Fistandantilus Reborn - Douglas Niles [104]
“Foryth!” the youth said with a moan. “He was still in there. He couldn’t have survived!”
Emilo shook his head sadly. “I never saw him after you two went around back last night.”
Danyal tried to suppress his tears, but when he slumped back to the ground in the ditch, he felt his throat tightening and knew that the unwanted moisture was stinging at his eyes.
“Why did he have to go wandering off?” he groaned. “He should have stayed with me; he’d be out here with the rest of us now!”
“Quite possibly true,” Emilo admitted. The kender’s eyes remained focused on the ruined structure, and Danyal turned around to follow the direction of his companion’s gaze.
The dragon had worked the destruction of Loreloch using the same methodical thoroughness with which he had devastated Waterton. As well as the bridge and the tower, a few chimneys, stone walls, and an occasional silo stood after the onslaught of flames, though the fires still searched hungrily through the ruins, eagerly seeking more fuel. The wrack seemed utterly complete, and it was impossible to think that anyone could be still alive in there.
“Don’t you think we should get going?” asked the kender casually. “Just in case any of Kelryn’s men happen to be around.”
Danyal shook his head firmly. “Not yet.” He found it inconceivable that anyone could have lived through the attack, but more to the point, he was not ready to abandon rhe place where he had Jast seen Foryth Teel.
“Maybe he’s hurt in there, or trapped somewhere.”
He was surprised to realize that, despite the man’s fussy nature and impractical priorities, the youth had become very fond of the aspiring priest. Also Foryth’s knowledge and his sense of insight into the minds of other people, particularly the bandit lord and former Seeker priest, had been comforting weapons in the companions’ meager arsenal.
“Let’s have a look, then,” Emilo agreed. The far end of the bridge was littered with charred, blackened corpses. Despite the fact that, moments before, these men had actively been seeking his own blood, Dan felt a grim regret at the loss of human life, at the implacable fire that had swept down from the sky with such telling, lethal effect.
“The dragon even pulled down the cottages,” Mirabeth said softly. Her own eyes were dry, but her face was as pale as a ghostly fog. “There were people sleeping in them, and now they’re dead.”
Another rock clattered into the ruins, and the three companions looked toward the tower, expecting to see another stage of Loreloch’s collapse.
Instead, they saw a small shutter slowly swing outward, a sturdy wooden plug that had secured a tiny window in the thick stone waUs of the tower.
“Someone’s alive there!” Danyal whispered, fear and hope mingling in his heart as he saw a slender hand emerge from the window. Even before that hand waved, he recognized the tan sleeve drooping around the slender wrist.
“It’s Foryth!” cried the lad, leaping from the ditch and scrambling into the road, ignoring Emilo’s fingers as the kender tried to slow him down.
“Foryth!” he called again, dancing at the end of the bridge, waving both his own hands. “Are you all right?”
They couldn’t hear the reply, though Dan clearly imagined the “tsk” as the historian leaned out of the small, lofty aperture. Foryth waved again, and the trio finally understood the nature of his gesture.
“He wants us to come to him.” Mirabeth voiced the obvious conclusion.
“Up in the tower.”
“But-” Danyal could think of a thousand reasons to object, though none of them quelled the joy of discovering that his friend was alive. “I suppose he thinks he’s found something we just have to see,” he concluded.
“Well, let’s have a look, then.” Emilo was already sauntering back over the bridge. Dan and Mirabeth came behind, though the two young humans slowed appreciably as they neared the mass of charred bodies on the far end of the span.
“I wonder which one is-or was, I should say-Kelyrn Darewind?”
The kender spoke breezily as he stepped among the blackened bodies.
Danyal took Mirabeth