“I can’t come to you yet, Flinn,” Jo sobbed. “I promised you! I have to avenge your death. Please help me return.”
Flinn still smiled at her with love and understanding.
Jo almost reached out for him, but she stopped herself in time. “Where … are you?” Jo asked instead, gesturing around at the darkness.
Flinn laughed low, a chuckle that held none of its old cynical bitterness. “Ah, Jo!” he murmured. “Return to your body. Have faith—we will meet again someday.”
The image of Flinn disappeared in the blackness that surrounded Jo, but the words have faith echoed through her soul. She felt like crying, whether from great joy or deep sorrow, she didn’t know.
From a tremendous distance, Jo heard Karleah murmur, “Look at that, Braddoc! That—that glowing mist is covering Jo’s body!”
“Aye, and it’s coming from the sword!” Braddoc responded.
“What do you make of it?” Karleah inquired.
Jo’s eyelids fluttered, and she heard Karleah and Braddoc both gasp.
“Johauna! You’re alive!” the dwarf cried.
“You’ve a penchant for stating the obvious, dwarf!” Karleah vented. Jo felt hands gently touching her. Then she heard the old woman hiss in sudden realization. “Of course! The sword healed her!”
Jo’s eyes opened fully, and she focused on her two comrades kneeling beside her. The squire smiled slowly. “Now who’s stating the obvious?” She held out her hands. “Help me up”
The two helped Jo rise to her feet. She felt a Little shaky. That’s to be expected, she thought wryly. After all, you’ve just come back from the dead. Jo stretched, the muscles in her back moving without pain. She tentatively took a deep breath; the stabbing ache wasn’t there. She smiled at the two concerned expressions staring up at her.
“I’m fine. Really,” she said.
Karleah blinked rapidly. “Forgive my staring, Jo,” she said, “but it’s been a while since I’ve seen a dead person.”
Braddoc snorted. He handed Jo her sword and hefted his own battle-axe. “She’s not dead anymore, so don’t go treating her like she’s dead, will you?” The dwarf looked up at Jo with his good eye and jerked his thumb behind him. “The dragon’s gone. We won’t get our vengeance today. But let’s at least load up on some treasure and return to the castle. Maybe if the baroness is in a generous mood, she’ll let us keep a piece or two for ourselves.”
Jo shook her head. “I’ll help you bring some treasure back to camp, but I’m coming back here with supplies. Verdilith’s injured; he’ll return to his lair sometime soon.”
Braddoc shrugged. “We’ve got maybe a week’s worth of rations left, if we stretch it. But you’re right. It makes sense to harry the dragon now before he heals and regains all his powers.”
As the three of them started across the cavern floor, Karleah stopped to get her staff. She frowned at the ball of light, but Jo didn’t bother to ask why.
“I don’t think Verdilith’s healed any since Flinn attacked him,” Johauna said seriously. “Aren’t dragons supposed to have lots of healing spells?”
“So the sages say,” Karleah answered absently. She was looking around nervously. “And I can’t divine why the dragon wouldn’t fight us with spells, particularly since he was too injured to really engage in physical battle.”
“We can puzzle that out later,” Braddoc interrupted as they reached the edge of the golden hoard. The magical light flickered across the vast mounds, which spread out as far as the light would reach.
Hadn’t the light extended farther before? Jo wondered. She dismissed the thought, thinking that perhaps the area of illumination diminished naturally as the spell wore on. “Karleah,” Jo murmured as she and Braddoc moved toward the piles of gold, “you keep watch. We’ll get a few things and be right back.”
“Make it fast, Jo,” the old wizardess called. “I want to get out of here soon… .”
Braddoc wandered to the right, and Jo circled to the left. She began wading through the gold and silver coins littering the floor, enjoying the shift and clink of coins slipping by her boots. She paused every now and then to reach out to touch some gem or gold-chased bauble. Her eyes flitted from necklaces and brooches to rings and bracelets to encrusted footstools and ornamented portrait frames. Jo’s brain reeled. How could there be so much wealth in the world? she wondered. How could there be so many exquisite, exquisite things? Johauna picked up a fire opal the size of her fist and an aquamarine diadem and tucked them in her belt. For the most part, however, the poor orphan girl from Specularum was too overwhelmed to greedily gather treasure. Johauna continued to walk on, her eyes touching on pieces of metalwork that would have paid a king’s ransom in the present age.
Some unknown time later, Braddoc came up behind Jo and touched her arm. The squire jumped. “I’ve been calling you for the last minute, Johauna,” the dwarf said. “Don’t let the dragon’s treasure root in your brain. It’ll take over your thoughts, mesmerize you, consume you—you’ll stop eating or sleeping or thinking of anything but the treasure.”
“Really?” Jo said thickly. She reached out a finger and stroked a cupboard made of gold, inlaid with jade.
Braddoc jerked her arm. “Come along! It’s a good thing I’m here—the treasure’s gotten to you already.”
Jo scowled, trying to think. It was true she hadn’t thought of anything but the riches she’d seen, but she couldn’t have spent more than a few minutes …
“We’ve been picking through the hoard for more than an hour now,” Braddoc said testily, as though sensing her thoughts. He shifted his bulging knapsack on his shoulder. “Karleah’s been nagging us to leave for that whole time.”
“How … how does the treasure get to me like that?” Jo asked. Her thoughts were beginning to clear.
The dwarf shook his head. “It just does. The dragon sleeps on the treasure, you know. I think his essence permeates the gold and traps the unwary. Even I’m not immune to it. Karleah had to tap me with that staff of hers before I was able to shake it off.”
The two rounded a mound of treasure and found Karleah anxiously pacing. She whirled toward them in a pique of nerves and held out her hands.
“There you are, you old stump!” she snapped, waggling her withered finger at Braddoc. “I sent you after Jo a quarter hour ago! There’s no time to lose! We must leave immediately!” the old wizardess urged. “Come!” She gestured for them to move closer.
Jo saw that the light atop Karleah’s staff had faded, giving off the dull illumination of an oil lantern. Jo’s thoughts cleared completely, and she tightened her hold on Wyrmblight. “Whats wrong, Karleah?” Jo asked.
The old woman shook her wrinkled head rapidly. “No time to explain!” she cried. She held out her staff before her. “Quickly! Put your hands above mine as you did before! We must leave now!”
Jo and Braddoc hurried to do as the wizardess bid. Karleah began murmuring her incantation, an undercurrent of fear lending urgency to the words. Jo closed her eyes and braced herself for the unnerving shift through space and matter.
The old mage had frenetically muttered many phrases before Jo felt the magic began to weakly wrap about her. But, even then, the sensation was all wrong. The magic felt unsure, its grip on the three tenuous and fragile at best. The spell that had brought them into the lair had been like hurtling over water aboard the steady deck of a ship. This spell, though, was like falling—falling and rising and falling. Images of rock and sand intermixed with images of sky and ground, as though they were shifting back and forth above and below ground … as though they were slipping down through the world into the nether realms, then back up again.