The staff screamed with the ecstasy of manipulating so much flame. It was still caterwauling when it exploded, and the shock flung Jhesrhi from brightness into darkness.
*****
Flying above all the foot soldiers and horsemen, Aoth could see exactly what ailed Alasklerbanbastos. Clad in their vestments and regalia, a collection of the city’s priests stood in the luminous haze of the power they were raising. The cloud grew brighter at the front, where it was transferring all that divine might to Cera. It burned from the head of the mace in her outstretched hand as a beam that was shoving Alasklerbanbastos backward, breaking away pieces of bone, and charring other bits to ash.
Unfortunately even that wasn’t enough to stop him. Breasting the tide of light, he plunged forward.
Discerning Aoth’s intent, Jet dived at the dracolich.
Aoth had already expended the greater part of his magic, but he blasted Alasklerbanbastos with flame on the way down. Then Jet slammed onto the naked vertebrae of the undead dragon’s neck.
The griffon instantly started clawing and biting. Thanks to their psychic link, Aoth felt both Jet’s fury and his frustration as the massive bones proved difficult to crack or even scratch. Rider and mount jerked as the lightning sizzling around their foe’s body jolted them.
Aoth flailed his arm and flung his shield away. He gripped his spear with both hands, charged it with destructive force, and began stabbing at the narrow gap between two vertebrae. He wanted to break whatever it was that held them together.
Alasklerbanbastos lurched to a halt. He tried to twist his head around to get at his attackers but couldn’t manage it. Jet had plunged down too close to the skull.
That didn’t mean the blue was helpless. Aoth listened for the start of an incantation and watched for any little shift that might signal Alasklerbanbastos’s intention to fling him and Jet loose with a snap of his neck or to crush them by rolling.
None of that happened. But suddenly Aoth realized that the little shocks that had stabbed into him and Jet had stopped. Yet the smell of an oncoming storm was stronger than ever.
“Fly!” he bellowed and Jet sprang into the air. An instant later, big lightning bolts flared down the length of Alasklerbanbastos’s skeleton, arcing and crackling from his skull to the end of his tail and back again.
Aoth and Jet had avoided that attack, but by returning to the air, they made it possible for the lich to reach them by other means. With more little pieces of his body crumbling and falling away as ash, Alasklerbanbastos whirled and struck.
Jet lashed his wings and dodged. The huge fangs snapped shut on empty air, showering sparks as they clashed together.
Jet tried to get out from in front of the dragon’s gnashing jaws and paralyzing stare. But Alasklerbanbastos matched him shift for shift, meanwhile snarling words of power.
Aoth stood up in the stirrups and drove the spear deep into Alasklerbanbastos’s brow, between the empty, glowing orbits and the bony spikes above. The undead blue jerked his head back and so tore his attacker’s weapon from his grip. Aoth cursed. But at least when the lich recoiled, he stumbled in the cadence of his conjuring, and it finally gave Jet the chance to swing out from in front of him.
As the griffon climbed, Aoth saw that they weren’t the only ones who’d engaged Alasklerbanbastos in close combat. Medrash, Balasar, and others were on the ground, hacking at the blue’s legs like woodsmen felling trees. Somewhat to Aoth’s surprise, neither the paladin nor his sword was glowing, nor were there any luminous runes floating around his body. Apparently he’d already expended every bit of mystical strength at his command.
But he must have been doing some damage even so because Alasklerbanbastos raised his foot high to stamp on him.
Aoth sent Jet diving back down onto the blue’s neck. Alasklerbanbastos staggered and Medrash scrambled out from under the creature’s talons.
Jet bit and tore at the dracolich. Aoth willed his safety harness to unbuckle, grabbed the warhammer strapped to the saddle to serve as a backup weapon, and clambered over the griffon’s rump. Without the reach his lost spear had provided, it was the only way to get at his foe.
A jerk of Alasklerbanbastos’s neck almost flung him off, but he crouched low and grabbed a projecting knob of bone. He stayed in that attitude as he began to pound. The impacts woke the enchantments bound in the hammer. The glyphs graven into the steel glowed brighter and brighter, and each blow hit harder than the one before it.
Finally somebody’s attack-Aoth had no idea whether it came from him, Jet, one of the dragonborn, Oraxes, or Cera and the priests-proved lethal. Alasklerbanbastos roared, convulsed, and shattered like a piece of porcelain.
That left Aoth with nothing underneath him. But he released the magic bound in a tattoo quickly enough to turn a plummet into a slower descent. Bits of bone clattering beneath him, he drifted down into a cloud of dust and ash.
Caught in the midst of it, Balasar coughed and spat. “This is why I hate fighting the undead,” he panted. “You always get filthy.”
*****
The twin strands of fire-the one streaming from Tchazzar to Jhesrhi and the one leaping from the wizard up into the sky-winked out at the same moment.
The sudden loss of all that brightness muddled Gaedynn’s sight. For a heartbeat, he imagined that the magic had stopped because Jhesrhi had killed or crippled the dragon. Then he saw that, although Tchazzar had shrunken into a wasted thing like the prisoner from the Shadowfell, with his gashed hide hanging loose on shriveled limbs, he was still on his feet. It was Jhesrhi who toppled with her body still wreathed in flame. Gaedynn couldn’t tell if that was a last, harmless manifestation of the magic she’d just worked or if she was in imminent danger of burning to death.
But he did see Tchazzar resume hobbling toward her, and he knew that if the red dragon reached her, she was going to die no matter what.
He sent Eider plunging to the ground. He tore at his safety straps and leaped off the griffon’s back. “Fly!” he shouted. Eider lashed her wings and sprang back into the air.
But Son-liin didn’t go along. She, too, swung herself off Eider’s back and snatched an arrow from her quiver.
His golden eyes burning as brightly as ever, Tchazzar glared down at the human and genasi who stood between him and the fallen wizard. “This is good,” he rumbled. “You’re another one I wanted to kill personally.”
“Shut up and die,” Gaedynn answered. He shot at the wyrm’s right eye. Son-liin loosed her shaft too.
Tchazzar tossed his head, and neither arrow hit an eye or any other particularly vulnerable spot, although Gaedynn’s did stick in the creature’s face. He reached for another of the few shafts left in his quiver, and the dragon advanced. His legs were so long that, even limping, he would come within reach of his foes with another stride or two.
Then Khouryn charged in on the dragon’s right. He bellowed, “East Rift!” and chopped at Tchazzar’s good foreleg with his axe. Armed with lances, Hasos and other warriors jabbed at the colossal creature’s belly. Meralaine and a white-scaled dragonborn hurled jagged blades of shadow and bursts of pale frost respectively.
Tchazzar reeled. But then, striking like a snake, hammering his wings up and down, swinging his tail like a flail, he scattered his new assailants and kept coming.
Shooting as fast as she could, the argent lines in her purple skin shining like white-hot metal, Son-liin pierced the red with arrows charged with lightning. Each balked him for maybe an instant but no longer.
Meanwhile, Gaedynn did something he almost never did. He took his time aiming.
He no longer had much hope of piercing an eye and the brain behind it. Tchazzar reflexively protected his eyes. But confident in his armor of scales, he sometimes disregarded attacks that mere human warriors aimed at other parts of his body.
That, Gaedynn resolved, was going to turn out to be a mistake because his recent dragon fighting had taught him where an artery lay close to the surface in the undersi
de of a wyrm’s neck. He’d have to hit the spot exactly, and the loose, dangling skin would only make it more difficult. But if he did, even a living god should find the results unpleasant.
He loosed. The shaft hurtled from the bow. And maybe Tchazzar somehow sensed it was a genuine threat because he started to twist his neck. But he was too slow, and the arrow plunged deep into the mark.
Tchazzar stumbled then swayed. He sat back on his haunches, lifted his good forefoot, and swiped the arrow out of his flesh, but that only made things worse. Gouts of blood spurted rhythmically from the wound, and the red dragon collapsed onto his side.
But then he rolled halfway onto his belly and somehow contrived to drag himself forward. And as Gaedynn and Son-liin drew their bows, he flailed with his claws and forced them to scatter. Had they stood their ground, the stroke would have torn them apart.
Panting, Tchazzar visibly gathered his strength for one final heaving motion to drag himself within reach of Jhesrhi. Then Shala ran out of the darkness with a gory broadsword in her hand. She thrust it into the base of Tchazzar’s neck. The red wyrm shuddered, a tremor so violent that Gaedynn could feel it through the earth, then slumped motionless.
As soon as Gaedynn was sure Tchazzar was no longer a threat, he whirled and dashed to Jhesrhi. When he reached her, he didn’t know whether to feel horrified or relieved.
Fire still covered the unconscious woman from head to toe. It was hot enough that it took an effort of will to stand within a pace of her, and it had burned every thread of clothing away. But it wasn’t burning her. She didn’t have even a blister.
*****
Phicos scurried through the cellars, grabbing a scroll here, an onyx statuette of Tiamat there, a five-headed wand elsewhere, and stuffing them into his satchel. Thanks to an enchantment, the bag was bigger inside than out, but it still couldn’t hold everything he and his fellow wyrmkeepers had used to equip and sanctify their shrine. Even if there were time to gather more, only the holiest and most powerful artifacts could go.
A footstep scuffed on the floor behind him. Startled, he spun and snatched for the dagger on his hip. He relaxed when he saw that it was Esvele who’d come up behind him.
To venture into the streets, the priestess had traded her vestments for nondescript clothing, including a hood to shadow her thin, sallow face with its pentacle tattoo. On such a terrible day, it was no longer safe for Luthcheq’s few surviving wyrmkeepers to look like what they were.
“Did you find out about Ferzath?” Phicos asked.
“Yes,” Esvele said. “He’s dead.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Chelnadatilar-the gold-killed him.”
Phicos cursed because it was an offense against the Dark Lady for any other being to kill a chromatic dragon but also because he and Esvele had hoped the black might help them escape the city.
“Well-” he began and, with a clinking and clattering of beads and pendants, someone else staggered into the multicolored candlelight. It was Halonya, with the layers of her grotesque, trailing costume muddy and askew.
The “high priestess” gaped at the satchel in Phicos’s hand. “What are you doing?” she shrilled.
“Running,” he answered. “Before Shala Karanok’s guards show up to arrest us.”
“No! I order you to stay and defend the temple!”
“Sorry,” Phicos said. “While Tchazzar lived, we deferred to you because he wanted us to. But now he’s gone.”
“He isn’t! He’ll rise again because he’s a god!”
“No,” Phicos said, “he wasn’t. We went along with his pretensions too since it was necessary to serve him and, through him, our true deity. But the time for that has passed as well.”
“Blasphemer!” Halonya screamed.
Phicos drew breath to deny the change, but Esvele said, “You’re wasting time we don’t have debating with a lunatic.”
And plainly she was right. Phicos pulled his knife from its sheath, stepped, and thrust. Mouth and eyes gaping wide, Halonya toppled backward, the sharkskin hilt jutting from her chest.
“Dangerous as the city is,” Esvele said, “I’m glad we lingered long enough for that.”
EPILOGUE
7 E LEINT-5 M ARPENOTH, THE Y EAR OF THE AGELESS ONE
In Airspur, Son-liin had observed the pomp and ceremony with which a queen conducted her affairs on a normal day. Now, she reflected, Shala Karanok was demonstrating the stark efficiency with which a ruler could manage a crisis.
The war hero hadn’t returned to the War College. Instead, as soon as word spread that Tchazzar was dead and those who had fought for him started surrendering, she set up a command post right on the edge of the battlefield, with corpses sprawled and crumpled in plain view. And there she took the city in hand, hearing reports, giving orders, and dispatching messengers. She didn’t even bother moving indoors when the rain Astanalan-the emerald wyrm-called to douse the fires began to fall. As a result, she and the human lords and officers attending her had wet hair plastered to their heads.
Many of those folk were eager to speak, but Zan-akar Zeraez looked ready to burst. And finally Shala called on him, although, judging from her glower, she begrudged the time for that as well.
“Your Majesty,” the ambassador cried, “that dastard deliberately provoked a dragon into charging genasi troops!” He pivoted and pointed at Gaedynn.
The bowman looked bewildered and spread his hands. “I can’t imagine what you mean, my lord. I fled from a dragon, certainly. I fled from several before the night was through. But I was never trying to lead any of them anywhere.”
“Liar!” Zan-akar spit. “Your intentions were plain!”
Magnol laid his hand on his fellow genasi’s arm. “I don’t know how you’d prove that,” the burly firesoul said. “And the truth is we were going to have to fight. I could tell it even if you couldn’t. And it was good that we joined the battle sooner rather than later.” He looked at Shala. “I understand Lord Zan-akar’s… concerns, Majesty, but Akanul is willing to let the matter drop.”
“Thank you, High Lord,” Shala replied, “and thank you again for your help.”
At that point Hasos and a squad of warriors herded two dozen bedraggled, stumbling prisoners toward the throne. Each captive had his green-tattooed hands bound behind him.
“The arcanists, Majesty,” Hasos said. “Or at least all that we’ve rounded up so far.”
The war hero scowled at them and they cringed. “Take them to the dungeons,” she said. “Do whatever you have to do to keep them from using magic to escape.”
Jhesrhi strode forward from the spot where she, Gaedynn, Aoth, Oraxes, Meralaine, Son-liin, and other sellswords stood in a group. Unlike everyone else, she was dry.
As Son-liin understood it, that was because the wizard had undergone a transformation. Jhesrhi had become a creature of fire, like a red dragon or a salamander. Her magic somehow enabled her to contain the flame and heat, so she could wear clothing and other people could approach her without danger. But the raindrops dried as soon as they touched her.
“Majesty,” she said, “this isn’t fair. You declared amnesty for everyone who fought for Tchazzar.”
“And the witches will share in it,” Shala replied. “I’ll release them when order is restored. Although I am reinstating the old laws that regulated their conduct.”
“That’s not just either,” Jhesrhi said.
“We’ve just suffered through the harm they do when we don’t control them,” Shala snapped. “And I have too many urgent matters to address to argue the issue with you. The decision stands.”
As Hasos and the soldiers led the prisoners away, the mages glared at Oraxes and Meralaine. Traitors! their eyes screamed. Traitors!
The illusionist and the necromancer both flinched but looked dismayed for only a breath or two. It didn’t really matter that they no longer had a place in Luthcheq, even among the folk most Chessentans shunned. Like Son-liin, they’d found a new h
ome among the Brotherhood.
It was Jhesrhi who, as she trudged back to her comrades, looked truly disconsolate. “So it really was all for nothing,” she sighed.
“The city just tore itself in two,” Gaedynn answered. “Shala figures folk need someone to blame if they’re to come together and be one people again. Since everyone already hates mages, they’ll do nicely.”
“It’s wrong,” Jhesrhi said.
“But nothing to do with you,” he said. “Not now that you’re back where you belong. What’s important is to leech the fire out of you, and we’ll figure out a way. Aoth can help. Meralaine and Oraxes, too, I expect.”
She simply looked at him for a moment. Then she said, “No. That isn’t what I want.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This change is the one thing that did work out. I’ve lived my life in dread of people… touching me. Now they can’t.”
“But that’s not ever how you wanted to be.”
“No, and the dissatisfaction only added to my misery because while my deformity was only in my mind, I couldn’t accept it. There were times when I all but drove myself crazy trying to overcome it.” She smiled a sad, little smile. “And drove you crazy while I was about it. But that’s over now. If I’m a freak inside and out, I have no choice but to learn to be content as I am. We finally have no choice but to be what we’ve always been and nothing more.”
“I won’t let you give up on yourself.”
“Damn you, you will never understand! It isn’t your choice to make!” She turned and stalked away.
You don’t need her, Son-liin thought. You need someone who will make you happy.
*****
As she peered at the ceiling, Cera had an abstracted frown on her face. Aoth reared up from the bed, twisted, dug his fingers into her ribs, and tickled. She tried to squirm away or to grip and immobilize his wrists but could manage neither. He didn’t relent until she ran out of wind, and her helpless chortles changed to little puffs.
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