Sneak Peak at Book 8: Warrant

A quick chapter or two from F&F Book 8: A Warrant of Wyverns!

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Chapter Six

The white of Galen’s transport spell had only just begun to fade when the wizard spoke, bringing his hand down in a diagonal slash.

“Nidher-slä!” he shouted, and I felt more than saw the centaur’s Shield of Turning wink into place around us. Aside from protecting us from arrows, it could also partially block overwhelming stench. That had proven quite useful during our past visit.

“Glad you chose that spell,” I remarked.

Shaw nodded. “Aye, mine own nose thanks thee, wizard.”

“You are welcome,” Galen said. “I felt it prudent. Our prior visit was a unique and profoundly unpleasant experience.”

The mustard yellow dirt and grey flagstones of Keshali’s courtyard materialized into being around us. As before, the area was covered with the bodies of slain wyverns. Liam, the only member of our group who hadn’t been here before, took a step back in horror.

“Dayna, I had thought of your work as a place of death,” he said, with a shudder. “That pales compared to this place, however.”

“I can’t argue with that,” I said. “I’m used to seeing death on a slab, mostly one body at a time. This mass slaughter is something else altogether.”

Over a hundred wyverns lay about the courtyard, contorted in their final death throes. Their snakelike forms either scrunched forward like overcooked shrimp, or lay arched backwards as if in post-mortem agony. Leathery wings lay crumpled along scaled sides, and many torsos still showed extruded organs burst from rotting bellies.

In the time since my first visit to Keshali, the bodies had continued much further along the putrefaction cycle, though not quite the way I’d expected. The low levels of ambient moisture had slowed the rate of bacterial decay. And the exposure to heat was slowly dehydrating the exposed reptiles into wyvern jerky.

Yeah, that thought made my stomach feel all happier.

I rubbed my hands together as if to warm them from an unseen chill.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s take a minute to really look at the scene. Let me know if you see patterns, or something that sticks out. It could be with the bodies, or the environs, anything. Doesn’t matter how small.”

Shaw grunted assent, while Liam and Galen nodded acknowledgement. None of my three friends moved to get beyond the boundary of Galen’s spell. They took no more than a step or two before squinting at the scene or sniffing the air.

The multi-story heap of ruined stone that roughly matched the bulk of Fitzwilliam’s palace lay directly in front of us. Two high mountain peaks loomed further overhead behind the main building, casting a V-notched shadow across the dusty ground. The building where Bonecarver, wearing Sir Caltrop’s flesh, had emerged to taunt us sat off to the side. Next to it lay a sight that chilled me even further.

The raised platform that still held the Ultari demon-stones.

Roughly carved stone pedestals marked out a semicircle atop the platform. A kind of spidery wizard writing adorned the bases. Looking like car-sized masses of used-up chewing gum, ugly grey stones squatted atop three of the pedestals. Two others lay shattered to pieces on the platform itself, testament to the power of Galen’s magic during our prior battle here.

Liam shook his head as if to clear it. “My nose is worse than useless now. But my ears still work fine. I hear no furtive scurries, no gnash of tooth nor buzz of wings. There aren’t any carrion-eating animals here. No bird. No insects. Nothing.”

“Yes, I noticed that as well,” I said. “In all this time, nothing larger than bacteria have disturbed the crime scene. That’s almost unheard of.”

Galen gestured a second time as he murmured a magical phrase under his breath. He rubbed his chin, perplexed.

“Apparently, there is a type of protective shield at work. It covers just the immediate environs inside the walls. It is very old and extremely weak…” His shaggy eyebrows raised in surprise. “And it utilizes a rather strange sort of magic…”

“What about demonic magic?” I suggested. “We did run into Bonecarver and the Ultari here, so that’s what I would expect to find.”

“As did I. However, I believe that this is a type of magic that I haven’t encountered before. Given our recent history, that may not be a positive development.”

Shaw made a chuffing sound as he snapped his beak. “I know naught of the magic used here. But now mine own eyes see what these creatures were doing whilst they were struck down.”

“What might that be?”

“Fleeing.”

I blinked. I hadn’t expected that. Grimshaw went on.

“Dost thou see the trails left behind by the wyvern?”

I shook my head. “Your eyes are still better than ours for seeing detail.”

“All thy corpses’ trails lead back to a single point.” He lifted a forepaw and extended a talon. “They emerged from there.”

‘There’ turned out to be the largest of the openings in the building before us. There were no doors, and the edges of the entryway were ringed with crumbling rock, all bitten or gnawed upon by countless years of sun and wind. Grimshaw continued, moving his leonine paw to indicate the area around us.

“Thou might note that no dead wyverns lie to our rear,” he said. “Nor to our sides. Whatever defeated these foes struck them down before they got any further than three score yards from their exit.”

“And what foe could do that?” Liam muttered.

“None that I have faced yet. But this I know for sure. ‘Twas not a battle that happened here. ‘Twas a slaughter.”

“I still suspect a form of death magic,” Galen said. “Bonecarver proved quite adept at using this type of weapon on my father, and came within a hoof’s strike of killing him with it.”

“There’s only one way to tell for sure,” I said, as I went over to the wizard’s full saddlebags. I pulled out my forensics case, a gowning kit, and a couple of pre-packaged polyethylene tarps. “Let’s move back a few yards, to put some distance between us and these bodies. I need room to set things up, too.”

We found a spot at the inner edge of the thick walls that ran around the courtyard’s edge. Several large blocks of stone had fallen away here, and one quickly became a makeshift table. I set out my equipment on one, then sat on a second to gown myself up.

I didn’t have my stompy gothic boots of doom with me. Instead, I slipped on some shoe covers over my boots and made sure the elastic holding the covers on fit snugly around my ankle. Then I slipped a transparent face shield down over my eyes, complementing it below with a surgical mask. Once I finished my fashion statement with a hair net and a pair of latex gloves, I was ready for battle.

“Galen,” I said, “I think I need you to lift the Shield of Turning. I need all of my senses for this job, even if it gets unpleasant.”

Resignedly, the wizard made a turning gesture with one hand. The air rippled with an unseen shimmy. The smell of the wyvern bodies hit us like a punch in the nose by a boxer holding a gone-off steak in his fist.

“Ugh,” Liam groaned. His hooves clattered as he moved restlessly, dealing with the odors. But he didn’t appear ready to lose the grass in his stomach.

As I’d hoped, the smell of decay had already passed its zenith. It wasn’t exactly as fresh as the air from a mountain meadow. But on the Chrissie Scale of Stinkiness (patent pending), I’d call it no worse than a two out of ten.

“Anything else?” Galen asked. “Hopefully something less malodorous?”

I indicated my package of cleaning wipes and wire-rimmed bags, “I could use your help setting up my disposal center.”

“Of course.”

“Shaw, Liam,” I said, as I held up one of the rolled-up tarps, “I need to do a halfway thorough examination of a couple of these bodies. I may need your help to drag them back here.”

Liam swallowed hesitantly, but he bobbed his head alongside Shaw.

I walked further into the courtyard and did a quick inspection of the closest body. It lay curled to one side, head arched painfully back on its slender neck. The organs lay next to the broken-open mass of the torso.

Once again, I saw several minor differences between this wyvern and the ones I’d seen before. The reptiles that had attacked Fitzwilliam and Ironwood’s lance near the Griffin Lands looked identical, at least to my untrained eye. They were either green or black, with snakelike bodies.

The wyverns here in Keshali were slightly smaller, even accounting for rigor and dehydration. Their wings sat higher up on their backs, allowing for a more flexibility around the shoulder joint. More tellingly, their foreclaws were slender and finger-like. In fact, these structures were so delicate that I couldn’t see them being used as heavy slashing tools.

But if they’re not for combat, my brain objected, then what are they used for?

I put that question aside for now and spread out one of the tarps next to it. Then I squatted next to the body and placed my gloved hands on its back. It felt surprisingly warm to the touch, though that was from being out in the sun. I gave it a nudge, then a full-on shove.

It didn’t move. Of course.

I braced myself and gave it the hardest sustained push that I could.

With the sticky schlorp! of a piece of rotted meat pulling loose from a tile floor, the body gave a half-roll onto the poly sheet. For a moment, the sour-dry smell of dust kicked up blocked the increased odor. The Stinkiness Scale went up a notch or three for a moment, making me reel.

“Guys,” I said, as soon as the smell dissipated, “Can you drag this back closer to my equipment?”

Shaw grabbed one corner of the tarp in his beak. Liam went to the other corner and looked at the burden with distaste. He then spotted the big metal grommet that stuck up from a corner flap, and his one green eye sparkled for a moment with inspiration.

The fayleene bent forward and with surprising ease, managed to hook one antler nub through the metal-lined hole. Then he tugged backwards along with Shaw to slide the tarp and its burden out of the kill zone and over to where I could work on it.

They repeated the feat twice more as I picked out additional bodies from different points in the courtyard. I wasn’t sure about how to tell gender in wyverns, so I selected ones with substantially different builds. Once I had all three lying next to each other, the griffin and fayleene stood back as I pulled out my forensic tool kit and went to work.

“These creatures all appear to have been ruptured from the inside,” Liam ventured. “Could that be a clue?”

“Sort of,” I replied, “We saw that before, too. It’s not a battle wound. The gut flora, along with other bacteria, start breaking down the cells of the intestines after death. That produces methane and hydrogen sulfide gas, which makes the abdomen swell and burst open.”

“How charming,” he muttered.

I began my examination of the first body from the top down. Wyverns had wedge-shaped heads that seemed to be mostly made up of spikes. But these here in Keshali had wider skulls, implying a larger braincase. After a moment, I stopped to look over at the other two corpses.

“Now that’s interesting,” I mused.

My friends didn’t come any closer, but they all leaned forward to see what I was talking about. I moved to one side and pointed at a pair of glistening trails that resembled dried egg-white. The trails started at the inner corner of each eye and ran down towards the toothy snout.

“What is it?” Galen asked.

“All three corpses show the same signs of excess rheumic production, as well as profuse lachrymation. That is, a heavy trail of dried mucus. And tears.”

“Could it be that thy foes felt remorse before expiring?” Shaw called over, as I grabbed a transparent plastic sample bag and scraped a crust of the dried stuff into it. “I feel no affection for wyverns, but surely, there are more heroic ways to die!”

“Heroic or not, they were suffering from some kind of mucosal irritation.”

I continued down the creature’s face. A spume of the same material had bubbled and then dripped from the toothy mouth, drying along a trail marked by gravity and the way the corpse fell. I moved lower, noting the lack of contusions or other markers of distress, until I got to the heap of dried organs protruding from the midsection.

At least this would make my next task a little easier. Using my forceps and a scalpel, I was able to pry the exposed stomach free from the mass and slice it open. Again, I was surprised as I poked around inside and then repeated the same task on the other two bodies.

“I may have just solved one minor mystery,” I said, as I sliced off another tissue sample and bagged it. “When we were here before, we were puzzled how so many wyverns could live here without being discovered.”

Galen nodded. “In truth, there is so little to consume in the Hinter Lands that they would have raided my people’s herds long ago.”

“Based on the lack of stomach contents, what they were consuming is obvious. The answer is, ‘nothing’. It could mean that the entire swarm had been in some kind of hibernation.”

The wizard considered that for a moment. “A logical possibility. Obviously, the wyverns killed this city’s inhabitants – or simply showed up to infest these ruins – and decided that this locale was remote enough that they would not be disturbed.”

Liam canted his antlers as he inquired, “Does that not leave the question of why they went into hibernation in the first place?”

“That is a valid concern you raise, friend.”

Once I completed my external scan, I got out my rib cutters. The wyvern’s ventral scales were tough, but the abdominal rupture had been so severe that I could just follow the tear up the middle of the chest plate. It took some doing, but I finally managed to snip high enough to locate the remains of the creature’s heart and lungs.

Now I spotted something truly disturbing.

 

Chapter Seven

Wyvern had five-lobed lungs, but I only noted that in passing. What grabbed my attention was the fact that the decaying organ was intact and swollen as if it were packed full. I squeezed the bottom lobe between two fingers. It gave reluctantly, as if it were filled with moist clay or mud. I cut into the organ and a sludgy blue fluid the exact shade of fountain pen ink ran out.

Alien species or not, I strongly doubted that this was the normal state of the lungs.

It went without saying that I took a sample and then moved to palpitate the heart muscle. It felt normal, and when I cut into it, only a thin dribble of greenish goo came out. My friends waited patiently, watching my every move as I repeated the procedure on the other two wyverns, with the same results.

I sat back after I was done and considered what I was seeing. Irritation of the mucous membranes around the face told me a bunch of possible stories. But the presence of heavy fluid in the lungs narrowed things down a bit. The wyverns had each suffered massive pulmonary edemas. Specifically, the non-cardiogenic kind, since their hearts remained clear of thick, choking fluid.

Edema meant that these creatures lungs had filled up with fluid. They’d essentially drowned in the middle of the driest place I’d seen in Andeluvia. Which of course led to the next question.

How?

There were several candidates for that answer, but all the ones that came to mind didn’t fit the situation. For example, it was pretty unlikely that all the wyverns simultaneously came down with pneumonia or kidney failure.

I explained the concept of edema to my friends as I brought the tissue samples back to my forensics case. Galen had set out my disposal and cleaning kits, so I carefully disinfected my gloves, the outside of the sample bags, and disposed of the shoe coverings.

“Suffocating on dry land?” Galen said, stunned. “One thing is for sure: Death magic does not work in this way.”

“In my world, there are more than a few illnesses that do,” I said. “Yet none of them explain a mass killing like this. So I’m going to see if can find any more clues.”

I dug in my case and pulled out the latest toy I’d ordered for myself. I suppose I should have suggested it to Esteban before the last Valentine’s Day. Some women liked shopping for jewelry or clothing. Me, I liked going through forensics equipment catalogs and picking out the gadgets I wanted to play with.

The canary colored, brick-shaped object I pulled out was nicknamed the ‘Tac-Spec’, the latest model of hand-held ‘tactical’ spectrometers. It wasn’t nearly as good or precise as the one in the Chem Lab, which could pick out specific elements down to the millionth part. But the device could identify narcotics or hazardous substances, and it could do it by simply pointing the sensor at a glass bottle or plastic collection bag.

It took me just a few seconds to scan my samples before the Tac-Spec emitted a ping. I held my hand up over the thing’s cramped screen and squinted to read it. Across the board, there were elevated levels of sodium hypochlorite, hypochlorous acid, and several types of oxidizing agents. That didn’t sound good, but I bit my lip as I tried to remember all the way back to my first year of chemistry.

“Thy brow is furrowed,” Shaw observed. “‘Tis it that bad?”

“I’m not sure,” I confessed. “There’s nothing jumping out at me. But I’m missing something. Something big.”

“What next, then?” Liam asked.

“I’m going to have a look inside that building,” I said, after a moment’s thought. “But I’ll have to go alone.”

“Alone? Into unknown demesnes?” Galen exclaimed, aghast. “We can’t let you do that. Besides, Grimshaw has already discerned a way for us to make our way through the field of bodies.”

I sat down and began pulling on some new shoe covers. “Well, I’d appreciate the backup. But I want you guys to stay outside the entryway. I’m seeing some trace evidence of oxides in these bodies. You normally see this stuff associated with cleaning products, but they can irritate your skin. And I happen to be the only one with protective gear on.”

He sighed. “Very well.”

Once I was completely re-gowned, we picked our way through the minefield of bodies under Grimshaw’s direction. I led the way, while Galen followed behind me, carrying my forensics case in one saddlebag. Liam came next, looking more resigned than nervous. Shaw brought up the rear, occasionally calling out course corrections to me.

We stopped just outside the entryway, which was blessedly free of bodies. The angle of the wall overhead and the sun cast this area in a chilly patch of deep shade. Up close, I noticed that the eroded edges of the entry had empty cavities or sockets in all four corners.

“Check that out,” I said, surprised. “What are those holes for?”

Galen considered it for a moment. He snapped his fingers as he said, “That’s where one might install hinges. There used to be an outward-swinging door here.”

“That implies whoever lived here wanted to keep something out,” Liam said darkly.

“Perhaps,” I acknowledged. “Yet it also implies a higher level of civilization than a run-down anthill.”

Shaw chuckled under his breath. “Neither griffin nor fayleene use thy kind’s ‘doors’, yet we count ourselves above ants as well.”

That made me grin. “You got me there, big guy.”

I went to Galen’s flank and located the flashlight in his saddle bag. In the meantime, the wizard murmured a spell, while Liam looked around his side, ears perked and listening. Shaw followed suit, peering with his bright eagle eyes into the darkness.

“That same strange magic permeates the dwelling.” the wizard announced. “Yet as far as I can tell, the interior contains no magical traps.”

“‘Tis more than I can tell you,” Shaw added. “Mine own eyes could not pierce the dark beyond a dozen yards, and I saw nothing thou might find of interest, save more dead wyverns.”

“That’s because the room inside is cavernous,” Liam said. “My ears picked up the sound of air moving from a far distance inside. That must mean there are more than a few long passageways connecting into that large room.”

“Any movement?” I asked, hoping devoutly for the answer, ‘no’.

Liam paused. “I’m not sure. These ‘ruins’ are in very poor shape. Faint sounds can come from pebbles if they fall from a crumbling rock wall or ceiling. I suppose that it is possible that something could be in hiding, but if so it is doing a masterful job.”

Well, that was reassuring.

Just my rotten luck.

“Sounds like I better trust in the luck of the fayleene, then.” I said, as I switched on the flashlight. I took a breath and went inside. I had to, before my brain could conjure up something frightening enough in the darkness to stop me in my tracks.

The temperature inside dipped noticeably, while the smell of the bodies around jumped up a notch. I flicked the light towards the floor at first as I picked my way around yet more dead wyverns. Luckily, the bodies weren’t as thick in here as outside, which allowed me to walk around without too much problem.

A low moan caused me to jump. I almost dropped the damned flashlight.

I swung the light to each side and saw the gaping maws of first one, then several connecting passages. Air moving through these passageways had made the sound. I firmly told myself to settle down. Everything in this place was long dead, and I wasn’t the designated ‘screaming female’ starring in a horror movie.

That’s when I came across a tar-black leathery egg the size of a watermelon.

I froze. Images of it opening and something jumping out at my face swam across my mind.

I actually had to use my free hand to grab my other wrist. Otherwise, I couldn’t stop shaking long enough to keep the flashlight beam steady.

“Dayna, art thou all right?” Shaw called.

“I’m fine,” I called back, though my voice sounded as shaky as my hands. “Just a little spooky in here, that’s all. Liam’s right, this is a gigantic room. Several passageways lead deeper into the rock. Or the building, if it goes further on. There’s some more wyvern bodies here. And a large egg.”

Galen called back this time. “Only one? Wyvern lore says that they kept entire nurseries of eggs.”

I played the flashlight around some more. “Yeah. That bit of lore looks like it might be right.”

The first egg I’d seen had a large crack on one side. Greenish yolk had spilled out into a dried heap on the floor next to it. And further on, several more wyvern bodies lay amidst dozens of eggs. Each body – the wyvern nursery caretakers? – cradled four or five eggs in each arm. More eggs lay scattered across the floor, shattered where they fell at the end.

The intact eggs in the caretakers’ grasps were all opened as well. The eggs had hatched prematurely. The half-formed embryos inside resembled mummified snakes crossed with plucked chickens. It was a sad and horrifying sight.

The wind set up another resonant moan from the closest passage. I spotted the gleam of some shiny object just inside, so I walked closer. Something about its shape made my hair start to stand on end.

“Dayna?” Galen called out again.

I didn’t answer quite yet. I was focused with laser-like intensity on my goal. Especially since now I saw several other objects with the same shape. A metallic, strangely familiar shape.

My nose started to register a new smell. It was faint, very faint. Only my weirdly acute sense of smell would have picked it up, especially given the miasma of half-rotting, half-dried meat that pervaded the cavern.

The tickle of cayenne pepper. A sickly sweetness behind it like gone-off pineapple syrup. My mind went back to a chemistry class where we mixed caustic substances and came out with hypochlorous acid.

What had gone into that mixture?

“Dayna?” the centaur’s voice repeated.

My flashlight beam fell upon the objects. There were six of them, and they had been set horizontally on the floor. Beyond, the passageway sloped sharply downwards into unknown depths.

Each object looked like a large stainless steel scuba tank, though about twice the size. My unease grew as I spotted a diamond-shaped icon with the words INHALATION HAZARD on the side. Unease turned to flat-out fright as my beam played across a black field adored with a scarlet skull and crossbones. Below crossbones was the alphanumeric C2.

Images of half-dead soldiers being hauled out of trenches flooded my memory out of a half-forgotten high school textbook. They’d been victims of a new kind of warfare.

Chemical warfare.

“Dayna, are you in trouble?” It was Liam this time. “We’re coming in to get you.”

The cavern echoed with the sound of hoofbeats and paw pads. That finally broke me out of my glassy-eyed stared. I turned and ran towards them, yelling as I went.

“Get back! Get back outside!” I cried, and the echoes shouted back at me. “Someone’s hit this place with chlorine gas!”