The Fading Dream_ Thorn of Breland - Keith Baker [75]
Thorn caught him as he fell, her strength surging with her anger. She threw the tinker over her shoulder and spun around. The teleportation chamber was just at the end of the hallway, and she sprinted as fast as she could, barely feeling Drix’s weight. The storm was close behind her, and an outlying shard grazed her neck as Thorn launched herself forward. One step … three … ten …
She let Drix fall to the ground as soon as she entered the room. Turning, she threw her full weight against the heavy door, pushing with everything she had. It had been five years since anyone had breached the chamber, and the hinges were stiff from disuse. Thorn strained against the heavy, wooden door, and slowly it began to shift. The storm had just reached the arch as Thorn drove the gate home. A handful of slivers slipped by as Thorn pressed the gate against the frame. As soon as the door was sealed and barred, the glass fell to the ground; whatever magic had brought it to life couldn’t reach through the heavy gate.
She could hear the storm raging outside, tearing into the wooden surface of the door. Seconds passed and it was as fierce as ever; clearly the spirit’s wrath wasn’t about to subside. Thorn held Steel up. “How much time do we have?”
That depends how large of a hole it needs to make in the door in order to squeeze through, Steel told her. Perhaps ten minutes before there’s a breach.
There was a ragged gasp from behind her. Drix’s eyes were open, and she knelt down next to him. It was a ghastly sight. The storm had struck from every side, and his flesh was studded with shards of bloody glass. Something else caught her eye—a pale glow coming from beneath his shirt, by his left breast. A faint radiance pulsed with a steady beat.
It was the crystal heart, keeping him alive.
“Can you hear me?” she said.
He nodded slowly and pushed himself up with one hand. He opened his mouth, and the ragged gasp came out again. Reaching up, he closed his fingers around a shard buried in the side of the neck, pulling out a piece of glass the size of a knife blade. As soon as the glass was free, the wound sealed up. He opened his mouth and closed it again, running his hand along his neck.
“The circle,” he said. “Help me reach it.”
Thorn helped Drix stand and supported him as they made their way across the chamber. The circle, a ring of mystical symbols nearly fifteen feet across, filled the center of the room. They’d been carved into the wooden surface of the floor then filled with some sort of metal that gleamed like quicksilver in the cold-fire light. Maps covered the walls of the chamber. Khorvaire was spread across three walls, with the familiar landmarks of Breland to the left, Cyre straight ahead, and the coastline of the eastern shore to the right. Sparkling points of cold fire gleamed on the map, and Thorn recognized many of them as the locations of the greatest cities of the land—Sharn, Passage, Fairhaven, Flamekeep, Korth. There were at least a hundred points of light spread across the map, and all too few in the Lhazaar Principalities, where they were supposed to be headed.
“There,” he said. There was a podium in the back corner of the room with a mosaic of polished dragonshards set into the top. One large Siberys shard was set into the center of the podium, and as soon as they were close enough, Drix reached out for it. He leaned against the column as he wrapped his hand around the crystal sphere and closed his eyes.
There was a chill in the air, and Thorn could feel a charge building, the pressure of a rising