by Kate Novak
This time, however, dodging the god was not so easy. As it streaked toward them Moander increased in size. In its approaching side a great maw opened, lined with duskwood tree trunks sharpened to fanglike points.
The Jawed God it was sometimes called, Akabar remembered. But how did it grow without absorbing more mass? he puzzled. It was now four times Mist’s size, and the open cavity could swallow the dragon whole.
Mist struggled to gain altitude. She managed to rise above the gaping mouth, but a tree-weighted vine shot out at her, entangling her neck and her wings. The dragon beat her wings furiously, but she was held fast. More red vines, pulsing like blood veins, snaked up the snarevine.
Cursing, Olive drew her dagger, preparing to cut any plants that came her way. She turned, thinking to offer Akabar her sword, but to her surprise he began chanting another spell. She thought he had exhausted the last of his magic on the enchantment to haste the dragon. Apparently he was getting better at the game. He looks worn, though, Olive thought, noticing the lines in his face, deeper and more plentiful than when they’d first met in Cormyr. He was beginning to look like a real wizard, she decided.
With furrowed brows, the Turmish mage completed the last sharp syllables and tossed a handful of iron powder over the dragon’s scales. The metal filings sparkled in the air, causing Mist’s whole body to glow.
The struggling dragon’s scales shifted beneath them. The halfling grabbed at the safety ropes, but they snapped away, as did the majority of the vines tethering Mist to Moander’s form. Olive gripped at a scale, but it was difficult to grasp as it grew in size. Akabar, she realized, had enlarged the dragon with his magic.
“Should even the odds,” the Turmishman said.
Mist, using her back claws, slashed open Moander’s side. A foul vapor burst from the god’s wound, and it screamed. The air smelled like a swamp.
Mist jerked her head up, breaking the last cord holding her near the god. The suddenness of her movement sent Dragonbait bouncing high into the air. With a gasp Olive tugged on Akabar’s kilt and pointed at the lizard.
Akabar was already aware of the saurial’s plight. He stood up nimbly on Mist’s shifting back and stretched out his arms. In each hand he held a single feather. He incanted fast and furious and then fell from the dragon’s back. Reflexively Olive grabbed at the mage’s ankles. She’d forgotten she was no longer anchored. The pair of them, mage and bard, plummeted toward the ground.
As Akabar pulled out of his dive and began to fly upward, he became aware of the halfling’s weight. Would he be able to carry her and Dragonbait? he wondered.
The saurial had begun arcing downward. He’d lost his grip on the finder’s stone, but still clutched at his sword. Akabar flew upward to intercept him.
Drat the halfling, the mage thought as he struggled to reach the saurial. He would not be able to cross the horizontal distance between himself and Dragonbait before the lizard fell past him. If Olive had not tagged a ride, he could have done so with ease. As it was, he was forced to angle down, arms forward like a diver.
Dragonbait fell with his arms spread open, presenting the most resistance to the air. Akabar did not think the saurial was the least panicked, but he was willing to bet the air around Dragonbait smelled of woodsmoke.
Behind the mage, Olive swore loudly and profusely. She had no idea how to present the smallest profile when flying, so she slowed the mage’s movements even further with the resistance of her body in the wind. Akabar offered his own prayer that he would reach the saurial in time.
The flying mage’s path intersected the free-falling lizard’s about thirty yards from the ground. By then Dragonbait was plummeting like a comet, and Akabar’s tackle hit him with so much force that something gave in the mage’s shoulder and the saurial’s ribs. The trio of wizard, halfling, and lizard was too heavy to remain in flight long. From their mid-air impact, they lofted in a very low arc, before they began to sink earthward.
They landed in a dell between hills. The ground was soft, but littered with boulders. The threesome rolled and slid, lost their grip on one another, and fell apart. Akabar kept flying after he lost the added weight. He pulled up and landed smoothly on a large rock. He touched his shoulder gingerly; the flesh dimpled inward and his wrist and arm buzzed with a thousand tiny needle-pricks. A dislocated shoulder, he realized, almost intrigued with the injury.
The halfling, with the luck endemic to her race, had skidded to a stop in a particularly soft, boggy area. She rose to her feet completely uninjured but quite slimy, smeared with mud and grass stains. Dragonbait needed to lean on his sword to rise to his feet.
Akabar turned his attention to the battle between the now-gigantic Mist and the monstrously swelled Moander. The Jawed God had increased its size once again and regained its hold on the red dragon. The two behemoths tumbled in midair, though why they did not crash was yet another mystery puzzling Akabar. Mist’s wings were too entangled to fly, and the blue flames that had propelled the god through the sky were no longer apparent.
The air shimmered around them like heat rising from the desert sands. Beneath the tattered shards of the god’s body, which Mist had ripped away with her claws, lay only great vacuities. The smell of fetid swamp Akabar had noticed aboard the dragon reached his nose even on the ground. Along Moander’s side, a second huge, duskwood-fanged mouth split open. So wide did the jaws part that the god resembled a giant clam.
Confronted with this new set of jaws, Mist began thrashing like a wild beast. She was a great wyrm, one of the most powerful of her race, and much enhanced by the Turmish mage’s magic, yet, while her opponent seemed to be made of nothing but that great maw, she was still flesh and blood. Then she remembered she was also fire.
Mist breathed a long stream of flame from her bloody mouth and nostrils. The fire plunged deep into the god’s mouth. With a sudden horrifying insight, Akabar understood the significance of the swampy smell, Moander’s great but empty size, and its ability to hover. The mage squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away from the battle.
A small star exploded in the sky over Westgate. The shell that was Moander the Darkbringer and the curved figure of the dragon were black pieces of ash against the blaze that consumed them. Mist’s fire-resistant scales ignited, her flesh became translucent, and her skeleton visible to any eyes unfortunate enough to witness her demise.
A booming sound rolled across the plains. The three adventurers were knocked from their feet by the force of the blast. Ruskettle lay toppled in the mud with her fingers pressed into her ears. The mage fell from his rock.
When Akabar looked up again, the star had faded, leaving behind the falling, burning shards of the god Moander. The long, blackened body that had once been Mistinarperadnacles Hai Draco spiraled to the earth. From the small valley, the mage could not see where the dead beast landed, but he felt the ground shake from the impact.
Akabar felt very tired. He prayed he had been right in his assumption that the package Moander had dropped off on the hilltop had been Alias. A further fear crept over him and tightened his gut. If Moander were indeed a god, they had destroyed only its earthly incarnation—somewhere beyond the borders of reality, it still lived. Should the Darkbringer find a way to return to the Realms, the mage knew that he would be at the top of the god’s list of enemies.
“So be it,” the Turmishman muttered. The beast had invaded his mind and made him a puppet. Now it was no more, destroyed by his hand, for without his spells Mist would not have lasted ten minutes against the Jawed God.
A feeling of intense satisfaction washed over Akabar. The feeling blended with the knowledge that he had rescued Dragonbait and Olive from death by flying them to safety. For the first time he was sure that he was more than a greengrocer merchant who dabbled in spell-casting. He was truly a mage of the first water.
Smoke rose in the sky from the direction of Westgate, and Akabar realized that the dragon must have hit the city. He felt a twinge of sadness for the bea
st. Evil though Mist had been, her evil had been no worse than that of a selfish, monomaniacal old woman. Like a villain in a street pantomime, she was all sneers and threats—her wickedness paled before the reality of the Darkbringer. She died honoring her agreement with the saurial paladin—battling and destroying a greater evil than herself.
Ruskettle should write a song, making Mist a hero, Akabar thought with a grin. The old wyrm would’ve hated that.
“You waiting for the moon to come up, Akash?” Olive snapped. “We have a swordswoman to rescue, in case you’d forgotten.”
Akabar shook his head, clearing it of his self-congratulations and melancholy meanderings. Dragonbait, his hip bloody from their rough landing, and clutching his ribs where Akabar had intercepted him, stood beside him. The lizard was reaching for the mage’s shoulder to heal it first. Akabar moved away from him, cradling his bad arm with his good. He clenched his teeth against the pain.
“No!” the Turmishman insisted. “I can walk at least. You should take care of yourself first.”
Dragonbait paused in protest, but he was not about to argue with the mage’s new determination. He used the last of his healing power on his injured side, then the three of them set out to find Alias.
Alias’s Escape
While Alias’s companions chased Moander over the Elven Wood, through the magical gate, and above the countryside surrounding Westgate, the swordswoman lay still in her dark cocoon. The cushioning about her did little to reassure her. Blood rushed in her ears as her prison rocked and swayed, spun, and finally turned over and over.
Alias’s nostrils flared. The mossy smell of her prison blended with the scent of swamp gas. She gagged and coughed, but was unable to avoid breathing the noxious vapor. She began to feel weak. Perhaps Moander did not realize the gas would damage her. Perhaps it would kill her by accident and the other “masters” would not be able to resurrect her.
That idea brought a peculiar comfort to the warrior woman. Her isolation had accomplished what Moander’s words had failed to do. Alias despaired. She’d caused the death of her friends. Her only real friends, as far as she knew, since her relationship with the Swanmays and the Black Hawks had been nothing but imaginary stories given her by her makers. She wasn’t even human, had never had a mother, was non-born. And soon she would be nothing but a trinket for evil forces to fight and intrigue over. She would become their unknowing puppet, forced into actions she had not chosen—a mockery of life, like a skeleton or golem. Better to die, she decided without feeling, her heart numb.
She wondered, though, whether there would be an afterlife for the likes of her. In the dark cocoon, she whispered, “Do I even have a soul?” She sighed. “What difference does it make?”
What difference does it make? she wondered. I’m alive. I enjoy being alive. She relished the satisfaction she’d felt when she’d defeated an enemy in combat, the contentment that settled about her when she sang, the camaraderie she’d shared with Dragonbait and the others. She’d made her own friends, real friends. She’d proven herself an adventuress, even if she was only a month old. And somehow, she had found the will to deny her would-be masters.
“Even if it isn’t a natural one, I have a life of my own,” she announced to the darkness—and to herself.
Heartened by her declaration, a new determination to live sprang up in Alias, coupled with an assurance that she would somehow defeat everyone who had branded her and reassert her free will.
“Moander!” she shouted uncertainly, not knowing if the god could hear her. “Moander!” she hollered louder. “You’re killing me! I can’t breathe! You have to let me out of here!”
Her prison made one more gut-wrenching turn. Her ears popped. Then the foul air in her lungs was driven out by a sudden impact against the bottom of her cocoon.
Her bindings were torn. She blinked in the sunlight. The air was fresh and warm. Half a dozen hands reached down to pull her from the moist, silky mass that entangled her. Despite her wooziness, Alias spotted the tattoos inscribed in all their palms: mouths full of jagged teeth.
Dizzy from her travel, her muscles atrophied from her imprisonment, and still weak from the effects of the gas, Alias could not resist as the people pulled her to her feet, no doubt prepared to transfer her to another prison, more conventional perhaps, yet equally inescapable.
Alias looked around. She stood by a bonfire in the center of a circle of giant, inwardly curved fangs carved of red stone. Around her were two dozen men and women, their faces hidden in the cowls of their robes. Their leader wore a mask of white with a single eye painted in the forehead and surrounded by teeth. A priest of Moander.
Alias gulped in deep breaths of air to fight her nausea and dizziness, though she did not know why she bothered. Even if she managed to escape from Moander’s minions, she would still be a puppet. One of the minions snapped a band of metal around her sword arm. The band was attached to a long chain of cold iron.
Her legs gave way beneath her, and she sank to her knees on the dusty hilltop. They would drag her off to her other masters, and she hadn’t the strength or the will to resist.
But instead, everyone ignored her. Their attention was fixed on the sky. Mutters passed through the crowd, then cheers.
Alias looked up with everyone else. At first, she did not understand what she saw. Moander, the oozing god, bobbed in the sky, a great, swollen balloon with jaws. Trapped in its tendrils was a red dragon. The beast flapped its wings vainly, but could not resist being drawn into the god’s maw. The pair of monsters twisted and turned in the sky above a great walled city. The sea lay beyond them. “Westgate,” Alias whispered.
Suddenly, Alias knew that the red dragon was Mist. The Abomination had not killed her. As a matter of fact, she looked bigger than ever beside Moander.
Alias’s captors began chanting a prayer for their god’s victory, though some less pious or more excitable, continued cheering as though they were watching two warriors wrestle in an arena.
Alias felt like cheering as well, though not exactly for the dragon. If Mist were still alive, the warrior woman realized, then so might Dragonbait, Akabar, and Olive be. Moander’s failure to mention the dragon’s survival gave Alias reason to suspect he had lied about her friends.
Fury and hope surged within her and gave her strength. She assessed the lanky man holding her chain. He was armed with a cudgel dotted with crude shards of crystal. She was weaponless. But they made me a weapon, she thought. She drew her feet up beneath her knees, remaining crouched near the ground, her eyes fixed on her guard, waiting for an opportunity to attack.
The man’s body shielded her vision from the brilliant explosion that threw the landscape into highlights of white contrasted against shadows of the deepest black. Alias stood up, but was immediately knocked to the ground by a powerful, booming wind. All her captors fell as well, thrown like rag dolls by the wind that ripped over the top of the hill.
A sudden pain shot up Alias’s sword arm, as though the cold iron that bound it had suddenly turned red hot. She ignored the ache and the burning star in the sky. Taking advantage of her guard’s fall, she pulled the iron chain from his numb fingers. The man lay staring sightlessly at her, blinded by the death of his deity. Rising to her feet, she gave him a kick, knocking him out. Then she stole the sharded cudgel from his other hand.
Moander’s minions went to pieces. Some stared blindly at the sky like statues, while many flung themselves on the ground and wept. Alias shot a glance skyward in time to see the last bits of Moander drift down over the city. A fell grin crept over her face. She spat good riddance to the god.
She slipped toward the far side of the hillock, but the priest in the white mask rushed forward to intercept her. He caught a cudgel in the face. Blood spattered from beneath the mask. The priest dropped to the ground.
Alias slid down the hill on the wet, slippery grass. At the bottom, she circled the mound and began to make for the road that led to the city gates.
No pursuit seemed imminent from Moander’s worshipers, but Alias was sure that her respite was only temporary. If they did not hold her responsible for the destruction of their masters earthly form, they would still consider her part of their property. And without the power of their god behind them, they would fight for any scrap left to them.
Tired of carrying the weight of the chain, Alias held her arm forward to inspect the lock on the band. Perhaps she could smash or pick it open somehow. She smiled with glee as she spotted the cause of the earlier pain on her arm.
Moander’s sigil was gone.
Just as Moander claimed, death destroyed the bond each master had on her. For Moander, that meant his material body in the Realms.
Death had cut the connection. But could she defeat the other four? Should she? She remembered Moander’s threat that without the purpose of her masters she would not live. If she eliminated the rest, could she function without someone pulling her strings? She didn’t feel lessened any by Moander’s death. Her heart felt lighter, but she most certainly was not lost without his godly guidance.
A man’s voice interrupted her thoughts. The sound came from the plain stretched out before her.
“Now, Daisyeye,” the man’s voice said, “you’ve been a very naughty girl, though I was afraid, too, the first time I met a dragon.”
A wizard addressing his familiar, perhaps, Alias guessed. Cautiously, he crept closer.
“But, you have nothing to worry about, even if that dragon was Mist. The nasty old beast is dead.”
With a start, Alias recognized the gold, green, and black markings stitched onto the back of the man’s cloak. The coat-of-arms of the Wyvernspurs. And the voice was familiar, though its tone was somewhat braver than it had been the last time she’d heard it. This was too great a coincidence. Yet, she could not be mistaken. It was the same voice that had desperately tried to excuse its faux pas of imitating Azoun IV. His name came easily to her memory, as though it were engraved there by the voice of that nagging woman who’d begged him to do the impersonation.
