The Rite

by Richard Lee Byers

  “No one’s here but us,” Pavel said. “Are you hearing voices? I keep telling you, you’re insane.”

  Yagoth ignored the taunt and started prowling around the room. “I understand the trick you played, halfling. My people are dead because of you. But I’ll still achieve my destiny. After I kill you, and the sun priest finds me the weapon I need, I’ll make myself chief of another tribe, and build my kingdom from there. The banner of the blue dragon—”

  Will lunged out into the open and hurled the rock.

  It was supposed to put Yagoth’s scarlet eye out. Instead, it glanced off the ogre’s low, blemished forehead, leaving a bloody graze, but no more. Yagoth roared and charged.

  In better times, Will could have slung another stone before his foe took two strides, or dodged and tumbled with such agility that Yagoth would have found it difficult to score a hit on him. But in his current state of decrepitude, he could manage neither. He scrambled back beneath the cover afforded by the table.

  Which vanished instantly, when Yagoth grabbed hold of the furniture and tossed it aside. Tablets crashed down everywhere, some shattering against the floor.

  Snarling, Yagoth stabbed repeatedly with his spear, and Will gave ground. The halfling realized his opponent was pushing him into a corner, but lacked the speed to maneuver out of the box. In another moment, he’d have his back to the wall, and most likely, the lance in his vitals an instant after that.

  “Flee!” shouted Pavel.

  Brilliant idea, thought Will. I would, if I had anyplace to flee to.

  But bellowing in anger and surprise at his own behavior, it was Yagoth who shambled backward. Will belatedly realized that Pavel had afflicted the ogre with a magical compulsion.

  Most likely, it would only last a moment, but maybe that was time enough for another cast. Will dropped a stone into the sling and let it fly.

  The missile hit the mark. Yagoth screamed and clutched at his ruined eye. As he reeled, his foot landed on a fallen tablet. He slipped and fell.

  Will rushed him, and thumb-gouged Yagoth’s good eye. The ogre howled and flailed blindly. Will ducked, seized a tablet in a two-handed grip, and pounded Yagoth over the head with it. After two blows, the shaman slumped down motionless, but Will kept on hitting him until he hammered his skull out of shape.

  Then he turned to Pavel and wheezed, “What was the point in waiting so long to cast a spell?”

  “I had to decide who I disliked more, you or Yagoth. Well, actually, I only had one chance. Once the ogre realized I could work magic, he’d knock me out immediately if he could. Thus I needed to choose my moment carefully.”

  “I take it,” said Will, “that he imagined you didn’t have any spells prepared.”

  “He abused me every morning at dawn, to keep me from praying, but he underestimated my ability to concentrate, and the strength of my bond with Lathander. I managed to acquire a few spells despite the harassment.”

  “So why didn’t you use them to escape? Too lazy, or too gutless?”

  “Too lamed. I couldn’t fix the injury by myself. For that, I’ll need your help. Once I’m untied, and I’ve mended your shoulder, I’ll lie down on the floor, and you’ll re-break my leg with my mace. Pulverize the bones if that’s what it takes, just as long as you can straighten the limb when you’re done. Then I’ll heal myself. Can you do it?”

  Will supposed he had no choice, though the thought of inflicting such agony on his friend made him feel queasy.

  He forced a grin and asked, “Are you serious? It’s exactly the kind of thing I’ve always wanted to do.”

  9 & 10 Kythorn, the Year of Rogue Dragons

  The crashing echoed along the tunnels, down the stairwells, through the archives, storerooms, and tombs. Dorn knew what the disturbance was, because Raryn had skulked up to the surface to scout it out. In undisputed possession of the mountaintop, the dragons were employing their strength, breath weapons, and wizardry to demolish portions of the stronghold.

  Like Dorn, Cantoule was standing watch behind the makeshift ramparts where they planned to oppose the wyrms the next time the reptiles attacked. Looking as dirty and exhausted as everyone else, the skinny, sun-bronzed Grand Master of Flowers flinched at a particularly loud bang that might have been a whole tower collapsing.

  “Why?” Cantoule asked. “Why are the dragons doing this?”

  “Maybe,” said Dorn, “they’re just venting their anger that it’s taking so long to kill us. Or, they mean the noise to keep us from sleeping. Or, they hope the destruction of the castle will demoralize us.”

  “It’s demoralizing me,” Cantoule said. “They’re defiling sacred ground I swore to protect.”

  Dorn grunted. “We’ve talked through this already.”

  “I know. It’s just that I keep thinking that if Kane were Grand Master of Flowers, it never would have come to this.”

  “Kane?”

  “King Dragonsbane’s comrade, who helped destroy the Witch-King. The wisest monk of our order, and the most accomplished fighter. By rights, he should have presided here. But he loved wandering too much to stay in one place, and so chose me for the position. Now evil is destroying everything he gave into my keeping.”

  “That’s self-pity talking,” said Dorn, “and it isn’t helping you or anybody else.”

  Cantoule blinked as if the half-golem had slapped him, then smiled wryly and said, “Perhaps you’re right. Ilmater teaches that virtue lies in fidelity, not in success. Still—”

  Something roared. It was more or less what Dorn had been waiting for, but as he started to string his longbow, he realized with a stab of dread that the noise had reverberated from behind him.

  “Come on!” he shouted to the monks manning the barricade. “All of you! No, wait.” He pointed. “You four stay here, just in case. But the rest of you, run!”

  He wheeled and plunged through the arched doorway behind the fortification and down a length of hallway. His companions sprinted after him.

  As Dorn ran, his iron foot clashing against the polished stone floor, he despised himself for the idiot he was. In retrospect, it was obvious why some of the dragons had spent the last couple days knocking down sections of the citadel overhead: to disguise the noise and vibration of their comrades digging into the mountain, thus bypassing whatever fortifications, traps, and guards waited to hinder them. Dorn had observed burrowing dragons among the attacking force, yet still hadn’t anticipated thats particular tactic.

  As he and his companions dashed down a staircase, a fierce yet lovely battle anthem, a defiant answer to the invading dragons’ bellowing, rose to meet them. Kara had evidently reached the site of the breach. Dorn was glad someone so formidable had showed up to oppose the malevolent wyrms before they pushed any farther into the vaults, but was likewise fearful that the intruders would overwhelm her.

  While he and his fellow sentries raced through the cellars, other folk came running from their new, improvised barracks, kitchen, mess hall, and chapel to join them. The cacophony of combat led them all to an ossuary, a series of chambers where the polished bones of previous generations of monks, assembled into intricate designs, adorned the walls and ceilings of a skull room, a vertebra room, a pelvis room, and so forth.

  The crypts were too cramped for archery. Dorn set down his bow and quiver so they wouldn’t get in his way, drew his hand-and-a-half sword, and advanced into the first vault, a repository of foot bones arranged into gleaming white roses. His comrades surged after him.

  Inside the ossuary, the mingled crashing, roaring, and the soaring strains of Kara’s song were deafening. The rooms shook. Jarred loose from their fastenings, bones rained down to batter Dorn’s head and shoulders. Dust filled the air, to choke him and sting his eyes.

  It was disorienting, and for a moment, he had the crazy feeling that somehow, he’d blundered right past the combat without noticing. Then he spotted it an instant later.

  Digging with no way of knowing precisely where it would
end up, a huge earth drake with a thick, lumpish body, craggy gray-brown hide, and shining green eyes had found its way into an area too small to contain it. It had needed to knock and scrape away sections of ceiling, and the dividing walls between chambers, just to squirm partway into the ossuary. The space was really too confining for Kara as well, but slender and nimble, she was better able to maneuver than her massive foe. It had black burns all over its mask and chest where she’d seared it with the lightning in her breath, while she only had a single set of bloody claw gashes on her shoulder.

  Which meant that so far, the situation wasn’t as disastrous as it might have been. But peering under the earth drake’s belly, past its stamping legs and lashing tail, Dorn glimpsed other dragons, waiting to pour into the cellars as soon as their comrade cleared the end of the burrow. Meanwhile, several yards away, a scaly, obsidian-clawed forefoot, mottled black and red and throwing off heat like a blazing hearth, smashed through a section of wall. A magma drake was on the verge of breaking in as well.

  Striving to make himself heard above the noise, Dorn bellowed, “Form into squads! Those with spears and polearms, attack the fiery one!”

  Anyone who tried to battle the magma drake with a shorter weapon would come away with burns.

  Anyone but Dorn.

  His iron half would shield his vulnerable flesh from the worst of the heat, as long as he kept the artificial side forward, and so he advanced on the magma wyrm.

  With a grinding roar, the wall crumbled into rubble, loose bones, and grit. Red eyes blazing, the drake thrust its wedge-shaped head and long neck into the breach, then set about the task of squirming its dark wings and shoulders through. Impatient for the burrowing dragon to clear the way, other wyrms snarled and hissed behind it.

  Dorn dashed forward to stop its progress. The heat pounded at him. Grateful that, unlike a red, the creature couldn’t breathe flame, he rammed his knuckle-spikes into its snout. It jerked its head back, exposing the underside of its neck, and he clawed away a handful of flesh.

  It snarled and bit at him, and he sidestepped. The drake snatched at him with its forefoot, and again he tried to dodge. That kept the black talons from stabbing into his torso, but the reptile still bumped him and knocked him staggering. It instantly grabbed for him once more, and its digits closed around him.

  He caught his balance and heaved with all his strength. Even so, he might well have failed to break the reptile’s grip, except that the effort drove the spikes and blades of his iron hand into its flesh. It screeched and snatched its foot back, and in that instant, before it could return to a fighting stance, he took the hilt of his sword in both hands and cut at its throat. The blade bit deep, blood gushed to sizzle and steam on the floor, but he knew he still hadn’t inflicted a mortal wound.

  Streaming white hair and polar-bear hide armor shining in the gloom, Raryn rushed up beside him to thrust with his harpoon. Monks assailed the magma drake’s flanks. Dorn wished he knew what was happening in the other half of the battle, but didn’t dare turn away from his adversary to look. At least Kara was still singing, thus, obviously, still alive.

  The magma drake lurched forward, looked backward, and snarled. Dorn realized that the wyrm behind it had tried to shove it out of the way. He and Raryn immediately sprang forward to attack while it was distracted. Both scored solid hits, but the dragon still wouldn’t die.

  Raryn scuttled underneath the drake and plunged the harpoon into its belly. The wyrm slammed itself against the floor, willing to risk driving the lance in deeper to crush its attacker. Raryn dived free, but lost the harpoon in the process. He yanked his bone-handled ice-axe from the straps securing it to his back.

  The weapon’s haft was too short. “Go fight the other dragon!” Dorn called.

  Raryn ignored him. He lifted the axe and rushed the magma drake, too full of battle-fury to care if the heat of it burned him.

  They fought on. For an instant, Dorn thought the magma drake was finally faltering, then perceived that it was gathering itself for a supreme effort. It surged forward, and at last its charcoal-colored wings pulled free. With a thunderous crack, it lashed them up and down at the enemies on its flanks, catching the monks by surprise. A couple still managed to spring out of the way, but the rest dropped beneath the battering pinions. Raryn and Dorn rushed the drake, and for once not trying to strike with its fangs, it heaved the head at the end of its long neck in a horizontal arc, just as a warrior might swing a flail. The attack caught both the half-golem and the arctic dwarf by surprise, and bashed them tumbling across the floor.

  Dorn rolled into a broken section of wall. He hit hard, but the flare of pain meant nothing compared to his horrified awareness of what was about to happen. In another second, the magma drake would force itself all the way into the chamber, all the wyrms at its back would come pouring in after it, and nobody was in position to stop it.

  Then he saw that one man was.

  Hands empty and open, Cantoule stepped into the dragon’s path. The thin, aging Grand Master of Flowers looked as small as a child’s toy in front of the immense creature, and as incapable of doing it any harm. Knees bent, feet at right angles, he swirled his arms through some sort of focusing, preparatory movement.

  The dragon struck at him, head hurtling down from above, jaws gaping to bite him to shreds.

  Cantoule shifted just far enough to the side to avoid the attack. Then, before the magma drake could lift its head again, he drove the heel of his palm into the side of its red-hot mask.

  Dorn was certain the blow had done no damage through the dragon’s scaly armor. Why in the name of his martyred god had Cantoule discarded his weapon?

  But the magma drake shuddered, then groaned. Its legs buckled, and its head and wings flopped to the floor. It looked dead, impossible as that seemed.

  That was good as far as it went, but the defenders were still in trouble. Left to their own devices, the dragons trapped behind the carcass would shove it aside. Indeed, the body was already hitching forward.

  Kara sprang in front of it, reared, and braced her forefeet against it. Presumably she’d already finished dealing with the earth drake. Or else she believed the magma wyrm’s burrow presented the greater threat.

  Whatever she thought, her strength and weight, prodigious as they were, couldn’t long hold back the might and mass of all the wyrms pushing from the other side, but luckily, she intended more than that. She opened her jaws and spewed a bright, crackling flare of her breath into the magma drake’s corpse, which jumped as if the blast had jolted it back to life.

  Behind the barrier of lifeless flesh and bone, other drakes screeched in pain. The magma wyrm’s body would have blocked most breath weapons, as it largely stopped the yellow flame the next reptile in line within the burrow spat back at Kara. But the essence of lightning infusing a song dragon’s exhalation could evidently penetrate obstacles to burn targets hidden behind them.

  Kara couldn’t use her breath continuously. It needed time to renew itself. But she was also adept with spells for conjuring thunderbolts. Singing, she evoked several in a row, to blaze through the magma drake’s corpse and down the tunnel. Her mostly unseen targets bellowed in agony and rage. A smell of roasting meat rose from the dead reptile’s charring body.

  Then everything started shaking again, even harder than before.

  Dorn cast about to find out why. As he pivoted, he finally got another look at the earth drake. Still half in and half out of its burrow, the head partly severed, it was dead, and sealed in a mass of ice as well. Kara must have conjured the latter to plug the tunnel more effectively, and apparently it had worked. No other wyrms had driven through.

  At the rear of the ossuary stood half a dozen of the monastery’s resident priests and visiting wizards, chanting in concert. Though it had taken them some time to reach the battlefield, their intent was obvious. They meant to spark another earthquake to collapse the invading dragons’ burrows.

  Dorn thought it a good stra
tegy, but it had one drawback. Even the most adroit spellcaster couldn’t target such an effect with the same precision that an able swordsman could aim a thrust or cut. Which meant his allies might well collapse the ossuary, too.

  “Pick up the wounded,” Dorn shouted, “and clear out!”

  He snatched up a dazed, bloodied, blistered monk, threw him over his shoulder, and hauled him toward the exit. His considerable strength notwithstanding, Raryn’s short arms and legs made it awkward to carry anything as big as a human being, but he too managed to drag an injured man along. Kara shrank back into human form, perhaps to make it easier to flee through the cramped rooms, perhaps so the immensity of her dragon guise wouldn’t block her comrades as they endeavored to retreat. Blood from her shoulder wounds began to soak her dress.

  They and their comrades ran, while the floor rose in waves, threatening to trip them. As he scrambled into view of the doorway leading out of the ossuary, Dorn half-expected to see it jammed with terrified, madly struggling men. But the monks were too brave and disciplined for that, and just in case they weren’t, Cantoule, the arm he’d used to strike the magma drake singed and blistered from fingertips to elbow, lingered there to make sure folk passed through one at a time, in good order.

  Once they made it out of the ossuary and withdrew a few yards down the corridor, the tremors felt less violent. Dorn inspected the walls and ceiling, then looked down at Raryn.

  “Have we fallen back far enough?” the half-golem asked. “Will this section of the tunnel hold?”

  Raryn, who bore genuine blisters on the brick-red cheeks and forehead that always looked painfully sunburned, smiled a crooked smile and replied, “I told you, partner, I’m not that kind of dwarf. Someone else will have to judge how sturdy the stonework is.”

  With a deafening rumbling and crashing, the ossuary collapsed. Dust burst from the entrance like another blast of dragon breath, followed instantly by a surge of rubble. But the corridor didn’t cave in, and after another moment, the tremors stopped.