“Wait! Jo!” Karleah croaked in sudden fear.
Something hard and heavy crashed against Jos shoulder. The squire lost her balance. “What the—!” She fell to the cavern floor, only just glimpsing the massive object that struck her. Where the bat had once been, a seething lump of metamorphosing flesh now lay.
Convulsing. Transforming.
A dragon-size lump of flesh.
Jo rolled to her feet, a snarl on her lips and Wyrmblight in her hands. The blade shone faintly, and its hilt was warm to the touch.
“Stand back!” shouted Karleah, waving her staff at Jo and Braddoc. The old wizardess struck the ground with the staff. It stayed upright by her side, its ball of light illuminating the cavern still. Karleah pulled back her sleeves and immediately began murmuring an incantation, her gnarled hands blurring with speed.
Ignoring Karleah’s instructions, Johauna swung Wyrmblight above her head and leaped forward, shouting, “Fttiinn!”
As Jo hurtled toward the transmuting lump of matter, it exploded in size and shape, taking Verdilith’s form. The squire hurled Wyrmblight down onto the beast in a massive, two-handed arc that carried every ounce of strength and willpower she possessed.
A sudden, blinding flash of blue light came from Jo’s left and struck Wyrmblight before her blow could reach the dragon’s flesh. The blue streaks of Karleah s spell flared brilliantly, magic clashing with elven silver and dwarven steel. A tremendous shudder of energy traveled up the blade and into Jo’s arms, almost wrenching the sword from her hands. The full force of the blow struck her body, and Jo was thrown backward across the cavern.
The squire’s flight ended almost forty feet later when she struck a stalagmite. The stone projection caught Jo in the back, and breath exploded from her body. She tumbled to the stony ground. Her spine felt snapped in two and tears of pain stung her eyes. Jo struggled for air, but her lungs would not respond. Sharp, stabbing pains pierced her chest.
Am I dying? she wondered frantically. Why can’t I catch my breath? I’ve got to kill Verdilith. I can’t die until he is dead! The squire’s fingers tightened on Wyrmblight, still clutched reflexively in her hand. Please, let me live, she pleaded to the sword. Let me outlive the dragon, if only by moments! She struggled to control the fear that washed over her.
The Great Green, Verdilith, separated Jo from Karleah and Braddoc. Around him lay stalagmites, crushed to rubble beneath his newly formed claws of ivory. His emerald-green hide was laced with myriad cuts, and fresh blood seeped from unhealed wounds. A gaping gash nearly a foot deep and more than three feet long bled profusely along the dragon’s right side. It was a serious wound, though perhaps not mortal, and it looked fresh. Jo had expected Verdilith to be healed by now, healed with the extraordinary spells he knew.
In the instant that all these thoughts flooded through Jo’s spinning mind, the great green dragon reared back in fury, extending and fluttered his giant, batlike wings. Wind whistled through numerous holes in the wings’ fragile membranes. A few of the holes were so large that Jo knew the dragon couldn’t fly.
Attack! Jo cried silently to her friends. Just beyond the beast, she could see Braddoc and Karleah; they stood like statues, poised as they had been when Jo had made her lunge. Apparently Verdilith’s magic is far more powerful than Karleah’s, Jo thought with a moan of pain.
Struggling desperately to move, the squire braced Wyrmblight against the ground and tried to pull herself upward. She rose to one knee before agonizing pain twisted through her back, forcing her back to the stony cavern floor. With an extreme effort, she held her head up and looked toward the dragon and her comrades. Why are they just standing there? she thought anxiously. Why don’t they do something?
The dragon turned his enormous head toward Jo, and the curved amber horns on his brow glinted coldly in the light of Karleah’s staff. Through her haze of pain Jo wondered if Verdilith had somehow read her thoughts. She saw the golden, malevolent eyes staring at her, perhaps gauging her ability to harm him. Then, with slow and deliberate malice, he stepped toward Jo and extended his trembling right claw. She gasped, struggling back from the razor-tipped talon. Eyeing her evilly, Verdilith lowered the massive claw, setting the ivory tip of one nail on the flat of Wyrmblight.
“No!” Jo shrieked, trying desperately to yank the sword away. It wouldn’t budge; the sigil for Glory was snagged on the dragon’s claw. Wyrmblight s hilt felt suddenly red- hot in Johaunas grasp. With one quick flick of his talon, Verdilith wrenched the sword from Jo’s hand and sent it skidding across the stone floor toward him. The hilt struck sparks in the darksome lair as it passed.
“Wyrmblight,” the dragon whispered in greedy awe, pinning the sword beneath his claw. Careful not to let the blade touch his flesh, he prodded it toward a cluster of stalagmites. There, with the caution of a jeweler, he slid the sword between a tight pair of rock columns. Then, setting his claw on the hilt, he began to bend the blade sideways. “Good-bye, Wyrmblight,” the dragon mumbled venomously.
“No!” Jo cried out again, struggling to get up. Her body cried out in pain but, gritting her teeth, she slowly rose to one knee.
With a ghoulish smile on his spearlike teeth, Verdilith snapped the blade harshly to one side. Instead of breaking, however, Wyrmblight cut hissing through the rock columns and dropped loose. One of the stone pillars, sliced in half, broke free from the cave roof and fell like a massive tree into the lair. The resulting boom shook the stony ground beneath Jo, and made her ears ring.
“You can’t destroy it, Verdilith,” Jo shouted in agonized triumph. “Not you! Wyrmblight was forged to kill you, and it’ll stay whole until its purpose is fulfilled.”
Verdilith turned his enormous head toward her and regarded her with all the disdain he would have for an injured fly. The vast lids over his slitted eyes drew into a dubious and irritable line.
“Quiet, bitch,” he murmured, green gas spilling gently from his nostrils and rolling over her.
Choking, Johauna croaked out, “Karleah! Do something!” She clamped her eyes closed against the stinging gas and rasped, “Braddoc, attack! Fight, damn you! Fight!” Every battered muscle in her back screamed with the drawn breaths.
Unconcerned, Verdilith snagged the sword once again. He shifted his weight to his back haunches and assumed a sitting position. Only then did Jo see his wounded left arm. A jagged laceration, nearly three feet long, puckered rawly across the inner flat of the claw and up Verdilith’s forearm. Exposed white tendons, likely snapped by Wyrmblight, extruded from the claw and arm; the limb was withered and virtually useless. Somehow Jo knew the wound would never heal, though the skin surrounding it might finally pucker and close over. She grinned with evil satisfaction. “Good for you, Flinn,” Jo whispered huskily, taking shallow breaths. “You’ve maimed the bastard for life!” She gained her feet and staggered toward Karleah and Braddoc.
The dragon studied the sword, cautiously lifting it in his claws. Setting her teeth in determination, Jo inched closer to her friends. Verdilith’s eye turned distractedly toward her, and he let out a roar that reverberated through the cavern. A cloud of noxious green mist erupted from his maw, covering Jo and the statuelike forms of Karleah and Braddoc.
Jo held her breath and dropped again to her knees. Watching her, Verdilith grinned. Slowly he snaked his long, sinuous neck toward her. The beast’s ivory fangs glinted, and his gums glowed with green bile. A long, snakelike tongue flickered out, licking away the viscid fluid. The stench that rolled from his mouth nearly made Jo retch. The dragon lowered his head, a head the size of a small cottage, to Jo’s level. His golden-orange eyes gleamed moistly, and little puffs of poisonous mist plumed from his nostrils.
It was the first time Jo had ever really seen the dragon, and even the pain in her back and lungs retreated in the face of her sudden terror. Nothing could have prepared her for this sight. Nothing could have prepared her for facing Verdilith.
“Ssssooooooo,” Verdilith hissed in a long drawl, �
�you are the foolish successor to foolish Flinn?” An amber eye flickered to the sword, dangling in Verdilith’s good claw. Even beyond her grasp, the sword seemed to whisper have faith to Jo. Heeding the words, she tapped the anger inside her—her only hope to fight off the terror of his presence. This fiend killed Flinn! she shouted to herself. You must avenge that death, broken bones be damned!
The dragon’s tongue tested the air, and droplets of green spittle splashed at Jo’s feet. “Your magicks and your sword are too feeble to defeat me,” Verdilith continued. The words sounded clipped and strangely alien to Jo, as if they were coming from a great distance instead of the few steps that separated Jo and her foe. “Your precious Flinn proved that. Your attacks now prove that. Your comrades are dead, and so are you.” The dragon opened his jaws, revealing rows of deadly, spearlike teeth.
He dropped Wyrmblight before her.
“Go, ahead,” he seethed. “Take the sword. Kill me if you can.”
Jo grappled the blade, struggling to clutch its hilt with her weary hands. Finally securing her hold, she raised the sword and thrust it toward the dragon’s head.
With something akin to a purr, Verdilith lowered his face toward the sword and rubbed it lovingly along his jaw. The keen, hot edge of steel lightly sliced into the tender facial skin of the dragon, hissing as blood poured slowly onto it. A spark of pain appeared for a moment in Verdilith’s massive eyes, but quickly transformed into a dull glow of pleasure. Jo wrenched fiercely at the blade, trying to redirect it toward the dragon’s throat. Wyrmblight swung about, leveling toward the creature’s throat, but Verdilith caught it lightly between his massive teeth.
Without releasing his bite, the dragon murmured, “A mere shaving implement, this.” He stared mirthlessly at Johauna, his golden eyes narrowing. Despite the dragon’s words, despite his apparent lack of concern about the blade, Jo saw a moment of fear in those great, slitted eyes. He blinked it away, and the wound on his face gently dripped blood onto the stone beside her. “Why need I destroy a shaving implement?” Verdilith continued, his voice strangely tense. “Especially, when I can destroy its bearer?”
“To arms, children of stone! To arms!” came the ragged shout of Braddoc Briarblood from some distance behind the dragon. As Verdilith whirled his huge head toward the call, a thud of metal sounded.
Verdilith shrieked.
In the same moment, a roaring funnel of wind suddenly formed in the cavern. It grew rapidly, swirling to one side of the cave, some distance away. Johauna wondered if
Karleah would be able to control the air elemental in time to actually threaten Verdilith.
Whether or not she could, Jo’s time was at hand.
Scrambling unsteadily to her feet, she charged the beast’s exposed breast. Her gray eyes flashed with anger and dread anticipation as she pulled Wyrmblight back for the killing blow. “For Flinn!” Jo lunged unevenly with the blade, letting her stumbling body impart its force to the attack. Still, it was a weak thrust at best, and misdirected, but the sword shone suddenly bright in its path. It glanced off the scales of the creature’s breast and dug into the dragon’s crippled left claw. White mist from the blade clung to the raw wound and turned red.
The dragon screamed again. He reared, his massive wings flapping wildly to help him keep his balance. Jo dropped to the ground, shielding herself from the buffeting wind. Karleah’s wind funnel swept closer, nullifying the winds from Verdilith’s wings.
Braddoc, axe glinting in hand, landed a solid blow on the wyrm’s wounded side. Verdilith seemed oblivious, gnawing his wounded arm in blind rage. Retreating from the creature’s thrashing tail, Karleah stepped amongst a forest of rock columns. From there she directed the wind tunnel toward the dragon. In moments, it engulfed him, pummeling him with coins and gems and dust.
With supple, wicked grace, Verdilith swung his head back toward Jo and hissed, his voice rumbling deep and low through the long, twisted neck. “You’ve earned my hatred, squire! You and that accursed blade are no more!”
Jo blinked the dust from her eyes and tried to see beyond Karleah’s tornado. One moment, he was a dim outline in the swirling storm, the next, he was gone altogether. Then, as quickly as it had come, the tornado vanished. A harsh hail of coins and gems followed for some moments afterward, leaving only a drifting cloud of sand, glittering in Karleah’s magical light.
There was no sign of the dragon.
Stunned, Karleah and Braddoc stared back at Jo from across the empty hall.
The squire slumped to the ground, the strength gone from her body. She clutched Wyrmblight in her arms. Braddoc and Karleah raced toward her, the dwarf reaching her first. He knelt by Jos side and smoothed tousled hair and grit from her face.
“Johauna!” Braddoc said urgently. “You’re hurt!”
Karleah knelt beside the dwarf and said testily, “Well, of course she’s hurt! She took the full effects of my most powerful missile spell—a spell, I might add, that would likely have killed Verdilith in his condition.” The old woman tapped the silver-and-gold medallion on Jo’s chest. “It’s nice to know this thing works, dear. You’d have been dead otherwise.”
Jo smiled feebly, but was too weak to respond further. I may not have died then, she thought, but I’m about to die soon. She looked at Karleah’s suddenly frowning face.
“When Wyrmblight intercepted my magic, the spell somehow rebounded on the dwarf and me,” Karleah explained. She began gently prodding Jo’s body, and every now and then Jo gasped in pain. “We couldn’t move; we were paralyzed,” Karleah continued. “We saw and heard everything, fortunately. Only after we were gassed by that behemoth were we freed.” Karleah jerked her thumb toward Braddoc, who held up his amulet, and said, “There again we were lucky.”
“How are you, Johauna?” the dwarf asked. “Where does it hurt?”
“My back . . . and lungs,” Jo whispered, the stabbing pains in her lungs forcing her to take shallow breaths. “Never . . . mind me. What . . . about . . . Verdilith?” Karleah glanced at Braddoc, who returned the old womans look. Then Karleah looked away, and Braddoc turned to Jo. “I’m afraid he got away, Johauna,” the dwarf said slowly. “He turned to mist and . . . disappeared.”
Jo closed her eyes. I’m going to die, Wyrmblight, she thought to the sword. I’m going to die, and I haven’t avenged Flinn’s death, and I won’t live to see Verdilith’s death. She pulled the blade closer to her, her fingers unconsciously seeking the four sigils. Perhaps I can fall asleep and then die without so much pain, she thought as a heavy darkness descended on her.
Jo felt consciousness begin to slip away. The pain retreated, taking with it Jo’s hopes and needs, dreams and desires. She fought against the gentle insistence surrounding her. Give up the sword, whispered her mind. Give up avenging Flinn’s death. Your time has come to depart from this world. Jo fought against the words. “No!” she shouted. In the indistinct blackness that closed around her, she ran, her soul suddenly given form. She waved her arms wildly, trying to ward off the insistent thoughts of defeat hammering at her.
“Flinn! Flinn!” she called frantically. “Wyrmblight, where are you? Where is Flinn?”
Then, somehow, he was walking toward her in a vision, a glowing figure surrounded by the blackness of death. He was whole and hale again, and seemed younger than Jo had ever seen him. A smile lingered on his lips beneath his dark moustache, and there was only a little iron streaking the black hair. The scars across his face were barely visible. Flinn held his hands out to her, palms upward. Jo looked up from them, across his broad chest now clothed in his midnight-blue tunic from the Order of the Three Suns, and on to his dark eyes. They were shining down at her, and Jo felt her heart break. He had never seemed more beautiful or more majestic.
“I can’t come to you yet, Flinn,” Jo sobbed. “I promised you! I have to avenge your death. Please help me return.”
Flinn still smiled at her with love and understanding.
Jo almost reached out for him, bu
t she stopped herself in time. “Where . . . are you?” Jo asked instead, gesturing around at the darkness.
Flinn laughed low, a chuckle that held none of its old cynical bitterness. “Ah, Jo!” he murmured. “Return to your body. Have faith—we will meet again someday.”
The image of Flinn disappeared in the blackness that surrounded Jo, but the words have faith echoed through her soul. She felt like crying, whether from great joy or deep sorrow, she didn’t know.
From a tremendous distance, Jo heard Karleah murmur, “Look at that, Braddoc! That—that glowing mist is covering Jo’s body!”
“Aye, and it’s coming from the sword!” Braddoc responded.
“What do you make of it?” Karleah inquired.
Jo’s eyelids fluttered, and she heard Karleah and Braddoc both gasp.
“Johauna! You’re alive!” the dwarf cried.
“You’ve a penchant for stating the obvious, dwarf!” Karleah vented. Jo felt hands gently touching her. Then she heard the old woman hiss in sudden realization. “Of course! The sword healed her!”
Jo’s eyes opened fully, and she focused on her two comrades kneeling beside her. The squire smiled slowly. “Now who’s stating the obvious?” She held out her hands. “Help me up”
The two helped Jo rise to her feet. She felt a litde shaky. That’s to be expected, she thought wryly. After all, you’ve just come back from the dead. Jo stretched, the muscles in her back moving without pain. She tentatively took a deep breath; the stabbing ache wasn’t there. She smiled at the two concerned expressions staring up at her.
“I’m fine. Really,” she said.
Karleah blinked rapidly. “Forgive my staring, Jo,” she said, “but it’s been a while since I’ve seen a dead person.”
Braddoc snorted. He handed Jo her sword and hefted his own battle-axe. “She’s not dead anymore, so don’t go treating her like she’s wwdead, will you?” The dwarf looked up at Jo with his good eye and jerked his thumb behind him. “The dragon’s gone. We won’t get our vengeance today. But fet’s at least load up on some treasure and return to the casde. Maybe if the baroness is in a generous mood, she’ll let us keep a piece or two for ourselves.”
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