The riders pushed on to yet another point where the way diverged. Pulling on the reins, Balasar swung his chestnut steed to the right.
“No,” Medrash said. “It’s the other way.”
“Are you sure?” Gritting his teeth, Balasar worked the pull lever of the weapon he’d just discharged. “It’s a maze in here.”
“I’m sure,” Medrash replied. Now that they were close, he could feel the unnatural power of the ceremony-or perhaps of Skuthosiin himself-just as he had the foulness of the shadow thing.
He led his fellow riders, and the foot soldiers trailing along behind, around two more turns and through two more bands of giants trying to bar the way. Then he gasped.
Because while simply feeling the vileness had been unpleasant, seeing it was worse. He’d already noted that Skuthosiin seemed hideous, even if he couldn’t say why. Now that he was closer, that ugliness seemed to stab into his eyes.
And, repulsive as the dragon was, the fire leaping out of the fissure was worse. When Medrash had seen it before, it had simply burned yellow like most flames. Now it changed color from one moment to the next. It was red, then blue, then green, then bone white, then shadow black.
Medrash could just discern that something was inside the fire-or, to be more accurate, coming through it. Using it as a passage from somewhere else. Whatever it was, its several parts swayed in a way that reminded him of Nala, and, even barely glimpsed, it radiated a terrifying feeling of might, malice, and contempt.
He realized he absolutely had to stop it from emerging into the mortal world. And do it now, before the mere threat of such a disaster panicked his companions. Which meant there was no time to look for the vanquisher’s wizards and ask them to help.
He reached out to Torm. Cold and bracing as a mountain spring, Power surged through him and collected in his hand.
He didn’t know a specific prayer to disrupt such a ceremony. But, guided by instinct, he focused his thoughts on the idea of forbiddance, tucked his sword under his shield arm, lifted his empty hand high, and swung it down at the ground.
Made of steely shimmer, a huge, ghostly gauntlet appeared in midair, swept down, and covered the source of the fire with its palm. Startled, the giant adepts cried out and recoiled.
Pain seared Medrash’s actual hand, as if it were bare and he were really using it to smother a fire. He had a muddled impression that his flesh didn’t burn constantly. Perhaps it charred one instant, froze the next, and suffered some other sort of injury the moment after that.
But he couldn’t really sort out the differences in sensation. It took all the will and focus he could muster to hold his hand in place despite the agony, and to keep the Loyal Fury’s Power pouring into it.
Until-after what was likely only a matter of heartbeats, even though it seemed like forever-the phantasmal gauntlet vanished, and Medrash saw that the fire beneath was gone.
That was the only way he could tell. His hand was still ablaze with pain. Yet even so, he felt a surge of satisfaction, and when Skuthosiin’s head whipped around to goggle at him, that only made the moment sweeter.
“Sorry,” Balasar called. “Were you using that fire?”
Skuthosiin’s eyes flicked to the giant shamans. “Kill them,” he snapped.
The adepts produced some of Nala’s globes, held them at eye level, then gasped and staggered.
“Oops,” Balasar said.
Medrash drew a bit more of Torm’s Power to quell the throbbing in his hand. It didn’t end it altogether, but it muted it. When he tried to grip the wire-wrapped hilt of his sword, he found that he could.
“You see how it is,” he said. “We know how to counter all your tricks. Surrender, and perhaps Tarhun will show you mercy.”
“Surrender?” Skuthosiin repeated. “Are you insane? Do you think I really need tricks, or any sort of help, to slaughter mites like you? This is the end of you and all your people.” He sprang forward.
Medrash rode to meet him. Balasar and the other riders pounded after him.
The fight was going to be terrible. In all probability, many dragonborn would die. But Medrash was satisfied because his comrades hadn’t quailed, and, in his furious eagerness to engage, Skuthosiin had opted to stay on the ground where lance and sword could reach him. And as more and more Tymantherans, including the mages, arrived in the heart of Ashhold-
Something seared Medrash’s back. His steed pitched forward and fell. On either side of him other horses dropped as well, and yellow flame glinted on the riders’ armor.
He hit his head hard, and something cracked. Suddenly everything seemed dim and far away. Unimportant. Some instinct insisted that he try to get up anyway, but he discovered he couldn’t move.
Her mouth still warm and tingling, Nala rejoiced to see that Medrash wasn’t standing up, or stirring at all.
Despite her best efforts, the paladin and the other riders had gotten ahead of her and interrupted the ritual before she could reach the center of the giants’ refuge. But even though that disruption was sacrilege, from a practical standpoint it might actually have been for the best. Because her miracles would play a greater role in Skuthosiin’s victory and show him how valuable she truly was.
She’d drawn down Tiamat’s glory to augment the power of her breath weapon, then spat it at the horsemen. The burst of fire dropped half a dozen riders. Her only regret was that Medrash and Balasar weren’t close enough together for her to burn both of them. But the paladin was the more important target, and if the Dark Lady smiled on her, she still might be the one to kill his clan brother.
She glimpsed a glint from the corner of her eye and turned toward the spear points swinging in her direction. For of course the foot soldiers among whom she’d advanced had seen her blast their mounted comrades. They’d stood stupefied for a heartbeat, but they meant to strike her down for her treachery.
She had no time for another prayer, whispered or otherwise, but her own innate vitality was sufficient for a second blaze of fiery breath. She spat it, and the two warriors who were threatening her reeled backward.
She darted out of the massed infantrymen, racing closer to Skuthosiin and the riders assailing him. Some of the foot soldiers hesitated to follow, but others scrambled after her.
She judged she had just enough time and distance for an incantation. She hissed Draconic words of power, touched the end of her thumb to the tip of her middle finger to make her hand resemble a saurian head, then, quick as a striking serpent, jabbed it at four different spots on the ground.
Each as big as a dragonborn, four rearing, snarling wyrms appeared where she’d pointed. Her pursuers quailed until they realized the apparitions were incapable of doing actual harm. By then she was close enough to Skuthosiin for the green to lash out at anyone who dared to keep following, and no one did.
Clouds shrouded Selune and the stars. To Aoth, the air smelled like a storm was coming.
It is, said Jet, and its name is Alasklerbanbastos.
I know, answered Aoth. Because the deepening darkness seemed blacker and felt somehow dirtier than just the clouds could explain, while the breeze carried a hint of old rot as well as the imminence of lightning. It was like the worst of his experiences in Thay, with something unimaginably strong and vile rising to poison all the natural world. I just wish he’d get on with it.
Back on the ground for the moment, Tchazzar incinerated a formation of kobolds with a blast of flame. Either he was trying hard to convince the Great Bone Wyrm that he was squandering his power-or else, in his excitement, he really was.
Whether he was thinking, the result was the same. At the northern edge of the battlefield, pieces of darkness seemed to thicken and arrange themselves into a structure, like ghostly hands were building it. And even wyrmkeepers and vampires instinctively shrank away.
In a moment, a murky skull with a spiked snout sat atop the stacked vertebrae of the neck, and fleshless wings arched to either side. Then, inside the core of the thing’s body, li
ghtning flared repeatedly from rib to rib, and its eye sockets lit with a spectral glow. The structure changed from dark to leprous white as lengths and curves of shadow turned into bone.
Alasklerbanbastos strode forward. Chessentans who were nowhere near him screamed. So did some of the Threskelans.
Go ahead, said Jet, if it will make you feel better.
Aoth snorted. If he’d ever done any screaming, it had been a long, long time ago. But even to a man who’d survived the nastiest parts of the War of the Zulkirs, the Great Bone Wyrm was an appalling spectacle. Now that the two of them were in the same place, he could tell that the dracolich was even bigger than Tchazzar. And as they advanced on each other, and warriors left off struggling to scurry out of the way, it was difficult to resist the idea that here were the only combatants and the only fight that really mattered.
Aoth spat away that notion as well. Whatever their pretensions, neither wyrm could stand up to a proper army all by himself. That was why they bothered to command armies. Besides, what was about to happen would be very little like the duel of titans his imagination was suggesting.
Or so he hoped. Jaxanaedegor and his followers were taking their time about striking at their master. Aoth hoped they were simply making sure they’d take the dracolich completely by surprise when he’d have nowhere to run.
The battlefield was strangely quiet as the undead colossus and the self-proclaimed deity approached each other. That was because a good many warriors were simply standing and watching, and it enabled Aoth to make out the words when the wyrms spoke in the same esoteric form of Draconic that Jaxanaedegor had used when he first appeared to Tchazzar. Or maybe it was their innate magic, roused by their utter mutual hatred, that made their words audible even high in the sky.
“I invoke the Five Hundred and Fifty-Fifth Precept,” Alasklerbanbastos said. “To the death, and winner take all.”
“That’s exactly how it will be,” Tchazzar replied. “For I promise I’ll find your phylactery.”
“Take it if you can.” Without cocking his neck back or doing anything else that might have warned of a live dragon’s intent, Alasklerbanbastos simply opened his fleshless jaws and spat lightning.
The flare dazzled Aoth, and the thunderclap spiked pain into his ears. The attack pierced Tchazzar and made him thrash.
But as soon as it ended, the red dragon spewed a blast of flame. It cracked some of Alasklerbanbastos’s naked bones, sent chips of them flying, and jolted the dracolich backward.
Tchazzar instantly sprang high and lashed his wings. He plainly meant to pounce on top of his foe before the Great Bone Wyrm recovered.
Unfortunately, Alasklerbanbastos was more resilient than expected. He lifted his head, stared at Tchazzar, and the glow in his eye sockets flared.
Aoth remembered how the dracolich’s gaze had paralyzed him. Tchazzar merely seemed to twitch in midleap. But perhaps that was enough to impair his agility, for Alasklerbanbastos dodged out from under his adversary’s claws. And when the war hero came down, the dracolich met him with a clattering sweep of his bony tail.
The blow caught Tchazzar across the side of the head and bashed him stumbling to the side. Alasklerbanbastos backed away, opening up the distance, and hissed words of power.
A web of shadows seethed into being. It covered Tchazzar like a net, and wherever it touched him, scales sloughed away and the flesh beneath them withered.
With all his might, he should have been able to break free. But as he gathered himself to try, Alasklerbanbastos snarled another spell.
Tchazzar roared, then thrashed wildly, as a beast would struggle against a net without truly comprehending what it was. Without intellect to guide it, raw strength wasn’t enough to snap the strands, and they rotted their way deeper into his body.
Like the paralysis, the red dragon’s frenzied confusion only lasted a heartbeat. Then he stopped his useless flailing. But at the same moment, Alasklerbanbastos spat another bolt of lightning.
Tchazzar went rigid, then slumped when the flare blinked out of existence. He kept on fighting the web, but seemed dazed and too weakened to have any hope of escaping.
Alasklerbanbastos started another spell.
Aoth looked around. Jaxanaedegor and his minions were nowhere near the Great Bone Wyrm. Maybe they hadn’t expected the dracolich to gain the upper hand so quickly and completely. Aoth hadn’t expected it either, even though every soldier knew combat was often like that. A duel between even the greatest warriors could start and end with a single cut.
Anyway, one thing was clear. If Jaxanaedegor hadn’t already started maneuvering to attack, he certainly wasn’t going to do it now.
Aoth supposed he should order the Brotherhood to retreat. Try to get them off the battlefield and out of Chessenta without taking any more casualties.
But then they’d have lost again and further tarnished their reputation. He might never see Cera again. And he could guess what fate awaited a priestess of the sun in a land newly conquered by an undead monstrosity.
To the Abyss with it. It was as reckless as anything Aoth had ever done in Thay, madder than anything he’d ever wanted to do again. But he aimed his spear and sent Jet swooping at the dracolich.
Skuthosiin spewed vapor. Balasar held his breath and squinched his eyes shut. His exposed skin stung even so, but his precautions-or the protective amulet Biri, the pretty young white-scaled mage, had for some reason given him-kept the vapor from rotting his lungs or blinding him.
His poor horse wasn’t as lucky. He felt the animal toppling beneath him. He opened his eyes, dropped his lance, dived out of the saddle, and rolled to his feet. At once he had to jump to keep his mount’s spasmodic legs from kicking him. To either side, other horses lay or rolled convulsing. As did some of their riders. Other dragonborn coughed and retched or swiped tears from their streaming eyes.
Balasar realized he needed to keep Skuthosiin’s attention fixed on him until his fellow survivors recovered the capacity to defend themselves. “I’m still here!” he called to the hideous creature. “You just can’t do anything right, can you?”
Skuthosiin snarled and clawed. Balasar dodged left and then, as the dragon’s foot smashed down and jolted the earth, glimpsed motion at the edge of his vision. He pivoted to find Skuthosiin’s tail whipping at him. By avoiding what amounted to a feint, he’d stepped right into the true attack.
He leaped and folded his legs underneath him. He felt the breeze as the tail whipped by. The blow slammed into his still-thrashing horse, smashing it into shapelessness and smearing parts of it across the ground.
As the tail completed its arc, Khouryn was there to intercept it. Bellowing, he jammed his spear straight down through the tip, nailing it to the ground.
Skuthosiin jerked his extremity free, snapping the point off the weapon in the process. The shaft remained in the wound and wobbled as the tail swirled around.
Many wearing the badges and colors of the Platinum Cadre, other spearmen scrambled after the dwarf. They formed up to attack and fall back as he and the Beast had taught them.
Balasar felt a surge of pride. Skuthosiin was deadly, slaughtering an opponent with almost every moment that passed, but his comrades kept attacking anyway. They came from a race of dragon-killers and were proving themselves worthy descendants of their forebears.
Unfortunately, valor alone didn’t guarantee a victory. Their chances would have been better if Medrash were still in the fight, but something-Balasar hadn’t seen what-had struck his clan brother down an instant after they charged.
Hoping Medrash was still alive, Balasar drew his sword, lifted his battered targe into a high guard, and advanced on Skuthosiin.
Aoth rattled off words of power. A shaft of sunlight that would have done Cera proud shot from the head of his spear. It slashed across Alasklerbanbastos’s skull and stabbed into his eye sockets.
It was powerful magic. Yet the dracolich didn’t even look up, any more than Aoth would have reacted to a
buzzing fly when intent on fighting a foe. Still staring at Tchazzar, the Great Bone Wyrm kept on hissing and growling his own incantation.
Aoth’s neck muscles tightened in anger. He cursed, then unlocked the most powerful spell currently stored inside the spear, poured extra force into it, and sent the results streaking from the point in a stream of sparks.
The sparks detonated in rapid succession as they hit the Bone Wyrm’s wings and spine. Each booming, fiery blast jolted him downward like a gigantic boot stamping on his back. A couple of small bones and pieces of bone fell away from his body. He stumbled over the words of his incantation, and Aoth felt the accumulating power dissipate in a useless sizzle.
Let’s see you ignore that, he thought. Then Alasklerbanbastos raised his head and spread his jaws.
Jet lashed his wings, and then the world turned into glare and a pounding bang. It took Aoth an instant to understand that in fact the thunderbolt hadn’t hit them. The griffon had dodged it.
Alasklerbanbastos spread his own wings, gave them a clattering flap, and climbed into the air.
Keep away from him! said Aoth.
Obviously! Jet snapped. He veered, and darts of blue-white light crackled past them.
As they dodged back and forth across the sky, Aoth hurled fire, acid, and every other force that seemed like it might be capable of hurting an undead blue dragon. More often than not, the attacks hit their target. But none of them made Alasklerbanbastos falter for even a heartbeat.
Whereas he only has to hit me once, said Jet.
I know. Aoth looked for Jaxanaedegor and found him hovering far from the action. He peered down at Tchazzar. The red dragon was still writhing under the web of shadows.
A boom jolted him and tumbled Jet end over end, like the griffon was somersaulting. Only his buckled harness held Aoth in the saddle. For a moment, the mind meshed with his own was dull and oblivious, and then, with a screech, the familiar snapped back to full wakefulness. He beat his wings and somehow regained control of his trajectory.
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