She began to hope fervently they never found it.
14
The wolf pack. The trap. Laurana’s destiny
Inside Sleet’s lair, now empty, the white wolf stood near his master. Though the dragon was gone, her magical snow continued to fall, drifting down around them in large flakes that landed on the wolf’s fur, forming a woolly white blanket. The wolf blinked his eyes free of the snow. The other members of the wolf pack stood or paced around him, ears twitching, pricking, listening. The lead female, mate to the wolf, lifted her nose and sniffed the air. She stiffened.
The other wolves stopped their pacing, lifted their heads, alert, their attention caught and held. The she-wolf looked over her shoulder at her mate. The male wolf looked at Feal-Thas.
The winternorn stood unmoving. The snow matted his fur robes, forming a second cloak. He stared down the tunnels, lit with the enchanted light, for he did not want his foes bumbling about in the dark, and he, too, sniffed the air. His ears pricked.
The ground shook as though with an earthquake. The tunnels creaked and groaned. He could hear above him the screams of the injured and dying—the sounds of battle. The castle was under assault. Feal-Thas didn’t give a damn. Let the gods of Light throw their temper tantrums. Let them melt this place to the ground. It only needed to hold together long enough for him to destroy the thieves who were after his dragon orb.
The snow stopped falling as Feal-Thas spoke words of magic, chanting a powerful spell. He sang words at the beginning of the chant, but it ended in a howl. The white fur of his robes adhered to his flesh. His nails grew long and curled under, transforming into claws. His jaw jutted forward, his nose lengthened to become a snout. His ears shifted, elongated. His teeth were fangs, sharp and yellow and hungry for blood. He stood on all fours, feeling muscles ripple across his back, feeling the strength in his legs. He reveled in his strength.
He was a massive wolf, lord of the wolves. He stood head and shoulders over the other wolves of the pack, who slunk around him, staring at him with their red eyes, uncertain, wary, yet prepared to follow where he would lead.
His senses heightened, Feal-Thas could smell what the other wolves smelled—the scent of humans borne on the frost-crusted air. He could hear the rasping of their breath and their firm footfalls, the clank of a sword, the occasional scrap of conversation, though not much, for they were saving their breath for breathing.
His trap had worked. They were coming.
Feal-Thas leaped forward on all fours, muscles bunching, expanding, bunching, expanding. His legs gathered up the ground, pushing off from it, reached out for more. The wind whistled past his ears. The snow stung his eyes. He opened his mouth and sucked in the biting air, and saliva spewed from his lolling tongue. He grinned in ecstasy, reveling in the run, the hunt, and the prospect of the kill.
Inside the icy tunnel, Derek stopped to consult the map given to him by Raggart the Younger. The tunnels in which they stood had not been here three hundred years ago. The dragon’s lair was on the map, though it had not been named by the ancestor, since dragons had not been seen on Krynn for many centuries. The lair was denoted as a “cave of death” on the map, for the ancestor had seen a great many bones lying about, including several human skulls.
An abandoned dragon’s lair would be the logical place for Sleet to use as her lair, or so Derek concluded. He knew the general location of the lair from the map and he chose a tunnel that led in that direction. Sunlight lit their way, shining through the ice, turning the tunnel a shimmering blue-green. They had walked only a short distance when they came to a place where their tunnel intersected with two others. Derek gazed, frowning, at his map, not making much sense of it. Aran suddenly jabbed a finger at the icy wall.
“Look at this!” he exclaimed.
Arrows had been carved into the ice. One pointed straight up. Another pointed at what appeared to be a crude drawing of a dragon—a stick figure with wings and a tail. The knights investigated the other tunnels and found that each had similar arrows.
“The arrow pointing straight up must indicate that this tunnel leads up to the castle proper,” guessed Brian.
“And this tunnel leads to the dragon’s lair,” said Derek in satisfaction.
“I wonder what that X means,” Aran asked, taking a pull from his flask.
“And who put these here,” said Sturm.
Derek shrugged. “None of that matters,” he said, and led the way down the tunnel adorned with the figure of the dragon.
Gilthanas and Laurana, accompanied by Flint and Tas, shadowed the knights, creeping silently down the icy corridors. They halted when they heard the knights halt and listened to the discussion about the marked tunnels. When the knights continued on, they continued after them.
The small group moved silently, keeping their distance, and the knights did not hear them. Due to the cold, Flint had been forced to leave his chain mail and plate behind. Though he wore a sturdy leather vest and was wrapped to his eyeballs in layers of leather and fur, he maintained he was naked without his armor. The crunching of his thick boots was the only sound he made, aside from his grumbling.
Tasslehoff was so charmed by the idea of being useful that he was determined to obey Gilthanas’s orders to be quiet, even though that meant keeping all his interesting observations and questions bottled up inside him until he began to feel like a keg of ginger beer that had been sitting in the sun for too long—he was fizzing and about to explode.
The knights would sometimes pause to listen, to try to determine if any enemy was either in front of them or behind. When the knights stopped, Laurana and her group stopped.
Flint found this puzzling. “Why don’t we just catch up with them now?”
“Not until Derek leads me to the dragon orb.” The elf’s voice was grim. “Then he’ll find out I’m here—with a vengeance.”
Flint regarded Gilthanas in astonishment and shifted his worried gaze to Laurana. She gave Flint a pleading look, asking for understanding. Flint walked on, but he no longer grumbled, a certain sign he was upset.
The four continued to pursue the knights through the maze of tunnels. They passed the chamber where Feal-Thas had kept the dragon orb and its magical monstrous guardian. The knights noticed the chamber, but went on by, although they could hear Aran stating he’d found an X on the wall. At this, Gilthanas, who had also noticed the Xs on the walls, took a moment to investigate. Laurana went with him, leaving Flint and Tasslehoff to stand guard outside.
Laurana stared in shuddering horror at the bones, severed limbs and blood frozen in the snow.
“Look at that pedestal,” said Gilthanas triumphantly, pointing. “It was made to hold the dragon orb. Look at these runes. They speak of the orb and how it was created. That explains the carnage,” he added, looking about at the blood and gore. “We’re not the first to come in search of it.”
“You’re saying the orb was here and something or someone was guarding it, but it’s not here now. Perhaps we’re too late.” Laurana sounded hopeful.
Gilthanas cast her an angry look and was about to say something when they heard Flint bellow.
“The blasted kender,” the dwarf stated. “He ran off that way.” He pointed at a dragon-marked tunnel.
Almost immediately, Tasslehoff came dashing back. “I think I found it!” he said in a loud whisper. “The dragon’s lair!”
Gilthanas hastened off, with Tas leading the way, and Flint and Laurana hurrying behind him. Rounding a corner, the elf jumped quickly back into the tunnel. He motioned the others to come forward slowly.
“They’re here,” he mouthed, pointing.
Laurana peered cautiously around the corner into a large empty chamber. Icicles hung from the ceiling like white stalactites. The knights stood in the middle of the chamber, looking around.
“Where are the guards?” Brian was asking tensely. “We’ve come this whole way and not a sign of anyone.”