Realms of the Dragons II - The Year of the Rogue Dragons Anthology by Philip Athans

Author:Philip Athans [Unknown]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast

Aged as you are, we measure the centuries a pace apart. I will claim you, in time. We will become dust together a thousand years hence, as Faerun is reshaped, remade again and again.

Too long! Impatience flared—rock and slab felt the blow of the dragon's desperation. There must be certainty. I must know that what is in my mind and breast will not be left to scavenge.

If you leave nothing behind, will it be that Amrennathed herself never was?

This time, Amrennathed wasn't certain if it was the mountain speaking or her own traitorous thoughts.

It does not matter, the dragon insisted.

By the measure of your kind, will you have failed?

I am the measure of myself! Pride had not left Amrennathed's mind, though the mountain had laid waste to her body.

Arrow-bright, an image flashed before the stone. Unused to the hard color, light, and sound, the mountain shuddered at the sudden barrage of all three.

102* UlEICH

A Zhentarim spy crouched on his knees, head thrown back in agony as a purple-hued claw caressed his spine, shredding black robes and peeling a fine layer of flesh.

Radiances pulsed and fed from the man's slack mouth into the claw. Amrennathed's mind-voice was soft, at first coaxing, then demanding, as the man shrieked and sobbed and gave the last vestiges of the spells he'd gathered in his long life to the dragon.

The image dissolved in screams, and another memory swelled in its wake.

In a filthy Skullport loft, Iamras Sonmaire crouched before an altar of metal and bone, a bloodied dagger point thrust into the crooked planks next to his knees.

Runes glowed from the altar and the spine of the thick tome perched upon it. Their magic flooded the shuttered room with a sickly green light. Iamras trembled, wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve even as he fought to keep his other arm steady over the book. Blood flowed from a clumsy gash in his wrist into the runes, and the book hungrily drank.

Amrennathed felt amusement stir at this memory. She'd left him knowledge of the book's location and power but stripped the memory of how much was required for its opening from his mind. He would bleed out well before he re-learned what she had stolen from him.

/ have raped the secrets of folk across Faer&n entire, made hoard of them in place of coin-mountains, she whispered to the stone, as if all Faerun was indeed bent to listen. / have knowledge stored that kingdoms would bleed for and may still, if it is not allowed to pass with me. My body, my mind joined to yours, will be safe.

Safe from a fate you fear, from ghosts of the minds you've stolen.

Again, Amrennathed wondered if she was hearing her own voice echoing in rebuke. Either way, her once clever and

manipulative mind was too weary to deny or circle the truth.

Yes. Safe. They will look for my bones and find empty stone. No one will beg secrets from a mountain. I will bury them in the deepest crevices where the lowliest creatures walk.

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