by Paul S. Kemp
Tamlin heard Onthul’s voice from somewhere above him on the walls, shouting orders. Lightning bolts and streaks of energy dotted the air as Selgaunt’s mages unleashed spells on the elementals. Soldiers atop the walls shot crossbows and swung swords at any part of the elementals within reach.
The creatures shrugged them off and battered the walls, sometimes crushing a man. Bloody spatters stained the walls. Dozens of pulped corpses littered the ground. Cracks ran the length of the walls from top to bottom. Shards of stone rained down.
The elementals’ assault on the walls and gate rang in Tamlin’s ears. Boom after boom shook the walls, the earth.
“Counterspells only!” Variance shouted. “Cast!”
The priestess held her Sharran holy symbol and intoned the words to a counterspell. Tamlin interlaced his fingers and did the same.
Variance completed her spell. The elemental pounding on the Khyber Gate, fist raised for another blow, bellowed and dissolved into a pile of rock and dirt that showered the ground. Tamlin targeted another elemental and his magic again failed. He was no match for the summoner of the elementals.
“Dark!” he cursed.
Another elemental dissolved under the force of a counterspell. Another. A third, a fourth. Some of the soldiers near him, and those still on the walls, cheered. Tamlin did not know if the Sharrans were countering them or his own mages, and he did not care. From the other side of the wall, he heard Saerloonian horns. They sounded close.
“We need to—”
The ground before him erupted in a rain of cobblestones and dirt, knocking him and Variance to the ground. An elemental rose out of the earth, its body coated in the cobblestones of Selgaunt’s own streets, and blotted out the sun. It had dug under the wall.
Men screamed, shouted, ran. Others fired crossbows and charged with their swords. Variance pulled Tamlin to his feet.
Tamlin, unwilling to waste time on another counterspell, incanted the words to the first spell that came to mind. He pointed his hand and discharged a sizzling lightning bolt into the creature. The spell tore a divot in the creature’s body, spraying rock and dirt. The elemental took no notice. Variance pulled Tamlin backward, away from the elemental, while she intoned another counterspell.
The elemental bellowed, lowered its shoulder, and charged the wall from the inside. Men scrambled out of its way as best they could. Several moved too slowly and the elemental crushed them underfoot in a spray of gore.
It hit the wall with a sound like thunder. The cracked wall surrendered at last and crumbled under the impact. The creature’s momentum carried it through the breached wall. It stumbled on the rubble, bellowed, fell.
Variance completed her counterspell and the elemental crumbled into mud among the rubble of the wall. At almost the same moment, counterspells destroyed the remaining two earth elementals.
But it was all too late. The wall was breached. Horns sounded from the field outside. The Saerloonians had an open road into the city.
“They are coming!” someone shouted.
Onthul’s voice boomed over the burgeoning chaos. He stood his ground near the breach in the wall. “Gather here, before the breach! Tight formation! Hold here!”
Horns blared. Men ran through the dust-choked air. The cries of the wounded and dying sounded from all around. Tamlin had no idea how many men he still had under his command.
The Saerloonian horns blew another blast.
They were coming.
Abelar returned to consciousness, slouched over Firstlight’s saddle. His head ached but it paled beside the ache in his soul. Regg gripped him tightly and prevented him from falling off the horse.
Swiftdawn trotted beside him, riderless. She saw his open eyes and whinnied a greeting. Abelar did not respond. The rest of his company thundered around him. He felt no anger. Regg had done the right thing. He felt only loss.
“You are awake?” Regg said tentatively.
Abelar nodded once.
“I am sorry, Abelar. I hope you know that.”
Abelar nodded again and watched the grass streak by, and watered it with his tears.
His god had failed him.
And Abelar had failed his son.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
30 Uktar, the Year of Lightning Storms
The dragon completed its turn, beat its wings, and flew toward Rivalen. Twin streams of green smoke leaked from its nostrils. It roared, shouted an arcane word, and a coin-sized glowing orange sphere flew from its mouth, sped toward Rivalen, and blossomed into a cloud of flame and heat.
Rivalen’s wards and the shadowstuff of his flesh allowed him to stand in the inferno unharmed. Flying backward as the dragon bore down on him, Rivalen answered the dragon’s spell of fire with one of his own. He pointed his finger and summoned a curtain of violet flame directly in the dragon’s path. The dragon, a clumsy flyer, could not avoid it and crashed right through it. It emerged trailing flames and smoke, roaring with pain and anger.
“Not warded against fire,” Rivalen murmured.
Rivalen swooped upward and hard to his right, forcing the dragon to turn again to pursue. The dragon roared in frustration as Rivalen incanted the words to a powerful evocation. When he pronounced the last syllable, he held his hands out before him, fingers spread, and a hellstorm engulfed the dragon from head to tail. Curtains of flame immolated the creature. It roared, smoking, and twisted in the air to get clear of the flames.
Rivalen spared another glance out over the bay—nothing. Where was Yder?
Below him and across the plains, he watched an elemental burst through Selgaunt’s walls. Dust and rock flew into the air. The Saerloonian army flowed toward the breach.
Rivalen cursed but could spare the city little attention. The dragon was coming. It turned and wheeled straight for him, incanting a spell as it came.
Rivalen intoned his own spell and turned his body and gear incorporeal, immune to the dragon’s claws, fangs, and deadly breath. He became a living shadow. As ephemeral as the wind, he dived downward and hard left, forcing the dragon to bank to reach him.
Instead, the creature shouted an arcane word, vanished, and instantly materialized beside Rivalen.
The moment it appeared, Rivalen returned to his physical form. His wards ceased to function, his flying spell ceased, he returned to normal size and strength, and every magical item on his person was drained of power. A moment of surprise froze him, and that was all the dragon needed.
It grabbed him in a claw, crushed him enough to steal his breath and crack bones. Rivalen’s shadow-infused flesh tried to regenerate while the dragon spiraled downward at alarming speed.
He understood its intent. It would crush him on impact, or would finish him on the ground with its fangs.
He had no wards to preserve him. No charms to protect him. The creature must have surrounded itself in a field of anti-magic, suppressing even Rivalen’s ability to transport himself through the shadows. He tried to squirm free, failed. He swung his blade against the dragon’s scales—futile. He twisted his head to look down, saw Selgaunt burning, its walls breached, saw the ground rushing up to crush him.
Only one solution leaped to mind. He could try to disjoin the anti-magic field. Only a disjunction could work against such a field.
Enduring the pain and focusing his mind, he intoned the elaborate couplets of the abjuration while the earth sped toward him.
The dragon held him close beneath it. If his spell failed, he would be pulped when the creature slammed into the earth.
The dragon’s scales rippled as the creature tensed for impact. Rivalen focused his mind on his spell, only his spell, and pronounced the final couplet.
Power went forth from him. Motes of green energy sparkled all around the dragon as the magic of the disjunction tried to unravel the threads of magic that created the anti-magic field.
The earth filled his field of vision. Rivalen shouted, anticipating impact.
His spell disjoined the anti-magic fie
ld and all his suppressed spells, wards, and charms began to function again. He turned incorporeal as the dragon hit the earth so hard it sank four paces deep into the dry plain. Rivalen’s incorporeal form sank harmlessly into the ground.
He felt a tingle in his mind as Brennus contacted him through his magical ring.
Rivalen?
Where is Yder?
I was unable to contact you for a time. I thought—
Where is Yder?
Look up, Brennus answered.
Rivalen floated through the dragon—his ability to see even in pitch darkness allowed him to view the dragon’s huge lungs, its heart, bones—while the reptile, unaware that Rivalen had survived, stood and looked under its body for his corpse.
Above him, Sakkors descended out of the sun. The inverted mountaintop upon which the city floated blotted out the light and cast the plain in darkness. Clusters of barnacles discolored the rough underside of the floating chunk of rock. Darkness clung to the city, trailed from it like a fog. Newly constructed spires, towers, and buildings pointed accusingly at the sun. Rivalen saw the dome of a new temple to Shar and grinned.
A cloud of veserabs flew below and around the city. Their tubelike bodies undulated with each beat of their membranous wings. A shade armed with a long spear rode atop each, buckled to a specially made saddle.
The dragon looked up, saw the city, the veserabs, and roared. It noticed Rivalen and whirled on him, throwing up clods of dirt, and spat a cloud of corrosive gas.
Rivalen, incorporeal, stood unharmed in the midst of the churning acidic vapors. Few things could harm him in his ghostly form, but he could do little to harm the dragon. With the field of anti-magic disjoined, the creature’s spell-turning ward would be functional. He would have to use his sword.
Yder is to hold the troops until I give the order, he said to Brennus. And the bonded krinth are to order the Source to place all of its power in my sword. Now.
Brennus did not bother to respond. Rivalen assumed his brother was communicating the orders to Yder.
The green vapors dissipated, leaving the plains pockmarked and dotted with curled grass and withered trees. The dragon, seeing Rivalen unharmed, snapped its jaws at him. Teeth half as long as Rivalen was tall closed on him, passed through him, and did no harm. The dragon roared its frustration.
Rivalen backed off, holding his blade at the ready. The dragon prowled after, as graceful as a cat.
A charge went through Rivalen’s sword. Power gathered in it. It vibrated in his grasp. Shadows bled from it as more and more of the Source’s power filled it. Rivalen shaped the growing power with his will, took the weapon in two hands.
The dragon, wary, backed away a step and pronounced an arcane word. Five glowing green bolts of energy streaked from the creature’s mouth and slammed into Rivalen. His ghostly form did not protect him from the magical bolts and the impact burned his chest and drove him back a step.
He recovered and bounded forward. The sword hummed in his hands, charged by the Source with magic that would reach through planes, with magic baneful to dragons, with the power of an entire mythallar contained within it.
The dragon slashed at him with claws, bit at him with jaws. Rivalen did not attempt to dodge the blows and they passed through him. The dragon, perhaps sensing its danger, tensed and leaped into the air. Rivalen clutched the blade in both hands, leaped forward, and drove the blade hilt-deep into the dragon’s chest as the creature took off.
The blade tore through scales as if they were leather and cut a furrow in the dragon’s flesh that started in its chest and continued the entire length of its abdomen. When his sword stuck and could slice no farther, Rivalen pulled it free.
Steaming blood poured from the ghastly opening and soaked the grass, sizzling and smoking. The dragon gave a high-pitched roar of agony. Blood rained down as it frantically beat its wings and struggled to stay aloft. Rivalen flew upward with it, slashed crosswise, and opened another bloody tear in the dragon’s underbelly.
The dragon roared, wings beating. It snapped at him in rage, but its bite passed through him without effect. Rivalen pressed the attack, chopping through scales and flesh in great sweeping arcs. The dragon screamed in frustration, pain, and finally, fear. Its blood soaked the plains. Its screams saturated the air. Rivalen closed, intent to finish the creature, but it glared at him, spat a magic word, and vanished.
Rivalen hurriedly recited the words to a spell that allowed him to see magically concealed creatures and to pierce illusions, and scanned the plain around him. Nothing. The dragon had fled.
Rivalen did not have time to revel in the victory. Selgaunt was falling.
Banish any remaining fire elementals, he sent to Brennus. Have the Source retrieve its power from my blade and distribute it among Leevoth’s men. Then meet me in the air over the walls.
Elyril smiled. The Nightseer had looked directly at her with spell-augmented vision and seen nothing. She was shadow, spirit, invisible. She was Shar’s weapon.
Thank you, Lady of Loss.
She laughed and the sound was like a breeze. She moved behind the Nightseer and stepped into his shadow. There she would lurk until he revealed to her the location of the rest of the book to be made whole.
Under Onthul’s command, several hundred Selgauntan soldiers formed a line fifty or sixty men wide and twenty deep that spanned the breach in the wall. Rorsin raced around behind the line, gathering every crossbowman he could and putting them into a group behind the line to mass their fire.
Saerloonian trumpets bellowed.
The sky darkened and Tamlin looked up.
An inverted mountain floated above the plains and cast its shadow over the city. Thin spires and towers dotted its top. Creatures as large as ponies, with black, tube-shaped bodies and membranous wings, flew around the city’s edges. Shade troops rode them. Shadows cloaked the entire city. Tamlin raised his fist and grinned at Variance.
“Stay close to me, Hulorn,” she said.
Tamlin nodded.
Men pointed at the sky, cheered.
The Saerloonian trumpets blew anew and Onthul moved along the front of his men.
“They’re still coming, lads! Ready now!”
Two lightning bolts shot through the breached wall and cut a swath through the Selgauntan ranks. Dozens of men fell, their bodies smoking. Other men stepped forward to fill the holes in the ranks.
Drums, trumpets, and a roar like an onrushing tide sounded as the Saerloonian army charged through the wall. They poured through the debris, blades high, standards flying.
“Fire!” Rorsin shouted, and a few hundred crossbow bolts winged into the Saerloonian army. Scores of men fell dead and their comrades trampled their corpses as they charged.
The men of Selgaunt met the charge with steel and sword. Metal crashed on metal. Men shouted, screamed, killed, and died. Bolts of magical energy flashed here and there on the battlefield as each side’s wizards made their presence felt.
Above the plains the Shadovar city hovered. The flying creatures and their riders did not descend.
“Why are they waiting?” Tamlin shouted to Variance. “We need them now!”
The Saerloonian forces outnumbered his forces three or four to one.
“The Nightseer’s purposes are his own,” she answered. “They will come.”
The Saerloonian forces surged forward. Blades rose and fell. The Selgauntan line buckled, broke in places. Saerloonians rushed through the openings. Selgaunt’s men were crumbling as surely as the city’s walls. The Saerloonians were too many.
Tamlin snarled, spotted a Saerloonian war mage hovering above the combat. The mage pointed a metal rod at Rorsin and the archers, and a cloud of black gas formed around them. Men fell to their knees, clutching their throats, dying. Others vomited and tried to stagger free.
“Counter that,” Tamlin ordered Variance, and intoned the words to his own spell. When he finished, he put his fists together and a ray of white-hot energy streake
d from him. It struck the Saerloonian mage in the face and neck as the man aimed his wand at another cluster of Selgauntan soldiers. The man pawed at his melting face, screaming, then fell out of the air, dead.
Meanwhile, Variance pointed her holy symbol at the killing black vapors and intoned a prayer to Shar. The power of her counterspell prevailed and the vapors dissipated.
Tamlin eyed Variance with envious eyes. “Shar is generous with the power she grants her faithful.”
Variance threw up her faceguard and pointed to the sky.
“The Nightseer is returned. Only now will you see the true power that Shar grants.”
Tamlin looked into the sky. Rivalen was streaking toward the walls, the shadows about him churning, giving him the appearance of an approaching storm.
Furlinastis circled over the fog cloud, the tips of his huge wings brushing the treetops with each downbeat. He scanned the swamp nearby.
Cale knew he could not hide from the dragon for long, so he did not try. He stepped out from the shadows, showed himself, and intoned the words to a spell.
The dragon heard him and roared. Beating his wings with enough force to strip nearby trees of leaves, Furlinastis wheeled around and streaked toward Cale, mouth open, eyes hard.
Cale held his ground, pronounced the final word to his spell, and pointed his finger at a point ahead of the dragon. Where he pointed, a towering wall of translucent silver energy flashed into existence. The dragon’s flight carried it into the wall head first and stopped it dead. The weight of the dragon’s own momentum smashed it in a heap against the barrier and the impact sounded like a hundred war drums. The magical wall flared, buckled, and dissipated, but it had done its work. The dragon could do nothing but futilely flap its wings as it fell into the swamp and sent up a spray of foul water.
Cale wasted no time. He shadowstepped to the space near the wing joint on the dragon’s back. The shadows that shrouded the dragon tugged at him.
The dragon is not at fault, First of Five, a voice in the shadows said to him.