Mask of Dragons (37 page)

But Talon’s edge had carved a deep valley into the center of his cuirass, just below his chest. 

Once more Rigoric attacked, as implacable as an avalanche, and Mazael ducked under the blow. He spun, whipping Talon around, and drove the sword of dragon claw against the Champion’s armor. 

This time the sword dug through the steel with a loud snap, cutting the cuirass in half. The lower half fell to the ground, and Talon’s edge slashed through the padded gambeson beneath the armor to rip open Rigoric’s belly. The Champion stiffened as blood poured over his stomach, steel threads erupting from the wound to heal it, more steel threads bursting from his mask to sink into his neck. 

Mazael stepped back, and Rigoric raised his sword up to block. Instead of slashing, Mazael ducked low, and drove his fist into Rigoric’s wounded stomach.

The Mask of the Champion gave Rigoric great strength and power, but that terrible wound across his stomach had to hurt. Mazael felt something squish and tear beneath his gauntlet, and Rigoric let out a hissing gasp of pain. The Champion started to straighten up, and Mazael punched again, tearing the wound open wider.

Rigoric staggered, doubling over, and Mazael stepped back, his bloody hands grasping Talon’s hilt, and brought the sword down. Rigoric still had enough presence of mind to dodge, but Talon sank a third of the way into his neck. The Champion shuddered as Mazael ripped the sword free, the steely threads snapping and coiling around his neck, and Mazael raised Talon for the death blow. 

The Demonsouled blood in him screamed with satisfaction.

“Behold!” thundered Azurvaltoria. “Lord Mazael has triumphed over your champion, Celina du Almaine. Behold the price of challenging Azurvaltoria in her…”

The Prophetess’s derisive laughter cut through the dragon’s pronouncement, and Mazael froze in astonishment.

Why the devil was she laughing?

“And now you shall behold the power of the great goddess herself!” said the Prophetess. She flung her arms wide, the collar of her robes loosening, and Mazael glimpsed the purple fire dancing around the Talisman against her chest. “Behold the power of Marazadra!” 

The dragon’s head displayed nothing like human expressions, but Mazael could have sworn that he saw contempt there, followed by the blaze of fire gathering behind the white fangs. 

The Prophetess made a hooking gesture, and purple fire blazed around the Mask of Marazadra upon its altar. A haze of shadows swirled around the Mask, and it erupted with a shaft of purple fire. The shaft struck the Prophetess, and she threw back her head and screamed with ecstasy. 

Power exploded from her in all directions. The ring of blue fire winked out, and a gale struck Mazael, knocking him over. He saw Romaria and Timothy and the others fall as well, Crouch’s furious barks echoing through the cavern. Mazael hit the ground and rolled several times, coming to a stop near the stone table that had held the silver arrows. For a moment his battered, exhausted body refused to move any further, and then he snarled and shoved against the ground, getting to one knee.

As he did, he saw an arc of purple lightning leap from the Prophetess’s hand to strike the dragon. 

Mazael expected Azurvaltoria to shrug off the spell, as she had when wearing the guise of Mother Volaria. Instead the dragon screamed in agony, her head arching back as fire erupted from her maw to rip across the cavern ceiling overhead. The awful heat of that fire struck Mazael, and the cavern’s ceiling glowed from the blast of dragon fire. 

The purple lighting coiled around Azurvaltoria, and she shrank, blurring back into the aged form of Mother Volaria. Then she shifted again, becoming the young woman who had spoken with Mazael in the Guesthouse, and then she shifted again, becoming the form of the mighty blue dragon once more. 

The shifts came faster and faster, from old woman to young woman and back again. Strange, twisted forms appeared as the Prophetess’s magic attacked the dragon, half-human, half-dragon shapes, hideous and distorted. Azurvaltoria screamed in agony all the while, and snarling bolts of purple lightning and blasts of furious dragon fire leapt off her to strike at the ceiling and walls of the cavern. The floor began to tremble beneath the bombardment of magical forces, and Mazael heard a snapping, grinding noise as cracks began to spread through the stone. 

The Prophetess raced up the stairs to the shrine, black robe billowing around her. 

Mazael snarled, drawing on his Demonsouled rage for strength. He looked around and saw that Rigoric had already regained his feet, running towards Liane, the wound in his neck healed. The girl had lost her gag in the wind, and she was screaming for Sigaldra. Without ceremony Rigoric scooped her up, hoisted her over his shoulder, and ran to join the Prophetess within the shrine. 

Mazael turned to pursue them, and then another thought occurred to him.

Azurvaltoria had forgotten her own advice. She had urged him to set up the game so he won no matter what happened. The Prophetess herself had done so, drawing on the power of the Mask to cripple Azurvaltoria, perhaps even to kill the dragon. There was every possibility, Mazael realized, that the Prophetess would escape with the Mask of Marazadra.

What then? 

Mazael snatched one of the maethweisyrs from the table and sprinted after the Prophetess and Rigoric. The dragon thrashed in her death throes next to the shrine, her body blurring and shifting from human to dragon and back again, limbs and wings and eyes appearing and disappearing at random over the rippling mass. Blast after blast of purple lightning ripped off her to strike the ceiling, the entire Veiled Mountain groaning with the strain of it. 

The ceiling might collapse around them at any moment.

Mazael raced up the stairs, Liane’s screams ringing in his ears. The Prophetess whirled, purple fire snarling around her fingers, the Mask of Marazadra glowing in her other hand. 

“Farewell, Mazael Cravenlock,” she spat, raising her free hand. “This is the last…”

Mazael flung the maethweisyr at her. 

It was the only thing that saved his life. The blade ripped across the side of her face, drawing blood, and the Prophetess screamed. The spell that would have blasted him to ashes instead clipped him on the left side, sending him spinning down the hill to land at the foot of the stairs below. 

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The cavern shuddered around Adalar, Sigaldra stumbling next to him.

“What is happening?” she shouted over the snarling roar of the purple lightning bolts erupting from the shrine.

“I don’t know!” said Adalar. He assumed the dragon had chosen to unleash her magic. But why? If Azurvaltoria had decided to kill them all, wouldn’t it be easier to burn them all to death?

They reached the empty area below the shrine. Romaria, Earnachar, Timothy, Basjun, and Crouch lay stunned, though some of them were beginning to regain their feet. A….twisted thing, blurring through shape after shape, lay next to the shrine, diminishing and swelling to immensity and shrinking again. Adalar glimpsed Mother Volaria and Azurvaltoria blended together, shrinking and growing and twisting and blurring together. Somehow the dragon had lost control of her shapeshifting power.

Or the Prophetess had done this to her.

If the Prophetess was stronger than the dragon, how could Adalar and Sigaldra hope to defeat her?

He spotted Mazael sprawled at the foot of the stairs leading to the shrine, stirring as he regained consciousness. The Mask of Marazadra was gone from the altar, and Adalar glimpsed Rigoric’s dark form on the other side of the shrine.

“No!” said Sigaldra. “No, no, no!”

She sprinted up the stairs, Adalar following her. They entered the shrine, running past the empty altar. Adalar spotted the Prophetess and Rigoric running for the far end of the cavern, heading for a narrow tunnel visible on the distant stone wall. 

“Liane!” said Sigaldra.

Liane was slung over Rigoric’s shoulder, still bound, though the gag was gone. She looked up at them both, and even across the distance Adalar felt the sudden power in her pale blue gaze.

The Sight had come upon her.

“Remember, sister!” said Liane, her voice ringing through the cavern, louder even than the roar of the lightning and the snarl of cracking stone. “Remember! When the time comes, sound the Horn! You must do it! You and no one else!” 

Sigaldra started to run after them, and a slab of stone the size of the common room of Armalast’s Guesthouse fell from the ceiling and landed with a crash next to the shrine. Gold coins and jewels sprayed in all directions, and the impact knocked Adalar from his feet, Sigaldra going to one knee. 

When he stood again, Mazael stumbled into the shrine. 

“We have to go after them!” said Sigaldra.

“We can’t,” said Mazael, looking at the floor. “This whole cavern is about to collapse. Azurvaltoria has lost control of her power, and she’s going to bring the mountain down atop us.” He scowled…and then a vicious, pleased smile came over his bearded face.

He snatched up a curious dagger with a crimson blade. 

“This is our last chance,” said Sigaldra. “She has the Mask, she has my sister…”

“She’s getting away now,” said Mazael, “but she won’t get away the next time, and we can’t help your sister if we’re buried here. Run!”

They scrambled down the stairs and rejoined the others, and fled from the cavern as the ceiling started to collapse, the blasts of purple lightning drilling into the walls. 

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A short time later they emerged into the sunlight once more, back into the damp, misty air of the Dragon’s Gate. Faint tremors went through the ground beneath Sigaldra’s boots, and she heard the distant sound of cracking stone from within the cavern. A cloud of ash rose from the jagged top of the Veiled Mountain, lit from within by harsh fire. 

The ash blew away to the west, but Sigaldra tasted its bitterness upon the tongue nonetheless.

They had failed. Sigaldra had failed her sister one last time.

Chapter 20: Cheating

“We’ll rest here,” said Mazael, “and then continue on in the morning.” 

He had led them away from the Veiled Mountain and the Dragon’s Gate, back to the foothills where the air was colder and drier. After the harsh heat inside the mountain, the cool air was a relief. 

“To what point?” said Earnachar, wiping the soot and the sweat from his face. “We have failed.”

“Have we?” said Mazael.

“Aye,” said Sigaldra. Her face was drawn and pale, her ragged hair lank with sweat, her eyes bloodshot from exhaustion and grief. “We knew where the Prophetess was going. First Armalast, and then the Veiled Mountain. Now…we couldn’t follow her before the cavern collapsed. She could go anywhere in the world.”

“I don’t know where she’s going,” said Mazael, “but I know how to find out.”

“How?” said Sigaldra.

In answer Mazael reached in to his belt and drew out the crimson maethweisyr. 

Romaria looked at it, blinked, and then let out a quiet laugh. 

“My father,” said Mazael, “was right about one thing in his life.”

Adalar blinked. “Lord Adalon?”

“Yes,” said Mazael. There was no reason for Adalar to know that Lord Adalon Cravenlock had not been Mazael’s father. “He told me once that the best way to play a game was to make sure that you came out ahead no matter what happened, that no matter who won or who lost, you found an advantage.” He tossed the maethweisyr to himself, catching it by the handle. 

“If he had followed his own advice,” said Adalar, his doubt plain, “perhaps he would still be the liege lord of the Grim Marches.” 

“Maybe,” said Mazael.

“What was the point of that little speech?” said Sigaldra, her annoyance plain. “And why are you playing with that dagger?”

“This is called a maethweisyr,” said Mazael. “A Dark Elderborn weapon designed to store the blood of a victim. I threw it at the Prophetess before she escaped.” He tapped the crimson blade with a finger. “This is her blood. And what can a wizard do with blood?”

For a moment no one spoke. 

“I can track her, my lord,” said Timothy, his eyes widening. 

“You…you can?” said Sigaldra, something like hope returning to her. “Will she not block it?”

“She cannot,” said Timothy. “That is why wizards are so careful not to let drops of their blood fall into the wrong hands. With a sample of her blood, I can track her anywhere in the world. There is no spell or relic that can shield her from it. We can find her anywhere!”

“And we will follow her,” said Mazael. “This isn’t over yet, Sigaldra, I promise you that. We’re going to follow the Prophetess, find her, and kill her. No matter where she goes next, no matter where the Heart of the Spider is, we’re going to find her.”

And this time, Mazael promised himself, she would not escape. 

Epilogue

“You’re going to fail,” said Liane. 

The woman who had abandoned the name of Celina du Almaine ignored the girl’s voice.

The Prophetess and Rigoric walked north of the Veiled Mountain, the Mask of Marazadra cradled in the Prophetess’s arms. 

Exultation burned through her heart. At last, after years of searching, she had all that she needed to complete her work. A maethweisyr holding the blood of the last child of the Old Demon to empower the summoning. The Horn of Doom and Fate to call forth the dead to serve the goddess. The Mask of Marazadra to act as a channel for the power.

“You’re going to fail,” said Liane again. “The spider will consume you. Can you not see it?” 

The Prophetess smiled to herself.

And Liane, to act as a vessel for the reborn goddess. 

Yes, let the smug little brat talk. Her words would turn to screams soon enough.

Still…

Doubt gnawed at the Prophetess. She was so close to victory…and many a victory had turned to defeat in the final moments. Mazael Cravenlock should not have been able to follow her to Armalast. Certainly he should not have been able to track her to the Veiled Mountain and Azurvaltoria’s lair.