Warriors spread out to flank Cera. The wyrmkeeper leader started chanting. She called out to Amaunator and cloaked herself in glare. The defensive measure didn’t dazzle or hurt her own eyes, but if she was lucky, it ought to hinder every one of her foes.
The wyrmkeeper whipped his arm with a motion like a snake or dragon biting. Crackling flame leaped from his long, pointed nails. But Cera jumped sideways, and it missed her by a hair.
Two warriors rushed her. The one on the right yelled, “Tiamat!” She lunged toward them. Maybe they weren’t expecting that because she bulled her way between them without either of them stabbing or slashing her, although one short sword skated along the reinforced leather protecting her side.
She whirled and clubbed madly at their heads while they still had their backs to her. First one then the other fell. She spun back around, and her limbs locked into rigidity.
She recognized the spell and knew it would paralyze her for only a few heartbeats. But that was long enough for one of her remaining foes to drive a pick or a blade into her.
Except just then bright light flared from among the prisoners. Hands clapped to his smoking face, a wyrmkeeper fell down, screaming. Warriors made of golden shimmer appeared between captives and captors. The wyrmkeeper with the filed teeth started another prayer, and two sunlords jumped him and bore him to the ground. Their fists hammered him.
Another ruffian came at Cera, but the commotion had distracted him, and he didn’t quite make it into striking distance before her paralysis fell away. She called the Keeper’s name as she swung her mace, and the god’s power lent force to the blow. It caved in her attacker’s chest.
After that, it was easy enough. In a few more heartbeats, all the wyrmkeepers and their servants were either dead or incapacitated.
“Is everyone all right?” Cera panted.
“Pretty much,” a sunlord replied. His knuckles were raw, possibly from swinging at flesh and hitting armor instead. “I think they were working up to killing us, but they hadn’t started yet. Why is this happening?”
“Haven’t you heard?” said a priestess with black, plaited hair. “Chessenta doesn’t need any gods except the Red Dragon.”
“That’s part of it,” Cera said. She explained what was going on as concisely as she could. “I was going to try to convince you to fight Tchazzar. After what’s happened here, I hope I don’t have to.”
The other clerics exchanged glances. Then the one with the skinned, bloody fists said, “We’ll fight. Apparently we have to, to serve the Keeper, protect the people, and save our own lives. How do we begin?”
“Arm yourselves,” Cera said. “Then we’ll visit the temples of all the other true gods. If the wyrmkeepers are holding any other clerics prisoner, we’ll free them. Either way, we’ll ask our colleagues to fight alongside us. And then … well, we’ll figure it out as we go along.”
* * * * *
Light flickered and thunder cracked in the northern sky. Tchazzar knew it wasn’t a storm or at least not a natural one. Alasklerbanbastos was signaling his arrival.
Tchazzar hesitated and thought that no one could blame him for it. Alasklerbanbastos was his greatest enemy and the very embodiment of everything foul and unnatural. Under any other circumstances, only an idiot would go to meet him in the dark and lonely sky, especially knowing that he’d brought allies along.
But Tchazzar believed that, abominable as he was, the dracolich wanted to preserve the sanctity of Tiamat’s game as much as every other player. And he might actually need the blue’s help to preserve what was his and to punish those who sought to take it from him.
Especially Jhesrhi. He thought of the love and trust he’d given her and how she’d repaid him with treachery and lies, and he roared out his anguish and his rage. The absolute need for revenge pushed all other considerations aside.
He leaped from the roof of the War College, lashed his wings, soared upward, and flew toward the spot where the lightning had flared. Alasklerbanbastos and his allies were still there, gliding on the night wind and awaiting his coming. The lesser dragons were a black, an emerald, two sapphires, and a gold.
“I expected more chromatics,” Tchazzar said.
“I certainly wasn’t going to share this victory with Jaxanaedegor,” Alasklerbanbastos replied, sparks crawling and popping on his naked bones and pale light flickering inside the openings in his skull, “or anyone else who betrayed me. These particular wyrms happened to dwell within easy reach of Dracowyr, so I recruited them instead. Don’t worry. They’ll follow our lead.”
“They’d better,” Tchazzar said. “My human soldiers will attack when we do.”
“You do understand,” said the lich, “the way the armies will jam and tangle together, the homes of noncombatants cluttering the battleground … this is going to be messy.”
Tchazzar spit a streak of flame. “I’m not as fond of humans as I used to be. Slaughter every one in the city if that’s what it takes to carry the day.”
F
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7 ELEINT, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE
If Jhesrhi survived the night, she’d choose a new griffon and teach it to know and obey her. For the time being, though, she’d coaxed a wind into the form of a giant eagle to bear her aloft.
That was where she needed to be, along with every other member of the Brotherhood who could get into the air. If Lady Luck smiled, their earthbound comrades could fend off Tchazzar’s human servants, but it would take flying cavalry to contend with dragons on the wing.
Having sharpened her eyes with a charm that enabled them to pierce the darkness, she looked around and found Aoth and Gaedynn soaring on their own steeds. For a moment at least, that sight lifted her heart.
Then the dragons hurtled into view.
Being wyrms, they unquestionably perceived the foes gliding and wheeling in front of them. But if Oraxes’s enchantments were working as promised, the dragons didn’t see as many griffon riders as were actually there. They registered only a handful and were experiencing a subtle psychic pressure to disregard those and look elsewhere for a more significant threat.
The illusion would hold for only a breath or two. But that was time enough for a first barrage of arrows and spells. Hurtling forward on Jet, his blue eyes glowing in the gloom, Aoth hurled a dazzling thunderbolt from his spear. Gaedynn nocked and loosed shafts fast as the eye could follow. Jhesrhi brandished her staff, and fire leaped from the top to lash a sapphire dragon across the eye. The creature screamed and she and her weapon laughed together.
Even though fire magic was likely to prove useless against him, she’d wanted to engage Tchazzar. She felt he was her responsibility. But it had been impossible to predict exactly where he’d appear, and chance had put them on opposite sides of the fight for the moment.
Her eagle plunged past the sapphire wyrm’s head and along its neck, and she seared it with another burst of flame. It swatted at her with an enormous wing, but her mount swooped safely under the stroke and, with a sweep of its own pinions, bobbed up again.
Elsewhere, her comrades were likewise streaking by dragons before the creatures could turn and retaliate. The defense worked because the colossal reptiles weren’t as nimble in flight as a griffon or a spirit of the wind.
From then on, the fight would be tougher. But as the eagle wheeled, Jhesrhi insisted to herself that it wouldn’t be any worse than the worst of Thay. Then her steed vanished beneath her, and she plummeted toward the rooftops below.
She tried to speak a word to slow her fall, and darts of amber light stabbed into her body. The jolt of pain made her botch the spell.
But fortunately the entity that had been the eagle shook off its own distress. Although it didn’t resume the form she’d given it, it managed a screaming invisible updraft that arrested her fall just short of someone’s chimney.
Bobbing like a cork
in a brook, she looked around for her attacker or, as it turned out, attackers. A skinny, wrinkled, bent old woman and a bearded young man with a wart at the corner of his eye were perched on a rooftop a stone’s throw away. Jhesrhi winced because she recognized them both. She’d met them the night Aoth had convened a meeting of Luthcheq’s mages and on several occasions since.
“You’re fighting on the wrong side!” Jhesrhi called, voice grating with the lingering ache in her chest.
“No,” the elderly sorceress quavered. “Tchazzar set us free, and you’re betraying him.”
“It isn’t like that,” Jhesrhi said. “But if you won’t fight on the right side, just go away. Don’t make me hurt you.”
Instead of answering, the old woman gripped her staff with both hands and raised it over her head. Tears of blood slid from her eyes, and suddenly it made Jhesrhi feel dizzy and sick to her stomach to look at her. Meanwhile, the male wizard held a doll of jointed wood up to his face and whispered in its painted ear. Ghostly imps like deformed fetuses flitted and flickered around him, half-visible one instant, gone the next.
Jhesrhi could tell both her foes were casting lethal magic. And they’d started first. But neither of them was a battle wizard. Pointing her staff, she rattled off words of power, twice as fast as their author had intended but still with the proper rhythm and intonation, and she was the one who finished first. The resulting blast of fire tore her foes apart, along with much of the roof beneath them.
She sighed and, tainting her own true emotions, the staff’s excitement only made her sorrow worse. But she thrust regret aside and, whispering rhymes in one of the languages of Sky Home, set about helping her mount return to avian form.
* * * * *
Pain ripped through Gaedynn’s head, and parts of his visual field shattered into a distorted patchwork like stones in a mosaic. He cried out, then, focusing his will despite the pounding anguish, he pushed the psychic intrusion out of his skull as Aoth and Jhesrhi had taught him. The headache subsided, and his sight returned to normal.
“My turn,” he gritted to the sapphire dragon sweeping along beneath him and Eider. He had little doubt that it was the foe who’d attacked him. Together with a number of other griffon riders, he’d been doing his best to bring it down, and by all accounts, gem wyrms possessed exotic psychic abilities.
He loosed an arrow, and it plunged deep into the muscle at the base of the dragon’s right wing. The creature convulsed and, with its wings no longer outstretched to catch the air, plummeted.
Gaedynn grinned as it smashed down on top of a house and plunged on through the roof. But satisfaction turned to disgust when it emerged from the newly ruined structure by shoving through a wall.
The fall had plainly hurt it. Its left wing was torn and crumpled, and one bull-like, forward-curving horn had broken off short. But it still looked able and willing to fight.
Indeed, it had even found itself some allies. Gaedynn had been too busy shooting and dodging dragons to register much of what was happening on the ground. But he saw that by wretched luck, the creature had fallen right in front of a company of Tchazzar’s soldiers circling to threaten the Brotherhood and its allies on their right flank. Like sensible folk, the common warriors balked at the violent and unexpected advent of such a huge, fearsome creature. But they had a couple of wyrmkeepers with them, and the priests hurried forward to palaver with the dragon. No doubt, since it could no longer fly, they were urging it to join the fight on the ground.
If it did, the results could be devastating. Seeking a way for his earthbound comrades to withstand such an attack, Gaedynn looked around and found the genasi, fairly close at hand but standing idle. Despite Tchazzar’s threats, no one had attacked them yet, so they hadn’t abandoned hope of avoiding battle.
Guiding Eider with his knees, Gaedynn sent her streaking over his embattled allies, then plunged her down behind some of Brotherhood’s own archers. Startled, the nearest bowmen recoiled. Then three sellswords started jabbering at him at once.
Ignoring them, he cast around and found Son-liin. “Come here!” he called, shouting to make himself heard above the roaring, pounding clamor of battle. “Mount up behind me!” She scurried to obey. “Where are the mages?”
The stormsoul pointed. “That way.”
Gaedynn sent Eider bounding in that direction, and mercenaries scrambled out of the way. The young wizards gaped at him.
“Before,” Gaedynn said, “you made the riders in the air seem fewer than we were. Now Son-liin and I have to seem like more than we are.”
Oraxes frowned. “Well, if I—”
“Don’t explain it!” Gaedynn snapped. “Do it! Now!” Sweeping his left hand in a serpentine fashion, Oraxes murmured too softly for Gaedynn to make out the words. But perhaps Meralaine could, somehow, because she joined in at the end.
As soon as they finished, Gaedynn sent Eider leaping back into the air. “Now,” he said to the girl mounted behind him, “I need you to be the genasi-est genasi anybody ever saw, with sparks flying everywhere. The foe has to see what you are despite the dark.”
“All right,” she said. “But what are we doing?”
“Killing a dragon,” he said. “Well, just hurting it, probably. But do your best.”
He wheeled Eider over the Akanûlan formation. A few of the genasi sensed them passing and looked up.
Then Eider was streaking across the stretch of ground that separated the genasi from the sapphire dragon and Tchazzar’s men. Trusting his safety straps to keep him in the saddle, Gaedynn leaned far to the left. It made archery more difficult, but it was necessary to give the enemy a good look at Son-liin and open up a line for her to shoot.
The foes ahead looked as if they were just about ready to resume their advance with the sapphire wyrm in the forefront. In a just world, that would mean they’d miss Eider hurtling out of the dark on their own flank.
But they didn’t, or at least not all of them did. The dragon’s head whipped around, then cocked back.
Gaedynn nudged Eider with his elbow, then realized he hadn’t needed to. Over the course of the past several tendays, the griffon had learned what a dragon looked like when it was about to spew its breath weapon, and she was already dodging. Dangling sideways as he was, the sudden motion whipped Gaedynn’s body, but the punishment was preferable to getting hit. And although he heard a shrill whine, nothing touched him.
He loosed arrows. One glanced off but the rest pierced the dragon’s neck and chest. Behind him, the discharge from Son-liin’s body popped and crackled. Eider’s muscles twitched when it stung her. The shafts the former firestormer shot flickered with lightning.
The sapphire dragon opened its jaws to spew another attack, and one such arrow streaked all the way to the back of its throat. The resulting flash made the creature flail its head and pound its tail on the ground in pain. The jolts sent its human allies staggering.
Gaedynn judged that that attack had likely accomplished their purpose if anything could. Besides, some of Tchazzar’s soldiers were raising their crossbows. He turned Eider and the griffon carried him and Son-liin back the way they’d come.
He glanced around and grinned to see the enraged dragon bound after them because that meant it was also charging the ranks of genasi. After a moment’s hesitation, its allies did the same.
Ripples of motion ran through the Akanûlans’ formation as they hastily prepared to defend. Flame and lightning flickered. Windsouls rose into the air.
“Welcome to the party,” Gaedynn said.
* * * * *
Medrash stared in amazement. Maybe that was ironic, considering that it was his premonition that had persuaded him and his companions to make the final leg of their journey as fast as sorcery would allow. But his worries and imaginings had fallen short of the reality.
Though distance and darkness obscured some of the details, he could tell humans, genasi, and wyrms were fighting in and above the western portion of the city up ahead, in a bat
tle at least as big and chaotic as any the dragonborn had fought against the giants. Shouts, screams, roars, and crashes blended into one huge, throbbing drone. Buildings burned and columns of gray smoke striped the sky. Wyrms wheeled over the rooftops, the glow of their breath weapons and the blasts of magic that came in response momentarily revealing the griffon riders who whirled around them like gnats.
“What is it?” asked Biri, perched behind him.
The question nudged him out of his astonishment, and he tried to order his thoughts. “War,” he said. “Though who exactly is fighting whom, I can’t yet tell.”
“So what do we do?” Praxasalandos asked.
“I came to free Tchazzar from the madness of the Great Game,” Medrash said. “That’s still worth doing, no matter what else is going on.”
“Then I’ll find him for you,” the quicksilver dragon said. Wings beating, he hurtled forward, and Khouryn and Balasar’s bats kept pace. Balasar shot his clan brother and the white-scaled wizard a grin.
As they reached the outskirts of the city and the fringe of the struggle, a dragon hurtled from the right. Medrash thought it was a black, although in the darkness he wasn’t sure. He shifted his lance and shield and prepared to channel Torm’s power. Biri took a deep breath and let it out again, centering herself to wield her own kind of magic.
But the dragon swooped right past Praxasalandos and Khouryn and Balasar as well. Either it had mistaken the quicksilver wyrm for one of its allies or, in the midst of the darting, wheeling struggle in the sky, hadn’t noticed him at all. The griffon riders it was actually diving at scattered before it.
“If we hit it while its back is turned—” said Prax.
“No,” Medrash answered. “Stick to the plan.”
They did and somehow avoided the hostile attentions of any other dragons or any of the archers and spellcasters on the ground. Then Khouryn made Iron dive. Medrash could only assume that, with his superior night vision, the dwarf had spotted something he thought needed his immediate attention.
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