Crown of Fire - Ed Greenwood [71]
"Many, and of course," Mirt answered smoothly. "Now let's be on-no trails are to be trusted in the Stonelands, and it's a ways yet to the gate 1 know of."
They scrambled warily along the gully. Mirt in the lead. Delg muttered from the rear, "If it's not betraying too much to tell us, just where are we heading?"
"Irondrake Rock," Mirt said, and Delg nodded.
"I've seen it," he said simply as they struggled up to the head of the gully and peered about. Bare shoulders of rock rose all around them in a confusing, broken landscape of rising ridges and plunging ravines. Scrub trees, gnarled and stunted, thrust branches in all directions, and the land ahead was a patchwork of greenery and rocky heights.
Death could lurk anywhere in a land like this, Shandril thought-and be at your elbow before you saw it.
She felt strangely weak and very vulnerable, like a deer surrounded by hunters. She drew a little closer to Narm, who put an arm around her, as if knowing tier thoughts.
Delg, seeking any signs of pursuit, was looking suspiciously back the way they'd come. After a long moment, he sniffed, shook his head, turned to follow Mirt over the first ridge, and executed a precarious scramble down the other side into the concealing thickets of the next ravine.
Wary as they were, none of them saw the skull that floated along behind them, for it was cloaked in magics that made it invisible. The lich lord's cold gaze was bent steadily on the small band-in particular, on the slim form of the maid among them. Nightfall approached slowly as the day went ontoo slowly, it seemed. Iliph Thraun was getting hungry again.
The day wore on in an endless struggle up and down treacherous slopes and breakneck ravines.
Everywhere around the travelers rose the crags and outcrops that gave the Stonelands their name. The Lord of Waterdeep, the dwarf, the bearer of spellfire, and the young mage who'd married her struggled through the broken lands, scraping and bruising elbows and knees on the everpresent rocks.
As they went, Mirt spoke seldom-no surprise, for he was wheezing and puffing like an old and indignant goat. When he did break silence. it was always to cheer them with tales of skeletal trolls, monstrous ettins and hobgoblins, and sly, cruel-fingered goblins who lurked in the Stonelands, dragging intruders down in ambushes or stonefall traps and feeding on them.
"Do you mind belting up, merchant?" Narm asked at last, exasperated. The young mage was white to the lips from fear, and he cast involuntary glances at every bush and shadow as they walked.
Mirt chuckled and clapped him on the back, a mighty blow that nearly sent the mage sprawling. "Ah, stop me vitals, lad," he rumbled, "but it's good to see some spirit in ye at last."
Delg squinted up at the fat merchant. "Speaking of 'spirit in you,' I recall seeing that bottle of amberjack in your bag-and wondering what else it might be hiding from us, too. Berduskan dark, perhaps? Or have you a little winter wine?"
Mirt chuckled. "I once had a considerable cellar in here, aye-but traveling 's thirsty work, and most of the stock's gone now. Moreover, friend Delg, this is not the sort of country one should try legging it through with a few skins of wine on board. Falling and breaking bones is easy enough when sober."
"A lecture on morals and practicality from Mirt the Moneylender?" Delg put his hands to his open mouth in mock amazement.
"Stow it, little one," Mirt suggested in kindly tones, then led the way along the winding, snakelike crest of a ridge that headed west, on into the seemingly endless maze of rocky heights and tree-cloaked ravines.
As the group climbed and clambered on, Shandril's fingers went numb from clawing at too many rocks, and she felt a growing weakness-an emptiness-inside. What was wrong with her? She sighed, drawing