of him, examining the tunnel walls. He caught a flash of colored light against the flame and blinked, thinking he'd imagined the sight.
'What is that?' he asked, then answered the question himself: 'Amethyst.'
He flattened his free hand against the stone. In the shadows, deeply embedded, the formations were a mural of sparkling purple and white, swirling designs not unlike his armor.
'Watch your step,' Diadree cautioned as gravel and something firmer crunched under Bahrn's boot.
He stepped back quickly and shone the torchlight over a dirt-caked bone that had been snapped nearly in half under his weight. He noticed a skull lying nearby.
'Human,' he said. The entire back portion of the skull was caved in. 'Others have come here?'
'Several others,' Arlon's voice echoed out of the darkness ahead of them. They heard the wizard's footsteps as he trotted into the torchlight. 'There are other sets of remains in the larger cavern,' he said, then shot the mercenary a look of triumph. 'And two eyes,' he added, motioning for them to follow him back down the tunnel.
The ground sloped downward for several feet, emptying into a dome-ceilinged chamber. Directly ahead of them loomed two identical, man-sized oval alcoves buried a hand-span into the wall.
The cavern was full of the sparkling amethyst. Crusts of it speared out from the wall and druzes carpeted the ground around his boots like a crystal maze in miniature.
Arlon moved his palm over the largest of the spears. Light haloed up from the crystal, illuminating the entire chamber in painful, lavender light.
Bahrn could pick out other glittering objects strewn about the floor-gems of varying colors and sizes amongst gold and silver coins.
'She was here,' Arlon said. 'These are remnants of her hoard. Tell me where she is!' he demanded, whirling on Diadree.
'Arlon.' Bahrn casually pivoted between the pair, ignoring the dark look the wizard threw him. 'You truly believe she's hiding Amrennathed in one of her pockets?'
'For a brief time, I thought she was the dragon.' He spoke to Bahrn in that same easy manner, but the wizard's eyes followed Diadree's every step around the cavern with the glittering fascination of a man who does not realize he is being observed.
Bahrn was observing though, and Arlon's eyes told him more than enough. The mercenary's hand slid to his waist, where the handle of his morningstar waited.
'The others who returned from the mountain never found this cave,' Arlon went on. 'They claimed the only living soul on the mountain was one crazy old woman… a woman who refused to leave Amrennathed. They didn't know she was speaking of the dragon, the Queen of the Mountain. Only a very few know her by name.'
Diadree paused and glared back at him, her hand raised at the ridge of one of the stone eyes.
Bahrn thought of Diadree's reflection in his armor. He shook the memory off. 'That's absurd. She isn't a dragon, she-'
'I know that!' Arlon said. 'But she knew the dragon's true name. She tried to get up here herself. Why?' The wizard scraped up a handful of coins, jewels, and dirt from the floor and hurled it at the wall inches from the old woman. 'Not for this! You're not a looter, not an ore, are you, Diadree? However much you smell like one. Where is she? Where are the dragon's bones?' he shouted.
Silence reigned in the cavern. A single coin from the wizard's tantrum rolled to a stop at the toe of Bahrn's boot. The mercenary glanced down at it and caught movement out of the corner of his eye.
For a moment, Bahrn thought the left eye of the cavern had blinked, but it was only Diadree, shifting restlessly beneath the low-hanging stalactites suspended above the hollow in thick-set lashes. He opened his mouth to call her back to his side.
And one of the rocky spears broke away from the wall. Not a stalactite, Bahrn realized-at the same time his voice shouted to the old woman to move-and it wasn't falling. It was crawling down the wall.
Detaching from a cluster of stone, the thing shuffled down into the circle of purple light cast by the enspelled amethyst. Bahrn could make out an anvil-shaped head that swiped, pendulumlike, from side to side, and four stony feet dragging awkwardly across the ground.
Its body swung toward Diadree as she stumbled away.
Bahrn drew his morningstar and ran forward to push her aside, but Diadree's ankle had already given out beneath her.
She slid to the ground as the creature charged by, raking her side with its stony belly. Diadree cried out as she was dragged forward, bare flesh caught on protruding shards of rock and crystal.
Bahrn swung the morningstar underhand at the creature's other side, taking both front feet out from under its body in a cloud of dust and shattering rock. The creature skittered wildly across the floor like a puppy on slick cobbles, allowing the old woman to fall free.
Bahrn wheeled around for another strike but checked the swing as Arlon's hands began cutting rapid patterns in the air. The coins and jewels and chunks of stone he'd hurled earlier rose up from the floor and shot toward the creature like a dozen tiny sling bullets. More pieces of the creature's stone body fell away as the pellets impacted. Stung, the beast swung its attention immediately to the wizard.
'Watch her.' Arlon raised his hands again. 'I don't want her dead yet,' he snapped at the mercenary.
Diadree lay curled into a fetal ball against the cavern wall. Her shirt was shredded-stone and bits of sharp crystal were embedded in her side.
'She's protecting herself,' Diadree moaned as Bahrn tried to tend the cuts in the dim light.
'Arlon will kill it,' Bahrn soothed, adding silently, and perhaps he'll move on to us. 'It appears your dragon left a few pets behind to guard her lair.'
'No,' Diadree said. 'They're like children, only not, not really. She's left pieces of herself behind.'
'That thing isn't alive, Diadree,' Bahrn assured her. 'It's made of mountain rock, and gold and gems. I pulled some out of your wound.' He pointed to the bloodstained pieces of wealth on the floor beside him.
The old woman lifted her head from her hands and reached for him, her fingers finding and clutching an exposed bit of tunic. Her eyes, dulled by pain, focused on him, pleading.
'Could you take the rest?' she begged.
Bahrn's heart wrenched. 'They're all gone, lady, I promise you.'
'No, they're not. Amrennathed's not. The pieces are still there.' She tapped her temple hard with a dirty nail. 'It's not her fault I got some of them. I'm stubborn-I loved the mountain as much as she did. I wouldn't leave.'
'What are you saying?' Bahrn gripped her shoulders as she began to tremble. 'Where did Amrennathed go?'
'The mountain. She was old and didn't want to leave or be scavenged after her death. Would you, if you had lived half so long, want your bones looted for trophies? I didn't blame her. I watched it happen to Orunn. So she joined her body with the mountain. It upset the balance of… everything-shook the earth, these caverns. Everyone left the village except me. The mountain and I… somehow the pieces got mixed, and now I've got some of her in me and… and I just wanted to stay in my home, to be safe.' Tears welled in her eyes. 'Or maybe that's her voice, her wishes. I don't know anymore. But it doesn't matter if he kills it,' she moaned. 'There're still too many pieces.'
'Gods, Diadree,' Bahrn said, feeling helpless. He rubbed his hands over her shoulders as she cried, trying to calm her.
His hands stilled abruptly as her words sank in. Too many pieces.
Bahrn squinted at the walls of the cavern, letting his eyes become absorbed by the rocky fixtures and shadows. He remembered as a child lying on his back on the Fox Ear's shore, hunting for cloud shapes in the sky. As he looked, his eyes picked up more of the vaguely serpentine shapes sprouting out of the rock at various points around the cavern. They remained still and silent.
Behind them, Arlon dropped to his stomach as the stone wyrmling twisted, slamming its hindquarters into a rocky shelf jutting out from the far wall. It fell hard to the floor and shattered.
The wizard stood and said, 'The amethyst dragons are powerful psions. I should have realized-wyrms animated from stone. Amrennathed allowed her body to waste away into the mountain, and her mental essence followed intact. But your proximity to her and the mountain-somehow a bit of that essence seeped into you.'
