“North,” the priest scout corrected. “North and west.”

Those words stung Cadderly, for the fireball he had witnessed was opposite that direction. The priest’s claim that “they were everywhere” reverberated in Cadderly’s thoughts, and he tried hard to tell himself that his children were safe in Carradoon.

“Without reliable magic, our struggle will be more difficult,” Cadderly said.

“Worse than you think,” said one of the Spirit Soaring escorts, and he looked to the scout to elaborate.

“Four of our nine were slain,” the man said. “But they didn’t stay dead.”

“Resurrection?” Cadderly asked.

“Undead,” the man explained. “They got back up and started fighting again—this time against the rest of us.”

“There was a priest or a wizard among the monsters’ ranks?”

The man shrugged. “They fell, they died, they got back up.”

Cadderly started to respond but bit it short, his eyes going wide. In the fight at Spirit Soaring the night before, at least fifteen men and women had been killed, and had been laid in a side room on the first level of the catacombs.

Cadderly leaped from his chair, alarm evident on his face.

“What is it?” the priest scout asked.

“Come along, all three,” he said, scrambling toward the back of the room. He veered to a side door to corridors that would allow him to navigate the maze of the great library more quickly.

Danica picked her way carefully but quickly along the trail, staying just to the side of the swath of devastation. It ran anywhere from five to ten long strides across, with broken trees and torn turf along its center, as if some great creature had ambled through. She saw only patches of deadness along the edges—not complete decay as she found in the middle of the trail, but spotty areas where sections of trees seemingly had simply died—along both sides.

The monk was loath to walk across that swath, or even enter the area of deepest decay, but when she saw a print on an open patch of ground, she knew that she had to learn more. She held her breath as she approached, for she recognized it as a footprint indeed, a giant footprint, four-toed and with great claws, the impression of a dragon’s foot.

Danica knelt low and inspected the area, taking particular interest in the grass. Not all of it was dead on the trail, but the nearer to the footprints, the more profound the devastation. She stood up and looked around at the standing trees along the sides, and envisioned a dragon walking through, crushing down any trees or shrubs in its path, occasionally flexing its wings, perhaps, which would have put them in contact with the bordering trees.

She focused on the dead patches of those trees, so stark in contrast with the vibrancy of the forest itself. Had the mere touch of the beast’s wings killed them?

She looked again at the footprint, and at the profound absence of life in the vegetation immediately surrounding it.

A dragon, but a dragon that killed so profoundly with a mere touch?

Danica swallowed hard, realizing that the hunched, fleshy crawlers might be the least of their problems.

CHAPTER 15

THE WEIGHT OF LEADERSHIP

They’re less likely to take comfort in his dwarf heritage if they think him an idiot,” Hanaleisa explained to Temberle, who was more than a little upset at the whispers he was hearing among the ranks of the Carradden refugees.

Temberle had insisted that Pikel, the only dwarf in the group and the only one who seemed able to conjure magical light in the otherwise lightless tunnels, would lead them through the dark. Though a few had expressed incredulity at the notion of following the inarticulate, green-bearded dwarf, none had openly disagreed. How could they, after all, when Pikel had undeniably been the hero of the last fight, freezing the water and allowing a retreat from certain disaster?

But that was yesterday, and the march of the last few hours had been a series of starts and stops, of backtracking and the growing certainty that they were lost. They had encountered no walking dead, at least, but that seemed cold comfort in those dank and dirty caves, crawling through tunnels and openings that had even the children on all fours, and with crawly bugs scurrying all around them.

“They’re scared,” Temberle whispered back. “They’d be complaining no matter who took the lead.”

“Because we’re lost.” As she spoke, Hanaleisa nodded her chin at Pikel, who stood up front, lighted shillelagh tucked under his stumped arm while he scratched at his thick green beard with his good hand. The strange-looking dwarf stared at a trio of tunnels branching out before him, obviously without a clue.

“How could we not be lost?” Temberle asked. “Has anyone been through here, ever?”

Hanaleisa conceded that point with a shrug, but pulled her brother along as she moved to join the dwarf and Rorick, who stood by Pikel’s side, leaning on a staff someone had given him to aid his movement with his torn ankle.

“Do you know where we are, Uncle Pikel?” Hanaleisa asked as she approached.

The dwarf looked at her and shrugged.

“Do you know where Carradoon is? Which direction?”

Without even thinking about it, obviously sure of his answer, Pikel pointed back the way they had come, and to the right, what Hanaleisa took to be southeast.

“He’s trying to get us higher into the mountains before finding a way out of the tunnels,” Rorick explained.

“No,” Temberle was quick to reply, and both Rorick and Pikel looked at him curiously.

“Eh?” said the dwarf.

“We have to get out of the tunnels,” Temberle explained. “Now.”

“Uh-uh,” Pikel disagreed, and he grabbed up his cudgel and held both of his arms out before him, mimicking a zombie to accentuate his point.

“Certainly we’re far enough from Carradoon to escape that madness,” said Temberle.

“Uh-uh.”

“We’re not that far,” Rorick explained. “The tunnels are winding back and forth. If we came out on a high bluff, Carradoon would still be in sight.”

“I do not disagree,” said Temberle.

“But we have to get out of the tunnels as soon as possible,” Hanaleisa added. “Dragging a gravely wounded man through these narrow and dirty spaces is sure to be the end of him.”

“And going above ground is likely to be the end of all of us,” Rorick shot back.

Hanaleisa and Temberle exchanged knowing looks. Watching the dead rise and come against them had profoundly unnerved Rorick, and certainly, the older twins shared that disgust and terror.

Hanaleisa walked over and draped her arm across Pikel’s shoulders. “Get us in sight of the open air, at least,” she whispered to him. “These close quarters and the unending darkness is playing on the nerves of all.”

Pikel reiterated his zombie posture.

“I know, I know,” Hanaleisa said. “I don’t want to go out and face those things again, either. But we’re not dwarves, Uncle Pikel. We can’t stay down here forever.”

Pikel leaned on his cudgel and gave a great, heaving sigh. He tucked the club under his stump and stuck a finger in his mouth, slurping about for a moment before pulling it forth with a hollow popping sound. He closed his eyes and began to chant as he held the wet finger up before him, magically sensitizing himself to the current of air.

He pointed to the right-hand corridor.

“That will get us out?” Hanaleisa asked.

Pikel shrugged, apparently unwilling to make any promises. He took up his glowing cudgel and led the way.

“We require the other four,” decided Yharaskrik, still in the body of Ivan and speaking through the dwarf’s mouth. “The lich First Grandfather Wu is lost to us, for now at least, but four others are missing and awaiting recall.”

“They are busy,” Hephaestus insisted.