A pair of arched doors, as tall and wide as fortress gates, stood revealed. No handles or hinges were visible and there was no decoration except Tharizdun’s jagged spiral. More of the Tigerclaws made Hurn’s warding gesture.
“Do you think this is where Albanon’s urge was leading us?” asked Tempest.
“I’m sure of it.” Quarhaun ran his hands over the smooth stone, pushed against the doors without result, then stepped back and looked at the rest of them. “I’ve never known anyone who makes one door into a place that doesn’t make a second one.” He nodded to the cliff overhead.
“You’re going in?” asked Hurn.
“ We’re going in,” said Turbull grimly. “Albanon aided us. We aid Albanon. And if we intend to settle in this valley, we need to know all of its dangers.”
A murmur ran through the Tigerclaws at that. Turbull turned and silenced them with a snarl.
“I think a better question might be how do we get in?” Uldane said. “There’s no lock on the doors. I can’t open them.”
Roghar studied the doors and his lips twitched into a smile. For the first time since Winterhaven, he felt like he had a purpose again.
“I can,” he said.
It took longer to find, fell, and strip the necessary trees than it took for Roghar to rig them together with rope into a sturdy frame and suspended battering ram in front of the great stone doors. Personal combat wasn’t the only form of battle that Bahamut’s paladins were trained for. Roghar had never needed to conduct siege warfare, but he thanked the Platinum Dragon he’d found siege engines interesting enough that they stuck in his memory. The work almost made him forget the burning infection in his hands and arms.
Turbull looked at the rough timbers with some doubt. “I’ve heard of such things,” he said. “I’d thought that armies could just take a tree trunk and run it against fortress gates.”
“We would have had to clear a lot of underbrush to make enough room for a charge at the doors,” said Roghar. “This is easier.” He took hold of the hanging ram and used his entire body weight to drag it back, then took a deep breath and drove it forward. The ram’s head slammed into the stone doors with a resounding boom.
“Teams of ten,” he called out. “Five to a side. We work in shifts. This will likely take some time.”
“Are you sure you want to do this now?” asked Belen. She pointed up, not to the ledges, but to the sky. The sun had sunk well into the west, casting most of the valley into shadow and painting the steep slopes of its far side with gold.
“We have enough people who can see in the dark,” Roghar told her. She shook her head.
“That’s not what I’m worried about. If this is some lost shrine or forgotten temple of Tharizdun, I’d rather face it during the day.”
Roghar glanced around, then dropped his voice. “Tharizdun wanted us to follow Albanon here, didn’t he? What do you think we will have to face?” When she didn’t respond, he turned back to the ram, where the first team of ten-Shara and Quarhaun among them-had taken their places. “Ready!” he called. “Pull and… swing!”
The ram slammed against the doors a second time. “Pull,” called Roghar again, “and… swing!”
They quickly fell into a rhythm, the boom of the ram echoing across the valley on a regular basis. The siege engine creaked and groaned but hung together. There was no immediate change to the face of the doors, but that didn’t surprise or deter Roghar. The stone looked tough and if the doors were dwarf-made as Quarhaun suspected, they would likely be thick as well. At least there was no one trying to stop them from breaking in.
Fine cracks spread out from where the ram struck. Chips of stone started to flake away. He changed the teams swinging the ram, but didn’t leave his own post at the back end of it. Quarhaun, sweat glistening on his black skin, came to stand beside him. “What if it’s sealed on the other side?” he asked quietly. “A wall or something.”
“Who would do something like that?” Roghar grunted between heaves. “It’s mad.”
“The symbol of Tharizdun is on the door.”
“If there’s a wall, we break through it, too. Pull and…”
“Roghar!” shouted Uldane.
The dragonborn froze at the urgency in Uldane’s call, but the ram was already in motion. It dragged him off his feet and nearly knocked him down on the rebound. Two or three shifters on either side also tumbled. Those still upright had the sense to drag the ram to a stop. Roghar rolled upright and glared at Uldane, but the halfling was scanning the sky. So were Belen and half a dozen of the resting Tigerclaws. “What?” he said, his anger fading fast, “What is it?”
“Something just flew over. Up high.”
Roghar looked up. A scattering of clouds had rolled in, breaking up the blue vault and scattering the red-gold light of the setting sun. “Another peryton?”
Uldane shook his head. “Bigger. A lot bigger.” He traced a line against the sky, heading west beyond the towering cliff. “It went that way.”
“I saw a long neck and a long tail,” said one of the Tigerclaw warriors.
Quarhaun cursed. “Dragon?”
Roghar didn’t hesitate. He went straight for his sword and shield. Hurn looked at him doubtfully. “Maybe it didn’t see us.”
“It couldn’t have missed hearing us.”
“Then maybe it doesn’t care.”
“I’m not taking that chance. Everyone under the trees. We’ll wait to see if-”
Across the valley, something flickered in the light that fell against the far hills. A shadow, made indistinct by distance-but at that angle, whatever was casting the shadow would have to be low, not high where everyone was watching.
“Scatter!” Roghar commanded. “It’s coming back!”
A few of the Tigerclaws reacted faster than the rest of them and sprinted for cover. They weren’t fast enough. Before they reached the trees, the dragon burst over the top of the cliff and swooped down on them.
Roghar caught a brief flash of green and red, then he threw himself flat on the ground and pulled his shield up over his head. The shouts of the Tigerclaws were drowned out by a rush of wind as the beast skimmed close overhead. One of the shouts rose into a sharp scream, then ended abruptly. Wings thundered on the air. Roghar let his shield fall and rose onto his knees.
The dragon was climbing again. Two of the Tigerclaws who had been running for the trees were bloody corpses, still tumbling across the ground from the force of the lethal attack. Turbull and Shara were both yelling, telling everyone to scatter so there would be no groups to present easy targets for the dragon’s breath. Roghar watched the dragon as it rose into the fading sunlight, then rolled in the air and came back for another pass.
Like Vestagix in Winterhaven, the creature was thin to the point of emaciation, its green scales tinted with crystalline red. More crystals sprouted in spikes from its joints and along its spine and tail. Where Vestagix had taken the size and stance of a dragonborn, however, the monster in the air was similar in size and shape to a true dragon-or at least to a true dragon with two necks sprouting from its shoulders and two long, narrow heads above.
It held the heads together in flight, but as it slowed and approached the ground, they separated. One looked ahead, guiding the flight. The other bent down. Red eyes scanned the chaos below. Roghar saw them fix on several Tigerclaws who, against all commands, were still running close together. The dragon’s chest expanded as it inhaled-
“Beware its breath!” Roghar shouted, coming to his feet. Turbull, Shara, even Quarhaun called variants of the same warning. It did no good.
Green vapor so dense it seemed like liquid blasted from the mouth of the second head. It boiled up into a thick cloud of green and washed over the fleeing Tigerclaws. Sounds of choking came from within the cloud, followed by the distinct thumps of bodies hitting the ground. The green vapor dissipated within moments, but it was already over. The Tigerclaws were down, their faces contorted with the agony of their deaths. Even the plants around them had shriveled from the poison.
Wings that seemed almost too large for the dragon’s body spread wide-more than any other part of the monster’s body, they flashed with veins and fragments of the red crystal-and it wheeled to fly across the stone face. Crystalline talons clutched at the rocks. Some shattered with the force of its grip. Others held. The dragon ended up
