“Albanon, what have you done?” she whispered.
He glanced at her briefly, then turned away, back to the dragon. “Kri,” he called over his shoulder, “it’s not Vestapalk.” He sounded disappointed.
A second figure emerged from the shadows inside the cliff, an old human man with dark, wrinkled skin and short white hair. The back of Tempest’s neck prickled. She brought up her rod, the fire of her power already licking and smoking around it. She’d never met Kri Redshal, but she’d heard more than enough about him from Albanon, Shara, and Uldane.
The traitorous priest only snorted at her. “Know your enemy, warlock.” He joined Albanon. “No,” he said with interest, “not Vestapalk, but certainly some kind of spawn.”
“Like Vestagix.”
“Indeed.”
They might have been discussing the lineage of a prize horse. Tempest looked behind her and found Shara, Uldane, and Quarhaun approaching warily. Roghar was with Turbull, while Belen had joined Hurn, Cariss, and the other Tigerclaws in circling Vestausan and Vestausir. The crippled dragon seemed to have recovered some of its wits. It snapped with both heads at its smaller foes, but the Tigerclaws kept their distance. They kept moving, forcing the monster to turn with them and wear itself down. Neither barbarians nor dragon seemed ready to commit to another close quarters fight, but they didn’t seem ready to retreat either.
Tempest clenched her jaw. There were two forces on the battlefield that frightened her now-but one of them she knew as a friend. She turned back to the priest and the wizard. “Albanon, if you can destroy that thing, do it!”
Blue eyes narrowed. Lightning crackled around Albanon’s fingers. Kri grabbed his arm before he could draw power into the spell, though. “I have a better idea. A test. Take out the gate fragment.”
Albanon blinked, then smiled. To Tempest’s shock, the lightning vanished. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Trust me,” said Albanon. He reached into a pouch and produced a small shard of red stone, placing it on his palm and stretching out his arm. Kri held his hand above Albanon’s. His face tightened in concentration.
“Tharizdun,” he intoned.
With that word, a change seemed to come over the valley. The last rays of the setting sun dimmed. Behind Kri and Albanon, the stone face of the cliff shivered, somehow changing subtly from mere rock to a looming, brooding presence. A strange feeling pressed on Tempest’s mind. Bad things had happened here once. Terrible things.
Vestausan and Vestausir stiffened and whipped around, Tigerclaws and its own broken leg forgotten. “You!” both voices roared, in perfect unison for the first time. Propelled by its good legs and wings, the dragon lunged.
Tempest thrust out her rod and screamed the harsh words of a spell. Flame erupted above the creature, streaking down and taking the form of a red hot iron spike as it passed through its shoulder and into the ground beneath. The dragon screeched and the iron groaned, but the spike halted the monster’s lunge. It didn’t end its furious attack, though. As Vestausan snapped at the iron, trying to get its teeth on it to rip it free, the twin head kept straining to reach Albanon and Kri.
The priest kept up his invocation. “Tharizdun! Chained God! Patient One and Undoer!” he called. “Heed me!” His voice rose from prayer to the complex syllables of magic. Albanon’s voice joined in, but the dragon’s attack seemed to have broken through to Albanon. A hint of fear crept into his face and he threw a wild, desperate glance at Tempest.
That was enough for the tiefling. Whatever Albanon might have done, whatever madness had overcome him, the man she knew was still there. She looked to Shara and the others, to Turbull and the Tigerclaws. “Keep up the attack! Defend them!”
The old priest’s appearance might have been a mystery to the Tigerclaws, but it was clear they saw an ally in the battle. They charged back to the attack. With the lashing tail immobilized, they came at Vestausan and Vestausir from the rear. One brave shifter tried to climb up along the dragon’s back. That was a mistake. Vestausan left off worrying at the iron spike and grabbed for him. Jaws closed on his arm and dragged the screaming shifter down. Heedless of the danger, other barbarians moved in to take his place.
Vestausir was still trying to get at the two spellcasters, though. Tempest waved at Roghar, Shara, Uldane, and Quarhaun. “Take it!” she called, then she sent a blast of fire right at the head’s eyes. That got its attention. She danced back as it swung toward her, trying to draw it even farther from Albanon, and almost bumped into Shara. The warrior steadied her.
“You know that’s Kri with Albanon?” Shara said.
“I know,” said Tempest. “Keep an eye on him.”
Shara nodded and went after Roghar, who had picked up a Tigerclaw warpick to replace his lost sword. They approached Vestausir from either side, forcing the head to waver between them. Roghar feinted and the head swung toward him. Shara leaped in from the other side and hacked at it with her greatsword. Vestausir roared and smashed her to the ground with a sudden twist of its head. At Tempest’s side, Quarhaun cried out and loosed a crackling bolt of darkness. Tempest unleashed another gout of flame.
The dragon roared again, both its heads thrown to the sky. Mighty wings beat the ground, throwing up a storm of dust, leaves, and stone fragments. Albanon flinched at the flying debris, but Kri stood absolutely still, ignoring wind and debris alike as he chanted.
The fragment of stone between their hands erupted in a ruddy light that seemed to drip like molten metal. The light made burning patterns and spattered the ground, the random splashings forming arcane-looking symbols. Kri’s voice rose in a commanding cry. “ What was once two shall be again. I divide you! ”
The red light flared. Vestausan and Vestausir howled and Tempest saw something strange on the dragon’s face: true terror. The great wings flapped in earnest and the iron spike finally gave way, vanishing in a wisp of smoke as the creature pulled free. The dragon half rose into the air, dumping off those Tigerclaws that had been clinging to its back. But its tail and broken leg-hampered by the remains of Roghar’s battering ram-still dragged at it. The other Tigerclaws retreated, Roghar and Shara along with them. The dragon seemed to weaken, dropping back to the ground as a shadow fell over it.
Tempest blinked. No, she realized, the shadow wasn’t something that had fallen over the creature. It was something that was rising out of its flesh, clinging to it like a haze of darkness.
“What is that?” she murmured to Quarhaun, but the drow only shook his head.
“Tharizdun,” called Kri, “reclaim what is yours!” His free hand made a wide, spiraling gesture.
Vestausir and Vestausan roared again as the darkness began to bleed away from it like smoke drawn into a draft. Thick ropes of shadow flowed together, twisting and compressing into a black thread that snaked through the air and vanished into the ruddy light between Kri and Albanon’s hands. The dragon’s struggle weakened further still.
Where the darkness pulled away, the creature’s bloody and spell-torn scales were left red and crystalline, much like the Voidharrow but more solid and less liquid. For a moment, fear lurched inside Tempest. Was Kri somehow purifying the dragon’s substance? Empowering it?
Then she saw that the crystals themselves seemed to be evaporating. Gaping holes opened like wounds in the dragon’s body, hide and muscles melting away to expose bone-and even bone dissipated, as if eaten away by some unseen force. Tempest watched in awe as Vestausan and Vestausir boiled away like water thrown on hot metal. The two heads roared and shrieked together, until suddenly one head went silent. It still writhed in agony and its mouth still gaped, but no sound came out.
One of the dragon’s forelegs collapsed. The creature fell flat, its cries reduced to mewling. Forelegs that were no more than half-formed stumps scraped at the ground-then it was entirely still. The only sound in the valley was Kri and Albanon’s continued chanting, and even that was mostly Kri. Albanon’s mouth moved, but his eyes were wide in shock. Tempest
felt disgust rise in her. “It’s dead,” she called to the priest. “You can stop.”
Kri shook his head and raised his voice again. Vestausan and Vestausir faded even more quickly, like a corpse rotting before her eyes. Beside Shara, Uldane retched and turned away.
Only one part of the body did not disappear. The vast wings drooped and fell, falling like leather shrouds. The crystal that had flashed on them turned clear and evaporated, leaving the flesh in tatters, but the wings stubbornly remained. Only when every other trace of the dragon had vanished did Kri finally fall silent. The red light winked out. The eerie change that had come over the valley with Kri’s invocation of Tharizdun faded, but not Tempest’s feeling of unease.
“Interesting,” Kri said. “Except for the wings, it was formed entirely out of the Voidharrow. What did it call itself?”
“Vestausan and Vestausir,” Tempest told him.
“ Ausan and ausir,” said Albanon. His voice was distant, but thin. “In Draconic, ‘first wing’ and ‘second wing,’ just as gix was ‘claw.’ ”
“What just happened?” Shara asked, her voice unsteady. “What did you do to it?”
“We defeated it, of course.” Kri went over to the fallen wings and prodded them with a toe, then looked up and around at the staring Tigerclaws. “Albanon,” he said, “are you going to introduce me or do I need to do it myself?”
The eladrin ignored him. Blue eyes that had been wide and bright when he emerged from the hole in the cliff were dark and haunted as they turned to Tempest. Albanon reached a trembling arm toward her. “Tempest…”
She hesitated for only a heartbeat, then went to him. He all but collapsed in her arms and she guided him to the ground as gently as she could. She wanted to be tender, but anger burned inside her, too. “You idiot. You said you wouldn’t try to use that power again!”
He stared into her face. “I had to. We needed to escape and save you-all of you. All of us.” Albanon’s hand unfolded and he held out the stone fragment she had seen him take from his pouch. It had been red. Now dark veins twisted across its surface, as black as the shadow Albanon and Kri had drawn from the two-headed dragon. “The urge that guided us here was right, Tempest. We have what we need to destroy the Voidharrow now. Kri just proved it. We’re ready to face Vestapalk.”
They camped for the night at the entrance to the valley. Kri tried to persuade Albanon and the others, as well as the Tigerclaws, that they would be comfortable inside the cloister, but Albanon refused to listen to the advice. “I’m not going back in there,” he insisted, clutching tight the staff that one of the shifters had returned to him. “I won’t let anyone else, either.”
No one else wanted to once the wizard had described-with lurid exaggeration-what was hidden behind the cliff face. Tempest went pale. Several of the Tigerclaw shifters made a primitive warding sign against evil.
They made the same sign toward Kri when Albanon introduced him. Kri gave the eladrin a disapproving glance. “Someone has been telling stories when I wasn’t around to defend myself.”
Shara glared at him. “You’re insane and a traitor. That’s not telling stories, that’s warning people.”
“Be civil,” said Albanon to both of them. The wizard was trying his best to appear calm, but Kri could see the conflict in him. Albanon might attempt to deny it, but the power he had embraced in shattering the sealed doors of the cloister was his already. “At least for tonight. Shara, we need Kri to defeat Vestapalk. Kri, the Tigerclaws don’t like Tharizdun-”
“Who does?” muttered Shara.
Kri took a certain satisfaction in seeing Albanon wince and elbow her before continuing, “We’ve earned their respect, but it’s precarious. No preaching.”
He smiled in his best fawning manner. “Of course. You know, you sound exactly like Moorin when you say that.”
Albanon’s scowl joined Shara’s.
Still, Kri did have to admit that the Tigerclaws treated them all with more respect than he’d ever experienced in previous encounters with the barbarians. Their hunters caught food for all of them-an excellent change from peryton eggs-and as the temperature dropped, one of them gave him a cloak left by warrior killed by Vestausan and Vestausir. Kri sat around a fire with the others, Turbull, and some of the remaining Tigerclaws, feeling content for the first time in a very long while. He had pleased his god, or at least it seemed as if he had. With Albanon’s aid, he would be the Chained God’s instrument of vengeance on the Voidharrow. Shara and Uldane’s open glares couldn’t bother him, nor could Tempest and Quarhaun’s mistrustful wariness or the Tigerclaws’ whispering when they didn’t think he could hear them. Even Albanon’s butchered explanation of the nature of the Voidharrow and of how extracting Tharizdun’s will was the key to destroying it failed to grate on his nerves.
Much, anyway. By the gods, the wizard’s old mentor had been sloppy in his training.
When the bulky Tigerclaw named Hurn asked-the third person to do so-exactly what had happened to the dragon after it had been “melted,” Kri couldn’t take it anymore. He sat up.
“Vestausan and Vestausir weren’t ‘melted’ or ‘evaporated,’ ” he said. “The creature was formed out of the Voidharrow and when the will of Tharizdun was removed, there was nothing left to protect it. The stuff of our world attacked and destroyed it. To answer the question I think you’re really trying to ask, it is completely gone. There is no residue of it drifting around the valley, waiting to condense with the morning dew. If your tribe wishes to attempt to hide from the Abyssal Plague in the valley, you won’t be troubled unless more plague demons come.”
The blunt answer earned him a growl from Hurn and a wince from Albanon. “Kri!”
“You said no preaching. I offered an explanation that was clearer than what you attempted.” Kri turned back to Hurn. “Any further questions?”
Hurn looked to Turbull with an angry expression but the shifter chief waved him to silence and said instead, “The Thornpad won’t return here. We’ll seek another refuge.”
“Why?” asked Albanon. “The perytons are gone.”
“And we thank you, but I won’t expose my people to a danger almost as great as the Abyssal Plague.”
Kri snorted. “I told you, there’s nothing to fear in the cloister.”
“The Elder Eye watches,” said Turbull, his catlike eyes narrowing and a trace of a snarl creeping into his voice. “I have no desire to remain under its gaze.”
The cracks in his mask of a wise and calm leader were beginning to show. Kri was tempted to push him, to show him just what Tharizdun’s freedom could offer, but Turbull turned his back on him and spoke to Albanon. “Return to our camp with us and reclaim your horses and the gear you left. We will share what provisions we can.”
“If we’re successful, you won’t need to fear the plague,” said Albanon.
“You know where to find Vestapalk?”
“West and south from here, past the Ogrefist Hills.”
“A hard journey. Harder if Vestapalk sends demons to stop you. You say he can take possession of any plague demon? He sees and speaks through them?”
Albanon nodded. “The Voidharrow connects them. Maybe if we can avoid plague demons, we can keep him from finding us. That might make the journey easier.”
“I know woodcraft,” said Shara. “I can keep us hidden.”
“You?” asked Cariss. “You crashed through the forest like a raging boar last night. If you need to hide, it will take more woodcraft than you have.” She stood up. “Turbull, I will go with them. I owe Albanon my life. I haven’t paid that debt yet.”
The eladrin looked startled and sputtered something about how she owed him nothing, but his protest was drowned out by a curse from Hurn. “Leave the tribe? You will be Riven!” He spat.
Cariss spat back at him. “I’ll return!”
“Hurn, not every Tigerclaw who ventures beyond the tribe has to be declared Riven,” said Turbull. “And not every Riven is a feral monster.
They can redeem themselves.” The chief raised his hand to Cariss. “Go. Do what you must.”
Albanon still looked like he wanted to protest, but Belen grabbed him and whispered something to him. He frowned, but then bent his head to Cariss. She nodded back to him somberly.
Hurn still didn’t seem happy. “Vestapalk’s creature found them here, didn’t it?” he said. “How? We’ve seen no plague demons since we came to the mountains.”
“Luck,” said Roghar, speaking up for the first time. The dragonborn sat a little apart from the others, still wearing full armor. “Chance. Maybe it followed us from Winterhaven.”
“We would have seen it,” pointed out Uldane. “It didn’t seem like subtlety was its strong point. I don’t think it would have waited to attack us. Maybe your patrols haven’t been as thorough as you thought, Hurn. Maybe there is a plague demon-it would only take one, right?”
The shifter bared his teeth at the suggestion. The other Tigerclaws looked uneasy. So, Kri noticed, did Roghar. He smiled to himself, then said calmly, “Perhaps a bit of both. Plague demons may have seen you travelling north, then Vestapalk could have dispatched Vestausan and Vestausir to search the region for you. If the beast was spawned in the Plaguedeep, it would have taken time for it to get here.”
The others stared at him. “That seems… reasonable,” said Albanon.
“Of course it’s reasonable,” Kri said, lifting his head proudly. “You don’t need to act surprised. I’m only mad some of the time, you know.”
The stares got a little wider. Those around the fire shifted uncomfortably. Kri rolled his eyes and sighed. “That was a joke.” No one laughed. He shrugged and sat back. “Perhaps not. But then, I imagine you’re all worried about your camp anyway. If Vestausir and Vestausan circled the area before they found us, they likely saw your camp first.”
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