The Spectral Blaze

NINE

27 E LEASIS, THE Y EAR OF THE A GELESS O NE

As Jet neared the earthmote, Cera tried not to imagine arrows streaking up out of the dark. She knew her companions were formidable. After all she’d experienced since the day she met the man to whose waist she was currently clinging, she was starting to feel reasonably formidable herself. Still, it took only one lucky shot to kill any human being, windsoul, or even a griffon. Of everyone flying in the vanguard, only Alasklerbanbastos was all but certain to survive any initial attack, and he was a potential threat to the rest of them.

But he wouldn’t be if she stopped fretting and attended to her job. She let go of Aoth with her right hand, slipped it into the pouch on her belt, and gripped the shadow stone.

The contact she so established wasn’t psychic communication like Aoth shared with Jet. It was more raw and primitive than that. But as usual, she felt the dragon’s arrogance, cruelty, and the filthy, unnatural force that sustained his existence, and they grated on her like the rasp of fingernails on a slate. She also felt Alasklerbanbastos’s stab of disgust at her touch and the slavery and indignity it represented.

Jet, Eider, and the dracolich set down on the stony floating island-more or less like a mountaintop with the rest of the mountain scooped out from underneath it-without either of the sentries loosing arrows at them or raising the alarm. Aoth had said he’d chosen a line of approach that neither wyrmkeeper could see well, and darkness and stealth had done the rest.

The six genasi set down too, and the winds that had carried them made Cera’s vestments flap and tousled her curls where they stuck out from under her helmet. She and Aoth swung themselves off Jet’s back, and the familiar immediately lashed his wings and flew away to pick up two more riders. When Gaedynn and Son-liin dismounted, Eider followed.

Gaedynn laid an arrow on his bow then, keeping low, led Son-liin and the windsouls in the direction of the bridge. Their first task was to capture it and keep any wyrmkeepers on the far side from crossing.

Whereas Aoth and Alasklerbanbastos’s job was to slaughter the priests on the near side. They hoped to divest Vairshekellabex of allies before he even realized he was under attack.

The warmage and the undead dragon skulked toward the vague forms of the five standing stones the wyrmkeepers had raised and then magically twisted into serpentine shapes. No doubt it was a shrine of sorts, and the priests dwelling on the earthmote had built their huts and pitched their tents around it.

Aoth skulked into one hut, and Alasklerbanbastos slipped his head under a lean-to. Cera could picture the spear thrusts that followed and the piercing and shearing as the dragon’s fangs nipped sleeping men to pieces.

Much as she’d come to detest wyrmkeepers-the wretches had tortured her, after all-Cera was still happy to be excused from such merciless brutality. She was quite happy that it was her chore to hold Alasklerbanbastos’s leash from far enough away that he couldn’t suddenly spin around and strike at her.

A soft, brushing noise came from the left. Her heartbeat accelerating, she pivoted in that direction and poised her buckler in front of her. She remembered Aoth telling her that she tended to hold it too close to her body and shifted it out a little farther.

No matter how she peered, she couldn’t see a threat, no stray wyrmkeeper creeping or wandering around in the night. She wished she could summon Amaunator’s light, but of course that would give away everything.

When no arrow flew at her and no magic flared, she decided her nerves were playing tricks or else she’d heard a night bird or some small nocturnal animal.

She turned back around and located Alasklerbanbastos slinking in the dark, and the sound came again, a bit louder and, therefore, surely, closer.

She jerked around and still couldn’t see anything amiss. But instinct screamed that she was in danger.

She backed up a step, and the clouds that veiled the earthmote parted for a moment. Selune’s light gleamed and rippled on a flat something flowing over the ground. At first Cera thought it was streaming liquid or a swarm of beetles scuttling as one. Then, perhaps comprehending that she’d spotted it, it heaved itself upward.

It was a hollow dragon. The billowing, sagging, flopping way it moved showed there was nothing inside the leathery hide. It reminded Cera of the costumes that a line of Tchazzar cultists sometimes wore to parade through the streets of Luthcheq. But those constructions were meant to look like red dragons. The sparks that started popping and sizzling and the smell like an approaching storm that mixed with the reek of corruption suggested that the empty wyrm was in some sense a blue.

It was a blue like Alasklerbanbastos, whose flayed appearance she finally understood. Still retreating, she gripped the phylactery and focused her will to force him to call off his creation.

But before she could pour sunlight into the gem, pain stabbed out of it, up her arm and into her head. She staggered and the stone nearly slipped from her fingers.

I didn’t know he could turn it around! she thought, feeling outraged as a child who’d caught a playmate cheating at a game. He never showed me that he could!

White light flickered inside the hollow dragon, at the back of the mouth and behind the empty eye sockets. Realizing what was coming, denying the all-but-paralyzing pain, Cera flung herself to the side. Her attacker’s breath, a dazzling bolt of lightning, blazed past her. Thunder boomed.

Now, Cera thought, now I’ll get the lich. But the empty dragon lunged at her, and she had to focus on avoiding that attack… and the next one… and the next.

Aoth was creeping from a hut to the tent next to it when the thunder boomed. As he spun around, he assumed that some idiot stormsoul had seen a threat and, forgetting that everyone was supposed to keep quiet, exerted his elemental powers in response.

But in fact, it was worse than that. Alasklerbanbastos had turned away from his appointed task and was bounding back the way they’d come, toward the edge of the earthmote and Cera. For some reason, he evidently believed she couldn’t hurt him with the phylactery anymore, and he no doubt had good reason for his confidence. For a heartbeat Aoth thought of Chathi, who’d died because he hadn’t anticipated another clever creature’s secret plan.

He started to run after Alasklerbanbastos then realized he’d never catch him. He pointed his spear and shouted a word of power.

A spark leaped from the point of the weapon, hurtled through the dark, struck the top of the dracolich’s tail, and exploded into a booming burst of flame. Alasklerbanbastos jerked and stumbled but then ran on.

Aoth spun his spear over his head and called floating, spinning blades of amber light into being, right in front of the undead wyrm. Alasklerbanbastos couldn’t stop or turn in time to avoid them, and they sheared chunks of rotting flesh away.

“Turn and fight me!” Aoth shouted. “Otherwise I’ll tear you apart!”

Alasklerbanbastos kept charging toward Cera. He was already close enough to attack her with his breath or a spell but apparently wanted to use fang and claw instead. Another bound or two would close the distance.

The bridge linking the earthmote to the mountaintop was a slender, arching, granite span seemingly extruded from the bedrock. It had low, rudimentary parapets and, as far as Gaedynn could tell, no tangible understructure to keep it from collapsing under its own weight. Magic had made it and sustained it.

One of the earthmote’s two sentries had stood watch on that end of the bridge. His corpse lay facedown with Son-liin’s arrow sticking out of its spine. Gaedynn took another look around, making sure nothing was happening that required his attention, then squatted and started rummaging through the wyrmkeeper’s possessions.

One of the windsouls made a little spitting sound.

“What?” Gaedynn asked, whispering. “We have time and if I find anything, I’ll share.”

“We’re not doing this for loot,” the firestormer said.

“That doesn’t mean you have to shrink from it in horror,” Gaedynn replied.

Son-liin chuckled and a thunderclap split the night. Somewhere behind them, something flashed.

His eyes wide, blue gleams flowing rapidly through the lines that etched his skin, the windsoul who’d taken exception to Gaedynn’s sellsword ways looked as if he’d forgotten all about them. “It’s too soon!” he said. “We aren’t all on the earthmote yet. We can’t be. There hasn’t been time!”

“That’s war for you,” said Gaedynn, rising and reaching for an arrow. “Nothing-” A burst of fire flared in the dark. Specifically, the dark off to the left, near the edge of the floating island. He felt a jolt of alarm.

Vairshekellabex’s cave was in the center of the earthmote. If he’d come out sooner than expected, but Aoth and Alasklerbanbastos had met him with blasts of battle magic and dragon breath, that wouldn’t have been too bad. But the flashes and noise were coming from the wrong spot for that to be the case.

It was just a guess, but Gaedynn suspected Alasklerbanbastos had devised another ploy to steal back his freedom, and Aoth and Cera were trying to subdue him. If so, then there was no one in position to deal with Vairshekellabex when he emerged as, roused by all the commotion, he surely would.

“Hold the bridge,” Gaedynn said. “Make sure no enemy sneaks up behind you. I have to go.”

He stalked toward the heart of the earthmote. Spinning lengths of yellow light appeared on the left. Aoth’s magic, most likely. Gaedynn had seen him use the spell before.

He heard a scuffing footstep and spun around, drawing his bow as he did. Son-liin was trotting to catch up with him.

“I told you to defend the bridge,” he said.

“There!” she said. She showed him where she meant by pivoting and loosing an arrow of her own.

He turned. Flaring into existence when he hadn’t been ready, the various lights had robbed him of some of his night vision. But he could still see a wyrmkeeper folding up around the shaft Son-liin had driven into his guts. Plainly Aoth and Alasklerbanbastos hadn’t disposed of all the wretches before the plan started falling apart.

Two more figures rushed out of the murk, one human, the other not. When Gaedynn saw its leathery wings and lashing tail, he cursed. Aoth had scouted the earthmote from afar but hadn’t noticed any abishais. Either the devil hadn’t been out in the open then, or one of the dragon priests had just conjured it out of Tiamat’s infernal domain.

Gaedynn shot an arrow into its chest. The attack would have dropped any man, but the creature kept coming. The tail lifted, ready to sting, and the abishai spit a misty spray that was all but invisible in the dark.

Gaedynn sprang to the side. At the same moment, red light flared at the edge of his vision, and white shone and crackled in answer. He surmised that the wyrmkeeper had struck at Son-liin with a spell, and she’d retaliated with her stormsoul abilities. But he couldn’t tell to what effect and didn’t dare look away from his own opponent to find out.

The spray spattered down beside him, sizzling on stone and earth. Though it had missed, the fumes that suffused the air stung his exposed skin and, more seriously, his eyes. Tears welled up and blurred his vision.

Then he realized he didn’t see the abishai anymore. Either he’d simply lost it in the haze and the dark or it was using a supernatural ability to befuddle him. He thought of the stinger reared to stab into his body and pump it full of vitriol.

Nocking another arrow, he backed up and looked for the creature. For a moment, he still couldn’t find the abishai. Then something, a footfall so soft or a scent so faint he wasn’t even conscious of it, or maybe just pure instinct told him his foe was still in front of him and somewhat to the right.

He pivoted, drew, and seemed to be aiming straight at Son-liin. If the abishai wasn’t really between them, or if he simply missed the creature, he stood an excellent chance of killing the genasi girl instead.

He told himself he neither jumped at shadows nor did he miss. He shot, the arrow thumped home, and the abishai became visible in mid-pounce. It convulsed and Gaedynn had little difficulty sidestepping it and avoiding the scrabbling claws and whipping sting. For after all, they were no longer targeting him. The abishai was fighting the one truly invincible foe. Its spasms subsided and it lay motionless.

Gaedynn spun toward the other fight. Except it wasn’t a fight anymore. The dragon priest was down. With a grunt of effort, one foot planted on the body, Son-liin pulled her long hunter’s knife from between the wyrmkeeper’s ribs.

“I was going to say,” the genasi panted, “that I’m not under an enchantment this time. I can help you with Vairshekellabex.”

Gaedynn grinned. “Not that I’m admitting I need help, but pick up your bow and hurry if you’re coming.”

They trotted onward, slowing down and skulking when they neared the cave. No one and nothing else accosted them, so maybe Aoth and Alasklerbanbastos had killed most of the wyrmkeepers. But they didn’t encounter any other genasi either.

Are the other firestormers still coming, Gaedynn wondered, or did the lights and sounds on the earthmote spook them? By the Hells, just getting on a griffon’s back was a daunting prospect all by itself if you’d never done it before. But if the firestormers were balking, maybe Jet could bully them into following through.

The black mouth of the cave yawned in the eastern face of a big, granite knob. Peering around a smaller outcropping, Gaedynn barely had time to look at it before a deafening roar echoed from within. Then the same deep, sibilant voice chanted rhyming couplets in what he assumed to be the draconic tongue. Blue sparks fell from the air. For a moment the darkness was something he felt rather than saw, like cool silk sliding on his skin, and the cries and other muddled sounds of combat coming from behind him were a metallic taste in his tongue.

“Oh, good,” he said as the synesthesia faded. “Vairshekellabex is a sorcerer.”

A huge head at the end of a serpentine neck came twisting out of the cave to peer about. Its jaws seemed disproportionately large in relation to the rest of the skull, and yet the rows of crooked, protruding fangs likewise appeared grotesquely oversized in relation to the mouth. Spiky growths dangled under the lower jaw to make a kind of beard.

“He’s big too,” Son-liin whispered. Despite her attempt at bravado, she wasn’t quite able to keep a tremor out of her voice, and Gaedynn didn’t blame her. Judging from the head, Vairshekellabex was twice as big as Yemere had been and likely twice as old and powerful too.

Gaedynn’s first impulse was to try to sink an arrow into Vairshekellabex’s eye. But that one attack probably wouldn’t kill him. No single wound ever seemed to stop a wyrm. Yet his first effort, whatever it was, would give away his location.

He drew one of the two remaining enchanted arrows from his quiver and laid it on his bow. Then he stepped into the open, drew, and loosed.

As he intended, the shaft flew over Vairshekellabex’s head, then vanished in a flash and a howl. A section of the cavern ceiling cracked apart, and banging and rumbling, the pieces rained down on top of the wyrm.

In fact, they drove his head and neck-which were still the only parts Gaedynn could see-to the floor and buried them. But the granite shards began to shift immediately. Plainly Vairshekellabex was still conscious and trying to drag himself free.

Gaedynn cursed and shot the last of the magic arrows. It, too, exploded into light and noise, and it brought more chunks of granite raining down to add to the pile. But afterward the mound continued to shift. Pieces spilled off the top and clattered down the sides.

Son-liin drew an arrow of her own. “Grumbar,” she said, “please help me.” She kissed the broad-head point of the shaft, and a glimmer flowed through the golden lines in her skin.

Then she shot the arrow into the pile, and golden light rippled through it as well. Grinding and crunching, the chunks of stone bunched more tightly together. Some hissed as one fused to another.

“Nice work,” Gaedynn said.

“It still won’t hold him for long,” Son-liin replied. “I’m much more of a stormsoul than an earthsoul. I did what I could, but…”

Her eyes rolled up in her head, and she pitched forward. Gaedynn caught her and laid her on the ground.

Up ahead, with Alasklerbanbastos rapidly closing on her, Cera jammed the shadow stone back into the purse on her belt. Her hand twitched toward the gilded mace hanging on her other hip, but then didn’t grab it. She evidently realized there wasn’t time. Instead, she simply raised her arm high and swept it in an arc from east to west. “Keeper!” she cried.

Golden light blazed around her, and finally Alasklerbanbastos balked and recoiled from the sun god’s holy power. So did a thing like an empty, flopping sack sewn in the shape of a dragon.

Aoth had been so intent on the dracolich that, his fire-kissed eyes notwithstanding, he hadn’t noticed the other threat until that moment. It reminded him of the skin kites he’d fought in Thay and was certainly a product of necromancy, specifically of Alasklerbanbastos’s necromancy. The undead creature had apparently flayed his own rotting hide to make himself a servant.

Aoth ran around Alasklerbanbastos and put himself between the dracolich and Cera. The sheer drop at the edge of the earthmote was just a stone’s throw behind him, limiting his ability to maneuver.

“Use the phylactery!” he yelled.

“He can use the link to hurt me too,” Cera panted. “But if I concentrate-”

With a snap like a sail catching the wind, the empty dragon rushed into the light. Aoth started to pivot in that direction, but then Alasklerbanbastos surged forward too.

Aoth jerked back around and stepped to meet the dracolich. He thrust with his spear and released much of the power stored within it, to infuse the thrust with destructive force and anchor himself to the ground, so his foe’s momentum wouldn’t fling him backward or bowl him over.

The spear stabbed deep into the wyrm’s lower jaw. A white burst of power banged and flung scraps of decayed flesh, bone, and broken teeth through the air. Alasklerbanbastos stumbled to a halt but instantly raised a forefoot.

Aoth scrambled right to keep the undead dragon from clawing him, then sensed motion on his left. He glanced in that direction. Alasklerbanbastos’s head had looped around toward him.

The dragon’s gaze made his own head spin. Suddenly it was as though the floating island had flipped on its side, and he was falling into his adversary’s eyes.

He focused his will on one of the tattoos on his chest and activated its magic. A surge of clarity and vigor washed his vertigo away, and he wrenched his eyes away from the wyrm’s. It was only then that he could see his foe’s jaws opening and the glow at the back of the mouth.

He dived forward. Lightning flared behind him, the flash illuminating the raw, reeking putridity of Alasklerbanbastos’s body in all its ugliness.

Aoth landed on his knees. Alasklerbanbastos lifted a foot to stamp. His neck kept twisting to put Aoth in front of his jaws and eyes again.

Aoth scrambled underneath the dragon. At that moment it was the safest place. Bellowing, he thrust the spear up between the massive ribs. When he jerked the weapon out, black sludge spattered down from the puncture.

Alasklerbanbastos’s legs flexed. Aoth realized his foe was about to take flight, and once that happened it would be impossible to keep the creature from turning his attention back on Cera. He rattled off words of power and swept the spear in an arc.

Tentacles of inky shadow burst out of the ground. They wrapped around Alasklerbanbastos’s hind feet and tail. While he had the creature immobilized, Aoth repeatedly drove the spear into his chest.

The dracolich snarled a rhyme in Draconic. Magic whined through the air and for a moment turned everything a sickly phosphorescent green. The black tentacles melted, and the steaming residue flowed down his limbs like oil.

Aoth ran toward one of Alasklerbanbastos’s forefeet. Maybe he could nail the creature to the ground with his spear. But before he could reach the extremity, the dragon jumped away.

To Aoth’s relief, though, Alasklerbanbastos didn’t take to the air. The wyrm just sprang away across the ground, uncovering him. Then he could see why. Jet and Eider had returned and were swooping and wheeling over the lich, crowding him, denying him the room he needed to take off.

Each griffon was carrying a pair of firestormers. The genasi were hanging on desperately, plainly too terrified to do anything more. One of them was screaming.

Aoth didn’t blame the fellow. Alasklerbanbastos’s wings were sweeping up and down. His tail swirled through the air. He struck like a serpent, his fangs clashing shut. It must have seemed impossible to their passengers that the griffons could dodge every attack.

It was certainly impossible that they could do it for very long, not unless somebody gave Alasklerbanbastos something else to think about. Aoth called fire from his spear and slashed it down the dragon’s flank like a sword.

Just die! he thought. I killed you before, when you were in a much stronger body than this. But then he’d had Tchazzar, Jaxanaedegor, and several other dragons fighting on his side.

As he dashed to interpose himself between the dracolich and Cera once more, it seemed to him that the phylactery was still the key. Cera could subdue their foe if she could only take the time to reassert her mastery of the stone. But the hollow wyrm was still pressing her relentlessly, pushing her back parallel to the edge of the cliff. The unnatural thing lunged, then snapped and raked with fangs and claws of hardened hide, and she hit back with the mace of amber glow she’d floated in the air between them.

Aoth aimed his spear at the sack-wyrm and growled the first words of an incantation intended to tear it to shreds. Then he heard a thump, and the rocky ground jolted beneath him.

He looked around. Alasklerbanbastos had made another leap, away from the griffons and off the line that Aoth had closed with his body. Now there was nothing but clear space between the dracolich and the priestess who had dared to chastise and control him.

Still chanting, Aoth resolved to turn his spell on Alasklerbanbastos. Then it came to him that there was a better tactic.

“Cera!” he bellowed. “Throw the stone! Over the side!”

Startled, she glanced over at him, then grinned and dropped the mace of metal and wood in her hand. She reached into her belt pouch, snatched out the shadow gem, and flung it into space.

Alasklerbanbastos froze. The empty wyrm did too, as though consternation had leaped from the mind of the creator to the creation.

“That’s your soul falling into the gorge,” panted Aoth. “Your existence. Your liberty. You and your friend can stay up here and fight us, or you can go look for it.”

Alasklerbanbastos roared. Then he ran at Cera. But when she scrambled out of the way, he didn’t pivot with her. He simply pounded onward, leaped off the edge, and plunged out of sight. After a heartbeat, the empty dragon did the same, although, its loose folds catching the air, it fell more slowly.

That, said Jet, speaking mind to mind, was actually a little bit clever.

I thought so, Aoth replied.

Or at least it would have been if you’d come up with it sooner.

Aoth snorted. You and Eider, stop loafing. Put your passengers on the ground and go back for the next four.

As the griffons did as instructed-and a watersoul dropped to his knees and puked-Aoth headed for Cera, who hurried to meet him. They hugged for a moment as best they could with weapons, shields, and armor in the way. Their gear clinked together.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said, “except that I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “I’m the one-”

At their backs, toward the center of the earthmote, something roared.

“Curse it!” he said. “Come on!” He strode in the direction of the noise, and she followed.

Tiny flames rippling through the asymmetrical mask of lines on his face, Mardiz-sul scurried toward them. “That’s Vairshekellabex!” he said.

“I imagine so,” Aoth answered.

“But… we don’t have our own dragon to pit against him anymore!”

“If we fight, we have a chance,” said Aoth. “If we don’t, we can be absolutely sure Vairshekellabex will kill us. So I recommend fighting. Collect those three”-he indicated the other new arrivals with a poke of his spear-“and come on.”

He’d done his best to project toughness and determination, but inwardly he understood Mardiz-sul’s dismay. Their situation was likely to turn out bad. Vairshekellabex might already be on the wing, soaring overhead to blast the intruders with his breath. Aoth scanned the sky but didn’t see the wyrm.

And when he and his companions reached the center of the floating island, he realized why. Vairshekellabex, or the front end of him, anyway, was evidently caught under the heap of fallen stone in the mouth of the cavern. Gaedynn stood watching with his customary air of insouciance, as if the gray’s situation were faintly amusing but of no actual significance. Shielded behind an outcropping, Son-liin lay unconscious on the ground.

Cera crouched beside the girl.

“She’s just napping,” Gaedynn said. “She strained herself. Some of us had to take up the slack when others weren’t where they were supposed to be. What was it, Alasklerbanbastos slipping the leash? Whoever could have predicted that?”

“Tell me what I need to know,” Aoth rapped.

Gaedynn’s flippant demeanor fell away. “You see we trapped the gray. But I can’t imagine it holding him for long. Right before the stone fell on top of him, he cast a spell. Something to make him stronger or faster, maybe, since it didn’t do anything else that I could see.”

“Right.” Aoth turned to Mardiz-sul and the other genasi. “Surround the cave entrance.” He pointed to the watersoul who’d vomited, leaving stinking spatters of puke on the front of his brigandine. “Except you. You run to the bridge. Whatever happened there, our squad should have it under control by now. Leave one man to stand guard and fetch the rest. Everybody, move!”

The genasi burst into motion. The watersoul sprinted with the inhuman speed of his kind, as if an invisible current was sweeping him along.

Cera looked up from her examination of Son-liin. “She just fainted,” the priestess said.

“Then leave her,” said Aoth. “We have to get into position too and break whatever enchantment Vairshekellabex already cast, if we can.”

He and Gaedynn positioned themselves squarely in front of the cave. The dragon was going to attack someone, and for the moment, it needed to be the warriors who had the best chance of surviving. Cera crouched behind a boulder off to the left. It would give her some protection without hindering her spellcasting.

His pulse beating in his neck, Aoth aimed his spear and chanted a spell whose purpose was to dissolve other enchantments. Cera murmured the start of a prayer.

Then the heap of stone fell in on itself. Vairshekellabex had finally succeeded in dragging his head and neck out the back end of it. A deep voice hissed a word of command, and the whole mound shattered into bits of gravel, which instantly hurtled from the mouth of the cave like a thousand slung stones.

It was pure reflex that made Aoth raise his targe in time to cover his face and eyes. The barrage clattered on his armor, stung him all over, and sent him reeling backward.

He caught his balance and looked around. Grinning, Gaedynn was rolling to his feet with one bloody pock on his cheek and another on his chin. He’d plainly saved himself from worse by dropping flat, as Cera had by cowering behind her boulder. And everyone else had been standing to one side or the other of the barrage.

Aoth returned Gaedynn’s smile. He surmised that they’d just experienced the result of the magic Vairshekellabex had conjured previously. It had been a spell of blasting prepared in advance, then triggered by a single word of command. Since it had been discharged, it was one less thing to worry about.

But when Vairshekellabex lunged out into the open, it became immediately apparent that there were plenty of other reasons for concern. One earthsoul yelped at the dragon’s size and speed, or maybe at the sheer horrific grotesquerie of the jutting, tangled fangs.

Aoth took a step, shouted a word of power, and hurled crackling lightning from his spear. The dazzling flare burned into Vairshekellabex’s chest, and the gray threw back his head and howled.

Gaedynn loosed an arrow. The shaft stabbed into the underside of their foe’s scaly neck.

Bobbing up from behind her stone, Cera stretched out her arm and said, “I pray for your holy light.” A brilliant beam shot from her fingertips and stabbed a smoking, black-edged hole in one of the dragon’s wings.

Mardiz-sul ran forward, shouted, and swung his sword at Vairshekellabex’s flank. The blade burst into flame as it arced through the air.

And at that point, all the other genasi started fighting too, shooting crossbow bolts and flinging javelins. Thank the Firelord, thought Aoth. Now we’ve got a chance anyway.

Vairshekellabex’s tail whipped through the air. Mardiz-sul ducked barely in time to keep it from smashing his skull. But at the same moment, the wyrm lunged forward. He was coming at Aoth and Gaedynn, but one of the spines on the hock of his hind leg snagged the firesoul’s sword arm, catching between two links of mail then popping free in a splash of blood.

Mardiz-sul froze in place like a statue. His red-bronze skin turned gray.

Meanwhile, Vairshekellabex cocked his head back, snapped it forward, and opened his jaws wide. Gray spew blasted out, and Aoth and Gaedynn threw themselves out of the way.

The caustic spray hammered the ground but didn’t splash like water. By the time it hit, it was already congealing, and it ended up as a freestanding web of interconnected globs, loops, and tendrils. Imagining the steaming, sizzling goo eating into his flesh and sticking to it at the same time, Aoth winced and roused the protective magic of another tattoo.

Then, spinning his spear through the necessary figure, he created a second such weapon made of rippling, multicolored light. It hefted itself as though an invisible warrior were holding it, threw itself at Vairshekellabex’s head, and guided by its creator’s will, started jabbing.

Gaedynn shot a second arrow into the dragon’s neck just as the first one fell out, the end of it charred away. If it meant the shaft had gone in deep enough to come into contact with Vairshekellabex’s caustic spew, Aoth supposed that was a good thing. Although so far, it didn’t seem to be slowing the gray down any.

Meanwhile, braving the lashing tail, stamping hind foot, and pounding wing that could have swatted him like a fly, an earthsoul scuttled forward to Mardiz-sul. He gripped the Bright Sword by the shoulder and jabbered something Aoth had no hope of hearing, not with Vairshekellabex snarling, Firetormers screaming war cries and warnings, and all the rest of the cacophony. But maybe it was a charm or a prayer meant to help the earthsoul exploit his affinity with stone, because the red and gold washed back into Mardiz-sul’s face, and freed from the bonds of petrifaction, he staggered backward with his comrade.

Vairshekellabex’s forefoot snatched for Aoth. He sidestepped and tried to jab it but was too slow. The gray started to claw again, and another arrow appeared in his neck right beside the last one and the gory hole left by the one before that. He hissed and his talons fell short of the mark.

Aoth made the rainbow spear stab for the throat as well. Vairshekellabex snarled a monosyllabic word of command in one of the Abyssal or Infernal tongues that filled a man with instinctive loathing even if he didn’t understand them. The spear blinked out of existence.

Then the dragon’s head jerked to the right. He opened his jaws and spewed his breath weapon. But the acidic slime arced high over the heads of any of the genasi on that flank and spattered the ground well behind him.

Aoth felt a vicarious surge of Jet’s derision: You missed us, wyrm! Then the griffon focused his thoughts on his master. We’re back. Do you want us to keep ferrying genasi across or start fighting the dragon?

Get the firestormers off your backs and get Gaedynn and me on, Aoth replied. There was no point in sending the griffons for any more reinforcements. One way or another, the fight would be over before they could arrive.

The flying steeds swooped to land beside the same mass of granite that was protecting Son-liin. As Aoth created a shower of fist-sized hailstones to batter Vairshekellabex, Gaedynn turned and sprinted toward the outcropping. Aoth thought the archer was breaking away too soon, then noticed his quiver was empty. He couldn’t have attacked again even if he’d stayed put.

Fortunately it was then that the windsouls came flying in from the east, and if any of them hesitated before actually joining the fight, it was only for a moment. In a sense, their advent made up for Gaedynn’s departure. They filled the gap in the rudimentary three-sided formation that was penning the dragon in.

But Aoth was still going to need someone on the same patch of ground that he was currently occupying, someone to brave the very worst Vairshekellabex could do and very possibly die as a result. And it was Mardiz-sul’s bad luck to be the best hand-to-hand combatant among the firestormers.

“Bright Sword!” Aoth bellowed. “Come here!”

Mardiz-sul sprinted toward him immediately, circling wide enough that Vairshekellabex was unlikely to kill him before he arrived. The same earthsoul who’d turned him from stone back into flesh and blood followed along a stride behind him. Eyes wide and body trembling, the watersoul in the vomit-spattered brigandine edged forward to join Aoth as well.

Maybe several warriors, standing together with Cera’s magic supporting them, had a chance of surviving. Aoth could only hope so because he needed them there whatever it cost them.

“Hold this ground!” he said, and Vairshekellabex’s head hurtled down at them. Everyone tried to leap out of the way, but the earthsoul was too slow. The gray’s crooked fangs snapped shut on him, and when the gigantic jaws lifted away, nothing remained but hands, feet, and blood.

Jet bounded into the open. The genasi that he and Eider had just carried to the earthmote followed him.

Aoth swung himself into the griffon’s saddle. Responding to his will, his safety straps started buckling themselves to secure him in place. But Jet didn’t wait on that. He lashed his wings and took to the air instantly.

On their way up, Aoth spotted Gaedynn and Eider above them. The skirmisher’s mount carried additional arrows, and he was shooting them at the dragon’s neck as rapidly as he could, making it look like a pincushion. But he wasn’t keeping his distance while he did it. Eider was diving and tearing at Vairshekellabex, flying on by, wheeling, and diving again.

That, Aoth decided, was the way to do it. He and Gaedynn needed to employ both their own best weapons and those of their steeds if they hoped to kill the seemingly unstoppable horror below them.

I like that plan, said Jet, sensing his intent. The familiar screeched, plunged at one of the gray’s sweeping, leathery wings, and ripped gashes in it as he hurtled past.

As he wheeled, Aoth had time to cast darts of azure light. Then Jet furled his wings and swooped. Aoth charged his spear with chaotic force and struck when his mount did. A century of practice allowed him to thrust safely past Jet’s body and pierce the dragon’s back instead. Power flared and blasted the wound bigger.

Then Jet wrenched himself sideways. Vairshekellabex’s gigantic teeth clashed shut just a finger’s length beyond the tip of his left wing.

Aoth immediately sensed another threat, although he didn’t know exactly what or where. Watch out! he said.

Prompted by either his rider’s intuition or his own, Jet plunged lower. Vairshekellabex’s tail whipped over their heads.

Wings beating, the griffon climbed, seeking to regain the high air. He turned for another pass.

Vairshekellabex snarled words in the same grating, repulsive demonic language he’d used before. The griffon’s black feathers and fur turned gray, and his body froze into immobility.

Jet spun end over end as he fell. Aoth closed his eyes to keep the whirling from impairing his concentration, rested his hand on the hard, ridged stone of his familiar’s neck, and rattled off the words of a counterspell.

Countermagic wasn’t a part of the comprehensive system of battle wizardry he’d studied in his younger years in Thay. It was just an extra trick he’d picked up along the way, and at that moment, he was grimly aware that he wasn’t nearly as good at it. But apparently he was good enough because Jet abruptly exploded into motion once again. Beating his wings, straining with every bit of his strength, the familiar pulled out of his fall.

Afterward his muscles shuddered and twitched. The residual pain of the two transformations and the extreme effort that followed bled across the psychic link and jabbed up and down Aoth’s body. For a moment he felt as though he had wings growing out of his own back, cramping, throbbing wings.

We can retreat for a moment, he said. Catch our breaths.

A man might have answered with an obscenity, but even griffons endowed with an equivalent level of intelligence didn’t grasp the concept. Still, Jet responded with a surge of disgust that conveyed the same message.

If we hold back, he said, it just gives the wyrm a chance to try the same trick again.

There is that, said Aoth. Let’s try this, then. He visualized the sequence of moves, making sure the griffon understood it completely. Then Jet lashed his wings and hurled them forward, straight at Vairshekellabex’s head.

When they were halfway to their target, Aoth hurled darts of crimson light. The dragon avoided them with a sideways curl of his neck. Then, jaws gaping, his head shot at his attackers. It was a move that would have surprised many an opponent. It seemed impossible that the creature could strike in such a blur of speed when he had to whip his head around in a horizontal arc.

But Aoth was ready. He pointed the spear, spoke a word of power, and a floating curtain of rippling rainbows burst into being. Vairshekellabex’s head stabbed through it, and he roared and convulsed as the various magical effects-heat, cold, poison, madness-ripped at his body and mind.

As he jerked his head back out of the sheet of light, Jet beat his wings and flew over it. The familiar then extended his talons and plunged them into the side of Vairshekellabex’s head just where it joined the neck. The sudden stop wrenched Aoth’s body, nearly breaking his own neck, or at least it felt that way. He set the point of his spear ablaze with power and drove it into the gray’s flesh. Jet clawed and bit.

Vairshekellabex raised a forefoot to swipe them to pieces as a man might brush away a mosquito. But he never completed the motion. Instead, he toppled forward, and Mardiz-sul and the other genasi in front of him scurried to get out from underneath. Jet sprang clear.

The dragon’s collapse shook the ground, and he rolled and flailed for a while. The tail was especially energetic, at first whipping even more furiously than before.

But gradually all the spasmodic motion subsided. Wheeling over the gray, studying him, Aoth decided the creature truly was dead. As he let out a long breath, he wondered who had finally delivered the deathblow.

Me, of course, said Jet, furling his wings and swooping toward the ground.

Below them, the genasi started cheering. They, too, had concluded that Vairshekellabex was really finished, and for the moment, the exultation and sheer relief of victory possessed them. There’d be time later to grieve for the several comrades who sprawled just as dead and mangled on the ground.

As Jet set down, Cera stood up from behind her rock. Aoth smiled to see her unharmed. Then Gaedynn and Eider landed.

“Why did you keep shooting for the neck?” asked Aoth.

“It was an experiment,” Gaedynn replied.

Aoth shook his head. “An experiment?”

Gaedynn grinned. “A dragon’s a big target, unworthy of my skills. I had to do something to keep from getting bored.”

As he prowled back and forth and up and down, peering, always peering, Alasklerbanbastos reassured himself repeatedly that he couldn’t possibly lose the phylactery, not in any ultimate sense. He was connected to it. He could feel it calling to him.

Still, it seemed to take forever to find it, and when he finally did, he saw why. Tumbling and bouncing down the steep wall of the gorge, the stone had landed in a drift of last year’s fallen leaves, mostly burying itself in the process.

His forefoot shaking, he picked it up. Its folds billowing as the breeze caught it, the servant he’d fashioned out of his own hide and his own pain looked silently on like a priest assisting with some esoteric rite.

And if it wasn’t quite that, it was at least a moment of utter profundity. Aoth Fezim was a despicable maggot, but he’d also been right. The gem was Alasklerbanbastos’s spirit. The key to existence and freedom for the most magnificent creature the world had ever seen. And finally that creature had it back.

High overhead, hoarse voices started cheering.

Nudged from his trance of near ecstasy, Alasklerbanbastos grunted. Vairshekellabex hadn’t been as powerful as Tchazzar, Gestanius, Skuthosin, or himself, but he’d been old and crafty. It was almost inconceivable that Fezim, the sunlady, and the firestormers had killed him without the help of their “tame” dracolich. Yet the cries of jubilation could signify nothing else.

Alasklerbanbastos decided it would be a short-lived celebration. While they were weary and their magic was depleted was the perfect time to strike at his enemies. He spread his wings, and they rustled instead of making the rattle of naked bone.

He’d had ample time to get used to that particular change since Fezim and his lieutenants had revived him in Calabastasingavor’s body, but even so it made him pause and think.

He’d just regained so much that it would be easy to overlook the fact that he had yet to recover everything. He still possessed only a fraction of the strength that was rightfully his.

In addition to which, the phylactery was vulnerable and would remain so whether he carried it with him or made some hasty attempt to conceal it. The only way to be truly safe was to hide it so well that no one would ever find it again.

So, he decided, retribution could wait for a little while. He’d seek out Fezim, Cera Eurthos, and their cronies soon enough.

He trotted a few steps, beat his wings, leaped into the air, and flew east. The skin wyrm tried to follow but couldn’t keep up.

That was all right. The thing had served its purpose. As he left it behind, he laughed to imagine it mindlessly wandering the mountains and killing whomever it encountered, continuing, if only in a minor, random way, Vairshekellabex’s campaign of terror against all who’d dared to encroach on his territory.

Gaedynn had heard of dragon caves that were vast mazes of tunnels twisting and forking through the ground for mile after mile. But Vairshekellabex’s lair wasn’t one of them. It couldn’t be. The whole earthmote wasn’t big enough to contain such a labyrinth, and in fact the hollow within the central outcrop sloped down for only a little way before coming to a dead end.

The dragon’s hoard, however, though it didn’t take up as broad a section of the floor as greed might have led one to imagine, was still pretty much what all the tales, poems, and ballads said it ought to be. The explorers faltered and caught their breath when the light of their torches gleamed on silver, gold, and gems.

By sheer good fortune, Gaedynn happened to be standing next to the gawking windsoul who’d disdained him for searching the dead sentry’s belongings. “It’s actually sort of a shame,” he said, “that you aren’t in it for the plunder.”

For a heartbeat the genasi looked back at him as if he didn’t understand the jape. Then he laughed a short, wild little laugh, scurried to an open chest, scooped up a double handful of coins, and let them fall back, clinking, through his fingers.

Across the chamber, other firestormers scrambled to get their hands on some of the treasure. Somewhat hesitantly, Son-liin moved to follow suit.

Gaedynn grinned. “I have a hunch you’ve never looted anything really valuable before.”

The stormsoul smiled. “Not really.”

“Stick with me, and I’ll show you how it’s done.”

Peering this way and that, he led her around the other genasi to the back of the collection. He picked up a small, intricately carved ivory box, opened it, took out the ruby ring inside, and held it up to the light.

“Now this,” he said, “is the kind of thing you want. Easy to carry and valuable enough to support you for the rest of your life if you live sensibly. Not that I’m advocating that. I recommend you sell it, squander the proceeds living like a princess, and then pillage something else.” He put it back in the box and tossed it to her.

She nearly fumbled the catch. “You’re giving it to me?”

He snorted. “Certainly not. Why in the name of the Black Bow would I give away anything as valuable as that? You’re claiming it as part of your rightful share. Don’t let the box get banged up. That’s valuable too.”

She shook her head. “All right.”

A cloak pin set with a big, black pearl and made of some strange, green metal-likely either a substance native to some other plane or the product of an alchemist’s researches-caught Gaedynn’s eye. He bent over to pick it up. “This one is mine, and I’ll knife the son of a sow who tries to tell me different.”

When he straightened back up, Aoth was standing before him, his blue eyes glowing in the gloom. He’d set aside his shield and carried a wineskin in his off hand. Most likely he’d found it among the wyrmkeepers’ belongings. He proffered it and Gaedynn took a swig of something red, lukewarm, and acidic. Awful, really, but at a moment like this, it would do.

“Thanks,” he said, passing the wine to Son-liin. “It’s about time you got in here. You’ll miss out on all the best swag.”

“It looks like there’s enough to go around,” Aoth replied. “Anyway, Cera and I found what we really need among the wyrmkeepers’ sacred things: notes on how to disguise abishais as dragonborn. They should help us convince Arathane that Tymanther hasn’t been raiding into Akanul.”

Gaedynn chuckled. “Ah, yes. In theory, that was the point, wasn’t it? In the midst of all this gold, I have trouble remembering.”

“Well, maybe it will come back to you on the flight back to Airspur,” Aoth replied. “We leave at first light, so get some rest.”

“ ‘The flight,’ ” Gaedynn repeated. “You make it sound like we’re parting company with the firestormers.”

“We are. We’re in a hurry, and I imagine they can make their way home without us.”

“I agree,” said Gaedynn, glancing around at the genasi. “They turned out to be tougher than I gave them credit for. Or maybe this little excursion toughened them up. But don’t you think Mardiz-sul’s testimony might help us persuade the queen? He is a noble, after all.”

“We’ll sit him down and have him write it out.”

“All right, then. If I need to make myself sleep, then give me some more of the swill.” He turned to recover the wine from Son-liin, then hesitated.

He wasn’t quite as perceptive at reading genasi expressions as human or elf ones. The patterns of glinting lines distracted him a little. But the stormsoul seemed to be working up the nerve to say something.

She swallowed. “You warned me that if I flew on a griffon, I’d want to do it again. Well, I do. I mean, I want to go with you and be a sellsword too.”

“It means leaving everybody and everything you know,” Gaedynn said. “That’s part of the reason to do it.”

Gaedynn smiled. “It is, isn’t it? I remember.” He turned to Aoth. “We need new blood, and she showed she can handle herself tonight.”

To his surprise, Aoth looked back at him with a certain sardonic cast to his expression. Since Gaedynn regarded himself as cleverer than most people, his captain included, it irked him a little that he didn’t understand why.

And Aoth’s next words didn’t enlighten him. The Thayan simply turned to Son-liin and extended his hand. “Welcome to the Brotherhood of the Griffon, archer. But don’t expect a griffon of your own right away. That could be years in the future, if you ever get one at all.”