Whisper of Venom botg-2

by Richard Lee Byers

  But by the time Jet pulled out of his fall, Alasklerbanbastos was plunging down at him, enormous claws poised to catch and rend.

  Jet swooped one way and another, trying to get out from under the dracolich. Alasklerbanbastos matched him move for move. Aoth hurled flame from his spear. It splashed across the Bone Wyrm’s legs and ribs and must have been doing some harm. But the undead blue kept closing in.

  Until an arrow plunged into his right eye socket.

  Aoth suspected that the shaft hadn’t actually injured Alasklerbanbastos. But judging from the way he jerked, it must have at least startled him. And perhaps it was a maddening distraction to have it bouncing around inside his hollow skull. Because the next time Jet veered, the dracolich failed to compensate. The familiar streaked into the clear, and Alasklerbanbastos plunged on by.

  Aoth glanced around and wasn’t surprised to spot Gaedynn grinning at him from Eider’s back. Though he’d been leading griffon riders for almost a hundred years, he’d met few archers who could have made that shot.

  He was surprised at how many other griffon riders were coming on behind the redheaded scout, ready to aid their captain in his suicidal folly.

  Their shafts fell on Alasklerbanbastos like rain and seemed to do as little harm. The dracolich shook his head, opened his jaws, and spat out Gaedynn’s arrow. Then he lashed his wings and climbed. The light in his eye sockets glowed brighter. Lightning crawled on him and leaped from one bone to another.

  Aoth pointed his spear and rattled off words of command. A blade of emerald light leaped from the point of the weapon and streaked at the ascending dracolich. Guiding it with little shifts of his hand, trying to match Gaedynn’s accuracy, he made it hack repeatedly at the spot where Alasklerbanbastos’s left wing connected to the shoulder bone.

  Alasklerbanbastos twisted his head to regard the sword of light. No doubt to get rid of it before it accomplished its purpose. But then Meralaine recited an incantation. Her voice was a girl’s voice, high and breathy, yet the charge of dark magic it carried made it seem somehow cold and leaden, as well as enabling a fellow mage to catch the sound even across the sky. Though Aoth didn’t take his eyes off Alasklerbanbastos to look for her, he surmised that the necromancer had persuaded some griffon rider to carry her aloft.

  Her spell made the dracolich hesitate. Only for a heartbeat, but in that instant, the flying blade accomplished its task. The wing broke away from the body. The Bone Wyrm started to fall-

  — and then stopped.

  Because, Aoth realized, while wings helped Alasklerbanbastos maneuver across the sky, it was ultimately magic that held him up. As it was still supporting him, while the wing also stopped tumbling and floated upward again.

  But the wretched creature had to fall! In desperation, Aoth shouted an incantation intended to shred enchantments to nothing. He didn’t know if it had any chance of working, but it was the only idea he had. Meralaine joined in on the first refrain, reinforcing his power with her own.

  Alasklerbanbastos plummeted again, and this time fell all the way down to the ground.

  Aoth prayed to Kossuth that the dracolich would smash apart, but the Lord of Flame apparently didn’t hear. Although Alasklerbanbastos hit hard enough to snap some bones and jolt others loose from their couplings, the damage looked relatively superficial. Worse, either because of some innate capacity or because he used enchantment, he instantly started to mend. Pieces of bone, the severed wing included, flew through the air to reunite with his body.

  Curse it! thought Aoth. The thing seemed as unstoppable as Szass Tam himself.

  Alasklerbanbastos flexed his legs and spread his wings. Then his head whipped around as a flash snagged his attention.

  Jhesrhi was on the ground near Tchazzar, casting flame from her staff to burn away the web of darkness. Maybe to restore his strength as well, as she had in the Shadowfell.

  Alasklerbanbastos took a first stride in her direction. Jet furled his wings and dived at the dracolich. Aoth hurled darts of scarlet light that stabbed into the undead dragon’s spine but failed to divert him from his purpose.

  Springing from the ground, Scar flung himself at Alasklerbanbastos. Who snapped him out of the air and gnashed him into pieces.

  Eider plunged down on top of the dracolich and began to tear with her talons. Alasklerbanbastos shook himself like a wet dog and sent the griffon and her rider tumbling.

  Oraxes hurled his own darts of light. Lances leveled, Shala and Hasos galloped at the undead blue. Soldiers rushed in, swinging axes and jabbing with spears.

  Still intent on Tchazzar and Jhesrhi, Alasklerbanbastos didn’t so much fight the other opponents seeking to bar the way as simply wade through them. Unfortunately, he seemed to do it almost as easily as Aoth could have walked through a puddle. Meanwhile, Jhesrhi stood her ground and threw fire from the staff. She plainly meant to free Tchazzar or die trying.

  Put me on top of him, said Aoth. Right where Eider landed.

  All right, said Jet, but I don’t promise that I’ll be able to hold on either.

  You don’t have to. Just set me there. Aoth willed the straps that held him in the saddle to unbuckle, and they did. He released the magic bound in every protective tattoo on his body.

  Then Jet thumped down. Aoth swung himself off the familiar’s back, grabbed a knob of bone, and shouted, “Go!” With a reluctance that throbbed across their psychic link, the familiar lashed his wings and took off again. Aoth charged his spear with raw force and stabbed at sections of rib that-he hoped-Gaedynn’s mount had already weakened.

  Pieces of two adjacent ribs snapped loose and fell away. Aoth jammed himself feet first into the breach he’d created. It was a tight squeeze, and a jagged tip of broken bone scratched his cheek. But then, releasing the charm bound in another tattoo to soften the fall, he dropped inside.

  Where he found it all but impossible to stand. The dracolich’s motion bounced him around, and the bottom of the rib cage was like a floor with planks missing. Small lightning bolts crackled across the space he occupied, stinging and jolting him. They’d do worse than that once they wore away his protective enchantments.

  He grabbed a rib to find and keep his balance, released the remaining energy in the spear, and jabbed at the curves of bone around him. If Tymora smiled, maybe Alasklerbanbastos would find the assault from the inside as difficult to ignore as Gaedynn’s arrow rattling around in his head.

  For two or three heartbeats, that didn’t appear to be the case. But then the dracolich whirled around like a hound chasing its tail. Head bent backward at the end of his long neck, he glared at the pest infesting his core.

  “Not this time,” said Aoth. He made sure he didn’t meet the Bone Wyrm’s gaze. And wished the creature didn’t have a hundred other ways of attacking him.

  Alasklerbanbastos’s fleshless jaws opened. Aoth shouted a word of defense, and the world blazed white.

  Medrash’s vision had cleared, and to a degree so had his thoughts. He could see and understand what was happening before him, and that was hellish. Because his friends and comrades needed him.

  Chopping with his urgrosh, or jabbing with the spike on the butt, Khouryn was fighting as brilliantly as any warrior Medrash had ever seen. Grinning, shouting taunts, waiting until the last possible instant to dance out of the way of an attack in order to land a counterstroke, Balasar was equally superb. And they had help. Dragonborn kept streaming into the heart of Ashhold. Bat riders wheeled and swooped overhead, hurling javelins or thrusting with lances and polearms. Some of the mages had arrived as well. Cloaked in a protective blur, Biri hurled bursts of frost from her rose quartz wand.

  Yet Medrash’s instincts told him it wasn’t going to be enough. Skuthosiin had gashes and punctures all over his prodigious body, but they weren’t slowing him down. He seemed to fell an adversary with every snap of his fangs, snatch of his talons, or swing of his tail, and when he managed another burst of poison breath, he was apt to kill several at once. To make t
he situation even more dire, a couple of the ash giant shamans had shaken off their debility, some of the hulking barbarian warriors had retreated into the heart of Ashhold, and they were all making a stand with their dragon chieftain.

  Medrash reached out to Torm. As on his previous attempts, he failed to make contact. Even though he felt like his thoughts had cleared, his injury seemed to hinder his spiritual gifts just as it had paralyzed his body.

  It occurred to him that he was likely dying. In other circumstances, that might not have dismayed him. But now it felt like failure. Like he’d be abandoning Balasar and the others.

  He groped uselessly in the void. Then a familiar figure crouched over him. “Patrin?” he croaked.

  The newcomer’s eyes widened in surprise, and Medrash realized he’d been mistaken. The fellow was younger and thinner than Bahamut’s knight had been, and his hide was brown-freckled ochre, not crimson. Medrash decided that it was the youth’s purple and platinum tunic, and the dark, that had confused him.

  “I’m … I’m not him,” the newcomer said.

  “I see that now,” said Medrash. “Go. Fight. Don’t worry about me.”

  “I’m not him,” the youth repeated, “but the wind whispered to me. It said that now the god needs me to be his champion in this place. It told me to heal you. But I don’t know how!”

  Even with his body broken and useless, Medrash felt a twinge of repugnance at the thought of accepting any boon from a dragon god. But he was far too desperate to pay it any heed.

  “Put your hands on my shoulders,” he said. “Now reach out to Bahamut with your mind. You just have to concentrate and believe the Power will come. And be ready when it does. Sometimes-”

  The newly anointed paladin cried out. A cold, stinging Power burst out of his hands and surged through Medrash, sharpening his thoughts and washing the deadness out of his limbs. Which brought a certain amount of pain, because the magic didn’t entirely heal his burns and bruises. But he so rejoiced in the return of sensation that even discomfort was a kind of joy.

  The dragon-worshiper’s eyes rolled up into his head. He toppled sideways.

  Medrash sat up and caught the unconscious youth, then laid him gently on the ground. He wished he could put him somewhere safer, but with Skuthosiin slaughtering dragonborn every moment, there wasn’t time. Besides, nowhere in Ashhold was truly safe, nor would be until the fight was won.

  He stood up and found his fallen sword, then tried to assess how much mystical Power remained to him. To his surprise, he had plenty. Bahamut had left him some blisters and scrapes, but had evidently refreshed his paladin gifts.

  A Daardendrien warrior with a broken leg lay in front of Skuthosiin. Jaws open wide, the green dragon’s head arced down at him.

  Medrash shouted, “Torm!” The world blurred for an instant as he switched places with his injured kinsman.

  Sidestepping, he slashed at the side of the dragon’s head as it plunged by. He missed the slit-pupiled yellow eye, but his blade split the scaly hide beneath.

  Skuthosiin whipped his head up high, almost snatching the sword from Medrash’s grip. But he held on tight, and, slinging drops of gore, the blade pulled out of the wound instead.

  Skuthosiin glared down at him, and the spiritual deformity that made him profoundly if indefinably hideous seemed to concentrate in his gaze. Perhaps it was supposed to make Medrash avert his eyes, or to churn his guts with nausea, but it did neither. It only made him even more determined to destroy the threat to his people once and for all.

  “I don’t care how many little gods you have propping you up!” the dragon snarled. “My lady is the only one that matters!”

  “Prove it,” Medrash said. He raised his sword, and white light blazed from the blade. Skuthosiin recoiled. Medrash dashed forward to strike while the wyrm was still dazzled. Other warriors did the same.

  Aoth had tattoos to blunt pain and avert shock. To keep him awake and active even when wounded. Sprawled inside Alasklerbanbastos’s rib cage, he released their power.

  And that was all he did. He didn’t know how badly he was hurt-badly, he suspected-but he was sure he couldn’t withstand another blast of the dracolich’s breath. His only hope was to lie motionless and convince Alasklerbanbastos he was dead already.

  Just look away, he thought, watching the Great Bone Wyrm through slitted eyes. There are dozens of people beating on you and trying to kill you. Look around at them.

  Alasklerbanbastos’s head whipped away. Then Tchazzar crashed down on him like an avalanche.

  Nala tried to avoid conflict as she skulked around the edges of the battle. It wasn’t too difficult. With Skuthosiin and various giants to fight, her fellow dragonborn tended to overlook her. Which was fortunate, because she needed to make haste.

  Impossible though it seemed, she could tell that the tide had turned against her master. Probably realizing it, he had at one point spread his wings to take to the air. But, chanting in unison, three of the vanquisher’s wizards had created a web of blue light that covered the center of Ashhold like a lid on a jar.

  The barrier at least kept the Lance Defenders on their bats from harrying Skuthosiin any further. But in Nala’s judgment, they weren’t really the problem. Nor, for all their power, were the mages. Nor the common warriors, jabbing and hacking with dogged determination. It was Medrash. The paladin was exalted, fighting like one of the dragon-killing rebels in the tales of treason and blasphemy that made up the history of their people.

  Nala had to strike him down and make it stick. Then Skuthosiin could still prevail, and would unquestionably know whom to reward for his victory.

  She could smite Medrash with the Five Breaths as she had the redspawn devastator. He wouldn’t get back up from that. She just needed a clear path between them, but with combatants scrambling and pushing one another back and forth, that wasn’t easy to come by.

  Yet finally she found it. Wishing she still had the wyrmkeeper regalia she’d discarded-she didn’t actually need it, but it would have made the magic easier-she raised her shadow-wood staff, focused her thoughts, and took a deep breath.

  Then a jolt stabbed through her torso from back to front. She looked down and saw a finger-length of bloody blade protruding from her chest.

  The pointed steel jerked backward and disappeared. She crumpled to her knees. Balasar stepped into view and grinned down at her.

  “My feelings are hurt,” he said. “Why would you think you ought to kill Medrash ahead of me? I’m the clever one. I tricked you into letting me into your filthy cult, didn’t I? And I spotted you slinking around tonight and did a little sneaking of my own.”

  She struggled to wheeze out a curse, but couldn’t manage it.

  “Ah well,” he continued, “I forgive you the injury to my pride. And now, much as I’d like to stay and chat with such a lovely lady, I have a dragon to butcher.”

  Yes, she thought, go. She’d find the strength to heal herself. She’d rise up like Medrash did. And how he, his clan brother, and all Tymanther would regret it when she did!

  Then Balasar aimed his point at her heart, and she realized he had no intention of leaving her alive.

  Aoth had been in many bizarre and dangerous places in his hundred years of life, but few stranger or more perilous than inside the body of one dragon when it was fighting another.

  Grappling, snapping with their fangs, slashing with their claws, lashing with their tails, the two wyrms rolled over and over together. Their snarls, grunts, and the thuds, crashes, and tearing sounds as their attacks landed were deafening.

  Aoth had found it difficult to keep his feet before. It was impossible now. He bounced around like a pea in a barrel tumbling down a hill.

  The noise and punishing bumps made it almost impossible to think. Still, he realized that at the moment, the greatest danger to him was Tchazzar. Already damaged by Eider, Jet, and Aoth’s own efforts, sections of Alasklerbanbastos’s ribs were snapping and crumbling by the moment. If the r
ed dragon smashed completely through, the blow could easily pulverize Aoth as well. And if Tchazzar spat another blast of fire, it would roast him in his cage.

  He had to get out. He cast around and saw that one of Tchazzar’s strikes had broken away more bone and slightly widened the breach through which he’d entered. That was one tiny particle of luck, anyway.

  He’d need both hands to reach the hole. With a pang of regret, he let go of his spear, gripped sections of rib, and alternately climbed or crawled, depending on the attitude of Alasklerbanbastos’s body at that instant. Lightning crackled from bone to bone, piercing his shoulder in its transit. His teeth gritted and his muscles knotted until the flare ended.

  When he reached the hole, he had to judge the speed and direction of the entangled dragons’ movement and pray it didn’t change. Because if he emerged at the wrong moment, their weight would come smashing and grinding down on top of him.

  He made his best guess, swarmed out, and jumped. He landed hard. Wings-some bare bone, some sheathed in crimson hide-flailed against the ground, and tails whipped through the air. The storm of motion was all around him, and he was sure something had to hit him. But nothing did, and then the dragons rolled farther away.

  He ran to put even more distance between them and him, just like everyone else was doing. Jet plunged down in front of him. “Get on!” the griffon rasped. “I’ll take you to the healers.”

  Suddenly feeling weak and dizzy, Aoth clambered into the saddle. The straps buckled themselves. “Not yet. I need to see what happens.”

  “You need-”

  “I said, I’m going to watch.”

  Jet screeched in annoyance, lashed his wings, and carried his master aloft.

  As he did, Tchazzar broke Alasklerbanbastos’s various holds on him, got his feet planted, and struck, all in a single blur of motion. The red dragon’s fangs closed on the dracolich’s neck, right beside the head.