Dragons- Worlds Afire

by R. A. Salvatore

  Elsewhere in the chamber, Captain Hask brandished his special sword still in its sheath. The other soldiers fell in alongside and behind Boom as the golem trudged toward the center of the battle. Nearby, Vaan hovered over the headless dragon skeleton Cayce had spotted earlier. Beyond the pixie, Kula and the dragon emerged from their hole.

  The anchorite had grown to enormous size, standing half as tall as the dragon himself. The huge chamber seemed cramped and crowded with two giants occupying it, Kula wreathed in green light and the dragon shedding showers of white-hot sparks. The forest warrior had her arms wrapped tightly around the beasts neck just behind his head. He was trying to toss her aside but could only manage to lift her off the ground. Free from their duty of holding Kula up, the anchorite’s legs slammed into the dragon’s torso. Kula kicked with her feet and twisted with her arms in a blur of furious motion, howling and screaming in guttural forest-talk.

  Though nearly transfixed by the sight of Kula rampant, Cayce still noticed Vaan hovering and staring down at her. She glanced over at the pixie and saw the anguished longing in his eyes.

  “What?” she said, exasperated. “If it’s important enough for you to tell me, the spell guarantees you can’t.” Vaan only smiled helplessly, and flitted a few feet closer to the combatants.

  The dragon let out a roar of frustration. He lunged forward with Kula still clamped behind his skull and forced his head and the giantess deep into the solid walls of the chamber. As he drove into the crumbling rock, the dragon raised the scales on his neck so that their razor edges stood out like the quills on a porcupine. Then the beast twisted in Kula’s grip, slicing a thousand vicious furrows in her flesh.

  Kula cried out in pain but never relaxed her grip. If anything, the mad anchorite clutched even tighter as the bladelike scales dug into her body. She kicked harder, and more furiously, though the sharp points of the dragon’s scales punched through the soles and balls of her feet with each blow.

  At last, the anchorite’s hold faltered. The dragon wrenched himself loose in a spray of ghastly red mist. As he slithered clear of Kula, he swatted the anchorite away with his tail before she could renew her grip. The dragon’s tail spikes scored Kula’s face, and the forest woman was hurled backward. The anchorite shrank back to her original size as she fell among the tumbling boulders.

  Essentially undamaged, the dragon crawled up onto the rectangular platform. He turned and hissed at Kula, ignoring the seemingly minor threat of four soldiers and a stone man who glowed at the seams. As the dragon’s angry challenge faded, Captain Hask’s voice rolled across the chamber.

  “Deploy the golem. Heavy demolition, on my mark.”

  The soldiers fell back from Boom, who had begun to whine and creak like an overheated kettle. Orange fire flared from the seams around his ankles, elbows, and shoulders. Boom bent stiffly at the waist and knees, and the stone man held this awkward posture for a moment. Then there was an explosion at his feet, and Boom shot into the air on a column of colorful flame.

  The golem blasted into the dragon’s chest like a man-shaped cannonball. Cayce saw some of the upright scales shatter like glass before orange flame engulfed the golem with a dull, muffled thump. The dragon’s eyes widened as the same orange flames erupted from his back. Boom’s attack had punched clear through the beasts body and gone on to char the wall beyond.

  The dragon staggered back and fell heavily onto his side. He still held his head defiantly aloft on his undamaged neck, but the huge pectoral and stomach muscles that anchored his neck were longer connected.

  Twenty feet from Cayce, Boom’s empty shell clattered to the ground. The golem’s body was intact, but the stone form that had been filled with churning, fiery energy was now an empty, hollow husk.

  “Don’t touch him!” Trooper Fost shouted from the far side of the cavern. “He’s still hot. Stay clear until he gets back on his feet.”

  Cayce made a half-hearted sign so Fost would see she understood. Looking at the golem, she didn’t think Boom would be back on his feet any time soon, but she was happy to obey Fost’s injunction to stay away from the walking explosive device.

  Over on the rectangular platform, the dragon stirred. His head rose over his holed torso, and somehow the torso rose after it like a fakir-charmed snake. The gaping, smoking hole in his body was beginning to close as tiny sparks of gold shimmered along the edges of the wound. The sparks seemed to be repairing the damage, rebuilding the dragon’s organs, bones, skin, and scales from the inside out. As the gold light restored the brute to fighting capacity, a strange bluish light danced across the headless dragon skeleton beside Cayce.

  Cayce blinked, her dry eyes popping. The dragon wasn’t just a machine, he was a self-repairing machine. And whatever magical method of self-repair he was using, it was somehow tied to the incomplete pile of dragon bones lying forgotten under the wreck of the wooden ship.

  Outside the ship, Kula leaped back into the battle. She was again human-sized, but her hair had grown wild and long, extending around her head like a thorn thicket. Her hands glowed with green eldritch light, and she seemed to be doing a complicated dance, carving intricate shapes in the air as she glided toward her foe. Kula shouted something in the language of anchorites then extended her hands toward the dragon. The green glow leaped from her body to the dragon’s, enveloping him in verdant light.

  Thick reddish rust spread across the dragon. Then this scabby coating faded to a dusty brown. As with Rus’s toxic crystal, however, the dragon was merely inconvenienced by this subtle attack. Damn, Cayce thought, he’s already leaving crusty flakes of his own all over the chamber. How would another layer of corrosion make any difference?

  It was pointless. Neither their carefully planned assault nor their special anti-machine tactics would work until they solved the dragon’s ultimate secret. He was impossible to kill if he instantly recovered after each of their attacks.

  If Vaan could tell them the answer, they’d be laughing. But how could you get someone to say what they simply could not say?

  Thinking quickly, Cayce turned to Vaan and said, “You use glamour to make us see things. Things you pixies want us to see.” Cayce dashed in front of the hovering blue man, locking eyes with him. “Show me,” she said. “Highlight everything in here that’s valuable to the dragon.”

  He didn’t understand at first, but Vaan’s eyes widened when he realized what Cayce had just made it possible for him to do. He grinned as tears welled up in his eyes.

  “Done,” he said.

  Vaan concentrated, fixing his otherworldly white eyes on Cayce. She blinked again, and when she opened her eyes she was treated to the exact same scene, only now the treasure trove was a collection of bright, gleaming lights. Every coin, every jewel, every broken bit of statuary was shining silver-white, as if the coins and rubies and polished steel had been replaced with solid energy. Gold, silver, and white brilliance sparkled, scintillated, and gleamed throughout the chamber.

  Around Cayce, beams of solid light crisscrossed among piles of coins that sparkled like stars. Lustrous tapestries, statues, and plate-sized discs competed for her eye against fine-cut gemstones that gleamed like the sun on shards of a mirror. The radiance wrinkled Cayce’s eyes as it hit her from every angle. Even the old bones and bits of armor glowed and shone as valued symbols of the dragon’s victorious past.

  As Cayce expected, showing her the dragon’s proudest possessions wasn’t a violation of Vaan’s geas. After all, there was nothing secret or dangerous in knowing dragons valued wealth and conquest. Her heart pounding, Cayce turned to the headless skeleton.

  There was no glow around this particular item. In fact, there was a black emptiness among all that shining treasure, a skeleton-shaped hole in the avalanche of dazzling brilliance. Aside from the odd broken stone and the rotting timbers of the merchant ship, everything else in the cave had been tagged by Vaan’s magic. To Cayce’s eye, everything but the skeleton was clearly marked as valuable, shining with importan
ce as if each reflected the pride it inspired in its owner.

  Cayce stopped. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welc—” Vaan’s words were cut off mid-syllable, interrupted by a wet slashing sound and a spray of blue-black liquid.

  Smiling helplessly, Vaan cast his white eyes down to his own chest. Cayce followed his gaze to the bladelike tip of the dragon’s tail, which now protruded several inches from the pixies breastbone.

  Cayce glanced into the stricken pixie’s eyes. Behind him, the tail curled and looped all the way across the chamber to where the dragon was getting the best of Kula. He had her pinned against a massive column of rock with one disdainful, clawed hand. The beast let Kula up then butted her aside with a long thrust of his neck. Eyes glittering, the dragon twisted his face back toward the little blue morsel skewered on the end of his tail.

  “Vaan.” The dragon leered through narrow eyes, his lips pulled back into a cruel smile. “Is that you among my guests? Have you been plotting against me again?”

  Instead of looking to his master, Vaan lunged forward and grabbed Cayce by the shoulders. Fortunately, the pixie’s arms were long enough to keep the tip of the dragon’s tail from stabbing Cayce as well, especially with her own arms pressing him away.

  “Listen,” Vaan said. “Listen… to me… now….”

  Across the chamber, the dragon roared. He jerked his tail away, whipping Vaan out of Cayce’s arms. With the pixie still flailing on his tail, the brute stood tall, blue sparks churning and glittering across his completely restored chest.

  Near the opposite wall, standing on a shelf of broken rock, Captain Hask held his special sword aloft. As he had when Rus launched his last-ditch effort, the dragon paused and watched as Hask prepared to unleash whatever he had held in reserve. Hask was ranting, wild-eyed, and Cayce quickly counted three dead soldiers scattered around the captain’s feet. Without Boom or Kula, the soldiers were little more than grist for the mill.

  “Behold,” the crazed officer shouted. “The Twice-Drawn Sword, the Hand of Righteous Retribution. Blessed by the High Primate of Angelfire and the Serran Mother Superior alike, it will burn you to slag and ashes, unclean thing.”

  “Captain Hask,” Cayce yelled. “Over here!”

  “The sword is drawn only in the cause of holy justice,” the officer wailed. As he spoke, Hask undid the bindings that kept the sword sealed in its scabbard. “Any who stand before it shall be smitten. It can only be drawn twice.”

  “Hask! Listen to me!”

  But the soldier paid no heed. “First,” he bellowed. “In anger, and only anger, as outrage is the true spark that becomes the fire of retribution.” Hask slid the scabbard an inch up the foot—wide blade. Piercing white light spilled out and curled to ash the officer’s eyebrows and the ends of his sweat-soaked hair.

  Recognizing the tone and cadence of a powerful incantation, Cayce slid back behind the timbers of the ship. Hask’s trump card was his to play, but she feared the noble captain was as doomed as her ignoble master had been. Battling the dragon head-on was futile; the skeleton was somehow the key.

  Hask drew the sword. Light poured from the blessed blade, consuming the captain, the dragon, the hoard, and the cavern. The last thing Cayce saw before the Hand of Righteous Retribution consumed her as well was a small, winged, blue-tinged figure that positioned himself between her and the advancing wave of white.

  Cayce awoke on the rounded peak of a grassy hill. The sky was blue and full of clean white clouds. A floral-scented breeze wafted by.

  “This is an illusion,” Cayce said. “Pixie glamour. Vaan? Are you doing this? Or have I defied Master Rus’s predictions after all and gone to paradise?”

  A healthy buzzing sound accompanied the pixie as he descended from above. Vaan was no longer dour and drawn, no longer pierced by a dragon tail, but healthy, whole, and relaxed.

  “Thank you, Tania Cayce.” Vaan hovered just over the top of the grassy peak.

  “What for? I think we’re both dead.”

  “You are neither dead nor dying. And because of you, my perpetual life-in-death can finally end.”

  “How? What do you mean?”

  “You have correctly guessed the dragon’s weakness: the skeleton and that abhorrent metal shell must both be destroyed together. In one fell swoop.”

  “Well, I can’t do much about it now,” Cayce said. “Hask may have already done it. He probably also destroyed himself, you, and me in the process.”

  Vaan shook his head. “Hask did extraordinary damage to the impostor’s body, but that will never be enough. You must use the Hand of Righteous Retribution to finish this once and for all.”

  “Me? How? I don’t know any of the ritual he was performing to make it work. And didn’t he say it could only be drawn twice?”

  “Hask is a fool,” Vaan said bitterly, “but I needed him to bring the sword—it truly is powerful enough to slay the beast if properly employed. Yes, the Hand of Righteous Retribution has been drawn once, in anger as the ritual demands. Hask believes it can only be drawn once more, in wisdom. For anger is the spark that begins retribution, but wisdom is the only path to true justice.”

  “I don’t have wisdom,” Cayce said. “I hardly have anger, to tell you the truth. All I feel right now is fatigue and fear. Plus, I haven’t been righteous in a long, long time. Somehow I don’t think I’m the one to summon the full power of the sword.”

  “The Hand is a weapon that anyone can use at any time, provided they allow its enchanted energy to build up between uses. The restrictions Hask follows are merely an ancient ruse perpetuated by priests and generals to prevent the Hands wielder from running rampant with it.”

  Cayce paused. “It’s a lie?”

  “A long-held and well-guarded lie. But I was able to learn the truth behind it… as you have done. This counts as wisdom, Tania Cayce, which should put your mind at ease when you take up the sword. Listen to me now: I will give you more wisdom, complete wisdom, and you will set me free.”

  “I will?” Cayce was growing increasingly uncomfortable. “I don’t even know where we are right now.”

  “We are still in the cave. I have taken you here to tell you the dragon’s final secret, the one that will destroy him once and for all.”

  “So, we’re actually lying unconscious in the cave, cooking in the light of Hask’s vengeance sword.”

  “In a manner of speaking. You are in no mortal danger, but time is precious. I must tell you how to defeat the machine beast.”

  “How can you do that with the geas still in place?”

  Vaan smiled helplessly. “Behold: the origin of our misery.”

  The hilltop shimmered and ran like melting wax. When the scene solidified, Cayce was back in the dragon’s treasure trove, only now it was well lit, meticulously ordered, and immaculately maintained.

  “My people were enslaved,” Vaan’s voice said. In the vision, Cayce saw the familiar form of a huge blue-and-white scaled dragon. He sat regally on the chamber platform atop a carefully constructed mound of diamonds and platinum coins. Dozens of tiny pixies danced in the air around the great beast, showering him with reflective dust.

  “Zumaki of the Bottomless Pool was not a harsh master,” Vaan said. “He was an old dragon, and he had already amassed enough treasure to sustain him and entertain him for the rest of his long life. In his dotage, however, he found a new kind of bauble to delight his eye: pixie glamour.”

  Silent as a sleepwalker, Cayce watched as a score of tiny blue men and women circled the great dragon, singing a joyful song as they filled the air with illusory magic.

  “But glamour and wish fulfillment can be a burden on the strongest of wills,” Vaan said. “As the mind is indulged, the body and spirit suffer. Grander, more absorbing fantasies become compelling, even compulsory. The longer you indulge your innermost desires, the harder it is to live in the real world.

  “Zumaki was an old dragon, and a powerful one. He had the power to imprint his min
d on lesser ones, to force his will upon the weak and undisciplined. So his mind was especially resistant to the corrosive allure of glamour. If the machine dragon hadn’t come, Zumaki would have probably lived another hundred years and died of old age before he ever felt the negative effects of our magic.”

  The scene before Cayce changed. The glowing lights of the treasure trove dimmed as a half-wrecked, smoking horror dragged itself into the chamber.

  “It was a fak mawa,” Vaan said. “A living engine of destruction in the shape of a dragon. They came by the hundreds during the Machine Invasion, and this one came to us bearing wounds from some titanic battle. During that battle, its opponent had torn it to pieces and seared almost half of its body away. We never knew how long it wandered after sustaining its terrible injuries. Months? Years? Decades? It was never truly alive, but by the time it reached Zumaki’s mountain it was more than half-dead.”

  The pixies fled from the broken, sputtering machine. Zumaki, his expression dull as if he’d just come out of a deep sleep, hissed at the metal horror. Power sparked in his eyes, and Zumaki focused on the machine’s half-ruined head.

  “I believe now it was some kind of infiltrator,” Vaan said. “Designed to get close enough to living things to infect them with its machine virus. Once infected, it could absorb their bodies into its own.”

  Zumaki’s throat swelled, and he spat a jagged ball of energy at the machine dragon. The impact blasted the metal monstrosity across the chamber. Zumaki crawled up the walls of his treasure trove and skittered across the ceiling, closing in to finish his opponent off.

  “My master could have survived,” Vaan said. “If he had simply burned the fak mawa to cinders from a distance or brought a piece of the mountain down upon it to mash it flat. But Zumaki was an intellectual being, and a curious one. He decided to try his power on the machine beast to see if its mind could resist his.”