When Dragons Rage

by Michael A. Stackpole

  “Trib, she has no staff.”

  “No, Princess, she does not.”

  Corde reached Parham’s body and pried the rings from his right hand. The one with which he had redirected the lightning still stuck in the ground, and she left it there. She examined the rings, giving each a raspy whirl against its mates, then looked up and bowed her head to Gramn.

  The Murosan canted his head to the right. “Those trinkets did him no good, woman. Get your staff and we shall battle.”

  “’Tis not the spell or the staff, but the sorceress, Muroso-tuc.” Though Gramn might not have known what the Aurolani suffix meant, Corde’s tone and the way she clipped it off made it clear that it was not a term of endearment. “I am prepared.”

  “Do your worst.”

  She shook her head as Gramn once again adopted the stance he had used to face Parham. “I shall do my best.”

  She fanned the rings and the third glowed scarlet. The red disk again flashed to life and arced in at Gramn. The Murosan contemptuously triggered the green spark that glanced it aside, this time knocking it up and out into a grander arc. He nodded at her, then twitched his finger in her direction, inviting another attack.

  The rings rang and spun, then locked down into the fire cylinder. The flames poured out hot and fast. The stream was smaller, but flowed more quickly and drove Gramn back two steps as his staff came around. He spun it quickly, summoning a golden shield that splashed the flames high and wide. Through them Isaura could see him straining, but his spell held.

  Corde yanked the rings apart, abruptly terminating the fire stream. Gramn rose from a crouch at the base of the dolmen, smiling. His staff was not burning, nor was his robe. The people on the wall cheered loudly, and that broadened his smile.

  Then that smile froze.

  The people’s cheering sank into wails.

  The scarlet disk that had been so easily deflected had arced back down. As had its predecessor, it sliced through the dolmen, this time fully bisecting the stone. The upper portion slid forward on molten rock. Its leading edge hit the soft ground and sank in until it hit frozen earth, then pitched forward.

  Gramn spun and stabbed his stick against it. Blue fire shot from the staff’s base and pierced the earth. The stone slowed, then stopped, held there by magick. Gramn’s back bowed with the strain, but he held even as muddy ground oozed up and around his feet.

  Corde rustled the rings against each other.

  Gramn shot back over his shoulder. “You wouldn’t . . .”

  “No need.”

  The Murosan’s right foot slipped in the mud.

  The stone slammed down heavily enough to shake the earth even where Isaura stood. Thick mud streaked with blood splashed out. Brown water had darker tendrils seeping through it, and bubbles rose thickly.

  The wails of horror from the walls lasted longer than the bubbles.

  Corde casually wiped mud from her tunic, then tossed the rings away. They crashed loudly against the stone and lay there, shining on its broad black face. The sunlight reflected off them, painting four white rings over the walls of Porjal.

  Toward the center of the Aurolani position, an order was shouted. Before Corde had crossed even a quarter of the distance back to her lines, dragonels spoke, splitting the air with fire and thunder. A dozen iron balls hammered the walls within those rings. Masonry crumbled, and people fell.

  The conquest of Muroso had begun.

  CHAPTER 42

  S houting from the coric’s common room brought Kerrigan awake, and he sat upright before a wave of vertigo hit him. Bok reached out to steady him, then dragged him from his pallet and propelled him through the small round opening. Silide-tse stood there, gesticulating toward the doorway. Resolute tossed Will a heavy pouch that clanked with bladestars. Crow slipped from the room he shared with Alexia, tucking tunic into trousers, and she followed several seconds later already clad in a short-sleeved coat of gold-washed ringmail that fell to her knees.

  Thunder blasted from the hall, and Kerrigan’s sleep-befuddled mind had a hard time handling the incongruity of thunder within the mountains. In a heartbeat he realized it must be the roar of a dragonel.

  He raked fingers back through his hair. “Silide-tse, how did they get inside?”

  “Traitors!” She spat another word, which sounded very much like “kachadikta,” though he had no clue what it meant. “When our families moved south from Boragul, centuries ago, we left signs for others to follow. Those paths and entrances have long been forgotten as grander roadways supplanted them. Now our ancient sisters have brought the enemy!”

  Resolute grabbed Silide-tse by the shoulder. “How many? Where? What do you need from us?”

  “Kill the Aurolani; leave the greys to us. We need to hold them, slow them. We are retreating to the Grand Gallery.” She glanced at Kerrigan. “They want him there.”

  The Vorquelf pointed at Bok. “You get Kerrigan there. Everyone else, kill things!”

  Resolute’s command struck Kerrigan as blatantly obvious, but it wasn’t until he headed out that he understood its import. As they came into the Long Hall, small knots of male urZrethi keened and fled back toward the Grand Gallery. Female warriors with arms ending in sword blades, axes, or maces—with armored plating contorting their bodies and spikes sprouting everywhere—urged their males along and turned to face the oncoming enemy.

  A flood of gibberers filled the hall and in their midst rolled small dragonels. At Fortress Draconis Kerrigan had seen how devastating dragonels could be. There Aurolani balls slammed into walls, bouncing high and long before coming back down and expending their energy. Here, in the close confines of the hallway, poorly aimed shots ricocheted from walls, bouncing through retreating urZrethi. One ball vaporized a male’s chest, scattering his arms and head in a bloody mist. Others tore off limbs and crushed bodies, leaving their victims bleeding and screaming until more thunder drowned them out.

  Lombo shouldered his way past Kerrigan, then bounded toward the advancing gibberers on all fours. He leaped, arms spread, claws flashing. His battle roar filled the hallway, and some gibberers gave way.

  Behind them, however, a rank of draconetteers raised their weapons and pulled the triggers. A staccato cacophony of thundercracks accompanied the lancing of fire into the air. Lombo’s body jerked and began to spin, then he crashed down hard. He smashed several gibberers to the ground beneath him, shattering bones, but lay still on his side.

  A jolt ripped through Kerrigan as the Panqui went down. He stepped forward, willing his friend to rise again. He wanted to run to him, to cast a spell to check on his wounds and then another to heal them, but those spells required him to bridge that hundred-foot gap.

  That gap into which flowed more and more gibberers.

  Beyond Lombo’s body the draconetteers began to reload their weapons. The gibberers’ mouths hung open in satisfied smiles, their keening laughter piercing the din. One spat on Lombo as he worked, raising a powder horn to refill the weapon with firedirt.

  Kerrigan balled his left fist, raising it to shoulder level, then shoved it forward and opened it. Green sparks, like a swarm of angry bees, rose from it. They shot straight out at the gibberers. Some hit the advancing warriors, stinging them and burning black patches into the mottled fur. Others dipped and cut, then reached their true targets.

  One penetrated a powder horn, igniting the handful of firedirt at once. It exploded, taking the gibberer’s paw with it. Others poured with the firedirt into the draconette’s barrel, causing fire to flash out. One flaming jet seared a face, blinding that gibberer, while the others just leaped back, dropping their weapons.

  Dranae shouldered his draconette and pulled the trigger. A small flash preceded a larger one, which was accompanied by a loud blast. The ball slammed into a gibberer’s belly, dropping it to its knees before it flopped over and thrashed its life out. The man dropped back a step to reload. Alexia, Crow, Sayce, and Resolute tightened into a line, swords drawn.

&n
bsp; Off from the right came an urZrethi with slate-grey flesh. The left hand had been replaced by a hook and the right by a knobby mace. Spikes had been sprouted at knee, elbow, and shoulder, but the armor remained thin. The grey moved with great agility, but hesitated as Silide-tse intercepted her.

  The Boka urZrethi had shifted herself as if to form a smaller model of the Panqui. Thick, armored plates covered her broad back and formed bracers and rerebracers to protect her arms. The right hand had become a lance a good four feet long, whereas the left was shaped into a pair of thick spikes. Silide-tse’s legs had become much shorter and splayed out broadly for balance.

  The grey snarled and leaped forward, driving at Silide-tse. The hook raked left to right, trying to catch an ankle, but the Boka just rolled onto her back in a somersault, came to her feet, then thrust out low as the grey came in. The lance punctured the grey’s left thigh, wrenching a screech from her throat. The right-hand mace came around and pounded on Silide-tse’s left shoulder, but skipped off ineffectively.

  Suddenly the Boka was well inside the grey’s guard. The lance ground in the wound, then appeared to soften and waver. It thickened, then became a tentacle that grew longer. It slapped against the grey’s back, then lashed across her throat, tightening. The hook came up to tug at it, but Silide-tse’s left arm came forward, driving the paired spikes up beneath the grey’s breastbone.

  The grey screamed hoarsely, then stiffed once before a violent spasm shook her body. Silide-tse ripped the spikes free, then flicked the tentacle. The grey’s body spun off and smashed against the hall’s far wall while the tentacle smeared dark blood over the ground to the accompaniment of dragonel thunder.

  Silide-tse turned back and smiled victoriously.

  The crushing power of a dragonel ball erased that smile. Teeth scattered and clattered as her decapitated body crashed back onto its carapace. She somersaulted twice, the tentacle writhing like a wounded snake, then lay still. A widening pool of blood marked where her head had been.

  Other balls had flown at the same time. Some skipped off the high gallery balustrades, peppering fleeing urZrethi with stone fragments. Some, knocked from the galleries, literally flew down. Their arms flapped furiously as they half transformed into wings, but did not slow their falls. Their bodies shattered against the hard stone. Some projectiles, with flatter arcs, caromed off pillars and bounced through the urZrethi. One ball, streaked with gore, spun madly in the center of the Long Hall, describing a little series of bloody curlicues.

  And throughout the shots, the gibberers continued to advance. Kerrigan saw vylaens in their ranks, and a taller creature here and there. They looked more elven than anything, save for their snowy fur. He had no idea what they were, but he knew he’d not seen their like before.

  Resolute and the others engaged the gibberers. Steel rang on steel, and blades swept round in skirling arcs that rent pelts and crushed limbs. To one such as Kerrigan, who had not been trained to combat, the ability to catalog blow after blow was denied. Combat became chaos punctuated by screams and roars, challenges and warnings, the heavy thump of a body hitting the ground, or the lighter thump of some lesser part doing the same.

  A draconette barked. Princess Sayce spun, her mask half-off, her sword flying. She hit the ground hard, and her limbs flopped loosely against it. A great cry went up from within the gibberer ranks, but before they could press that advantage, Will Norrington leaped into the gap. He shook his head, flinging off blood from a stone-shard cut over his left eye. His face was half-masked by blood, and he brandished two bladestars, grasped at the nexus. He faced the horde with mere fistfuls of steel.

  “No!” His growl sliced sharply through the din. “By my blood, you will not pass!”

  Kerrigan had expected the fury in Will’s statement, but not what accompanied the words. A wave of magick pulsed off Will with a force that staggered Kerrigan. The nearest vylaen screamed and vomited blood, while others reeled away in agony. The closest snow-furred figure slumped in a dead faint and—just for a moment—the battle ceased.

  Then the push of the rear ranks knocked several gibberers forward, and the slaughter began again.

  Peri stooped and picked up the once-spinning dragonel ball, then spread her wings and launched herself into the air. Kerrigan watched her for a moment, then pointed at Princess Sayce. “Bok, bring her. Now.” The urZrethi darted forward and caught her up by the shoulders, then dragged her back.

  Qwc circled him. “This way, this way!”

  Resolute shouted. “Pull back!”

  Farther down the hall, behind the surge of gibberers, a dragonel went off, but clearly something had gone wrong. Instead of a flash of fire, Kerrigan saw a jet of flame cutting across the enemy formation. Bodies flew in the air toward the right, then to the left, as the ball slammed off a wall and scythed back through.

  More shrieking came from the Aurolani ranks, this time on the left. Kerrigan couldn’t see what was happening until one of the snowy elves screamed and rose into the air as if flying. His back bowed, then cracked. Massive paws, one on his neck and the other on his tail, bent his shoulders to his hips, then cast the body aside.

  With his tail smashing and his claws rending, a blood-streaked Lombo shouldered his way through the horde. One unfortunate gibberer turned to see who had bumped it. Lombo’s head surged forward, and he bit the gibberer’s face off and spat it at another.

  Crow darted forward, cutting down a gibberer raising a barbed iron spike to impale the Panqui. One of Will’s bladestars thwocked into a gibberer’s forehead and Dranae’s draconette spoke again, this shot blowing the throat from one of the snows.

  Crow pulled Lombo back behind their lines, then the company began to fall back. The Aurolani troops pressed forward and were sure to overwhelm them save that something impeded their progress. It was as if there were iron bars running from floor to unseen ceiling. One gibberer pressed flat up against it, and another twisted, shouldering between the barriers.

  Kerrigan frowned and cast a quick spell that let him trace magick. A crescent of little luminous dots glowed a ghostly green that matched the blood on Will’s face. By my blood, you will not pass.

  In some manner, Will’s blood and his oath had combined to work a potent magick.

  “Will, your blood!” Kerrigan drew a hand across his own forehead and flicked it off, as if ridding himself of sweat. Will looked at him oddly, but the mage just pointed. “Do it! Splash your blood on the floor. Past your blood they shall not go!”

  The thief’s eyes widened, then a cruel smile split his bloody mask. He swiped his hand over his cheek and dappled the floor with a flick of his fingers. Advancing gibberers ran into a tangle of impenetrable rods. Will danced farther right, wiping and flicking in a diagonal line that choked off the Aurolani advance. As they snarled, he laughed, then rained droplets on them as they clawed at him.

  Those baptized with his blood howled piteously. It burned them as if it were molten rock. Their flesh sizzled, sometimes breaking into open flames and at other times just smoking as their bodies melted. Will laughed aloud, then licked his lips and spat at them, burning a hole through one’s chest.

  Though the gibberers could not pass, save where they could squeeze through the droplets, the same was not true of dragonel balls, draconette shot, and weapons hurled in anger. Resolute grabbed Will, dragging him backward as he painted more stone with blood. Kerrigan used his telekinetic spell to deflect one iron ball, then snapped to the left as a draconette shot struck his shoulder. The shot stung, but the bone armor had stopped it, leaving him with a neat hole in his tunic.

  As they retreated to the Grand Gallery, a few gibberers squeezed through after them while others started to climb up to the upper galleries that ran along the Long Hall. Bokagul urZrethi retreated, unblocked by Will’s blood. A few Bokas formed a rear guard and began to kill those few gibberers who did make it past the barrier.

  They came out of the northern leg of the Long Hall and into the Seegg Grand Galle
ry. It literally formed the hub of the community, and rose to dizzying heights. The Hall itself only opened into the lower half of the gallery, but balconies ringed it for another four levels, and generous levels they were. Kerrigan had estimated previously that from floor to domed ceiling, the cylinder ran two hundred feet, and Silide-tse had confirmed that estimate when she pointed to the fountain at the center of the mosaic-decorated floor.

  In contrast to the wails of survivors and the thunder of dragonels, the central fountain gaily burbled and gushed water high—cresting just below the ceiling. The fountain took the shape of two kneeling winged figures, pressed belly to belly, with their heads bent reverently and their wings raised such that the four tips converged a good thirty feet above the floor. From there the jet shot up, thick around as a man, then splashed down gloriously over the two figures.

  Boka warriors guided the company toward the stairways that spiraled up and around the Grand Gallery. Kerrigan was ready to continue up past the fourth level—the one at the top of the halls that led to the Grand Gallery—but Bok handed Princess Sayce to Dranae, then tugged him along the wide balcony circling the gallery. Kerrigan resisted for a moment, then saw a group of urZrethi sorceresses.

  One with onyx skin smiled at him. “We do not know what you did to slow them, but we could feel it here.”

  “I did nothing.”

  “Modesty; good. We need your help.” She pointed to her fellows. “We have a way to stop them, but we cannot do it alone. Will you help us?”

  Kerrigan nodded. “Tell me what to do.”

  She pointed down at the fountain. “The sculpture. I need you to destroy it.”

  “Destroy it?” Clutching the balustrade, he looked down as the last of the warriors started up the stairs. He cast a spell and caught the hint of an enchantment on the fountain that did resemble his telekinesis spell. There he used the magick to draw and lift something, whereas here it was used to restrain. It was really the same spell, just reversed.