Night guild 2, p.32
Night Guild 2, page 32
“There they are!” a voice cried from behind them. “Get them!”
Shadow and flame clashed in the hall, and the four companions whirled and found themselves face-to-face with four Crimson Knights. The men were tall and clad from head to foot in steel plate armor, and they carried long swords.
Tanya leapt forward with a cry of hatred to tackle the foremost of the steel-clad warriors. He raised his sword but she was lightly-armored and driven by righteous anger. He was equipped for fighting on a battlefield, not in a narrow corridor. As he raised his sword to strike, his companions were forced to move back to avoid being struck by the blade. The tip of his sword knocked against the stone wall, striking sparks that lit up in the darkness and sending his blow awry.
With ferocious speed, Tanya rained blows on him, knocking off the leather straps that held his steel breastplate in place. The plate fell, and she drove her sword through the chainmail below it into his shoulder.
The others crowded in behind her. Ronan saw Eric dive low to take out the legs of one of the fighters, while Diana hurled a throwing dagger with incredible accuracy to punch through the eye socket of the faceless helmet of another.
For his part, Ronan summoned a shadow blade while also pushing a tentacle of shadow out to tip his opponent over at the legs. The man crashed to the ground and Ronan jumped on him, knocking his helmet up and driving his shadow sword into the man’s neck.
The only one still alive was the one that Tanya had tackled first, but he tripped backward over the fallen bodies of his companions, landing with a crash on the ground that sounded like a whole case full of plates falling to the ground.
Tanya finished him with a thrust of her sword, and the four companions jumped up, looking around for further threats. Behind them, in the altar room, the shadow figure of the Night God still grappled with the red wraith of Mala. Crackling energy blasted through the room as shadows and stabbing blasts of red light fought for supremacy.
“We have to find where the brotherhood is hiding,” Ronan said. “The Night God commands it. We must use the time he has bought us!”
They charged away down the hall, leaving the fallen knights and the grappling gods as they ran back the way they had come. They reached the hall where they had entered and looked around.
It was then they saw the doorway leading downward.
In one corner of the hall, a flight of steps ran up to the tower, but another ran straight down. From the flight of steps leading down, a red light was glowing.
“There,” Ronan said. “That must be where they are hiding. Come on! Let’s finish this once and for all.”
Ronan, Eric, and Diana still had a dragon egg each on their backs, but they did not feel them as burdens. Rather, they felt a strange urging forward from the eggs. The eggs were not fully activated, and yet the magic that was in them even with only partial activation seemed to be waking up as they moved swiftly down the spiral staircase.
The stairs were rough stone, and they were nothing like the beautiful and well-made appearance of the temple upstairs. The walls were rough as well, and filthy black marks stained the walls where the torch sconces sat, their orange flames lighting the stairwell with an unhealthy flickering glow.
“The brotherhood are showing their true colors down here,” Diana muttered.
The stairs ended abruptly in a long corridor. The friends followed this, and as they did so they could hear the sound of voices chanting, getting louder and louder as they got closer.
“Be ready,” Ronan warned his friends. “We’re nearly upon them.”
They came to the end of the corridor, where a short flight of stairs led down into a wide room with a vaulted ceiling. The four friends came up carefully and peered around the corner of the doorway into the room. The sight they saw was horrifying.
The room was packed with people, all dressed in red and black robes with the symbol of the brotherhood on their backs in gold. They stood in a circle, hands raised, around a long, low stone table. On the table lay a man, dressed in white, with his eyes closed.
They had no difficulty recognizing the Crimson Knight that they had been pursuing. He still wore his tattered white robes, and his face was filthy and stained from long travel. His eyes were closed, and on his chest, glowing with power, was the yellow and red dragon egg from the town of Eila.
The Silent Brothers were concentrating on their ritual, and they did not pay any attention to the four companions at the doorway. They seemed intent on the egg and the prorate figure of the knight, and Ronan could see that he and his friends had arrived at a critical moment. In fact, from the pulsing of energy running around the egg, and the speed and intensity of the chanting, it seemed that the ritual was about to reach its culmination.
There’s only one thing for it, he said, speaking to his companions through the mind link. We have to disturb their ritual before it reaches its climax.
I think they’re going to kill the knight, Diana said. They will want his spirit to flow into the egg. According to the priest at Eila, it’s already been bathed in fire during the burning of the old temple at Eila. All it will need will be battle blood, and then it will hatch!
We don’t want that to happen, Ronan said firmly. Not right now. We don’t know what a hatching dragon will look like, but we’re here to fight, and we don’t need the extra work of looking after a dragon hatchling.
The others agreed. The mind link communication had the advantage of being incredibly quick. Really, it took almost no time at all. Even as they communicated, however, they saw a menacing figure step out from the crown of chanting Silent Brothers. The figure was robed all in red, without any mark or device on him.
In his raised hand, he held an ornate golden knife, and he was advancing on the figure of the knight.
“Now!” Ronan roared, not using the mind link anymore. He conjured a shadow longsword and charged into the midst of the circle.
His friends followed him, roaring battlecries and making as much noise as possible to disrupt the ritual and upset the spell.
Ronan could almost see Guildsman Janus shaking his head in disapproval at their noisy entrance onto the scene, but even Janus would surely admit that sometimes making a spectacle is the only way to achieve your goals.
It worked. The chanting faltered, the evil light in the room wavered, and the Silent Brothers stepped back, breaking the circle. Ronan cut one of them down with his sword, then another, and then yet another. These were unarmed men, caught unawares, and yet he felt not a twinge of conscience as he slew them. His father had been unarmed, asleep in his bed, when he had died at the orders of the Brotherhood. Diana’s parents, Eric’s village, even Tanya’s grandparents, priests of the old gods in Eila.
It was of these innocents that Ronan thought of as he tore through the Silent Brotherhood like a wind through the grasses, and he knew that his friends felt the same.
The four companions stuck together as their Fighter Guild instincts taught them, but they fought with a deadly combination of Fighter Guild and Night Guild skills. They picked and dived, stealth fields crackling and diverting the eyes of their foes, shadows raining from their swords to create distractions even as they attacked the brothers in their own right.
Within moments of their furious attack, chaos reigned in the hall. The Silent Brothers drew blades and tried to form up for a defense, but they were not ready for it. Many of them seemed to be under the influence of some intoxicant, and they stared bleary-eyed at the newcomers as if they had no idea what was going on.
Then, a harsh shout from somewhere in the hall seemed to bring them to their senses, and they closed ranks around the table in the middle of the chamber. The red figure with the knife advanced more quickly toward the unconscious knight who held the dragon egg.
Ronan had to stop the man with the knife from killing the knight. If he did so, the knight’s spirit would flow into the egg, and when the dragon hatched it would be a tool of the brotherhood, and possibly corrupted or deformed in some way. He was at the heart of the brotherhood’s conspiracy now, and tantalizingly close to the answers to all his questions.
What was the brotherhood’s goal? What twisted monster would emerge from the dragon egg if the brotherhood had its way and was able to complete its ritual? What terrible use would they put the dragon to if they had managed to hatch it for themselves?
All these questions flew through Ronan’s mind as he saw the red-clad figure raise the gold knife above the chest of the knight.
He leapt up into the air, pushing all the power of the shadows around him into the spring. Raw power ran through him, lifting him up in the air in a mighty jump that was worthy of a cat more than of a man. Six feet in the air from standing, he flew up over the heads of the startled Silent Brothers even as he heard the shouts of his friends encouraging him from behind.
In the air, he straightened out and reached his arms out, dropping his shadow blade as he dived toward the egg.
At the very moment the gold knife slammed into the chest of the knight, Ronan connected with the dragon egg, grabbing it and catching it up into his arms as he flew over the knight and crashed onto the ground on the other side.
A roar of anger came up from the brothers around him, led by the red-cloaked executioner, but before they could turn their blades on him Eric, Diana, and Tanya were among them, their swords swinging in every direction as they drove the brothers back. Eric himself took the head off the red-cloaked executioner.
But as they fought, Ronan saw something that caught his attention entirely. The ghost of the knight, slain on the table, had risen from the corpse and was now looking around, eyes blazing. It caught sight of the egg and began to dive toward Ronan, arms outstretched for the egg.
There was only one thing Ronan could do. He had to keep the ghost of the Crimson Knight from occupying the egg, or all their efforts would be lost. He scrabbled at his belt pouch and pulled out the crystal that contained the ghost of the priest from Eila. The crystal glowed bright, and it was hot enough to burn Ronan’s hand.
Without hesitation, he slammed it onto the surface of the egg and felt the spirit flow from the crystal into the dragon egg.
Chapter 21
“No!” the knight’s ghost screamed in a voice loud enough that Ronan could hear it over the shouting of the brothers and the clashing of weapons. The ghost, and all the nearby Silent Brothers, charged at Ronan, but a moment after he slammed the crystal to the surface of the dragon egg a shockwave blasted out from it, thundering outward in an expanding circle from where Ronan lay.
The wave sent Silent Brothers flying, knocking them over and sending them crashing to the ground as the one in the red robes with the golden knife screamed at them to get up and fight.
As the knight’s ghost reached him, Ronan felt cold hands grabbing at his throat, but the ghost was struggling to manifest itself in a material form. Ronan hugged the egg to himself with his left hand and punched out with his right, catching the ghost in the face but feeling only a cold, slight resistance, as if he’d punched a spider web.
The ghost, who had not been pushed back by the shockwave, roared out a prayer to Mala, but it was not answered. Ronan grinned fiercely. He reckoned that Mala was still somewhat occupied fighting the Night God upstairs to be answering prayers.
For his own part, he felt that the Night God’s presence had left him entirely. He was on his own.
He reached out and dragged shadow to himself. It was everywhere, clustered in the corners of the hall and creeping along the floor below the fallen brothers. Using the shadow, he powered a blast of force from his right hand, firing it mercilessly at the center of the ghost’s chest.
The spirit was knocked backward by the shadow, and Ronan saw the shadow transforming into a crowd of eerie hands that grappled the ghost and dragged him downward. Clearly, shadows were able to cross the boundary between the physical world and the world of the spirits.
Ronan took his chance. He looked around for his friends and found that they had righted themselves and were fighting through the crowd to get toward him.
He tucked the egg more firmly under his arm, summoned a shadow sword, and charged toward them. “Let’s go!” he shouted. “Let’s go! We’ve got the egg!”
But his plan was not to be fulfilled so easily. From behind him, he heard a malevolent screech, and he saw from the corner of his eye a flash of red. He half turned, too late to stop the blow that hit him in the side of the head and sent him sprawling.
The egg left his grip, curving through the air. Time seemed to slow. The red-cloaked Silent Brother was advancing toward him, and he had thrown back his hood to reveal a terrible face that was not a face at all…it was a skull, but a skull coated in gold.
Two wild, lidless eyes stared out from the sockets of the skull, but that was the only suggestion of normality that was left in the terrible face. From within the skull’s malevolently grinning mouth, a horrible voice came, screaming curses and imprecations at the assassins. In the creature’s hand there was a gold scepter in the shape of the circle and triangle of Mala, and it was this that the red-cloaked brother had struck Ronan with, causing him to fall and drop the egg.
Now, he flipped over on his back and sprang out of the way of another Silent Brother who had darted toward him with a knife in hand. He took out that second attacker’s legs with a sweeping kick and leaped over him, away from the screaming skull-faced brother’s second swing with the scepter.
He glanced around for the egg, and then he saw it. As his eyes fell on it, he suddenly became aware that everyone else in the hall had seen it too. The Silent Brothers had stopped attacking, and were all drawing slowly back from the sight.
“What have you done, you fools?” the golden skull brother whispered, as even he backed away from the scene.
The egg lay near the entrance to the basement chamber now, but it lay in a pool of blood. The blood of the Silent Brothers, spilled in furious battle by Tanya, Ronan, Eric, and Diana, lay thick on the floor of the chamber.
It was being absorbed.
“The egg has been bathed in its element of sacred fire,” the ghost at Eila village’s temple had said. It had been bathed in its element, and activated with a willing spirit, and now it was being soaked in blood shed in battle. This was a dragon egg that had fulfilled the three necessary stages for full activation.
As Ronan watched, the blood from the floor around the egg was drawn up into it like water into a sponge. The egg moved as if it were being lifted by an unseen hand, rolling from side to side and then standing upright on its slightly flattened base.
Bright light shone out from the egg suddenly. For a moment, Ronan could see the shape of the creature inside, and then the light became too bright to see by. He glanced around. The Silent Brothers had all lost any interest in fighting them, and they had all backed away toward the edges of the hall. Some were looking hopefully toward the exit.
Diana glanced at Ronan, then jerked her head toward the door. He moved, running toward the dragon egg as he headed for the door, his friends joining him. Once they stood with their backs to the exit, they shielded their eyes as they gazed toward the dragon egg.
Light shone out unbearably bright from it for a moment longer, and then it faded. There was a loud crack, like thick ice breaking, and a howl of rage and fear sounded from the golden skull brother.
“You have birthed a dragon!” he screeched. “You have birthed a dragon without any control! Who knows what it will be? You have birthed a dragon!” he screamed again.
And so they had.
The egg had shattered like ceramic, large pieces lying scattered around the floor in every direction from the center. In the middle, in a pool of thick, clear liquid that glittered as if it was shot through with powdered gold, a baby dragon blinked and stared around at them with wide, innocent eyes.
The creature was not exactly what Ronan had expected. He’d thought of the dragons as being more terrifying, scalier, more like lizards or snakes. This creature reminded him most of a puppy, though it was scaly and its long tail looked as if it would grow to be as powerful as a battering ram in time.
Diana took two steps toward it, and it swung its head toward her with a look of alarm.
Its skin was a gleaming yellow, the color of fresh egg yolk, and running along its body was a fine tracery or red lines, like the red lines that had run along the outside of the egg. Its eyes gleamed blue and silver as it regarded the four friends on one side and the Silent Brothers crowded against their wall on the other side.
“Hey,” Diana said quietly, crouching and holding out a hand to the creature.
The dragon had been sitting on its rump, but now it dropped forward onto its four paws, and Ronan caught a glimpse of the gleaming black claws that were retracted within the big feet like those of a cat. The whole creature from nose to rump could not have been more than two feet in length, though the tail was as long again. Heavy wings were folded tightly across its back.
It regarded Diana with wary eyes and blinked. Then it looked at the golden skull brother, who stood a little way off, his scepter in his hand, and his followers all clustered behind him as if behind a shield.
“It must die,” the gold skull hissed. “It must be killed. There is no telling what it will become.”
“But you were going to hatch it yourself,” Ronan shot back. “What’s the difference?”
“You have no idea what you’re dealing with, you idiot,” the gold skull replied haughtily. “We of the brotherhood know how to deal with these creatures. We hatch them with great care, letting them grow only in our own decided way, along the lines of our own plan. With the spirit of a good Crimson Knight animating the creature, it can be turned to our will and our use, and we can use it for…”
“Enough, Kashog,” another brother said, sternly. “Would you reveal all our secrets?” This man looked more normal than the gold skull. He was a tall, swarthy man with a black beard and dark eyes, his skin tanned by much time spent outdoors. He looked at Ronan and his friends.
