The Shattered Land_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [92]
“Patience, captain,” Gerrion replied. “Allow me to demonstrate.” He dropped to one knee and reached for the tiny castle.
Before Gerrion’s fingers reached the carved tower, there was a burst of motion on the treeline. There was no sound, no burst of fire or smoke, but a patch of vines vaporized as if caught in an intense explosion. Five people strode into the clearing. Four were identical: warforged scouts, duplicates of the hunched creature they met on the frozen beach. These scouts were spread in a semicircle around a huge cloaked figure at least nine feet tall and with the build of an ogre.
“Be still.” The voice was like a rush of sand or metal particles thrown against the wind. It seemed to flow all around them, carrying across the clearing with no need for volume. “Throw down your weapons, and you may yet live.”
Daine’s blades were in his hands in an instant, and he was charging, ready to leap from the platform and join up with Pierce and Lei on the ground. Then Gerrion placed his hand on the dark tower, and everything changed.
The forest was on fire. The temperature had jumped, and the emerald green that cloaked the trees was a blaze of orange. This sheet of fire had swept forward, and Pierce, Lei, and the strangers vanished beneath the fiery curtain. Daine cried out in wordless anguish, barely halting his progress before he tumbled into the flame.
No. Not flames—tall grass, weeds painted in red and orange. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he realized that their surroundings had completely changed. The trees were draped in the colors of autumn, and the trees and shrubs themselves were clearly different. The clearing was far smaller than the last one had been.
Daine could see Gerrion out of the corner of his eye, and he turned toward the half-elf, his sword still in his hand. Lakashtai was even swifter. She lashed out with her foot. The kick caught Gerrion in the side of the head and slammed him to the broken earth. Lakashtai brought her knee down in the small of Gerrion’s back, pressing him into the ground. Her right fist was poised above his head, wrapped in a halo of baleful green energy.
“Explain swiftly or I will tear the answers from your mind,” she said, her voice cold and hard.
“Helped you …” Gerrion gasped.
“Lei and Pierce!” Daine said. “What did you do to them?”
Lakashtai traced one finger across the back of Gerrion’s neck, and he convulsed in pain.
“You’re closer … closer to your goal,” Gerrion said. “The map. Magical … teleportation. We escaped your enemy, moved closer.”
Lakashtai hissed and shoved Gerrion’s head into the ground with a swift blow of her hand. “How dare you? Abandoning the others to save your own miserable skin.”
As angry as Daine was, he was still surprised by Lakashtai’s viciousness. The kalashtar was usually so calm, and she’d hardly seemed to care about Pierce or Lei. Now Gerrion was writhing on the ground as the light flared around her fingers.
“Don’t kill him! We still don’t know what he’s done.”
“Nor do we need to, because he’s about to undo it. Aren’t you, guide?” Lakashtai released Gerrion and stood up, her face twisted in anger. The halo around her hands slowly faded.
“I can’t,” Gerrion moaned. “Look … down. Ground.”
The stone beneath their feet was just a cracked shard of an ancient plaza. Once it might have been a mirror of the map they had seen before, but if so war and weather had destroyed it long ago.
“There’s no going back,” Gerrion said. He’d rolled onto his back and was slowly catching his breath, and his gray skin glistened with cold sweat. “I thought the others were on the map. I swear. It’s too late. Now it would take us more than a day to get back to the boat, and even if the others survive, there’s no telling where they’ll have gone by then. Just find the Monolith. Do what you came here to do.”
“Unacceptable!” Daine said. “I don’t care what happens to me. We are NOT leaving them behind.” He pondered.