Durlag's Tower, Pawns In Durlag's Game
We ran. Fire swept through the black-and-white tiles in a circle both wide and narrow-roofed, but we were only singed: for Faldorn's protection, for Imoen's magical speed. At the other end was a door, and my red-hot lockpicks coaxed it open; a dwarven-crafted lock, bound by ingenuity rather than wardstone. Durlag meant this way to be passable.
A dwarf's skeleton behind us, from which a strange voice came; a quintet of cold statues. The ceilings had widened to a vast height even for a human, taller even than the great halls of the High House of Wonders in the city.
"Adventurers are not known for their wisdom, otherwise they would have chosen a safer profession." The tones were neutral, slow and yet vicious in their certainty, the skull opening to blackness in order to feign to speak. "Take the five fools that stand behind me, frozen in stone. Once warriors who sought to rob Durlag of his treasure. They stand vigil over Durlag's bestiary; they can be awakened with a touch. But they will loathe their commanders and turn upon them. Now ware the children of Vissilithysmee, whom Durlag stole in the egg and determined as his guardians." Dust, suddenly, spread from where the skeleton had stood, yellowed dust that fell to the ground. And still the voice spoke a final sentence. "Ware the children of Vissilithysmee..."
Suddenly it was apparent that there were sounds beside the constant beating of the flames; sounds of large reptiles, noises of scales gliding along stone. Perhaps a reason for the fires that singed behind here...
"Vissilithysmee," Shar-Teel said, in a voice set to tones oddly calmer than her norm. "That would not be Vissilithysmee the black dragon that you have mentioned that Durlag fought at one point, Skie?" She cursed. "Every other kind of monster, why not bloody dragons! Damned male—"
"Vissilithysmee attacked with acid from her mouth and she could cast spells too and her scales were very thick," I recited. My tongue seemed to try to stick to the surface of my throat.
Shar-Teel swore again, and spoke quickly to give orders. "Take the legs, or the eyes if you can aim at them. Watch the tail. Dodge the breath, acid goes through a lot of things that you don't want to think about. Witch, Sharran, get off all the offensive spells you've got, don't hold back. Like she said, the scales are tough. Magic doesn't always work. No attacking it with acid, use fire, ice, bad air, or lightning—get the area-effect ones in before the boy and me start charging." The sliding seemed to become louder. The noise of a scaled creature, slowly stepping through Durlag's dungeon behind us—I looked behind the statues and saw a set of dead white bones, each one of them wider than I was tall, impossibly gigantic. "Skie, go wake the statues and run back to use your bow," she ordered, and I rushed to obey. "Don't go in close unless we need you to distract the creatures. Druid, start any protections you've got. Get ready, weaklings."
Slithering scales, ever closer. A half-dwarf. A human. A hobgoblin chief. An ogre. A woman, a sirine, as those singing in Beregost temple's gold-red-green brightness. Stone cracked into flesh as with Branwen, and the five walked again—
Faldorn's aid rolled across all of us like a warm wind. First Imoen's light shone bright in the air, and then we saw the matched pair of shapes. Their scales were shaded an onyx black that gleamed with life, and around their necks were matched, glittering emerald collars. They had not attained the legendary height and breadth of dragons, that which the bones behind them even exceeded; close to the size of an adult wyvern each. Their long dark tails scraped behind them. Vissilithysmee's children. Adolescents. Durlag's guardians.
A lightning bolt from Imoen whistled blue into the air and through the scaled flesh; Viconia gave a harshly shouted command. Faldorn raised other protections around us, calling to Silvanus. Three of the statue-warriors rushed in, and the hogboblin and sirine loosed their arrows. The arrows fell to the ground, though the lightning did not; it ricocheted off the bones of the giant wyrm and back again through the second dragon, an excellent aiming from Imoen— A weblike substance that looked as if it was fashioned of living night briefly captured the dragons' feet, but quickly dissipated. Viconia called her goddess for another prayer.
I stood near the sirine, slinging arrows alongside her. The enchanted ones we had found, anything we had; she carried arrows of her own in a quiver strung across her lean blue-skinned back, over the grey scraps of sailcloth she wore as a shift below the covering of her pale sea-green hair. The eyes of the black dragons were a dark topaz, set deep within their skeletal faces, covered by the prominent lines of dark-scaled skull. Some shafts came close, others less so; the dragons' heads snapped forward at speeds hopeless to follow, Shar-Teel and Ajantis attacked about the legs of one whilst the roused warriors hacked at the second. Imoen cast again, a second lightning bolt aimed above the heads of the warriors through the dragon's stomach, her voice clear and high. The dragon tried to reach her, but the human's axe distracted it with a blow to its wings.
The acid breath rained down. Shar-Teel jumped easily aside, Ajantis less ably but nonetheless escaping it in time; green and poisonous, even more dangerous than those snapping white fangs— The hobgoblin laid down the bow he had used, and ran when the dragon came close. But the tail lashed forward; its point flicked out against him, impaled him against the wall. He cried out hoarsely as other hobgoblins who had died at our hands.
Two—young—dragons. The ogre's spiked club hit repeatedly on the left flank of the dragon on the right; he was as tall as the top of its leg, large and obeying the orders Shar-Teel yelled. There were signs of dark blood flowing over the scales; but the dragon struck with a kick and threw the ogre down, slipping across the ground with claw marks in him.
The sirine was the first to pierce a target with her arrow; the pale shaft plunged into the eye of the dragon fighting her fellow warriors, making the dragon howl and bleed. "Arrows, little one?" I heard her musical whispering. "Use what is within your quiver; aim a bow as if you were a sister—" Sirines have a voice that is supposed to charm. Her bow was long and taut, her wiry form strong to draw such a force. I tried to focus only upon the task, aiming an arrow to near the dragon's head; it slipped, though, into neckscales as the dragon whipped its teeth down to attack. Faldorn rushed forward; she cast a quick healing spell over Ajantis, whilst Shar-Teel hacked at the creature, and then he returned to the battle—
Imoen went forward. She was close to the dragon Shar-Teel fought; she stepped close to it, and fire erupted from her hands. It scorched a knee; and the dragon's wings whipped from its sides like a cloak torn away by wind. It reached into the air, shaking away the fighters below like so many gnats flicked away by a dog's tail; Imoen ran, but the acid fell around her and she slipped to the ground.
Imoen!—
I aimed fire arrows; let it be distracted let it over here— Shar-Teel had managed to take up her crossbow, the electrical arcs of her bolts pinholing the dragon's wings. I tried the same with the fire; the cavern was narrow for a dragon but the flight was above our heads, leaning down to snap and bite but more difficult to hit—
Faldorn was by Imoen, with some effort dragging her away from the stream of acid by her robes, casting quickly. She'd be all right, she had to be. The dragons hadn't cast spells yet, just everything else. Two arrows hit a wide wingspan, and then Meiala the sirine and I both scattered back; hiding behind the large bones, the remnant of the other dragon, unimaginably giant.
Meiala was a fighter as amazing as the skeleton had promised; all the warriors were. She used the old bones, not only hid among them; the dragon flew in pursuit of her, and she had power over its flight that she led it, using the bones herself to jump upon and raise herself to its height. The dragon hit the hefty weight of—of I suppose its mother's—spine and Meiala flew down on it as if it was a ramp, the grey moccasins she wore on her feet sliding down the shifting bone. Even as she slid, her arrows loosed one after the other in quick motion, one after another of her powerful shafts sinking into the dragon's flesh; and it howled in pain, pierced like a pincushion. I tried with my own bow; perhaps fifteen arrows I could use left, fourteen. Beyond that only ordinary arrows and acid arrows that would not harm it. Another shot from Shar-Teel's crossbow spiked lightning through the dragon, and it spewed out that acid breath again as everyone near it ran desperately.
The other dragon had a wing torn by the ancient warriors surrounding it, pressing on it. Ajantis fought with them, though his sword completed less damage than that of the human warrior, or even the quick half-dwarf slipping his axe through the joints of the dragon's tail. I should have thrown him Varscona again, but there was no time—
Thirteen arrows left, and the dragon was on the ground again, thrashing about itself with blows through the air that I could imagine destroying the likes of Tazok by their touch, any vast monster that we'd seen before. There was Imoen's fire again, at the other dragon; so she was still in the fight. Viconia chanted in a very hoarse voice, as if her body was breaking, and something dark seemed to pass over the dragon. Ten arrows left. The ice I had shot spread in wide diameter over the dragon's left wing, and its howls were stronger when Meiala's next shaft struck deeply in its chest. The movement had slowed, a little; a fire arrow hit its neck.
Eight arrows. The second dragon bled, thrashing out at the warriors by it; Imoen added a third flame spell, and ran back to use missiles instead. The half-dwarf stood on its long back and hacked down with his axe; he was wounded himself, but did not stop fighting for us. It stayed to the ground; Ajantis raised his sword high and brought it down on its left flank.
Five. Acid breath spilled again. I ran desperately behind the stone pillars that held the ceiling; my left sleeve and my skin burned. I opened a potion of antidote and poured it over; there was enough muscle left to aim a bow. Three arrows remaining; the dragon we fought was badly pierced, but enraged rather than falling down. Two. One. Meiala hit it and its head snapped to her direction; I aimed for the eye. It missed. None.
—a red arrow in dreams— Meiala was smiling to herself; the dragon howled, brought its tail over its head to strike at her, and she somersaulted away. Nothing left that I could do, I thought. I aimed an ordinary arrow, which did nothing but make it turn to me, while Meiala the sirine hid.
A large scaled creature with teeth and breath, bearing after you and so much faster that it's almost impossible to run—
Shar-Teel sunk a crossbow bolt through the eye. The lightning within it flared into the dragon's head; it paused for a long moment, its head convulsing in blue. Then it snapped its head down, but Shar-Teel is always fast; her sword struck into the blind spot, piercing deeply and making the dragon's head bleed, dark red-black caustic blood that melted Shar-Teel's gauntlets. She grunted, and pushed it further in. The dragon convulsed; Meiala's arrows bit over a long time, and it was hurt. Its other eye closed; its legs slipped from under it and we could feel its bulk falling to the ground by the impact upon the ground. A fallen dragon.
"Skie, for good measure, hack off the head—" Shar-Teel ordered. The other dragon was bleeding badly, dying from the warriors who stood around it, Meiala's arrow in its skull. Imoen aimed another round of missiles at it; and Shar-Teel joined the fight. I brought down Varscona just above the dragon's collar; the sword only cut a little into the dead scales. Again. Wood-chopping of a giant tree, not that I ever did wood-chopping in the old life. Again, and there was a little blood on the sword: it did not hurt the blade. The emerald collar glittered. Again.
The second dragon fell, having lost enough blood at last. "Fallen to Tarnor's axe!" the half-dwarf gloated, and raised his weapon. Then Shar-Teel was behind him, and she slipped her sword into his back—
He died, looking surprised. "Ignore that," Shar-Teel ordered, and the wounded ogre and the human stood and waited. "Skeleton said they'd attack when time was up," she said, and pushed her blade in through the human's neck. He fell. "Stand still, ogre." She aimed carefully, placing her blade where the dragon's teeth had wounded him; her sword and strength went easily through his thick skin, and he died.
The collar had that tingle to it that one can use to detect and disarm a magical trap. Durlag's control of the young dragons, perhaps preventing them from casting a dragon's spells, or from becoming too fierce for their captor's liking. Varscona finally cut through the last of the dead neck, and I picked up the collar;
"Meiala?" I said; the sirine watched Shar-Teel cut down the other warriors Durlag had imprisoned. "Does the spell really make you turn on us after it's over? I know you can cast charm spells, but—"
She gave a laugh like the flickering of waves cascading over silver shells of oysters. "Of course we all wish to die slaying everyone," she said, and drew a spear-like long blade of jagged coral and flew at me.
We fought her; then she lay dead as the other warriors.
"The skeleton warned us they would turn on us," Imoen said miserably, and sat down, her robes ragged and melted by the acid. Viconia was the only among us who was not wounded in several places, and her casting had exhausted her. Faldorn used as many healing spells as she was able. Shar-Teel and Ajantis had armour badly damaged; they were too exhausted to do more than roughly try to wrench it back into shape and brush over the markings of acid. We drank our healing potions and sat next to Vissilithysmee's bones, trying to rest... Two dead dragons; five dead warriors.
—
Down four tunnels lie four foes. Kill all four and the game begins. A room of staring ceramic masks, all giants' faces, grey and expressionless with blank cut slits for eyes. Invisible creatures lying in wait to stab us in the back, Durlag's old weapon caches. I took a short sword, well-balanced in the blade, its hilt a light walnut with two smooth florets in green sapphire; lightly enchanted, it hung easily enough to the right of my belt. Imoen passed along arrows and bullets. We shut and barricaded a thick stone door to a small maze garden, where the ashirukuru waited in hedges, tree-spirits invisible to most.
"They wish to escape here," Faldorn said, and strangely enough wept for their fate. "Without uprooting their entire garden I cannot free them, and yet if I were to stand there for the casting they would give to their instincts and attack."
Imoen and I had searched the shadows for the ashirukuru, raiding the stored weapons that lay under a topiary statue of Durlag; sometimes we could see their bone-sharp twiglike daggers before they slid into us, and sometimes not. We had bled for what we had taken.
Durlag...is playing a game.
Fire. Ice. Slime. Wind.
Faldorn and Viconia cast, and we could move in the icy winds that simulated the far north. There were polar bears, larger than Faldorn's form; winter wolves like those near the Cloudpeaks. They fell to Imoen's flame.
Then muddy slime; striding waterlogged through a green swamp. Puddles of ooze that moved and spat, and had to be killed with blunt weapons and incinerated by fiery arrows. Otherwise one split apart would turn into two, the pair equally deadly and able to overcome everything with its ill vapours.
Blasts of air that only Ajantis and Shar-Teel could really stand under; like cyclones, heavier than the strongest sea breezes I could remember and smelling of nothing. The aspects of air were part-translucent, shaped roughly like light grey wyverns that soared on the wind, vulnerable enough to a sword— On the high cliffs of whatever the place Durlag had built to contain them, they fell down. Viconia took a vial of their blood to return to the tower.
She who fires flame must be killed before her bow is drawn. I walked through the shadows between the pools of boiling magma, the heat sufficient to strip flesh even at some distance, protected by Faldorn's casting; and stabbed. She was not human, a creature of living flame that was only shaped like a human; and when she died she exploded in scorching fire that had to be run away from. Imoen aimed ice arrows toward her companions...
Then we returned from that final tunnel to the chamber of the masks; and the walls shifted. Everything was dark; Shar-Teel cursed at the last. There was a long moment of black unconsciousness.
Then I uncoiled myself and found that I stood on a white-stoned square of some pale rock. Faldorn was to my left, still sleeping, curled around her black wolf's fur that blended with the dark stone around her; Shar-Teel was on the right, slightly further away, across from an empty black space and upon another white square. The others were beyond her, in a neat line of alternating black and white.
I do know this pattern—
Shar-Teel threw herself quickly to her feet, her sword drawn, searching wildly for enemies. She stood in the middle in the place of the king of a chessboard's black pieces, Viconia crowned as queen by her side. Imoen and I twinned as knights-errant, myself in Shar-Teel's file and Imoen upon Viconia's; Ajantis and Faldorn in the place of the rooks, Faldorn next to me and Ajantis as the queen's rook upon a white square.
Viconia took a slight step forward; and then a storm of lightning came through the air. It played in the middle of the chessboard; it did not touch our squares as we all stepped as far back as we could. Dangerous and frightening; we were afraid of future mistakes and punishments—
A voice spoke in the storm's wake. "Lightning will be sent to punish your transgression, should you move into the incorrect square."
Across from us, we could see now a row of white pawns, taller pale figures behind them, lingering in some blue light that seemed to remain from the lightning's storming. A first pawn took a step forward, a dwarven figure in thick plate mail—
"Remember, when one king falls, the game is done."
The enemy queen began to spellcast, and Imoen shouted out missiles at her. Faldorn muttered, her eyes closed, and pawns of our own appeared: a row of five wolves howling, leaping for the throats of the dwarves opposite, guarding against the enemy pawns.
"Skie, I'm not trusting you on how to play!" Imoen called out. "Vic, d' you know chess? 'Jantis, someone who plays it better than us?" She flung another set of missiles quickly; but from the queen's hand spun a fiery arrow at one of Faldorn's wolves. It swiftly died.
"This is not sava, fool!" Viconia did not move from her place as queen; she cried out to Shar, and a long arc of dark shadow materialised before us, like a thick black ribbon hanging in the air. She thrust her arms out sharply; it hit each of the enemy's pawns, and seemed to crack lightly their armour. "Shar, for your gifts I thank you—"
"I am arook, then—I knew I was no knight—" Ajantis said; "Faldorn, summon further pawns, please. If it is the king then I will target him—"
He ran forward, a rook's move to cross the board in a straight line. He fought the pawn that lurked there, and was looking toward the king; though the two knights of the white side both leaped their way to menace him.
"Shar-Teel, you won't be able to move in time—" I said. She had her crossbow, and peppered the queen to disrupt the spellcasting, not trespassing from her king's space. "Just stop their king, Viconia, please; Imoen, stay back—" I could take a knight's move; could tumble two forward and one to the right, bypass the group of three squares. I drew Varscona; had to, to protect my friends, I told myself.
The pawns were tough and fierce. Faldorn's wolves roamed the board, howling and nipping, summoned up as quickly as they could be killed by the powerful axes. I duelled a pawn, tried to slip blade through gaps in the heavy armour, find the joints to open— It wasn't easy to step aside from the axe staying on the small square; I had to take chances to pierce the armour. Where Viconia had weakened it Varscona's blade could slip through; the pawn did not bleed but collapsed, transfixed, to its square. A successful capture.
To reach the other end of the board crowns a pawn. I want to be more than a pawn, I think I do—
I jumped a second move: two forward, one right. A wolf of Faldorn's occupied the pawn in front of me; when I made the knight's move again, the king was a diagonal square away and the queen directly in front. It is the queen that is supposed to capture the knight in such a position; but I could help keep her busy, though the queen's priest lowered a heavy mace down upon me.
"Silvanus grants me no further summoning," Faldorn's voice rang out. She flung scattered seeds across the board, and chanted again; thick green vines rose up around the enemy's pieces and held them in place. Viconia's sling bullets, darkened with power by her connection to Shar, flew against the king in his robes. Ajantis struck down the black king's rook, called Helm probably without thinking about it, and marched against the knight— He was tall and hefty and well-plated, strong enough to be a tower.
"Withdraw," Imoen cried from her place in the back. "Pawns, king's knight-errant, queen's rook, retreat—"
We obeyed, and the black pieces could not follow us under the entanglement. Then before our noses Imoen flung something reddish that simmered through the air; and the white pieces faced an exploding fireball— It was as red and hot and bright as Edwin's efforts, fierce and powerful.
"Yes, it worked, thank you Islanne!" Imoen called in triumph, and aimed a set of missiles at the king, who was badly scorched; "Forward again, pieces! Beware the archmage who knows the rules of living chess!" The entanglement had been burned to ashes by her power; I held away bishop and queen's rook, trying to deflect their blows with Varscona in left hand, shortsword in right—
"Shar, command him to his doom," Viconia hissed, and she forced the king down by her will; he knelt, his neck bared. Ajantis rushed his rook's way through the knight and bishop, to the opposing king's square, and raised his blade high above the king's pale neck. Viconia breathed: "You are my rook by your surfacer's game, fallen knight, are you not? You are the toy of the black queen. I order you to act."
"I do this to protect the group," Ajantis said, and brought down his longsword.
The pieces crumbled when the king was beheaded—shah mat, in the ancient Calishite tongue of the people of the Marching Mountains, the king is ambushed, oft translated as the king is dead in Common— The board itself shook; I saw cracks open beneath my feet, and flung myself across the board's edge to the grey stone of the other side. Those in the back rushed forward; there was another door awaiting us, and it opened readily. Shar-Teel stooped to take up the white king's two-handed sword, as heavy as her Spider's Bane and shimmering with an enchantment shaded a dark purple of that hue they sometimes call imperial...
"Not many live to speak," breathed the mist beyond the door with the appearance of a silver and shimmering dwarven man, "and fewer live to leave."
—