Shala grabbed the hilt of her sword and ran toward the trouble. A warrior backpedaled toward her, and she rammed him out of the way with her shield.
As she closed with the reptile, she saw that Hasos had slashed its head and shoulders before it scored on him. That was something, anyway. She cut and added a gash of her own, slicing across one of the wounds the baron had inflicted to make an X under the creature’s right eye.
It roared and pivoted toward her. But the back half of its body was still on the far side of the rampart, and maybe that made it clumsy. When it bit, it wasn’t too difficult to hop back out of range, then slash it across the snout.
Then it spewed fire.
Shala wasn’t out of range of that. Reflex snapped her shield into position to protect her face and torso. But the defense effectively blinded her, and pain still seared her lower body.
Then fangs searing as red-hot iron caught her leg and wrenched it out from underneath her. Her dwarf-forged greave kept the bite from nipping it off immediately. But even enchanted armor wasn’t likely to hold for more than a heartbeat or two. And even if it did, the heat would cook the limb inside.
Bending and twisting at the waist, straining to bring her blade into striking position, she wrenched herself around. Praying the awkward attack would penetrate, she thrust at the creature’s scaly throat.
The sword stabbed deep, and when she withdrew it, steaming blood spurted. The reptile roared, releasing her, then fell over sideways.
But more reptiles were climbing over the rampart after it. She rolled to her feet and caught one squarely between the eyes with another lucky thrust. The beast collapsed. “Chessenta!” she bellowed. “Chessenta!”
And warriors who’d followed her on many a campaign scrambled back to the battle line. Together, they hurled the wave of saurians back.
Next came the shadows, ghastly things that could shrivel a young man into an old one just by touching him. “Sunlords!” Shala shouted. “Kill these ghosts!”
And the priests too heeded her call. They abandoned their fruitless effort to restore daylight to the field as a whole and conjured localized flashes. Those repelled the ghosts or burned them away to nothing.
The next time the combat gave her a momentary respite, she realized that some of her comrades had taken up her battle cry. “Chessenta!” they howled. “Chessenta.”
While others chanted, “Shala! Shala! Shala!”
Aoth surveyed the battle. Neither darkness nor distance impeded his fire-touched vision. But the situation was so chaotic that even he, with all his experience with war, had difficulty making sense of it.
For the moment, the Chessentans were holding, although at a heavy cost and surely not for much longer. Not with all three enemy dragons still in the air, even if the one Gaedynn and Jhesrhi were fighting was just a mangled undead travesty of its former self.
On the positive side, even deprived of assistance from the winds, he and his fellow griffon riders had killed a substantial portion of the lesser winged reptiles. And some power-Meralaine’s perhaps-was hindering the ghosts, turning some against their fellows or melting them back into the ground. It wasn’t enough, but it was something.
Aoth tried to decide where he and Jet were needed most. The answer was everywhere. Which might mean that the only way for the Chessentans to survive the fiasco was to strike at the enemy commander, or at least his position. He blew the ram’s horn, signaling every griffon rider who could to follow his lead.
Jet wheeled, aiming himself at the pocket of deeper darkness. You don’t have many spells left. And Jaxanaedegor hasn’t even done any fighting yet.
But he’s been working powerful magic through that black orb, Aoth replied. He drowned the field in shadow, summoned a company of ghosts, and turned a dead dragon into a zombie. It’s possible he’s just as tired as we are.
That’s fine, then, the familiar said. By all means, risk our lives, just as long as “it’s possible.”
Aoth looked around. Other griffon riders had maneuvered into position to accompany him. Perceiving what his master saw through their psychic link, Jet screeched, lashed his wings, and hurtled forward.
Jaxanaedegor and his assistants were slow to react to the aerial charge. Perhaps they didn’t think that any of their foes could actually see them. Aoth disabused them of that notion by pointing his spear and hurling a thunderbolt from the tip. Unfortunately, though the lightning hit the black globe on its tripod, it didn’t do any damage. Well, he’d just have to keep trying.
Exploding into motion, Jaxanaedegor sprinted clear of the trees, lashed his wings, and rose from the blot of darkness. His companions, however, stayed on the ground. Aoth had hoped they were lesser vampires, the kind that didn’t turn into bats, and that appeared to be the case.
Don’t get too excited, said Jet. Jax doesn’t look like he needs the help.
Unfortunately, that was true. The wyrm was huge enough to dwarf the other three rampaging across the battlefield, and his pale yellow eyes blazed. Griffons wheeled and beat their wings, trying to stay away from him and above him while their riders shot their few remaining shafts as fast as they could draw and release.
Many of the arrows glanced off Jaxanaedegor’s scales. Others stuck-but only in his hide, without piercing what lay beneath. One, however, drove deep into his brow. In response, he spat a stream of vapor that engulfed the marksman and his mount. The two plummeted together.
Aoth hammered the dark orb with blasts of fire, six detonating in succession quick as the beats of his racing heart. The blasts flung vampires through the air and even tore a couple apart. But the talisman remained intact.
He decided he needed to get close to the thing. He hated to abandon his men to fight Jaxanaedegor by themselves, but if they could distract the wyrm and survive for just a few moments, maybe they’d be all right.
Jet wheeled. When he was behind Jaxanaedegor, he swooped.
For a moment Aoth thought the undead green truly had lost track of them. Then he felt Jet’s jolt of alarm and looked up. Growing larger by the moment, Jaxanaedegor seemed to fill the sunless sky. His claws were poised to catch and tear.
Jet lashed his wings to change course. Then he furled them and dropped like a stone into the leafless upper limbs inside the bubble of darkness.
Branches cracked beneath the griffon and his rider, and bashed and raked them as they fell through. The punishment was like enduring a beating and a tumble down a staircase at the same time. But at least a creature as huge as Jaxanaedegor couldn’t pursue them down into the treetops.
At least not in solid form. Aoth had hoped the dragon would veer off, set down outside the copse, then reenter at ground level. Instead, he dissolved into mist. Aoth caught a whiff of the putrid-smelling fumes. It nauseated him and made him feel dizzy and weak.
Aoth judged-or perhaps merely hoped-that he’d have a few moments to act before Jaxanaedegor floated to the ground and turned solid again. Then Jet slammed down hard. Aoth felt the flash of pain as an aquiline front leg snapped.
I’m all right! the griffon snapped. Go!
Gaunt, pale figures rushed them. Jet gave Aoth just enough time to swing himself out of the saddle, then sprang to meet the vampires. His beak slashed and bit, and his good foreleg clawed to devastating effect. Yet even so, creatures pounced on him and clung, gnawing and tearing with their fangs.
As before, Aoth couldn’t linger to help. He dashed toward the tripod. Another vampire ran in on his flank. It had a poleaxe with what appeared to be grimacing faces mirrored in the blade, although there was nothing outside the steel to cast the reflections.
The creature struck. Grunting with effort, Aoth parried with his spear, then thrust it into his opponent’s heart. Since he couldn’t leave it there, he used a bit more of his rapidly dwindling power to draw flame from the point, sear the organ, and so keep the vampire from getting right back up again.
That cleared the way to the black globe. He rattled off a spell to ensure he
struck hard and true. Meanwhile, wisps of mist coiled together and congealed into a wedge-shaped head. Jaxanaedegor leaped forward, clearing Jet and his frenzied foes in the process.
Releasing every bit of force still bound in the spear, Aoth drove the weapon into the talisman. The orb shattered, and sunlight stabbed through the naked branches overhead.
Jaxanaedegor was lifting a foreleg to strike when the radiance caught him. At once his immense scaly body charred and smoked, and he jerked in agony. Backpedaling, Aoth thought, Burn, you whoreson! Die!
But the latter was too much to hope for. Mastering his pain, Jaxanaedegor snarled words of power and vanished. Magic had translated him through space, no doubt to somewhere dark and safe.
Aoth pivoted toward Jet. The lesser vampires actually had burned to death, and-still alive despite a dozen gory bite wounds-the griffon stood on three legs amid smoldering drifts of ash.
“Can you get me back up into the sky?” asked Aoth.
“Oh, why not?” Jet replied. “What’s one more painful test of strength at this point?”
Feeling guilty-but only slightly, because he knew how hardy the griffon actually was-Aoth climbed back into the saddle. Jet limped out of the trees, accelerated, lashed his wings, and flew. The sellswords above them cheered, and their mounts screeched. Aoth acknowledged it by brandishing his spear.
Until a prodigious roar drowned out the acclaim. At the other end of the battlefield, from behind the earthwork at the top of the rise, Tchazzar soared upward in dragon form.
Bigger even than Jaxanaedegor, he annihilated the zombie dragon with a flare of fiery breath that nearly engulfed Gaedynn and Eider as well. Then, wings beating, he climbed.
One of the enemy reds tried to do the same. But Tchazzar gained the high air, then plunged at the smaller reptile like a hawk diving at a pigeon. He seized it and ripped it apart with fang and claw.
By that time, the other enemy red was fleeing north. Aoth thought it had enough of a head start to escape. But Tchazzar snarled, and Aoth felt a charge of supernatural coercion in the noise. It made his head throb even though it wasn’t directed at him.
The lesser red flailed, then labored onward clumsily like it was carrying an enormous weight or its muscles were cramping. As a result, Tchazzar had no trouble overtaking it.
When the enemy red turned to fight, it regained its agility. Either Tchazzar had contemptuously restored it, or that particular curse could only afflict a fleeing victim. The Threskelan wyrm found rising air, soared, then dived as Tchazzar had hurtled down at his comrade.
The war hero spat flame. Which should have had little or no effect on a fellow red. Yet it blasted chunks of flesh from his foe’s skull and burned or melted its eyes in their sockets. Aoth winced to imagine the heat and force required.
Tchazzar then flicked his wings, got out of the way of the blind, maimed wyrm, and seized it as it plunged by. He held onto it for the heartbeat it took to bite its head off, then let the bloody, burning pieces fall.
After that, he turned his murderous attention to an unfortunate company of kobolds. But he couldn’t attack everyone at once, and so a fair number of the enemy would get away to regroup later.
For, the Firelord knew, Tchazzar’s warriors were in no condition to pursue them. Somehow they’d averted complete destruction while waiting-and waiting-for the self-proclaimed god to make his move. But they’d taken a brutal mauling.
NINE
16 KYTHORN, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
The Market Floor echoed with the fast, complex clatter of the victory drums, and dancers leaped and whirled to the rhythms. Khouryn reflected that dragonborn could be remarkably nimble for such a solidly built people, although in the present circumstances they weren’t always nimble enough. Many dances involved simulated combat with live blades, or tossing weapons into the air and catching them, and some folk watched from the sidelines with freshly bandaged hurts to attest to a fumble.
He and Medrash tried to slip past one such celebration, convened beneath a platinum and purple banner of Bahamut. But someone recognized them, and people clustered around to shake their hands and press wooden cups of wine and apple brandy into them.
Khouryn supposed it made sense. Thanks to the mounted charge and the other tactics he’d introduced, he and Medrash had emerged from the recent battle as heroes. Unfortunately, so had the leaders and warriors of the Platinum Cadre, and people-including many of the cultists-had a tendency to see all the innovations as parts of a greater whole. Especially since Medrash and Patrin had both proclaimed themselves the exotic sort of champion called paladins and fought side by side to save the vanquisher.
Since there was drink involved, Khouryn didn’t mind the attention all that much. He suspected it bothered Medrash more, but the Daardendrien’s natural courtesy masked it.
Eventually they managed to make their escape. They found a twisting staircase and descended into the Catacombs.
Balasar stepped from a shadowy niche in the wall. “It took you long enough,” he said.
“Your fellow maniacs are dancing all over the Market Floor,” Medrash said. “It ties up traffic.” He and his clan brother clasped hands.
Khouryn peered down the corridor with its dim, infrequent lights. “You’re sure you weren’t followed?” he asked.
Medrash smiled slightly. “He wasn’t. If there’s one thing he knows how to do, it’s sneak. He learned it breaking curfew and the rest of our elders’ rules.”
“Fair enough.” Khouryn raised his hand to his chin, then made himself lower it again. He’d never considered himself vain, at least not about his appearance, but since the venom had burned his beard he’d acquired the unconscious impulse to cover the sad remains. “So, why did you want to meet us?”
“Did someone look at the bag?” Balasar asked.
Medrash nodded. “The wizard couldn’t tell a thing.”
“I swear,” Balasar said, “the talisman that interfered with the horses was in there.”
“We believe you,” Khouryn said. “Why else did the riders regain control as soon as you stole it? Why, if the contents weren’t incriminating, did they turn to dust as soon as a hand other than Nala’s untied the cord? But we can’t prove anything.”
“So the Platinum Cadre are marvels,” said Medrash, “winning new converts by the day. They’ll march with the rest of us when we head back onto Black Ash Plain to break the tribal alliance once and for all. Where, for all we know, Nala will betray us again.”
Balasar grinned one of the fang-bearing grins so often unsettling to folk unaccustomed to dragonborn. “Maybe not.”
Medrash’s eyes narrowed. “Meaning what?”
“I haven’t reported everything I’ve done as a spy. It’s dangerous to write very much, and impossible to hide a big sheet of parchment behind a stone. So you don’t know about the glassblower and her sand.”
He proceeded to tell how he’d followed said glassblower and two other cultists into the Catacombs, where he’d run afoul of a flying creature and a group of reanimated corpses.
“Later,” he concluded, “I made my way back to the spot where the winged thing ambushed me. There was no sign of it, so maybe I actually did kill it. But when I pressed on, I couldn’t find where Raiann and the others had gone, or anyplace interesting.”
“Still,” Khouryn said, “I think you were close.” He reached to stroke his chin, then lowered his hand again. “I’ve never actually run into a creature like the one you met, but I think I know what it is-a portal drake. The kind of watchdog a dragon priestess might use to guard the approach to something important.”
“Which means Torm has given us one more chance to unmask Nala before the army marches,” Medrash said. He always stood tall, but now seemed to draw himself up straighter still. “Lead on, kinsman.”
Khouryn’s nerves felt taut as they prowled along. It had nothing to do with the darkness or the stone overhead and all around. To a dwarf, such an environment was arguab
ly more congenial than clear skies and green fields. Nor was he worried about the portal drake. Even if it was still alive, the three of them could handle it.
He was concerned because by then, Nala almost certainly knew someone had fought the reptile and survived. She didn’t know it was Balasar, or she would have tried to murder the Daardendrien as, Khouryn suspected, she’d sent the devil on the balcony to dispose of him. But she’d likely emplaced something worse than a portal drake and zombies to keep her secrets safe.
“I can’t believe Patrin knows,” Medrash said abruptly. “It’s difficult to imagine how he could not know, being a champion of the dragon god and Nala’s lover too, but I can’t believe he understands the vileness.”
Khouryn grunted. “I think it’s the same with most of the cultists, like the ones who wanted us to join their revels. They’re just misguided. At least until Nala has enough time to really twist their heads around.”
“That’s true,” Medrash said. “We’re fighting to save them as much as anyone else.”
“A noble sentiment,” Balasar said. “But it won’t mean a fish’s toenail if we can’t figure out how to win. We’re coming up on the corner where the portal drake attacked me. I’ll give the signal Raiann gave. If the wretched beast is still alive, that may convince it to leave us alone.” He whistled three ascending notes, the sounds reverberating off the walls.
Afterward, they stalked around the right-angle bend without incident. The tunnel beyond looked no different than the dark, lonely ones they’d just traversed.
“Can one of you find the way from here?” Balasar asked.
“I can ask the Loyal Fury for a sign,” Medrash said.
“And I can be a dwarf,” said Khouryn. “Maybe Lady Luck will smile on one of us.” He pulled off one of his leather and steel gauntlets and ran his fingertips along the right wall as they moved ahead. The granite was smooth and cool to the touch.
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