Donegan slashed his great sword, as if trying to cut through some physical hand, but there was nothing to hit.
The knight turned his attention to the ceiling, which he fast approached. He braced himself for the impact, but never quite got there.
The invisible force let him go.
Screaming and cursing as he dropped, Sir Donegan refused to accept his fate. His startled cry became a roar of defiance, and he twisted himself around, lining his sword up with the head of the dragon, who did not see him coming.
Donegan’s blade drove in against the beast’s skull, cracking through the bone. Donegan held on until he, too, smashed into the wyrm, head first. His helmet jolted down, cracking his collarbone at either side. His neck compacted so forcefully that his spine turned to powder. He crunched into place and held for a moment, twisted over backward.
Then he rolled away, off the wyrm, whose great head was held suspended in the air, Donegan’s sword quivering in place like a third horn.
“Witch-King?” Urshula bellowed again, in a voice bubbling with blood. He peered at the wall where the wizards had been felled, and red filled his vision. “Witch-King!”
And Zhengyi answered him, not physically, but telepathically. Urshula spied a dark tunnel before him, and at its end, in bright light, stood the lich, holding the small dragon skull phylactery. Urshula instinctively resisted the pull of it. But there, in Zhengyi’s outstretched hand, was the promise of life, where otherwise there was only death. In that moment of terror, the blackness of oblivion looming, the wyrm surrendered to Zhengyi.
Urshula’s spirit flew from his dying body and rushed down the tunnel into the dragon skull gem.
Zhengyi marveled at his prize, for the skull glowed bright, seething with the spirit energy of the trapped dragon soul, the newborn dracolich Urshula.
Zhengyi’s newfound ally.
The Witch-King lowered the gem and considered the scene. He had timed his intervention perfectly, for only a couple of the warriors remained alive, and they lay helpless, squirming, groaning, and bleeding on the floor.
Zhengyi didn’t offer them the courtesy of a quick death. He cast another spell and magically departed with his prize taken and his victory complete, leaving them to their slow, painful deaths.
“You thought you had won those months ago when you defeated the force that had slipped behind you into Vaasa,” Byphast scolded Zhengyi on a cold Damaran winter morning.
“I won the day, indeed,” the Witch-King replied, and he looked up from the great tome on his desk to regard the dragon in elf form.
“My kin are fleeing you,” Byphast went on. “Lord Dragonsbane is a foe we will not face again. The allies arrayed against you are more formidable than you believed.”
“But they are mortal,” Zhengyi corrected. “And soon enough they will grow feeble with age and will wither and die.”
“You believed your kingdom secured,” the dragon countered.
Zhengyi had to refrain from laughing at her, so shaken did she seem by his calm demeanor. For her observations were correct; it was indeed all crumbling around him, and he knew that well. Gareth Dragonsbane could quite possibly win the day in Damara, and in that event the paladin would, at the very least, drive Zhengyi into hiding in a dark hole in Vaasa.
“It amuses me to see a dragon so fretful and obsessed with the near future,” he replied to her.
“Your plan will fail!”
“My plan will sleep. Cannot a dragon, a creature who might raze a town and retire comfortably in her lair for a century or more, understand the concept of patience? You disappoint me, Byphast. Do you not understand that while our enemies are mortal, I am not? And neither are you,” he reminded her, nodding to the shelf beside his desk where several gemstone dragon skulls sat waiting for the spirits of their attuned wyrms.
“My power comes not from my physical form,” the Witch-King continued, “but from the blackness that resides in the hearts of all men.”
He slipped his hands under the covers of the great tome and lifted it just a bit, just enough for Byphast to note the black binding engraved with brands of dragons—rearing dragons, sitting dragons, sleeping dragons, fighting dragons. Zhengyi eased the book back down, reached into his belt pouch, and produced a glowing dragon skull gem.
“Urshula the black,” Byphast remarked.
Zhengyi placed the skull against the center of the opened tome and whispered a few arcane words as he pressed down upon it.
The skull sank into the pages, disappearing within the depths of the tome.
Byphast sucked in her breath and stared hard at the Witch-King.
“If I do not win now, I win later,” Zhengyi explained. “With my allies beside me. Some foolish human, elf, or other mortal creature will find this tome and will seek the power contained within. In so doing he will unleash Urshula in his greater form.”
Zhengyi paused and glanced behind him, drawing Byphast’s gaze to a huge bookcase full of similar books.
“His greed, his frailty, his secret desire—nay, desperation—to grasp this great treasure that only I can offer him, will perpetuate my grand schemes, whatever the outcome of the coming battles on the fields of Damara.”
“So confident.…” Byphast said with a shake of her head and a smile that came from pity.
“Do you seek to sever your bond with the phylactery?” Zhengyi asked. “Do you wish to abandon this gift of immortality that I have offered you?”
Byphast’s smile withered.
“I thought not,” said Zhengyi. He closed the great book and lifted it into place on the shelf behind him. “My power is as eternal as a reasoning being’s fear of death, Byphast. Thus, I am eternal.” He glanced back at the newly finished tome. “Urshula was defeated in his lair, slain by the knights of the Bloodstone Army. But that only made him stronger, as King Gareth, or his descendants, will one day learn.”
Byphast stood very still for some time, soaking it all in. “I will not continue the fight,” she decided. “I will return to the Great Glacier and my distant home.”
Zhengyi shrugged as if it did not matter—and at that time, it really did not.
“But you will not sever your bond with the phylactery,” he noted.
Byphast stiffened and squared her jaw. “I will live another thousand years,” she declared.
But Zhengyi only smiled and said, “So be it. I am patient.”
About
the Author
R.A. Salvatore was born in Massachusetts in 1959. His love affair with fantasy, and with literature in general, began during his sophomore year of college when he was given a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings as a Christmas gift. He promptly changed his major from computer science to journalism. He received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Communications in 1981, then returned for the degree he always cherished, the Bachelor of Arts in English. He began writing seriously in 1982, penning the manuscript that would become Echoes of the Fourth Magic.
His first published novel was The Crystal Shard from TSR in 1988 and he is still best known as the creator of the dark elf Drizzt, one of fantasy’s most beloved characters.
His novel The Silent Blade won the Origins Award, and in the fall of 1997, his letters, manuscripts, and other professional papers were donated to the R. A. Salvatore Library at his alma mater, Fitchburg State College in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.
the Artist
When Todd Lockwood attended his first Science Fiction and Fantasy convention in Winnipeg, Ontario, a door was opened that would lead to a staff position at TSR, the makers of the popular role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Over the next seven years, he built an impressive body of fantasy images, and helped to redefine the look of the popular Dungeons & Dragons game for the Third Edition release.
His work has been honored with multiple appearances in Spectrum and the Communication Arts Illustration Annual twelve Chesleys, two prestigious World Fantasy Art Show awards, and numerous industry awards. Now he finds him
self, his wife, and three children in Washington state, freelancing again, but doing the kind of work he enjoys, with fans all over the planet. His first art book, Transitions, from Chrysalis books (UK), was released in September of 2003. You can see more of his work at his website, www.toddlockwood.com.
Here Be Dragons { A Kender Tale }
Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Tasslehoff Burrfoot was having a bad day. This was something new for the kender. Humans have bad days all the time. So do ogres and goblins and even elves, on occasion. Kender do not. Good days are a kender’s birthright, ranking right up there with lock picks (because the world would be a much friendlier place if everyone would simply share what they owned!) and wanderlust (because what’s the point of having a world if you don’t see as much of it as possible?) Thus, Tasslehoff was not prepared to handle a bad day. He simply did not know what to do. Which is what led him to the cave with the dragon.
But we’re getting ahead of the story.
The bad day started when Tasslehoff—all four-some feet of him, with his topknot of brown hair tastefully decorated with a sprightly sunflower, and wearing a green jacket and his favorite purple pants with the gold splotches—arrived at the walled city of Pigeon Falls, located west of the City of Barter near the River Swift in the foothills of the Highguard mountain range on the continent of Ansalon in the world of Krynn. The city of Pigeon Falls was small—it was noted on only one of the seven maps currently in Tasslehoff’s possession—but he paid it a visit because the name, Pigeon Falls, intrigued him.
Sitting beneath a tree outside the city walls, the kender looked the city over and thought that it was a shame Pigeon Falls wasn’t on every single one of his maps, for it deserved to be. The city was small, but prosperous. The stone wall that encircled and protected the city was tall and formidable and in good repair. Fertile farm lands surrounded the walls.
The War of the Lance (which had ended only a few years previous) and the deprivations caused by the Dark Queen’s dragons, who had devastated many cities in Abanasinia, had apparently left this small city unscathed.
Tasslehoff did not immediately enter Pigeon Falls, but sat at his ease beneath the tree, watching those who came and went. He noted that the guards at the gate stopped everyone who wanted to go inside the city walls. Tas was too far away to hear what they were saying, but he guessed from long experience that the guards were asking people in a friendly way what their business was in the city. The guards were jovial, teasing the young women who came driving geese to market, exchanging jests with the farmers on their carts, and bowing respectfully to wealthy merchants.
Tas had never seen such friendly gate guards and he thought he might try entering the city by the gate, something unusual for kender, who know from sad experience that even the friendliest guards turn immediately unfriendly when confronted by a kender. Why this was so was beyond Tasslehoff, though it had been explained to him many times by his dear old friend the dwarf, Flint Fireforge.
“It’s because yon can’t keep your hands out of other people’s pockets,” Flint told Tas grumpily.
Tas brought a picture of the old dwarf to mind. Shorter than the kender, but stockier in build, the dwarf would go all red in the face and his beard quiver and his eyes nearly disappear in the crinkles that came when he scrunched up his eyebrows to yell at the kender. Tas missed Flint a great deal.
“I never put my hand in someone else’s pocket in my life!” Tasslehoff protested indignantly.
“What’s this?” Flint held up his thumb.
“Your thumb, Flint,” said Tasslehoff, wondering why his friend was changing the subject.
“And what do I usually wear on this thumb?” the dwarf demanded angrily.
Tas hazarded a guess. “A golden ring?”
“And where is my golden ring?” Flint scowled at him.
“I don’t know, Flint,” said Tas. “Did you lose it?” He was concerned.
Flint reached out, took hold of Tasslehoff’s hand and thrust it in the kender’s face. He pointed. “What’s that?”
“My thumb,” said Tasslehoff, mystified.
“And what is on your thumb?”
Tas looked. He was amazed. He honestly had no recollection of having seen it before now. “A golden ring!”
The ring was too big for him and wobbled a bit. but he thought it looked well on him.
“It’s just like yours. Flint,” Tas said pleased.
“That’s because it is mine!” the irate dwarf bellowed.
“Is it?” Tas was pleased. “There! You thought you’d lost it and I found it for you. You must have dropped it.”
“Bosh!” Flint seized hold of the ring and snatched it off the kender’s thumb. He shook the ring under Tasslehoff’s nose. “This is why city guards with any sense never allow kender inside their gates!”
“Because we find things people have lost?” Tas was understandably confused.
“Because you can’t keep your hands out of people’s pockets!” Flint roared.
“The ring wasn’t in your pocket. Flint,” Tasslehoff felt called upon to point out. “It was on my thumb. Like I said, you must have dropped it…”
At that point Flint stomped off, the conversation ended, and Tasslehoff never did find out why gate guards were so narrow-minded.
Perhaps these guards would be different.
Hope springing eternal in Tas’s breast, he smartened himself up. He carefully combed the long topknot of hair that flowed down from the top of his head. He brushed off his bright purple trousers and straightened his green shirt and arranged all the bags and pouches that were slung over various parts of his body to their best advantage. Said bags and pouches contained all the kender’s worldly goods.
Tas had no idea what was in his pouches, for, like most kender, any object he “found” seemed the most wonderful and valuable object in the world (be it emerald ring or bird’s nest). something he would keep forever (a petrified frog), and he promptly forgot about it the moment he dropped it inside his pouch (how did that frog come to be petrified?) This made life a constant happy surprise for Tasslehoff, who was always finding the most marvelous and unexpected things every time he put his hand in his pouch.
Tugging up his orange stockings. Tas strolled down the hill and politely took his place at the end of the line. He soon found himself right up at the front, this clue to the fact that whenever the person in front of him glanced around and saw a kender standing behind him. that person immediately stepped out of line.
“You can go ahead,” the person would say, gesturing with one hand and holding the other hand tightly over whatever valuables he or she possessed.
“Why, thank you,” Tasslehoff would say, charmed, and he would move up a notch. He really liked the people of Pigeon Falls.
The next thing he knew, he was standing before the gate guard.
“Hullo,” said Tasslehoff Burrfoot cheerily, “I’ve come to Pigeon Falls to see the falling pigeons.”
The guard took one look at him. “No kender.”
“But I’ve never seen a falling pig—”
“No kender.”
“It’s just that—”
“No kender!” The guard emphasized his statement with a prod in the kender’s stomach from a very sharp spear.
“Ouch,” said Tasslehoff, and rubbing his maltreated stomach, he took his diminutive self sadly back to his tree.
It appeared that if he wanted to visit the town of Pigeon Falls, he would have to find some quiet and unobtrusive way to sneak inside.
A farmer and a hay cart provided the perfect opportunity. Tasslehoff could not only ride inside the town in comfort, he could take a little snooze at the same time. The kender gave the farmer a friendly wave, waited until the man had driven past him, then swiftly and nimbly ran down the hill, climbed up onto the cart, burrowed his way inside the fragrant hay, and closed his eyes. The cart rumbled over the bumpy road and the soothing motion lulled the kender to sleep.
The next thing Tas knew, he was being rudely stabbed in the backside by a pitch fork.
“Ouch!” he yelped.
“Ah, ha!” said a nasty voice. “I thought I’d find you trying to sneak in!”
A large hand reached inside the mound of hay, clapped itself over Tasslehoff’s belt, dragged him out, and dumped him unceremoniously on the ground.
“No kender,” said the gate guard, glaring. He made a threatening gesture with the pitchfork. “We don’t like kender in Pigeon Falls! Be gone with you!”
“Ferret-face,” Tas muttered, though only to himself.
Plucking hay out of his hair, he went back to sit under his tree. He hoped the falling pigeons were worth all this trouble, but he was beginning to doubt it.
Seeing as how he wasn’t likely to get in through the gate, Tas decided to take a little stroll around the outside of the city wall to locate some other way he might enter. As luck would have it, he found a drainage pipe that penetrated the wall. The pipe carried off rain water that collected in the streets and dumped it (and whatever else it picked up) into the river.
The only drawback to this was that the drainage pipe was fitted with an iron grate. This proved only a minor impediment. Tasslehoff brought out his lock pick tools and, first making certain that none of the guards walking around on top of the wall could see him, he set to work. In moments, the iron grate lay on the ground and the kender was crawling up the drain pipe.
Emerging, he washed off the muck as best he could in a horse trough, then set off to the see the sights.
“Excuse me, Mistress,” said Tasslehoff, walking into a baker’s shop, “I’m here to see the falling pigeons—”
The woman gave a shriek of fury that reminded Tasslehoff of one of Lord Soth’s banshees. She (the woman, not the banshee) picked up a broom, ran around the counter, and began smacking Tas over the head.
Dragons- Worlds Afire Page 5
