The Spectral Blaze botg-3

by Richard Lee Byers

  Tentacles of inky shadow burst out of the ground. They wrapped around Alasklerbanbastos’s hind feet and tail. While he had the creature immobilized, Aoth repeatedly drove the spear into his chest.

  The dracolich snarled a rhyme in Draconic. Magic whined through the air and for a moment turned everything a sickly phosphorescent green. The black tentacles melted, and the steaming residue flowed down his limbs like oil.

  Aoth ran toward one of Alasklerbanbastos’s forefeet. Maybe he could nail the creature to the ground with his spear. But before he could reach the extremity, the dragon jumped away.

  To Aoth’s relief, though, Alasklerbanbastos didn’t take to the air. The wyrm just sprang away across the ground, uncovering him. Then he could see why. Jet and Eider had returned and were swooping and wheeling over the lich, crowding him, denying him the room he needed to take off.

  Each griffon was carrying a pair of firestormers. The genasi were hanging on desperately, plainly too terrified to do anything more. One of them was screaming.

  Aoth didn’t blame the fellow. Alasklerbanbastos’s wings were sweeping up and down. His tail swirled through the air. He struck like a serpent, his fangs clashing shut. It must have seemed impossible to their passengers that the griffons could dodge every attack.

  It was certainly impossible that they could do it for very long, not unless somebody gave Alasklerbanbastos something else to think about. Aoth called fire from his spear and slashed it down the dragon’s flank like a sword.

  Just die! he thought. I killed you before, when you were in a much stronger body than this. But then he’d had Tchazzar, Jaxanaedegor, and several other dragons fighting on his side.

  As he dashed to interpose himself between the dracolich and Cera once more, it seemed to him that the phylactery was still the key. Cera could subdue their foe if she could only take the time to reassert her mastery of the stone. But the hollow wyrm was still pressing her relentlessly, pushing her back parallel to the edge of the cliff. The unnatural thing lunged, then snapped and raked with fangs and claws of hardened hide, and she hit back with the mace of amber glow she’d floated in the air between them.

  Aoth aimed his spear at the sack-wyrm and growled the first words of an incantation intended to tear it to shreds. Then he heard a thump, and the rocky ground jolted beneath him.

  He looked around. Alasklerbanbastos had made another leap, away from the griffons and off the line that Aoth had closed with his body. Now there was nothing but clear space between the dracolich and the priestess who had dared to chastise and control him.

  Still chanting, Aoth resolved to turn his spell on Alasklerbanbastos. Then it came to him that there was a better tactic.

  “Cera!” he bellowed. “Throw the stone! Over the side!”

  Startled, she glanced over at him, then grinned and dropped the mace of metal and wood in her hand. She reached into her belt pouch, snatched out the shadow gem, and flung it into space.

  Alasklerbanbastos froze. The empty wyrm did too, as though consternation had leaped from the mind of the creator to the creation.

  “That’s your soul falling into the gorge,” panted Aoth. “Your existence. Your liberty. You and your friend can stay up here and fight us, or you can go look for it.”

  Alasklerbanbastos roared. Then he ran at Cera. But when she scrambled out of the way, he didn’t pivot with her. He simply pounded onward, leaped off the edge, and plunged out of sight. After a heartbeat, the empty dragon did the same, although, its loose folds catching the air, it fell more slowly.

  That, said Jet, speaking mind to mind, was actually a little bit clever.

  I thought so, Aoth replied.

  Or at least it would have been if you’d come up with it sooner.

  Aoth snorted. You and Eider, stop loafing. Put your passengers on the ground and go back for the next four.

  As the griffons did as instructed-and a watersoul dropped to his knees and puked-Aoth headed for Cera, who hurried to meet him. They hugged for a moment as best they could with weapons, shields, and armor in the way. Their gear clinked together.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she said, “except that I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said. “I’m the one-”

  At their backs, toward the center of the earthmote, something roared.

  “Curse it!” he said. “Come on!” He strode in the direction of the noise, and she followed.

  Tiny flames rippling through the asymmetrical mask of lines on his face, Mardiz-sul scurried toward them. “That’s Vairshekellabex!” he said.

  “I imagine so,” Aoth answered.

  “But… we don’t have our own dragon to pit against him anymore!”

  “If we fight, we have a chance,” said Aoth. “If we don’t, we can be absolutely sure Vairshekellabex will kill us. So I recommend fighting. Collect those three”-he indicated the other new arrivals with a poke of his spear-“and come on.”

  He’d done his best to project toughness and determination, but inwardly he understood Mardiz-sul’s dismay. Their situation was likely to turn out bad. Vairshekellabex might already be on the wing, soaring overhead to blast the intruders with his breath. Aoth scanned the sky but didn’t see the wyrm.

  And when he and his companions reached the center of the floating island, he realized why. Vairshekellabex, or the front end of him, anyway, was evidently caught under the heap of fallen stone in the mouth of the cavern. Gaedynn stood watching with his customary air of insouciance, as if the gray’s situation were faintly amusing but of no actual significance. Shielded behind an outcropping, Son-liin lay unconscious on the ground.

  Cera crouched beside the girl.

  “She’s just napping,” Gaedynn said. “She strained herself. Some of us had to take up the slack when others weren’t where they were supposed to be. What was it, Alasklerbanbastos slipping the leash? Whoever could have predicted that?”

  “Tell me what I need to know,” Aoth rapped.

  Gaedynn’s flippant demeanor fell away. “You see we trapped the gray. But I can’t imagine it holding him for long. Right before the stone fell on top of him, he cast a spell. Something to make him stronger or faster, maybe, since it didn’t do anything else that I could see.”

  “Right.” Aoth turned to Mardiz-sul and the other genasi. “Surround the cave entrance.” He pointed to the watersoul who’d vomited, leaving stinking spatters of puke on the front of his brigandine. “Except you. You run to the bridge. Whatever happened there, our squad should have it under control by now. Leave one man to stand guard and fetch the rest. Everybody, move!”

  The genasi burst into motion. The watersoul sprinted with the inhuman speed of his kind, as if an invisible current was sweeping him along.

  Cera looked up from her examination of Son-liin. “She just fainted,” the priestess said.

  “Then leave her,” said Aoth. “We have to get into position too and break whatever enchantment Vairshekellabex already cast, if we can.”

  He and Gaedynn positioned themselves squarely in front of the cave. The dragon was going to attack someone, and for the moment, it needed to be the warriors who had the best chance of surviving. Cera crouched behind a boulder off to the left. It would give her some protection without hindering her spellcasting.

  His pulse beating in his neck, Aoth aimed his spear and chanted a spell whose purpose was to dissolve other enchantments. Cera murmured the start of a prayer.

  Then the heap of stone fell in on itself. Vairshekellabex had finally succeeded in dragging his head and neck out the back end of it. A deep voice hissed a word of command, and the whole mound shattered into bits of gravel, which instantly hurtled from the mouth of the cave like a thousand slung stones.

  It was pure reflex that made Aoth raise his targe in time to cover his face and eyes. The barrage clattered on his armor, stung him all over, and sent him reeling backward.

  He caught his balance and looked around. Grinning, Gaedynn was rolling t
o his feet with one bloody pock on his cheek and another on his chin. He’d plainly saved himself from worse by dropping flat, as Cera had by cowering behind her boulder. And everyone else had been standing to one side or the other of the barrage.

  Aoth returned Gaedynn’s smile. He surmised that they’d just experienced the result of the magic Vairshekellabex had conjured previously. It had been a spell of blasting prepared in advance, then triggered by a single word of command. Since it had been discharged, it was one less thing to worry about.

  But when Vairshekellabex lunged out into the open, it became immediately apparent that there were plenty of other reasons for concern. One earthsoul yelped at the dragon’s size and speed, or maybe at the sheer horrific grotesquerie of the jutting, tangled fangs.

  Aoth took a step, shouted a word of power, and hurled crackling lightning from his spear. The dazzling flare burned into Vairshekellabex’s chest, and the gray threw back his head and howled.

  Gaedynn loosed an arrow. The shaft stabbed into the underside of their foe’s scaly neck.

  Bobbing up from behind her stone, Cera stretched out her arm and said, “I pray for your holy light.” A brilliant beam shot from her fingertips and stabbed a smoking, black-edged hole in one of the dragon’s wings.

  Mardiz-sul ran forward, shouted, and swung his sword at Vairshekellabex’s flank. The blade burst into flame as it arced through the air.

  And at that point, all the other genasi started fighting too, shooting crossbow bolts and flinging javelins. Thank the Firelord, thought Aoth. Now we’ve got a chance anyway.

  Vairshekellabex’s tail whipped through the air. Mardiz-sul ducked barely in time to keep it from smashing his skull. But at the same moment, the wyrm lunged forward. He was coming at Aoth and Gaedynn, but one of the spines on the hock of his hind leg snagged the firesoul’s sword arm, catching between two links of mail then popping free in a splash of blood.

  Mardiz-sul froze in place like a statue. His red-bronze skin turned gray.

  Meanwhile, Vairshekellabex cocked his head back, snapped it forward, and opened his jaws wide. Gray spew blasted out, and Aoth and Gaedynn threw themselves out of the way.

  The caustic spray hammered the ground but didn’t splash like water. By the time it hit, it was already congealing, and it ended up as a freestanding web of interconnected globs, loops, and tendrils. Imagining the steaming, sizzling goo eating into his flesh and sticking to it at the same time, Aoth winced and roused the protective magic of another tattoo.

  Then, spinning his spear through the necessary figure, he created a second such weapon made of rippling, multicolored light. It hefted itself as though an invisible warrior were holding it, threw itself at Vairshekellabex’s head, and guided by its creator’s will, started jabbing.

  Gaedynn shot a second arrow into the dragon’s neck just as the first one fell out, the end of it charred away. If it meant the shaft had gone in deep enough to come into contact with Vairshekellabex’s caustic spew, Aoth supposed that was a good thing. Although so far, it didn’t seem to be slowing the gray down any.

  Meanwhile, braving the lashing tail, stamping hind foot, and pounding wing that could have swatted him like a fly, an earthsoul scuttled forward to Mardiz-sul. He gripped the Bright Sword by the shoulder and jabbered something Aoth had no hope of hearing, not with Vairshekellabex snarling, Firetormers screaming war cries and warnings, and all the rest of the cacophony. But maybe it was a charm or a prayer meant to help the earthsoul exploit his affinity with stone, because the red and gold washed back into Mardiz-sul’s face, and freed from the bonds of petrifaction, he staggered backward with his comrade.

  Vairshekellabex’s forefoot snatched for Aoth. He sidestepped and tried to jab it but was too slow. The gray started to claw again, and another arrow appeared in his neck right beside the last one and the gory hole left by the one before that. He hissed and his talons fell short of the mark.

  Aoth made the rainbow spear stab for the throat as well. Vairshekellabex snarled a monosyllabic word of command in one of the Abyssal or Infernal tongues that filled a man with instinctive loathing even if he didn’t understand them. The spear blinked out of existence.

  Then the dragon’s head jerked to the right. He opened his jaws and spewed his breath weapon. But the acidic slime arced high over the heads of any of the genasi on that flank and spattered the ground well behind him.

  Aoth felt a vicarious surge of Jet’s derision: You missed us, wyrm! Then the griffon focused his thoughts on his master. We’re back. Do you want us to keep ferrying genasi across or start fighting the dragon?

  Get the firestormers off your backs and get Gaedynn and me on, Aoth replied. There was no point in sending the griffons for any more reinforcements. One way or another, the fight would be over before they could arrive.

  The flying steeds swooped to land beside the same mass of granite that was protecting Son-liin. As Aoth created a shower of fist-sized hailstones to batter Vairshekellabex, Gaedynn turned and sprinted toward the outcropping. Aoth thought the archer was breaking away too soon, then noticed his quiver was empty. He couldn’t have attacked again even if he’d stayed put.

  Fortunately it was then that the windsouls came flying in from the east, and if any of them hesitated before actually joining the fight, it was only for a moment. In a sense, their advent made up for Gaedynn’s departure. They filled the gap in the rudimentary three-sided formation that was penning the dragon in.

  But Aoth was still going to need someone on the same patch of ground that he was currently occupying, someone to brave the very worst Vairshekellabex could do and very possibly die as a result. And it was Mardiz-sul’s bad luck to be the best hand-to-hand combatant among the firestormers.

  “Bright Sword!” Aoth bellowed. “Come here!”

  Mardiz-sul sprinted toward him immediately, circling wide enough that Vairshekellabex was unlikely to kill him before he arrived. The same earthsoul who’d turned him from stone back into flesh and blood followed along a stride behind him. Eyes wide and body trembling, the watersoul in the vomit-spattered brigandine edged forward to join Aoth as well.

  Maybe several warriors, standing together with Cera’s magic supporting them, had a chance of surviving. Aoth could only hope so because he needed them there whatever it cost them.

  “Hold this ground!” he said, and Vairshekellabex’s head hurtled down at them. Everyone tried to leap out of the way, but the earthsoul was too slow. The gray’s crooked fangs snapped shut on him, and when the gigantic jaws lifted away, nothing remained but hands, feet, and blood.

  Jet bounded into the open. The genasi that he and Eider had just carried to the earthmote followed him.

  Aoth swung himself into the griffon’s saddle. Responding to his will, his safety straps started buckling themselves to secure him in place. But Jet didn’t wait on that. He lashed his wings and took to the air instantly.

  On their way up, Aoth spotted Gaedynn and Eider above them. The skirmisher’s mount carried additional arrows, and he was shooting them at the dragon’s neck as rapidly as he could, making it look like a pincushion. But he wasn’t keeping his distance while he did it. Eider was diving and tearing at Vairshekellabex, flying on by, wheeling, and diving again.

  That, Aoth decided, was the way to do it. He and Gaedynn needed to employ both their own best weapons and those of their steeds if they hoped to kill the seemingly unstoppable horror below them.

  I like that plan, said Jet, sensing his intent. The familiar screeched, plunged at one of the gray’s sweeping, leathery wings, and ripped gashes in it as he hurtled past.

  As he wheeled, Aoth had time to cast darts of azure light. Then Jet furled his wings and swooped. Aoth charged his spear with chaotic force and struck when his mount did. A century of practice allowed him to thrust safely past Jet’s body and pierce the dragon’s back instead. Power flared and blasted the wound bigger.

  Then Jet wrenched himself sideways. Vairshekellabex’s gigantic teeth clashed shut jus
t a finger’s length beyond the tip of his left wing.

  Aoth immediately sensed another threat, although he didn’t know exactly what or where. Watch out! he said.

  Prompted by either his rider’s intuition or his own, Jet plunged lower. Vairshekellabex’s tail whipped over their heads.

  Wings beating, the griffon climbed, seeking to regain the high air. He turned for another pass.

  Vairshekellabex snarled words in the same grating, repulsive demonic language he’d used before. The griffon’s black feathers and fur turned gray, and his body froze into immobility.

  Jet spun end over end as he fell. Aoth closed his eyes to keep the whirling from impairing his concentration, rested his hand on the hard, ridged stone of his familiar’s neck, and rattled off the words of a counterspell.

  Countermagic wasn’t a part of the comprehensive system of battle wizardry he’d studied in his younger years in Thay. It was just an extra trick he’d picked up along the way, and at that moment, he was grimly aware that he wasn’t nearly as good at it. But apparently he was good enough because Jet abruptly exploded into motion once again. Beating his wings, straining with every bit of his strength, the familiar pulled out of his fall.

  Afterward his muscles shuddered and twitched. The residual pain of the two transformations and the extreme effort that followed bled across the psychic link and jabbed up and down Aoth’s body. For a moment he felt as though he had wings growing out of his own back, cramping, throbbing wings.

  We can retreat for a moment, he said. Catch our breaths.

  A man might have answered with an obscenity, but even griffons endowed with an equivalent level of intelligence didn’t grasp the concept. Still, Jet responded with a surge of disgust that conveyed the same message.

  If we hold back, he said, it just gives the wyrm a chance to try the same trick again.

  There is that, said Aoth. Let’s try this, then. He visualized the sequence of moves, making sure the griffon understood it completely. Then Jet lashed his wings and hurled them forward, straight at Vairshekellabex’s head.