The Grieving Tree: The Dragon Below Book II (18 page)

“I’m zhe besht …” slurred Chain. “Zhe besht! Don’ fuhget it.”

“Well, the best is going for a trip.” Geth guided him to
Lightning on Water
. Ashi was waiting for him and between the two of them they wrestled Chain up the gangplank.

As he stepped onto the deck of the ship, Geth felt a flush of triumph sweep through him. It felt very good, he thought, to be one step up on Dah’mir.

T
he sun was setting as the river boat rounded a final bend and Vennet saw the mound rising up against the orange sky. After days of following the river through marshes flatter than a calm ocean, its rounded height seemed nearly mountainous.

Seated at the center of the boat, Dah’mir pointed to shallows beneath a path cut in the rising riverbank. “Put in there.”

The men Vennet had picked from his crew dipped their oars and made for the shallows, giving the boat just enough speed that she came gliding gently to a stop and kissed the bank like a lover. Two men hopped overboard and tied the boat to a worn post driven into the ground. Others began unloading their gear and supplies. Dah’mir gave a short whistle to the two herons that stood beside him in the boat and the birds flapped into the sky, joining the dozen or so other herons that had followed them from Zarash’ak. All of the birds whirled down to settle in along the riverbank.

Vennet scanned the bank above. It was empty. “Where’s the Bonetree clan? I would have thought they’d come to investigate a boat tying up in their territory.”

“The herons have seen them, captain,” said Dah’mir, “and they’ve seen the herons. They know I’ve returned.”

Vennet looked at the priest. “But they haven’t come to greet you?”

Dah’mir didn’t answer him. Vennet clenched his teeth. The journey up river had gone quickly, but more than ever the half-elf
was certain that the green-eyed man was keeping something from him. They were so close to the mound and to his promised reward, though, that there was little he could do but trust him.

He rose, then helped Dah’mir to stand and disembark. The priest had grown steadily weaker over the days of the journey. Vennet had somehow come to expect that he would become stronger as they approached the Bonetree mound, but there had been no miraculous recovery so far. Only the day before, Dah’mir had been forced to call for aid in rising in the morning. His strong frame had become gaunt, his pale skin dry and drawn. The wound in his chest remained open. Vennet had seen it once or twice. He wasn’t quite sure how any man could live with an injury like it.

Maybe the power of the Dragon Below sustained Dah’mir. Certainly his will and intelligence had never dimmed. Vennet had seen his eyes shining fever bright through the days and nights on the river. As he helped Dah’mir off the boat and up the steep path to the top of the riverbank, Vennet had the feeling that even if Dah’mir’s body failed entirely, the priest would carry on. The image came to him of a withered corpse with burning acid-green eyes ruling the Bonetree clan like a lich-king. He shivered.

On his arm, Dah’mir stiffened. Vennet glanced at him.

“What is it?”

“Something has burned here.”

Vennet sniffed. Now that the priest had pointed it out, he could smell something on the cool evening air: a faint stench of old ashes. Dah’mir was right. Something had burned. As they came over the top of the bank, he saw what it was.

What must once have been the Bonetree camp or settlement had been put to the torch. The ribs of tent poles stood broken and black. The walls of huts were charred and crumbled. Here and there, new green shoots of grass poked out of the scorched earth, but otherwise all plant life had been seared away.

There were bodies scattered through the ruins, too. Vennet counted half a dozen at a glance. They’d been burned as thoroughly as the huts of the camp, hard black flesh clinging to dark sticks of bone. A couple had died fighting but others, including the small corpses of children, looked like they had fallen while fleeing. Strangely, there seemed to be no signs of injury on the bodies—no bones sliced by blades or smashed by clubs.

Dah’mir was staring as well, though with curiosity rather than shock or horror. “What happened here?” Vennet asked him.

The priest shook his head, then nodded toward the mound that rose—still covered in waves of green grass—beyond the burned camp. “Continue on,” he said.

They passed through the camp. Their feet and the feet of the sailors following listlessly behind made no noise on the soft carpet of ash that covered the ground.

Closer to the mound lay the battlefield that Vennet had expected to find. The ground had been churned and scarred by fighting. More bodies lay scattered across it, ravaged by decay and scavengers, the stink of their rotting already dissipated. Vennet recognized humans and orcs, the four-armed skeletons of dolgrims, stranger skeletons that might have been dolgaunts, empty carapaces that must have been chuuls. The battle at the Bonetree mound had been fierce.

But over top of the battlefield lay burned patches—not so extensive as in the Bonetree camp, but more distinct because of it. Two burned corpses lay in one blackened patch, three in another closer to the camp. A pattern of charring lay across the whole battlefield, as if lamp oil had been drizzled at random then set alight. Dah’mir studied the marks as though reading some meaning in them. He nodded again, but this time not toward the mound. “That way,” he said. “I need to speak with the Bonetree hunters.”

Through the gloom of twilight, Vennet could see a handful of armed figures. They stood well beyond the last of the burned patches, keeping their distance. They didn’t move as Vennet and Dah’mir approached, however. If they were keeping their distance from anything, Vennet realized, it was the burned land. Once he and Dah’mir were beyond the blackened grass as well, Vennet glanced at the priest and murmured, “Should I have the crew make camp, lord?”

In his heart he was almost hoping Dah’mir would say no, but the green-eyed man nodded, his eyes fixed on the Bonetree hunters. Vennet clenched his teeth and paused long enough to look over his shoulder at the men who followed. “Make camp,” he called, then added, “Set a watch.”

“That was unnecessary,” Dah’mir said as the men shrugged off their equipment and began to pitch the same rude camp they
had every night of the journey up river. “They have nothing to fear from the Bonetree.”

“It’s not the Bonetree I’m worried about,” said Vennet. “Something feels wrong.”

The waiting hunters—four of them, three men and a woman—still hadn’t moved, though as Vennet drew closer to them he could see that they weren’t standing like stoic statues either. Instead they twitched and fidgeted, their eyes darting back and forth across the twilight landscape. Their dark gazes lingered on Vennet and he knew they were studying him—the stranger who walked with their priest—just as he was studying them.

All of the hunters wore tattoos and strange piercings, but they also bore recent, serious burns. The man who stood at the fore of the group carried an angry red stripe across his chest that looked as if he had been struck with a flaming lash. “Revered!” he said. He dropped to his knees, the fingers of his free hand darting up to touch his forehead and his lips. Behind him, the other hunters repeated the gesture, though not smoothly. One of the men was trembling in fear, his eyes fixed on Dah’mir.

If the priest saw the man’s fear, he paid it no attention. “Breff,” he said to the hunter who had spoken. “Are you the master of my hunters now?”

Breff nodded tightly as if struggling to maintain his composure. “Master of few, Revered. We saw the herons, Revered. We knew you had returned. We—”

He bent his neck suddenly, turning his face away from Dah’mir. “Revered,” he moaned, his composure crumbling, “what did we do to anger the Dragon Below? We don’t understand. During the battle, the children of Khyber turned on us and now your fiery hand drives us from our homes and keeps us from the ancestor mound. Is it because we fled when you assumed the power of the Dragon Below? We saw Ashi leave after the battle with the outclanners—are we punished because of her betrayal? Tell us!”

Breff’s plea made no sense at all to Vennet, but Dah’mir pressed his lips together in thought, then pulled himself away from Vennet’s support to stand on his own before the kneeling hunters. “Breff, tell me what happened here.”

“After the battle, we waited like cowards for night to fall again, gathering the survivors in the grasslands beyond the mound,”
said the hunter, “then we returned to our camp to pray for your return. Two of the hunters took a torch to survey the battlefield. I don’t know what they found, but suddenly there were flames in the night and a terrible howl.” The hunter looked up again. “We went to see what was happening and were met by your hand, his body in flames.”

“My hand?” Dah’mir’s eyes narrowed. “Hruucan?”

Breff nodded.

A memory stirred in Vennet—while they had been allies, Ashi had told him of the Bonetree’s hunt for Dandra. Dah’mir had named the dolgaunt Hruucan as his Hand and put him in charge of the band of Bonetree hunters. “I thought Hruucan was dead,” the half-elf said to Dah’mir uneasily. “You said Singe killed him.”

“He walks, outclanner,” said Breff. “After the camp burned, we fled from him. He didn’t pursue us. When the flames died down, he seemed to be gone. We tried to return and restore the camp, but the Hand came back again, stealing flame from our cooking fires to turn against us. We moved our camp further away, but he still reached for us.” He shivered. “The Bonetree is reduced, Revered. Many of our children and elders are gone. The survivors of the clan hide in the grasslands.”

“So where is Hruucan now?” asked Vennet. “We crossed the battlefield and didn’t see him.”

Breff shook his head. “He is a scourge on the Bonetree. Perhaps he cares nothing for outclanners. Perhaps he lies quiet before the Revered.”

“No,” said Dah’mir. “I don’t think so.” His eyes flashed in the dusk. “A torch on the battlefield, stolen flame—Hruucan died in fire but we carried no fire across the battlefield.”

Vennet stiffened and whirled. His crew’s camp was growing. Wood gathered the night before and carried along had been laid beside a makeshift fire pit piled with tinder. One of the crew crouched beside the tinder, flint and steel at the ready. The camp was beyond the burned zone, but unease filled Vennet. “No fire!” he bellowed.

His warning came too late. The hands of the sailor beside the fire pit were already in motion, striking flint against steel with practiced ease. Sparks leaped into the tinder and the man gave
them a gentle puff of air. Flames crackled and blossomed—then seemed to leap into the air, leaving only scorched tinder behind as they stretched like a gossamer thread back to the blackened battlefield.

On the battlefield, a burned corpse stirred. Vennet froze. Behind him, he heard one of the Bonetree whimper in fear. He glanced over his shoulder to see the hunters on their feet, their hands tight on their weapons.

“Revered, it’s him!” said Breff.

The sailor at the firepit looked at the cold tinder in confusion and struck a new shower of sparks. More flames bloomed.

“Stop!” Vennet shouted. He started forward—but Dah’mir’s fingers dug into his shoulder.

“Don’t move!” the priest hissed.

The stirring corpse rose to its feet with a faint whisper like crumbling ashes. It shambled toward Vennet’s crew, black skin cracking to reveal glowing embers beneath. The movement and the glow caught the attention of some of the sailors. Two drew short swords and moved forward. Someone called out to Vennet. “Captain! Danger on deck—”

Before Vennet could even think to respond, the corpse lunged forward with astounding speed. Claw-like hands grasped the nearest sailor in a horrid embrace. The man screamed in agony as he burst into flame. The other sailors flinched back—one or two retreated a pace. The burned corpse flung the dying sailor aside. Bright flames clung to it, tendrils of fire writhing around its chest and hanging like clumps of hair from its head, long burning tentacles weaving above its shoulders.

The tentacles of a dolgaunt reborn in fire.

The creature exploded in a fiery whirlwind of motion, its movements fluid and supple as if the sailor’s death had given it new energy. Tentacles wove around another sailor. He burned. Fists and feet pummeled others, knocking them back with smoke rising from their clothes. More sailors fell, their bodies engulfed in devouring fire. More screams rose. Vennet wanted to order his men to fall back, but he felt paralyzed.

One of the Bonetree let out a wail and bolted. “Revered?” Breff asked.

Dah’mir made no reply. Vennet heard Breff hiss, then spit a
desperate order in the language of the hunters. Footsteps darted away and he and Dah’mir stood alone.

The last of the sailors fell. Flames rose around the burning dolgaunt. The creature’s body was a horrible, shifting mass of flaking ash, raw new flesh, and smoldering embers. Only the empty black pits where eyes should have been remained constant. They turned on Vennet and the dolgaunt began to glide forward as smoothly as flame given life—or rather unlife. Heat and hatred seemed to flow from the dolgaunt in equal measure, and yet Vennet felt only a profound, unnatural chill in his spirit. He fumbled for his cutlass, though his gut told him it would be of little good against a creature that had already died once before.