“Mariana, leave the lamps and come here,” she insisted.

The half-elf heard the tone in her voice and did not argue. When she reached Linsha, she started to say something then she, too, found the taint in the air. Her brow lowered to a worried frown. From her elf-blood she had inherited stronger senses, including a more powerful sense of smell. She knew immediately from which direction the smell emanated, and with Linsha beside her, she hurried along the passage. The rest of the group followed close on their heels. The tunnel here was high and wide and skillfully built, full of moving air, echoes, and a sense of space.

“I don’t know where this leads,” Linsha said.

“I don’t either,” was Mariana’s only reply.

They said nothing more for nearly a quarter of an hour as they walked through the dark passages of Iyesta’s lair and followed a smell that grew stronger with every passing minute. Even the soldiers of the guard and the militia had caught the smell and murmured worriedly among themselves.

All too soon the stench became heavy and pervasive. Linsha and Mariana covered their noses with their sleeves and pressed on in the thick darkness.

Something small and multi-legged skittered out of the light, its claws making hard scratching noises on the stone. The two women exchanged glances. They both recognized the creature in the brief glimpse they had before it disappeared-a large carrion beetle. And where there was one, there were usually more.

Linsha held the lantern overhead. There was a mutual gasp. More beetles clung to the wall and the ceiling of the passage, their oblong bodies iridescent with a sickly greenish light reflected from the lantern. So replete were they that they did not move as the group passed by them with lanterns.

“I believe we’re near the throne room,” Mariana said quietly. “There are supposed to be more large chambers under there connected by passages large enough even for Iyesta.”

“Did anyone notice this smell when they went down to check Iyesta’s hoard?”

The half-elf s voice was muffled through the cloth of her sleeve. The reek was so strong now that her eyes were watering. “I don’t believe so. That was three days ago. They would have investigated this.”

Just ahead, at the farthest edge of the light, they saw the passage come to an end in a high-arched doorway.

Beetles clung to the doorframe and scuttled across the floor. The blackness beyond was impenetrable, and out of the void came a stench so foul that the searchers could hardly draw breath.

Fighting off fear and sickness, Linsha, Mariana, and the soldiers groped forward into the dreadful opening. The walls and ceiling around them vanished into a vast space that echoed with their footsteps and the sound of uncountable insects scrabbling and chewing and chittering in the darkness.

Linsha raised the lantern again. The feeble lantern light spread a small pool of pale light across the great floor. It was not nearly bright enough to light the entire cavern, but it was enough to show them the end of their search. Her hand flew to the dragon scales on the chain under her shirt. Mariana gave a cry of despair.

They had found Iyesta.

Mourning a Friend

14

She lay sprawled across the floor of the abandoned stone chamber, a great hulking carcass that stretched almost from wall to wall. They knew it was she by the size of the corpse and by the piles of brass scales that heaped on the floor where the carrion beetles had chewed them loose to get at the flesh beneath. Withered and tattered skin hung over the skeleton like a ragged blanket. Bone shone through the rents and gaps in the half-devoured flesh. It was difficult to tell how long she had been dead, for the beetles had been hard at work and through the gaping holes and tears in the skin, the searchers could see the corpse writhe with the gorging insect bodies.

“Paladine preserve us!” Mariana moaned. “What did this to her?”

Huddled around the two small lanterns, the group made its slow way around the corpse toward the head. What they found dismayed them all.

“Oh, gods,” Linsha murmured for everyone.

The long, supple neck lay collapsed on the stone floor, mostly eaten away by the beetles, but where the head should have been was nothing but a dried pool of blood.

“Someone took her head,” breathed Mariana. “Who would do that?”

“Another dragon,” Linsha said flatly.

“Thunder?” gasped one of the soldiers.

The captain shook her head in disbelief. “How would a dragon have gotten in here? We’ve doubled the guards on this palace since Iyesta’s disappearance.”

“Since her disappearance,” Linsha repeated. “What about the night of the storm? All this time we’ve worried for her and looked for her, she’s been dead below our feet.” She whirled around, glaring at the tiny pool of light thrown from the lanterns. “We need more light. We must learn what happened here. Who killed her? Who took her head?”

Mariana readily agreed. “You three. Go back the way we came. Bring torches and all the help you can find. Tell anyone who comes down here to wear a mask. You three-” she turned to the next set of soldiers-“take word to the city elders, the Legion, and the Solamnic fortress that Iyesta is dead. I’m sure you are smart enough to leave Lady Linsha’s name out of your report. Now, you two-” she spoke to the remaining soldiers-“there is another entrance over there, large enough for a dragon. Get torches and see if that corridor leads to the treasure vault. The way should be shorter than the way we came.”

The guards and the militia soldiers were quite willing to obey, anything to get out of that chamber of reeking death. They took one of the lanterns and departed to their tasks, leaving Linsha and Mariana alone in the darkness that rustled and clicked with the sounds of thousands of carrion beetles.

Linsha stifled a shudder. This was so unbelievable.

How could Iyesta be dead? She was vibrantly alive and well and… invincible!… only six days ago. What had happened to her?

Linsha heard an odd, stifled sound and turned to see Mariana wipe tears from her eyes. Her strong shoulders were shaking. Linsha felt like weeping herself, but not here, not yet.

She strode around the corpse to the opposite side to examine it from a different angle and to allow the half-elf a measure of time to grieve alone. She lifted the lantern and began a careful and gruesome examination of the corpse under the feeble light. There wasn’t much to see. Except for the missing head, the dragon’s body was fairly intact despite the beetles. She had not been blasted or burned with sorcery or seared with another dragon’s breath weapon. It looked to Linsha as if the dragon had walked into the chamber and dropped dead in her tracks. A few hours ago, Linsha would have said that was impossible. Of all the possible clues or evidence Linsha had hoped to find down here, a dead dragon had never occurred to her.

A sickening thought suddenly struck her like a blow to the ribs. The dragon eggs. Iyesta had trusted them to her. What if they, too, had been destroyed? And what of the guardian, Purestian? For that matter, Linsha’s thoughts bolted up another path, where were the gold and silver dragons who had befriended Iyesta and stayed in her realm to serve her? Anger, grief, and blinded frustration swarmed into her heart like giant wasps stinging her to tears. She shook her head savagely.

The fact that Iyesta’s head was missing and the body withered pointed a finger to Thunder. Linsha could not believe that any one of the monstrous dragon overlords would have slipped into the Missing City unnoticed, killed Iyesta, taken her head, drained her magical energy, and left. Those dragons would have erupted into the city like comet, blasting death and destruction. They would have fought the brass for the thrill of the kill and, after taking her head, they would have burned Mirage to the ground.