Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [39]
Rakka scoffed. “You’re worse than Kresh.”
“And you betrayed Kresh. You got most of his men devoured by that hellkite! The last thing I should be doing is following y—”
“Shh!”
“What is i—”
“Shhhh!”
Rakka had stopped. What ruse was she planning? But as he listened, he heard scrabbling sounds echoing from deep inside the lava tubes. Goblins. Sarkhan readied a spell—a little lavamancy should keep the hungry buggers off of him.
“Don’t move,” Rakka hissed. “And don’t cast anything.”
You’re out of your mind, Sarkhan thought. Or perhaps this was her ambush. He began the first steps of the spell. He could already feel the satisfying tug of a nearby stream of lava; its course was beginning to divert. One more good, solid act of will, and it would pour into the echoing lava tube and make crispy statues of the incoming goblins.
Rakka hissed once more—not an instruction, just a noise of urgency.
“Fine,” he said under his breath. “I’ll wait one moment. But if one of those goblins so much as nibbles on me, I’ll roast the lot of them.”
Sure enough, goblins surged out of the tunnels, chittering and rasping like deranged rats. They flowed over the cliffs in a furry stream, moving in every direction including against gravity, as if they didn’t notice its pull. They came close to Sarkhan, brandishing short spears and making click-wheeze sounds of irritation at him. He didn’t budge—he just stared back at them. One of them reached tentatively toward the staff at his side, and he snarled at it. It yelped and scrabbled off up the mountain.
The goblins swarmed up past the two shamans and disappeared over the top of the cliff. Sarkhan heard their steps and clicking calls recede into the distance, and only then did he speak again.
“Why didn’t you tell me they were plant-eaters?”
“They aren’t,” said Rakka. “They just have bigger things to worry about than us.”
“What, I’m not tasty enough?”
“It’s just a little while now. Let’s go—it’s just a little farther to his favorite spot.”
“I’m offended, really. I’ve been bitten by goblins on five worlds, and these things didn’t even stop to—”
“Come on.”
The goblins climbed over one another in a jumble on the mountaintop plateau, a pile of furry humanoids eager to be as close to the sky as possible. It was as high as those goblins would ever get outside of a dragon’s maw, thought Sarkhan, and yet they had brought themselves so low. It was disgusting—choosing to make themselves prey for the draconic lords of the world. He could understand their revering the mighty beasts, but not prostrating themselves before them. That was not a relationship of respect or admiration. That was an orgy of self-destruction, the pathetic chorus of victims begging homicidal charity from a superior being.
He turned away and scanned the landscape.
Jund’s sky was a cauldron of roiling smoke fed by a thousand volcanic chimneys. A storm was brewing nearby, a purplish welt on the sky that gathered force as it twisted.
“We should get moving soon,” said Sarkhan. “This will be a bad place to be in a short while.” Rakka just grinned at him.
The storm exploded suddenly, soundlessly, as if some magnetic cyst inside it had burst open. A black shape appeared from inside it, fell meteorically for a moment, then caught its own weight in the air. It had wings.
“This is our dragon?” Sarkhan asked.
“That’s him, yes,” said Rakka.
“He’s big. A hellkite.”
“Not exactly. Hellkite is too young a term to describe him.”
“He’s older than a hellkite?”
“He’s older than the word hellkite.” Sarkhan’s eyebrows raised.
Rakka set herself in a firm stance, and began pulling at the air with her clawlike hands. She grasped pockets of air and pulled them to her chest, fuelling some kind of ritual. Soon, Sarkhan saw, she had a ball of hot smoke hovering before her. With a shout she pushed the smoke-ball into the air, and it shot upward with a roar. High up in the air above the mountaintop,