The dragon left Oxland burning, and the heroes spent the next morning teaching the city how to survive its return.
Smoke still hung above the eastern quarter when Kaylor crossed the square.
The worst of the fires had been extinguished before dawn. Roofs continued to smolder. A row of houses near the wall had collapsed into blackened beams, and the stones beneath them retained enough heat to shimmer in the morning air.
The Manticore's Tail remained standing.
Part of its roof did not.
The awakened tree behind the bar had spent the night carrying buckets in both branchlike arms. It now stood in the street beside Hexen, its roots sunk into wet ash while the druid examined the damage.
One of the smaller awakened shrubs pushed a broom twice its own height through the doorway.
Another carried a cup toward Isamu.
Isamu accepted it.
The shrub waited.
He drank.
The shrub took the empty cup and returned inside.
"Efficient," Isamu said.
Grazim looked up at the missing section of roof.
"Our inn has been attacked by a dragon less than three days after we received it."
"It is still our inn," Nethnarel said.
"That is not the reassuring part."
Hexen placed one palm against the awakened tree's trunk.
It had gained a deep scorch across one side while helping fight the fire. Sap had hardened along the wound like amber.
"You did well," he told it.
The tree's branches rustled despite the absence of wind.
Kaylor stopped beside them.
Ash marked his blue-and-silver armor. The Cloak of Displacement shifted his outline by inches whenever anyone looked at him directly, as though the smoke had refused to release him.
"The dragon knows where we are," he said.
Fendor stood on the inn's remaining roof, watching the mountain.
Smoke rose from its summit in a dark line.
The dragon had returned there after the battle.
It had not attempted to hide its lair.
Perhaps it believed the city had learned the proper lesson.
Hexen looked toward the armory district.
"Then Oxland needs more than buckets."
The work began before breakfast.
The city possessed a capable armory, a lumber yard and enough craftspeople to turn fear into preparation if someone gave it direction. Hexen did.
He asked for longbows.
Not hunting bows. War bows.
He asked for arrows in numbers that caused the first fletcher to stare at him, then begin calculating how many apprentices could be borrowed from neighboring shops.
He asked the carpenters and smiths to build ballistae for the walls and rooftops, with reinforced mounts capable of turning toward any quarter of the sky.
Fendor came down from the roof when the word arrows reached him.
"How many?" the master fletcher asked.
"Enough," Fendor said.
The man waited.
Fendor considered the size of the red dragon.
"More than enough."
Isamu looked toward him.
"A precise quantity."
"Nine billion would be preferable."
The fletcher's expression changed.
Fendor rested one hand on the Oathbow.
"Begin with what can be finished before it returns."
That answer proved more useful.
The armory bell rang throughout the morning. Townspeople who had hidden from the giants arrived asking what they could carry, build or learn. Some had used bows before. Most had not.
Fendor arranged the experienced archers along the walls and placed the inexperienced ones in the square with straw targets.
Kaylor inspected the gates.
The giants had damaged both, but the hinges remained sound. He ordered water barrels placed beside every tower and had the guard clear debris from the streets so defenders could move without being trapped between burning buildings.
Grazim organized healers at the keep and marked the stone cellars that could shelter families if the dragon returned.
His new height did not diminish his authority.
It did, however, force him to stand on a crate while addressing the city guard.
No one laughed.
Isamu did not count.
Nethnarel walked the streets with Gygax upon her shoulder, searching for places where fire could leap easily from roof to roof. Whenever she found one, she marked it for demolition or soaked the timber with magic and water.
The awakened trees became part of the defense.
The largest took its place outside the Manticore's Tail like a living bouncer, thick branches resting over the doorway. Smaller shrubs continued carrying cups and sweeping ash, but Hexen spoke to each before assigning it any task.
"They are not servants," he told the innkeeper who had once owned the building. "They are helping because they choose to."
The man looked at a shrub carrying six mugs at once.
"Do they want payment?"
Hexen considered the question.
"Sunlight. Water. Respect."
"That is less than the last staff required."
"Give them more respect than the last staff received."
By midday, Oxland looked less like a rescued city and more like a settlement preparing for siege.
It still was not enough.
The heroes had wounded the dragon.
They had not come close to killing it.
They had survived because its breath had not struck all six at once, because Grazim's radiance and Fendor's arrows had reached it and because Hexen had pursued long enough to make retreat more attractive than another pass over the city.
The next attack might be different.
The dragon had seen them.
It would remember.
They gathered in Oxland's library that afternoon.
The building occupied two cramped rooms beside the keep. Its shelves held tax records, farming ledgers, local histories and enough devotional texts to prove that every priest who had served the city believed his sermons deserved preservation.
Books about dragons occupied less than half a shelf.
Hexen read them all.
The information was broad and old.
The chromatic dragons were cruel.
Red dragons were creatures of fire, pride and destruction.
The largest could live for centuries and regard kingdoms as temporary disturbances upon land they already considered theirs.
None of the texts described a red dragon living near Oxland.
None recorded any dragon in the region for generations.
That confirmed what the earthquake, sulfur and smoking mountain had already suggested.
The creature had either arrived recently or awakened from a long sleep beneath the range.
Nethnarel stood over a table covered in open books.
"We know it breathes fire."
Grazim touched the blackened edge of his cloak.
"We had discovered that."
"We know it is ancient."
"Also discovered."
"We know the library is not useful."
Isamu sat on the windowsill.
"The library has confirmed three things we already knew. That is a form of usefulness."
Kaylor looked toward the mountain through the narrow window.
"There must be a way to force it to the ground."
"Chains," Fendor said.
"Large chains," Hexen added.
"Ballistae," Grazim said.
"Nine billion arrows," Isamu said.
Fendor nodded once.
"That remains the best plan."
Nethnarel turned a page.
Her eyes moved across a passage concerning extradimensional spaces.
"There is another possibility."
The others looked at her.
She explained the old magical warning.
A portable hole placed inside a Bag of Holding could tear open a passage between planes. Anything caught close enough might be drawn through before the rupture closed.
Silence followed.
Kaylor considered the size of the dragon.
"How large is the hole?"
"Not large enough."
"Do we possess one?"
"No."
"Do we possess a Bag of Holding?"
The question ended the discussion more effectively than any criticism could have.
Their Bag of Holding had vanished with Leonidas.
So had Leonidas.
Nethnarel closed the book.
"It was a possibility."
"A possibility requiring two objects we do not have and a dragon willing to stand upon one of them," Isamu said.
"Yes."
"Excellent."
"You have offered nothing better."
"Nine billion arrows."
Fendor looked pleased that the idea had spread.
Hexen left the dragon shelf and began searching the oldest local histories instead.
If the library held no answer written for dragons, it might contain an answer written for something else.
Weapons survived the enemies for which they had been made.
So did temples.
So did the places where civilizations buried what they feared others would use.
Late in the day, he found a reference in a crumbling tome whose leather cover had lost its title.
The passage described a sanctuary beyond the northern road, a place called the Resting Place of Elinder.
One account called it a temple.
Another called it a library.
A third described it as a repository built around powers older than the kingdoms that now claimed the mountains.
Every account agreed upon one thing.
People went there searching for knowledge, weapons or treasure.
They did not return.
Hexen read the final line twice.
Then he carried the book to the others.
Grazim studied the faded route drawn beside the text.
"This is not a map."
"It is almost a map."
"It is a line leaving Oxland and disappearing into mountains."
"That is the correct direction."
Kaylor read the accounts of the missing travelers.
"How long since anyone returned?"
"No one recorded a successful return."
Isamu stood from the windowsill.
"Promising."
Fendor examined the page.
"If the place contains weapons, others would have taken them."
"Unless the others died before reaching them," Nethnarel said.
"Also promising," Isamu replied.
Kaylor looked again toward the smoking mountain.
Going directly there would satisfy the part of him that wanted to answer the dragon's fire with steel.
It would also risk repeating the battle over Oxland without rooftops, distance or a city full of people dividing the creature's attention.
They needed knowledge.
They needed a way to keep the dragon from simply leaving the moment the fight turned against it.
They needed something the small library could not provide.
"We go to Elinder," he said.
The decision changed the work in Oxland.
The ballistae continued.
The arrows continued.
The guards trained beneath Fendor's direction while the awakened trees carried water, moved timber and watched the sky.
The heroes left instructions with the city council and the keep.
If smoke thickened over the mountain, the bells would ring.
If the dragon appeared, the people would move to the marked cellars while the trained archers took the walls.
The Manticore's Tail would remain open as a command post and shelter.
The large awakened tree stood at its door when the heroes departed.
Hexen touched its bark.
"Protect them."
The tree bowed one heavy branch.
They followed the northern road.
The smoke from the dragon's mountain remained visible for most of the first day.
By the second, the road bent through wooded hills and the peak disappeared behind the range.
The route in Elinder's book proved less useful than Grazim had feared and more useful than he had expected. It named streams, old boundary stones and a fork where the right-hand road climbed while the left descended toward abandoned farmland.
Most of those landmarks still existed.
Some had changed enough to require argument.
Isamu won two of those arguments by walking ahead until the others were forced to follow.
On the third night, they camped among trees a short distance from the road.
No fire large enough to be seen from the mountains was permitted.
Kaylor took the first watch.
Hexen took the late watch and remained awake after the others settled, listening to the forest.
The road carried sound before it carried danger.
Voices rose to the north.
Angry voices.
A man shouted for someone to hand over what he had stolen.
Another voice denied knowing what they meant.
Branches broke.
A pony screamed.
Hexen stood.
"Wake up."
Isamu opened his eyes.
"Dragon?"
"People."
"Less dangerous."
A second shout came from the road.
"Usually," Hexen added.
They moved north through the trees.
The scene waited around the next bend.
Five human men surrounded an elf beside a small pony. The elf's pack had been pulled partly from the animal's back. One of the men held its strap while another stood close enough to strike him.
The elf wore travel-stained clothing and carried no visible weapon.
He looked more angry than frightened until Kaylor stepped from the trees.
Then he looked at the dragonborn's armor, Fendor's bow, Nethnarel's horns, Isamu's hands and the halfling priest carrying a warhammer.
His expression became more complicated.
Hexen walked into the road.
"Leave him alone."
The five men turned.
One of them tightened his grip on the pack.
"This man stole from our village."
The elf looked toward the heroes.
"They came from the woods and attacked me. I have never seen them before."
The men began shouting at once.
Kaylor raised one hand.
The movement silenced them.
"No one leaves until we know the truth."
"We know it," the apparent leader said. "He took the idol from our temple."
"What idol?" Grazim asked.
The man described a carved image of the Naked Goddess, the central relic of their village shrine.
The elf laughed once in disbelief.
"I have no idol. Naked or otherwise."
The men surged forward.
Kaylor drew his sword halfway.
They stopped.
Grazim stepped between both sides.
His new body made him the smallest person in the road.
The divine power gathering around him made that irrelevant.
A clear pressure spread from the point where he stood. It did not compel speech. It made deliberate falsehood impossible within its reach.
Grazim looked at the elf.
"Did you steal their relic?"
"No."
The answer crossed the spell without resistance.
Truth.
Grazim turned to the leader.
"Did this elf steal the relic from your village?"
"Yes."
Truth again.
The night became very quiet.
Nethnarel looked between them.
"That is inconvenient."
"One of them may be wrong without lying," Fendor said.
The villagers swore they had tracked the thief from their shrine.
The elf swore he had never entered their village.
Both statements remained true as far as Grazim's spell could determine.
Kaylor pointed toward the pack.
"Open it."
The elf hesitated.
"You believe them?"
"I believe that someone is missing an idol."
After a moment, the elf opened his pack.
They found rations, feed for the pony, spare clothing, rope and the ordinary possessions of a traveler.
No idol.
Nethnarel examined the bag for concealed magic.
Fendor searched the seams.
Nothing appeared.
"Search him," one villager demanded.
The elf backed away.
"You have searched my belongings. You will not put your hands on me."
The leader's patience failed.
He lunged.
The two hit the road together.
The villager pinned the elf beneath him and tore at his coat and belt. When he found nothing, he drew a dagger and placed it against the elf's throat.
"Where did you hide it?"
Isamu crossed the distance before the final word left his mouth.
A blade flared in his hand.
Fire ran along its edge.
"Put that down."
The villager looked up.
Then he drove the dagger toward Isamu instead.
The strike missed.
Isamu answered with an open palm.
He had intended restraint.
The blow still drove the man to one knee.
A second strike locked the villager's body before he could rise.
The remaining men attacked.
One rushed Kaylor and struck armor instead of flesh. Another moved toward Grazim, perhaps believing the smallest opponent would be the easiest.
Grazim's shield proved him wrong.
The road erupted into a fight no one had intended and everyone had helped create.
Kaylor used the flat of his sword and the edge of his shield to drive one attacker down without killing him.
Isamu kept the first man stunned and turned upon a second.
Grazim struck once with his warhammer, then shouted for the villagers to surrender.
They did not.
An arrow crossed the road.
Fendor's target fell and did not move again.
Another man charged past the body.
A burst of magic struck him before he reached Nethnarel.
The light was brief.
The result was not.
Within moments, the attack ended.
Two villagers lay unconscious.
At least one was dead.
The rest had either fallen or dropped their weapons when they understood what stood against them.
The elf crawled backward from everyone.
His eyes moved from the dead villager to the heroes who had supposedly rescued him.
"Stay where you are," Hexen said.
The elf continued moving.
Hexen cast.
Invisible force reached for the traveler and failed to close around him.
The elf froze for a different reason.
He had felt the spell.
"You attacked me."
"You resisted the spell," Nethnarel said.
"That is not a crime."
"It is suspicious."
"You are suspicious."
Isamu stepped toward him.
The elf rose.
"Do not."
Isamu struck twice.
They were controlled blows, intended to stop rather than kill.
The first should have folded an ordinary traveler.
The second should have left him unable to move.
The elf staggered, but remained standing.
He stared at Isamu.
Isamu stared back.
"More suspicious," Nethnarel said.
Fear magic followed.
It slid past the elf without changing his expression.
Grazim lowered his hammer.
"Why are we attacking the person we came to rescue?"
No one answered immediately.
Fendor stepped between Isamu and the elf.
He spoke in Elvish.
"Stop. We saved you. We only want to understand what happened."
The traveler answered in the same language.
"They attacked me. Then you attacked them. Now you are attacking me."
Fendor considered that.
"That is accurate."
The elf raised both empty hands.
"I have not struck any of you."
That was also accurate.
Kaylor sheathed his sword.
The others slowly did the same.
The remaining villagers were bound until they could be questioned again or taken to the nearest settlement. Grazim tended the unconscious, though he did not restore the man Fendor's arrow had killed.
The truth spell had failed to identify a liar because it was possible neither side believed it was lying.
That left a stolen relic, a group of dead or injured villagers and an elf who had resisted enough magic to make an ordinary roadside thief seem unlikely.
The elf gathered his pack.
"My name is Jorah," he said.
The exact shape of the longer elven name that followed was lost beneath accent and irritation. Jorah was the part he offered them.
He claimed to come from the northern kingdoms.
He claimed he had been traveling alone toward Oxland.
He claimed to be a thief.
Isamu looked at him.
"You say that as though it improves matters."
"It explains why I do not travel wearing a sword."
"It does not explain why a village believes you stole its god."
"I did not steal their god."
Grazim's lingering magic accepted the answer.
Fendor spoke to him again in Elvish.
"We are traveling to an old sanctuary in the mountains. We are searching for something that may help us kill an ancient red dragon."
Jorah looked toward the dark road.
Then at the bodies.
Then at the six people who had complicated his night beyond recovery.
"That sounds like a noble quest."
"It may be a fatal one."
"At the moment, traveling with you appears safer than traveling behind you."
Nethnarel smiled.
Jorah agreed to join them.
He trusted Fendor.
He did not claim to trust anyone else.
The feeling was mutual.
They continued north the next morning with seven travelers and one pony.
Gygax watched Jorah from Nethnarel's shoulder.
Fendor walked near him.
Isamu walked behind him.
Hexen's expression suggested that if the elf attempted to steal anything, the forest itself might report it.
Jorah endured the attention for most of the day.
At last he looked toward Fendor.
"Do they always behave this way?"
"No."
Jorah appeared relieved.
"Sometimes it is worse," Fendor added.
The right fork climbed into the mountains.
The road narrowed until it became a trail between dark pines and broken stone. Old markers appeared beside it, their carvings softened by rain and time.
Elinder's name survived on only one.
Beyond that point, the route vanished beneath fallen needles.
They followed the shape of the land instead.
Jorah proved useful.
He found old cuts in the rock where steps had once been. He noticed a line of stones too regular to be natural and uncovered the remains of a paved approach beneath moss.
That did not make the heroes trust him.
It made them watch him more carefully.
The mountains closed around them.
Near sunset, they found the entrance.
It stood alone upon a high slope, far from any graveyard or ruined settlement.
At first, it looked like a low stone structure buried beneath the mountain.
Then the angle changed.
The heroes saw the shape.
A vast passage descended through worked stone toward something hidden below. The architecture widened as it fell, forming the buried outline of a pyramid or temple whose upper levels had been swallowed by the mountain.
No gate barred the way.
No lock waited to be opened.
The entrance had simply remained open.
Grazim looked into the descending darkness.
"Either no one has entered for a very long time..."
"Or no one who entered returned to close it," Isamu finished.
They lit no torches.
Nethnarel's magic provided enough light to descend.
The passage sloped deeper than expected. Walls that had seemed merely large at the surface became immense below it.
The builders had not shaped the place for ordinary people.
Or they had wanted ordinary people to feel very small.
The tunnel ended at an opening framed by stone teeth.
Beyond it rose the interior of a colossal skull.
Not a carving upon a wall.
Not a statue placed above a door.
The chamber itself had been built in the shape of a titan's head. Curving stone formed the jaw and cheekbones. Empty eye sockets climbed into darkness. The ceiling arched like the inside of a cranium large enough to contain a temple.
Jorah's pony refused to continue.
Kaylor stepped to the threshold.
Fendor raised the Oathbow.
Hexen held the Staff of the Woodlands close.
Grazim looked upward into the dead titan's empty eyes.
The old book in Oxland had called this place a library.
It had called it a sanctuary.
It had called it the Resting Place of Elinder.
None of those names had mentioned the skull.
Isamu stood beside Kaylor.
"Promising," he said.
The road to the Grand Library ended between the teeth of a dead titan.
The heroes entered its mouth.