The Binding Stone: The Dragon Below Book 1 Read online

A pack of wolves burst out of nature’s rippling magic, leaping at the nearest hunters. The battle cries of the Bonetree turned to shouts of surprise and terror. Adolan howled again and magic brought forth more wolves on their right. Lean, savage bodies met snarling, bristling beasts. Dandra saw a flash of white as Geth bared his teeth in kinship with the animals. He almost started to pull away as if to join the fight, but Adolan was already moving forward, faster now. “Keep moving!” he said sharply. “The wolves will guard our backs!”

  They plunged on. Every few moments, Dandra caught Geth glancing over his shoulder, watching for signs of pursuit. If there were any, she didn’t see them, but she could hear increasing barks of wolfish pain mixed in with the shrieks of the hunters. Slowly, the shrieks became confident calls. The hunters were taking the upper hand.

  Tetkashtai was stirring again, fear mingling with her cold rage. Dandra, we need to get out of this place!

  It’s too late for that now, Dandra snapped back.

  But the brief contact with the presence also lent a fresh trickle of energy to her tired limbs. A second wind whispered across her mind. “How much farther?” she asked Geth.

  “We’re almost there.”

  Dandra looked ahead. Past Adolan, firelight was beginning to peek through the trees. She could smell smoke strong on the air. A little further on and she could hear screams as well.

  Then they were out of the forest. Dandra froze on the edge of a scene of horror, her eyes wide and Tetkashtai’s terrified moans echoing through her soul.

  The sleepy hamlet that Singe had seen at twilight was gone.

  More than half of the buildings that had clustered around Bull Hollow’s open common were on fire. Two had already collapsed, one falling back into trees and setting them alight as well—luck seemed to be the only thing holding back a forest fire. Smoke drifted and whirled on the air, threatening to choke the wizard with every breath.

  Figures raced back and forth across the common—dolgrims, bandy legs and arms twitching like demented toys, and the folk of Bull Hollow, some fleeing in terror, some trying to fight back. Screams tumbled from more than one burning building.

  Mixed with the screams was the chuckling, gibbering chatter of the dolgrims. If Singe could have blotted out that nightmare chorus, he would have. Through long years of war and service to House Deneith, he had seen more battlefields than he cared to remember. He could think of only one that might compare to the madness that had fallen on Bull Hollow.

  Geth stood beside him. Singe glanced at the shifter. White showed around his eyes. His breath was coming short and shallow between his sharp teeth. Singe knew they were both seeing the same battle—if the massacre at Narath could really have been called a battle at all.

  On his other side, Dandra stood stiff with shock. In front of her, Adolan was simply staring at the devastated hamlet with an expression of pure rage on his face. Stretching out his arms toward Bull Hollow, he let out a cry of anguished fury.

  With an answering roar, the spirit of the Bull Hole exploded up out of the common, raining clods of soil and chunks of turf down everywhere. The dolgrims ran and screamed just as hard as the folk of Bull Hollow. Their chatter turned to shrieks and wails, and they scrambled like rats at the elemental lashed out with its rocky fists. Singe saw a dolgrim driven down into the ground, crushed so deep into the soil that it vanished from sight.

  But for every dolgrim that died under the elemental’s fist, three more slipped away. The elemental was so ponderous and so much larger than the twisted creatures that they had an advantage in dodging the earth-spirit’s blows. And the hamlet was still burning.

  “Move in!” Adolan yelled. His voice cracked with emotion. “Do whatever you can!”

  Geth roared and charged like a mastiff released from its chain, sword and gauntlet catching the burning light. Adolan raced forward as well, the deep words that commanded the elemental rumbling out of his chest. Singe scanned the smoke and shadows of the common. When he had first glimpsed the hellish light of the burning hamlet rising about the trees, one guilty thought had shot through him.

  He had left Toller alone while he pursued Geth. Now the young commander was somewhere in the middle of madness that would make even a veteran falter.

  Dandra was still standing with him, the shock in her eyes seeming stronger than ever. She had her free hand wrapped around the psicrystal that lay against her chest. Her whole body was trembling. Her gaze was empty, as if her entire awareness had turned in on itself in reaction to the horror before her. Her mouth was moving, though. She was muttering to herself. “I won’t run. I won’t. They need us …”

  “Dandra!” Singe shouted over the cacophony of screams and cracking flames. She didn’t respond. He had seen too many recruits freeze with shock at their first battle to be gentle. He reached out and slapped her.

  The kalashtar reeled back, then looked up at him sharply.

  For a moment, Dandra’s eyes burned with the feral, brittle fury of someone terrified beyond madness. Singe gasped and snapped up his rapier, but before he could do more than react, Dandra sucked in a deep, wracking breath. Her eyes squeezed shut and a shudder passed through her.

  When she opened her eyes again, they were frightened, but clear and rational. “Singe …” She stared at his raised blade, touched her cheek, and swallowed. “Il-Yannah, what did I do?”

  The truth of what he had seen—or thought he had seen—almost rolled off Singe’s tongue. From somewhere behind him, though, a heartrending shriek tore through the screams of Bull Hollow’s destruction. The wizard glanced over his shoulder at the fiery scene, then back to Dandra. He swallowed his answer.

  “You froze,” he told her. “That’s all.” He lowered his sword. “Have you recovered? Do you think you’re ready to fight again?”

  Dandra nodded grimly and shifted her grip on her spear. Singe took a breath. “Good. Stay with me. I left a friend in Bull Hollow. I need to find him.”

  He turned and plunged across the common, shouting for Toller. Through the smoke, he could see the towering form of the elemental as it slowly chased down dolgrims, swinging its immense fists at any that came within its reach. Adolan moved with the earth-spirit, his spear skewering any dolgrims lucky enough to escape the earth-spirit’s fists. Geth was leaping and springing through the shifting shadows cast by the burning buildings, darting back and forth wherever dolgrims menaced the people of Bull Hollow. Singe whirled around, looking for some sign—any sign—of his young commander.

  On the far side of the common, Sandar’s proud inn was half ablaze, its northern end devoured by flame that was slowly working its way south. In the cover of the south end, sheltered between the inn and its stables, a makeshift barricade had been erected. A classic defense taught in House Deneith officer training. Behind the barricade, a blue jacket with the flashing silver insignia of the Blademarks flew like a rallying banner from a broken pole. Dark shapes crouched low around it. Hope leaped in Singe.

  “Toller! Toller!” He grabbed at Dandra’s arm and pulled the kalashtar around to point the barricade out to her. “My friend is there!”

  He sprinted across the common without waiting to see if she followed. The barricade was intact and three dead dolgrims were scattered across the ground before it. “Toller!” he shouted again.

  There was no response. The only sound beyond the barricade was the screaming of terrified horses in the stable.

  Singe slowed to a stop with sudden dread. “Toller?” he called. “Anyone?” He approached the barricade, a spell ready on his lips.

  The light from the burning inn danced across fallen bodies—the dark shapes he thought he had seen crouched around the banner of Toller’s jacket. With his heart in his throat, Singe vaulted over the barrier. Toller sat slumped with his back against the banner’s broken pole. The scion of House Deneith, a promising Blademarks commander, slumped to the side at the wizard’s touch. Any sign of life Singe thought he had seen was, he realized stupidly, nothing more than t
he shifting of firelight.

  Toller’s shirt had been torn open. His exposed chest, his arms, and his throat were all strangely pockmarked, the skin shriveled and pale. His dead face was locked in an expression of agony.

  Singe squatted down and touched the swirling colors of Toller’s dragonmark. The bright mark had faded slightly with its bearer’s death, but it was hot to the touch. Toller had used its magic before he died.

  There was a whimper from the deepest shadows alongside the stable wall. Singe lifted his glowing rapier sharply. Its light fell on a huddled woman—the serving woman from the inn. Her eyes were wide with terror, but she was alive and, except for minor bruises and burns, uninjured. Singe’s jaw clenched. There was a slight shimmer about the woman. He recognized it. House Deneith carried the Mark of Sentinel, the ability of magical defense. Some heirs of Deneith could turn aside arrows or conjure phantom armor or block spells. Toller had been able to throw up a minor magical shield.

  In his last moments, he had used it to protect a serving woman.

  Singe rose and took a step toward her. “What happened here?”

  The woman’s response was to stiffen and press herself back against the wall, her wide-eyes staring at him.

  Past him.

  Singe whirled as the tall, emaciated figure of the dolgaunt emerged from the smoke and shadows. Hruucan, Dandra had named him. His shoulder tentacles twitched like an insect’s antennae, probing the air. Up close, Singe had a better view of what he had thought at a distance to be thick hair and light fur on the dolgaunt’s head and body. The truth was repulsive. Thick tendrils of flesh dangled from the creature’s scalp and ran down his neck and onto his shoulders in a heavy pendulous mane. Hruucan was naked from the waist up and all over his exposed skin, tiny buds of flesh rose up in imitation of whiskers and body hair—except that those fleshy buds writhed and shivered in reaction to every speck of falling ash and every breath of hot, fire-born wind. The black pits of the thing’s eyes turned toward Singe.

  “Wizard,” he said and the grating bluntness of the word made Singe shudder. There was no emotion in Hruucan’s harsh voice, only cold acknowledgment of what he faced.

  His tongue-like tentacles lashed forward.

  The huddled serving woman finally found her voice and screamed, scrambling away over the barricade. Singe leaped away from the whipping tentacles. Hruucan, however, closed in behind them, moving with uncanny speed and fighting in silence. His tentacles swept the air again and this time the dolgaunt whirled with them, spinning up on one leg to reach and kick with the other. Singe jumped back again. He slashed his rapier at the tentacles, but the tough strands of muscle just twitched out of the way as if possessed of a mind of their own. He shifted and stepped back, trying to pick his target.

  His foot came down on something hard and thick, yet yielding. An out-flung leg. Toller’s leg. His arms flailed and he staggered, then lost his balance entirely. The ground—and Toller’s sprawled body—rushed up at him. Singe tucked his shoulder in and rolled as he hit the ground, coming up in a crouch. One of the dolgaunt’s tentacles hit Toller’s corpse and seemed to dig into the flesh, almost sucking at it.

  Singe gagged. Gathering his concentration, he stared at the dolgaunt and hissed the words of a spell. In his mind’s eye, the creature’s nightmare form seemed to come into sharper focus for a moment, the swirling of its tentacles, arms, and legs slowing into something comprehensible. A moment of certainty filled Singe and he snapped up out of his crouch to swing his rapier at empty air.

  Except that when the blade reached its target, the air was no longer empty. As he swung around for another blow, Hruucan drove his arm straight onto Singe’s waiting rapier. The weapon sank in deep, piercing the dolgaunt’s arm above the elbow and sliding along the bone to emerge just below Hruucan’s shoulder. The dolgaunt’s whirling fury stopped. He froze.

  So did Singe. There was a certain feel to the moment of a sword striking flesh. A solid connection, a tearing of muscle, a grating of bone. His strike on the dolgaunt carried none of those sensations. Instead, it felt as though he had driven his blade into spongy, rotten meat. There was no resistance as it penetrated muscle. When it struck bone, it glided silent and smooth along the hard surface. Singe choked and jumped back, tearing the weapon away. It came free as easily as if he was wiping it across fine velvet. It left no wound behind it and only the barest trickle of blackish blood. Hruucan flexed his arm and smiled.

  And as Singe stared, the dolgaunt’s tentacles swept around behind his back, crossed, and yanked him forward. His rapier tumbled from his grip as Hruucan swept his arms wide, pulling him into a horrid embrace.

  The tiny writhing buds of the creature’s skin crawled against him—and where his skin was bare, or his clothing thin, stung! Singe howled in agony. It felt like the buds were burrowing into him! He struggled, trying to push back against the dolgaunt, but silent as a ghost, Hruucan squeezed tight, his tentacles flexing to drag across Singe’s back. Their touch stung as well, bringing a new scream out of the wizard. Even the thick flesh of Hruucan’s scalp tentacles swung to brush at him! The Aundairian sagged, weak and dizzy as if the dolgaunt was draining his very life away.

  “Singe, get away from him!” Dandra’s voice.

  Singe fought to wrench his head back enough to turn so he could see her. She stood on the other side of the barricade, one trembling arm extended toward Hruucan. When they had first met in the forest, she had hurled fire bolts with ease. Now it looked like she was fighting to draw on that power.

  “Move!” she shouted. “I’ll burn him!”

  Singe wanted to shout at her to burn him anyway—he wasn’t entirely sure his ring would protect him from her psionic flames, but he was willing to take the risk. There was no need, though. As Hruucan whirled toward the sound of Dandra’s voice, Singe could feel his horrible body stiffen. He pushed Singe away, reaching instead toward Dandra. The wizard reeled back to stumble against the broken pole that flew Toller’s jacket. He stared down at his arms. Where they had been pressed against the dolgaunt’s squirming skin, his flesh was puckered like Toller’s.

  On the other side of the barrier, Dandra was backing away from Hruucan, her spear held ready, her hand pointing at the dolgrim. Hruucan vaulted lightly to the top of the barricade and just stood there, tentacles writhing in the darkness. He seemed to stare at Dandra for a moment, then raised his harsh voice. Gibbered words, the same language he had used outside the Bull Hole to command the dolgrims, rippled off his tongue. Singe couldn’t understand any of them, but Hruucan’s command was obvious. All around the common, dolgrims began streaming toward them in immediate response, their chattering rising into shrill cries. Adolan’s elemental swung around ponderously, roaring in confusion as the sudden movement of its tiny enemy.

  An instant later, the weird fluting call of the Bonetree hunters rolled through the air as well. Singe choked on a curse as savage figures leaped out of the trees and across the common, battered and bloodied after their fight with Adolan’s wolves but still very much alive!

  “Hand of the Revered!” called the old hunter Geth had fought. “Command us!”

  A hard pleasure seemed to spread across Hruucan’s horrid visage. Pointing at Dandra, he shouted to the hunters, “She’s here! Take her!”

  One of the hunters, a muscular brute streaked with blood and armed with a heavy, wide-bladed axe, raced ahead of the others. His face was weirdly pinched and too small for his body, but his eyes were even smaller, dark pinpricks gleaming mad with bloodlust in the firelight. “Su Drumas!” he screamed as he charged. “Su Darasvhir!”

  With enemies on all sides, Dandra spun around in confusion, her spear and her hand wavering.

  Then Adolan was there, darting through a wash of firelight to put himself between the Bonetree hunter and the kalashtar. The hunter shouted again and swept his axe around in a deadly arc, but Adolan jumped back out of reach and thrust with his spear, forcing the hunter to break his charge or be impaled. The b
lood-streaked warrior threw himself to the side. Adolan followed, stabbing his spear down. The hunter was faster though, rolling aside and leaping back to his feet. His next swing was even heavier than his first. Adolan barely managed to check it with the shaft of his spear. The blow still sent him staggering back and left a deep notch in the spear’s shaft.

  “Ado!”

  Geth’s roar rolled across the battlefield of the common. Singe saw the shifter’s sword and great-gauntlet flash as he tried to fight his way past a pack of dolgrims to the druid’s side.

  Atop the barricade, Hruucan’s tentacles twitched in frustration. His eyeless face turned toward Dandra. He tensed, ready to leap at the kalashtar.

  Singe’s chest clenched. “Hey, wormface!” he bellowed. He jumped at Hruucan and grabbed the rough fabric of the loose pants the dolgaunt wore. Hruucan turned, kicking to try and shake him off, but Singe held on grimly. Spreading the fingers of his free hand, he pointed up at the dolgaunt’s head and bony chest and let the words of a spell ripple from his lips.

  Fire rushed from his fingers, washing over the foul creature. Some of the flame rebounded to pour down over Singe, but the magic of his ring protected him. Hruucan had no such protection. The dolgaunt let out a grating screech as his deformed flesh bubbled and charred. He tore himself from Singe’s grasp and tumbled from the barricade, fleeing blind into the smoky darkness.

  His flight struck confusion into the dolgrims. Their charge slowed, turning into a chaotic mass. Beyond Adolan and his big, black-eyed opponent, however, the rest of the Bonetree hunters were still closing rapidly. Singe scrambled up onto the barricade where Hruucan had stood only a moment before and spoke a word of magic. A tiny, intense tongue of flame sprang into the palm of his free hand.

  Picking his target carefully, he drew back his arm and hurled it. The flame streaked through the air as far and fast as an arrow—though not quite fast enough. Singe caught a glimpse of the old hunter leaping back hastily with his eyes wide and heard him shout for others to do the same.