Abruptly the fire ceased, and in its absence, the cavern felt utterly cold and dark. Though the air was still baked and illuminated by the streams of fiery lava flowing throughout the vast enclosure, it might have been a winter’s night by comparison to the dragonfire.
The other wizard extended a hand toward the monster, the gesture swift and menacing. Dan had time to notice that the limb was more manlike than the first mage’s skeletal digits. The fingers that now extended were long, slender, and clearly dexterous, but they were undeniably cloaked in flesh and pink, living skin.
Another word split the air within the cavern, a barking cry that sent a shiver down the lad’s spine, and he knew that he was witness to still more powerful magic. The arcane sounds were harsh against his ears, and the feeling they left in his belly was not unlike the sensation of getting kicked very hard.
A wash of pale light expanded outward from the wizard’s hand, a growing cone that encompassed much of the dragon and cast its chilly glow onto an expanse of bubbling lava and the smoking wall of the cavern beyond. The liquid rock instantly darkened, frozen hard, cracks wrenching violently outward across the floor.
And in the eerie glow of that spell, Danyal felt a bitter, piercing chill, a coldness that seeped through his clothes and his skin, striking so deep that it seemed to ice the blood in his veins. Even as he felt that cold, the youth understood another thing: He absorbed this penetrating effect from watching the spell—the real cold was a force of powerful magic attacking everything that was caught in the wash of that pale, icy light.
Blasted full in the chest by the arcane onslaught, the dragon reared backward with a shrill cry of pain and rage. Red scales, strangely rimed in thick frost, tumbled free from the monstrous shape as the serpent writhed away from the hateful chill. Flayze tried to strike with a massive wing, to brush the wizard away, but the leathery membrane was brittle and clumsy, crippled by the attack of cold magic.
Dan was vaguely aware of the gray-robed stranger in the background. The man was still making notes, though he showed little interest in the events being enacted before him. He had turned the silver hourglass over; now sand, glowing like powdered diamonds, filtered slowly through the glass’s neck.
And still, except for Danyal, no one else in the cavern had seemed to notice him.
But it was the dragon who again commanded their attention. Flayze roared, the sound like the crash of a massive thundercloud, sending the companions and Kelryn Darewind reeling back from the onslaught of sound. Only the two wizards held their ground, black robes flapping around their legs as they regarded the crouching form of the infuriated dragon.
The whiplike tail lashed around, a crimson tendril of crushing power, but the fleshly mage pointed and barked a command. A spear of crackling lightning ripped through the air, striking the dragon’s tail and shattering the last half of the supple limb. With a howl, Flayze pulled the bleeding stump into a coil around his feet.
But the dragon’s wings were flexing now as the slowing effects of the ice magic wore off. The great head lashed forward, jaws gaping as it snapped toward the nearest of the two black-robed shapes.
The wizard blinked out of sight just before the serpent’s jaws clamped shut. Danyal whirled in surprise, seeing that the mage had transported himself to the other side of the cavern. There he raised a hand and sent another searing bolt of lightning hissing and sparking into the dragon’s side.
Still roaring, Flayze whirled back, but Danyal sensed that the dragon moved purely in reaction to the attacks of the two wizards. Indeed, as the crimson jaws lashed toward the target who had just released the lightning bolt, the other magic-user pointed a finger—this one, Dan saw clearly now, as bony and thin as any skeleton’s—and released a great barrage of glowing, sparking balls of magic.
The arcane missiles struck the dragon’s neck, one after another searing through the layer of armored scales. The great serpent moaned, the sound curiously plaintive emerging from such a monstrous being. Flayze thrashed again, more weakly this time, and tried to extend a reaching forelimb, only to have the leg blasted by another onslaught of magic missiles.
Finally, with a shuddering groan, the massive red dragon collapsed to the floor and lay still, dead.
Chapter 45
The Ambitious Priest
Third Bakukal, Reapember
374 AC
“My lord Fistandantilus!” cried Kelryn, throwing himself at the feet of the nearest of the wizards. “You have appeared in answer to my prayers!” He reached out as if to wrap his arms around the figure’s legs, but then hesitated, rising to his knees, staring hopefully upward.
The black-robed figure ignored the man, turning a shadowy face toward the other gaunt, shrouded form. Though the two were dressed alike and approximately the same size, the nearer sorcerer was somehow more substantial, more solid than the other.
Both, Dan realized, were equally frightening.
The second wizard drew back its hood to reveal a visage of ghastly horror. Danyal recognized the skull of Fistandantilus, except that now that bony visage was attached to a skeletal neck, extending out of a corpselike body. The arms that moved the sleeves of the robe seemed vaporous and incorporeal, while the face bore that same, teeth-baring grimace that the companions had seen on the inanimate skull. The hands were skin stretched taut over bone and seemed to float, unattached physically, at the ends of the wide sleeves.
And the eyes of the skull had changed, Dan saw with a dull throb of horror. Instead of cold shadows within the empty sockets, there glowed a spark of heat in place of each eye, a crimson spot of burning fire that seemed to penetrate Danyal’s skin, to shrivel his insides with the force of hatred, violence, and cruelty. It was as if the pure evil of this creature had somehow been condensed into illumination, and that vile brightness now glittered wickedly from the dead sockets.
Only vaguely did the lad become aware that the flaming, hellish inspection was not specifically directed at himself. Indeed, though the eyes seemed to see everywhere, the posture of the skeletal body showed that the creature’s attention was fixed upon the other black-robed magic-user.
“Who are you?” asked the death’s-head wizard of its counterpart, the voice a rumbling growl that shivered through the bedrock of the mountain.
“I am Fistandantilus!” crowed the other, the flesh-cloaked sorcerer, his tone exultant. This archmage threw back his hood, and Danyal saw the stern face of a mature, but not old, man. His hair was long and black, and his stern features were centered around a hawklike nose. Cold, dark eyes blazed with intensity as he raised a finger and pointed at the image of death.
“Now name yourself!” he demanded.
“I am Fistandantilus! I am the lich of Skullcap, survivor of the Dark Queen’s foul challenges.” The cry roared from the skull as the fleshless jaws spread wide. “It is you who are the imposter—and you who are doomed!”
Danyal tore his eyes away, saw Kelryn looking wildly back and forth between the two black figures. Mirabeth and Foryth watched with awestruck expressions, while Emilo Haversack observed the conflict with a look of intrigued curiosity. Looking around, the lad saw that the gray-robed observer remained in place, scribing diligently. The dust still trickled through the hourglass, though the level of sand in the timepiece hadn’t appreciably changed.
“Dispassionate.” Dan suddenly remembered the word Foryth Teel had used, the ideal that he strived for—and he knew that it fit perfectly this silent, aloof figure.
“Wait!” the command came from Kelryn Darewind. The Seeker priest, still on his knees, crept around the side of the human Fistandantilus. “You have both come in answer to my plea. Both of you together are the archmage!”
“I have no need of together, or of any intrusive assistance!” declared the man in black robes. His eyes never left the apparition of death, which likewise maintained a tight focus on its opposite number. “I am myself, powerful and invulnerable. I have returned to Krynn, and now I am ready to commence my vengeance.”
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br /> “Wow—will you have a look at that?” Emilo’s voice, calmly speaking into Danyal’s ear, was like a dousing of cold water on the numbed young man. Grateful for any indication of normalcy, Dan turned to see what the kender was talking about.
Emilo was pointing at the floor, where the bloodstone of Fistandantilus lay, temporarily forgotten. Danyal saw that the green gem was pulsing, radiating its sickly illumination through the darkness, the seeping, misty light apparently unnoticed by the great figures debating nearby. That vague illumination swirled in the air, slowly congealing into a flat disk, suspended perpendicular to the floor. The hourglass was below the disk, and the foggy image seemed to be centered above the silver timepiece.
As he watched, Danyal saw a vaporous essence take firmer shape, whirling into an image that looked like nothing so much as a window, a view through space into a place of gray mist, like the dew-laden air of a foggy morning. The representation solidified above the hourglass, and Dan knew he was looking at an entirely different place.
“It’s the power of the stone and the skull. It has opened a window to other planes, other worlds!” Foryth gasped. “A gate into space and time.”
The bandit remained focused on the twin sorcerers. “You have come because I called you! I summoned you!” cried Kelryn Darewind, rising to his feet, turning to confront one, then the other of the two mages.
“Silence!” snapped the human version of Fistandantilus. He stared at Kelryn Darewind for a moment; then his eyes flickered, attracted to something else. “Ah, my bloodstone!” declared the archmage, spotting the gem on the cavern floor. He stepped toward the pulsing artifact.
Danyal watched the shimmering window take firmer shape in the air.
“Hold!” cried the skeletal Fistandantilus. Abruptly the grotesque personage vanished, reappearing directly before his counterpart. Kelryn Darewind stepped after it, forming the third point of a triangle.
“I remember!” It was Emilo Haversack who spoke, his voice a whisper of wonder. “I recall everything that happened to me. It started with the skull, a very, very long time ago. I saw it there, in the darkness.… The dwarf struck me with it, and my memories were gone.”
He looked at Dan, his eyes wide with awe and dawning understanding. “That’s where my sickness came from—and it took away my memories, too! My life, my whole past! But now they’ve come back!”
Emilo skipped a little step, as if he were ready to break into a dance. “I come from Kendermore, and … and I remember a time before the Cataclysm! And … and I thank you all for helping me, for keeping me alive, for letting me get better!”
“You saved us, too, if you don’t remember,” Danyal replied.
The kender scowled. “But that stone and skull—they shouldn’t be together, should they?”
“No, they shouldn’t!” Mirabeth wrapped the kender in a hug as Danyal continued to watch the two magic-users and their prophet. Kelryn was raving, his voice shrill as he made demands of first one, then the other Fistandantilus.
And all the time the bloodstone lay on the floor, pulsing in time with the flaring image of that green-framed window. The mysterious portal whirled in the air, still suspended above the silver hourglass.
“The power was mine—the bloodstone belongs to me!” Kelryn’s voice was shrill but futile.
“You are mine!” the lich declared in a voice like the wind from a newly opened crypt, finally turning to regard the bandit lord with its flaring, horrifying eyes. “For too long you have used my talisman as your toy, playing your role as a priest. My strength sustained you, and now you will sustain me!”
Kelryn recoiled, his face draining of color under the inspection of the ghastly undead mage.
“His life belongs to me!” the other wizard interjected. “It was my essence that held back the effects of age, that allowed him to survive for so long.”
Each of the black-robed figures took one of the bandit’s arms. Light seared the air, a sizzling aura that outlined the twisting, writhing figure in cold brightness. Danyal, watching in awe, saw the illumination as power, and he observed the power divided.
The essence of Kelryn Darewind’s life was sucked from his body as the bandit lord writhed and screamed in unspeakable agony. He weakened quickly, moaning, slumping between the two mighty sorcerers. Vitality faded from the man’s eyes, and Dan could almost see the warmth of his blood being pulled from his flesh, flowing in equal portions into the two versions of the black-robed archmage.
Finally the sorcerers released the clawlike hands of their shriveled victim, and Kelryn Darewind crumpled to the ground, the shell of his skin drained of blood, of vitality and life. The corpse lay motionless on the floor while the two images of Fistandantilus stood trembling under the onslaught of renewed life and restored power.
A web of green light flared, sparking and firing between the two archmages. Tendrils of ghostly power connected into a glowing net of supernatural, sinister force.
“Together—they’ve absorbed him together!” Foryth Teel whispered, awed.
“What does it mean? What will happen?” Danyal asked.
“I don’t know, but see: Neither archmage can break away from his counterpart. I think that whichever one prevails will either be very powerful, so much so that he becomes in fact invulnerable, or he will be doomed.”
The mountain itself trembled under the onslaught of barely contained power. Pieces of rock broke from the ceiling, tumbling down to shatter on the floor. Sharp-edged shards of stone flew here and there, several whizzing past dangerously close, but Danyal’s attention was rapt, still focused on the two wizards. They strained visibly to tear themselves apart, but with the violence of the collapsing mountain forming a convulsive backdrop, the two black-robed forms were pulled inexorably closer together.
At the same time, vibrations of power continued to seethe and to rumble in the ground itself. Spatters of gravel tumbled from the ceiling, and tongues of flame flared upward, breaking through the crust of the floor. The cavern rocked back and forth, filling with smoke and dust, thundering with the violent noise of collapse and destruction.
And Danyal knew that Flayze’s mountain was dying.
Chapter 46
Departures, Alive and Dead
Third Bakukal, Reapember
374 AC
The green vortex of magic still hung over the hourglass, swirling like a liquid mirror. Now, instead of a pure reflection, the companions caught glimpses of actual places. Dan saw a forest, and then a swath of smooth, wave-swept beach. The two wizards grappled magically, taut within the web of green magic.
Another convulsion shook the lair of Flayzeranyx, and Danyal nearly lost his balance as a piece of the ceiling smashed to the floor nearby. Already the corridor by which the companions had entered was gone, vanished beneath a crushing barrier of rubble.
“Go!” Foryth Teel cried amid the chaos, pointing toward the glowing aperture. “This place is doomed! It’s your only chance!”
Dan saw the diamondlike sand still sparkling magically as it tumbled through the narrow neck of the hourglass. The gray-robed man had lowered his pen, and his eyes were fixed upon the companions. He would write, Danyal sensed, when they acted.
But what should they do?
A hiss of energy crackled loudly as the Fistandantiluslich tried to pull his counterpart to the side. The human version of the archmage set his feet and spread his fingers, summoning a roaring spiral of greenish fire that flared high and momentarily blocked the two figures from view. The screams that emerged from within the cocoon of magic were chilling and unnatural, each sound intense with unchained fury and violence.
The vortex to the worlds wheeled like a kaleidoscopic image, and the kender stared into the space, obviously fascinated. “What a place to wander—so many places,” he declared in amazement. “There’s a range of blue mountains—and look! A city, the whole thing crammed into one big tower!”
“Go, then. See all those places!” urged the historian. “Es
cape while you can, to survive and wander!”
“My friends, I shall do just that!” declared Emilo, suddenly decisive.
Mirabeth clasped her arms around him in a crushing hug. “Go now!” she demanded through her tears.
“Farewell, then, all of you—and thank you!” cried Emilo Haversack, turning to wave a jaunty farewell to the three humans. The two mages, still enshrouded by magic, took no note of the companions.
Before Dan could shout any kind of reply, the kender dived into—and through—the mirror. The lad caught a glimpse of a crowded street, a city with strange, lofty walls, and then the image had moved on to display a vault of cold, starry sky.
The visions in the arcane window continued to change. The next place was familiar—a mountain valley, scored by a small, babbling stream. Dan recognized the road they had followed near Loreloch, and then he saw the blackened ruin itself. In another moment he saw something moving, a familiar equine shape.
“There’s the horse!” he cried as the image of the black mare, cantering gracefully along the road, came into view.
“Nightmare!” Mirabeth shouted. “Can you hear us? Come here!”
Suddenly the scene shifted, whirling closer in a dizzying rush, and then the horse was right before them. With a kicking, plunging jump, the animal leaped, and abruptly Nightmare passed through the shimmering window and was in the cave alongside them, rearing amidst the crumbling stone.
“She will carry the two of you to safety. You must go after the kender!” Foryth declared sternly, taking Mirabeth and Danyal firmly by their arms. “Leave Fistandantilus to me!”
“No!” Dan shouted. “I’m not leaving you!” Though he sensed it was foolish to remain in the collapsing mountain, he felt a fierce loyalty to the historian, who had so clearly proved himself a friend.
“I’m staying, too!” declared Mirabeth, taking the lad’s arm, watching in awe.
The mountain rocked with growing violence. A shard of stone scored a deep gash in Foryth Teel’s head, drawing an immediate shower of blood and sending the man staggering backward.
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