The Spectral Blaze botg-3

by Richard Lee Byers

  Tchazzar’s burning yellow eyes narrowed. “Whatever schemes he’s scheming, he wouldn’t dare cross us by himself.”

  “No, he wouldn’t. We have to assume the other wyrms will turn on us too.”

  “Curse you! You’re the one who brought them here!”

  “And fortunately for you, I’m also the one who’s figured out how to adapt to our changing circumstances.”

  “How?”

  “We stop allowing ourselves to be distracted even by the enemies we particularly detest,” Alasklerbanbastos said, “or any petty harassment from the air. We finish the fight on the ground now, quickly, before the other dragons come at us together.”

  “How do we do that?” Tchazzar asked.

  “We locate Shala Karanok and hit her with everything we have because she’s Chessenta’s one alternative to you, and if we kill her, your rebels will lay down their arms. And if any Threskelans or genasi are stupid enough to keep fighting afterward, your loyal troops will overwhelm them.”

  Tchazzar grunted. “It could work.”

  “It will! And net us Jhesrhi Coldcreek and Aoth Fezim in the bargain. They’ll stand their ground to defend Shala. And afterward, when the other dragons see the city is ours, they’ll turn tail. They won’t stick around to fight us and every bowman and artilleryman who can send a shaft or a stone into the air.”

  Tchazzar spread his wings. “Let’s do it.”

  *****

  After punching through several walls, Aoth and Jet went to ground in a butcher shop and waited to see if Alasklerbanbastos would track them or if he’d raze the entire street to flush them out. Aoth used the time to swig water from his waterskin and ease his smoke-parched throat. Jet discovered that the butcher dealt in horseflesh and set about devouring that portion of the stock.

  After a while, it became apparent that Alasklerbanbastos had given up the pursuit. Aoth slumped, releasing tension he hadn’t realized he was holding, even though he expected that he and Jet would be back fighting the dracolich soon enough.

  You know that clever plan you had? the griffon asked, speaking mind to mind because his gnashing beak was busy tearing horsemeat. The one where you and I would sneak off to Akanul and kill a dragon and because of that there wouldn’t be a war?

  “Yes,” Aoth replied.

  How do you think that’s working out?

  Aoth scowled then laughed. “Plainly it’s working brilliantly. The actual goal was to prevent the invasion of Tymanther and we did. We’re fighting on Chessentan soil instead. Do you feel ready to go back aloft?”

  Jet gulped a final chunk of horsemeat. “Just open the door.”

  Aoth did and peeked out. There was no dracolich glaring down at him, or any other foe in view. There was battle somewhere nearby-he could hear the muddled roar of it-but it hadn’t yet spilled into that section of street.

  When he and Jet took flight, he had the griffon climb high. It made him feel exposed, but it was his only hope of assessing the overall progress of the battle despite the billowing, eye-stinging smoke and the buildings breaking up the view.

  Even after Jet reached the apex of his ascent, no dragon, living or undead, attacked them. But when Aoth saw where Tchazzar and Alasklerbanbastos actually were, he cursed.

  Troops loyal to the Red Dragon were plainly massing to assault a central part of the allied formation. Tchazzar himself towered in their midst, no doubt giving them orders and trying to inspire them to valor. Flickering with lightning, Alasklerbanbastos perched on a rooftop a little way back, probably so he wouldn’t spook his new partner’s warriors. He’d join the attack when it began.

  “They’re throwing everything into a run at Shala,” said Jet.

  “Yes,” Aoth answered. “Get us over there.”

  As they streaked toward Shala’s troops, he blew calls on his bugle because, while the sellswords on the ground had little hope of reaching Shala, griffon riders could. And one by one and two by two, those who were still able flew out of the night to race along beside him.

  They swung west to avoid a premature brush with the enemy, then looped in over Shala’s formation. As they arrived, still more flyers came to join their wheeling, swooping company. Riding double on Eider, Gaedynn and Son-liin preceded a band of windsouls with fluttering garments and blue lines glinting on their faces. Her staff rippling with fire, Jhesrhi floated like the genasi; something had evidently happened to her eagle. Oraxes and Meralaine rode their stolen drakkensteeds.

  And others flew in as well, folk Aoth hadn’t even dared to hope would appear just when he needed them most. Khouryn was riding a giant bat, of all things. Balasar and a white-scaled dragonborn arrived on horses made of congealed fog whose bodies dispersed as soon as the Tymantherans dismounted.

  “We might actually live through this,” murmured Aoth.

  “Or at least have all our friends with us in the afterlife,” Jet replied. “Either way, it’s starting.”

  He was right. Tchazzar spread his wings, and his warriors scurried or dropped low to avoid being swatted. The red dragon leaped into the air, and Alasklerbanbastos sprang from his rooftop. A flick of his fleshless tail tore half the shingles and several planks away. Beneath the dragons, warriors bellowed war cries and charged.

  Aoth and Oraxes hurled bursts of flame at Alasklerbanbastos. Settling to the ground behind the sheltering ranks of Shala’s warriors then swinging her staff overhand like a greatsword, Jhesrhi threw a howling wind full of hailstones in Tchazzar’s face. Her hands moving ceaselessly like a juggler’s, Meralaine plucked bits of darkness from the fabric of the night and lobbed those at the red dragon too. Griffon riders, hovering windsouls, and the bowmen on the ground loosed whistling clouds of arrows at the oncoming wyrms.

  And none of it even slowed them down. Alasklerbanbastos hissed words of power, and a huge, clawed hand made of shadow appeared in the air. It snatched and Jet dodged it by a hair. Tchazzar spewed a dazzling blast of fire. When the blaze died away, Jhesrhi was standing unharmed where it had fallen, but bodies lay black and twisted to either side.

  Meanwhile, the masses of spearmen, axemen, and swordsmen crashed together. But although Aoth actually knew better, it was hard not to feel that their struggle was meaningless compared to the violence and terror erupting over their heads.

  Aoth cast a blast of focused sound at Alasklerbanbastos, and a tremor rattled down the length of the creature’s skeletal form. But the bones didn’t break apart, and the lich still didn’t falter. He whipped his head from right to left, and the pale light in the empty eye sockets flared. Aoth felt his muscles try to clench into immobility. He growled a word of denial and released the power of a warding tattoo, and his limbs relaxed.

  Several windsouls were less fortunate. They couldn’t move or, apparently, even command the air to shift them as the Great Bone Wyrm snarled an incantation, and acid exploded in their midst. Bubbling and sizzling, their flesh dissolved, and their steaming bones showered out of the sky.

  The vitriol dropped too and splashed on the ground below. It reared up into a rippling, flowing dragon shape and swiped at a nearby crossbowman with its forefoot. He fell down, thrashing and screaming until the liquid eating into his face and chest stole his voice away.

  Alasklerbanbastos was close. Jet dodged to the right, and the dracolich turned to keep the griffon and his rider in front of his jaws and paralyzing gaze. Then like a bright, roaring waterfall, flame cascaded down on the wyrm from overhead.

  *****

  Jhesrhi did her best to maintain the confidence and indomitable will that wizardry required. Still, as the dragons came driving in, it was hard to ignore the fear whispering that she and her friends were overmatched. And when the other wyrms came swooping into view, she felt a pang of near despair.

  Then, its blue scales gleaming in the light of a fire, a swooping sapphire dragon punched a hole in Tchazzar’s wing with the shriek that was its breath weapon. The red jerked and veered off course, and before he could recover, an emerald
wyrm plunged down on top of him and smashed him to the ground.

  The emerald dragon leaped back into the air. Tchazzar lurched to his feet. His whipping tail killed men without his even intending it. He spewed flame at the green-colored wyrm, but the creature lashed its wings and dodged.

  Jhesrhi had no idea why the lesser dragons had changed sides, but since they had, maybe she and her comrades had a real chance after all. She blasted Tchazzar with frost. Jabbing with a wand crafted from a wisp of cloud, a dragonborn with snowy scales and silver skewers for piercings did the same.

  *****

  Cera led her gaggle of priests forward, toward the howl and clangor of battle. Then the mass of warriors in front of her parted for a moment, giving a woman of less-than-average height her first clear look at what was actually happening up ahead. She gasped and stopped short.

  She and the rest of Amaunator’s clerics had indeed found wyrmkeepers holding other priesthoods prisoner in their own temples. The dragon worshipers apparently hadn’t possessed sufficient manpower to capture everyone, but they had neutralized every order known to be particularly unhappy about the ascendancy of the Church of Tchazzar.

  Surprising the captors as they’d likely surprised their captives, the sunlords found it fairly easy to overwhelm them, especially since every victory added fresh recruits to their band. Cera tried not to feel too much vicious satisfaction as the wyrmkeepers fell, although, when she remembered how they’d imprisoned and tortured her, it was hard not to feel that, if anything, a quick death by sword thrust or battle prayer was too good for them.

  When every servant of a true god was free, she took her company west, toward the armies who, judging from the echoing racket, had begun to fight in earnest. She and her comrades had to handle a couple of skirmishes, but they swung around the bulk of Tchazzar’s forces and avoided a major confrontation. It seemed the wiser course. Rich in magic though she and the other priests were, a band of trained warriors would still stand a fair chance of slaughtering them until they united with the soldiers on Aoth and Shala’s side.

  Her success at reaching Shala’s company safely left Cera feeling a little smug about her own emerging talents as a war leader, and she knew a fierce resolve to do whatever she could to aid the defense. But that feeling fell away when she saw the heart of the battle, and awe welled up to take its place.

  Dragons were fighting one another, and their struggle had all but become the entire conflict, at least on the part of the discontinuous, irregular battleground that she could see. Warriors had fallen back to keep a stray blast of breath weapon or the stamp of a huge foot from killing them. That limited their ability to engage one another, not that they seemed much inclined to do so anyway. No doubt experiencing the same amazement and dread as Cera, for the most part, they, too, were simply watching the dragons assail one another.

  Which was to say, they were watching, not helping. Either they doubted the ability of mere human beings and genasi to affect the outcome, or they were afraid of hitting the wrong dragon. Only mages such as Aoth and a few master archers such as Gaedynn sent flares of power blazing or shafts streaking into the swooping, wheeling, lunging blur of motion.

  For a few heartbeats, Cera wondered if salvation was at hand, if the dragons who had inexplicably joined their cause would take down Alasklerbanbastos and Tchazzar. After all, they outnumbered the blue and the red and had forced them onto the ground. The gold and the earthbound sapphire with the broken wing had burned or ripped a horn, alar phalanges, ribs, and other pieces of the dracolich’s skeletal form away. The emerald and the other sapphire had torn bloody gashes in Tchazzar’s hide. Their howls had hammered his left foreleg so the knee cocked inward, and he could no longer use the limb to slash or to bear his weight.

  Then a dark liquid sprayed the gold from above, and it jerked in pain. An instant later, yet another wyrm, a black, plunged down on it like a hawk snatching a pigeon on the wing. The chromatic’s momentum slammed them both through the wall of a house, and they started struggling inside. Cera could tell because their fury was smashing and shaking the building apart.

  With the gold otherwise occupied, Alasklerbanbastos glared at the sapphire and snarled an incantation. The living wyrm turned to run but not quickly enough. Tentacles of shadow erupted from the earth, whipped around it, and dragged it down onto its belly.

  The dracolich whirled and spit a booming thunderbolt at the emerald dragon. The gem wyrm convulsed and crashed to earth. Tchazzar sprang, lashed his wings, and seized hold of the remaining sapphire’s forefoot in his burning jaws. He whipped his neck, yanking his foe out of the air and biting down at the same time.

  The foot ripped off as the sapphire slammed to the ground. Blood spurted from the stump, and the creature spasmed. Tchazzar gnashed the extremity, bones and all, and gulped it down.

  Then he and Alasklerbanbastos turned their gazes on the humans and genasi before them and, not even bothering to take flight again, lunged forward. Some warriors screamed and scattered. Others tried to fight, and the wyrms smashed them aside or trampled them flat.

  Cera couldn’t strike at both dragons at once. But she prayed she could do something to hinder Alasklerbanbastos. Why not? He was undead and she had all the best priests in the city at her back. Even without them, she’d hurt him before, and although she’d lost the shadow gem that had made it possible, perhaps some vestige of the link it had forged remained.

  She reached out to the Keeper, and he filled her with his light. She swung her mace over her head, and dazzling radiance leaped from it, passed harmlessly through any of the living who happened to be in the way, and burned into Alasklerbanbastos’s skull face. The undead blue lurched to a halt, then backward, some irresistible pressure shoving him.

  Other sunladies and lords started chanting. Their warm light poured into her and through her to add to the force she was exerting. Then the rest of the priests began to pray, and although their might derived from sources other than the nurturing and purifying sun, it, too, lent a measure of strength to the forbiddance.

  We’ve got him! Cera thought. We’ll burn him away! Then, defying the pressure of the light, Alasklerbanbastos came straight at her, picking up speed with every stride.

  *****

  Tchazzar coiled his hind legs and unfurled his wings for a spring. Jhesrhi could tell the leap would carry him over most of the warriors who still stood between him and Shala and bring him smashing down on top of the former sovereign and her personal guards.

  Jhesrhi pointed her staff and splashed flame across the dragon’s eyes. It wouldn’t hurt him, but it was something she could do instantly and, she hoped, would distract him before he pounced. The staff crowed in idiot glee at being used to conjure fire at last, and despite the exigencies of the moment, she felt a corresponding thrill.

  Startled, Tchazzar whirled in her direction.

  “Isn’t it me you want most of all?” she shouted.

  “I did,” the red dragon gritted. Blood pattered from his wounds down onto the ground. “I loved you. I wanted to give you everything.”

  “I loved you too,” she said. “And I wanted to believe you could be the hero from the legends. But you can’t. You were trapped in the dark too long, and it broke you. Now there’s nothing to do but put you down.”

  “Try,” Tchazzar said. He started toward her.

  She hurled a screaming blast of ice and hail at him. The dragonborn wizard augmented the effect with a jab of her misty wand. Meralaine threw tatters of darkness.

  Tchazzar kept coming, though not nearly as fast as he could have. He must want Jhesrhi to feel helpless before he killed her.

  Shala and some of her soldiers charged him from behind. Without even glancing around, he held them back with potentially bone-shattering sweeps of his tail.

  Gaedynn and other griffon riders swooped and wheeled around him, driving arrows into his scaly hide. Tchazzar swatted a sellsword who came too close with a flick of his wing, sending man and steed tumbling h
elplessly through the air, but otherwise ignored the harassment as he took another limping stride.

  Jhesrhi melted the earth to quicksand beneath his feet, then drew strands of muck streaming up his body to bury and smother him more quickly. But, wings lashing and snapping, he heaved himself clear of the effect, and in the process nearly closed the distance.

  At most, Jhesrhi had time for one more spell, but which, when they all seemed useless? For one ghastly instant, her mind was blank. Then a notion came to her.

  Why was Tchazzar unstoppable? Because she’d given him strength and life in the Shadowfell and again on the battlefield where Alasklerbanbastos had nearly killed him. And maybe what she’d given she could take away.

  She fused her will and perception with those of the staff, reached through the instrument, outward, and into the core of the colossal creature in front of her. She seized hold of the flame that suffused and sustained him and pulled.

  Tchazzar threw back his head and screamed.

  So far, so good. But it felt as if there were an ocean of flame to drain, the remnants of what she’d given him and the vast reserves he’d produced for himself in the days since his restoration. She wasn’t sure she could handle the torrent rushing into the staff and her. But she had to. If it slipped from her control, it could explode across the battlefield and kill everyone except Tchazzar.

  She cast some of the fire back into the Undying Pyre from which she and her weapon had drawn it in the first place. She sent part of it leaping up around her in a blue and gold pillar higher than the tallest spire in Luthcheq. Yet still there was more, shaking and drowning her at the same time.

  She struggled against panic until something-a wizard’s intuition, perhaps-told her there was something else she could do with the fire, some alchemy it might accomplish and expend or cage itself thereby. Without trying to understand further-there was no time-she willed that magic into being. Heat blazed along her nerves and through her veins.