Realms of Infamy - James Lowder [101]
She glared at him. Did he take her for an idiot?
"Grip the wall, Ravendas," he urged again.
She supposed she might as well discover what game he was playing. Walking to the wall, she reached out and attempted to grasp the smooth black surface. Her fingers sank into the stone. She recoiled in shock, staring at her hands. Gradually realization dawned over her.
"Where did you get this, Marnok?"
His expression was unreadable. "I have my sources."
She turned back toward the wall and dug her fingers once more into the rock. It was a strange sensation, like plunging her hands into thick, cold mud. She began pulling herself upward. Why should she wait for the mage, now that she had the means to reach the top herself?
"I wouldn't recommend climbing any higher."
Something in the mage's voice made her halt. She glared down at him. "Why?"
"Come down and I'll show you."
She paused, thinking. True, there must be some reason Marnok had not simply used the salve himself to climb the wall. She let go and dropped lithely to the ground. The mage was peering into crevices and under rocks, searching for something.
"This will do," he said after a minute.
She approached and squatted down to see what he had found. It was a small, unidentifiable animal, long dead. Its flesh was gone, but dried sinews bound its bones together. She could see by the worn, flat stubs of teeth in its skull that it had died an old animal. A few ragged tufts of fur still clung to the small carcass.
"If you're hungry, you might want to find something a little fresher," she noted caustically.
Ignoring her, he carried the little skeleton to the ground before the dark wall. After dabbing a small amount of the emerald salve on the dead creature's paws, he chanted a dissonant incantation in a low voice. The skeleton began to move. Ravendas raised a curious eyebrow. Perhaps the mage was more powerful than she had guessed.
"Climb," he whispered.
The animal skeleton lurched toward the wall, then began to scrabble upward, the magical salve allowing it to sink its claws into the smooth, dark stone. The skeleton was perhaps twenty feet above Ravendas when she noticed something strange. The stone some distance to the creature's right was undulating, almost as if it had turned to liquid. Suddenly she swore. As if emerging from dark water, a shape rose from the smooth surface of the wall, long and sinuous, with horns like curved scimitars and teeth like daggers. It was the head of a dragon, as perfectly black as the stone from which it sprang. Two glowing crimson slits appeared above its snout. It was opening its eyes.
"Look there," Marnok said softly, pointing to a section of wall off to the undead animal's left. Ravendas followed his gaze to see another dragon emerge from the stone. Each of the dark, serpentine heads turned toward the skeletal creature that climbed between them. Without warning, a beam of hot crimson light shot from the fiery eyes of the first dragon. The beam arced around the curved wall of the fortress. It struck the animal skeleton, but the reanimated creature kept climbing.
"The dragon's gaze didn't harm it," Ravendas uttered in amazement.
"Keep watching," the mage instructed.
Moments later the eyes of the other dragon flared. A second beam shot from its eyes, arcing around the wall from the opposite direction to strike the undead animal. As the two beams connected, their color changed from violent red to searing white. In a brilliant flash of light, the skeleton of the undead animal exploded. Smoking splinters of bone rained down on Ravendas and Marnok. The two dragon heads shut their glowing eyes and sank silently back into the smooth surface of the wall.
"Now you see why I was not so eager to begin climbing," Marnok said softly.