surrounding mountains. It seemed as if no time at all had passed since they went below. Or perhaps, the dwarf wondered, an entire day had gone by without their noticing it.

They set up their camp a little distance from the black stone, speaking few words and those only in whispers. Omarro they laid on the ground near the fire, tended by Alyssaran. She tried again and again to stop the flow of blood, but he never opened his eyes, never ceased to struggle against his bonds, and never stopped weeping. Alyssaran resigned herself to wrapping him in blankets, several of which quickly became blood-soaked. As the stars brightened in the sky, the stricken elf uttered a long sigh and was at last silent. Alyssaran undid the bandage around his mouth, untied him, and arranged his limbs beneath the blanket before she pulled it over his face.

One more, Ayshe thought. One more of the company gone. Crushed by an avalanche, slain by draconians, destroyed in the woods, driven mad by the Dreamchamber… and Jeannara. He looked at Malshaunt’s dark robes, gathered closely around the mage, then turned away. He did not want to think about how Jeannara had died.

The air about them was fresh and clean, and the night seemed to embrace them like dark velvet. Most of the elves seemed disheartened, both by the death of their companion and because, having sought their prize so long, they were unsure what to do. They spoke in low tones and cast uneasy glances into the dark valley that spread below them.

Harfang set watches, but no one slept. The mate stood through all the watches, tall and unmoving save for the ruffling of his hair by the unceasing wind. Tashara did not sleep either, but sat alert by the fire.

Ayshe closed his eyes several times, but cold and a growing feeling of dread kept him awake. At last he rose, lifted his axe, and went to stand beside the silent human.

Pale light shone in the eastern part of the sky. As the night drew to an end, Ayshe wandered about, stretching his legs but avoiding the body of Omarro beneath its shroud. He found himself standing next to the black stone. The glow of the red moon and the silver were reflected in its surface as they rode high in the sky, slowly paling with the coming of the morning. He looked up.

High above, the disks of Solinari and Lunitari met and joined. For a few moments, it seemed to Ayshe, as he gazed on the spectacle of the two moons, that beyond them he could glimpse a third moon, a dark moon staring at Krynn like some unfathomable eye. He recalled the words of Callach.

The sun and the stars have come round to their appointed places. They’re only waiting for the three moons to join them, and then it’ll be time for the wyrm to sleep until she issues forth again to bring death to Krynn.

“Sir!” he called.

Harfang turned. Ayshe gestured toward the moons.

The tips of the Mountains of the Moons glowed pink in the coming dawn. No, the dwarf realized, it was more than that. They shone with their own power, as if they glowed from within, mimicking the light from the three moons—red, white, and black.

Lightning leaped into the sky. Not, Ayshe realized, from a cloud, but from one of the peaks itself. Another bolt burst from the red mountaintop and struck the black summit. There was a deep, resounding boom, and the valley shuddered. There came another flash and another, faster, so the vale seemed crowned with a ring of blue-white fire.

Above the roar of the thunderous detonations, Harfang shouted commands. The elves spread out in a line, sprinting to put distance between themselves so each had room to fight. Nearest him, Ayshe saw Otha-nyar testing the edge of her wyrmbarb with her thumb. A look of exultation was in her eyes. Malshaunt stood at attention, hands uplifted, either in prayer or in rapture.

Above the noise, Tashara’s voice rose and echoed through the valley. “Hold, Dragonsbane!” she cried. “Not until I give you leave! This is my fight!”

Harfang turned toward her in consternation. “No!” he roared. “We fight as one! Captain, we are one!”

Malshaunt turned toward him. Behind the mage, Tashara drew her great sword, the sword of Kuthendra. In the blazing light of the peaks, the blade sparkled and hissed.

“Stand back, human!” the mage screamed. “This is her command! Obey your captain!”

The pass on the other side of the valley seemed dim and distant to Ayshe. He realized a gray mist was creeping up from the valley floor. It obscured the faces of his companions then drew itself into the center of the valley. The lightning among the peaks seemed to have lessened, but the air was charged with electricity. The black stone near which the dwarf stood was warm to the touch. Snow around it melted and ran in rivulets about Ayshe’s feet.

The mists and clouds that had gathered in the Amidst of the valley solidified and assumed a terrible form: a head, a long snout, row upon row of gleaming teeth. From it, two emerald eyes regarded its foes with unspeakable malice.

The White Wyrm had come home.