Alone I faced the Dragons
And now you laugh and stamp your feet
And profanely bellow for more ale
And mock my limp, my burns, and scars
Weakness your valor makes hale
Well let me tell, sneering younglings
As 'gainst my feeble sloth you rail
There was a time when I was as you
Bold, foolish, young, and pale
Riding to tame the world entire
Though dreams 'gainst talons fail
Fell my friends and lovers all, one by one
Burned, gnawed, screamingly pierced-impaled
Gutted and bone-smashed, 'til in the end
Alone I faced the dragon and lived to tell the tale
Drathar hadn't had magic to hurl for all that long. Oh, he'd always known from the tinglings when he was near a spell being cast or when walking through the roiling aftermath of a spell battle that he'd had a touch of the Art. Yet he'd been a thief, and no more than a thief, before he'd found the Qaethur.
It had been the Qaethur, a worn and chipped gemstone carved into a shallow relief depiction of a human face, that barely filled his palm, that had whispered to him, opening up a door in his mind to the glory of the Weave. Unthinking and eternal, the Qaethur spoke the same things to everyone who touched it. He had been one of the lucky few.
He had Varandrar to thank for that. The senior Zhent in Arabel had sent him to do that slaying and robbery, had known the Qaethur was there for the taking, and had specifically mentioned it to Drathar. Varandrar had meant him to find it.
The bastard.
Now he had power few thieves could do more than dream of and the riches that power had let him wresr from others. Now he was truly someone worthy among the Zhentarim, not a mere tolerated lackey.
And now, he knew as much as many in the Brotherhood did and so knew something else: true fear.
His spells were too paltry and fresh-learned for him to battle any but the greenest wizard, Art against Art, and hope to live. Yet he had a talent for the spells that called and coerced beasts to his bidding.
Which is why the Knights of Myth Drannor were soon going to be facing a gray render.
'Soon' as in very shortly after it finished tearing apart the joints of the wyvern it had just slain, gnawed the last shreds of meat, and went looking for more to devout to fill up the yawning, gurgling emptiness in its belly.
Riding its mind as lightly and gingerly as possible, Drathar smiled tightly as the horrible rending and splintering of bone went on.
As the old Dale saying put it, his own mother wouldn't know him now.
The hargaunt was spread very thinly across his face-just enough to make him seem a pocked, wrinkled woman who looked nothing like a certain former war wizard. Most of its bulk was busy doing its best to thrust his chest out into a rather impressive, though sagging with age, bust.
The tattered and dirty dress he'd had to strangle the crone he now resembled to gain possession of- hargaunt-disguised as the ornrion Dauntless, he'd intended merely to rob her, but she'd persisted in screaming and trying to blind him with her clawing fingers and everything breakable she could snatch up and throw-was catching on thorns and twigs and the gods alone knew what else as he fought his way through the brush, but what of that?
Torn went with dirty, and dirty suited him. He didn't want to look well-to-do or beautiful enough to make anyone consider him worth waylaying.
Onsler Ruldroun was in a hurry to do a little waylaying of his own.
'Auril's kisses, bur 'tis cold,' Pennae murmured nigh Florin's ear, gently pushing aside the tip of his sword from where it had reached out to menace her as she approached. Hunched over and hugging herself for warmth, on the verge of shivering, she tried to thrust herself against his armpit. 'There's always a chill before dawn, yes, but this is worse than I've tasted for a long time.'
'And if a monster swoops swiftly in at me?' the ranger whispered. 'What then?'
'Throw me at it, and use my screams to wake the others. Or use me as a shield.'
Florin sighed, put his free arm around her, and started rocking the thief gently back and fotth, shifting weight from one boot to another just as he was, to restore the rhythm he'd established before she'd risen from huddled sleep to join him.
It was cold, and he'd been feeling it.
'Alone I faced the dragon,' he muttered to himself, barely above a whisper.
'And lived to tell the tale,' she whispered back, her soft breath almost a tune. 'And before you think of it, don't bother telling me to go back to sleep. I'm too chilled for slumber. In fact…'
Florin felt deft, iron-strong fingers sliding in under the waist of his breeches, reaching into the warmthHe stepped away. 'No. Not now.'
Pennae moved back against his chest. 'Flor, I'm not after… what you think I am. Right now, at least. I only wanted to get the tips of my fingets a little warmer, and there's always just enough room-'
'Indeed,' the ranger growled into her ear in mock disapproval. Then he put his arm around her again and drew her gently back against him to settle into just where she'd been before.
'Who d'you reckon is still after us, now?' she whispered, sliding her fingers a little way back in under his breeches, then bringing them to a firm halt.
Florin shrugged. 'Half the stlatning Realms, it seems,' he murmured. 'To say nothing of Those Who Harp and anyone else who may just be watching what befalls us, rather than hunting us down to do the befalling. I-'
He stiffened suddenly and thrust her away.
'What?' Pennae hissed, seeing his intent face and his rising sword. He was staring tensely out into the night, gaze hard upon something. Yet she hadn't heard a thing.
Trying to look down into the dark forest before them, she stiffened. That was just it.
She, too, couldn't hear a rhing from in front of het. No little night noises, no gentle sighing of ghost-breeze- driven leaves.
Nothing at all.
She could hear those faint forest sounds coming from off to her right-and to the left, too, when she crouched and turned. Yet straight ahead, nothThen she saw it. A movement in the trees, a thrusting that was mirrored by Florin's sword lifting sharply in response beside her.
Something large was approaching through the night-gloom. Something that was tearing aside trees and trampling down bushes and saplings in the heart of that eerie silence.
It was massive-a great, gray, neckless, hulk of stonelike hide and tippling muscle, reaching out with two huge black-taloned, manlike arms so long that they dragged knuckles through the brush whenever they weren't reaching up to claw aside a tree trunk. It was shouldering through a thick stand of trees to reach their ledge, lumbering along heavily, massive shoulders and that bony snout that thrust forward from between the shoulders rather than rising above them on any sort of neck.
Florin cutsed softly, then told Pennae, 'Wake the others now, in case its silence comes right up here onto the ledge with it. Not Jhess, but stand over her, ready to kick het awake or drag her aside if you have to.'
The thief nodded, staring at black fangs jutting out of large, parted jaws, as the snout lifted to better peer in their direction. A line of three small, amber yellow eyes ran down each side of its bone-ridged head and beheld her with dull, hungry malice. Or was it merely hunger?
