Queen of the Depths

CHAPTER 11

he locathah spread the mouth of the net bag, and the fish swam sluggishly forth. They were already dying, poisoned by the enchantments the spellcasters had poured into their veins, and that was fine. It made them easier to catch.

Wraxzala kicked forward, converging on the cloud of fish with the other ixitxachitls, and sank her teeth into her share of the bounty. The blood was vile, bitter with power, and she had to clench herself to keep from retching it back up. Pain burned through her guts and blurred her vision then waned.

Afterward, she didn’t feel any different, and wondered if the magic had truly prepared her for the venture to come. Then she sneered at the very notion, for obviously, nothing could do that.

She peered back and forth, at the other warriors, ixitxachitl and slave, waiting here in the shallows with the surface of the benighted sea rippling just a few yards above their heads. Yzilcurse him! had promised the surviving thralls soft treatment, and his fellow ‘chitls, advancement, and some of the stupider folk in each category looked eager to get started. Most, however, appeared so tense and morose, it was plain they shared Wraxzala’s trepidation.

By the Five Great Deeds of Vengeance, how she wished she’d never threatened the eggs! When Yzil killed His Holiness’s envoy instead of her, she’d believed she’d enjoyed a miraculous escape but now understood the devitan actually had identified her as the guilty party. He’d just opted to punish her in a different fashion.

But this way at least she had a chance. She was, after all, an ixitxachitl and a vitan, blessed by Ilxendren and superior to all lesser creatures. Logically, that ought to mean she and her allies could defeat them, even under adverse circumstances.

She resolved to keep telling herself that until she believed it.

The vitan in chargeshe wondered sourly what he’d done to anger Yzilgave the command, and the company advanced. Soon the seabed sloped high enough that the locathahs, koalinths, and their ilk had to plant their feet and wade with their upper portions sticking up out of the water. At that point, stealth became impossible, and Wraxzala decided she, too, might as well experience the world above the waves. With luck, she might even have a few heartbeats to get used to it before she had to start fighting for her life.

She swam upward, through the heaving interface between sea and air, and onward. Once she exited the water, the medium supporting her felt thin and insubstantial, yet she didn’t fall. In fact, precisely because it offered less resistance, she had a giddy feeling she might even be able to swim faster above the waves than below.

She zigzagged awkwardly, seeing how much effort it took and how it felt. Other ixitxachitls rose from the waves to either side. Then, on land, among the dilapidated huts, some creature started yelling. She couldn’t understand the words, but it was obvious what was going on. A sentry had spotted the invaders coming ashore.

Hulking bipedal shapes with folded wings, serpent heads, and dragging, writhing tails shambled forth from the shacks. Wraxzala had never seen such brutes before, but according to the wretched, meddling waveservant, they were called “dragonkin.” In these first confused moments, the reptiles failed to understand just how many ixitxachitls and thralls had risen from the depths to threaten them. They evidently thought they could make a stand on the beach and push the intruders back.

The ixitxachitl commander shouted an order. Dozens of locathahs with their goggle-eyed piscine faces, and brawny koalinths with big, scalloped ears and shaggy manes now plastered to their skulls, shouldered and discharged their crossbows. Many of the bolts flew wild. Like Wraxzala herself, the missiles moved differently in air. But some found their marks, and dragonkin fell.

Most of the surviving reptiles scrambled for cover, from which they would likely seek to harry and slow the advance. The invaders would need to root them out before they could pass in safety, but though they’d pay a toll in blood, they could certainly manage it. The real problem was that two other dragonkin turned, spread their leathery pinions, and flew inland… to fetch reinforcements, without a doubt.

Though Yzil had been too cagey to say it in so many words, Wraxzala understood that, according to his strategy, that was more or less what was supposed to happen. As she and her companions fought their way up the mountainside, they were supposed to lure the enemy forth to engage them.

But by the poison tides of the Abyss, please, not yet! If the wyrms and all their minions descended on the invaders before they even established a beachhead, they’d have little trouble wiping them out.

Wraxzala had absolutely no inclination to imperil herself by chasing the fleeing dragonkin. But unfortunately, only ixitxachitls had any hope of overtaking them, because only they could swim in air. The thralls had partaken of a simpler, less costly enchantment, which merely enabled their gills to function out of water. For they, after all, had legs to provide mobility on land, and their masters had assumed that would prove sufficient.

“No more shooting!” Wraxzala cried. She waited for other voices to echo the order then charged forward. Several other ‘chitls did the same. At least she wasn’t entirely alone.

She raced over the ruined village. The rocky ground rose steeply just behind it. Patches of vegetation clung to the lower slopes.

She still felt clumsy speeding through the air. Every slight flick or tilt of her body achieved too much, and she veered crazily from one overcompensation to the next. But she couldn’t worry about that now.

She peered, trying to pick out a dragonkin, and spied a rhythmic flicker of mottled wings. Unfortunately, the reptile had a considerable lead, in distance and elevation, too.

Only magic could hinder it now. Still pursuing, she rattled off an intricate sequence of rhyming palindromes. The power, as it gathered and poised itself to strike, made a sound like bright, wicked laughter.

A set of shadowy, disembodied jaws appeared directly in front of the dragonkin. The reptile tried to veer off, but the construct leaped at it and caught it anyway. The shadow creature plunged its fangs repeatedly into the dragonkin’s body.

The dragonkin wrenched free and riposted with its spear. The lance plunged right through the shadow-stuff without doing it any harm.

Once the reptile realized it couldn’t strike back, it started veering and dodging, trying to distance itself from its attacker. The flying jaws, however, matched it move for move.

Wraxzala was reasonably certain the construct couldn’t kill the enormous brute, but that wasn’t the point. The harassment was just supposed to keep it in place while she beat her way closer. She was trying to steal up on it, but in this strange environment where all sound seemed muffled, couldn’t tell if she was being quiet or not.

Finally she judged she’d sneaked close enough for a different and perhaps truly devastating curse. She whispered the opening words, and the jaws faded away as the spell that had birthed them exhausted the last of its force.

She hoped the dragonkin would simply attempt to continue on its way. But despite its uncouth appearance, it had brains enough to realize a spellcaster had afflicted it. Now free of the punishment, wounds bleeding, it tilted its wings and wheeled in the air, seeking its tormentor. It spied Wraxzala, snarled, and threw its spear.

Underwater, it was impossible to fling a lance for any distance, and so the attack caught her by surprise. Reflex jolted her into motion, though, and she dived. The spear streaked over her.

She declaimed the final syllable of her invocation. The dragonkin grunted as its body went rigid. Unable to move its wings, it plummeted and crashed down amid some big, sturdy plantsWraxzala thought they were called “trees”on a ledge.

She swam warily downward, peering to see what had become of her foe. If she had to use another spell to finish it off, she would, but hoped the fall had killed it. With a long night of battle ahead of her, she needed to conserve her power as much as possible.

Unfortunately, on first inspection, the thick, tangled limbs and their shroud of leaves confused her eyes. She was used to picking lurking enemies out of a mass of kelp or coral, but here the shapes were different.

Hoping it would help, she swam lower still. With a sudden rattle and snap of branches, the dragonkin exploded out at her. Its talons slashed at her face.

She spun herself out of the way and onto the reptile’s back, between the roots of its wings. She drove her fangs into its neck.

It convulsed, and they fell together. Twigs jabbed and gouged at her as they crunched and bounced through the foliage, finally jolting to a stop at the crossing of two substantial branches midway down.

The dragonkin was hearty. The virulence in her initial bite hadn’t shocked it into helplessness. It fumbled at her with its claws, trying to grab her and tear her loose. But the angle was awkward for it, and it couldn’t manage a solid grip. She ripped open a throbbing artery in the side of its neck, and its life quickly pumped away.

She drank some of it then swam back up above the trees, where other ‘chitls were wheeling and swooping about. “I killed one of them,” she called.

“We got the other,” replied a warrior. He was one of the stupid ones: He sounded gleeful, as if the raid were a game.

Wraxzala wondered just how playful he’d feel when the wyrms emerged from the apex of the volcano. It would happen by and by. She and her comrades had merely delayed the inevitable.

Tu’ala’keth cautiously raised her head halfway out of the water, ducked back down, and turned to Yzil, who was hovering beside her. “The way is clear,” she said.

“Good.” He and the other ‘chitls in the vanguard swam up into the air to see for themselves.

She rather wished she were able to do likewise, but the ‘chitls hadn’t offered her this particular magic. They claimed they barely had enough for themselves. She suspected they were simply unwilling to share the precious resource with someone they regarded as a “slave creature,” but she hadn’t made an issue of it. During her time with the pirates, she’d had plenty of practice walking and assumed she’d manage well enough.

Trident in hand, her new satchel dangling at her hip, she waded up onto a shelf of granite and took another look around the sea cave. The air was damp and salty, alive with the echoing boom and murmur of the surf. Shells, starfishes, and clumps of weed littered the floor where it sloped down to meet the water. An oil lamp, unlit at the moment, reposed in a niche in the wall, and bits of broken stone lay about the entrance to a passage slanting upward. Someone had smashed away rock to make the path more accessible.

“You were right,” said Yzil. “There is a way up.”

Tu’ala’keth shrugged. “It was not difficult to deduce. The wearer of purple mentioned that in time, he and his fellow lunatics might provide undeath to the dragons of the sea. How could humans accomplish that without workrooms where land and water come together?”

“Well, don’t feel too smug. It’s a narrow way up. I was hoping we could sneak up on them quickly.”

“If we make haste, we still can.”

“Let’s hope so.” Yzil turned toward the other hovering, flitting ixitxachitls, and the locathahs and koalinths still sloshing up out of the depths, and started barking orders.

It took him a few minutes to get everyone organized, and he and Tu’ala’keth led the ascent. The ‘chitl’s broad, flat body all but filled the passage, the rippling edges nearly swiping the walls.

He hesitated at a point where the smoothly sloping floor gave way to a succession of chiseled edges and right angles. “What’s this?”

She smiled for an instant. “Stairs. No inconvenience to you, but I suffered stumbles and stubbed toes before I learned the trick of them. I suspect your slaves will, too.”

Yzil showed his fangs. “If that’s the worst they suffer tonight, they can count themselves blessed.”

Anton had pilfered a few small knives without his captors noticing, but now that he’d figured out where to hide it, he wanted a sword. It didn’t need magical virtues like Tu’ala’keth’s cutlass or Shandri’s huge and thirsty blade. Any hilt weapon that extended his reach by more than a finger-length would do.

Surely somewhere in the caverns lay a dull, notched, rusty, poorly balanced sword nobody wanted or would miss. But he’d crept about for a long while without finding it and wandered dangerously far from his cage in the process. He supposed it was time to give up, for tonight anyway, and to steal some more food and make his way back to his fellow prisoners.

He turned, and a quavering roar shook the tunnel.

It sounded as if it might actually have words in it, but since he didn’t speak the language of dragons, he couldn’t be sure.

Whether it did or not, it roused the entire complex. Echoing voices babbled on every side. Footsteps scurried. Trumpets bleated, repeating the alarm the wyrm had sounded. A sickly blue shimmer and whiff of rot washed through the air as, somewhere, one of the necromancers cast an initial spell.

Intent on covering at least some of the distance back to the prison before the tunnels filled up with cultists dashing in all directions, trying to balance the conflicting imperatives of haste and stealth, Anton trotted as quickly as he dared until red light shined from an irregular opening just ahead.

The spy felt a pang of fear and self-disgust. He’d known a fire drake had claimed that particular side gallery for its lair, but the cursed thing had been asleep ever since he’d first discovered it, and so he’d come to consider this particular passageway as safe as any.

But it wasn’t anymore. The commotion had roused the reptile and drawn it forth. Anton cast about for a hiding place. There was nowhere within reach.

The fire drake crawled out into the corridor. A runt compared to Eshcaz or any of the magnificent horrors proclaiming themselves “true dragons,” it was nonetheless bigger than a horse and wagon, and its crimson scales radiated heat and light like metal fresh from the forge. Its blazing yellow eyes fixed on Anton.

He bowed to it deeply but quickly, like a lackey in a frantic hurry. “Someone is attacking the enclave!” he cried. “The other wyrms need you, milord!”

The drake showed its fangs. “I’m a female, fool!” Wings flattened against her back so as not to scrape on the ceiling, she lunged.

For one ghastly instant, Anton thought she was charging him; then he perceived that her true intent was simply to traverse the passage as fast as possible. He flattened himself against the wall.

The dragon’s scaly flank nearly brushed him, and he flinched from the searing heat. Then the excited wyrm hurtled on by and around a bend, without ever registering that the human groveling before her had worn the rags and sported the shaggy whiskers, grime, and lash marks of a slave.

Anton hurried onward, hiding and backtracking repeatedly as the tunnels filled up. At least it gave him a chance to eavesdrop on snatches of conversation:

“attacking up the mountain”

Anton smiled; he’d guessed right about that much, anyway.

“crazy to challenge the Sacred Ones.” “They’re crazy just to challenge us! I know a spell” “some kind of bats, or demons that look and fly like them.”

“No, it’s gill-men. They crawled up out of the sea.”

He frowned, puzzled. Was it possible Tu’ala’keth had returned at the head of an undersea army? He couldn’t imagine how. She had no influence over her fellow shalarins. That was the galling realization that had launched her on her demented mission. He was still mulling it over when he finally managed to skulk back to the cage.

His fellow captives were all pressed up against the grille and raised a clamor when he appeared. On another night, he would have berated them for it, but it didn’t matter anymore.

“What’s happening?” demanded Jamark. “We heard all the noise and asked a cultist when he ran by, but he didn’t stop.”

Anton explained what little he knew. “So it’s time,” he concluded and, heedless of the squeal and bang, threw open the door. “Dig out the knives.”

They didn’t move; they just regarded him uncertainly. Eventually Stedd, a scrawny, homely, balding fellow who’d owned a dozen tanneries until pirates captured him and his beautiful young wife refused to pay his ransom, said, “Maybe that’s not the wisest thing to do.”

“Of course it is,” Anton said.

“Why?” Stedd retorted. “We’ve only got knives, and most of us aren’t trained warriors. Where’s the sense in taking on well-armed dragonkin, magicians, and wyrms? If somebody else has come to wipe out the cult and rescue us, wonderful. Let’s stay here where it’s safe and pray they succeed. We can thank them when the fighting’s over.”

“That might not be a bad plan,” Anton said, “except for a reason you already mentioned yourself: The cultists are powerful and have the advantage of a highly defensible stronghold. We can’t count on the newcomers, whoever they are, to win without our help. But if we sneak through the caves, stabbing maniacs in the back while they’re intent on the threat outside, maybe we can make a difference.”

“Or die for nothing,” the tanner said.

“Damn you all,” Anton said. “Half of you would be dead already if not for me. But forget that and ponder this instead: This is our one chance. The opportunity we yearned and prayed for, never believing it would ever really come. I plan to make the most of it, even if I have to fight alone. If anyone wants to help, I’ll be glad of the company. If others are so cowardly they can’t bear to leave the cage, that’s all right, too. Just stand aside while I pull out the knives.”

Jamark made a spitting sound. “Ah, to Baator with it. I don’t care if I die, as long as I kill a dragonkin first.” Some of the others muttered in agreement.

In the end, almost everyone followed Anton away from the cage, even Stedd, sweaty, eyes darting, one of the knives clutched tight in an overhand grip. For his part, Anton still lacked a blade. Since they didn’t have enough to go around, he’d decided to trust his sorcery to protect him for the time being.

“Where are we headed?” Jamark whispered.

“An armory,” Anton answered, “not too far away. It was never practical to steal from it before, but now the cultists are in the middle of an emergency. They may have left it unlocked and unattended. There may be some weapons left inside. We’ll find out.”

In his time, Diero had been a military man, serving as a war mage and officer in baronial armies and mercenary companies around the Sea of Fallen Stars. Drawing on his hard-won expertise, he had, despite the constant press of his other duties, made time to plan the mountain’s defense, and to explain everyone’s assigned duties in the event of an attack.

Accordingly, it exasperated him to see the dolts all running around in confusion instead of proceeding briskly to their proper stations.

Part of the difficulty was that most of the others lacked military training. Even the dragonkin were barbarian raiders, not veterans of a civilized army. Their human counterparts tended to be spellcasters with an unhealthy attraction to the forces of shadow, outlaws, and a motley assortment of malcontents, some every bit as deranged as dragons cultists were commonly held to be.

The real problem, however, was that the wyrms they served were ordering them out onto the mountain just any old way. Eshcaz was a case in point. Crouched in the center of the half-finished pentacle in the center of the great hall, shrouded in a haze of acrid smoke leaking from his mouth and nostrils, he bellowed commands, and lesser beings scurried to obey, more terrified of displeasing him than of any possible threat awaiting them outside the caverns.

Diero murmured an incantation. The world seemed to blink like an eye, he experienced a sensation of hurtling like an arrow loosed from a bow, and he was standing at Eshcaz’s immense and scaly feet. The smoke stung his eyes, and the heat was unpleasant.

But he didn’t permit his discomfortor his annoyanceto show in his expression. He might be the most accomplished human spellcaster on Tan, but even so, he wouldn’t wager a copper on his chances if the red opted to chastise him for what he interpreted as a show of disrespect.

“Sacred One,” the wearer of purple said, “may I ask what you’re doing?”

Eshcaz twisted his neck to sneer down at him. “What does it look like?”

“It looks as if you’re rallying your troops for battle. But I wonder if you’ve considered that you’re sending them forth from a strong defensive position into the open.”

“I’m sending them where the enemy is.”

“If that’s the strategy you’ve chosen, so be it. But it might work all the better if you conducted a proper reconnaissance first. Or at least gave your servants time to form up properly.”

“To what end?” Eshcaz replied. “Odds are they won’t even have to do any real fighting. The other wyrms and I will annihilate the intruders all by ourselves. I just want you worthless mites to witness our wrath and to kill any nits on the other side who might otherwise scatter and hide well enough to escape our notice.”

With that, he wheeled toward an exit large enough to admit his colossal frame. Diero had to scramble to avoid being pulped by his swinging tail. The red rushed forward, occluding the stars framed in the natural arch as he passed through, then leaped up into the sky.

Diero took a long breath, struggling to quell his irritation.

It wasn’t that Eshcaz was stupid. That might actually have made his attitude less irksome, but in fact, like all mature dragons, he was cunning. Yet he was also impatient, reckless, and possessed of a fundamental wildness that made him favor boldness, instinct, and improvisation over caution, system, and analysis.

Olna sauntered up to Diero. Her straw-colored hair gathered in an intricate braid, the witch was slim and rather pretty, with bright eyes and a generous mouth made for laughter and frivolity. When he’d first met her, it had rather surprised Diero to learn she’d committed a magical atrocity so heinous she’d had to flee hundreds of miles from her native Damara to escape retribution.

“Well, this is a mess,” she said.

Over the course of the past few months, they’d learned they could speak candidly to one another, for neither suffered from an inability to distinguish wyrms from gods, or the delusion that Sammaster’s interpretation of a cryptic prophecy necessarily constituted the final word on the destiny of the world. Rather, they’d each reasoned their way to the conviction that dracoliches, if produced in sufficient numbers, might well conquer a significant portion of Faerun, and when it happened, their supporters would reap rich rewards.

“It’s ridiculous,” Diero agreed. “The dragons see no need for strategy or tactics. They assume their sheer might will suffice to obliterate any threat.”

“Well,” said Olna, “to be fair, they’re almost certainly right.”

He felt his lips quirk into a grudging smile. “I suppose you have a point.”

“So, do we go outside, too?”

“Mist and stars, no. There are still dragonkin and such in the tunnels. Perhaps enough to defend the key entry points, and if things go wrong outside, the dragons will be glad we stayed inside. Let’s get to it.”

Sharkskin satchel bouncing at her hip, Tu’ala’keth drove her trident into a human’s chest. Another man fell with a ixitxachitl covering him like a rippling mantle, fangs buried in his throat.

That finished clearing the way… to a granite wall. Yzil scowled in irritation and started to turn away from the carnage.

“Wait,” said Tu’ala’keth.

“Why? It’s a dead end.”

“Perhaps not. This passage is large enough for one of the smaller wyrms to negotiate, and it appears to me that the stone at the end displays a less intricate grain and texture than the granite to either side.”

She walked forward and probed with the trident. The coral tines sank into the rock without the slightest resistance. She stuck her face into the illusion and found it to be no thicker than a fish scale. Beyond it stars gleamed, surf boomed and hissed at the base of the island, and the deep, rough voices of koalinths shouted and shrieked somewhere closer at hand.

She turned back around. “It is an entrance. Someone has simply concealed it with a phantasm.”

“You have a keen eye.” Yzil turned to one of his fellow ‘chitls. “You and your company will defend this place. If any humans or dragonkin happen along, you’ll need to kill them, but your primary concern is to destroy any wyrm that tries to pass through in either direction.

Hide as best you can, and hit it hard the instant you see it, before it senses you. Use your most damaging spells, and some of you, get your teeth in it. With Ilxendren’s help, your bites may cripple even a dragon.”

The ‘chitl curled itself smaller. “Yes, Devitan,” it said glumly.

“Buck up,” Yzil snapped. “You drew the desirable chore. Some of us are venturing onward to kill the big dragon.”

“It’s just a little farther,” Anton said.

But up ahead, in the lamp-lit darkness, the passage forked, and dragonkin abruptly shambled out of the right-hand branch. The caves were so noisy now, the stone bouncing echoes to and fro, that he hadn’t heard them coming.

The ogre-sized reptiles gawked at the humans. They were rushing to fight invaders, not slaves who’d escaped their confinement, and the unexpected sight made them hesitate.

It gave Anton time to rattle off an incantation and brandish the three gray pebbles he’d found and painstakingly polished after Tu’ala’keth took his original set of talismans away from him. Power whined, and vapor billowed into being around the dragonkin. They staggered, retching.

The fumes faded as quickly as they’d appeared. “Get the bastards!” Anton cried. “Now! While they’re off balance!”

Some screaming with fury, fear, or a mixture of the two, his fellow captives charged. He jabbered the charm that made his hand into a blade then sprinted after them.

Jamark rammed his knife into a dragonkin’s groin, and the creature’s knees buckled.

Stabbing madly, two humans swarmed on a second reptile and drove it reeling backward.

But otherwise, the enemy quickly took back the advantage. A dragonkin aimed and braced its spear. An onrushing captive failed to react quickly enough to evade the threat. The point punched all the way through his body and, covered in gore, popped out his back. Unwilling to take the time to pull the corpse from the end of the weapon, the reptile simply dropped it and shredded another victim with its claws. Meanwhile, hissing and snarling, its comrades speared and slashed the puny creatures who’d dared to challenge them.

Anton wondered grimly if he and his allies could possibly prevail. Then he spied the dragonkin leader, and the long, straight sword it was just starting to draw from its scabbard. Shadow swirled inside the forte of the blade.

Unfortunately, the reptile stood toward the rear of its squad. Anton veered away from the warrior he’d intended to attack and plunged into the mass of frenzied combatants.

Some of the dragonkin struck at him as he raced by, and he dodged as best he could without slowing down. Another inch of dark blade cleared the sheath, and eager to start killing, the sword itself jumped, assisting the process and emerging fast.

Anton dived under a jabbing spear then leaped into the air. His first blow had to kill. Otherwise, the greatsword’s fury was likely to prop up the leader long enough for it to retaliate, and to say the least, he doubted his ability to withstand the assault.

The dragonkin saw him coming, and took a hasty retreat that didn’t quite carry it out of reach. It lifted the sword and scabbard to block but not quickly enough. He chopped at its neck with all his strength.

Blood gushed, and partially severed, its head flopped. It toppled backward.

He dropped to the floor, scrambled forward, and finished drawing the greatsword. No doubt the weapon had been eager to butcher him only a moment before, but now it welcomed him with a thrill of delight. For one set of hands on the hilt was as good as another.

As before, he loathed the touch of its mind, its bloodlust and gloating cruelty oozing in to contaminate his own thoughts. But he opened himself up to them anyway, and the sword rewarded him. It washed aches, weakness, and fatigue away, as if his hours on the rack and all the subsequent abuse had never happened.

Grinning, he pivoted and hacked a dragonkin’s legs out from under it then split its skull as it went down. He turned again and buried the greatsword in a reptile’s spine.

At that point, the other dragonkin realized a significant threat had materialized behind them. Several moved to encircle him.

Even with the greatsword, he might not have withstood that tactic for any length of time. But by riveting the reptiles’ attention on himself, he’d taken the pressure off his surviving comrades. They seized the opportunity to snatch the spears of fallen enemies from the floor and, adequately armed for the first time, assailed the dragonkin once more.

Somehow, it proved enough. The last dragonkin fell, and the greatsword jerked Anton around toward Stedd. “No!” he told it, just as Shandri had, silently adding, be patient. I have plenty of foes left to kill.

The blade quieted, humoring his quaint, irrational notion that some people ought not to be slaughtered.

Oblivious to his argument with the weapon, Jamark shot him a grin. “Nice sword,” the scarred man said.

So it was, in its repellent way. Anton had assumed it lay amid Eshcaz’s hoard but now reckoned he understood why it didn’t. Tu’ala’keth hadn’t presented the weapon to the red with the rest of her tribute, and lacking gems in the hilt or similar ornamentation, it looked like just an ordinary if well-made greatsword until someone pulled it from the scabbard. Eshcaz hadn’t deigned to take any notice of it where it lay on the floor, enabling a dragonkin to claim it for itself.

Still it was remarkable luck that it had returned to Anton just when he needed it most. Tu’ala’keth, in her daft and arbitrary way, had decided the sword bore Umberlee’s blessing, and if she were here, she’d doubtless tell him to thank the goddess or prattle of divine will manifesting itself in pattern and coincidence. He mulled such notions over for an instant then put them from his mind. He had more urgent things to think about.

“You were right,” Stedd panted, blood seeping from a graze on his shoulder, “this is worth doing. Let’s raid that armory then kill some more of them.”

As Wraxzala wheeled about the sky, casting her few remaining spells, shouting orders to the slaves in a voice worn hoarse and raw, she marveled at how quickly an army’s fortunes could shift.

She and her comrades had sneaked up the mountainside, to guard outposts, and small fields and gardens tucked away in pockets in the escarpment. They’d slaughtered dragonkin, cultists, and penned slaves who might otherwise raise a commotion sufficient to rouse the rest of the enclavewherever they found them. As long as the ixitxachitls had numbers and surprise on their side, it was relatively easy.

But at some point, one of the enemy, a dragonkin on the wing, perhaps, or a mage shifting himself instantly through space, had evidently escaped to raise the alarm. For in time, wyrms and a horde of their minions exploded from rifts in the rock.

The minions, though they made a reasonable effort to kill invaders, were virtually superfluous. It was the dragons who immediately started slaying their foes by the dozens, like the limitless might and malice of the Demon Ray himself embodied in gigantic snapping wings, roaring jaws, and slashing talons.

The largest wyrm wheeled, vomited flames, and burned ixitxachitls to drifting sparks and wisps of ash. A second dragon, its countenance studded with hornlets, spewed fumes, and a squad of locathahs dropped, skin dissolving, fins riddled with sizzling holes. A third conjured a glowing orb that hurtled down like a crossbow quarrel then exploded into leaping, dazzling arcs of lightning when it hit the ground. Transfixed by one or another of the radiating flares of power, koalinths danced spastically and withered to smoking husks. Perhaps lacking breath weapons and wizardry, the smallest drakeswhich were still far bigger than the largest of their foesravaged them with fang and claw. Some were content to smash down into a mass of opponents, crushing some in the process, and fight on the ground until they wiped that cluster out. Others swooped, seized an opponent, carried it aloft to tear apart or simply drop from on high, and dived to catch another.

Wraxzala had participated in savage battles before and watched significant numbers of her allies perish. The difference this time was that they scarcely seemed to be inflicting any damage in return. Most of the drakes had crossbow bolts jutting from their scaly hides. Some bore puncture wounds from the slaves’ spears and tridents. Now and again, one even faltered or convulsed when a vampire ‘chitl swooped in and bit it, or an attack spell pierced its mystical defenses.

Yet nothing balked them for more than a moment. After which they assailed the invaders as fiercely as before.

She realized bitterly that nonetheless, she and her comrades were accomplishing all Yzil expected of them. They were keeping the wyrms busy and enticing them to exhaust their breath weapons and sorcerous capabilities. They were softening them up for the confrontation to come.

In her folly, Wraxzala had dared to hope the diversionary force might somehow accomplish more, might actually defeat the foes counterattacking down the mountain, or failing that, that she might at least outlive the struggle. Now, however, it was clear just how unlikely that was to happen.

In her eyes, the contest became absolutely, incontrovertibly hopeless when the colossal red dragon conjured eight orbs of seething, crackling lightning, which then streaked down to strike and blast every third thrall in a ragged formation of koalinths.

The reptile then oriented on a squad of locathah crossbowmen, ostentatiously sucked in a breath, swelled its throat, and cocked back its head. The warriors discerned that the red’s snout was pointing a little to the left, so they madly scrambled right. Most of them escaped the booming flare and kept right on running until the dragon furled its wings, slammed down immediately in front of them with a thud that started loose stone clattering down the mountainside, and roared into their terrified faces. The locathahs blundered about and fled in exactly the opposite direction.

The red was so certain of victory, and so contemptuous of its foes, that it was playing with them.

Enough of this! Wraxzala thought. If she disobeyed her devitanand he survived to condemn her for it her rank and life were forfeit, and that was why she’d lingered as long as she had. But it was plain she would surely die if she didn’t get away.

Fortunately, she’d had the foresight to save a spell for the purpose. She declaimed the prayer, and darkness swirled and whispered into being all around her. For an instant the touch of it chilled her skin.

By day, a blot of inky shadow would itself be conspicuous against the sky, but by night, it would make Wraxzala effectively invisible. It was inconvenient that she couldn’t see through it either, but that wouldn’t be necessary just to distance herself from the island. She’d flee until she heard and smelled water below her; then she’d dive for the safety of the depths.

She wheeled, sped away, and a rhythmic flapping sounded somewhere above her. She wondered if she should change course, or dodge, but how, when she couldn’t tell exactly where the dragon was in relation to herself? She was still trying to determine its exact position when gigantic claws punched through her body. Dazed with the shock of it, she dully remembered hearing that all a dragon’s senses were acute, and the wyrm pulled her apart as if she were no more substantial than a jellyfish.

It took a lot of killing just to reach the enormous chamber at the top of the mountain. Tu’ala’keth observed that by the time they cleared it of enemies, most of Yzil’s thralls were dead. But that was all right. They’d served their purpose.

Weary from fighting, she cast about, making sure the cave was as she remembered it. Then she pointed, noticing as she did so that her hand was spattered and tacky with gore. Fighting on land was a filthy business.

“Eshcaz has to come in either there,” she said, “or over there. Those are the only holes big enough to admit him. So we’ll set up by that wall, as far as possible from both of them.”

Hovering, body rippling, Yzil studied the corner in question. Blood oozed down from a superficial cut above his eyes, and he blinked and swiped it away with a flick of his tail. “We’ll be boxed in,” he said.

“It does not matter,” she replied. “Either we will kill the red, or he will kill us. It is unlikely we could retreat and get away.”

“I suppose so.” The devitan raised his voice. “Follow me, warriors of Ixzethlin, and be quick about it. We may have very little time in which to prepare.”

The other ‘chitls, who’d been either gliding about, investigating the chamber, or feeding on dead or crippled cultists and dragonkin, obeyed him. When everyone was in position, Tu’ala’keth opened her satchel and pulled out the book inside.

The heavy volume consisted of plates of horn inlaid with characters of onyx, agate, and obsidian, and perforated on one edge so a chain of worked coral like her silverweave could bind them together. It was plain from the construction that someone other than ‘chitls had made it. They were literate, but books of the sort employed by shalarins and sea-elves were awkward for them. For an instant she wondered again where and how her allies had obtained the precious thing then put the irrelevant question aside.

Straining, she snapped the coral chain, gave one page to each ‘chitl cleric, and kept the remainder for herself. Perhaps some of ‘chitls resented a “slave creature” retaining most of the magic, but it was in accordance with Yzil’s orders. He understood that just as she, by virtue of her anatomy, had been best suited to carry the tome, so she, possessed of hands, would be best able to flip from one leaf to another as circumstances required.

She started to read the trigger phrase of one of the preserved spells, and others did likewise, their voices muddling together. The carved stones glittered, flashed, and sometimes crumbled as they delivered themselves of the power stored inside. The gathering magic made everything look somehow too vivid, too real, and therefore frightening, like looming, leering faces in a delirium. The granite groaned beneath her feet.

Eshcaz watched his troops form into squads then tramp forth to scour the island. If any of the invaders had escaped the massacre, the dragonkin and humans would find and kill them. They were competent enough to manage that, anyway.

Once certain his minions were setting about their work with sufficient zeal, he then prowled over the battleground in search of plunder and morsels to eat.

Considering how many had fallen, the latter were surprisingly different to locate because, for the most part, the dragons had sensibly kept to the air, out of reach of the enemies’ hand weapons, and annihilated them with spells and breath effects. Which was to say, burned the corpses to charcoal, poisoned them with acids and other malignancies, or blasted and ripped them to such small fragments that it would be awkward and undignified for a creature the size of Eshcaz to bother with the crumbs.

Fortunately, he wasn’t actually hungry. It was simply his custom to sample his enemies’ flesh after any fight. It made the victory seem complete.

Something flopped feebly on the ground before him. He scrutinized it then grinned. He’d discovered a still-living ixitxachitl, and eating a live enemy was even more satisfying than devouring a dead one.

He scooped the ixitxachitl up in his jaws. It writhed and shrieked for a second as he chewed; then it was too maimed for even that bit of impotent resistance.

He swallowed it whole then turned to the black-robed, skull-masked priest of Velsharoon who’d been trailing him about, awaiting orders. “Tastes like chicken,” he said. It was a human joke, and he didn’t really understand why it was supposed to be funny, but the cleric laughed dutifully.

Then a ghostly, grayish figure wavered into existence between the two of them. With a twinge of unease, Eshcaz saw that it was Diero, or rather, a conjured semblance that would allow the two of them to speak over a distance. The wearer or purple’s snowy hair, which he always kept neatly combed, now dangled over his sweaty brow. He was breathing hard, too, his shrewd features taut with urgency.

“What’s wrong?” the dragon asked.

“The warriors you just fought constituted a feint. While they kept you occupied, a larger force climbed up into the mountain from the sea caves, dividing as they progressed to invade every gallery and tunnel. Those of us who stayed inside are trying to fight them, but we’re heavily outnumbered. It’s difficult to stop them from going wherever they want and holding any position they choose to occupy.”

The dragon snarled, angry at the sea creatures for tricking him and at Diero for having been right that it was a poor idea to leave the caverns. Had the magician been physically present, the red might even have clawed him, just to rip away any smugness or sense of superiority that he might be harboring inside..

Eshcaz struggled to calm himself. It was galling that the wyrms would have to fight their way back into their own stronghold, that they’d already expended a measure of their arcane abilities, and that in the confined spaces within the mountain, their wings would prove less of advantage. But even so, surely this fiasco was only a momentary nuisance.

They were, after all, dragons, and he, the most powerful red the Sea of Fallen Stars had ever known. It was insane to imagine that lesser creatures could defeat them under any circumstances whatsoever.

“I’ll deal with it,” he said, spreading his wings.

“Wait, please!” Diero said. “Listen to me. We don’t know why the ixitxachitls attacked us or the full extent of their plans, but if they destroy the work we’ve been doing, it will set us back by months.”

Curse him! He was right again. “What needs protecting most urgently?” Eshcaz asked. “The grand pentacle?”

“Yes. A bit of chiseling at the right point, coupled with the proper counterspell, could ruin it almost beyond repair. I’m trying to head in that direction.”

“I will, too.” Eshcaz glared at the priest of Velsharoon. “Tell everyone I order them back inside to kill more intruders.” He lashed his pinions and sprang into the air.

Tu’ala’keth trembled as Eshcaz burst into the chamber. She reminded herself that she was a waveservant, and her reflexive dread subsided to a degree.

She glanced from side to side. Hunkered on the floor, crouched over their pages from the compendium of priestly magic, the ‘chitls were likely frightened, too. In some cases, their long tails lashed in agitation. But nobody tried to flee.

The red began to charge in eerie silence. That wasn’t his doing but theirs. They’d shrouded his side of the chamber in an enchantment that stifled sound to keep him from reciting incantations.

Perhaps Eshcaz realized what they’d done, for he gave them a sneer, as if to scorn the suggestion he needed sorcery to slaughter tiny creatures like themselves. Then he bounded far enough to trigger a second ward.

Whoever had originally crafted the ixitxachitls’ book, he must have been a supremely wise and able priest of the sea because he’d stored extraordinary magic in the gemstone lines. A huge wave of saltwater surged up from the dry stone floor and smashed into the dragon. Even his strength, weight, and momentum couldn’t withstand the prodigious force. The wave tumbled him all the way backward to slam against the wall before dissipating into nothingness.

The impact didn’t even stun him, though. He scrambled to his feet in an instant, cocked his head back, and spat a bright jet of flame. The flare rustled as it left the zone of quiet, then hissed explosively when it met the enchantment the invaders had emplaced to counter fire. Blocked short of its targets, Eshcaz’s breath produced a gout of steam at its terminus, as if it had struck an invisible, freestanding wall of water. In a metaphysical sense, that was precisely what had happened.

Tu’ala’keth read the final trigger phrase from one of the pages, and the entire sheet of horn shattered in her grasp. Fortunately, the magic, once unleashed, could strike anyplace, even where silence reigned, and Eshcaz thrashed, stricken.

She’d filled his lungs with water, a bane that ought to kill him, but he mastered his convulsions and retched it forth. Because of the heat in his vitals, most of it burst out in another gout of steam.

By that time, Yzil and another ‘chitl had also conjured attacks. A cloud of luminous blue-green wraiths in the form of sharks appeared with the dragon at their center. They whirled around him biting and tearing until he leaped clear of the effect.

Canny enough to know that particular magic couldn’t shift to pursue him, he paid it no further heed.

Instead he oriented on Tu’ala’keth and the ‘chitls then jerked as the next spell took hold of him. His scaly hide withered, cracking and flaking. But it blurred back to normal a heartbeat later as resilience of soul or body enabled him to withstand the curse.

Enraged, his shark bites bleeding, he hurled himself at his tormentors, and another wave arose and threw him backward. He spat more flame, and it, too, halted short of the mark in a burst of steam.

“By the Five Torments!” cried one of the ixitxachitls. “We’re doing it! We’re killing a dragon!”

Though she saw no point in contradicting itit would fight better jubilant than afraidTu’ala’keth thought its judgment was, at best, premature. For even the supremely powerful magic sealed in the book of horn hadn’t done Eshcaz any serious harm as yet. The second wave, moreover, hadn’t flung him backward as far as the first, while his second jet of flame had shot a little closer before their defense balked it. His exertions were eroding the wards, and it was impossible to guess whether they’d manage to kill him before he succeeded in breaking through.

But in essence, this was a clash between fire and water, and there was no flame Umberlee could not drown. She dragged down the sun and devoured it every night without fail, obliging Lathander, god of the dawn, to craft a new one each morning. If Tu’ala’keth could simply reflect the infinite majesty of her patron, then surely she, too, must prevail. She reached and from somewhereinside herself or Fury’s Heart, it was ultimately the same thingflowed the pure cold malice of the Queen of the Depths to steady and exalt her. She searched through the plates of horn for the spell she wanted next.

Diero peeked around the corner just as Hsalanasharanx collapsed with so many writhing, flapping ixitxachitls clinging to her that her serpentine shape was almost indistinguishable. Even so, he expected the green to heave herself to her feet again or roll and crush her attackers. She didn’t, though, and as they sucked and slurped at the wounds their fangs had inflicted, it became apparent she never would.

The magician cursed under his breath. He hadn’t liked Hsalanasharanx any more than he likedwell, any of the wyrms, to be truthful about itbut they were all important to realizing his own ambitions. Besides which, the victorious ‘chitls and their gill-men servitors were blocking yet another route to the grand pentacle.

He wondered if he and Olna, supported by the dozen other cultists who were following them around, could fight their way through this particular clump of invaders. Perhaps, but it would be a messy, time-consuming business. Better to go around if they could.

He and his comrades skulked back the way they’d come, through shadowy tunnels echoing with the muddled roar of combat. It was all but impossible to tell precisely where or how close the sounds originated, and he worried he might turn a corner and find himself instantly caught up in a melee. He knew a spell that could have conjured a phantom to scout ahead for him, and wished he’d had the foresight to prepare it at the start of the day. But who could have predicted insanity like this?

He suddenly felt the pressure of another’s gaze. He pivoted and cast about, but saw only the passageway and the murky irregular mouths of side tunnels and galleries.

“I don’t see anything,” Olna said.

“Neither do I,” he replied. “But somebody was watching us. He simply ducked out of sight when I turned around.” As both mage and soldier, he’d learned to trust his intuition.

“Do you want to spend time looking for him?” the blond woman asked.

Frowning, he took a heartbeat to consider then said, “No. We have more important matters to concern us. Onward.”

In another minute, they came to point where a lava tube squirmed upward, the ascent steep enough that, at his direction, his followers and captives had chiseled stairs. He listened, trying to determine if any of the ambient noise was filtering down from above, and as usual, he couldn’t tell.

He led his companions upward andpraise be to the Lady of Mysteries! encountered nothing lurking on the steps to bar the way. The twisting shaft opened onto one of the ledges overlooking the great chamber; after what had felt like hours of fighting and sneaking, they’d finally reached their destination. He raised a hand, ordering everyone else to hold his position, then prowled to the edge of the platform and peered downward.

The vista below was peculiar enough that it took a moment to make sense of it. Acrid smoke and warm, wet steam mingled in the air. Bloodied and to all appearances berserk with rage, Eshcaz beat his gigantic wings and ascended to the high, domed ceiling. But the pinions didn’t rustle and crack or make any sound at all.

Jaws gaping, foreclaws poised to catch and rend, Eshcaz dived at those creatures who were making noise, murmuring ixitxachitls strangely hunkered on the floor, a few terrified gill-men arrayed to guard them, andDiero blinked. Was that the same demented shalarin who’d intruded here before?

A waterspout whirled up from the stone floor to intercept the plummeting Eshcaz. It caught him, engulfed him, and whirled him backward before dissipating as suddenly as it had appeared. The red couldn’t sort out his wings and the rest of his body quickly enough to resume an attitude of flight, and he fell ingloriously, slamming down on the stone.

At the same instant, other spells assailed him.

Branching and extending like flowing water, a lattice of ice formed on his skin, binding him, searing his scales with its frigidity, until he flailed and shattered it.

A black cloud boiled into the air above the wyrm. Lightning flared in its belly, and thunder would surely have boomed an instant later except for the field of silence. Rain hammered down, mingled with a harsher liquid that blistered the reptile’s hide.

Diero scowled. He’d wasted a moment in professional appreciation of the rather neat trap Tu’ala’keth and her allies had lain for Eshcaz, and to be honest, in enjoyment at seeing the arrogant dragon discomfited. But it was time to intervene. If the acidic downpour could burn the red, it was conceivable it could mar granite and deface the grand pentacle as well.

Fortunately, with a wyrm to occupy them, none of the sea folk had noticed him perched on the ledge. So long as he was quiet about it, he should be able to conjure without interference, and better still, his foes had emplaced their defenses in relation to Eshcaz on the other side of the hall. He doubted they had anything oriented to deflect an attack striking down from his angle.

Diero extracted a bit of lace from the pocket of his vestments. Tied up inside were bits of phosphorus and saltpeter. He swept the bundle through the proper pass and whispered the appropriate words of power.

Tu’ala’keth burst into flame. She reeled and dropped a stack of clattering rectangular plates. Gouts of fire leaped from her body to the nearest ixitxachitls and gill-men. They didn’t start blazing like torches in their turn. The spell wasn’t quite that deadly. But the secondary effect did sear whatever it touched, and the creatures thrashed and floundered at the pain.

The black cloud and its downpour wavered out of existence. It had required the concentration of one of the spellcasters down below to sustain it, and Diero had just disrupted that.

He could see that, in their shock, pain, and confusion, the sea creatures hadn’t yet determined where the attack had originated. He should have time to cast another.

It was a burst of glare, and he scrunched his eyes shut so his own magic wouldn’t blind him. Afterward, the rays and fish-men crawled or stumbled about helplessly, so bereft of sight they couldn’t even avoid Tu’ala’keth, still lurching to and fro like a living bonfire. Tendrils of flame lashed out at them whenever they blundered close to her, or she to them.

Diero waved Olna forward. “You see the water creatures,” he said. “They’re helpless for the moment. You make sure they stay that way, and I’ll dismantle the wards they set.” He glanced back at the remainder of his followers. “You fellows, watch for trouble coming up the stairs.”

Anton knew it would be stupid to outdistance his comrades, who possessed no supernatural means of enhancing their vigor and suppressing fatigue, or to make any more noise than necessary. Still it took an effort not to run up the steps.

He and the others had given a good accounting of themselves as they prowled through the caves. They’d killed a fair number of cultists and dragonkin, and because of his hatred of these particular foes, reinforced by the greatsword’s bloodthirst, he’d enjoyed every second of it.

But such accomplishments paled to insignificance the moment he peeked from one tunnel to the next and sighted Diero, wearer of purple, master wizard, and the whoreson who’d sent him to the rack. Diero had to die, to satisfy Anton’s need for retribution and, quite possibly, to ensure the defeat of the entire enclave of wyrm worshipers.

Peering upward, trying to penetrate the gloom, Anton skulked around a twist and beheld the uppermost section of the shaft, lit by the wavering glow of a single oil lamp set in a nook halfway up. At the top was an opening, and on other side of it, barely visible in the darkness, two men stood gazing downward. They spotted him and started yelling.

Anton charged as best he could, dashing up a crudely chiseled flight of stairs. The shadows above him shouldered crossbows. He bellowed, “Archers!” and threw himself down on the risers. The quarrels thrummed over him, but one thunked into the body of someone at his back. The fellow made a low sobbing sound.

There was no time to turn and find out who’d taken the wound or how bad it was. The erstwhile prisoners couldn’t stay where they were, or the enemy would shoot them all dead. Anton jumped up and scrambled onward.

Figures scurried in the natural doorway above as the crossbowmen, their weapons useless until cocked and loaded once again, yielded their places to two other cultists. The new men pointed spears down at the captives then jabbed with them to bar the way and halt Anton’s ascent.

They had the advantage of the high ground and weapons even longer than the greatsword. So long as they maintained their current defensive posture, it would be difficult to get at them, but it would be likewise difficult for them to score on Anton. That, however, didn’t matter. Behind them, barely visible between their shifting bodies, a woman with a long blond braid was chanting an intricate rhyme. The spearmen were simply giving her time to complete the spell unmolested.

Anton hacked at a lance. The greatsword sheared through the seasoned ash and chopped the point off. If the spearman knew his business, the remainder of the weapon could still pose a threat but not as deadly a one as before.

Anton paused for an instant, as if he’d overcom-mitted to the stroke and couldn’t come back on guard quickly. The second spearman took the bait and thrust at his exposed flank. The spy pivoted, used the greatsword to bat the lance out of line, and bounded upward, safely past the long steel point. He cut at the cultist he’d just outfoxed, and the dark blade smashed through his ribs and into his vitals.

At the same moment, though, the blond woman finished her incantation and sucked in a deep breath. Knowing he couldn’t free and lift the sword in time to threaten her, Anton averted his face and pressed himself against the wall of the lava tube.

The wizard expelled her breath into a searing conical cloud. Anton’s skin burned wherever the corrosive vapor brushed it, and on the steps below him, other captives cried out in pain.

He couldn’t let the shock of injury balk him, nor allow the witch to cast another attack spell. The greatsword agreed and steadied him with a surge of strength and anger. He jerked it from the first spearman’s body and cut down the second one then another cultist who rushed in with a short sword. That cleared a path to the magician.

He sprang out onto what he now perceived was one of the natural balconies overlooking the big cave at the top of the volcano. Smoke and steam swirled through the air, and fire flickered somewhere down below, but he couldn’t tell what was burning. Too many people were in the way.

The witch goggled as if astonished he’d survived her initial attack. She started jabbering a second incantation, and the words slurred into a gargling sound as the greatsword crunched into her skull.

Anton stepped deeper into the mass of cultists and cut at another foe. His enemies were all around him now, and even an enchanted sword wouldn’t save him from a stab in the back. Only his comrades could do thatassuming any were still alive and fit to fight.

Cries of fury and scrambling footsteps established that they were. They swarmed out onto the platform and ripped into the cultists. Jamark swung a mace. A cultist managed to catch the blow on his shield, but the force sent him stumbling backward to topple off the ledge. Stedd drove a sword into an opponent’s chest and laughed crazily. Then the eyes rolled up in his head as the other man, mortally wounded but not dead yet, thrust a blade into his torso. They took a lurching sidestep together, like spastic dancers.

As he fought, Anton looked for Diero but at first couldn’t spot him amid the frenzied press. Finally, though, the master of the enclave, with his trim frame, purple vestments, and silvery hair, came into view. To the spy’s surprise, Diero was facing outward, away from the battle. His hands slashed through mystic passes, and it looked as if he might be trying to complete a conjuration begun before the escaped slaves intruded on the proceedings.

Anton struggled toward the wizard. If Lady Luck smiled, he might reach him in time to cut him down from behind and spoil the magic, whatever it was.

But he had to kill another cultist first, and it was too late.

A prodigious roar sounded from the floor of the chamber below. Flickering firelight cast a gigantic serpentine shadow on the wall. By the Lanceboard, had there been a wyrm down there all along? Why had the cursed thing kept so quiet until this moment?

There was no time to ponder that, either. Diero was the immediate threat. The wearer of purple called somethingAnton couldn’t make out the wordsto the dragon then turned toward his embattled followers and their assailants. His gaze fell on Anton. He murmured a word and extended his hand, and a bastinado appeared in it. He swept the cane through an occult figure.

Anton rushed in and made a chest cut. Diero hopped back, and the attack fell short. He flicked the bastinado through a final backhanded stroke, as if chastising a thrall.

Agony tore through Anton’s body. It was worst in his guts, and he doubled over. Tears blurred his vision.

Diero tossed away the stick to vanish in midair. He took something from a pocket and brandished that instead. Ripples of distortion seethed around his hand.

Anton had little doubt that the follow-up spell, if completed, would mean the end of him. He had to straighten up and strike. Had to. Had to. He sucked in a breath, bellowed it out, and heaved himself upright. The curse inflicted a final spasm, and the torment faded.

But perhaps it had delayed him long enough. Diero lifted the fist clutching the spell focus as if grasping a dagger in an overhand grip. It looked as if it must be the penultimate move in the conjuration. When he stabbed downward, the magic would blaze into existence.

Anton cut as the hand plunged down. The greatsword clipped the extremity off just above the wrist. Blood spurted from the stump. Diero’s face paled all at once, and his mouth fell open. Anton pulled the dark blade back for the death stroke.

“The torturer wanted to break you,” whimpered Diero, gripping his truncated forearm in a thus-far unsuccessful attempt to stanch the bleeding. “I saved you.”

“That was a mistake,” Anton replied. He decided to behead Diero, shifted the sword into the proper attitude, then hesitated.

Because somehow, in spite of all his hatred and anger, all the terror and excitement of combat, he’d abruptly remembered he was a spy. A gatherer of secrets, and it was certain no one on Tan knew more secrets about the Cult of the Dragon than its resident wearer of purple.

Still he yearned to kill Diero, and the greatsword urged him on. His arms trembled with the need to cut. He gave a wordless cry, denying the impulse, and kicked the wizard’s feet out from under him instead. Once his foe was down, he booted him in the chin then stamped on the fingers of his remaining hand. Even if Diero escaped death by exsanguination, the fractures should keep him from casting any more spells.

As Anton finished, he heard the wyrm on the cavern floor snarling what sounded like an incantation of its own. He rushed to the drop-off to see what was happening.

To his dismay, the dragon was Eshcaz, the most formidable of them all. The red bore a number of wounds, but if they’d weakened him, it wasn’t apparent from his carriage. Eshcaz declaimed the final syllable of his spell, and a soft, oozing, semitransparent wall appeared midway across the chamber. It looked like water piled up on top of itself, like a tall wave that refused to curl and break.

Rather, the mass simply lost cohesion, shattered, and all the liquid plunged toward the floor. It vanished into nothingness, though, before it could raise a splash. Eshcaz strode toward the opposite end of the cavern and the defenseless creatures gathered there.

Most were ixitxachitls and gill-men, crawling, stumbling, or gliding erratically about in manifest confusion and distress. One, however, was a shalarin shrouded in bright, crackling flame, as if someone had dipped it in oil and set it alight. That one rolled back and forth on the ground.

After her first clash with Kassur, Anton had explained to Tu’ala’keth that if she ever caught fire, dropping and rolling was the way to put it out. Was that her?

Maybe it was, though he couldn’t imagine how she could have returned at the head of an ixitxachitl army. As he understood it, the demon rays were hostile to the Nantarn Alliance. Still, what other shalarin could it be?

He reflected grimly that in another moment, it wouldn’t much matter who it had been. The shalarin and its allies were helpless, and Eshcaz was about to kill them. Even if Anton had cared to intervene on behalf of a creature who’d given him to the cultists to torture and enslave, he could only delay the inevitable for a moment or two at most, and that at the cost of his own life.

He knew it, jumped off the ledge anyway, and couldn’t even say why. He wondered if the sword’s irrational, implacable bloodlust had prompted him then decided it didn’t matter. Though he was committing suicide, it felt right: pure, in a black and ferocious way.

The final spell in his meager store allowed him to land softly as a drifting wisp of gossamer, without injury or even a jolt. He charged instantly.

Eshcaz must have been intent on the creatures who’d evidently managed to wound him previously, or else the ambient noise and stinks masked Anton’s approach, for despite the dragon’s keen senses, he didn’t notice the newcomer. Anton cut deep into his flank.

Eshcaz roared and spun around toward his foe, which meant the world shattered into a chaos of sweeping tail and trampling feet. Anton had to duck, dodge, and scramble just to avoid being crushed before the red even oriented on him and made an actual attack.

Eshcaz glared with eyes like hellfire. He opened his fangs, and his wedge-shaped head surged forward and down at the end of the serpentine neck. Anton waited until the final instantdodge too soon and a foe would simply compensatethen wrenched himself aside. The gigantic jaws clashed shut beside him, and he cut at the dragon’s mask.

His sword glanced off the wyrm’s scales. Eshcaz flicked his head sideways, and the great bony mass of it smashed into Anton like a battering ram, flinging him through the air and down on the floor. Claws loomed above him and slashed, and he rolled out from underneath. The dragon immediately leaped, trying to smash down on top of him. He scrambled back and just got clear. When Eshcaz slammed down, the cavern shook.

Anton got his feet planted, poised the greatsword to cut, then glimpsed motion at the periphery of his vision. He had to forgo his own attack to jump away from another sweep of Eshcaz’s talons.

Well, he thought, at least I managed to cut the bastard once. He feinted left then scuttled right, trying to get back on the red’s flank. Eshcaz sneered, and with a quickness incredible in a thing so huge, matched him shift for shift. Wisps of smoke seeped from his nostrils and between his fangs.

Tu’ala’keth rolled and rolled, and still fire clung to her like a horde of leeches. She wondered if Anton who had, after all, betrayed her in the endhad lied about the way to put out such a conflagration. Perhaps rolling intensified the flames.

But they finally guttered out, either because she’d smothered them or because the curse that had kindled them had run out its time. She tried to lift her head, and even with the fire gone, her entire body cried out in agony.

She slumped back down and might even have stayed that way, too daunted to try again, except that Eshcaz was roaring and snarling, and once she noticed, she remembered how wrong that was. She shouldn’t be able to hear the red. Silence was an essential component of the defenses against him.

Despite the torture of charred skin cracking and splitting, she managed to take a look around. The surviving ‘chitls and locathahs appeared as helpless as she was. Though she hadn’t truly been able to see through her shroud of flame, she’d had a vague impression of a succession of mystical attacks hammering them, and it was evidently so.

Eshcaz was on their side of the cave, and no wave or waterspout was forming to shove him back. Plainly, all the wards were gone. The red would no doubt have finished off his original adversaries already, except that a lone human had appeared from somewhere to challenge him. He had an octopus tattooed on one arm and wielded a huge sword with shadow drifting and twisting inside the steelimpossible as it seemed, it was Anton!

Naturally, he couldn’t prevail against Eshcaz. It was miraculous he’d lasted any time at all. But magic had hurt the dragon. If Anton could keep the creature busy a little longer, it was at least remotely possible it might finish the job of killing the red.

Of course, she didn’t mean her own personal magic. Even if she were still capable of articulating a complete incantation with the necessary precision, it simply wasn’t strong enough. But the remaining spells bound in Yzil’s book might serve.

She expected to find the pages lying right beside her. When she didn’t, though, she dimly recalled dropping them at the moment she burst into flame then reeling blindly about before she fell. She looked around and spotted them scattered a few feet away. As weak and anguished as she felt, it was like peering through a scrying mirror and observing them on the far side of the world.

She started crawling on her belly. Her silverweave rattled and clinked. Bits of ruined skin broke off and flaked away.

The pain was like a tide trying to sweep her into darkness, and she had to fight the desire to let it take her. Umberlee, she thought, Umberlee, Umberlee, Umberlee. It was as much of a prayer as she could manage.

Finally she reached the sheets of horn. Certain she was on the very brink of losing consciousness, she pawed through them to find the first spell she needed. That was almost as difficult as crawling. Her cooked fingers couldn’t bend or grasp.

Here! Here it was, but could she actually use it? Though mercifully short compared to an entire spell, the trigger phrase required accurate enunciation, too, and she wasn’t sure she even still had a voice. Maybe the fire had burned that away also.

She sought to steady herself, to hold back the pain that might otherwise have made stammer and stumble, then tried to whisper. The words came out faintly but clearly.

Magic washed over her like the caress of the sea. Pain faded. Scorched and blistered skin blurred, flowed, and became smooth and soft. Her dorsal fin, which had nearly burned away, extended into the high, scalloped crest it had been before.

She looked at the battle just a few yards away. Somehow, Anton was still on his feet. Perhaps Eshcaz was playing with him. The dragon’s chest pumped, and his neck swelled in time. If she’d seen a lesser air-breather doing that, she would have inferred it was winded. But the red’s strength seemed inexhaustible, and judging from the smoke streaming from his mouth and nostrils, she suspected he was actually recharging his depleted breath weapon.

Once he accomplished that, his foes would have no hope at all. She hastily returned to the pages of Yzil’s book. They were depleted, also, the majority of spells cast already, and most of the remaining ones, duplicates of invocations that had already failed to put the dragon down.

But one potentially crippling spell remained. She would have attempted it already, except that it required the caster to touch the target, and she and her allies had hoped to stay away from him. But now that their defenses had fallen, that was no longer a consideration.

She murmured the trigger phrase, and an aching throbbed deep in her right hand. It was bearable enoughcompared to the agony of burning, it was almost laughablebut even so, she could sense the profound malignancy it represented. Fortunately, it was incapable of inflicting its devastation on her.

She cast about, found her trident, snatched it up in her off hand, and ran forward. Though seemingly intent on Anton, Eshcaz must have heard her coming or else felt the bane she harbored in her flesh, for he whirled to face her.

His neck bulged, and his head cocked back. His flame had renewed itself, and he was about to spit it at her, while she was still nowhere near enough to touch him. Nor did she have any realistic hope of dodging the great expanding blaze that was his breath.

But Anton rushed the foe whod pivoted away from him. Its seething darkness smeared with gore, the greatsword swung high and swept down to bury itself in Eshcaz’s side.

It must have found a vulnerable spot, for the dragon convulsed, and the spasm made him spew his flame too high. Tu’ala’keth threw herself to the floor, and the crackling flare passed harmlessly above her. The fierce heat was unpleasant, but did her no harm.

Eshcaz rounded furiously on Anton, which required twisting away from her. She scrambled up and charged. The red lifted a foreleg to rake at the swordsman, and she planted her hand midway along the limb.

She winced at the blistering heat of the reptile’s body. Then the power she’d invoked leaped from her flesh into his, and he screeched. His scaly hide split again and again, into a Crosshatch of gashes. Between the cuts, sores opened to seep and fester, and knotted tumors bulged. A milky cataract sealed one blazing golden eye.

The dragon shuddered and took a stumbling step. Tu’ala’keth stabbed him repeatedly with her trident. She suspected that, on the other side of the gigantic creature, Anton was attacking just as relentlessly, doing his utmost to take advantage of Eshcaz’s vulnerability.

Then, unbelievably, the red regained control of his ravaged body. A wing snapped down out of nowhere to swat Tu’ala’keth to the ground. Eshcaz poised his head to seize her in his fangs. She tried to spring back to her feet, but dazed, could only clamber clumsily. It wasn’t going to be quick enough.

But the wyrm’s head slammed down beside her. His body listed ponderously to the side then toppled. His limbs flailed, feet clawing, tail lashing, but not at any target. After a few moments, the thrashing subsided. He shivered and lay dead.

Tu’ala’keth surmised that as Eshcaz had prepared to strike at her, Anton must have scored a final, fatal blow. She started around the enormous corpse to find the human.