The Binding Stone (The Dragon Below, Book 1) (34 page)

Geth studied the marsh. The only sign that a stronghold of any kind might once have stood here were a few large, scattered dark rocks. The grass and reeds of the marsh looked the same as anywhere else. The wind that blew over them smelled no different. The shifter glanced at Batul. "All we have to do is cross this?" he asked.

"Dagga."
The old druid pointed. Geth followed his gesture; in the distance, he could make out the shape of another dead tree. "We will wait for you there. Cross Jhegesh Dol by dawn and Fat Tusk will fight with you."

Geth noticed that the orc didn't bother to mention the alternative. He glanced at Natrac. "Ready?"

The half-orc nodded. Geth took a breath and stepped out past the dead tree.

Nothing happened. He walked a few paces more. There was still nothing. He twisted around. Natrac was right behind him, looking as puzzled as he felt. Batul, Orshok, and Krepis had turned away from the dead tree and were pacing back toward the boats. "Batul!" he shouted. "Is this a trick? Nothing--"

Natrac sucked in a sudden, sharp breath and terror settled over his face as he stared beyond Geth. The shifter whirled back around.

The marsh was empty no longer. A misshapen fortress, cold and black, rose above them.

'W
here did
that
come from?" Geth growled in disbelief.

Natrac shook his head. "I don't know! One moment there was nothing and the next ..." He swallowed and said thinly, "It happened when you turned around. When you took your eyes of the marsh. There are legends about what orc tribes and dragonshard prospectors have found deep in the Shadow Marches. Old ghosts from the dark times of the Daelkyr War."

"There are legends about the deep forests in the Eldeen Reaches, too," Geth told him, a chill on his skin. He craned his neck back, looking up at the fortress. It was a hideous thing. The black stones that it had been built from were rough and irregular yet shone slick in the moonlight, as if grease or fat had been rubbed into them. High up on the fortress walls were tall windows that were no wider than his palm. Higher still, narrow platforms and towers jutted out, like vile growths. The battlements at the very top of the walls were jagged with blades set into the stone.

The fortress sprawled out to either side of him and Natrac, but directly in front of them was a gate, tall and narrow like the windows, set with blades like the high battlements. "We can't go around it," said Geth. He jerked his head at the gates. "I think we're supposed to go through."

Natrac nodded in reluctant agreement.

The blades that covered the gates looked dull and weathered, but Geth didn't feel like taking the chance of touching them. He and Natrac set the butts of their hundas against a flat space on one gate and leaned hard on the stout wood, pressing until the great gate swung open enough for them to slip through.

A rank stench of blood engulfed them. Natrac doubled over, retching at the smell. Geth clenched his teeth, biting down on his tongue, and fought the urge to do the same. Instead, he forced his head up and looked around them. The moonlight that bled through the open door made a tenuous silver path through a great, shadowy hall. Even away from the sliver of moonlight, though, there was enough light for him to see clearly. He almost wished that he couldn't.

Every part of the walls was decorated with blades and spikes. Empty torch sconces were formed from jagged swords of strange design. Knives made fantastic pinwheels on the walls. Halberds and other pole arms were bound in ranks around columns, their heads jutting out like sharp-edged frills. Doorjambs and archways wore crowns of iron spikes. High above, the ceiling was shingled in the overlapping blades of battleaxes.

The brown and black of long dried blood stained every surface.

Geth turned around, staring. "Grandmother Wolf," he murmured. The grating sound of Natrac's retching filled the air, echoing off the cold, hard metal. His whisper and even the soft scuff of his feet rose to join the cacophony. There was something else as well, though. He froze and gestured for Natrac to do the same. The half-orc wiped his mouth and staggered upright. They stood still and listened.

The echoes of their intrusion died out. For a moment there was silence--then a faint heart-wrenching scream of pain burst out from some unseen distance. Geth spun again, trying to locate the origin of the ghostly sound, but it seemed to come from everywhere at once. It rose and broke, falling away into a series of wordless, anguished sobs.

"Mercy of Dol Arrah, what was that?" gasped Natrac.

"It was the sound of someone with their tongue cut out," said Geth grimly.

The great hall narrowed ahead, shrinking down slightly to become a tall corridor that seemed to lead in the direction they wanted to go. Geth pointed his hunda silently. They crossed the hall and entered the corridor, both of them moving with swift stealth. Doors that bristled with clusters of long, tooth-like arrowheads lined the corridor, but neither Geth nor Natrac glanced at them, instead driving forward in unspoken agreement to get out of the fortress as quickly as possible. Geth's gut tightened with every step, though. It couldn't be that easy, he thought.

It wasn't. The corridor ended in another great chamber. At its far end stood a pair of metal-clad doors. To either side of them, stairs swept up, meeting at a broad landing and a dark archway. Natrac leaped forward to grab eagerly for the handle of one of the doors. Geth threw himself at the half-orc, holding him back. "Wait!" he ordered, and bent to examine the handles.

Long, knife-edge blades lined the inside of them. Anyone grasping the handles to open the doors would likely lose several fingers. Natrac hissed and clenched his hand quickly. Geth reached out with the crooked end of his hunda, hooking it around the handle and giving an experimental pull.

Nothing happened. The doors were locked or barred from the other side. Geth released his hunda--the wood now deeply scored from the blades in the door handle--and glanced at the stairs. "Looks like we're going up."

The room at the top of the stairs was darker than the hall and corridor below and it lacked the bizarre bladed ornamentation of the fortress's lower level. Geth wasn't certain he found that comforting. The upper room was cold and stark. If it had been an alley, he wouldn't have walked down it without a sword in his hand.

"Can you feel it?" Natrac whispered. "There's been murder here."

"More than murder, I think," muttered Geth. There was another corridor. They moved down it cautiously.

Natrac heard the whispers first. Geth felt him stiffen and turned to glance at him. The half-orc touched his hunda stick to an ear. Geth cocked his head and listened. After a moment, he heard the whispers, too. They were like a gentle wind blowing through the forest, each rustling leaf creating its own quiet sound. Leaves didn't sound so frightened or desperate, though.

Most of the whispers were the grunting, snuffling sounds of Orc. Mixed in among them were hints of another, harsher language--Goblin, Geth guessed. He looked Natrac. "Can you make out what they're saying?"

"They're begging for release," the half-orc said, his voice shaking. "They're in pain. They want to die." He pressed his lips together. "I don't hear any human voices."

"There wouldn't be," Geth pointed out. "There were no humans around to witness the Daelkyr War."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something shift in the shadows. He held back the urge to leap toward it and grabbed Natrac's arm. "Keep moving," he said tightly. The half-orc obeyed without question, though Geth could see his eyes darting around as they hastened on.

The whispers stayed with them. So did the shapes in the shadows, except that soon they weren't just in the shadows anymore. Geth staggered to a sudden stop as a pale orc, all color leached out of it, seemed to flow out of the very stones of the wall--he could see the corridor ahead through the filmy substance of its body. The orc's mouth moved in a pleading whisper and it reached out to Geth. Or tried to. Its hazy arms ended in ragged stumps, hacked off at the elbow.

"Tiger's blood!" choked Geth. He grabbed for Natrac, but the half-orc seemed frozen. Geth twisted around.

There were more phantoms emerging from the walls and shadows, rising from the floor and gliding down through the ceiling. There were bulky orcs and lean hobgoblins, scrawny goblins, and even hulking bugbears. Some looked almost as old as Batul. Others were little more than children. All of them were whispering. All of them had looks of horror and desperation on their faces.

All of them held out the stumps of arms and the stubs of legs. Some were missing fingers, some feet, others whole limbs. Many had been disfigured in other ways as well, their ears or noses or lips or eyes torn away, their bodies flayed and gouged. Natrac was staring at all of them in stunned numbness.

"Jegez,"
he croaked, his eyes wide. He stretched out his right arm, holding up his own blunt wrist. The phantoms' whispers rose and they pressed forward as if welcoming their kin.

Geth snarled at them, trying to push back. It was like grabbing a broken egg--he could feel the phantoms' insubstantial flesh, but not hold it. He seized a sharp-toothed hobgoblin by the neck and thrust it away from him for an instant. Even as he thrust, though, his fingers sank into the phantom, then through it. The hobgoblin clutched at him with pleading in its eyes. Geth jerked backward, plunging through several other phantoms and slamming into the floor.

"Geth!" called Natrac from the middle of a growing mass of colorless, tormented figures. The half-orc was beginning to look frightened. "Geth! Help me!"

Baring his teeth, Geth rolled back to his feet and lunged into the crowd, sweeping his hands through ghostly flesh until he grabbed something solid. Natrac's arm. He hauled the half-orc toward him, batting and growling at the phantoms as they tried to follow. Natrac was pale and stumbling, but Geth dragged him on down the corridor. "Move!" he urged. "We can't hurt them, but they can't hurt us either. We can get through this!"

"I don't know if we can," gasped Natrac as a new noise, a scraping noise, began to rise against the desperate whispers. "Look!" He flung out an arm. Geth turned from the phantoms behind them to look ahead--and froze.

Creeping along the floor and across the walls of the corridor was a swarm of amputated limbs: feet and hands, legs and arms. They scuttled on fingers and writhed like snakes.

The scraping noise was the sound of the bloody razors and blades that many of the creeping limbs clutched between gnarled fingers and overlong toes, dragging the metal against the stone of the corridor as they crawled.

A growl rumbled in Geth's throat. "Tiger, Wolf, and Rat!" His fingers closed tight around his hunda. The weapon was no use against the phantoms, but if the creeping limbs were solid enough to carry blades, he prayed that they were solid enough to take a blow.

Whether it would kill them, that was something else.

"Dol Dorn's mighty fist," spat Natrac. "What I wouldn't give to have a wizard or one of those druids here right now!" He scrambled to his feet and put his back against Geth's. "Singe's or Dandra's fire would be very good, but I'd even take Vennet's wind if he could blow those things away!"

Desperation sparked an idea in Geth's head. "Grandmother Wolf guide me," he gasped--and dropped the hunda stick to tear at the pouch at his side. Natrac glanced down as he ripped frantically at the knotted drawstrings.

"Sovereign Host!" the half-orc choked, understanding flashing instantly in his eyes. "You're not going to--"

Geth looked at him as the knots parted and the pouch gaped open. "You know what to do if you have to," he said.

He glanced up and down the corridor as the phantoms and their severed limbs closed on them, then he squeezed his eyes shut, plunged his right hand into the pouch, and seized Dandra's psicrystal.