The Ruin

by Richard Lee Byers

  The lightning infusing the vapor had little effect on Brimstone. Raryn, however, convulsed. Afterward, swaying, the dwarf continued to cling to his perch on the smoke drake’s back, but that was all he could manage. He was no longer capable of threatening anyone.

  Brimstone turned, compensating for Kara’s attempt to dodge out from underneath him. His claws stabbed into her back, and impelled by his momentum, they plummeted together, to slam down on the floor of the valley. Old, broken bones flew up at the impact.

  Raryn jumped off Brimstone and staggered away just before the two wyrms started rolling, biting, and tearing at one another. Had he been even an instant slower, they surely would have crushed him. When clear, he collapsed to his knees, and his sides heaved. Plainly, for the moment, he had nothing more to give.

  Though unscathed, Taegan felt almost as helpless. He didn’t want to help Kara battle Brimstone. However demonic his fundamental nature, the vampire was an ally, and even had it been otherwise, destroying him would do nothing to restore Kara’s reason.

  Yet he saw no other recourse, and so, sword poised, rattling off an incantation to surround himself with phantom duplicates, he dived at the tangled, writhing drakes. Then something hissed and screeched. He leveled off and wheeled to see that the Tarterians were coming.

  Someone in Lyrabar had spotted the dragons winging their way through the twilight. But either the folk in the city hadn’t discerned the wyrms were metallics, or else had deemed it prudent to sound the alarm even so, for all the countless temple bells were tolling, and had been for a considerable time.

  But no one had rushed forth to confront the travelers. When the drakes and their riders spiraled downward toward the hill crowned with its circle of weathered menhirs, nine standing, one fallen on its side, the landscape was otherwise deserted.

  Swinging himself down off Tamarand’s back—arguably a position of honor, though, grieving and guilty over Lareth’s death, the gold had turned out to be just as taciturn and uncongenial a companion as Dorn—Pavel noticed that Darvin and a number of the other Thentians appeared relieved to be back on the ground. Hissing and screwing up their faces, they rubbed their thighs and hobbled stiffly around.

  Firefingers, though, despite looking twice as old as any of the others, strolled briskly around inspecting the symbols carved on the standing stones. “This place was sacred to Bane,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Pavel, “but according to Brimstone, the decent folk of Impiltur eradicated the coven long ago. These days, the circle is simply the entrance to his lair. Or at least, I hope it still is.”

  “If it isn’t,” said Havarlan, argent, much-scarred scales shining even in the evening gloom, “we’ll simply have to break it open.” Like most of the drakes, she crouched on the hillside, outside the ring. The space inside wasn’t big enough to hold more than a couple wyrms at a time.

  “Are you sure you can?” asked Will, still astride Wardancer.

  Havarlan snorted, chilling the air and suffusing it with the smell of rain. “I certainly hope so. For if we can’t contend with Brimstone’s enchantments, we surely have no chance of countering Sammaster’s magic, or that of the primordial elves.”

  “Well,” Pavel said, “let’s try it the easy way first.” His bad leg aching a little—days on dragon-back had taken a toll on him as well—he strode to the center of the circle. Tamarand, Firefingers, Dorn, Scattercloak, Jivex, and Jannatha came to join him.

  “Brimstone!” he shouted.

  As before, for a split second, he seemed to fall, or to hurtle like an arrow through emptiness dappled with light, then the vampire’s limestone cavern sprang into being around him. The cool, greenish light of the perpetual torches gleamed on coffer after overflowing coffer of coins and gems. Despite Brimstone’s extended absence, the lair still smelled of smoke and sulfur.

  Hovering, wings glimmering, Jivex peered about. “I’m a dragon,” he said. “Why don’t I have heaps of sparkly stuff?”

  “I suggest,” said Scattercloak, “we move. We don’t want the others dropping in right on top of us.”

  They all hurried into a side gallery, less stuffed with treasure than the first chamber, but still aglitter with a certain amount of overflow. The rest of their companions blinked into view, a few at a time. Once they perceived that they hadn’t teleported themselves into danger, the gold and silver dragons shrank into human form, relieving what would otherwise have been claustrophobic congestion.

  “Now, then,” said Firefingers. “Those of us who understand portal magic will need to work in the center of the hoard. Everyone else, please, give us room.”

  As Pavel watched the wizards, human and dragon alike, set about their labors, Sureene, clad in silvery mail that glowed like moonlight, and made her look like a handsome warrior queen, came to stand beside him.

  “Well done,” she murmured.

  He shrugged. “Anybody could have called out Brimstone’s name.”

  “I mean all of it. I have a gift for you.” She opened the satchel hanging over her shoulder and brought out a leather scroll case. “The divine magic version of the spell to end the Rage, scribed half a dozen times over.”

  “I accept it gratefully, of course, but I trust it will be truly accomplished spellcasters like Firefingers, Nexus, and you who actually make the attempt to end the curse.”

  “So one would expect,” she said, “but then we expected the warlocks would be the ones to solve the problem of reaching the citadel, too. It’s best if every spellcaster in our company possesses the means to try, and from what I understand, you’ve been too busy roaming around gathering vital information, rescuing kings and kingdoms, and slaughtering evil wyrms to master the actual incantation.”

  Was she flirting with him? It felt like it, and the gods knew, even though she was ten years older than he, he’d always fancied her. He’d just never tried to do anything about it because she’d always seemed too dignified, busy, important, and generally unavailable. He started to frame a suitably glib but modest response, then glimpsed motion at the periphery of his vision.

  Will glanced surreptitiously around. Then he eased in front of an open chest, shielding it behind his body and cloak. His hand slipped toward a gold ring set with an emerald solitaire.

  “Please, pardon me just a moment,” Pavel said. He advanced on Will. “Leave that, insect!”

  The halfling snatched his hand back. “What?”

  “You know what. Leave the treasure alone. If you steal anything, you could change the hoard’s essential identity, and keep the wizards from opening the gate.”

  “You don’t know that. You just like frustrating your betters. My whole life, I’ve wanted to loot a dragon’s lair. Now here we are, with the tenant nowhere around—”

  “No one cares about your sordid predilections. Restrain yourself.” Pavel turned back around, only to discover that Sureene had drifted away and stood murmuring with Baerimel and Jannatha. The moment had passed.

  As he drew breath to shower Will with invective, brightness bloomed in the air above the bulk of the hoard, the soft radiance glinting on jewels and pieces of precious metal. The portal resembled a whirlpool standing on end, and likewise light refracting through a prism.

  “If Brimstone happens to be flying,” said Tamarand, currently wearing the shape of a slim youth with curly chestnut hair, “we could step through into empty air.”

  “Or something a thousand times worse,” Darvin said.

  The gold ignored the interruption. “Accordingly, we dragons will pass through in our true shapes, carrying our allies on our back. That way, no one will come to harm by falling. I’ll go first.”

  Pavel supposed that meant he would, too. He headed for Tamarand, who swelled and dropped to all fours, clothing dissolving, wings erupting from his shoulder blades.

  When the transformation was complete, Pavel climbed onto the dragon’s back. Tamarand sprang at the luminous disk, and evidently recognizing that the gate was just large enough for
him to pass through at the same time, Jivex opted to streak along beside him.

  Taegan didn’t know what to do. Probably, he thought, because there was no way to avert disaster.

  But he could see that Kara and Brimstone were still ripping at one another as if they hadn’t even noticed the advent of the Tarterians. If the six otherworldly wyrms descended on them while they were tangled together, they’d have no chance at all. Nor would Raryn, who’d struggled back to his feet, but was still only a few paces away from his draconic allies.

  So Taegan decided to try to lead the Tarterians away from his friends, to give Raryn time to hide, and Kara and Brimstone a final chance to come to their senses. He flew higher, shouting and brandishing Rilitar’s sword, then wheeled and raced zigzagging away from Sammaster’s minions.

  A blaze of breath narrowly missed him and obliterated two of his illusory twins. Beginning a charm to cloak himself in blur, he glanced back, then felt a surge of despair.

  Three of the Tarterians were chasing him, but the others were spiraling down toward his allies, and despite the imminent threat, Kara and Brimstone continued battling one another. Raryn shouted to them to stop, to look, while loosing arrows at the creatures overhead. Shaft after shaft pierced the Tarterians’ dark, mottled hide, but the wounds were insufficient to deter them.

  With all hope lost, Taegan considered translating himself through space so he could at least die fighting in proximity to his comrades. But then the Tarterians on his tail would follow him back to Kara and the others, and though he couldn’t see how it actually mattered either way, somehow he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He flew onward instead, toward the dark, snow-dappled barrier mountains.

  Instinct prompted him to veer, and a bubble of shadow burst into existence beside him, almost caging him, but not quite. Unfortunately, though, his evasive maneuver turned him straight at a Tarterian that had drawn up even with him on his left flank. Until this moment, he hadn’t even realized it was there.

  He looked around for a ghost dragon, or one of the areas of old, decaying magic his pursuers avoided. Neither was within reach. The wyrms had him boxed in, with nowhere left to flee. Green eyes shining, the Tarterian in front of him spread its black-fanged jaws.

  Then a cloud of hummingbirds popped into existence around it and jabbed at it with their needle beaks. Startled, the Tarterian spewed hammering force at them instead of Taegan, cutting a clear space through the middle of the flock but not destroying them all. The remainder continued to harass it, and it struck at them with tooth and claw.

  Its distraction afforded Taegan an avenue of escape. He swung around the reptile, placing it between the other two wyrms and himself, and as he did so, Jivex’s voice sounded from somewhere close at hand.

  “How did you ever survive this long without me?” the faerie dragon asked.

  To Pavel’s relief, the gate actually had transported him, Tamarand, and Jivex to the valley they’d glimpsed before the grand divination went awry, but also into the midst of a situation so chaotic that it took him a moment or two of casting about to make any sense of it.

  Exiting the portal, he and his companions found themselves on barren, bone-littered ground, with Kara and Brimstone locked in snarling combat close at hand. Three of the black, green-eyed wyrms—Tarterian dragons, if he could trust a reference he’d read as a seminary student—glided overhead.

  Jivex whirled and sped away. He must have spotted something else requiring his attention. But before Pavel could determine what, one of the black, speckled wyrms overhead cocked its head back and whipped it down. Its jaws snapped open wide, and a grayish, expanding burst of breath weapon exploded from its gullet.

  Tamarand lashed his pinions and leaped. The blaze of force pounded down, jolting and cracking the frozen earth, smashing crumbling skeletons, but missing its targets. All three Tarterians maneuvered, orienting themselves to strike at the gigantic gold even as he roared an incantation.

  A floating circle of white radiance appeared around Tamarand’s body, and a pair of sizzling lightning bolts leaped upward from the ring. Each stabbed into the belly of one of the Tarterians, and the reptiles convulsed. At the same time, the gold crouched low and shrugged, spilling Pavel to the ground.

  Tamarand then leaped, beat his gleaming, leathery wings, and took to the air. A flare of Tarterian breath bashed him, made him wobble in flight, but failed to knock him down. He riposted with a blast of fire, and his assailant plummeted, its tattered wings burning like dry leaves.

  Meanwhile, Wardancer sprang through the portal with Will perched at the base of her serpentine neck. The bronze looked around, then flapped her wings and climbed to join the aerial combat. Unlike Tamarand, she hadn’t opted to deposit her rider on the ground first, and the halfling pulled the warsling from his belt.

  Their departure left Pavel to deal with Kara and Brimstone, at least until more of his comrades emerged from the gate. As always, mere proximity to the vampire made him clench with loathing, and his instinct was to do everything in his power to help Kara destroy him. But perhaps that would be wrong. Brimstone was an ally, too, and at the moment, arguably not responsible for his actions. His exile in this desolate place had likely left him starved for blood.

  Thus, instead of casting attack spells, Pavel simply evoked flares of Lathander’s warm, red-gold light from his amulet. The tactic worked to a degree. Brimstone hissed, twisted his head away from the glow, and attempted to scramble backward. Unfortunately, Kara still held him gripped in her talons and coils and wouldn’t release him. She simply took advantage of his temporary incapacity to inflict further harm.

  “Stop!” Pavel shouted. “Let him go!”

  Somewhere close at hand, Raryn bellowed the same thing. But she didn’t heed them. Pavel belatedly realized both dragons were mad, the vampire with blood thirst, Kara, with the Rage, and he had no idea what to do about it.

  Then Nexus was there, huge as Tamarand, so huge that even Brimstone and Kara appeared small in comparison. He declaimed a rhyme, and some unseen force seized hold of Kara, yanked her away from the smoke drake, and flung her torn, bloody body through the air. Nexus wheeled, keeping track of her, and started another incantation.

  That meant it was still Pavel’s job to control Brimstone. Unfortunately, fangs bared, the vampire was already pivoting back in his direction. Pavel could keep producing blazes of dawnlight, but what would happen when he’d exhausted the capability?

  Then Pavel noticed the Tarterian Tamarand had burned. The dark wyrm was still on the ground, its smoking wings apparently too charred to bear it aloft once more. Its neck swayed this way and that as it sought to aim a breath or supernatural attack at the gold soaring overhead.

  Pavel pointed, shouted, “Look there!” and when Brimstone failed to heed him, forced the reptile to flinch and turn with another pulse of holy light. “There’s blood! Take it from an enemy, not your allies!”

  Brimstone hesitated, then lashed his wings, pounced on the other dragon’s back, and buried his oversized fangs in its throat. They rolled, tangled together, spat blasts of breath at one another.

  Pavel thought he should help Brimstone, but peered about first, lest some menace steal up on him unnoticed.

  Nexus held Kara pinned beneath him as he recited the spell to quell the Rage. Obviously, the ward she’d previously established had failed, and the gold sought to conjure a replacement. Snarling and hissing, the song dragon struggled beneath him, and Pavel recalled with dismay that supposedly, only Sammaster had achieved such mastery of the enchantment that he could impose it on an unwilling subject. Nexus must hope that, despite all appearances to the contrary, Kara wasn’t wholly lost to madness.

  Dorn hovered near the confrontation. Maybe he thought it would help if Kara could see him.

  Meanwhile, dragons and their riders lunged one pair at a time through the portal. Some of the wyrms staggered, or crouched down shaking, as something afflicted them, and Pavel surmised that the Rage must be even
stronger here near the source. But none of the metallics succumbed. They shook off their distress, then they and their human comrades threw themselves into the confrontation with the Tarterians.

  Some battled close at hand, fighting the wyrms Tamarand had initially engaged. Azhaq spat pale, glittering vapor that paralyzed Brimstone’s opponent but had no effect on the vampire, who then guzzled and slurped the live wyrm’s blood. Gloved hands gesturing, Scattercloak murmured a rhyme, whereupon gashes split a flying Tarterian’s hide.

  Other dragons and their riders streaked away in the direction Jivex had gone, to confront the three Tarterians wheeling in that portion of the sky.

  In both cases, the end result was the same. The guardian drakes were powerful, but so were the newcomers, who also had them outnumbered. One by one, the Tarterians fell.

  Which meant no one needed any further assistance from Pavel after all. He turned back around to see how Kara, Nexus, and Dorn were faring.

  The gold roared the concluding syllable of his incantation. Kara kept on thrashing. Dorn rushed in close to her head. If she snapped at him, or spat lightning, he had no hope of avoiding it.

  Heedless of the danger, he placed himself before one of her glaring amethyst eyes and rested his human hand on her brow. “It’s me,” he said, “and you’re alive. You can’t let the frenzy swallow you now!”

  She shuddered, then sang the same words of power Nexus had just spoken, the sound both lovely and full of anguish, or perhaps, supreme effort. Gradually, almost imperceptibly at first, she shrank back into human form. Nexus stepped back and so avoided crushing her.

  When she was entirely a woman once more, Kara and Dorn embraced. She started weeping, and so did he. The latter was a sight Pavel had never seen, nor ever expected to.

  Dorn and Kara slipped away from the others as soon as they could manage it discreetly. At first, they had better things to do than talk. But afterwards, as they lay twined together wrapped in their cloaks, she explained how she’d survived.