Death of the Dragon

17

The cavern reminded Vangerdahast of what starry nights once looked like, save that these stars hung down around the height of his belly, winking and blinking in the radiance of the ball of lightning dancing atop the ghazneth’s finger. The ghazneth-Vangerdahast still found it difficult to think of him as Rowen Cormaeril-had brought him into a strange warren of narrow passages and soaring chambers packed with thousands of small, goblin-sized iron racks. The racks looked eerily like goblin scarecrows, with anywhere from one to a dozen crooked iron arms hung with jagged scraps of metal, broken spectacles, brass buttons, bits of colored glass, anything that might glitter or gleam. No paths or trails twined through the peculiar little legion, which stood in such close array that Vangerdahast could not thread his way through without constantly stopping to unsnag his tunic hem.

The ghazneth seemed to suffer no such difficulty. He slipped through the jagged hordes swiveling his hips to and fro, sidestepping and pivoting past the little scarecrows so quickly that it was all Vangerdahast could do just to keep up. Presently, the foul stench of rot and mold began to fill the air, and the scarecrows grew so thick that even Rowen could not slip through the host without dislodging a chain of brass buttons or knocking a string of tin scraps to the slimy floor. Whenever this happened, he paused to return the object to its place, arranging it more artfully than before. Vangerdahast tried to move more carefully, but said nothing about the long string of displaced trinkets his own passage had left strewn behind.

Finally, they came to a dark clearing, and the stench grew so overbearing that Vangerdahast had to cover his nose. The ghazneth stopped at the edge and put out an arm to prevent Vangerdahast from going farther.

“Can you jump across, old man?”

“Across?” Vangerdahast glanced down and saw that he was standing on the edge of a foul-smelling pit. “By the wand!” Rowen raised his hand, and the lightning ball expanded until Vangerdahast could see the far side of the pit, perhaps four paces away. “Can you jump that far?”

“When I was twenty,” said Vangerdahast. “Now it would take magic.”

“Not wise,” said Rowen. He took Vangerdahast’s arm and clasped it above the wrist. “Grab hold.”

Vangerdahast eyed the distance and frowned. “Why don’t we just work our way-“

The wizard’s suggestion dissolved into a cry as the ghazneth sprang, jerking him out over the reeking pit. Vangerdahast caught a glimpse of sheer, irregular walls caked with a thick layer of brown… something, then his knees buckled as he and Rowen crashed down on the opposite rim.

Rowen pulled him to his feet and said, “You’re the one who asked for my help. Do not insult me by refusing to trust me.”

“That might be a little easier if you let go.”

Vangerdahast cast a meaningful glance at his wrist, where the ghazneth’s hand was sliding down toward the ring of wishes. Rowen let go so abruptly that Vangerdahast nearly fell and had to catch hold of a bauble rack.

“Let’s go.” Rowen backed away, his dark brow arched in horror, then started through the scarecrows again. “Once you have the scepter, we are done with each other. Take it and hide someplace I won’t find you.”

“I’m not going to do that. I can’t.” Before following, Vangerdahast allowed the ghazneth to advance a few extra steps. “Our chances are better together.”

“Until my hunger grows too strong.” Rowen was moving so fast that Vangerdahast began to fall behind. “Then I will steal your ring and drain the scepter. When that’s gone, I’ll turn on you.”

“You won’t,” Vangerdahast said. “I can feed your hunger.”

“But never satisfy it,” said Rowen. “The more you fill it, the more it will grow. It is like your thirst for the crown.”

Vangerdahast stopped and stared at the ghazneth’s back. “My what? I have no thirst for the crown.”

“No? Then you did not claim to be king when Boldovar wounded you?”

Vangerdahast was too astounded to reply. He had told Rowen about being wounded by the mad king but not what he had hallucinated-the wizard barely remembered that himself.

A few steps later, Rowen stopped and turned to face Vangerdahast. “It was a guess.” His tone was gentler now, almost sympathetic. “But not a terribly hard one. We all have a dark seed in our hearts, and it is from that seed that a ghazneth’s power sprouts.”

“And what was your seed?” Vangerdahast demanded huffily.

“Fear,” Rowen said. “Fear of never seeing Tanalasta again.”

Vangerdahast was not nearly as astonished by the admission as he was by his own reaction to it. During their travels together in the Stonelands, he had considered Rowen’s affection for Tanalasta a danger to the crown and done everything he could to discourage it. Now here he was, relying on that same affection to insure a ghazneth’s loyalty and protect himself from feral hungers he could only guess at. The irony was not lost even on Vangerdahast. He knew the real monster between them.

Vangerdahast laid a hand on Rowen’s shoulder and said, “You’ll see Tanalasta again. We both will.”

“And that is what I fear now.” Rowen shrugged the wizard’s hand off. “This is not how I want her to remember me.”

“She won’t,” said Vangerdahast. “What is done can always be undone. I’ll see to it when we escape.”

“If we escape, wizard. Be careful of your arrogance.”

Vangerdahast started to object that it was confidence, not arrogance, then thought of how long he had been in the city already. “Good advice. If we escape, then.”

Rowen nodded, then started forward again. “And if you do escape, you must never tell her what became of me.”

“If I escape, I pray you will be there to tell her yourself.”

Vangerdahast’s reply was careful, for there was a danger in making promises even a royal magician might find impossible to keep. He followed the ghazneth across the immense cavern, past another dozen pits-at least judging by the smell and the irregular crescents of dark clearing-and untold thousands more iron scarecrows. The chamber narrowed to a small passage crammed full of racks and baubles, with a long sliver of a black pit running along one wall, then opened into an immense room where the scarecrow legion stood even thicker.

The ghazneth threaded his way through the darkness into the center of the chamber, then stopped at the edge of another pit. This one was so large that the far side remained swaddled in darkness, even after Rowen doubled the size of the lightning ball on his fingertip.

“Down there.” Rowen pointed into the rancid hole.

Vangerdahast dropped to his knees and peered down. The wall dropped away more or less vertically, though it was hard to be certain beneath the thick layer of brown gunk clinging to the sides. Somewhere below-he could not tell how far in the flickering light-lay a tangled mass of what looked like… sticks?

“Do you see it?”

“Not without better light,” Vangerdahast said. “I can’t be sure what I’m seeing.”

Rowen dropped to one knee and thrust his arm down into the pit to illuminate the bottom, plunging the rest of the cavern into darkness.

A loud chime rang out behind them, as though the sudden murk had caused someone to stumble into an iron scarecrow.

Rowen extinguished his lightning ball at once.

“Goblins?” Vangerdahast whispered.

“Not here,” came Rowen’s soft reply. “Not following us.”

Scraps of tin and glass began to tinkle as the unseen stalker broke into a rush. Vangerdahast snatched a stone off the floor and started a light spell. He had not even reached the second syllable when Rowen shot a ball of silver lightning into the cavern roof.

In the brilliant flash that followed, Vangerdahast glimpsed a sinewy woman with flaming red hair dodging through the scarecrows toward them. Though her skin was fair, she was as naked as Rowen and far more powerfully built, with scaly red wings unfurling behind her back and a pair of fiery, diamond-shaped eyes glaring in their direction.

“She’s free!” As the cavern sank back into darkness, Rowen pushed Vangerdahast away from the pit. “Go!”

But Vangerdahast had a better idea. He turned and flung himself into the pit. He gave himself a single heartbeat to vanish over the edge, then spoke a single word that slowed his fall to that of a feather. Seeing no reason to avoid magic now that Nalavara was free, he pulled a crow’s feather from his pocket and spoke a long series of mystic syllables, then swooped down to snatch one of the sticks off the pit bottom.

Vangerdahast pulled into a steep ascent, flying blindly into the pitch darkness above. He pictured the scepter Rowen had described earlier, a long golden staff carved into the semblance of a sapling oak, then plucked a few hairs from his woolly beard. Leaving the direction of his flight to chance, he rubbed the hairs over the length of the stick and quietly uttered the twisted syllables of a little deception spell.

The first clue of his enchantment’s success came in the form of the heavy pulse of Nalavara’s wings, approaching from straight ahead and rapidly growing louder. Vangerdahast veered left and narrowly escaped a roaring cone of flame, which splashed against the far wall and brightened the entire cavern. The wizard glimpsed the scaled figure of a two-hundred-foot elf woman changing into a giant dragon, then again fell sightless when she closed her mouth and the flames vanished.

Vangerdahast cast a spell of light upon the stick in his hands, revealing what appeared to be an oak sapling of pure gold, with an amethyst pommel carved into the shape of a huge acorn. The wizard swung the staff to his side and saw Nalavara’s huge mouth, all fangs and tongue and now completely reptilian, swooping into the light. He dived beneath her, then nearly lost control of his flight as her jaws boomed shut behind him.

Flying beneath the dragon seemed to take forever. He passed between her first set of legs without incident, for Nalavara was still smacking her jaws and did not yet realize she had missed him. Her scales were the size of tournament shields and as thick as doors, and when Vangerdahast came to her abdomen, the heat of the fire burning in her belly was enough to sear his flesh. Had he spread his arms and held the staff out to its full length, he would not have spanned half the breadth of her body. As he passed beneath her wings, the turbulence nearly knocked him from the air, then a pair of taloned feet appeared in the light, reaching forward out of the darkness to slash at him blindly. He steered dead center between the huge claws and still had an arm’s length to each side.

Knowing better than to risk her thrashing tail, Vangerdahast plunged groundward and turned toward the narrow passage by which he and Rowen had entered the chamber. If he could lure her out of the cavern, he would send his counterfeit scepter streaking off on its own and teleport back to recover the real one.

Nalavara wheeled around, glancing off the wall and filling the cavern with an enormous crash. Knowing his light spell would draw her eye like a beacon, Vangerdahast dropped to within a foot of the iron scarecrows, making wide erratic turns in both directions. The ploy failed miserably. As he neared his goal, a stream of fire shot past overhead and filled his escape tunnel, forcing him to dodge to one side and duck into a nearby hole.

For a moment, Vangerdahast dared hope it would not matter. The passage was as narrow as the first and packed even more densely with the same iron scarecrows. He streaked twenty paces forward-then was forced to pull up short when he came to a gray dead end.

The ground rumbled, and the wizard knew Nalavara had landed behind him. He dropped down among the iron scarecrows and jerked one out of its base, then thrust it toward the entrance and began a spell.

Vangerdahast had barely started the incantation before Nalavara’s snout blocked the mouth of the passage, her nostrils already boiling with fire. He rattled off the final syllables, sighed in relief as a thick wall of iron sprang up before him-then shrank away as the dragon’s fiery breath crashed into his magic barrier.

The roar continued for what seemed like several minutes. An orange circle appeared in the middle of the wall and slowly spread outward, pouring so much heat into the tunnel Vangerdahast thought he would burst into flames. The iron began to melt and drip out, and long tongues of flame poured through the hole, licking at the tunnel’s end and turning the bauble racks white with heat. Vangerdahast pressed himself to the side of the passage and crept closer to the iron wall, where he would be more sheltered from the flames.

Finally, Nalavara’s breath gave out, leaving a huge circle of white-hot iron between the wizard and his foe. He remained pressed against the wall, confident as ever that he would survive but trying desperately to find some way to turn this to his advantage.

“Sir Magician?” rumbled Nalavara’s voice.

Vangerdahast thought about remaining silent, then decided he would be better served by confidence. He took a deep breath and stepped in front of the hole.

“Still here, Nalavarauthatoryl.” He tipped the counterfeit Scepter of Lords briefly into view. “I understand you have been looking for this? Feel free to come and get it.”

A ghastly chuckle rumbled through the cavern outside, then Nalavara tipped her head, blocking the mouth of the passage with one of her huge eyes.

“I think not, wizard. You have proven more… challenging than I thought.”

“Shall I take that as a compliment?” Vangerdahast asked. Seeing no sense in allowing his foe more of a chance than necessary, he tipped the scepter out of sight. “Or have you decided to surrender?”

Again, Nalavara chuckled. “You are not that stupid. But you are dissatisfied. I could satisfy you.”

“I trust your proposition is not a carnal one?”

“Hardly. You know what I have planned for Cormyr, so your dream of ruling that particular realm is impossible.”

“I see you have been eavesdropping.”

“More than you know, wizard.” Nalavara’s eye was replaced by a half open mouth filled with teeth as tall as men. “But there will be a realm left when I am through-a realm free of men but in need of a ruler nonetheless.”

“How very generous of you,” Vangerdahast said. “So you intend to give Cormyr to a bunch of goblins? No wonder Iliphar’s ghost rose against you.”

“The Grodd will defend the Wolf Woods!” Nalavara hissed. “They will not yield it to a band of murdering humans.” Her voice grew calmer. “And you… you will be their ruler.”

“I will?”

“If you give me the scepter.”

“And if I don’t think that’s a very good idea?” Vangerdahast asked.

“Then destroy it yourself.” The dragon lowered her eye, again blocking the passage. “It is all the same to me.”

“All I need do is pick up the iron crown?”

“It is waiting for you in the palace,” Nalavara said. “Wear it, and you are master of your own kingdom.”

“A kingdom of goblins?” Vangerdahast stepped back behind the iron wall. “I think not.”

Nalavara remained ominously silent. Vangerdahast closed his eyes and pictured himself standing beside the pit where he had left Rowen, then hissed his teleport spell. There was that instant of colorless, timeless falling, then he found himself lying on his side gasping for breath, staring up into a dark fissure between two teeth the size of wagon wheels. In his teleport afterdaze, he could not imagine how he had managed to shrink himself to the size of a rat and end up in a terrier’s mouth.

“Magic? With me here?” rumbled a deep voice. “You are not as smart as I thought.”

Finally recalling the situation, and recognizing by the scaly lip above what had happened, Vangerdahast smashed the golden scepter against the dragon’s teeth.

The staff broke in two, and Nalavara flinched, jerking her head around and flinging the wizard across the dark chamber. He crashed down among the iron scarecrows, then rolled to a painful halt and found himself staring at his hand, watching the glow fade from the stump of a broken little thigh bone. Though recovered enough from his teleport afterdaze to recall that the scepter in his hand had been counterfeit, he couldn’t think of why he should be holding a goblin’s femur.

Nalavara’s head swung in his direction, then disappeared from sight as she spat out the top half of the thigh bone. “Fraud!”

Vangerdahast rolled away before the stub could strike him, then found his escape blocked by a dozen iron scarecrows and began to think the situation more serious than he had imagined.

“Rowen?” he called. “Help?”

A bolt of lightning crackled up from the opposite side of Nalavara and silhouetted her immense snout against the black vastness. Her head swung away and disappeared into the darkness. There was a booming crack as her jaws came together, and Rowen howled in agony.

Vangerdahast knew what he had to do. “I wish Nalavara out of existence!” he cried, rubbing his ring of wishes. “I wish Nalavarauthatoryl the Red out of existence! I wish Lorelei Alavara out of existence!”

The cavern went suddenly quiet, then a familiar flickering glow began to illuminate the scarecrows fifty paces distant.

“Rowen?” Vangerdahast called.

“Aye, wizard, it’s me.” The ghazneth stood and tried to walk, then doubled over backward and collapsed. “But why in the Thousand Hells did you not make your wish before she bit me in two?”