The Rite

by Richard Lee Byers

  She feared to bring down any more lightning. She had the feeling that she herself couldn’t withstand another bolt. Fortunately, she had other spells prepared. Trying to focus past the pain still burning in her tortured flesh, she recited the prayer, and power whispered around her like leaves rustling in the wind. A cloud of white steam billowed into existence, surrounding the giant’s wrist like a bracelet, scalding the brute’s corpse-white skin.

  Startled, it jerked its arm out of the blistering vapor. At that instant, Igan leaped in and cut it again. A great gush of arterial blood spurted from the wound.

  The giant doubled over, clutched at the gash with its free hand and slowly flopped over onto its side. It trembled, grasped Christine even more tightly than before, then stopped moving.

  Igan helped her squirm from her attacker’s death grip, hauled her to her feet, and held her up when her legs buckled beneath her. He turned and whistled, whereupon his war-horse trotted up to them.

  “Until I can find Your Majesty another mount,” he said, “we’ll have to ride double.”

  He helped her up into the saddle, started to swing himself up behind her, then slipped back and fell on the ground. For a moment, she didn’t understand. Then she saw the stubby goblin arrow with the black fletchings. The shaft had found the tiny gap between Igan’s breastplate and gorget.

  Attuned like any druid to the ebb and flow of life, she sensed that Igan was dead, but it seemed unbelievable. He was still a youth, yet already a knight, a hero, savior of the king and queen alike, dragon- and giant-slayer. How could such a life end so abruptly? With so little fuss? It was quite possible the goblin archer hadn’t even aimed the shaft specifically at him.

  She scowled away her consternation. Thousands of Igans would die that day and in the tendays to come, if she and her comrades didn’t make Gareth’s plan work. She used what remained of her lightning magic to harry the onrushing Vaasans, a sea of stunted goblins, their flat, ugly faces russet or jaundice-yellow, with giants rising from their midst like mountainous islands. When her spell ran out of power, she wheeled her mount and rode toward the center of the beleaguered Damaran army, where she could concentrate on healing herself with some degree of safety, and steel herself to plunge back into the fray.

  Pondering, Malazan prowled through the garden, among yellow roses and Ishenalyr and the copper’s scattered bones. The monastery’s cellars weren’t spacious enough for all the dragons to attack their foes at the same time. That was why the humans had retreated there, to make it impossible for the wyrms to bring the totality of their strength to bear. Which drakes, then, should accompany their leader in the forefront of the final assault?

  Her instincts assured her that the attack would indeed be their last. She and her minions had already slaughtered scores of monks, and the wretched crypts and tunnels couldn’t go on forever, could they?

  Though, confident as she was, it was mildly troubling that no one had seen the song dragon or the warrior with the iron limbs for the past few days. Maybe someone had struck each of them a mortal blow to which they’d subsequently succumbed, deep inside the mountain where the attackers couldn’t witness their deaths, but Malazan had no way of knowing that for certain.

  The gigantic red spat her trepidation away, charring a patch of grass in the process. For inferior creatures, the song drake and her companion had proved themselves worthy adversaries, but whatever had become of them, they couldn’t forestall the destruction of the monks and the archives any longer. Nothing in all Faerûn could do that.

  A vermilion, amber-eyed fire drake swooped over the garden, disturbing Malazan’s meditations. She’d given him leave to go hunting through the mountains and over the gleaming whiteness of the glacier, but he’d returned almost immediately.

  “Milady!” he cried. “A company of metallic dragons … flying down from the north.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “The metals have all gone into seclusion to wait out the Rage. It’s what they always do.” A thought struck her. “Unless these are wyrms who failed to do so in time. In which case, they’ve lost their minds, and have united to go on the rampage.”

  It amused her to think of her squeamish kindred slaughtering humans, elves, and their ilk with all the ferocious glee of any chromatic. Perhaps it was just as well for them that the frenzy would never release them, for how they’d writhe in anguished guilt if it did!

  “I doubt they’ll come anywhere near here,” she said.

  “With all respect, Milady,” said the fire drake, “it looks as if they’re headed straight for the stronghold, and if I’m not mistaken, one of them is a song dragon.”

  “That can’t be. Show me.”

  She spread her wings and leaped into the air. The other reptile led her north, over the river valley and toward the southernmost peak of the Galenas. Soon she saw points of light glittering above the mountains. Most were gold or silver, though not all. One was bronze, one brass, and another blue, at a distance only barely discernible against the clear cerulean sky.

  “I don’t understand,” said the fire drake, “how this can be. Did Sammaster warn you the metals might come?”

  The witless question triggered a flare of rage, and she nearly succumbed to the urge to smite him with a spell. Instead, controlling herself, she merely snarled, “Silence, imbecile! I have to think!”

  However the song dragon had slipped out of the monastery and assembled her new force, she hadn’t mustered as many wyrms as Malazan had followers. Despite the formidable abilities of silvers and particularly golds—might that even a red had cause to respect—the chromatics could win the coming battle. The question was, where to fight it?

  Beneath the monastery? No. It would be more difficult to exploit her numerical advantage there. She and her warriors would meet the metals in the sky. She wheeled and hurtled back toward the fortress as fast as her pounding wings could carry her.

  Crouched behind a heap of broken stone, Raryn watched the fang dragon ten yards away. The mottled, gray-brown creature with its bony spurs and forked tail was one of several wyrms stationed throughout the cellars to keep the monks from reclaiming any of the ground they’d lost. For his part, the dwarf was scouting the perimeter of the territory the humans still held in order to determine when the wyrms would launch their next attack.

  A long, ululating howl echoed through the vaults. The fang dragon raised its head to listen. Raryn couldn’t speak the Draconic tongue, but assumed he was hearing the command to prepare for another assault. The last one, he suspected. After tendays of dogged resistance, the defense had little left to give.

  He told himself he and his comrades had done their best, and that was all the gods required of anyone. It was a belief that had sustained him through every other danger and uncertainty in his life, but he found little comfort in it just then. It was a bitter thing to strive so hard only to lose at the end, thus failing his friends and all the world.

  He prepared to slip away from the fang dragon and rejoin the monks. He expected the enormous reptile to remain where it was while it waited for its fellows to descend into the crypts. But instead the wyrm wheeled, the long blades at the end of its tail clattering through rubble, and headed toward the surface.

  Raryn realized its departure could only mean one thing: Dorn and Kara had returned with the help they’d gone to find. Malazan had called her followers forth to meet the new threat.

  Grinning, no longer feeling the weight of his fatigue or the sting of his scrapes and bruises, Raryn ran to find Cantoule. The defenders might possess only a shadow of their former strength, but whatever remained, they’d commit to the final struggle. The chromatics would find themselves assailed on every side, from the front and rear, and above and below.

  Pavel and Will peered over the crest of the hill at the two armies, the littler one retreating, the bigger pursuing, darkening the plain below like enormous swarms of ants.

  “That’s a lot of goblins,” the halfling said.

  Pavel sno
rted. “As usual, I find myself in awe of your profound insight into the obvious. Are you wishing we’d gone back to Thentia when we had the chance?”

  Actually, Will did. He didn’t fear even the most vicious alley brawl or a hunt for even the fiercest creature. But he’d never marched to war before, and the prospect of hurling himself into the vast and murderous confusion churning and yammering below gave him a pang of unease. But he would have sooner have dipped his nose in tallow and lit it on fire than admit such a thing to Pavel.

  “I do wish I’d left,” he said, “but only to escape the fetid stink of your breath. I wonder, though, will Dragonsbane’s company turn and fight when they’re supposed to? Look how hard the Vaasans are pushing them. If they won’t stand, the Vaasans are going to massacre us all.”

  “Says the master of military strategy. We’re about to find out if our side can still put up a fight. The goblins have advanced to the proper position.”

  A moment later, Celedon whistled, recalling the pickets he’d positioned along the top of the rise, to keep watch and kill any goblin kin or giant who wandered up the hill, before the creature could discover the army hiding on the other side and alert its fellows. Will, Pavel, and the other sentries scurried to rejoin the band of skirmishers to which they’d been assigned. It took the squad a couple minutes to form up, and Drigor didn’t wait on them. Other cohorts stood ready, and the hulking, scar-faced priest ordered them forward. Thus, Will had the leisure to observe the first moments of the new phase of the battle.

  Drigor’s command advanced to the top of the rise. With a prodigious thrumming and whistling, archers shot arrows arching across the sky. Wizards hurled blasts of flame, crackling, dazzling thunderbolts, and pale plumes of frost down the slope. Knights couched their lances and cantered toward the foe, and spearmen and swordsmen on foot trotted along behind them. Their faces red, their cheeks puffed out, trumpeters blew their horns.

  Down on the plain, other bugles answered. More rapidly than Will would have imagined possible, the ragged, harried mass of Dragonsbane’s company stopped fleeing and regrouped into something even a lad who’d never before been to war could recognize as an army arrayed in formation and ready to fight.

  The king himself had been in the rearguard, and thus, since the company had reversed it facing, rode his white destrier in the vanguard. He brandished his sword, and a halo of light, somehow visible even in the bright sunshine, flowered around him. Will inferred that he’d used his paladin abilities to cast some useful enchantment. Damara’s champion then charged his foes, and his knights surged after him.

  Will sighed. The Damarans actually had a chance.

  The halfling sensed a presence on his left. As he pivoted, the grizzled sergeant bent over him, the better to shout into his face.

  “Are you deaf?” the Damaran roared, spraying him with droplets of spit. “I said, move out!”

  He strode away as soon as Will showed signs of obeying.

  “I helped fetch your king’s soul out of Shadow,” Will said to the warrior’s broad, mail-clad back, meanwhile extracting a skiprock from his belt pouch. “You really ought to treat me with more respect.”

  Vingdavalac was a bronze dragon, though in the pale, steady light of Firefingers’s magical lamps, his scales looked more yellow than metal-brown. According to Rilitar, that was a sign of the dragon’s relative youth, and certainly, he was smaller than any of the warriors of the Queen’s Bronzes Taegan had known in Impiltur, compact enough to fit inside the magicians’ workroom without utterly dominating the space.

  Taegan realized his mind was wandering and he made an effort to focus on the report Thentia’s magicians had assembled to hear. It was difficult. Vingdavalac had a rambling, pedantic, tedious way of speaking, the room was warm and stuffy, and Taegan’s head buzzed as if he had a bee trapped in his skull. He wondered if he was getting sick.

  Then the droning resolved itself into words of command forgotten until that moment. He felt a stab of horror, which hardened into determination. At last he recalled how Sammaster’s agent had violated him, and if he was aware, then surely he could resist.

  He opened his mouth to warn the wizards and plead for their help, but couldn’t force the words out. He sought to flail his arms and capture their attention, only to discover he couldn’t manage that, either. He struggled to flee the tower. His legs refused to walk, or his wings, to spread.

  He felt defiance fading. He strained to hold onto it, but it dwindled anyway, until nothing remained and he no longer even understood why he’d made the effort. He had a task to perform, and perform it he would. Why wouldn’t he?

  He murmured the opening phrases of the incantation under his breath. If no one heard, no one would try to stop him.

  Or so he imagined. But then something, a duelist’s instinct for danger, perhaps, warned him of trouble on his left. Trying to make the motion appear casual, he looked around. Rilitar had been standing at his side, but at some point in the past few moments, had slipped away, placing some distance between them. The elf was whispering too, his lips moving rapidly, rushing to complete his spell first.

  Sammaster’s ally had compelled both Taegan and Jivex into his service. Accordingly, the bladesinger pointed urgently at Rilitar. Jivex, who’d been flitting restlessly about the ceiling, dived at the elf, throat swelling with its disorienting euphoric vapor, talons poised. Taegan whipped out the magnificent sword the wizard had given him and rushed to aid the drake in his benefactor’s destruction. At the same time, he continued with his spell.

  Jivex spat out a plume of his sparkling breath. Rilitar jumped away and covered his mouth and nose with the collar of his tunic. It evidently protected him, for he kept on chanting, declaiming the intricate rhymes at the top of his voice. No doubt he hoped it would alert his colleagues that something was amiss, and probably it did. But surprise froze them in place and rendered them useless.

  Jivex clawed for Rilitar’s eyes. The magician wrenched himself to the side, and the reptile merely tore gashes in his cheek as he hurtled past. By then, however, Taegan was nearly in sword range. He sprang forward, beating his wings to lengthen the leap, and lunged.

  Rilitar floundered backward, twisted, and the thrust plunged into his biceps instead of his torso. Taegan yanked the sword back and prepared to redouble. Both combatants were still reciting their spells. Magic whined in the air around them.

  Taegan’s point plunged at Rilitar’s breast. The elf was off balance. He couldn’t dodge again.

  But gloved hands seized hold of Taegan’s forearm and held his weapon back. The grip sent a magical jolt of pain juddering through his body, but couldn’t make him stumble over his words of power. He turned his head. It was Scattercloak who’d grabbed him. Even with their bodies scant inches apart, Taegan still couldn’t see even a hint of the features hidden inside the magician’s shadowy cowl.

  He jerked his arm free of Scattercloak’s hold, then bashed the warlock in the jaw—presumably—with the pommel of his sword. Bone cracked. Scattercloak reeled backward and fell on his rump.

  Taegan whirled back toward Rilitar. His instincts told him the elf presented the greater threat to the completion of his task, and therefore, he meant to finish him first. Wheeling, claws outstretched, Jivex began a second pass.

  But before either attacker could strike, Rilitar shouted the final syllable of his spell. He lashed his hands apart, and power streamed from him in an invisible but palpable wave. Taegan staggered. Jivex floundered in flight.

  That, however, was merely an incidental effect of the spell. The true purpose was evidently to cleanse the mind of possession, and that it accomplished. Taegan was himself again, full of gratitude for his liberation and a profound desire to exact retribution on the dastard who’d enslaved him.

  When his psychic shackles broke, a portion of his memories withered, for that was the way of his adversary. The wretch sought to plan for every contingency. To layer one safeguard on another. But he hadn’t done enough tamp
ering. Taegan still knew where to aim his sword.

  He pivoted, seeking his foe, then realized to his dismay that though Rilitar’s counterspell had freed Jivex as well, the faerie dragon hadn’t figured out what he had. As a result, the reptile was streaking across the chamber at pudgy, white-robed Darvin Kordeion.

  “No!” Taegan cried. He spread his pinions, leaped into the air, and flew toward his comrade. “Darvin’s not the traitor. You’re attacking the wrong man!”

  For a moment, it looked as if Jivex was too enraged to hear. Then, however, the drake veered off, an instant before he would otherwise have ripped the mage with his talons. Darvin stumbled backward, his eyes wide with shock.

  Taegan wrenched himself around to find the real foe, then saw with a twinge of dread that the need to save Darvin had delayed him too long. It had given Phourkyn One-eye time to cast a spell.

  The square-built mage with his eye patch and shiny, slicked-back hair thrust out his hand. A spark leaped from his fingers and shot across the workroom, to strike in the center of the majority of the assembled wizards, Vingdavalac, and a goodly assortment of their notes, books, and documents.

  With a deafening boom, the point of light exploded into a spherical blast of fire. The flame didn’t blaze out far enough to engulf Taegan, but the concussion tumbled him through the air and slammed him into a wall. He dropped to the floor.

  Refusing to let the shock of the impact paralyze him, he struggled to his feet. On the far side of the room, some of the wizards and even Vingdavalac sprawled motionless. Taegan prayed they were simply stunned, not dead. Other mages threw themselves to the floor and rolled to extinguish their burning robes. Hissing tongues of flame danced on books and papers. Perhaps immune to the searing heat that made the bladesinger flinch from yards away, old Firefingers stood conjuring and seemingly unharmed in the midst of the conflagration.

  His platinum wings a blur, Jivex swooped down to hover in front of Taegan’s face.