Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [126]
It seemed only a short time before the trees thinned, and Alusair spun around and held up her hands for a halt. As panting noblemen gathered around her, she said, "The hills beyond are alive with goblins and their scouts, and the dragon has been landing on the hilltops beyond. We can't avoid being seen, but magic will only bring our foes and darkness confuses our eyes, but not theirs. Moreover, the lives of many Cormyreans may be lost if we delay. So it's time to be fools, I'm afraid, and just rush out to be slain. Let's see if we can't draw the dragon down to us in the process."
She turned, blade flashing, ducked between two trees, and was gone.
After a startled moment, the noble sons of Cormyr-the expectation of looming death now clear upon their faces-charged after her.
Where the woods ended, farm fields began. It was rolling pastureland for the most part, with rubble-and-stump boundary fences, and goblins. The humanoids were camped in little clumps here and there, gathering on distant hills and sure to see the rushing human band, unless…
A curious wall or hump of mist filled a low spot not far off on their right. It was a bank of fog that by rights should not have been there, unless the little creek that meandered along beneath it had suddenly spouted hot springs.
Alusair peered at it, as suspicious as any warrior who knows the countryside well and sees something strange in it, then shrugged, pointed at the mist with her drawn sword, and veered toward it. The men trotting behind her followed her into the whirlwind of mist, peering and keeping their blades ready in case this fog should prove to hold the dragon or another deadly beast.
They found no such hidden peril before Kortyl gasped to the princess, "How far do you think this extends, then, Highness?"
Alusair turned to answer, her face making it clear that "I don't know" was going to feature in her utterance to come-then the world changed.
Everything was suddenly a deep, bubbling blue, and the ground was gone from beneath their feet. They were upright, and yet falling endlessly, or perhaps Faerun was falling away from them… then there was suddenly bare rock under their boots, without any sense of landing or jarring, and the deep blue radiance was fading, into deeper darkness.
"Torches!" Alusair commanded, stripping off one of her boots and plucking up the inner sole to shake a tiny glowpebble out of a hollow heel. "Use this to light them by."
Those without torches or lanterns waited tensely in the darkness, listening with blades drawn until the torches flared up. Nothing rushed at them.
The flickering flames showed them a large, dank cavern on all sides-a very large cavern, with tunnel mouths opening like dark eyes in every wall.
"Where," Kortyl Rowanmantle cursed, looking around in astonished dismay, "by all the dark pits of the Underdark and the fiends that dance in them, are we?"
His commander came up behind him and put a reassuring arm around his shoulders, bringing with her a smell of scorched hair and leather and smooth, muscled curves that awakened a sudden stirring in the noble knight as they pressed against him.
"Wherever we are," Alusair told him calmly, "our work is clear. We slay the foes of Cormyr wherever we find them, until we see that dragon dead and the realm saved."
"And where in all this murk are the hills of goblins and the dragon?"
Princess Alusair Obarskyr gave him a wolfish smile and replied sweetly, "And how by all the dark pits of the Underdark and the fiends that dance in them should I know?"
* * * * *
Azoun groaned, and his body spasmed, seeming to bound off the bed as it arched, and dragging astonished underpriests with it. They clung to the royal limbs and turned pale, frightened faces up to their superiors.
Aldeth Ironsar, Faithful Hammer of