The Spectral Blaze

by Richard Lee Byers

  Then fire exploded across the sky.

  It was Tchazzar’s breath, and Aoth Fezim and his black griffon swooped beneath the flare. But instead of dying away for want of fuel, the streak of flame floated in the air, drew in on itself, and took on the shape of a dragon. The bright horror turned and, wings lashing, shot after the Thayan captain.

  That would likely keep him from threatening Tchazzar for a little while at least, and ignoring the flyers who were simply loosing arrows at him, the Red Dragon glared at the action of the ground. There, to all appearances, two masses of Chessentan soldiers were fighting one another. One company was pushing the other back, and despite the height at which he was flying and the general cacophony, Medrash could make out what the humans who had the upper hand were chanting:

  “Shala! Shala! Shala!”

  Medrash still didn’t entirely understand what was happening in Luthcheq. But it seemed that, like Aoth, Shala Karanok was fighting Tchazzar. And that meant someone should intervene before the wyrm dived and attacked her and the warriors under her command.

  “Get me close!” Medrash said. In response, Praxasalandos’s wings beat even faster.

  Medrash raised his lance high and opened himself to the Loyal Fury’s boundless, righteous power. As he did, he dimly sensed Bahamut, in some nonphysical sense, standing with the other deity and ready to lend his strength as well. Though it was possible that no one else could see it, cold, white fire poured down the lance, into his steel-gauntleted hand, and on into his core.

  Then he felt vibrant with strength, so full that he almost doubted his ability to contain it. Still, the sensation wasn’t frightening but ecstatic. If his body burned away, then surely the soul that remained would burn in glory forever, like a star.

  He strained to put such fancies aside and focus. Joyous as it might be simply to revel in his communion with the divine, it was his duty to use the gift and quickly. Tchazzar was already furling his wings to dive at the humans below.

  Medrash pointed the lance, and silvery flame streamed out. He was certain everyone could see it, and Tchazzar jerked as the flare washed over his body.

  “Tchazzar!” Medrash called. “Let Torm help you! Let him purge you of Tiamat’s stain and xorvintaal too!”

  Tchazzar beat his wings and leveled out of his dive. He simply seemed to be gliding, as though dazed or oblivious to the furious struggle raging on all sides. Prax turned and pursued him.

  Medrash kept the Loyal Fury’s power playing over Tchazzar’s form until he’d expended every bit of it. When the flare died, he slumped in fatigue.

  “Did it work?” Biri asked.

  Meanwhile, Prax’s swooping trajectory carried them both lower and closer to the wyrm ahead of them.

  “I think so,” Medrash answered.

  Then, yellow eyes burning, Tchazzar whipped his head around. Biri gasped. Medrash thought, we’re too close. Then flame erupted from the Red Dragon’s jaws.

  * * * * *

  Khouryn knew a warrior in an aerial battle, where danger could come from above, below, or any side, had to stay vigilant. He was also doing his best to look for Tchazzar, although he imagined that an ancient red dragon spitting flame would be hard to miss once he and his companions got reasonably close.

  Still, whenever he deemed it relatively safe, he stole a moment to scrutinize the action on the ground. Since the Brotherhood’s griffon riders were in the air, his spearmen were surely down there somewhere, and he needed to see how they were faring.

  There! There they were, anchoring the center of an allied battle formation—if one cared to dignify the jumbled masses of men below with that name—with a war band mustered around a Threskelan crown-and-wand standard on their left and a company flying red Chessentan banners on their right.

  An entirely different horde of Chessentans was attacking all along the front of the formation, and as was inevitable, what had surely started out as straight, unbroken ranks were bent and ragged. But they were holding.

  The problem was at the back of the formation. Some of the enemy had made their way all around the allies to attack there as well, and they looked to be on the brink of breaking through the rearguard, who were probably screaming for reinforcements, but no one was answering. Amid all the noise and confusion, it was possible that no one even realized.

  But as Khouryn sent Iron plunging downward, he thought that somebody should know. He understood why, if there were dragons in the air, Aoth, Jhesrhi, and maybe even Gaedynn needed to be there too. But still, someone needed to oversee what was happening on the ground.

  As he unbuckled his safety harness, he realized he was actually reproaching himself for being absent as long as he had.

  Then Iron plunged down on top of one of the enemy soldiers, who collapsed under the impact and the bat’s ripping claws. Khouryn thrust his lance into another foe, grabbed his battle-axe, and flung himself out of the saddle.

  Iron lurched beneath him and robbed the dismount of any grace it might otherwise have had. Khouryn tumbled off the bat’s body and slammed down on the ground. He grunted at the jolt, then jumped up and started swinging.

  Startled, the enemy was slow to react. He chopped down two men before the others started defending themselves, and even then they were more worried about Iron. To Khouryn’s surprise, the bat stayed on the ground with him, and even though the animal was clumsy, flailing and flopping about, his hammering wings and ripping fangs were murderous. Heartened by the havoc he and his master were wreaking, the rearguard rallied and surged at the enemy.

  Still, for a while, Khouryn thought the struggle could go either way. Then, just as he was killing his current opponent with a cut to the guts, men started screaming. He glanced around to find out why and took advantage of the moment to catch his breath. Iron looked fearsome, even to him, when he was suddenly invested with a demonic aura of menace that even his size and bloodstained teeth and talons couldn’t explain.

  Then dead men lurched up from the ground and stabbed and struck at the Chessentans, and that was finally too much. The attackers turned and fled, some flinging away their weapons and shields to scurry faster.

  The sellswords didn’t run, but they, too, shrank back from the swaying, shuffling corpses. “It’s all right!” called a high, breathless voice. “They’re on our side!”

  Khouryn pushed between two spearmen and saw a petite, snub-nosed girl astride a drakkensteed, of all things. He dimly recalled her from Aoth’s assembly of Luthcheq’s mages.

  She remembered him too. “Khouryn Skulldark! You came back!”

  “Of course I did,” he said, “and here on the ground, I’m in charge. In five breaths or less, tell me exactly what in the name of the Twin Axes is going on.”

  * * * * *

  There was no hope of avoiding Tchazzar’s fiery breath. Though it was a pitifully inadequate defense, Medrash raised his shield to protect Biri and himself.

  Meanwhile, Praxasalandos had essentially the same idea. He couldn’t dodge the flame but managed to flip himself upward so it burned into his ventral surface and not the riders on his back.

  Unfortunately, since his body was aligned vertically, Medrash started slipping from his back. Bellowing, trying to shout the weakness out of his muscles, he clutched at the dragon’s hide with fingers and knees. He prayed Biri was holding on too. He certainly couldn’t do anything to help her.

  Prax continued his backward somersault until he was belly up. Then, his flesh still burning like dry wood, he plummeted.

  Medrash looked down at the peaked roof rushing up from below.

  He reached out to Torm, and a smaller surge of the deity’s power—all that he could gather and hold in his depleted state—shivered into him. He concentrated it in his clutching fingers, then passed it on to Prax.

  Wings suddenly flailing, the dragon heaved underneath him. Prax couldn’t arrest his fall, but perhaps he slowed it, just as he twisted to drop feet first.

  He also liquefied as he smashed down onto the
rooftop, and maybe, to some degree, that cushioned the shock for his riders. Still, the jolt shattered Medrash’s thoughts into jangling confusion. By the time he snapped out of his daze, he’d nearly slid down the slope to the eaves, with rivulets of quicksilver streaming along beside him. He clutched at the shingles and anchored himself.

  He looked around. Biri was higher up on the roof. She didn’t seem to be in any danger of rolling or sliding off, but he couldn’t tell if she was breathing.

  Horribly, not all of Prax had turned to liquid metal. Some still on fire, body parts lay amid the globs and spatter.

  Alarming as all that was, Medrash could barely spare it a glance because, yellow eyes burning, flames leaping from between his fangs, Tchazzar was swooping toward the rooftop.

  Still shaky from the fall, keenly aware of the treacherous slope beneath his boots and the drop-off at his back, Medrash heaved himself to his feet. Realizing that at some point he’d dropped his lance, he snatched for his sword. He hoped he could at least land a cut before the red wyrm overwhelmed him.

  Then Balasar and his bat hurtled at Tchazzar’s head, and the Daardendrien threw his lance at the dragon’s eye. He didn’t hit it, but the missile did stick in the creases of hide underneath.

  Tchazzar struck back but the bat dodged, and the blazing jaws clashed shut on nothing. Balasar kept on flitting around the wyrm’s head. His arm cocked and snapped as he threw knives.

  Leveling off, Tchazzar twisted his neck for another strike. Then the wind howled. Though Medrash felt only the fringe of the blast, that was enough to send him tottering backward before he caught himself.

  Tchazzar took the full force of the gale. It slammed him sideways into a tower to smash the facade. He and chunks of broken sandstone fell down into the street together. Meanwhile, Balasar and his bat tumbled through the air but fortunately didn’t suffer a collision of their own.

  Roaring, Tchazzar rose with a lash of his wings that threw banging, clattering rubble in all directions. Then Jhesrhi Coldcreek swooped over him. To Medrash’s surprise, the sellsword wizard was riding a huge eagle, not a griffon.

  He had little doubt that she’d conjured the wind, and Tchazzar apparently thought so too. He spit flame but missed the eagle as it raced on by. And since the street in which he’d landed was too narrow for him to spread his wings, he couldn’t immediately return to the air to chase it there. He snarled and bounded after it on foot.

  Medrash had no way of following even had he wanted to, and he realized he still hadn’t checked Biri. Just as he scrambled up to her, she groaned and shifted her arm.

  Then Balasar set his bat down on the roof and swung himself out of the saddle. “Are you all right?” he said.

  “I think I’m just bruised,” said the mage. She tried to sit up, and Balasar crouched to help her. “Thanks to Prax.” She looked around the rooftop, and sorrow entered her voice. “He’s not going to put himself back together this time, is he?”

  “I don’t think so,” Medrash said.

  “So,” Balasar said, “I gather the exorcism didn’t work.”

  “No,” Medrash said, and a bewildered anger welled up inside him. “And I don’t understand! Why would the Loyal Fury urge me to rush here if I can’t affect the outcome of the battle?”

  “I’ll be a son of a toad if I know,” Balasar said. “It’s your superstition and your magic. But maybe there’s a reason. Think it through.”

  Medrash gripped his gauntlet-shaped pendant as though he could squeeze inspiration out of it. “All right. I freed Prax but he was a metallic. Tchazzar’s a chromatic and it’s the chromatics who are really Tiamat’s people. Maybe I can’t channel enough power to break her grip on them.”

  “But not all the dragons fighting on Tchazzar’s side are chromatics,” Biri said. “I spotted gem wyrms.”

  “And if I can get them to turn on Tchazzar,” Medrash said, “or just go away, it will change the odds considerably. It might give Aoth and Shala Karanok a real chance to win.”

  “Take the bat,” Balasar said. “You’ll need it to get close to your targets.”

  “Thanks.” Medrash clambered toward the crest of the roof and the animal perched atop it. “Will you two be all right?”

  “Fine,” Biri said. “I just need a moment to catch my breath, and then we’ll find a way down to the ground. I imagine Khouryn and his infantry can use an extra swordsman and wizard.”

  Medrash touched his heels to the bat’s flanks, and the animal lashed its wings and soared upward. Resenting the dark, the eye-stinging smoke, and the taller structures, all of which seemed engaged in a conspiracy to deny him a clear view of the air around him, he looked for dragons.

  The first one he spotted was Alasklerbanbastos, unmistakable even to someone who’d never seen him by virtue of his hugeness and the lightning flickering around his bare bones. According to Jhesrhi by way of Khouryn, Aoth had found a way to control the lich. But if so, the creature had slipped the leash, because he and his erstwhile master were fighting.

  The Great Bone Wyrm spit a thunderbolt. Jet raised one wing and swept his rider safely to one side. Aoth hurled a rainbow of presumably destructive power from his spear. But Alasklerbanbastos didn’t even bother dodging, and the magic played over his skeletal form without doing any discernible damage.

  Medrash wanted to go to the Thayan’s aid. Everything about Alasklerbanbastos outraged his sensibilities as both a paladin and a dragonborn. He could barely look at the lich without clenching and shivering with hate.

  And besides, Aoth seemed to need help because at the moment there weren’t many other griffon riders fighting Alasklerbanbastos. Evidently the dragons were thinning them out, either by hurting them and their mounts or simply exhausting their supplies of arrows. It wouldn’t be long before there weren’t enough foes left in the air to keep the wyrms from turning their attention to the relatively helpless warriors on the ground.

  And that, Medrash decided, was why he had to stick to his original plan. It offered the only real hope of winning. Though his instincts cried out against it, he passed the dracolich and the beleaguered warmage by.

  The smoke seemed to thicken. Then he realized it wasn’t smoke anymore, not over that bit of the city, but rather something damper and cleaner: fog.

  But though the mist was easier to breathe, it was an even greater hindrance to sight, and he soon realized that others had discovered the same thing to their cost. Below him, just visible in the cloud, battered sellswords tended their wounded mounts.

  Then he heard crashing, and a squat, drum-shaped tower swam out of the vapor and the gloom. Even if it hadn’t originally been intended as a bastion, it resembled one, and troops on Aoth and Shala’s side had taken refuge inside. They could probably have held off the warriors who’d surrounded the structure for a long time too, except for the thing that was smashing and tearing its way down to them from above.

  Medrash couldn’t see it even when he was nearly on top of it, although its existence was apparent from the long, deep tears appearing as it clawed the wood beneath it. Not content merely to blind its adversaries with fog, it had wrapped itself in true invisibility as well.

  And that, Medrash realized, meant he had no way of knowing when it was about to use its breath weapon. But fortunately the bat had its own ways of sensing and had probably fought dragons on Black Ash Plain. The animal flung itself sideways, and although the shriek that sounded an instant later was painfully loud, it didn’t do Medrash any actual harm.

  He resolved to let his mount fly as it saw fit. At the moment it understood how it ought to maneuver far better than he did. He reached out to Torm and Bahamut and, grateful that his mystical strength had returned, drew cold fire down.

  Then pain ripped through his skull. He almost lost focus and let the gift the gods had given him spill from his grasp, but not quite. Snarling, he pushed the clawing alien presence out of mind.

  But by the time he accomplished that, new rips had stopped scarring the
rooftop, and the rapidly disintegrating surface no longer bowed under an unseen weight. The dragon was on the wing.

  The bat flung itself to the right then the left, swooping and whirling, dodging more attacks that Medrash couldn’t see. But its agility wouldn’t save it for long, not against a foe who could strike with fang and claw, a burst of sound, the hammering force of its will, and Torm only knew what other tricks.

  Medrash had to end the fight quickly, and—he hoped—he still held the means shivering and burning like ice inside him. But how could he cast the power at an invisible mark?

  He needed to sense Tiamat’s taint as he’d sensed it before. He reached out with his intuition or some faculty akin to it and thought he felt a sickening locus of vileness arcing through the air.

  He stretched out his hand and shouted, “Torm!” A white blaze leaped from his fingers. The fog diffused some of its light, but the rest played across and half-revealed the serpentine form of a dragon.

  The creature roared. Flailing its wings, it made a final furious effort to close with the bat and Medrash. Then, as he scoured it with the last of the holy light, it gave up that effort and its invisibility too. The glow of a burning building gleamed on scales like plates of polished emerald.

  You’ve … restored me to myself, the dragon said, speaking mind to mind. The words were like a kettledrum throbbing and rumbling inside Medrash’s head.

  “Then here’s how to thank me,” he replied. “My comrades and I need your help against Tchazzar and Alasklerbanbastos.”

  I acknowledge a debt to you, dragonborn, and I’ll repay you if I can. But I’m no match for the Red Dragon of Chessenta and the Great Bone Wyrm. I’d only be throwing my life away.

  “Like the rest of us,” Medrash said, “you’re no match for them by yourself. But I’m going to purge the other dragons too. As many as I can, until I run out of strength.”

  The emerald dragon pondered that for a breath or two as it and the bat glided over the rooftops. Then it said, Don’t bother with the black. I doubt you can break the Great Game’s hold on him.