Had Taegan been directing the Tarterians, such would not have been the case. If he’d recognized that odd things were occurring on one side of the valley, he would have dispatched some of the wyrms to make sure all was well on the other. But these particular dragons evidently didn’t think that way. According to Brimstone, their one great ruling instinct was to hunt, catch, torment, and slaughter prey. If so, perhaps none of them could bear to abandon the search for the trickster lurking close at hand.
Black, wedge-shaped, withered-looking head swinging back and forth, the nearest Tarterian glided a step closer. Taegan felt a sudden stab of alarm.
Had the wyrm spotted him? His instincts screamed yes, but he didn’t know why. Had he observed something without quite realizing what, or was that prolonged game of hide-and-seek simply wearing on his nerves?
He studied the Tarterian. To superficial appearances, it was searching for him in the same manner as before. It peered this way and that. Sniffed the snowy ground and the frigid breeze. Cocked its ragged-edged ears to listen.
Yet it seemed to him that it might be crawling a trifle faster as it made its way in his general direction, as though it had already spotted its quarry, and all the subsequent casting about was just a show to conceal the fact. He likewise had the impression that, as its head pivoted at the end of its serpentine neck, it spent just a little more time gazing in his direction than it did looking elsewhere.
He realized he was certain. It knew where he was, and he had to start moving before it eased into striking distance. He spread his pinions, sprang into the air, and flew away from the boulder he’d been using for cover. The dragon immediately turned, tracking the motion just as if it could see invisible people, and charged, unfurling its own ragged, leathery wings as it bounded along.
He kept ahead of the creature, gained some altitude on it before it too took to the air, but the other Tarterians were orienting on him. Screeching and hissing, wings lashing, they wheeled, swooped and leaped in his direction.
Racing out over the valley, he rattled off an incantation and flourished the innocuous-looking scrap of licorice root that—praise Sune—none of his former captors had bothered to take from him. Power jolted through his limbs, accelerating his reactions. When he glanced back at the Tarterians, they appeared to be moving slower than before.
But they could still fly faster than he could. His advantages, to the extent that he could be said to possess any, were that they couldn’t actually see him, and that he could maneuver more nimbly. He veered and turned, trying to shake them off his trail, or, failing that, at least keep them from catching up with him.
Snarling, they compensated by spreading out, so a turn away from one was likely to carry him closer to another. They also started spewing their breath weapons and employing their mystical abilities, and he had to trust his veil of invisibility and zigzagging mode of flight to spoil their aim.
It soon became apparent they wouldn’t spoil it by much. A blaze of force missed him, but blasted close enough to agitate the air around him and make him flounder. He sensed a raw ache in the fabric of existence, a flaw that engendered a sympathetic throb in his own head, manifesting just in front of him. He dived, and a floating bubble of shadow seethed into existence above him. A rippling hole in empty space opened to his left and sucked at him as if he were bath water in peril of swirling down a drain. Inside it, he glimpsed a maze of pearly, featureless corridors like the one Brimstone had described. He lashed his pinions and broke the magic’s grip on him. Balked of its prey, the hole melted from existence.
Rather to his own amazement, he was unscathed and uncaught so far, but he was rapidly approaching the wall of dark, snow-dappled peaks on the other side of the valley. He couldn’t fly very far into them, lest he blunder into one of the maze traps. He had to turn, but a simple change of course was no longer possible. The Tarterians were too close, and would catch him if he tried.
He felt tempted to use his final trick. Certainly, it offered his best hope of survival. but even assuming it succeeded, it would bring the chase to an early end, and he’d promised himself he’d buy Kara and Brimstone as much time as possible.
To Baator with it, then. He’d play the game as he’d originally intended. He veered right and swooped low, into the area where he and his comrades had most often observed the largest of the several ghost dragons.
Though sometimes the spirit wandered elsewhere, or simply vanished altogether, and such appeared to be the case at the moment. When Taegan glanced back, he discerned that the Tarterians had nonetheless hesitated before entering its domain, but they cried to one another and drove forward.
That meant his ploy hadn’t done him any good. Indeed, by requiring him to swoop lower, ceding the Tarterians the advantage of height, it had worsened his chances.
Prompted, presumably, by magic gone senile, strange, crumbling skulls laughed as he hurtled by. Rocks rolled and hitched themselves into a curving line which, for a moment, became a pale, slithering serpent. Then an enormous shadow fell over him. He looked up. A Tarterian hung directly overhead, its jaws spreading and its head cocking back to spit its breath.
It was going to kill him if he didn’t get away. Probably he’d waited too long already, because he was supposed to shout first, that was his idiot plan, and he doubted he had time for that and an incantation, too. Still, he sucked in a breath to try, then the dark wyrm lashed its wings and veered off. At the same instant, he sensed something cold and terrible on his right.
He turned, and misty and insubstantial yet somehow, paradoxically, seeming the realest thing in the world, the ghost drake was right beside him, had only to stretch out its neck to seize him in its jaws. The sight of it paralyzed him, and he fell to the ground. Cocking its head, it peered down at him. Plainly, perhaps because of its own phantasmal nature, it had no difficulty discerning the invisible. Though the rest of it remained blurry, as it stared, its eyes resolved themselves into cavities as sharply defined and full of darkness as the orbits of a skull.
Taegan yearned to draw Rilitar’s sword. Instead, he forced himself to lie still and return the colossal specter’s regard.
After a moment, the thing lifted its head to glare and snarl at the Tarterians gliding overhead. Brimstone’s enchantment had worked, fooling it into believing Taegan was an undead entity like itself, and thus it evidently felt no inclination to molest him.
Whereas the Tarterians, their infernal origin notwithstanding, were living creatures encroaching on its territory. They turned off to avoid a confrontation.
For a heartbeat, Taegan considered staying put, where Sammaster’s watchdogs couldn’t reach him. But he had no idea how long the spell of disguise would continue to deceive the wraith, and in any case, he simply couldn’t bear to linger near it. Somehow, its mere presence was fouler and more horrific than even that of a dracolich, and he flew on toward the far side of its barren patch of ground.
That increased his lead. Enough for the Tarterians, flying high over the edges of the ghost dragon’s territory, to lose track of him? No. When he veered, they adjusted.
One of them snarled rhyming words of power. A stinging heat danced over his body, and his wings flailed spastically, abruptly unable to beat as quickly as before. A counterspell had stripped away his charm of heightened speed, and most likely, his veil of invisibility as well.
He could quicken himself a second time, but a spell of invisibility was beyond his powers. He made do with lesser sleights, sheathing himself in murky vagueness and conjuring illusory twins to fly alongside him. It wasn’t good enough. The Tarterians’ attacks struck closer and closer, obliterating the phantom Taegans one at a time. Then a burst of draconic breath slammed into him like a battering ram.
He tumbled. Fell. Forced himself to shake off the shock of the blow and lash his wings. They still worked, and pulled him out of his plummeting descent, but every stroke stabbed pain through his shoulders. He turned and raced for a space where the night was ever so slightly
darker, like the ghost of a black tower rising against the sky. According to Kara, it was both the largest and the most virulent pocket of old, decaying enchantment left in the vale, and the Tarterians kept clear of it just as they avoided the wraith dragons.
The dark wyrms roared, screeched, and flew their fastest to keep him from entering the murk and evading them as he had before. A flare of breath weapon missed him by a finger length. Then he plunged into the looming shadow.
He was simultaneously hot and cold, elated and despondent, weak with sickness and bursting with health, calm and enraged, blind and cursed with an acuity of vision that made every sight pierce him like a poniard, and famished and sated until his guts were sore with gluttony. He couldn’t resolve nor even contain the contradictions. He could feel his mind breaking under the strain.
So don’t think about them! Or anything but flying out the other side of the magic.
He struggled to empty his mind, and it made the chaotic sensations slightly more bearable. After a few more breaths, they ceased, as if the magic, unable to score with its first attack, had given up.
He doubted that, however. He suspected it would strike again before he managed to get clear. But since he had no idea what form the assault would take, all he could do was—
All he could do was hang his head as his mother scolded him. She hated it when he climbed trees, or the ivy-covered walls of their manor house in the country. She was sure he was going to fall, and couldn’t understand why he loved to be up high. Nor could he explain, for he didn’t comprehend it, either.
It wasn’t that he lacked for other diversions. As the scion of one of Lyrabar’s wealthiest families, he could fence, ride, hunt, hawk, and play at lanceboard whenever he felt so inclined. As he grew older, he added dancing, wenching, drinking, and gambling to his amusements. It all made for as pleasant a life as any young man could desire.
Yet he never stopped climbing, even when it made his shoulders tingle and itch in a peculiar, disquieting way. Even when, upon reaching the top of one spire or another, he experienced a sudden urge to jump. Not because he wanted to kill himself, but for some other reason he couldn’t articulate.
His parents indulged him when he squandered coin on clothes, cards, and dice, impregnated serving maids, and even when he dueled. Yet they continued to rebuke him when he climbed. They swore it would be the death of him, and threatened to cut off his allowance if he persisted.
They were so upset, he feared they might be serious, and he did stop for a while. Ultimately, though, the impulse to scale the heights became too powerful to deny. One night, he crept outside the family mansion in Lyrabar, and not even caring that the stonework was slick with rain, clambered up the intricately carved facade of the structure to the conical slate roof of the tallest tower.
Perhaps it was because he’d denied his forbidden desires for so long that his back burned worse than ever, and the edge of the roof called to him as never before. Terrified and exhilarated, he realized that he really was going to jump. He moved forward.
“Stop!” his mother cried.
Startled, he glanced back, and there she was, perched behind him. But he’d been alone an instant before, and it was inconceivable that she could have climbed up after him in any case. Assailed by such irrationality, the confusion in his mind unraveled.
“You’re not my mother,” he said, “and this is only a dream.”
“Whatever else it is,” she said, “it’s everything you’ve always wanted. You’re human and thus a part of your beloved Impiltur as never before. You have all the coin you ever craved, and don’t even have to work for it. Your father earned it, and you can spend your days enjoying it.”
“While lost in a delirium.”
“No. Have you never heard, there are many Torils, many worlds, lying side by side like pearls on a string. In the one you currently inhabit, Sammaster never lived, Taegan was born into one of Lyrabar’s richest families, and the Rage never happened. It’s better than your previous existence, isn’t it? There, the Tarterians will soon tear you apart. Or Kara will, or Brimstone, as their respective curses overwhelm them. Or you’ll eke out the brief remainder of your life in fear, misery, and the knowledge of futility and defeat, until the food in the valley runs out. Wouldn’t you rather stay here?”
He grinned. “You make a compelling case, but alas, my preferences aren’t the point.” He turned back toward the drop-off.
“Please,” his companion—Sune only knew what it truly was—wailed in a convincing imitation of maternal anxiety. “Don’t you understand, you’re human here. You don’t have any wings!”
“We’ll see.” He took a deep breath, then leaped into space.
Lyrabar melted, and he found himself back in the valley, and back in his proper body. Thus, he did have wings, but it seemed he’d stopped flapping them when the dream possessed him. He was falling, and the ground was rushing up fast.
Heedless of the pains that had reasserted themselves along with the remainder of reality, he beat his pinions as hard and fast as he could, fighting to level off. He managed it with scant inches to spare, the tips of his pinions actually rattling against the ground.
He drove onward. Felt rather than truly heard the magic howl with frustration as he burst out of the shaft of gloom. He smiled at its vexation, then sighted the Tarterians hovering before and above him. They’d sped around the column of shade to cut him off, and unless he was willing to retreat back into the dark—suicide, he suspected, since he’d roused the forces lurking there—he had nowhere left to go. Nowhere his wings could carry him, anyway.
“All right!” he cried, loud as he could. Loud enough, he prayed, for Raryn, Kara, and Brimstone to hear. “Come take me if you can, you dull-witted lizards!”
They obliged. One flew directly at him, black talons poised to seize and rend. The others maneuvered left and right, up and down, boxing him in even more thoroughly than before.
Rattling them off as quickly as he dared, he whispered words of power. A drake to his left realized he was attempting magic, and spewed a flare of its breath. He lashed his wings, flung himself out of the way, and the world spun, broke apart, and reassembled itself. Unexpectedly, he was standing behind a stone on one of the mountainsides. Clumsy with the jarring, instantaneous transition from flight to a stationary position on the ground, he hastily folded his wings and crouched.
At the same instant, Raryn, his timing impeccable, shoved the stones he’d piled up for the purpose banging and bumping down a slope near the entrance to the ruined portal. The purpose was to convince the Tarterian that their quarry had shifted himself to that distant point, and peering out from his hiding place, Taegan saw the ruse was working. Screeching, the dragons beat their way toward the gate. They were flying fast, but Raryn should still have sufficient time to scurry away from the rock fall and conceal himself as ably as a skilled ranger could.
Presumably, after the Tarterians failed to find anyone lurking outside the tunnel, they’d revisit the portal chamber itself, where Raryn had cast a petty charm of one sort or another. If they sensed the residue of magic lingering in the air, it might well persuade them that, even though the magical cobbles were damaged, Taegan had still managed to employ them to transport himself out of the vale.
Meanwhile, with their keen ears, Kara and Brimstone had surely heard him yell, the stones tumble, or both. If they’d penetrated the citadel, that was their signal to make sure they were indoors, out of sight. If not, it was a warning they were out of time and needed to get away.
Taegan waited a while, catching his breath, then, his bruised and battered body throbbing, started creeping along the slopes. When they departed the vicinity of the gate, the Tarterians split up and glided back and forth across the battlefield, and he crouched motionless whenever one ventured near. It slowed his progress, and he wondered if Kara and Brimstone might destroy the heart of the Rage before he even had a chance to see it. If so, it would be all to the good, but still, a bit of a d
isappointment.
Eventually, white wyrms and ice drakes lit on the tableland behind the Sossrim force. Will supposed it had been inevitable. All the reptiles had needed to do was invest the time to fly in a wide arc around the battlefield, a course that took them beyond the range of the spells the druids and wizards could cast to deter them.
The maneuver placed the Sossrim between two contingents of their foes, and Stival rushed Will and the rest of his troop—designated dragon killers, the Defender help them—to the rear. There, aided by many of the spellcasters, they gave the whites a difficult time of it.
Violent winds howled overhead to keep the reptiles on the ground. Frozen earth melted into sucking quicksand beneath their feet. Walls of crackling flame, and light curdled hard as steel, sprang up before them to block their frosty breath and prevent them from closing with their foes. Meanwhile, dazzling thunderbolts, explosions of fire, arrows, and all the stones that Will could sling assailed them.
With its steadfast valor and tactical brilliance, the defense was awe-inspiring—and insufficient. On average, whites didn’t command sorcery as potent as that of other chromatics, but they knew their share, and conjured darts of ice and bursts of hail to batter their foes. Often enough, they slipped a blast of milky breath through the wards to freeze archers and spearmen where they stood. Sometimes they even managed to rush in close enough to rend with fang and claw.
In consequence, people died. Will had little leisure to keep track of what was going on behind him, but the occasional glance revealed that the situation was equally dire in the front of the Sossrim formation. At least twice already, Zethrindor’s other minions had reached the crest of the ridge. Thus far, Madislak’s warriors had flung them back, but with their ranks thinning, it was difficult to imagine they could repel many more such assaults.
The Ruin Page 22
