The rust dragon turned. Dorn realized it had maneuvered to hold Kara in check and keep her from aiding the humans and dwarf on the ground. She started to countermaneuver, and the abyssal drakes furled their wings and dived.
An eerie cry sounded from elsewhere in the sky. The abyssal drakes convulsed, vomited their blazing breath prematurely—at nothing. Then they were falling, not diving, tumbling over and over as they dropped. They slammed down on the ground to lay broken and inert.
Next came a prodigious boom of a thunderclap that stunned the rust dragon and kept it from dodging when Kara spat another blast of her breath at it. That finished it, and it too fell.
At the same time, Dorn discerned who it was who had helped them. Engaged in a whirling aerial fight with at least four opponents, Nexus had nonetheless noticed his allies’ peril and used his magic to succor them. He turned back around and battered one of his own foes with conjured hailstones.
Kara plunged down beside Dorn, in her haste, landing harder than usual. Raryn dashed up to him as well.
“How bad is it?” the song dragon asked.
He struggled to goad his mind into motion, so he could take stock. His arm was entirely gone. Something of his leg remained, but it was a spindly, misshapen thing, numb, and hard to bend at the knee. The iron sheathing the rest of left side, even the plates inside his brigandine and breeches, was red and grainy with rust. No protection anymore, certainly not against a dragon’s fangs and claws. It seemed a bitter mockery that only his sword had come through the wyrm’s assault intact.
He realized, in a dull way sure to become excruciating later on, just how bad his life was henceforth going to be. He’d spent decades hating his golem parts. They’d made him a grotesque, frightening freak. But better that than a helpless cripple.
“I … I’m not dying or even wounded, exactly,” he said. “But …”
“We understand,” Raryn said. “Let’s get you under cover.” He picked up Dorn, carried him a dozen paces, and laid him down beneath the arching ribs of a dragon who’d died thousands of years before. He then murmured a charm. Power tingled over Dorn’s body, altering its colors, making it blend with the earth, bones, and shadows around it.
“Stay quiet,” said the dwarf, “and nothing will bother you.”
“I don’t want to leave you alone,” Kara said, “but—”
“Go!” he snapped. He didn’t want her, Raryn, or anyone standing here pitying the broken thing he’d become.
They hovered uncertainly for another moment, then turned away to rejoin the battle. A battle that half a man could only lie and watch.
Once the gaunt, purple howling dragon swooped down into the courtyard, Taegan couldn’t see it anymore. But he heard it give the eerie screech that was its breath weapon, and had no doubt it had employed it against the folk caught inside the barbican. He strained to fly even faster, and Jivex did the same.
Wind screamed, surely another conjured effect to batter Pavel, Will, and the rest, then the avariel and faerie dragon swooped over the wall and down into the bailey. The howling wyrm didn’t notice them. Poised in front of the entrance to the fore-gate, it was too intent on the foes it had been attacking.
The creature’s body essentially blocked Taegan’s view of the passage beyond, but as best he could judge, none of his comrades was striking back at their tormentor. It seemed likely that the demonic reptile’s cry and magical abilities had already incapacitated them or worse.
Then the howling wyrm lunged into the barbican. While Taegan was still too far away to divert it from its helpless prey.
Jivex hissed, stared, and a massive steel portcullis dropped down in front of the howling drake, rattling and clanking, almost close enough to clip the end of its snout. The barrier was undoubtedly one of the smaller reptile’s illusions, but the dragon of Pandemonium evidently couldn’t tell it. It stopped short and regarded the grille in astonishment.
“Get to the side of the gate,” Jivex said, “where it won’t be able to see us.”
As Taegan lashed his wings and hurried to comply, a second illusion formed, directly in front of the tunnel. It was the semblance of a copper dragon with blue eyes and a gap-toothed grin, the very image of poor lost Chatulio, and with luck, when the howling wyrm turned to see who had balked it, it would assume the metallic was responsible.
Another shriek erupted from the barbican. The phantom Chatulio vanished as soon as the ripping, pounding noise swept over it. That, however, didn’t stop the howling dragon from leaping out into the open at the same instant. Apparently it had intended to follow up on the breath attack immediately, with fang and talon, and had pounced before it had a chance to recognize that it was wasting its aggression on something unreal.
As a result, Taegan and Jivex were behind the confused, distracted wyrm, well positioned to assail it. The elf flew at it and thrust Rilitar’s sword into its neck.
The howling dragon whipped its head around and poised it to strike at him. But before it could, Jivex appeared hovering in midair and puffed iridescent vapor at its snout.
The howling wyrm reeled drunkenly. Taking full advantage of its incapacity, Taegan drove in three more thrusts. Jivex faded back into invisibility.
Then, snarling, the howling wyrm shook off the effect of Jivex’s breath. It whirled toward Taegan. The bladesinger swooped underneath its body, slashed his belly, and came up on the other side. The howling dragon hammered its wing down at him, and the stroke missed him by a hair.
Jivex lit on the infernal dragon’s spine to bite and claw. The howling wyrm twisted its head around to strike back, and its small assailant whizzed away.
Terror and confusion exploded through Taegan’s mind, but crying out, he denied them, and they lost their grip on him. He looked over at Jivex. His friend gave him a brusque nod to convey that he too had resisted the howling dragon’s psychic attack. They attacked the hellish thing once more, Taegan cutting at it, Jivex conjuring a hood of golden dust that unfortunately failed to stick to its head.
The howling wyrm pivoted, found Taegan, and lunged at him. And kept on lunging. Taegan realized it had decided to attack one opponent, himself, relentlessly until it dispatched him. Then it would turn its attention to the other.
Snapping and clawing, the howling drake pushed him back against a wall. He tried to dodge away, but the creature spread its leathery wings to pen him in. Jivex conjured flashes to blaze and bang around its head, but failed to disorient or divert it.
The howling dragon’s chest and throat swelled as its breath weapon renewed itself. Trapped right in front of the reptile’s jaws, Taegan knew he was unlikely to survive the blast.
Then flares of light, flame, and jagged darkness erupted behind the howling wyrm. It screamed and whirled, seeking the source of the new attack. Peering past the drake, Taegan saw them, too. The folk the reptile had trapped in the barbican had recovered from its assault, emerged into the open, and hammered it with an assortment of spells. The magic had seared and pounded its tail and hindquarters into a raw, bleeding mess.
It started to rush Scattercloak, Sureene, and their fellows, but Taegan was faster. He flew at it and thrust his sword deep into its skull. The howling dragon fell, thrashed, and finally lay still.
Once he was certain the creature of Pandemonium was truly dead, Taegan looked around, making sure no other threat was descending on his friends or himself. None was, so he furled his pinions and set down on the ground.
“Is everyone all right?” he panted.
“Of course,” Jivex replied.
Taegan regarded Will, Pavel, and the others. “What about the rest of you?”
“The wyrm’s cry and other powers tore at our minds,” Pavel said. “If we can spare a moment for some healing, we’ll be the stronger for it.”
“All right, but let’s do it indoors, where we won’t attract the notice of any other unfriendly dragon that happens to flap overhead.” He cast about and found an arched doorway leading deeper into the c
astle. “This way.”
Havarlan soared to join Llimark and Azhaq in their struggle with five of the enemy. But before she could climb high enough, a red-eyed shadow glided in on her flank.
“I found Sammaster,” Brimstone whispered.
“Where?” she asked.
“In the top of the second tower on the wall north of the barbican.”
She turned and scrutinized the structure with all her senses and arcane sensitivities. “Even now that you’ve told me, it seems empty to me.”
“I assure you, he’s there.”
“Very well,” she said, “I believe you.”
“Then we have to attack him with as many dragons as we can. A dozen at least.”
“Impossible. If we disengage so many from the fight with the hell wyrms, our defense will fail.”
“If you leave Sammaster alone to do as he wishes, it will crumble faster. I know you can’t perceive his influence directly, but I guarantee you, he’s the reason we’re losing, even with the likes of Nexus and Tamarand on our side.”
“All right,” she said, peering about, looking for allies she could pull from the fray while doing the least amount of damage to their chances. But the grim truth was that no one could be spared. Everyone was fighting desperately to hold Sammaster’s minions in check.
Such being the case, she’d use the drakes who’d come, unquestioningly, when she called. Employing a cantrip to amplify her voice, she bellowed, “Talons! Talons of Justice! To me!”
As quickly as they were able, silvers broke away from their opponents and winged their way in her direction. Climbing in the southern quadrant of the sky, Tamarand peered at her in surprise, and no doubt, dismay. But he didn’t seek to countermand her order, or waste time questioning her. Instead, his own voice magically enhanced, he directed his remaining warriors hither and yon, striving to mend the holes she’d just torn in their battle order. Meanwhile, Sammaster’s troops raised a bloodcurdling clamor and drove forward.
The Talons swooped and wheeled around Havarlan and Brimstone. “What are we doing?” Azhaq asked.
“Though we can’t see him, Sammaster is in that tower.” Havarlan jerked her head to indicate the proper one. “We’re going to assault it.”
Sammaster wondered what had become of Gjellani, the howling wyrm he’d sent to slaughter the foes he’d noticed scurrying into the barbican. He hadn’t expected it to take this long. Was it possible the Thentians had somehow managed to defeat the drake?
He reassured himself that even if they had, it didn’t matter. The castle had other defenses. Still, it would be sloppy, reckless, to let his enemies get anywhere near the source of the Rage. If Gjellani had failed, he’d send other dragons after the Thentians. The struggle in the sky was going well enough that he could spare them.
He murmured the opening words of a charm that would afford him a view of the interior of the fore-gate and the bailey at the end of it, then noticed what Havarlan, other shield drakes, and Brimstone were doing: streaking toward the tower in which he stood. Plainly, they’d discerned his presence at last.
He considered shifting himself to another location. but since they’d found him, he wasn’t certain that would shake them off his scent, and a number of the defensive wards he’d conjured were, of necessity, fused to the structure in which he stood rather than his person. Besides, he’d been itching to reveal himself and fight openly. He thumped the butt of his staff on the floor and dissolved his shroud of invisibility.
Since he had windows on all four sides, he presented a target to all the wheeling silvers at once, and several immediately bellowed spells. He willed his defenses to life, and the shield wyrms’ blasts of fire, sunlight, and such frayed away to nothing a pace or so short of the spire with its high, pointed roof.
He sneered, then willed his invisible, concentric spheres of protection to expand. When the outermost came into contact with the nearest silvers, it slashed them like razor-sharp claws, and, pinions lashing, they frantically retreated.
It was too bad he could only expand the bubble out to a certain point. Otherwise, he could have enlarged it until it shredded every metallic in the valley. But no matter. He had plenty of other ways to kill them.
Brimstone dissolved into smoke and sparks, came billowing at the summit of the tower, then recoiled as Sammaster’s wards wounded him even in that insubstantial state. Melting into dim translucency, a silver shifted the bulk of its substance to another level of reality, only to find the lich’s defenses existed there as well. A shield drake who looked as old and powerful as Havarlan herself—a long-time foe of the Cult of the Dragon named Azhaq, if Sammaster wasn’t mistaken—sought to translate himself through space, then hissed as the magic not only failed to shift him, but hurt him. Roaring words of power, Havarlan attempted a dispelling. Sammaster’s mystical fortifications softened for an instant, but then flared strong as before.
He took an onion from his pocket, recited an incantation, and tore at the vegetable’s layered surface. A silver screeched and flailed as strips of flesh peeled away from its body. He seared another wyrm with a downpour of acid, then sent a shadow-sword flying at a third. The blade was actually a mobile gap into the cancerous nothingness between the worlds, and when it slashed the reptile, it engulfed and obliterated it.
Meanwhile, the silvers struggled to reach him with their own spells, and failed utterly. He laughed in exultation.
Lying in the middle of the ancient dragon’s skeleton, Dorn watched Sammaster’s wyrms hammer his allies. It was plain that Kara and the others were losing, and he despised himself as bitterly as ever in his life for his inability to help them.
In time, however, and quite unexpectedly, a new thought came to him: He had reason to hold himself in contempt, but not for being ugly or freakish, and not because the rust dragon had crippled him anew. For surrendering to despair. After reaching the valley and finding Kara still alive, he’d vowed he’d never do it again. Yet here he slumped, wallowing in his own personal misery and self-hatred while the woman he loved, his friends, and all Faerûn were in jeopardy.
It didn’t matter that he’d lost an arm. The human one could still swing a sword. Or that his metal leg was numb and withered. Other men managed to walk on peglegs, and he was at least a little better equipped than that. Or that he no longer had impervious iron sheathing half his body. Raryn, Will, and Pavel had never enjoyed such an advantage, and it didn’t stop them from killing wyrms.
Dorn crawled out from under the arch of ribs, then tried to stand. The spindly, twisted remnants of the iron leg didn’t immediately snap or buckle beneath his weight, so that was something, anyway. He just wished the limb had more sensation in it. He hobbled a few steps, trying to get used to it and to figure out how to keep his balance with the heavy mass of his artificial arm shorn away.
All things considered, he was in a sad state, and doubted he’d last any time at all. But all he asked of the Beastlord—no, Lathander, damn it, Pavel’s god of hope—was to strike a single telling blow before some drake or other ripped him apart.
Most of the battle was still in the sky, and he couldn’t shoot arrows anymore. But periodically, one or another of Sammaster’s wyrms dived to the ground, and he watched for one to touch down.
“Hold up!” said Will, and the folk skulking along behind him came to a halt.
He stooped and verified that what he’d thought he’d seen on the floor was real. A glyph lay there, no doubt to discharge some form of unpleasantness when somebody stepped over it. The symbol itself was essentially invisible, but Sammaster’s fingertip had smeared the dust and grime of ages when he’d written it on the sea-green marble, and the glow Pavel had conjured onto the head of his mace to light their way just barely sufficed to reveal the shape.
“Shall I dispel it?” Firefingers asked.
“No, I’ve got it.” Will wet his finger with spit, then rubbed at the edge of the glyph, blurring it. The magic leaked out of it all at once, jabbing his digit like a
bee sting and filling the corridor with a rippling burst of visual distortion.
Celedon smiled. “Nicely done.”
Will shrugged. “It wasn’t that hard. Neither were the other traps. I guess we’ve finally reached the point where Sammaster ran out of inspiration.”
“Our Lady of Silver,” said Sureene, “grant that you’re right.”
They trekked on through echoing courtyards, chambers, and hallways still resplendent with the consummate artistry and craftsmanship of the elves, but cold, dusty, and draped in thick shrouds of spider silk. Will wondered if the builders had unwittingly imported the arachnids and the bugs to feed them when they’d come to this remote and desolate place.
As Pavel had conjectured, the foes of the dragon kings seemed to have laid out the stronghold to make it difficult for wyrms to move around. Mostly, it was spacious and airy, but at certain key points, the way forward led through choke points: cramped doorways, narrow corridors, and multiple hairpin turns.
Alas, the precaution hadn’t kept the dragon lords out, for here, as on the floor of the valley outside, bones lay strewn around, crunching beneath the seekers’ feet if they stepped carelessly. Will could only assume the besieging force had fought its way almost to the very heart of the Rage before the last surviving elves finally stopped them.
The complex was so big, he wondered how the invaders had known which way to head. Probably they’d had magicians of Scattercloak’s caliber to guide them. The faceless warlock in his shadowy cowl and layers of robe had cast a spell which, he claimed, enabled him to discern a source of extraordinary power toward the center the citadel.
So they headed where his gloved hand pointed them, with Will in the lead to look for snares, until two enormous shapes loomed out of the gloom, at which point he caught his breath and stopped short.
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