This would pass, he told himself. The unpleasant business with the bronze statue of Niln would resolve itself, as his rivalry with its subject eventually had. The gods knew that Al’Matra’s fancies were as transient as they were inscrutable.

The trick, he knew, was to mentally box these scriptures up and pack them away. Just like the silly rituals, and the monthly fasts, and the holy wars with better-armed temples. Pathalan found religion much more palatable when it was stripped of all the belief and obedience, and all that remained was unquestioned authority, free meals, and a complete lack of accountability. The life of a clergy member was a comfortable one, provided you set aside the gods.

The problem was that it was hard to set aside someone who was screaming fire into your brain every few minutes. Pathalan groaned as another scripture erupted from his quill.

The thing that had brought Pathalan to Al’Matra’s service rather than the richer, more prestigious temples was the All Mother’s benign absentmindedness. Whereas other gods took an interest in the observance of rituals, conduct in line with their divine ethos, and the balance of the temple coffers, Al’Matra was usually too preoccupied with stone fruit and mollusks to bother her high scribe. The High Scribe of Tandos wore a king’s ransom in jewels around her neck; the High Scribe of Musana liked to boast about his feasts with nobles; but Pathalan had freedom and time to relax in a way they and every other scribe in Andarun envied.

Or he had. Now he was chained to a goddess thrashing angrily in the weave, and unlike the more coherent gods, she couldn’t tell him what she wanted. Or how to stop the burning.

Another scripture erupted in his mind’s eye, searing the back of his eyeballs until he released the heat and pressure through his quill.

I don’t want to see them! I didn’t know! I couldn’t know! Don’t make me remember!

Pathalan straightened his features as he regarded the little verse. Intense? Yes. Insane? As always. But harmful? No. It was just another string of nonsense. It would pass when the goddess’ mood finally shifted. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that he could get through this.

Acolyte Penna set a saucer with a cup of tea on the high scribe’s desk and scurried away. The aroma of steeping blue manabloom and honeycomb brought a smile to Pathalan’s parched lips. If pugwort took the edge off, blue manabloom beveled it down to a cylinder. A tea brewed from its cobalt petals was inner peace and tranquility in a cup. A sip or two, and he’d be fine.

As he reached for the cup, his inner mind suddenly flared with the red heat of new scripture, and he felt his hand reflexively reach toward his quill. He grunted as he resisted the urge and reached for his tea instead.

His arm jerked back toward the page, doggedly moving to write the scriptures. Pathalan scowled. Not every verse had to be inscribed the moment it was relayed, of course. High scribes needed time to sleep, or use the chamber pot, or partake of some refreshments. It was only reasonable that this scripture could wait a moment, and so—grimacing with effort—the high scribe reached for his tea.

When Pathalan regained consciousness, he could smell damp pages and see the faint blue splodge across his parchment where the tea had spilled. There was a charred scent in the musty air as well, and the paper darkened and scorched around the edges of his latest, monosyllabic screed. The high scribe choked back a sob as he stared in horror at the single word scrawled around the edges of the page.

No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No

“No, no, no!” cried Ignatius, slapping the stone skull of the shrine.

The sculpture of Mordo Ogg stared impassively back at him, unswayed by the assault. The same electric blue light that had scorched its brows and sent molten tears dribbling down the god’s cheekbones still hissed and spat from the recesses of its eye sockets.

“Everything dies! You’re no exception!” barked the old priest. “You’ve got to know when to quit! It’s all part of the cycle! The cycle of change! You can’t stay the same forever!”

And then, quite horribly, something changed.

The shift wasn’t the sort of jolting surprise that had brought so many elderly people briefly passing through the shrine. Ignatius barely noticed it at first; there was just an odd quality in the air as he berated the stubborn light in his god’s eyes. The strange sensation resolved into a sound, a thin whine barely audible over the priest’s shouting. It grew in volume and pitch, as a teakettle left on the boil too long, and as the priest fell silent under its shrill protests he noticed wisps of smoke curling around the corners of the skull’s eye sockets. An overpowering scent of ozone curled the hairs in his nose.

Ignatius took a step back and regarded the skull. “This isn’t right,” he muttered. Worse still, it was wrong in a way he didn’t recognize.

He darted forward and opened a small compartment at the statue’s base. The heat rolling from Mordo Ogg’s face was intense enough to crack his lips and singe the charred stubs of his eyebrows. Frantically shuffling some old armor aside, the priest grabbed a lacquered ebony box from the cubby and darted back to a safe distance. With a deep sigh, he opened the box at a small hinge.

The top half of the case contained a paper note, on which someone had written “FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY.” The bottom half was a velvet pad, occupied by a single, greenish crystal. It flared with emerald light and gave a small chime when Ignatius pressed his index finger to it.

“Somethin’ wrong?”

Ignatius startled and looked at the speaker, a young Halfling in a courier’s cap. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and where there’s fire, there’s an audience. The lad stood at the fore of a group of assembling onlookers staring at the shrine. The courier nodded at the trails of smoke pouring from the shine’s blazing blue eyes. “’Cause it looks like that might be bad.”

“Very bad,” muttered Ignatius. His mind followed the implications and then, like a lost child who follows a trail of candy to a gingerbread house, wished that he had not. He jammed his finger on the crystal a few more times for good measure. “Worse than you can imagine.”

Chapter 26

“It’s hard to imagine this being any worse,” Heraldin sputtered. “Everyone thinks there’s some amazing treasure down here. People are counting on there being mountains of gold and gems! And we found what? A handful of broken statues?”

Gorm looked at the ring of seven marble figures at the center of the dragon’s dais. Their torsos were tall and barrel-chested, but notably deficient in extremities. The arms and legs of the figures were neatly stacked in front of their respective midsections, and each pile was topped with a head wearing a melancholy expression. But the terminal ends of their arms, legs, and necks were rounded and smooth.

“Not sure they’re broken, per se,” he said.

“These are Stennish artifacts preserved by low magic and guarded by a dragon.” Jynn carefully inspected the impeccably sculpted head of a woman with her hair up in elaborate braids. Her stoic features were broad and soft, despite being carved from the stone in sharp, fast cuts. It was an effect that Gorm had only seen on one other statue, and that stood in a square in Andarun’s Pinnacle Plaza. “They’re some of the best examples of Stennish sculpture I’ve ever seen, and perhaps the first fully rendered representations found of their leaders outside of the Dark Prince. They’re priceless.”

“No! No, they’re not priceless,” Heraldin ranted. “The problem is that they’re priced—very definitively priced—down to the last copper, and bought and sold by every bank, broker, and investor on Arth. By any estimate, each one of these statues needs to be worth a king’s ransom in order to not bankrupt half the world. And I doubt anyone can or would pay much for a bunch of make-your-own sculpture kits that⁠—”

A low rumble from the heights above reminded the bard that every good hero—or at least every hero who intends to see the inside of a tavern again—must always take their proximity to a dragon into account.

“That are masterfully crafted treasures nobody could dream of selling,” he squeaked, looking up into Kulxak’s fiery eye. “But still.”

“We can’t sell them anyway,” said Laruna, tending the dragon’s wounded scales. “They still belong to her, and we aren’t slaying this dragon. We don’t need any more bloodshed today.”

“Aye.” A pit opened up in Gorm’s stomach as he thought of Kaitha and Thane. He pushed the grief down beneath the surface; not to smother it, but to plant the seed that would bear the fruits of justice. He loosed the white-knuckled grip that his hand had subconsciously wrapped around the handle of his axe, and let out a long breath between his teeth. “But the problem’s still the same. There’s supposed to be a treasure, and there ain’t.”

“That puts it in line with the rest of this quest. There wasn’t supposed to be a dragon, and there was.” Heraldin’s voice dripped resentment.

“We’re supposed to kill her, and we won’t.” Laruna scratched under Kulxak’s chin, and the great dragon’s scales turned a satisfied golden hue.

“All true.” Gorm’s mind raced down the twisting path of memory that had brought him to this point. “Then again, we were all supposed to be dead, and most of us ain’t.”

“Were we?” asked Jynn.

A grin split Gorm’s beard. “Aye, far as Johan’s concerned. I’d bet my beard he was the one who sent them fancy undead to kill us just before the dragon broke through that big spell. The king didn’t want us to get this far, to see what we saw, to…” His mind reached the end of the thought before his mouth had time to catch up. “We need to go.”

“Where?” asked Heraldin. “We can’t go back to⁠—”

“Back to the city,” said Gorm.

“Of course you’d say that.” The bard threw his hands in the air and gave Gaist an exasperated look. “Of course he’d say that. I should just stop talking altogether!”

“That’s what we’ve all been saying, yes,” said Jynn.

Gorm had no time for such bickering. He was already stomping back across the narrow stone bridge between the dragon’s dais and the stone grove. “We need to get back to the surface before Johan realizes his trick with the Golden Dawn ain’t worked. There’s only a narrow chance...” He paused and looked at the others. “Come on! And Laruna, tell the dragon to stay here, for her own safety.”

“I can’t talk to her,” protested the pyromancer. “The gem shattered. I mean, I get a vague idea of her mood and I think she understands us up to a point, but there’s a language… barrier…” The mage fell silent as Gaist didn’t speak over her protests. Wordlessly, he stepped up in front of the dragon and crossed his arms.

The dragon regarded him coolly. Its scales turned a cold gray, tinted amber around their edges.

“Did he just interrupt me?” Laruna asked.

“Hush,” said Heraldin. “I don’t want to miss this.”

“Miss what?” Gorm asked, watching the exchange, or lack thereof, between warrior and dragon.