for imported ceramics from Shou Lungand he knew then how the firedrakes had gotten loose.
The little shop was still on fire, though more accurately it was the pieces of the little pottery ship that were on fire. The building itself had been burst open from the-inside, and Marek smirked at the irony of the image that crossed his mind: a black firedrake bursting from the confines of an egg.
The floor of the shop had been shredded, and from the way the planks were standing up along the rim of all three of the biggest holes it was obvious that the lizard-creatures had broken up from the cellar. That space was rendered open to the sky, but the smoke still rising from it stung Marek’s eyes and he couldn’t see how they’d managed to get into the basement.
Finding no other recourse, Marek quickly rattled off a spell to protect him from the blistering heat of the ruined cellar. The wood glowed orange and gave off little yellow sparks that shot up into the air only to come down as snowflakes of black ash. Even through the spell, Marek began to sweat, and he had to squint against the smoke and ash that colored the air around him.
The bass rumble of an explosion from a few blocks away startled him. Another seller of volatile wares- alcohol, perfume, paintany number of things might have gone up like that.
Setting himself back on the task at hand, Marek swatted at smoldering timbers and stepped through half- melted nails and jagged black shards of broken glass, until he finally came to a yawning hole in the floor of the cellar. It might at one time have been a cistern, or a glory hole, or even a well, but it appeared to Marek as if it had been sealed off years agolikely even before the pottery seller took over the building. It was an easy guess that the shaft connected to a tunnel that connected to another tunnel that connected to something else that connected to the underground space he’d taken over for the firedrakes. Cursing his bad luck that they’d found it more than his negligence in not finding it first, Marek scanned through his memory for a spell that would seal it, and seal it well and for good.
With a sigh he remembered the perfect transmutation, and at the loss of a few other spells he’d thought that morning would have been more useful, he conjured the right elements from his mind, drew upon the Weave, and filled the shaft in by moving the very earth itself around its edges. He had to step back, then use the last few heartbeats worth of his spell-granted ability to fly in order to keep out of his own area of effect, but while more fires burst into life in the city blocks around him and more screams and shouts echoed through the streets and alleys, he turned the gaping hole into a smooth-bottomed crater. With the blackened remains of the ruined shop still creaking around it, Marek thought the whole thing looked like a fireball had gone off, and all trace that the firedrakes had come from the cellar of the little pottery shop were
“They came from the cellar of the little pottery shop in Phriterea Alley!” a young man’s voice shouted from behind him.
With a deeply pained sigh, Marek turned to see a pair of wide-eyed young watchmen stumble from an alleyway, casting about for any sign of the black firedrakes, or any sign of the shop. Their eyes never paused on Marek, who remained invisible.
“It’s right there,” the guard who’d spoken before said.
His comrade, a slightly older fellow whose tabard showed the rank of sergeant, asked, “Are you sure, mate?”
“Positive,” said the watchman. “I saw them break through the walls with pieces of the pottery merchant’s wife in their jaws.”
The young man gagged into the back of his hand at the memory, and the sergeant spat on the wreckage- strewn floor of the alley,
“Have you told anyone else?” asked the sergeant.
The younger man shook his head, and the sergeant took him by the arm and said, “Come on then, lad. The captain will”
He stopped because that’s when Marek became visible. The sight of the man in soot-covered robes appearing from the thin air startled both of them. Marek saw a flash of relief cross the face of the younger watchman when he realized it was just a man and not a firedrake.
But then, Marek Rymiit didn’t consider himself “just a man.”
And he hadn’t become visible on purpose. It’s what happens when you cast a spell meant to kill someone.
The fireball engulfed both of the guards in a sphere of blazing yellow-orange. The already burning buildings on either side of them cracked and bent, the few parts of their walls not already scorched danced with livid flames, and smoke ballooned into the sky, rising like the bubble from a breath let loose underwater.
The younger man had the decency to die instantly, but the sergeant stumbled around a bit, his iron helmet melted to his scalp, his clothes and armor burned away to reveal what was left of the skin underneath, just a mass of swelling blisters. He took a few steps, groaned, and fell over dead.
Marek cast another spell to make him invisible again then another to reveal the thoughts of anyone who might be watching.
The neighbors had obviously had the good sense to clear out a long time ago, and Marek started running back in the direction of the worst of the firedrake attacks, confident that no one else alive knew the source of the firedrakes’ escape. Even if a few did, he reasoned, the shaft had been sealed well enough that no one could trace them back to the hatchery.
Marek worked well into the night chasing down the last of the black firedrakes and teleporting them back, dead or alive, to the hatchery. He was a bit disappointed that three of them had been killed by the city watch, though in the wealthy Second Quarter the officers were combat veterans and armed to a man with enchanted weapons and armor. Marek had supplied a good number of them himself.
Still, the black firedrakes, having had the element of surprise, bursting out of the ground in the middle of the fancy shopping district, had done severe damage to the city. Marek promised himself he’d keep a close eye on the toll of death and damage as the ensuing tendays revealed the extent of the devastation.
Though unplanned, and not a little inconvenient, it had been a successful test.
He went to bed that night concerned only with what he was going to tell Insithryllax, and what he was going to have to do to finally give the dragon and his mutant offspring the space they needed to grow in safety and | secrecy. As he drifted off to a deep, restful sleep, Marek | Rymiit wondered if the city itself could truly hold them. |
23
17 Tarsakh, the Year of Maidens (1361 DR) Along the Banks of the Nagaflow
Hrothgar Deepcarver couldn’t help but watch the strange human. The man they called Devorast had hair as red as Hrothgar’s own bushy eyebrows, but his beard was but a brown-red stubblethe sort of beard Hrothgar had sported when barely out of diapersthe same color as the dwarfs.
“He could be a Deepcarver,” Hrothgar said to his cousin Vrengarl. “If he wasn’t so tall and lanky, that is.”
The human’s big eyes were so dark brown they almost matched Hrothgar’s own beady black orbs.
“He works like a Deepcarver,” Vrengarl replied. “You know, slow and clumsy.”
Hrothgar suppressed a smile at the jibe and hefted his bulky stonehammer.
“Did we come here to work,” Vrengarl asked, “or to stare at humans?”
Hrothgar shrugged then swung his hammer down onto a steel wedge. The wedge split a block of stone and Hrothgar kept his eyes off Devorast long enough to appraise the cut. It was straight and trueworthy of a Deepcarver.
“Judging by the shape of your blocks,” Hrothgar taunted his cousin in return, “it looks like you’ve come here to work like a human.”
Vrengarl laughed heartilyas if a dwarf from the Great Rift could laugh any other wayand bent his back to his work, and his blocks were as straight as Hrothgar’s.
The rest of the morning was spent cutting blocks from boulders dug from the limestone quarries north
