The Dragon's Doom (dragonlance)

by Ed Greenwood

  "A moment," Hawkril rumbled. "We came here to seek plain answers, and now snarling's abated and we speak politely-yet I hear nothing plain. I'm no mage, and scarce care who Aumthur and Maumanthar were, if they're safely dead, but what is the Arrada?"

  Tshamarra opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again and waved at Embra.

  The Lady Silvertree raised her brows and turned to the chained man on the wall, lifting her hand in a "will you?" gesture.

  Huldaerus smiled crookedly. "The Arrada's the underlying magic of Darsar. Magic is no god-gift, despite what priests say, but the natural forces of all living things in Asmarand-whereas sorcery is ways we've learned to harness and control these powers."

  He fell silent, but both Embra and her father waved at him to continue. Arkle Huldaerus grew a real smile, just for a moment, and continued, "These forces swirl and contend constantly, but also rise and fall in cycles, battling each other chiefly in two contending musterings: one of dark savagery-the Serpent-and one of bright cleansing-the Dragon. Sometimes one is victorious and sometimes the other."

  The procurer and the armaragor were listening intently. The chained wizard looked from one of them to the other, and added, "All thinking beings-beasts and swordswingers and cobblers, not just wizards and priests-can work to sway these musterings, strengthening one side or the other. Neither side is necessarily 'good' or 'bad,' mind, but to most folk the Dragon appeals more. We all prefer places and things dear to us to be just as we want them, and things we hold precious to be clean, and unwithered, and at orderly peace."

  "Oh?" Craer asked skeptically. "And how do I manage this swaying of the battle, against no foe I can see to put a dagger into?"

  The Master of Bats grinned. "That's a deriding I've heard many times before-a dismissal I'm sure Maumanthar heard often enough to grow right tired of. We do this by praying to the Three, and to lesser gods, the spirits that dwell in certain dells and pools and caverns. Of the Three, the Dark One is allied to the Serpent, the Lady to the Dragon, and Forefather Oak to the overall Arrada, the great balance or All."

  "So," Hawkril rumbled, " 'tis inevitable: There'll be a new Serpent."

  "I believe there's one already," the imprisoned wizard murmured.

  "Who?" Blackgult asked sharply, but Arkle Huldaerus just shrugged in his chains.

  The Golden Griffon's eyes narrowed, and he took a threatening stride forward, but the Master of Bats smiled and shook his head. "Truly, I know not. My bats see things only where I dare to send them."

  It was the turn of Embra to narrow and sharpen her gaze. "Will there also be a new Dragon?"

  The chained mage shrugged. "Of course. A useful ally- if you can find whoever it is, and meet their price or treat them properly."

  "Life is just full of ifs, isn't it?" Tshamarra asked softly.

  Chains rattled as the manacled man shrugged again. "If you freed me," he said slowly, "I could perhaps help."

  "Or not," the Talasorn sorceress said sharply.

  The Master of Bats grinned rather unpleasantly. "Or not," he agreed. "Reap as you've sown, Overdukes."

  Even as the words left his lips, a din arose outside the cell. Echoes, as always down in the Flowfoam cellars: the much-grown sounds of stumbling, frantically running feet, fast approaching through the dark passages.

  The overdukes whirled around, lifting weapons, as the chained wizard watched with interest.

  They were in time to see a crownless, ragged-cloaked Raulin Castlecloaks sprint past the open doorway, lit by bobbing torches clutched by two hard-eyed warriors who pursued him, swords drawn. At their heels ran another man, who sported no human face at all, but rather the emerald-green, shiny-scaled head of a serpent!

  "Claws of the Lady!" Craer snapped, hurling himself through the door with the rest of the overdukes in frantic, shoulder-bruising pursuit. A bat swooped past their heads, but none of them bothered to strike at it as they pelted down the passage after the flickering, dwindling torchlight.

  "Tash!" Craer gasped back over his shoulder, at the lithe woman running along not far behind. "Can't you… fly?"

  His lady shook her head, and panted, "Takes too long… to cast… without Dwaer… become hurled arrow… No way to fight or parry when reach…"

  "So what by all the Three-engloried splendor is magic good for?" the procurer snapped.

  "Oh," Blackgult called, "saving kingdoms, felling the Great Serpent-little things like that."

  The sounds of their voices made the snake-headed priest glance back, a forked tongue darting from between his lips as he hissed in anger and surprise. He slowed, and threw up his hands to cast a spell-and Embra stopped, pointed the Dwaer at him as if it was a sword, and let fly with a bright needle of force that lit up the passage blindingly bright for a moment.

  The other overdukes cried out, but kept running-and by the time Craer could see again, he was stumbling over the thrashing, headless corpse of what had recently been a Serpent-priest.

  "Graul and bebolt!" he snarled, veering to find a wall and claw himself to a halt until his gaze cleared. "Why can't you blast down those two warriors, Em? Hey?"

  "They're safely around a corner," the Lady Silvertree replied, as she joined him, guiding her fellow overdukes together. "Or I'd not even have dared cook this snake. Such bolts don't bow to royalty." The Dwaer had protected her against the flash of its own strike, and Blackgult had anticipated her deed and clapped a hand over his eyes, but the others were still blinking blearily at the near darkness around them.

  Embra sighed, made the Dwaer glow gently, and ignored the bats-a trio now, at least-flapping around her. "Come on," she said. "Run, and I'll try to touch and heal as we go. We've got to catch them before they get to a-"

  Even as she spoke, she saw that there was a well room ahead, with six passages leading out of it. When she let her Dwaer go out and brought blinding darkness down on them all, she could see no torch-glow ahead, anywhere.

  The Lady of jewels cursed as coarsely as any warrior, and then reached out with her Dwaer and started banishing the hurt she'd done to the overdukes stumbling blindly around her.

  Then, shaking her head, she led them on, the Dwaer leaping again to golden life. Craer bounded into the lead, Hawkril running to join him, and Blackgult fell back behind the two sorceresses.

  When they reached the well-Craer glancing down into its dank darkness, just to make sure-Embra doused her magical radiance once more. Nothing; the darkness was utter, unbroken.

  "Claws of the bloody, blood-spitting Dark One," she began softly. "To lose them now, when-"

  "Em!" the procurer snapped, hearing a tiny shriek close by his ear. "Give us light!"

  With a sigh, the sorceress did so-and found five bats circling her head. As soon as she stared at them, they flew away across the chamber, and through a certain archway. Without hesitation she ran after them, murmuring, "My thanks, wizard. Remind me to free you much sooner than I was intending to. Perhaps even before we've both died of old age."

  A bat screamed in her ear, then whirled away to join its fellows. Embra Silvertree gave it a savage grin as she hurled herself around a corner, down a few broad, unexpected steps, and on along the unfamiliar, winding passage.

  It ran for a long way without doors or side chambers, during which time a determinedly sprinting Craer caught up to Embra, gave her a reproachful look, and took up his former station ahead of her, with Hawkril moving to join him… all at a dead run.

  They'd just started to really gasp for breath, and slow with weariness, when the passage suddenly descended sharply, hooked to the right, and opened into-a large cavern that shouldn't exist.

  Embra stared, slowing in bewilderment now as much as exhaustion. She'd been bound to all of Flowfoam by the Living Castle enchantments of the Dark Three, unfinished as they were, and… and this place was not part of them. It should not be here, it-

  – presently held crates upon crates of what looked suspiciously like a ready armory of weapons, and two warriors racin
g around them, after a staggering, panting-to-exhaustion king!

  Running out of curses, Embra stopped, held up her Dwaer in a grip so hard her fingers turned white around its rising glow-and hurled a paralyzing spell upon all three distant running figures.

  The air around her flashed, and then flowed crazily… and Embra felt her own limbs tightening and stiffening.

  Shuddering, she forced herself to hold tight to the Dwaer, and used her last breath to snarl one of the oldest spells she knew, calling on the Stone to power it.

  The Dwaer flashed strangely, and she could suddenly move freely again. Around her, an explosion of gasps told her that her fellow overdukes had also been freed from paralysis.

  Something had hurled her magic back at her. Something had stood against the ravening power of a Dwaer-Stone, in a defiance she'd begun to think was impossible unless the gods themselves-

  Another Dwaer. Eyes narrowing, Embra looked at the saddlebag on

  Craer's back. It was ahead of her, directly between her and the fleeing king- and his would-be slayers, too.

  She ran on, trying to keep the procurer in view as he ducked and dodged around and over the crates, hurling daggers at the warriors ahead- until at last he ran across an open space, and she could snatch the two breaths she needed.

  Holding up her Dwaer, Embra gasped out an enchantment-and her Stone blazed up brightly.

  Craer staggered in mid-run as something tugged sharply upward at his saddlebag-and then burst right through its leather, spinning up into the air and blazing as brightly as Embra's own Stone.

  Something flashed and crackled back and forth between the two Dwaerindim, like a double-ended arrow sent flashing from one deadly bow to another and back again.

  Still running, Craer looked up at the sudden explosion of light over his head-and promptly sprang up onto the nearest crate, leaping high and…. closing his fingers around the stump of the severed priest's hand holding the Stone. Craer's weight dragged it down, the sheer flowing force of magic passing between the two Dwaerindim making his entire body shudder, and landed hard on the crate, falling forward to the floor and rolling to his feet still running…

  Just as Hawkril's warsword stabbed desperately out-and a scant swordlength in front of its tip, the two running warriors both snarled in triumph, and together drove their blades through the body of the fleeing king.

  18

  The Sword of Spells

  Dolmur Bowdragon straightened with a sigh that sounded suspiciously like a sob. His arms trembled as the spell-flame dancing amid the three Bowdragon brothers wobbled, sputtered-and Died, in a spitting of sparks.

  Multhas sat back, his face gray with effort and despair. Ithim fell to the tiles, weeping bitterly.

  In the searching linkage they'd forged, the three brothers had grimly found the faintest trace of their missing Maelra-but just now, as they'd closed in on her, those faint, distant traces had been chopped off, as if by a knife. There could be little doubt that they'd just felt Maelra Bowdragon die.

  Another of their bright young gone-the last one who'd had power enough to impress anyone with sorcery. Dolmur clutched the arms of his chair as if his fingers were talons that could pierce and crumble wood, and stared up at the high ceiling above, feeling sick and empty. How soon would it be before the dome above him, and all others in Arlund, resounded to the stride of some conquering mage?

  Unless they bred again, to some sorceress who was a very Dragon of sorcery, the Bowdragons were doomed. Cathaleira, Jhavarr, and now Maelra-the brightest children had all gone to Aglirta, and had all been slain.

  Sobbings and snivelings rose from outside the circle: the lesser, still-living children, probably as much afraid that they'd be expected to venture to their deaths next, as they were grieving Maelra.

  Dolmur ignored his writhing, facedown youngest brother for the moment, and asked Multhas flatly, "What's your wish that we do now?"

  He'd expected the ever aggressive Multhas to explode into either hot or icy rage, but surprisingly, his bearded, usually blustering kinsman just shook his head, empty-faced, and whispered, "Nothing. Not another drop of Bowdragon blood must be given to Serpent-ridden, plague-riddled Aglirta. Let us build a spell-wall, turn our backs on it, and try to forget. Nothing will bring our dead back."

  "No," Dolmur told him, as flatly as before. "We must know what happened to her. The time for revenge may not be now, but we must know. Or that 'not knowing,' and her loss, will haunt us and change us forever."

  The patriarch lifted his gaze from the dark, despairing eyes of Multhas to regard the younger Bowdragons around the circle, and ordered, "Get your most powerful magics together, and meet me back here, as swiftly as you are able."

  The younglings stared at him in awe-or was it terror? -until he let a frown settle onto his face. Then they hastened to obey, the youngest fleeing for the doors like storm-driven rags, and the eldest reaching out to drag away the ashen Multhas and the weeping Ithim.

  The blade-transfixed young man staggered in the Dwaer-light, turning agonizedly toward his slayers-in time to see Hawkril furiously hack both warriors to the ground, torches bouncing and rolling. He swayed, face twisted in pain, as Craer ran toward him and Embra called, "Craer! Get away! I can't heal him if your Stone's too close!"

  "Overdukes!" the dying man cried. "Get to your King!" And then he fell on his face and rolled over, bluish blood gouting from his mouth and nose.

  Reaching him, Embra stared down at… features that were melting from Raulin's into… blank facelessness. A Koglaur!

  She looked up at her fellow overdukes, as they gathered around her in this deepest cellar of Flowfoam. They stared down at the corpse, traded astonished looks-and then turned and raced back to the passage that had brought them to this hidden place.

  Bats circled and swooped around Embra's head as she hastened, emitting tiny, chill chuckles of mirth. She ignored them-but knew full well, as she ran, that in his cell the Master of Bats was hanging in his chains, coldly laughing.

  Raised in exasperation, Baron Phelinndar's voice sounded like the building-to-a-scream growl of a great hunting cat on the prowl. "You think we've still got time for spell-frippery, with this Gadaster bone-wizard on the loose, looking for you?"

  Ingryl Ambelter stepped around a motionless Melted with a sigh meant to warn the baron that his patience wasn't infinite, and placed the long-locked coffer carefully on the table.

  He silently bade the dust-covered undead to step back and make more room here in the center of the cavern, and then turned to the simmering Phelinndar. "We need this more than ever if Mulkyn survives," he said coldly. "And if he hasn't, we should proceed as we've planned, so as not to end up striving against a triumphant Church of the Serpent after they've secured their rule over the Vale, when they'll have leisure enough to send priest after priest after hiresword army at us."

  He beckoned a single Melted forward, and made the shambling, grotesquely twisted thing hold out its hands. Brushing dust from each gray-and-yellow palm, he put into them small items he'd need once he began spellweaving, produced a key from empty air with a murmured word, and unlocked the coffer.

  "More than that," the Spellmaster added, eyeing the glowering baron, "I keep my promises, and you were most insistent-were you not? -that I fully inform you of my plans and magics."

  He gestured grandly at the table. "So, now, observe or not, as you prefer, as I begin the long and exacting process of interweaving a Sword of Spells that will give me-us-control not only of the mind of someone but their powers."

  "Such as Embra Silvertree?" Baron Phelinndar growled, hands clutching the hilt of his sword, where they always went when he was in need of comfort.

  Ambelter nodded. "Or Gadaster Mulkyn, or Dolmur Bowdragon, or even this outlander Talasorn wench who seems to have been made an Overduke of Aglirta when our backs were turned. I have, however, someone other than all of these in mind."

  "Oh?" the baron asked, but the Spellmaster had already started to cha
nt a spell, raising his arms out in front of him as if to proffer a chalice or bowl that wasn't there to someone taller than he, who also wasn't present.

  The air between his empty hands shimmered restlessly as the incantation rose in volume and urgency, was briefly shot through with sparks, darkened as if a long evening shadow was falling across it… and then thinned to emptiness once more.

  Ingryl Ambelter let his hands fall, and then nodded as if satisfied. He seemed to be able to see something Phelinndar could not; all that the casting had achieved, as far as the baron could tell, was to create a certain singing tension in the air that had not been present before.

  "Who?" he asked roughly, persisting. "Three take you, Ambelter-have we an agreement, or have we not?"

  "We do," the Spellmaster replied curtly. "Patience, please. I'll tell you when I'm done. This series of castings is exacting and precise, and I must keep many things in my mind as I work-or all will be ruined. Rest assured that when I'm done, my intended victim won't have been chosen by the magics; we'll have ample time to debate then."

  The two men stared at each other across a cavern that now throbbed and thrummed with magic, an ever-growing din of power that crackled around Ingryl Ambelter as the baron watched-crackled ever more hungrily, though the Spellmaster stood calm and expressionless.

  Phelinndar wondered if he was watching a weapon being built before his eyes that could slay him with careless ease-or if Ingryl himself was becoming that weapon. Either way, he stood in peril if he fought the wizard now. Staring into Ambelter's eyes, he nodded slowly.

  Ingryl gave him a mirthless smile and then turned to his table and launched into an incantation.

  The baron glowered at the mage's back, then sighed, turned away, and found his chair. If he was going to be blasted to ashes before the day ended, there was nothing he could do to prevent it, or to successfully flee and hide… so he might as well wait in comfort.