The carpet refused to climb.
Fendor tried again anyway.
He eased the enchanted fabric upward through the thinning air, watching the mountain wall slide downward beside them. For several hundred feet the carpet behaved as it always had, responding to thought and command with the effortless obedience of magic that had long since ceased to impress anyone who owned it.
Then they crossed the invisible line.
The carpet lurched.
Fendor felt the enchantment beneath him lose certainty.
Not power entirely. Something worse. The magic seemed suddenly unsure of what it was supposed to be.
The carpet tilted toward the open air.
Isamu shifted his weight immediately.
Fendor forced them downward.
For several ugly seconds the artifact fought him like a frightened animal. Then they dropped beneath the troublesome altitude and the carpet steadied.
Fendor stared at it.
“I dislike objects developing opinions.”
Kaylor circled nearby on the Pegasus.
“The mountain is doing it.”
“That does not improve my opinion of the mountain.”
The summit rose another two thousand feet above them.
There was no gradual slope, no convenient trail, no broad shelf where they might simply land and walk. Oslan’s lowest mountain climbed almost vertically toward its plateau, a wall of stone ten thousand feet high.
The flying carpet had carried Fendor and Isamu most of the way.
Most of the way was rapidly becoming an irritating measurement.
Kaylor looked at the Pegasus beneath him.
“Can he carry another?”
The celestial mount snorted.
Fendor regarded it.
“I’m not riding behind you.”
“You were not the first person I was going to offer.”
“That somehow makes it worse.”
Hexen solved the problem before Fendor could continue developing objections.
His human shape dissolved into rushing air.
The transformation was nearly invisible against the wind. Arms and legs became streams of moving cloud, his body stretching and curling until an Air Elemental hovered beside the cliff. Unlike the carpet, Hexen was not relying upon an object enchanted to fly.
For the moment, that distinction mattered.
Fendor looked at him.
“No.”
The elemental wind curled around him.
“Yes.”
“No.”
Fendor rose from the carpet.
Not under his own power.
Hexen lifted him as though the elf weighed approximately as much as a badly behaved leaf.
Fendor’s boots left the enchanted fabric.
He looked down.
The ground was very far away.
“Hexen.”
Wind howled cheerfully around him.
“If you drop me, I will haunt your tree.”
The Air Elemental carried him upward.
Behind them, Isamu transferred to Kaylor’s Pegasus, leaving the carpet at the altitude where its magic remained trustworthy. Nethnarel climbed under her own power. The Pegasus strained as the air thinned further, wings beating harder for each foot gained.
Even Hexen’s elemental form began to fight the altitude.
Not magic this time.
Air.
There was simply less of it.
The mountain seemed determined that no one should reach its summit casually.
That made sense.
Someone had once built a city there.
The last hundred feet were the worst.
The Pegasus climbed almost vertically beside the stone. Kaylor leaned close to its neck while Isamu sat behind him with the untroubled expression of a man who regarded ten-thousand-foot falls as primarily a problem of technique.
Nethnarel’s wings carried her over the lip.
Hexen pushed Fendor after her.
Kaylor and Isamu followed.
Then the mountain vanished.
Not beneath them.
Around them.
Fog swallowed everything.
The summit was not hidden beneath the great cloud they had expected from below. There had been no enormous white crown announcing itself around the plateau.
Instead, a low bank of dense mist lay directly across the top, clinging to the ground and filling the first layers of air above it.
From below it had been nearly invisible.
Inside it, the world ended ten paces away.
Kaylor guided the struggling Pegasus downward.
“Land.”
The mount needed no persuasion.
Its hooves touched stone.
Kaylor dismounted, then dismissed it. Whatever strange interference surrounded Oslan, forcing the creature to fight the limits of altitude seemed unnecessary now that they had reached solid ground.
Nethnarel descended beside them.
Fendor appeared out of the mist with his dignity only slightly damaged.
Hexen returned to human form.
Isamu stepped down behind Kaylor.
For several moments all five simply stood there.
They had reached the summit of one of Oslan’s three mountains.
There was no city.
Only fog.
Fendor looked at Nethnarel.
“Your ancient magical civilization is impressive.”
“We can see approximately fifteen feet.”
“That is what impressed me.”
Nethnarel ignored him.
The ground beneath them was dry and dusty. Nothing grew there. The lush city Hexen had glimpsed through Scrying belonged to an age so distant that the mountain itself seemed to have forgotten green.
The fog made the silence worse.
Even sound seemed uncertain.
Hexen raised one hand.
Wind gathered.
Not the violent transformation he had just used, but deliberate magic.
Controlled Winds.
The spell pushed outward from him.
Fog rolled back.
Slowly at first.
Then faster.
The white bank tore apart in widening circles, streaming around rocks and lifting from the ground. Sunlight reached the plateau.
The first thing revealed was a dragon.
Kaylor drew his sword.
The dragon did not object.
It had been dead for a very long time.
The skeleton lay half buried near the edge of the newly cleared ground. Massive ribs curved from the dust like the ruined beams of a ship. A skull large enough to serve as a small room rested at an angle, one side sunk into earth accumulated by centuries of wind.
Fendor stopped.
“Dead.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“I noticed.”
“I wanted to establish that before someone attacked it.”
Kaylor lowered the sword slightly.
Then walked toward the skull.
Fendor sighed.
“I should have been more specific.”
The dragon had been enormous in life.
Not merely large.
Ancient.
The heroes had fought enough dragons to recognize what time did to them. This creature had survived long enough to become one of those beings for whom kingdoms measured their own history in terms of whether the dragon had been asleep during it.
Now only bone remained.
Kaylor crouched beside the jaw.
Several teeth were still intact.
He examined one.
Then another.
Fendor watched.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking a tooth.”
“Why?”
“Could make a dagger.”
Fendor considered this.
“Acceptable.”
Kaylor worked one loose.
The old tooth came free with a grinding sound.
Hexen searched among the half-buried remains and eventually found something the years had not completely stripped away.
A scale.
It was weathered and dulled, but when he brushed away the dust a faint color remained.
Green.
Nethnarel leaned over it.
“Ancient green dragon.”
“Probably,” Hexen said.
Fendor was studying the bones.
Not admiring them.
Reading them.
Scars marked the remains.
Old damage scored the skull. Several ribs had broken before death rather than after it. Deep marks scarred the bones where flesh had once hidden them.
“This didn’t just die here.”
Kaylor looked over.
“No?”
“It fought.”
Fendor walked farther along the skeleton.
“Something killed it.”
No one spoke for a moment.
A ten-thousand-foot plateau.
A vanished civilization.
Magic that failed as they approached.
A dead ancient green dragon whose skeleton had lain there longer than anyone could measure.
Nethnarel looked into the newly cleared distance.
“That is useful.”
Fendor stared at her.
“That is the word you chose?”
“It means something happened here.”
“Yes. To an ancient dragon.”
“That is why it means something.”
Beyond the skeleton, more of the plateau emerged as Hexen continued driving the fog back.
Stone pillars.
Boulders tall enough to block sight.
A shallow opening in the mountain.
And statues.
Two of them.
Even from a distance they were enormous, standing perhaps twenty-four feet high beside the approach to the shallow cave. They were humanoid, though age had damaged both badly enough that their finer features remained difficult to judge.
One had lost pieces of its face.
The other had been worn smooth in places by centuries of wind.
Isamu climbed onto the dead dragon’s spine.
Fendor watched him balance along the ridge of ancient vertebrae.
“Why?”
Isamu kept walking.
“It is there.”
“That answer has caused most of our problems.”
Isamu reached the skull without falling.
Fendor sighed.
“Fine.”
Kaylor moved toward the statues.
Slowly.
That alone told the others he had learned something.
They followed at different distances.
The plateau was not flat in the simple sense. Great stone formations interrupted the ground. Some stood tall enough to conceal whatever waited beyond them. Others formed narrow lanes that forced the party apart.
Fendor chose a position with cover.
Nethnarel remained slightly above the ground where the remaining fog allowed it.
Hexen stayed near Kaylor.
Isamu moved where he could see both the front and their flank.
The statues grew clearer as they approached.
Human.
Almost.
Not stylized gods or monsters.
People.
Whatever Oslan had been, its inhabitants had apparently looked close enough to ordinary humans that one might have passed them on a street without recognizing that their civilization had understood magic in an entirely different way.
Kaylor stopped.
Something touched his mind.
He heard no voice in the air.
The words arrived already inside him.
He will not be happy.
Kaylor’s hand tightened around Final Word.
Hexen noticed.
“What?”
The nearest statue began to smoke.
Black vapor poured from cracks in the ancient stone.
Not dust.
Not fog.
Smoke.
It spread around the statue’s legs and curled upward along its body.
Kaylor reached outward with the sense that had survived even after his oath had not.
For years it had warned him of certain things.
Fiends.
Celestials.
Undead.
The answer struck immediately.
Undead.
More than one.
Powerful.
He felt them like rot hidden behind walls.
Four.
At least.
Then something noticed him noticing.
The sensation came back along whatever invisible line Kaylor had opened.
His eyes narrowed.
“Incoming.”
The black smoke thickened.
Something stepped from it.
At first the creature possessed no proper shape.
Then the vapor condensed.
Long arms.
A distorted body.
Limbs too thin for their reach.
A face that seemed less carved than remembered badly.
It emerged from the cave and pointed one crooked finger directly at Kaylor.
Doom entered him.
The Heroes’ Feast should have made fear impossible.
It had strengthened mind and body against exactly that kind of supernatural assault.
This was not ordinary fear.
For the smallest fraction of a heartbeat, Kaylor experienced certainty.
Not that he might die.
He had already done that.
Something worse.
That the thing approaching him was the end of every road.
That fighting it was pointless.
That the sensible response was to abandon sword, friends and courage and simply accept what was coming.
Then Kaylor became angry.
The feeling broke.
He remained standing.
The creature’s finger lowered.
Fendor had seen the dragonborn hesitate.
“Kaylor?”
“Undead.”
“That was not my question.”
“Four of them.”
Black smoke poured from the second statue.
Isamu turned.
Another shape emerged.
Then another gathering of darkness farther back.
The plateau filled with drifting black forms.
The first creature lunged.
Its arm lengthened farther than bone should have allowed.
Claws raked toward Kaylor.
The attack missed.
A second pointed at Isamu.
That same unnatural doom pressed toward the monk.
Isamu’s expression barely changed.
He rejected it.
The creature reached anyway.
Its long limb struck.
Cold rot traveled through the wound.
Isamu stepped back, looking down at the injury.
The flesh around it darkened.
Not merely wounded.
A little less alive.
“That is unpleasant.”
Fendor drew.
“That is becoming a theme.”
Isamu attacked first.
The whip snapped outward.
It caught the smoky creature despite the uncertainty of its body.
Isamu pulled, stepped closer and struck again.
Then again.
His hands became a blur.
The Swarm Gloves stirred, but he did not need their worst hunger.
Discipline was enough.
The creature recoiled.
Isamu withdrew.
Usually nothing caught him when he decided to leave.
This did.
One long arm snapped after him.
Isamu twisted away just before the claws closed.
He landed several paces back.
His eyes narrowed.
“Fast.”
Kaylor’s second attacker reached him.
Its finger rose.
Again the doom.
Again Kaylor fought it off.
Necrotic energy still tore through him.
Then claws found armor.
This time they cut deeper.
The wound did not close properly.
Kaylor felt the difference immediately.
Healing would not restore what the creature had taken.
Not yet.
It had diminished him rather than simply injured him.
Kaylor looked at the blackened cut.
“Oh.”
Fendor moved to him.
“That sounded bad.”
“It is.”
“How bad?”
“Later.”
“That is usually very bad.”
Kaylor charged.
Radiance met smoke.
Final Word cut through the undead creature and divine power followed the blade into the wound. Kaylor drove another strike after the first, forcing sacred energy into something that had been dead long before they climbed the mountain.
The creature staggered.
“Undead,” Kaylor repeated.
This time the word sounded like an advantage.
Fendor joined him.
The Vorpal Longsword moved four times in quick succession.
No perfect decapitation came.
It scarcely mattered.
The blade hacked through the smoky form until darkness streamed from the cuts.
The undead recoiled from both heroes.
Then Nethnarel rose above them.
Her wings ignited.
Fire surrounded her body.
She lifted both hands toward the sky.
Fendor looked up.
“Neth?”
She screamed.
The sound did not enter through the ears.
It erupted inside the mind.
Psychic force swept across the plateau.
The undead creatures convulsed.
One stopped moving.
Then another.
Their smoky bodies locked into place, trapped inside themselves.
Two had resisted.
Two had not.
Isamu looked toward Nethnarel.
“That helps.”
Her fiery wings held her in the air.
“I thought it might.”
Hexen surveyed the battlefield.
Two stunned horrors.
Two still moving.
A cave.
Two statues.
A great deal of open ground.
He planted the Staff of the Woodlands.
The mountain grew thorns.
A wall erupted from the dusty plateau.
Not a neat hedge.
A violent mass of briars and tangled branches rose around the stunned undead, enclosing them inside a barrier dense enough to tear flesh from anything trying to force its way through.
The creatures could not move.
The thorns did not care.
Branches tightened.
Black smoke leaked through them.
Fendor stared.
“That is unpleasant.”
Hexen looked at him.
“For them.”
“Yes.”
“That is the important distinction.”
One of the unstunned creatures rose.
Literally.
Its smoky body lifted over the thorns without wings.
Kaylor watched it climb.
“Of course it flies.”
“Everything flies now,” Fendor said.
The creature drifted toward Nethnarel.
Its arm extended.
Rotting force struck her.
She jerked backward in the air but stayed aloft.
Below, the trapped undead remained motionless while Hexen’s thorns tore into them.
Kaylor headed for the wall.
Hexen looked at him.
“Kaylor.”
“What?”
“There are thorns.”
“I see them.”
“You cannot walk through them.”
Kaylor raised Final Word.
Hexen considered the sword.
“Fine.”
Kaylor hacked an opening.
The living wall fought him.
He fought back harder.
Isamu arrived beside him.
“You could wait.”
“No.”
“I assumed.”
They entered.
The thorns tore at armor and clothing, but the stunned creatures inside could not exploit the difficulty.
Kaylor found the nearest.
Final Word rose.
Radiant light filled the briars.
The sword fell.
Outside, Fendor had changed weapons.
The flying creature had made the mistake of providing him with a clear target.
He raised the bow.
The first arrow struck.
Then another.
The creature drifted higher.
Fendor selected the next shaft.
Magic gathered along it.
He released.
The arrow reached the creature.
Then burst.
Force tore through the smoky body.
The undead thing fell from the air.
Fendor lowered the bow.
“One.”
Nethnarel landed near him.
“There are still three.”
“I was counting kills, not inventory.”
Inside the Wall of Thorns, Isamu struck.
His target remained stunned.
Whip.
Sword.
Fist.
Then another rapid series of blows.
The creature came apart between the thorns and the monk.
Smoke dissolved into the branches.
Kaylor destroyed another.
The final undead tried to escape.
Hexen’s wall slowed it.
Fendor’s arrows punished the opening.
Nethnarel pressed it back with magic.
Isamu crossed the difficult ground in a series of impossible steps and struck again.
The thing collapsed.
For a heartbeat its body remained vaguely humanoid.
Then the shape failed.
Smoke unwound.
The blackness thinned.
Gone.
Kaylor swung once more through the place it had occupied.
Fendor watched.
“It’s dead.”
“It was already dead.”
“You know what I mean.”
Kaylor lowered the sword.
Across the plateau, the oppressive dread vanished.
The fog continued drifting at the edges of Hexen’s controlled wind.
The ancient green dragon remained where it had died.
The statues remained.
The cave remained.
The heroes remained.
That qualified as victory.
Barely.
Kaylor leaned against Final Word.
Now that the fight had ended, the damage became easier to measure.
The undead creatures had not simply wounded him. Their touch had eaten into the limit of what healing could restore. He felt diminished by an amount large enough to be alarming.
Nethnarel approached.
“How bad?”
Kaylor considered lying.
“Bad.”
Hexen moved toward him.
“I can restore—”
“Wait.”
Kaylor placed one hand against the worst of the darkened wounds.
The power he carried had changed profoundly since the days when he had still called himself a servant of the Sanctum. Not all of it had left when the oath broke.
Some things had become his.
Healing was one.
He pushed a small portion of that power into the corruption.
The blackness retreated.
Kaylor blinked.
“Oh.”
Fendor looked over.
“Good oh?”
“Yes.”
The unnatural rot loosened as though his touch had treated it not merely as injury, but as disease.
Kaylor used more.
Life returned to the damaged flesh.
The invisible ceiling that had been pressed down upon his strength lifted.
Hexen stopped preparing his own restoration.
“You solved it.”
Kaylor continued healing.
“I did.”
Fendor nodded.
“Annoying.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“You wanted me permanently rotted?”
“No. I wanted to complain about it longer.”
Isamu examined his own wounds.
The worst of the creature’s corruption had not settled as deeply in him.
Nethnarel looked toward the statues.
They had begun this approach believing the weathered figures marked the entrance to whatever remained of Oslan.
Instead, they had released four undead horrors that attacked with a fear capable of pushing through protections designed to make fear impossible.
And before the first one appeared, something had spoken into Kaylor’s mind.
She turned toward him.
“What did you hear?”
Kaylor looked at the nearest statue.
For several seconds he considered keeping the words to himself.
Then he remembered what had happened the last time he investigated an ancient civilization while withholding useful information from the people standing beside him.
“He will not be happy.”
Fendor looked at the statue.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Excellent.”
Hexen dismissed the Wall of Thorns.
The great briars withered away, revealing disturbed ground and fading traces of black smoke.
Isamu walked toward the cave entrance.
The opening was shallow.
Dark.
Waiting.
Behind him, Kaylor studied the two weathered statues.
One looked like a warrior.
The other, perhaps, a mage.
Human enough to be unsettling.
Oslan had stopped being an old name in a ruined book.
Its magic had interfered with their flight.
Its mountain held the corpse of an ancient green dragon.
Its statues contained or guarded powerful dead things.
And somewhere—perhaps beneath their feet, perhaps across an impossible distance—there was a he who might object to their presence.
Fendor joined Kaylor.
“We could leave.”
Kaylor looked at him.
Fendor waited.
Kaylor continued looking.
“Yes,” Fendor said. “I thought I should mention the theoretical option.”
Nethnarel was already walking toward the statues.
Hexen followed.
Isamu stood at the cave.
Kaylor sheathed Final Word.
Fendor sighed.
“Of course.”
The five heroes moved deeper onto the summit.
Behind them, the ancient dragon’s empty skull watched the fog close slowly around its bones.
Ahead, Oslan waited to discover whether it was happy to have visitors.
Someone, apparently, would not be.