The Dragon's Doom

YOU KNOW ME, AS ALL MEN KNOW ME.

"Yes, Dark One!"

YOU HAVE SEIZED POWER ENOUGH. I AM PLEASED. BE NOW THE "GREAT SERPENT," IF IT AMUSES YOU TO BE SO.

And the Thrael opened out around him, thrumming and vast and-thrilling. In the heart of clashing Dwaer-fire, even as Gadaster's attack stabbed into him and agonies that should have slain him surged through him, Ingryl Ambelter beheld… and gasped. So this was what he'd been missing! Not just Stones of trapped and frozen power, but a living web of magic, with awareness of its own, great-

And suddenly that great weight of darkness was gone from his mind, without even bothering to utter, "Or else."

Ingryl Ambelter rose out of what he now realized had been an awestruck daze, and gathered his newfound power around himself. So this is what it was, to be a Great Serpent!

With a bellow of exulting laughter, the Spellmaster of All Aglirta hurled a bolt that should easily destroy his former master, Dwaer and all!

A flash was born beyond his spread fingertips, and then a mighty roar arose and went on and on, as the far wall of the scorched chamber vanished, the ceiling fell into his bolt and suffered the same fate, and sunlight flooded in to show him room after passage after great chamber of the building beyond vanishing into rubble and emptiness, the sheared-off edges slowly collapsing inward with ground-shaking thunder.

The sunlight also flashed back from something small and bright and whirling, that hung in the air much closer to him. At a spot where Gadaster-in the Bowdragon maid's stolen body-might well have been.

Ingryl peered at it, and then nodded grimly. Gadaster had teleported away and left behind a shimmering wildfield-just as he himself had done when fleeing his lair, to keep the cursed Band of Four from following. Should he try to use his Dwaer to trace and follow, he'd be whirled away to a random elsewhere.

Ah, but what if he called on the Thrael instead?

Shimmering in his mind, it waited, but Ingryl saw in a moment both its lure-he could spend oblivious days racing along its flows, examining this new magic, and that-and its unsuitability.

No doubt he could trace his foe's teleport, given hours of looking or lucky anticipation of where Gadaster might be headed, so that he looked first in just the right place… But what, during those hours, would his onetime master be doing? Teleporting again almost immediately, for one thing…

Bah! What need had he now, to concern himself with such trifles? Let the skull-wizard strut around in his stolen wench-body! Ingryl Ambelter might have had to worry about a walking skeleton with wiles and a Dwaer, but the Great Serpent could laugh at the worst Gadaster Mulkyn could do!

Ambelter's own Dwaer blazed with a fierce, triumphant flame in his hand, and he laughed as he looked down at it, half-drunk on the dark, whispering power raging in him. It would always rage there, making him as restless and as mighty as he was now…

Letting him do-this!

He gave in to the whispering urgings and grew, transforming himself, towering up over what was left of the riven temple walls, becoming serpentine and giant, a Great Serpent in truth.

Wavering higher, as tall as the highest keep he'd ever stood upon, Ingryl Ambelter gazed down the Vale, opened great fanged jaws, and roared in triumph.

His roar came out as a thunderous hiss, as he swayed back and forth, gloating. The Silverflow made its own coiling way across the land below him, the Thrael reached out like a glittering net around him, and… the Thrael!

The moment he thought of it, its fascination snared him again, and he dwindled, the gigantic serpent-body forgotten. The Great Serpent shuddered down out of sight, towering into the sky no longer.

Lost in the wonder of the Thrael, Ingryl Ambelter stood naked amid the shreds of his torn robes, his Dwaer-Stone blazing in his hand, and never noticed the surviving Serpent-priests, all around him in the ruins, going to their knees and then to their faces on the stone floor, in silent, awestruck reverence.