The Fading Dream_ Thorn of Breland - Keith Baker [89]
“Don’t look,” she told Drix. She took his hand, and they slipped inside the tower.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Taer Lian Doresh
Barrakas 25, 999 YK
The floor was slick with blood, and the scent of it filied Thorn’s sensitive nose, drowning out all other sensations. It was worse than the slaughterhouses of Droaam. Yet she somehow knew that the blood had yet to be spilled, that it was the carnage from murders only dreamt of, as of yet uncommitted.
It didn’t help with the smell.
She drew Steel, tracing a cross on his hilt.
The energies in this place are almost as strong as those of the Mournland itself, he told her. No specific wards that I can sense. As for divination … I feel as if the tower itself is watching you. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Illusion, conjuration … I’m not sure anything is real.
The bloody hallway descended in a tight spiral turret; Thorn had to fight to keep her footing on the slick stone. At last the floor leveled out, a dim, flickering light flowing through a large archway. The only sound Thorn heard was a low and steady rustling, the sound of paper blown in the wind. She glanced at Drix, tapping the stone in her neck then gesturing at the chamber, a questioning look on her face. The tinker’s crystal heart pulsed with a flash of light and he nodded.
Thorn raised a hand, palm out, hoping Drix would understand the order to wait. She paused at the entrance, studying the chamber ahead. It was a library, and a very disorganized one at that. There were no shelves; it was a collection of leather-bound journals and sheets of loose parchment with the occasional odd item thrown in. Strange symbols glittered on one of the many facets of a carved dragonshard. A giant’s notebook was leaning up against a wall, the volume only slightly shorter than Thorn herself. Some of the loose pages were yellowed and cracking with age; others were fresh, with words written in ink and blood still drying upon them. Crumbling cold-fire torches were fixed to the walls, and their flickering light cast long shadows across the unsteady towers of literature.
The eladrin soldier struck the moment she stepped into the room, thrusting with a short, curved blade. Whether it was Sarmondelaryx’s draconian senses or natural paranoia working to her advantage, Thorn threw herself out of the way just in time, sending a tower of journals tumbling to the floor as she staggered into it. She wasn’t quite fast enough to evade all harm, and the spear traced a narrow gash across her ribs.
Her enemy was still an indistinct figure wrapped in a black cloak, but Thorn flung Steel before she even rose to her feet. Steel tore through cloth without touching flesh.
The soldier charged. She was an eladrin, wearing the armor Thorn had seen in her dream of the ancient battle with the giants. Her face was smooth and lovely, and her eyes were empty pits. She held a sword in each hand, and both flashed toward Thorn.
Thorn swept aside the first blow with a mithral bracer, but as she tried to catch the other blade, she found herself staring into the woman’s hollow gaze, and for a moment, she felt lost in that emptiness. Then the point of a steel blade stuck bone, the pain breaking the spell. In an uncharacteristic moment of panic, Thorn just pushed the woman away from her. The dragon’s strength wasn’t with her, though, and while the eladrin stumbled back, it gave her room to ready both her blades. Thorn took a step back, trying to gather her thoughts; instead she slipped on a loose scrap of paper and fell into the pile of books. The soldier raised her blades, leaping forward—
There was a flash of light, and a warm feeling flowed over her. Even the pain of her wound faded, though a dull ache remained. Where the soldier had been, there was only a piece of a broken blade and a crossbow bolt, shattered against the ground.
“It worked!” Drix sounded so happy, so pleased with himself, that Thorn almost forgot her pain. He was holding his tiny crossbow in both hands, looking down at it with