But then a small but powerful force had swept into Vaasa in his own army’s wake. They had broken the siege at Palishchuk and gathered the remnants of refugees from across the wasteland into a single, formidable force. Several caravans of supplies from Castle Perilous had not reached Bloodstone Pass in the Galenas. Zhengyi’s main supply route had been interrupted.
The Witch-King understood that he should not be looking north at so critical an hour. He had not the time to chase a splinter group of rebels with Gareth Dragonsbane rising to prominence before him.
“Where are you, Byphast?” he asked the cold northern breeze.
He had sent the dragon back to her glacial home with instructions to put down the rebels and their Damaran supporters, but the news coming back to him had been less than promising.
He stood there a while longer, then snapped his black robes and gray cape around him in a swift, angry turn. He strode back down the mountainside, his undead form easily gliding over the treacherous descent, and soon he walked among the rear guard of his army again, appearing once more as he had in life. The living humans who slavishly followed him would not have suffered the terrible sight of his true form.
He waited out the night in his command tent, perusing the reports and maps that were coming in from the battle fronts in the south. Truly Zhengyi’s preparation for the campaign would have garnered the appreciation of the greatest generals throughout Faerûn. Information was power, Zhengyi knew, and his command tent, with its tables full of maps and miniatures of various strategic stretches of the Bloodstone Lands’ terrain, and markers depicting the relative size and strength of the armies doing battle, was a testament to that knowledge. There, Zhengyi could plot his army’s movements, his defensive positions, and those areas most vulnerable to attack. In that tent, the grand strategy—including the decision not to throw his weight fully against Palishchuk—had been formulated and continually refined.
The Witch-King didn’t like surprises.
Despite his preparation and confidence, Zhengyi’s firelight eyes often glanced back over his shoulder, to the north, in the hope of word from the white dragon. Splinter groups of powerful heroes were harder to keep track of and often more trouble than regiments of common soldiers.
The long night passed without incident. It wasn’t until the next morning that Byphast, in her elf form, came walking down the trail. Zhengyi spotted her some distance off, and first sight told him that the news from the north was not good. Byphast limped, and even from a distance, she appeared more disheveled than Zhengyi had ever seen her.
The Witch-King’s robes fluttered out behind him as he strode through his camp, determined to meet the white dragon on the trail beyond the hearing of his guards and soldiers.
“The rumors are true,” Zhengyi said as he approached. “A band of heroes reached Palishchuk.”
“To the cheers of the half-orcs,” Byphast replied. “That city is more fortified than ever. Their preparations do not cease. They have thickened their walls and set out crates of stinging arrows.”
Her use of that particular adjective told Zhengyi that the dragon had personally tested those defenses.
“And they have constructed greater engines of defense, catapults and ballistae that can be quickly swiveled toward the sky to strike back against airborne creatures. When I flew over the city, barbed chains rose to impede me, and I only narrowly avoided giant spears hurled my way.”
“Palishchuk will be dealt with in time,” Zhengyi promised.
“Without the aid of Byphast, and without any other dragons, I would guess,” the white dragon replied. “The treasures of Palishchuk are not worth the risk to wing and limb.”
Zhengyi nodded, still not overly concerned with the half-orc city. Once Damara had been conquered, Palishchuk would become a tiny oasis of resistance with no help forthcoming from anywhere in the Bloodstone Lands. They would not hold out for long, and Zhengyi had not yet given up hope that the half-orcs would ultimately throw in with him. They were half-orcs, after all, and would not likely be as deterred by moral issues as were the weak humans, halflings, and others of Damara.
“These heroes hid within the city?” Zhengyi asked, getting back to the problem at hand.
“Nay, they came forth quite willingly. When I escaped the chains and the spears and flew off to the north, they burst out of Palishchuk’s gate in pursuit.”
“And you killed them?”
Byphast’s twisted expression gave him the answer before the dragon began to speak. “They are accompanied by mighty wizards and priests. Their knights glow with wards to defeat my deadly breath; their armor sings with magic to deter the rake of my claws.”
“A small band?”
“Fifty strong and well designed to do battle with dragons.”
“Byphast would not normally flee from such a group.” Zhengyi did nothing to keep the contempt out of his voice, nor from his expression, as he narrowed his eyes and sneered.
“If forced to do battle with them—if ever they happened upon my lair—then I would surely destroy them,” the dragon replied without hesitation. “But scars would accompany that win, I am sure, and in that place, at this time, they were not worth the trouble.”
“You serve Zhengyi.” Even as the Witch-King took the conversation in that direction, Byphast’s statement, if ever they happened upon my lair, resonated in his thoughts.
“I agreed to fight beside Zhengyi’s forces,” the dragon replied. “I did not agree to wage such battles alone in the bogs of Vaasa.”
Zhengyi produced a phylactery, the one to which Byphast had attuned herself. If the dragon was slain, her energy and life-force would transfer to the phylactery, and she would become undead, a dracolich.
“You forget?” the lich said.
“It is a final safeguard, but not one I am anxious to use. If in the course of events I am slain, then so be it. That is the risk my kind need take whenever we come forth into the world of lesser creatures. But I’ll not chase after the undeath you offer.”
“Ah, Byphast, it is a piteous thing to see a creature of your reputation reduced to such fear.”
Lizardlike eyes narrowed, and a low growl escaped the dragon’s elf lips.
“Very well, then,” said Zhengyi. “I will deal with the intruders myself. I’ll not have them nipping at my heels all the way through Damara. Go and rejoin the commanders at the front. Lay waste to the foolish Damarans who stand in our way.”
Byphast didn’t move, nor did her expression change from the hateful look she shot Zhengyi’s way.
If that threat bothered the Witch-King at all, though, he didn’t show it. He turned his back on the wyrm in elf’s clothing and stalked back to his vast encampment.
“Donegan!” cried Maryin Felspur, Knight of the Order.
“Sir Donegan,” the senior knight corrected. He walked his armor-clad horse out from the ranks, the heavy hooves making plopping sounds as the fifteen-hundred-pound steed, with three hundred pounds of armor and two hundred pounds of rider, crossed the soft, wet ground. Donegan paced right up to Maryin, the only female knight of the ten who had come out from Lord Gareth’s ranks in Damara, accompanying more than fifty footsoldiers, half a dozen priests, and a trio of annoying wizards.
“Sir Donegan,” Maryin corrected herself with outward humility.
She didn’t have her helmet on, though, and her smile betrayed her tone. Serving as scout for the group, the lithe Maryin was the least armored of the knights, and her horse, a fine, strong young pinto, barely larger than a pony, wore only protective breast- and faceplates. Maryin preferred the bow and used her speed to skirt the edges of the encounters with Zhengyi’s minions, thinning their ranks at advantageous points so that Donegan and Sir Bevell could best exploit their enemies.
Donegan did not dismount. His mail of interlocking plates made such movements tedious, particularly in trying to get back up onto the nearly eighteen-hand charger. Instead he leaned over as far as his encumbering suit would allow
and lifted the visor of his helmet.
Maryin crouched beside a depression, a tear in the ground that was half-filled with brown water.
“Only a creature the size of a dragon could make such an imprint,” Maryin said.
Donegan straightened and scanned the area. He noted a second and third imprint behind and several more ahead but beyond that, nothing.
“Master Fisticus,” he called to the leader of the trio of wizards, “pray you and your companions ready your components and our shielding spells. These tracks are not old, and it would appear that the wyrm has taken to the air. It could swoop upon us from on high at any time, and I’ll not have its deadly breath decimating our ranks before we’ve had a chance to engage the beast.”
“Perhaps we should slide back toward Palishchuk, my lord,” Maryin offered quietly. “In reach of their ballistae—”
“Nay,” Sir Donegan began before Maryin had even finished. “The wyrm is too smart to be goaded near the town again. The half-orcs nearly brought it down the first time.”
“If it is the same dragon.”
That thought gave Donegan pause, for he could not dismiss the reasoning. Until a few months ago, Donegan had seen only one dragon in all of his twenty years of adventuring, and that was a small white up near the Great Glacier. With the coming of Zhengyi, the Knight of the Order had learned far more than ever he had intended regarding dragonkind, for evil chromatic wyrms of many colors filled the sky above the Witch-King’s advance. Reds and whites had laid waste to many villages, including Donegan’s home town, and the knight had done battle with a pair of blues, an encounter that had cost him a horse and had left a blackened line of lightning scarring across the back of his otherwise silvery armor.
Too many dragons, Donegan thought. Far too many dragons.…
Zhengyi stood on the northeastern bank of a small pond a few miles to the north of Palishchuk. Gone were the human trappings of his former self; he saw no need for such vanities out there, alone. He had his hood back, revealing his skull, the splotchy patches of hair, and the flaps of rotting skin. His robes smelled of mildew, hanging in tatters and showing green spots of mold. He clutched a twisted oaken staff, leaning on it heavily, and stared out to the south.
He saw their approach, the glint of the sun off their lance tips, off the armor of their mounts. He heard the thunder of hooves and marching soldiers.
The remnants of the Witch-King’s lips curled in a wicked smile. He thought of Byphast’s declaration: that she would not go against such a contingent except in her lair.
Any dragon would fight against any odds to protect its lair. To the death.
More flashes showed in the south. They followed the trail Zhengyi had dug with his magic, thinking it the tracks of a dragon.
He lifted his twisted oaken staff again, located a suitable spot, and uttered a command word. The ground erupted where he’d pointed his staff. Clumps of dirt flew into the air. The magic dug at the soft ground, bursts of energy tore up and threw aside yards of ground as efficiently and powerfully as a dragon’s talons might.
Zhengyi glanced southeast, to the distant troop of warriors. Perhaps they had noted the disturbance, perhaps not. They would be there soon enough, in any case. His spell completed, the deep hole dug, Zhengyi stepped into the water. It did not feel cold to the Witch-King, of course, for he could no longer experience any such sensations. In any case, no chill was more profound than the icy embrace of death.
His robes floated out behind him as he stepped in deeper, and soon he was under the water, not breathing, not moving. As the surface stilled, Zhengyi’s otherworldly eyes peered through the film to the northeastern bank. His trail would take them to the dig.
He clutched his staff more tightly, preparing the next spell.
Maryin crept along the muddy ground, staying low and letting her elven cloak, a garment of magical camouflage, hang down around her. She had left her horse back with Donegan and the others, who marched along some hundred feet behind her. Maryin’s job was to detect any potential ambushes, and to keep them moving toward the dragon. Given the dirt flying high into the air a few moments earlier, the knight had every reason to believe she had completed that task.
She had found another few tracks not far back, for the beast had apparently set down, but then she came upon a great hole, not far from the bank of a small pond. She crouched at the rim, considering the tunnel at the bottom.
“Did you go to ground, wyrm?” she whispered under her breath.
Maryin lingered for a few moments, then, hearing the approach of her companions, she straightened, glanced around, and moved her hand out from under the protection of her cloak, raising her fist high into the air.
She glanced at the water, not realizing that the eyes of the Witch-King looked back at her. Behind her, Sir Donegan slowed his contingent and approached with some caution. He walked his horse up beside the knight scout.
“Into the tunnel?” he asked, inspecting the hole. “Or is it a ruse, and the beast has gone under the pond?”
Maryin pulled back her cowl and shrugged. “I’m finding nothing to say it is and nothing to say it isn’t.”
“A wonderful scout you are.”
Maryin smiled at him. “I can track almost anything, and you know it well—even that little lass who thought to sneak into your room. But you cannot expect me to track a dragon that keeps taking to the sky. Do you think its beating wings will flatten grass from on high? Do you think the beast will cut a wake through the land as a boat might do across a lake?”
Sir Donegan laughed at her endless sarcasm and the wicked little jab against him. He still had a bone to pick with Maryin over that wench incident, for Donegan had been anticipating the visit, and the interception had not been appreciated. But that was a fight for another day, and a thought came to him.
“Has the water risen?”
Maryin looked at him, curious, then caught on and moved to the pond’s bank where she began inspecting for signs of a recent swell. The pond wasn’t very large, after all, and surely the displacement would be noticeable in the event a creature as large as a dragon had entered its depths.
A moment later, Maryin stood straight again and shook her head.
“And so the wyrm did not enter the pond,” Donegan said with a sigh. “Good enough, then.”
“There are no tracks from the hole to the water, and if the beast had taken to the air for any distance, we should have seen it—or should have heard the splash when it dived in. My guess is that the dragon, confident and oblivious to our pursuit, took to the tun—”
She hunched forward, and Donegan leaped back. Behind them, horses and soldiers bristled. From the hole came a low, throaty growl, a resonating rumble befitting a beast of a dragon’s stature.
“Form up!” Sir Donegan commanded.
He turned his charger and thundered back to the ranks. Maryin pulled her cowl back over her head and face and appeared to melt into the shadows at the pool’s edge.
The growl continued for a few moments, then gradually receded.
Lances were lowered, swords were drawn, and wizards and priests prepared their spells.
Then it was quiet once more. And through the long hush, no great monster sprang from the hole.
When Donegan and the others finally dared to approach, they stood on the edge of the deep, wide, funnel-shaped pit, looking to the broad tunnel at its base, which ran off both east and west.
“It would seem that we have found our wyrm,” Sir Donegan told his troop.
“Are we certain that a dragon dug this pit?” another knight asked.
“There are spells that can facilitate such things,” Fisticus the wizard replied. “As there are beasts.…”
“A dragon?”
“There is little turmoil a dragon cannot create,” Fisticus explained. “Such a wyrm as the one that attacked Palishchuk those days ago would have little trouble boring through the soft ground of the Vaasan summer.”
Sir Gavaland,
another Knight of the Order, said, “One would think that if the dragon meant to announce its presence in such a manner, it would have burst forth to attack us in that moment of surprise.”
“If it knew we were here,” Donegan replied.
“The growl?”
“A purr of satisfaction before settling down to sleep?” the wizard offered. “Such beasts are known to growl as often as a man might sigh or yawn.”
“Pray it is a yawn, then,” said Donegan, “and one announcing that the beast is ready for a long and sound nap.” He looked around at his soldiers, grinning from ear to ear beneath his upraised visor. “One from which it will never awaken.”
That brought a host of nods and grins from the rank and file.
Off to the side, Maryin neither nodded nor grinned. She knew what was coming, and what her role would be, before Sir Donegan even motioned to her to enter the pit. It occurred to her that perhaps she would do well to don her heavier plate mail and hire an elf to handle the scouting.
Under the water, Zhengyi nodded with contentment as he watched the troop disappear over the pit’s rim. His spell mimicking the dragon’s roar had been well placed through use of his complimentary enchantment of ventriloquism, or so it would seem.
The Witch-King knew that he should be away at once—back to the south and Damara, where the battle raged—but he lingered a bit longer in the pond, and when all of the soldiers had gone into the pit save those few left to guard the horses, he emerged again on the northeastern bank.
The three fools standing with the horses still stared at the pit, oblivious to the danger, when the Witch-King came calling.
She knew that her elven cloak could protect her from prying eyes, but still Maryin felt vulnerable as she edged her way down the enormous tunnel—certainly high and wide enough for a dragon to charge through it. Lichen covered the walls, emitting a soft light, like starlight in a forest clearing. Though thankful for that illumination—for it meant she had to carry no torch—at the same time she feared the glow might make her just as plain to the wyrm’s clever eyes.
The Collected Stories, The Legend of Drizzt Page 24