Whisper of Venom

THIRTEEN

5 FLAMERULE, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

Medrash assumed it would be immediately apparent when Skuthosiin joined the fight. The fact that the dragon had yet to do so meant that he was still trying to finish his ritual.

Accordingly, Medrash, Balasar, and others who rode with them pushed toward the heart of Ashhold. Unfortunately, with almost every step of the way contested, their progress seemed excruciatingly slow. Medrash fought the urge to spend his Power freely and clear the path as expeditiously as possible. He was certain he was going to need it later.

One of the hound-sized shadow dragons swooped down out of the black, smoky sky. Had he been forced to rely on his eyes alone, he might not have seen it until its fangs were already in his throat. But he felt it too, as a sickening, plunging locus of vileness. That gave him time to swing his sword. His lance had shattered early on, on a giant’s crudely fashioned granite shield.

His blade split the murky creature’s skull, and it dissolved into black, rotten-smelling smoke. At the same instant, Balasar grabbed one of the crossbows hanging from his saddle and shot it one-handed. The quarrel hit the giant, who’d been about to heave a boulder, right between the eyes. The missile slipped from the barbarian’s hands to tumble banging down the side of the basalt eminence on which he stood. He toppled after it a heartbeat later.

The riders pushed on to yet another point where the way diverged. Pulling on the reins, Balasar swung his chestnut steed to the right.

“No,” Medrash said. “It’s the other way.”

“Are you sure?” Gritting his teeth, Balasar worked the pull lever of the weapon he’d just discharged. “It’s a maze in here.”

“I’m sure,” Medrash replied. Now that they were close, he could feel the unnatural power of the ceremony-or perhaps of Skuthosiin himself-just as he had the foulness of the shadow thing.

He led his fellow riders, and the foot soldiers trailing along behind, around two more turns and through two more bands of giants trying to bar the way. Then he gasped.

Because while simply feeling the vileness had been unpleasant, seeing it was worse. He’d already noted that Skuthosiin seemed hideous, even if he couldn’t say why. Now that he was closer, that ugliness seemed to stab into his eyes.

And, repulsive as the dragon was, the fire leaping out of the fissure was worse. When Medrash had seen it before, it had simply burned yellow like most flames. Now it changed color from one moment to the next. It was red, then blue, then green, then bone white, then shadow black.

Medrash could just discern that something was inside the fire-or, to be more accurate, coming through it. Using it as a passage from somewhere else. Whatever it was, its several parts swayed in a way that reminded him of Nala, and, even barely glimpsed, it radiated a terrifying feeling of might, malice, and contempt.

He realized he absolutely had to stop it from emerging into the mortal world. And do it now, before the mere threat of such a disaster panicked his companions. Which meant there was no time to look for the vanquisher’s wizards and ask them to help.

He reached out to Torm. Cold and bracing as a mountain spring, Power surged through him and collected in his hand.

He didn’t know a specific prayer to disrupt such a ceremony. But, guided by instinct, he focused his thoughts on the idea of forbiddance, tucked his sword under his shield arm, lifted his empty hand high, and swung it down at the ground.

Made of steely shimmer, a huge, ghostly gauntlet appeared in midair, swept down, and covered the source of the fire with its palm. Startled, the giant adepts cried out and recoiled.

Pain seared Medrash’s actual hand, as if it were bare and he were really using it to smother a fire. He had a muddled impression that his flesh didn’t burn constantly. Perhaps it charred one instant, froze the next, and suffered some other sort of injury the moment after that.

But he couldn’t really sort out the differences in sensation. It took all the will and focus he could muster to hold his hand in place despite the agony, and to keep the Loyal Fury’s Power pouring into it.

Until-after what was likely only a matter of heartbeats, even though it seemed like forever-the phantasmal gauntlet vanished, and Medrash saw that the fire beneath was gone.

That was the only way he could tell. His hand was still ablaze with pain. Yet even so, he felt a surge of satisfaction, and when Skuthosiin’s head whipped around to goggle at him, that only made the moment sweeter.

“Sorry,” Balasar called. “Were you using that fire?”

Skuthosiin’s eyes flicked to the giant shamans. “Kill them,” he snapped.

The adepts produced some of Nala’s globes, held them at eye level, then gasped and staggered.

“Oops,” Balasar said.

Medrash drew a bit more of Torm’s Power to quell the throbbing in his hand. It didn’t end it altogether, but it muted it. When he tried to grip the wire-wrapped hilt of his sword, he found that he could.

“You see how it is,” he said. “We know how to counter all your tricks. Surrender, and perhaps Tarhun will show you mercy.”

“Surrender?” Skuthosiin repeated. “Are you insane? Do you think I really need tricks, or any sort of help, to slaughter mites like you? This is the end of you and all your people.” He sprang forward.

Medrash rode to meet him. Balasar and the other riders pounded after him.

The fight was going to be terrible. In all probability, many dragonborn would die. But Medrash was satisfied because his comrades hadn’t quailed, and, in his furious eagerness to engage, Skuthosiin had opted to stay on the ground where lance and sword could reach him. And as more and more Tymantherans, including the mages, arrived in the heart of Ashhold-

Something seared Medrash’s back. His steed pitched forward and fell. On either side of him other horses dropped as well, and yellow flame glinted on the riders’ armor.

He hit his head hard, and something cracked. Suddenly everything seemed dim and far away. Unimportant. Some instinct insisted that he try to get up anyway, but he discovered he couldn’t move.

Her mouth still warm and tingling, Nala rejoiced to see that Medrash wasn’t standing up, or stirring at all.

Despite her best efforts, the paladin and the other riders had gotten ahead of her and interrupted the ritual before she could reach the center of the giants’ refuge. But even though that disruption was sacrilege, from a practical standpoint it might actually have been for the best. Because her miracles would play a greater role in Skuthosiin’s victory and show him how valuable she truly was.

She’d drawn down Tiamat’s glory to augment the power of her breath weapon, then spat it at the horsemen. The burst of fire dropped half a dozen riders. Her only regret was that Medrash and Balasar weren’t close enough together for her to burn both of them. But the paladin was the more important target, and if the Dark Lady smiled on her, she still might be the one to kill his clan brother.

She glimpsed a glint from the corner of her eye and turned toward the spear points swinging in her direction. For of course the foot soldiers among whom she’d advanced had seen her blast their mounted comrades. They’d stood stupefied for a heartbeat, but they meant to strike her down for her treachery.

She had no time for another prayer, whispered or otherwise, but her own innate vitality was sufficient for a second blaze of fiery breath. She spat it, and the two warriors who were threatening her reeled backward.

She darted out of the massed infantrymen, racing closer to Skuthosiin and the riders assailing him. Some of the foot soldiers hesitated to follow, but others scrambled after her.

She judged she had just enough time and distance for an incantation. She hissed Draconic words of power, touched the end of her thumb to the tip of her middle finger to make her hand resemble a saurian head, then, quick as a striking serpent, jabbed it at four different spots on the ground.

Each as big as a dragonborn, four rearing, snarling wyrms appeared where she’d pointed. Her pursuers quailed until they realized the apparitions were incapable of doing actual harm. By then she was close enough to Skuthosiin for the green to lash out at anyone who dared to keep following, and no one did.

Clouds shrouded Selune and the stars. To Aoth, the air smelled like a storm was coming.

It is, said Jet, and its name is Alasklerbanbastos.

I know, answered Aoth. Because the deepening darkness seemed blacker and felt somehow dirtier than just the clouds could explain, while the breeze carried a hint of old rot as well as the imminence of lightning. It was like the worst of his experiences in Thay, with something unimaginably strong and vile rising to poison all the natural world. I just wish he’d get on with it.

Back on the ground for the moment, Tchazzar incinerated a formation of kobolds with a blast of flame. Either he was trying hard to convince the Great Bone Wyrm that he was squandering his power-or else, in his excitement, he really was.

Whether he was thinking, the result was the same. At the northern edge of the battlefield, pieces of darkness seemed to thicken and arrange themselves into a structure, like ghostly hands were building it. And even wyrmkeepers and vampires instinctively shrank away.

In a moment, a murky skull with a spiked snout sat atop the stacked vertebrae of the neck, and fleshless wings arched to either side. Then, inside the core of the thing’s body, lightning flared repeatedly from rib to rib, and its eye sockets lit with a spectral glow. The structure changed from dark to leprous white as lengths and curves of shadow turned into bone.

Alasklerbanbastos strode forward. Chessentans who were nowhere near him screamed. So did some of the Threskelans.

Go ahead, said Jet, if it will make you feel better.

Aoth snorted. If he’d ever done any screaming, it had been a long, long time ago. But even to a man who’d survived the nastiest parts of the War of the Zulkirs, the Great Bone Wyrm was an appalling spectacle. Now that the two of them were in the same place, he could tell that the dracolich was even bigger than Tchazzar. And as they advanced on each other, and warriors left off struggling to scurry out of the way, it was difficult to resist the idea that here were the only combatants and the only fight that really mattered.

Aoth spat away that notion as well. Whatever their pretensions, neither wyrm could stand up to a proper army all by himself. That was why they bothered to command armies. Besides, what was about to happen would be very little like the duel of titans his imagination was suggesting.

Or so he hoped. Jaxanaedegor and his followers were taking their time about striking at their master. Aoth hoped they were simply making sure they’d take the dracolich completely by surprise when he’d have nowhere to run.

The battlefield was strangely quiet as the undead colossus and the self-proclaimed deity approached each other. That was because a good many warriors were simply standing and watching, and it enabled Aoth to make out the words when the wyrms spoke in the same esoteric form of Draconic that Jaxanaedegor had used when he first appeared to Tchazzar. Or maybe it was their innate magic, roused by their utter mutual hatred, that made their words audible even high in the sky.

“I invoke the Five Hundred and Fifty-Fifth Precept,” Alasklerbanbastos said. “To the death, and winner take all.”

“That’s exactly how it will be,” Tchazzar replied. “For I promise I’ll find your phylactery.”

“Take it if you can.” Without cocking his neck back or doing anything else that might have warned of a live dragon’s intent, Alasklerbanbastos simply opened his fleshless jaws and spat lightning.

The flare dazzled Aoth, and the thunderclap spiked pain into his ears. The attack pierced Tchazzar and made him thrash.

But as soon as it ended, the red dragon spewed a blast of flame. It cracked some of Alasklerbanbastos’s naked bones, sent chips of them flying, and jolted the dracolich backward.

Tchazzar instantly sprang high and lashed his wings. He plainly meant to pounce on top of his foe before the Great Bone Wyrm recovered.

Unfortunately, Alasklerbanbastos was more resilient than expected. He lifted his head, stared at Tchazzar, and the glow in his eye sockets flared.

Aoth remembered how the dracolich’s gaze had paralyzed him. Tchazzar merely seemed to twitch in midleap. But perhaps that was enough to impair his agility, for Alasklerbanbastos dodged out from under his adversary’s claws. And when the war hero came down, the dracolich met him with a clattering sweep of his bony tail.

The blow caught Tchazzar across the side of the head and bashed him stumbling to the side. Alasklerbanbastos backed away, opening up the distance, and hissed words of power.

A web of shadows seethed into being. It covered Tchazzar like a net, and wherever it touched him, scales sloughed away and the flesh beneath them withered.

With all his might, he should have been able to break free. But as he gathered himself to try, Alasklerbanbastos snarled another spell.

Tchazzar roared, then thrashed wildly, as a beast would struggle against a net without truly comprehending what it was. Without intellect to guide it, raw strength wasn’t enough to snap the strands, and they rotted their way deeper into his body.

Like the paralysis, the red dragon’s frenzied confusion only lasted a heartbeat. Then he stopped his useless flailing. But at the same moment, Alasklerbanbastos spat another bolt of lightning.

Tchazzar went rigid, then slumped when the flare blinked out of existence. He kept on fighting the web, but seemed dazed and too weakened to have any hope of escaping.

Alasklerbanbastos started another spell.

Aoth looked around. Jaxanaedegor and his minions were nowhere near the Great Bone Wyrm. Maybe they hadn’t expected the dracolich to gain the upper hand so quickly and completely. Aoth hadn’t expected it either, even though every soldier knew combat was often like that. A duel between even the greatest warriors could start and end with a single cut.

Anyway, one thing was clear. If Jaxanaedegor hadn’t already started maneuvering to attack, he certainly wasn’t going to do it now.

Aoth supposed he should order the Brotherhood to retreat. Try to get them off the battlefield and out of Chessenta without taking any more casualties.

But then they’d have lost again and further tarnished their reputation. He might never see Cera again. And he could guess what fate awaited a priestess of the sun in a land newly conquered by an undead monstrosity.

To the Abyss with it. It was as reckless as anything Aoth had ever done in Thay, madder than anything he’d ever wanted to do again. But he aimed his spear and sent Jet swooping at the dracolich.

Skuthosiin spewed vapor. Balasar held his breath and squinched his eyes shut. His exposed skin stung even so, but his precautions-or the protective amulet Biri, the pretty young white-scaled mage, had for some reason given him-kept the vapor from rotting his lungs or blinding him.

His poor horse wasn’t as lucky. He felt the animal toppling beneath him. He opened his eyes, dropped his lance, dived out of the saddle, and rolled to his feet. At once he had to jump to keep his mount’s spasmodic legs from kicking him. To either side, other horses lay or rolled convulsing. As did some of their riders. Other dragonborn coughed and retched or swiped tears from their streaming eyes.

Balasar realized he needed to keep Skuthosiin’s attention fixed on him until his fellow survivors recovered the capacity to defend themselves. “I’m still here!” he called to the hideous creature. “You just can’t do anything right, can you?”

Skuthosiin snarled and clawed. Balasar dodged left and then, as the dragon’s foot smashed down and jolted the earth, glimpsed motion at the edge of his vision. He pivoted to find Skuthosiin’s tail whipping at him. By avoiding what amounted to a feint, he’d stepped right into the true attack.

He leaped and folded his legs underneath him. He felt the breeze as the tail whipped by. The blow slammed into his still-thrashing horse, smashing it into shapelessness and smearing parts of it across the ground.

As the tail completed its arc, Khouryn was there to intercept it. Bellowing, he jammed his spear straight down through the tip, nailing it to the ground.

Skuthosiin jerked his extremity free, snapping the point off the weapon in the process. The shaft remained in the wound and wobbled as the tail swirled around.

Many wearing the badges and colors of the Platinum Cadre, other spearmen scrambled after the dwarf. They formed up to attack and fall back as he and the Beast had taught them.

Balasar felt a surge of pride. Skuthosiin was deadly, slaughtering an opponent with almost every moment that passed, but his comrades kept attacking anyway. They came from a race of dragon-killers and were proving themselves worthy descendants of their forebears.

Unfortunately, valor alone didn’t guarantee a victory. Their chances would have been better if Medrash were still in the fight, but something-Balasar hadn’t seen what-had struck his clan brother down an instant after they charged.

Hoping Medrash was still alive, Balasar drew his sword, lifted his battered targe into a high guard, and advanced on Skuthosiin.

Aoth rattled off words of power. A shaft of sunlight that would have done Cera proud shot from the head of his spear. It slashed across Alasklerbanbastos’s skull and stabbed into his eye sockets.

It was powerful magic. Yet the dracolich didn’t even look up, any more than Aoth would have reacted to a buzzing fly when intent on fighting a foe. Still staring at Tchazzar, the Great Bone Wyrm kept on hissing and growling his own incantation.

Aoth’s neck muscles tightened in anger. He cursed, then unlocked the most powerful spell currently stored inside the spear, poured extra force into it, and sent the results streaking from the point in a stream of sparks.

The sparks detonated in rapid succession as they hit the Bone Wyrm’s wings and spine. Each booming, fiery blast jolted him downward like a gigantic boot stamping on his back. A couple of small bones and pieces of bone fell away from his body. He stumbled over the words of his incantation, and Aoth felt the accumulating power dissipate in a useless sizzle.

Let’s see you ignore that, he thought. Then Alasklerbanbastos raised his head and spread his jaws.

Jet lashed his wings, and then the world turned into glare and a pounding bang. It took Aoth an instant to understand that in fact the thunderbolt hadn’t hit them. The griffon had dodged it.

Alasklerbanbastos spread his own wings, gave them a clattering flap, and climbed into the air.

Keep away from him! said Aoth.

Obviously! Jet snapped. He veered, and darts of blue-white light crackled past them.

As they dodged back and forth across the sky, Aoth hurled fire, acid, and every other force that seemed like it might be capable of hurting an undead blue dragon. More often than not, the attacks hit their target. But none of them made Alasklerbanbastos falter for even a heartbeat.

Whereas he only has to hit me once, said Jet.

I know. Aoth looked for Jaxanaedegor and found him hovering far from the action. He peered down at Tchazzar. The red dragon was still writhing under the web of shadows.

A boom jolted him and tumbled Jet end over end, like the griffon was somersaulting. Only his buckled harness held Aoth in the saddle. For a moment, the mind meshed with his own was dull and oblivious, and then, with a screech, the familiar snapped back to full wakefulness. He beat his wings and somehow regained control of his trajectory.

But by the time Jet pulled out of his fall, Alasklerbanbastos was plunging down at him, enormous claws poised to catch and rend.

Jet swooped one way and another, trying to get out from under the dracolich. Alasklerbanbastos matched him move for move. Aoth hurled flame from his spear. It splashed across the Bone Wyrm’s legs and ribs and must have been doing some harm. But the undead blue kept closing in.

Until an arrow plunged into his right eye socket.

Aoth suspected that the shaft hadn’t actually injured Alasklerbanbastos. But judging from the way he jerked, it must have at least startled him. And perhaps it was a maddening distraction to have it bouncing around inside his hollow skull. Because the next time Jet veered, the dracolich failed to compensate. The familiar streaked into the clear, and Alasklerbanbastos plunged on by.

Aoth glanced around and wasn’t surprised to spot Gaedynn grinning at him from Eider’s back. Though he’d been leading griffon riders for almost a hundred years, he’d met few archers who could have made that shot.

He was surprised at how many other griffon riders were coming on behind the redheaded scout, ready to aid their captain in his suicidal folly.

Their shafts fell on Alasklerbanbastos like rain and seemed to do as little harm. The dracolich shook his head, opened his jaws, and spat out Gaedynn’s arrow. Then he lashed his wings and climbed. The light in his eye sockets glowed brighter. Lightning crawled on him and leaped from one bone to another.

Aoth pointed his spear and rattled off words of command. A blade of emerald light leaped from the point of the weapon and streaked at the ascending dracolich. Guiding it with little shifts of his hand, trying to match Gaedynn’s accuracy, he made it hack repeatedly at the spot where Alasklerbanbastos’s left wing connected to the shoulder bone.

Alasklerbanbastos twisted his head to regard the sword of light. No doubt to get rid of it before it accomplished its purpose. But then Meralaine recited an incantation. Her voice was a girl’s voice, high and breathy, yet the charge of dark magic it carried made it seem somehow cold and leaden, as well as enabling a fellow mage to catch the sound even across the sky. Though Aoth didn’t take his eyes off Alasklerbanbastos to look for her, he surmised that the necromancer had persuaded some griffon rider to carry her aloft.

Her spell made the dracolich hesitate. Only for a heartbeat, but in that instant, the flying blade accomplished its task. The wing broke away from the body. The Bone Wyrm started to fall-

— and then stopped.

Because, Aoth realized, while wings helped Alasklerbanbastos maneuver across the sky, it was ultimately magic that held him up. As it was still supporting him, while the wing also stopped tumbling and floated upward again.

But the wretched creature had to fall! In desperation, Aoth shouted an incantation intended to shred enchantments to nothing. He didn’t know if it had any chance of working, but it was the only idea he had. Meralaine joined in on the first refrain, reinforcing his power with her own.

Alasklerbanbastos plummeted again, and this time fell all the way down to the ground.

Aoth prayed to Kossuth that the dracolich would smash apart, but the Lord of Flame apparently didn’t hear. Although Alasklerbanbastos hit hard enough to snap some bones and jolt others loose from their couplings, the damage looked relatively superficial. Worse, either because of some innate capacity or because he used enchantment, he instantly started to mend. Pieces of bone, the severed wing included, flew through the air to reunite with his body.

Curse it! thought Aoth. The thing seemed as unstoppable as Szass Tam himself.

Alasklerbanbastos flexed his legs and spread his wings. Then his head whipped around as a flash snagged his attention.

Jhesrhi was on the ground near Tchazzar, casting flame from her staff to burn away the web of darkness. Maybe to restore his strength as well, as she had in the Shadowfell.

Alasklerbanbastos took a first stride in her direction. Jet furled his wings and dived at the dracolich. Aoth hurled darts of scarlet light that stabbed into the undead dragon’s spine but failed to divert him from his purpose.

Springing from the ground, Scar flung himself at Alasklerbanbastos. Who snapped him out of the air and gnashed him into pieces.

Eider plunged down on top of the dracolich and began to tear with her talons. Alasklerbanbastos shook himself like a wet dog and sent the griffon and her rider tumbling.

Oraxes hurled his own darts of light. Lances leveled, Shala and Hasos galloped at the undead blue. Soldiers rushed in, swinging axes and jabbing with spears.

Still intent on Tchazzar and Jhesrhi, Alasklerbanbastos didn’t so much fight the other opponents seeking to bar the way as simply wade through them. Unfortunately, he seemed to do it almost as easily as Aoth could have walked through a puddle. Meanwhile, Jhesrhi stood her ground and threw fire from the staff. She plainly meant to free Tchazzar or die trying.

Put me on top of him, said Aoth. Right where Eider landed.

All right, said Jet, but I don’t promise that I’ll be able to hold on either.

You don’t have to. Just set me there. Aoth willed the straps that held him in the saddle to unbuckle, and they did. He released the magic bound in every protective tattoo on his body.

Then Jet thumped down. Aoth swung himself off the familiar’s back, grabbed a knob of bone, and shouted, “Go!” With a reluctance that throbbed across their psychic link, the familiar lashed his wings and took off again. Aoth charged his spear with raw force and stabbed at sections of rib that-he hoped-Gaedynn’s mount had already weakened.

Pieces of two adjacent ribs snapped loose and fell away. Aoth jammed himself feet first into the breach he’d created. It was a tight squeeze, and a jagged tip of broken bone scratched his cheek. But then, releasing the charm bound in another tattoo to soften the fall, he dropped inside.

Where he found it all but impossible to stand. The dracolich’s motion bounced him around, and the bottom of the rib cage was like a floor with planks missing. Small lightning bolts crackled across the space he occupied, stinging and jolting him. They’d do worse than that once they wore away his protective enchantments.

He grabbed a rib to find and keep his balance, released the remaining energy in the spear, and jabbed at the curves of bone around him. If Tymora smiled, maybe Alasklerbanbastos would find the assault from the inside as difficult to ignore as Gaedynn’s arrow rattling around in his head.

For two or three heartbeats, that didn’t appear to be the case. But then the dracolich whirled around like a hound chasing its tail. Head bent backward at the end of his long neck, he glared at the pest infesting his core.

“Not this time,” said Aoth. He made sure he didn’t meet the Bone Wyrm’s gaze. And wished the creature didn’t have a hundred other ways of attacking him.

Alasklerbanbastos’s fleshless jaws opened. Aoth shouted a word of defense, and the world blazed white.

Medrash’s vision had cleared, and to a degree so had his thoughts. He could see and understand what was happening before him, and that was hellish. Because his friends and comrades needed him.

Chopping with his urgrosh, or jabbing with the spike on the butt, Khouryn was fighting as brilliantly as any warrior Medrash had ever seen. Grinning, shouting taunts, waiting until the last possible instant to dance out of the way of an attack in order to land a counterstroke, Balasar was equally superb. And they had help. Dragonborn kept streaming into the heart of Ashhold. Bat riders wheeled and swooped overhead, hurling javelins or thrusting with lances and polearms. Some of the mages had arrived as well. Cloaked in a protective blur, Biri hurled bursts of frost from her rose quartz wand.

Yet Medrash’s instincts told him it wasn’t going to be enough. Skuthosiin had gashes and punctures all over his prodigious body, but they weren’t slowing him down. He seemed to fell an adversary with every snap of his fangs, snatch of his talons, or swing of his tail, and when he managed another burst of poison breath, he was apt to kill several at once. To make the situation even more dire, a couple of the ash giant shamans had shaken off their debility, some of the hulking barbarian warriors had retreated into the heart of Ashhold, and they were all making a stand with their dragon chieftain.

Medrash reached out to Torm. As on his previous attempts, he failed to make contact. Even though he felt like his thoughts had cleared, his injury seemed to hinder his spiritual gifts just as it had paralyzed his body.

It occurred to him that he was likely dying. In other circumstances, that might not have dismayed him. But now it felt like failure. Like he’d be abandoning Balasar and the others.

He groped uselessly in the void. Then a familiar figure crouched over him. “Patrin?” he croaked.

The newcomer’s eyes widened in surprise, and Medrash realized he’d been mistaken. The fellow was younger and thinner than Bahamut’s knight had been, and his hide was brown-freckled ochre, not crimson. Medrash decided that it was the youth’s purple and platinum tunic, and the dark, that had confused him.

“I’m … I’m not him,” the newcomer said.

“I see that now,” said Medrash. “Go. Fight. Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m not him,” the youth repeated, “but the wind whispered to me. It said that now the god needs me to be his champion in this place. It told me to heal you. But I don’t know how!”

Even with his body broken and useless, Medrash felt a twinge of repugnance at the thought of accepting any boon from a dragon god. But he was far too desperate to pay it any heed.

“Put your hands on my shoulders,” he said. “Now reach out to Bahamut with your mind. You just have to concentrate and believe the Power will come. And be ready when it does. Sometimes-”

The newly anointed paladin cried out. A cold, stinging Power burst out of his hands and surged through Medrash, sharpening his thoughts and washing the deadness out of his limbs. Which brought a certain amount of pain, because the magic didn’t entirely heal his burns and bruises. But he so rejoiced in the return of sensation that even discomfort was a kind of joy.

The dragon-worshiper’s eyes rolled up into his head. He toppled sideways.

Medrash sat up and caught the unconscious youth, then laid him gently on the ground. He wished he could put him somewhere safer, but with Skuthosiin slaughtering dragonborn every moment, there wasn’t time. Besides, nowhere in Ashhold was truly safe, nor would be until the fight was won.

He stood up and found his fallen sword, then tried to assess how much mystical Power remained to him. To his surprise, he had plenty. Bahamut had left him some blisters and scrapes, but had evidently refreshed his paladin gifts.

A Daardendrien warrior with a broken leg lay in front of Skuthosiin. Jaws open wide, the green dragon’s head arced down at him.

Medrash shouted, “Torm!” The world blurred for an instant as he switched places with his injured kinsman.

Sidestepping, he slashed at the side of the dragon’s head as it plunged by. He missed the slit-pupiled yellow eye, but his blade split the scaly hide beneath.

Skuthosiin whipped his head up high, almost snatching the sword from Medrash’s grip. But he held on tight, and, slinging drops of gore, the blade pulled out of the wound instead.

Skuthosiin glared down at him, and the spiritual deformity that made him profoundly if indefinably hideous seemed to concentrate in his gaze. Perhaps it was supposed to make Medrash avert his eyes, or to churn his guts with nausea, but it did neither. It only made him even more determined to destroy the threat to his people once and for all.

“I don’t care how many little gods you have propping you up!” the dragon snarled. “My lady is the only one that matters!”

“Prove it,” Medrash said. He raised his sword, and white light blazed from the blade. Skuthosiin recoiled. Medrash dashed forward to strike while the wyrm was still dazzled. Other warriors did the same.

Aoth had tattoos to blunt pain and avert shock. To keep him awake and active even when wounded. Sprawled inside Alasklerbanbastos’s rib cage, he released their power.

And that was all he did. He didn’t know how badly he was hurt-badly, he suspected-but he was sure he couldn’t withstand another blast of the dracolich’s breath. His only hope was to lie motionless and convince Alasklerbanbastos he was dead already.

Just look away, he thought, watching the Great Bone Wyrm through slitted eyes. There are dozens of people beating on you and trying to kill you. Look around at them.

Alasklerbanbastos’s head whipped away. Then Tchazzar crashed down on him like an avalanche.

Nala tried to avoid conflict as she skulked around the edges of the battle. It wasn’t too difficult. With Skuthosiin and various giants to fight, her fellow dragonborn tended to overlook her. Which was fortunate, because she needed to make haste.

Impossible though it seemed, she could tell that the tide had turned against her master. Probably realizing it, he had at one point spread his wings to take to the air. But, chanting in unison, three of the vanquisher’s wizards had created a web of blue light that covered the center of Ashhold like a lid on a jar.

The barrier at least kept the Lance Defenders on their bats from harrying Skuthosiin any further. But in Nala’s judgment, they weren’t really the problem. Nor, for all their power, were the mages. Nor the common warriors, jabbing and hacking with dogged determination. It was Medrash. The paladin was exalted, fighting like one of the dragon-killing rebels in the tales of treason and blasphemy that made up the history of their people.

Nala had to strike him down and make it stick. Then Skuthosiin could still prevail, and would unquestionably know whom to reward for his victory.

She could smite Medrash with the Five Breaths as she had the redspawn devastator. He wouldn’t get back up from that. She just needed a clear path between them, but with combatants scrambling and pushing one another back and forth, that wasn’t easy to come by.

Yet finally she found it. Wishing she still had the wyrmkeeper regalia she’d discarded-she didn’t actually need it, but it would have made the magic easier-she raised her shadow-wood staff, focused her thoughts, and took a deep breath.

Then a jolt stabbed through her torso from back to front. She looked down and saw a finger-length of bloody blade protruding from her chest.

The pointed steel jerked backward and disappeared. She crumpled to her knees. Balasar stepped into view and grinned down at her.

“My feelings are hurt,” he said. “Why would you think you ought to kill Medrash ahead of me? I’m the clever one. I tricked you into letting me into your filthy cult, didn’t I? And I spotted you slinking around tonight and did a little sneaking of my own.”

She struggled to wheeze out a curse, but couldn’t manage it.

“Ah well,” he continued, “I forgive you the injury to my pride. And now, much as I’d like to stay and chat with such a lovely lady, I have a dragon to butcher.”

Yes, she thought, go. She’d find the strength to heal herself. She’d rise up like Medrash did. And how he, his clan brother, and all Tymanther would regret it when she did!

Then Balasar aimed his point at her heart, and she realized he had no intention of leaving her alive.

Aoth had been in many bizarre and dangerous places in his hundred years of life, but few stranger or more perilous than inside the body of one dragon when it was fighting another.

Grappling, snapping with their fangs, slashing with their claws, lashing with their tails, the two wyrms rolled over and over together. Their snarls, grunts, and the thuds, crashes, and tearing sounds as their attacks landed were deafening.

Aoth had found it difficult to keep his feet before. It was impossible now. He bounced around like a pea in a barrel tumbling down a hill.

The noise and punishing bumps made it almost impossible to think. Still, he realized that at the moment, the greatest danger to him was Tchazzar. Already damaged by Eider, Jet, and Aoth’s own efforts, sections of Alasklerbanbastos’s ribs were snapping and crumbling by the moment. If the red dragon smashed completely through, the blow could easily pulverize Aoth as well. And if Tchazzar spat another blast of fire, it would roast him in his cage.

He had to get out. He cast around and saw that one of Tchazzar’s strikes had broken away more bone and slightly widened the breach through which he’d entered. That was one tiny particle of luck, anyway.

He’d need both hands to reach the hole. With a pang of regret, he let go of his spear, gripped sections of rib, and alternately climbed or crawled, depending on the attitude of Alasklerbanbastos’s body at that instant. Lightning crackled from bone to bone, piercing his shoulder in its transit. His teeth gritted and his muscles knotted until the flare ended.

When he reached the hole, he had to judge the speed and direction of the entangled dragons’ movement and pray it didn’t change. Because if he emerged at the wrong moment, their weight would come smashing and grinding down on top of him.

He made his best guess, swarmed out, and jumped. He landed hard. Wings-some bare bone, some sheathed in crimson hide-flailed against the ground, and tails whipped through the air. The storm of motion was all around him, and he was sure something had to hit him. But nothing did, and then the dragons rolled farther away.

He ran to put even more distance between them and him, just like everyone else was doing. Jet plunged down in front of him. “Get on!” the griffon rasped. “I’ll take you to the healers.”

Suddenly feeling weak and dizzy, Aoth clambered into the saddle. The straps buckled themselves. “Not yet. I need to see what happens.”

“You need-”

“I said, I’m going to watch.”

Jet screeched in annoyance, lashed his wings, and carried his master aloft.

As he did, Tchazzar broke Alasklerbanbastos’s various holds on him, got his feet planted, and struck, all in a single blur of motion. The red dragon’s fangs closed on the dracolich’s neck, right beside the head.

Aoth grinned, because it was a shrewd tactic. The grip would keep Alasklerbanbastos from using his own teeth or his breath.

Flames leaping between his fangs, Tchazzar bit down hard. Aoth saw the effort manifest in every bunched muscle down the length of the war hero’s body. Surely in another moment his teeth would clash together, and Alasklerbanbastos’s head would fall away from his body.

But the dracolich roared words of command. Several tendrils of power leaped from the empty air above Tchazzar and stabbed into his body. The magic was shadow dark, not bright, but it crackled, twisted, and smelled like lightning.

Tchazzar leaped out from under the evidently excruciating effect, but he had to let go of Alasklerbanbastos to do it. The dracolich’s skull dangled from his neck like a half-broken twig at the end of a dead branch. But it was still attached-and, with a succession of little jerks, it started to hitch back into its proper position, even as chips of bone floated up from the ground to patch the cracked, gnawed vertebrae behind it.

Then, at last, Jaxanaedegor plunged down on top of his master. Another green wyrm followed, and then a red. Tchazzar lunged to join them.

The four dragons ripped into the dracolich like a pack of starving wolves assulting a deer. Alasklerbanbastos spat all the lightning he had left-then, roaring, struck and clawed with all his might. It wasn’t enough. Gradually his foes bit, smashed, and wrenched him into such a scatter of broken bone that not even magic could go on putting him back together.

Aoth relished every moment of it.

Skuthosiin told himself he wasn’t tiring, nor weakening from blood loss. In his former life he’d been a Chosen of Tiamat, and he was still an ancient wyrm. No horde of scurrying little dragonborn could bring him down.

Although admittedly, it wasn’t just dragonborn. Acting through his champion, Torm himself was striving to kill Skuthosiin. But that didn’t matter either. Because, his paladin gifts notwithstanding, Daardendrien Medrash was as tiny and fragile as the rest of his kind. Skuthosiin only had to score once with his fangs or claws to tear the wretch to pieces.

To that end, he slashed with his forefoot. Medrash jumped back. But perhaps he too was tiring, because he didn’t recoil quite far enough. Skuthosiin didn’t connect with his body, but the tip of one talon snagged the top of the swordsman’s battered heater. As it jerked free, splitting the top half of the shield in the process, it yanked Medrash off balance.

Skuthosiin struck like a serpent.

Scrambling faster than should have been possible for such a squat, short-legged creature, Khouryn Skulldark knocked his comrade aside. Now he was under Skuthosiin’s jaws. Well, that was all right too.

Except that at the last possible instant, the dwarf hopped to the side, and Skuthosiin’s teeth clashed shut on empty air. Then something slammed into the side of his head.

Or at least it felt like a simple impact. But as Skuthosiin reflexively heaved his head high, he realized Skulldark had actually chopped him with his axe. The weapon was still buried deep in his flesh, perhaps even in the bone beneath, and the wound gave a first excruciating throb. Skuthosiin snarled.

Something else snarled back, close to his ear. Or perhaps it was a breathless but savage laugh. Dangling, Skulldark still clung to the haft of the axe. Either he’d been too surprised to let go of his weapon when Skuthosiin lifted his head, or else he’d chosen not to.

Clinging to the axe with one hand, Skulldark drew a dirk with the other and stretched his arm to the limit, trying for Skuthosiin’s eye. Unable to reach it, he plunged the knife through hide and into the flesh beneath.

Enraged, Skuthosiin lifted his claws to swipe both the dwarf and his weapon away. Then white light blazed before him as, seeing his distraction, Medrash charged his sword with divine Power, rushed in, and cut at the base of his neck.

Balasar darted in beside his clan brother and slashed with his own blade. So did Tarhun-Skuthosiin hadn’t even noticed his arrival on the scene-swinging a greatsword bloody from point to guard. Spearmen jabbed, and mages hurled bright, crackling thunderbolts and fire.

Skuthosiin toppled sideways. It was impossible, but it was happening anyway.

He struggled to get back up again, but merely thrashed and writhed. As his vision dimmed and his body went numb, even those useless convulsions subsided.

He hoped that when his head smashed against the ground, it had smashed Skulldark as well. Or that he’d pulped the dwarf during his death throes. But then he saw Skulldark sitting a few yards away, bruised and bloodied but alive. And watching him, no doubt to make sure he was really finished.

After a futile attempt to spit poison in the sellsword’s direction, Skuthosiin decided that he truly was. He watched worthless giants flee into the night, heard dragonborn start cheering, and then knew nothing more.