“It would be better for you to retell all,” Lord Duirsar said. “I take it Lady Laeral has found a way to weaken the deadwall?”
“Not Laeral,” Khelben said. “The Netherese.”
“The Netherese?” Lord Duirsar gasped.
“Shade Enclave, to be more precise,” Khelben said. “They are the ones who created the shadow mantle—to cut the phaerimm off from the Weave and weaken them for a final assault.”
“Then there is no need to sacrifice a company of spellblades to affix a magicstar to it,” Kiinyon said. “If Shade Enclave is on our side, we need only ask them to lower it before the mythal is weakened.”
Khelben’s expression grew darker. “Matters are not so clear, I’m afraid.” He glanced at Keya and the Vaasans, then took Lord Duirsar’s arm and started for the stairs. “Perhaps we should discuss this in Cloudtop. There are difficult decisions to make, and you may have need of the Hill Elders’ advice.”
Keya bit her lip and managed to remain silent, even when Khelben started down the stairs with Kiinyon and Lord Duirsar.
Once they were out of sight, Dexon came to her side and wrapped a burly arm around her shoulders. “I’m sure Galaeron’s all right,” he said. “We’ll ask later, after they’ve sorted out their strategy.”
Keya nodded and squeezed Dexon’s hand. “Thank you.” She closed her eyes and raised her face toward the heavens. “I pray to Hanali that just this once, the Hill Elders will move with a speed more human than elf.”
After just three days beneath the blazing Anauroch sun, Galaeron’s tongue was swollen to the size of a rothé’s. His head throbbed and his vision blurred unpredictably. His heart beat in slow, listless thumps that barely seemed to pump the viscous blood through his veins, and he was close enough to water to smell damp sandstone. Sometimes, through the screen of emerald foliage growing along the base of the cliff ahead, he even glimpsed a flash of rippling silver. Had Ruha not insisted that they pause to study the oasis before entering, he and Aris would have been at the pool already, doing their best to drink it dry.
Two minutes later, though, Aris and Ruha would have been dead and Galaeron on his way back to Shade Enclave in a pair of scaly claws.
It had taken Ruha only a few minutes of watching to realize the oasis was too quiet, there were no birds flitting through the treetops or hares scurrying through the underbrush. A few minutes later, Aris had spotted the dragon, a young blue tucked onto a hidden ledge just above the treetops, little more than its eyes and horns visible at one end and a tip of dangling tail at the other.
Galaeron motioned to his companions, and they slipped down behind the crest of the dune and retreated into the trough nearly four hundred feet below. There was no shade, so Aris dropped to his seat on the stolen shadow blanket, which lay folded on the face of the opposite dune. His eyes were glassy and sunken with dehydration, his lips cracking and his nostrils inflamed.
The giant glanced up at the midday sun, then said, “I need that water.” His voice was a raw croak. “Even if I have to fight a dragon for it.”
“The dragon will only be the beginning,” Galaeron said. “It looks too small to have many spells, but I’ll wager the Shadovar have arranged a way for it to communicate with Malygris.”
“Maybe it has nothing to do with them,” Aris said. “It seems like oases would be good places for young dragons to hunt.”
“But not to guard,” Ruha said. Though she had drank no more than a few swallows since their departure from Shade, her voice betrayed no sign of thirst. “Nothing will come while a dragon is here. When they are hunting, they must swoop in and take what they can. Otherwise, the silence of the birds betrays them.”
Aris let his head drop. “I can’t go another day,” he said. “If I go in alone, maybe we can fool it.”
“How many stone giants do you think there are wandering the desert?” Ruha asked. “If the dragon sees any of us, the Shadovar will realize we turned toward Cormyr instead of Evereska.”
Aris glanced toward the crest of the dune, his eyes growing large and wild. “Then we have to kill it,” he said. “We have to sneak up and kill it.”
“You’re sun sick, Aris,” Galaeron said. “You can’t sneak up on a dragon.”
“There will be water in the Saiyaddar.” Ruha stood and started south, walking on the trough’s steep wall so the slope would collapse and slide down to cover her tracks. “We will be there soon. It is not far.”
Aris groaned and buried his face in his arms.
“Come on,” Galaeron said. “I’ll take the shadow blanket.”
Aris raised his head high enough to fix a single eye on Galaeron. “It is twice your size. How can you carry it?”
Galaeron pulled a strand of shadowsilk from his cloak and began to fashion it into a circle. “How do you think?”
“No!” Aris boomed the word sharply enough to loose a small avalanche on the slope behind Galaeron. “No shadow magic.”
Ruha spun around. “Are you trying to call the dragon down on us?” She glared at the giant for a moment, then looked to Galaeron. “Leave the blanket. It is too heavy and hot for him to carry.”
“It’s proof,” Galaeron said as he began to twist the ends of his shadowsilk together, “and I’m not leaving it.”
“Then I’m carrying it.” Aris stood and slung the huge blanket over his shoulder. “Because you’re not casting another shadow spell.”
With no place to hide from the sun and concerned about attracting vultures and giving away their position even if they did stop, the trio spent the rest of the day marching south. Every so often, Ruha would climb to the crest of a dune to study the terrain and search the sky for signs of pursuing dragons, then wave her companions up behind her and lead them eastward in a mad dash over one dune crest after another. The effort never seemed to tire the witch, but Galaeron and Aris would grow so weary after a dozen or so crossings that their legs gave out and left them crawling on their hands and knees.
Galaeron spent much of that time seething over Vala’s desertion, relishing the prospect of the vengeance he would extract on Telamont for refusing to intervene with Escanor, and plotting how he would emphasize the prince’s part in the melting of the High Ice.
The Shadovar had betrayed him, had stolen Vala away and made her turn a blind eye to the promise she had sworn to him, and for that they would pay. For that, he would expose their true nature to the world, reveal how they were melting the High Ice and upsetting the weather all along the Sword Coast. What that decision might mean for Evereska, Galaeron did not even consider. Shade Enclave had its own reasons for destroying the phaerimm, and his departure was unlikely to have any impact on their plans.
Finally, as the afternoon shadows began to extend their stretch toward evening, they crested a dune and found themselves looking over a vast prairie of pale green grasslands. In the distance, the brown blot of a gazelle herd was slowly drifting over the purple horizon, while the rest of the plain was speckled with the tiny flecks of foraging birds. Scattered here and there along the course of a dry riverbed were the puffy crowns of several dozen big cottonwood trees.
“Skoraeus strike me now!” Aris cursed. “The river is as dry as bones.”
“Only on the surface.” Ruha slipped over the crest of the dune and started down the other side. “There is water underneath.”
“Underneath?” Aris cast a longing look north toward the cliffs where they had left the young dragon. “How far underneath?”
“Not far,” Ruha said, waving the giant after her.
“You have said that before,” Aris observed.
Despite his protests, the giant raced down the dune past the witch and started across the plain.
“Aris! Wait until dark!” Ruha called. “The birds!”
She was too late—and even had she not been, it was doubtful that the giant would have stopped. With the heavy shadow blanket still draped over his shoulders, he started for the riverbed in long, booming strides that sent
a cloud of startled birds screeching and cackling into the sky.
Ruha looked to the north. “How close do you think—”
“Too close,” Galaeron said. “I have heard blue dragons brag that they pick meals in the Sharaedim from a roost in the Greycloaks.”
“You speak with dragons?” Ruha asked.
“On occasion,” Galaeron said. “The Tomb Guard had an arrangement with several young blues.”
Instead of asking about the arrangement, Ruha nodded and started across the plain after Aris. “Then we must hurry.”
Galaeron caught her shoulder and pointed toward a fan of alluvial gravel spilling out of the foothills that separated the Saiyaddar from the parched slopes of the Scimitar Spires.
“We stand a better chance hiding,” he said. “A young dragon will be arrogant in its approach, and we can take it by surprise.”
“You would use your friend as bait?”
“He’s the one who scared up the birds.” Galaeron’s tone was defensive. “I’m just trying to keep us all alive.”
Ruha considered this, then started along the edge of the plain. “Your plan makes sense—though it would be better if he had been given the chance to volunteer.”
“He volunteered when he let his thirst put us in danger,” Galaeron said, joining her.
“Perhaps so,” Ruha said, “but had you taken his waterskins from the flying disk instead of your shadow blanket, his thirst would not be so great.”
Galaeron’s only reply was an angry scowl. They were only about halfway to the gravel fan when the birds suddenly began to flee southward. Ruha pulled Galaeron into a bramble thicket and crouched on her haunches, pulling a clump of thorny stalks over their heads so they would be concealed from the air. Aris did not seem to realize anything was wrong for another dozen steps, when he noticed the fleeing birds and stopped to turn around. He spent several moments searching the plain behind him, calling out to Galaeron before finally raising his gaze skyward and looking north toward the oasis where they had seen the dragon.
Though Galaeron was hiding close to five hundred paces away, he was close enough to see the giant’s jaw fall and his shoulders sag. Aris spent another moment searching the plain behind him, then, still carrying the heavy shadow blanket, turned and ran for the foothills, angling toward a narrow gully not far from where Galaeron and Ruha were hiding.
“Good,” Galaeron whispered.
He began to fashion a tiny stick figure out of shadowsilk. Ruha looked to the sky. It was only a moment before she nudged Galaeron and the cross-shaped shadow of a small dragon began to sweep across the Saiyaddar. Galaeron finished his effigy, then pointed it at Aris and uttered an incantation. A circle of shadows appeared around the giant. One after the other, they peeled themselves off the ground and assumed Aris’s form, then fanned out in a dozen different directions.
An angry cackle sounded from the sky, then the dragon swooped into view, its blue scales flashing like sapphires in the dusky light. It leveled off a dozen feet from the ground and, starting at one end of the fleeing replicas, opened its mouth and loosed a huge bolt of lightning that stretched in front of three of the fleeing shadow giants.
Lacking any wits of their own, the images continued straight into the bolt and vanished from sight.
“This is a smart one,” Ruha whispered, pulling a small flint and steel from her aba, “and it wants us alive.”
“It wants me alive,” Galaeron corrected. “Don’t overestimate your value—or Aris’s—to the Shadovar.”
The dragon breathed again, spraying another bolt of lightning in front of four more running giants. This time, they stopped and fled in the opposite direction. The dragon wheeled on a wing tip and extended its claws, slashing through two illusionary giants on its first pass. The dragon pulled up less than fifty paces from them, exposing its thin belly scales as it wheeled around to snatch up the fleeing giant. Ruha started to rise from their hiding place, pointing the flint and steel at the dragon’s abdomen to cast what Galaeron knew would be a fire storm.
“Not yet!” Galaeron hissed.
He caught her arm and pulled her back down, then pointed his effigy at a figure he knew to be a false Aris. He whispered the same spell, and a circle of shadows appeared around each of the remaining giants on the plain. They began to rise by the dozen and flee in every direction. The dragon roared in frustration and blasted the nearest circle with its third and final lightning bolt.
By unlucky chance, his target proved to be the correct one. Aris bellowed in pain and went down on his face, then the dragon was on him, pinning him to the ground with a huge claw and hissing something angry that Galaeron could not quite hear from so far away.
“Coward!” Ruha hissed, throwing off the brambles. “You should have let me attack when we had a shot at his belly!”
She started across the plain at a run, pointing her fingers at the huge dragon. Blood boiling at her insult, Galaeron started after her—then stopped as she poured a volley of golden bolts into the wyrm’s flank. The resulting blast sent a fountain of blue scales spraying into the air, along with a fair amount of draconian blood and flesh.
The dragon roared and brought its huge head around—only to receive another volley of the witch’s golden bolts in the snout. This time, the eruption sent a nostril, two horns, and one slit-pupiled eye tumbling away over its shoulder. As surprised by Ruha’s power as was Galaeron, the creature spread its great wings and launched itself into the air.
It was clutching Aris and the shadow blanket in its massive claws.
Ruha switched to her flint and steel, crying out a Bedine fire spell and striking sparks into the air. A long line of tiny meteors streaked into the air, taking the dragon in the right wing and burning several dozen melon-sized holes through the leathery skin. The creature pitched right and plummeted a hundred feet toward the foothills, then leveled off and began to fly for freedom—still clutching Aris and the shadow blanket.
Galaeron was not going to let it escape with his shadow blanket. He fashioned a strand of shadowsilk into a noose, then uttered a long string of magic syllables and flicked the loop after the fleeing dragon. The filament stretched to nearly half a mile in length, allowing Galaeron just enough time to slip his end of the line under his foot before the noose expanded to the size of a wagon wheel and flipped itself up to slip over the dragon’s head.
A version of a Tomb Guard enchantment used to capture fleeing crypt breakers, the spell worked even better with shadowsilk than with elven thread. As soon as the dragon hit the end of the line, the noose closed and the filament contracted to a small fraction of its previous length, both cutting off the wyrm’s air supply and jerking it around to crash down within a few dozen paces of Galaeron.
The stunned wyrm impacted face first, then lay in a crumpled, convulsing heap as it clawed in vain at the magic line. Keeping his foot on his end of the line to keep the noose tight, Galaeron leveled his palm at its already mangled head and drilled a hole through its skull with a single shadow bolt. His body was filled with so much shadow magic that it was almost numb, but he didn’t mind at all. The cold felt good.
Ruha came to his side and paused as though to say something, then thought better of it and went to the dragon’s head.
“Dead,” she confirmed.
“Good.”
Galaeron stepped off the magic line, which vanished as soon his foot lost contact with it, and started forward as Ruha crawled over the wyrm’s neck to its underside.
“And my blanket?” he asked. “Still in one piece?”
Ruha snapped her head around to glare at him. “Yes, the blanket is still in one piece.” She dropped out of sight behind the dragon, then added, “Which is more than I can say for your friend.”
“Aris?” Galaeron broke into a run. “He’s hurt?”
“Yes, and badly.” Ruha peered over the wyrm’s back, then said, “That is what happens when you use someone for dragon bait.”
Galaeron reached the dra
gon’s back and clambered over to find Aris trapped beneath the wyrm’s body. There were four talon punctures in his chest and one arm was twisted around behind him at an impossible angle. The giant’s gray eyes were barely open, and when they fell on Galaeron’s face, they looked away.
CHAPTER NINE
19 Mirtul, the Year of Wild Magic
By dusk of the day of its arrival, the Shadovar army was drawing the last corner of its shadow blanket over legendary Myth Drannor. The cracked spires and vine-wrapped columns of the city, already half-hidden behind a wall of spring mist, vanished beneath an undulating mantle of darkness, and a silence that had been eerie and foreboding for most of the day grew perfect and still. As the edges were affixed to the ground, a few birds and other woodland animals rushed to escape in ones and twos. These creatures were allowed to flee, but companies of warriors were waiting to slay any monster that might return later to harass the veserabs. From her airborne vantage point at the western end of the city, Vala saw them strike down a beholder, two gargoyles, and even a malaugrym in its true three-tentacled form.
The blanket would prevent their quarry from teleporting away or using the translocational gates rumored to be still functional inside the city, but that only meant the phaerimm would be even more dangerous and ferocious than usual. According to the Shadovar scouts and diviners, there were still close to thirty thornbacks inhabiting the ruins’ subterranean levels, and if the attack was to succeed, most would have to be slain in their own lairs. For the first time in her life, Vala wished she could write. She would have liked to set down some thoughts for her son before the bladework began.
Vala dipped a magic wing toward the rolling meadow at the western end of the city and landed in the trampled grass outside Escanor’s pavilion tent. The prince was waiting in the entrance, his coppery eyes watching every move as she undid her breastplate so she could remove the wing harness. His retinue of aides and subcommanders was there as well, though most seemed more interested in watching him watch her.
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