Oathen (55 page)

Geret risked a glance below just as Sanych
looked up, sensing him.

As they reached the far side, Ahm panted,
“Keep close, lads.” He leaped to the stone path and skittered on
the its smooth surface, nearly slamming into the wall.

Geret and Salvor leaped to either side of him.
As soon as their feet were in the air, Ahm let his enchantment go.
The metal bridge vanished. The nearest cultist was close enough to
make the leap to the path also, but more than twenty men fell
screaming into the lava pit.

Salvor didn’t wait for the Enforcer behind
them to regain his balance; he struck as the man was landing, his
fiery blade pressing the man back toward the edge. The Enforcer
swung his serrated sword, trying to ward off the fiery blue blade
that leaped toward his chest, but all he accomplished was cutting
his blade in two. When he paused to stare in dismay at his
shortened weapon, Salvor drove his sword through the man’s chest.
Then he dropped and whirled, his leg catching the man behind the
ankles. With an agonized scream, the Enforcer fell into the pit,
following his companions.

“Not too shabby, for an arrogant fop,” Geret
said.

Salvor stood again, dusting himself off. “I
learned from the best trickster in Vint.”

Geret nodded and gave Salvor a quick salute
with his sword.

An enormous rocky hand, crackling with the
sounds of cooling stone, glowing red between its knuckles, clasped
the edge of the stone shelf they stood upon. Geret took an
instinctive step back from its heat.

Another hand joined the first, and the
creature hauled itself up over the crater rim. Its eyes and mouth
glowed with the deep orange of magmatic fire, and its body, ashy
grey with deep cracks that glowed red, blocked the entire
ledge.

“And me without my roasting sausages,” Geret
complained.

~~~

The dragon braced his massive forelegs on the
island and the far wall, then heaved himself further out of the
lava, revealing slender, green-scaled shoulders and a pair of dark
green wings folded flat against his back. The claws that tipped his
massive forefeet were the same copper-to-silver as his
horns.

Oolat paused in his golem-summoning and stared
with singular focus at the mythical creature in the lava pool. A
look of fervent desperation made his face gaunt in the orange
light. If he could destroy the dragon, the
Dire Tome
would
survive even within the lava, and could eventually be retrieved. He
raised his hands and flung an enormous bolt of disintegration
energy at the beast.

The dragon cocked a slender, rounded ear in
his direction, then turned his head so quickly that he seemed a
blur. Oolat’s magic evaporated into nothingness, vanishing before
his eyes. With the same unimaginable speed, the dragon raised a
talon, held one nostril shut, and blew a forceful snort at him.
Oolat felt a hot force strike his body, slamming him into the side
of the cavern. He blinked, shaking off the tingling sensation in
his limbs, and found himself plastered to the wall with an enormous
glob of yellow dragon snot.

The resilient gooeyness of the massive booger
held him fast. He swiped at the gluey material with his silvery
claw, expecting it to reduce the snot to shreds. Instead, it had no
effect whatsoever. His silver hand couldn’t make the tiniest
impression in the mucus, but his normal hand could. He tried
directing spells at the substance, but found to his horror that he
could not.

Organic barrier-magic? I must get
free!

The
Great Tome
and his glorious future
were slipping from his grasp. Frantic, he began to rip at his gooey
prison with his fleshly hand.

~~~

Impertinent
, the dragon’s voice rumbled
in Sanych’s and Meena’s minds
. Pray, continue, immortal
mortal.

“Great dragon, friend of mortals,” Meena
began, “I beg your aid. Whilst you slept, mankind created an evil
book that has wrought much destruction upon the world. Now there is
no magic left to mortals that can match it, and the sentient book
threatens to unleash its chaos upon us all. Shanal will be but the
first victim of this wicked book, unless it can be destroyed. Will
you save us from the
Dire Tome
?” Meena pointed to the book
behind her.

The dragon’s eyes narrowed to silver slits. It
whipped its head down to the
Tome
faster than Sanych could
follow. A moment later, the great beast snorted, and a blast of hot
wind blew Sanych’s hair straight back from her head, making it
crackle with electricity.

Humans
, the dragon began, its mental
voice thick with surprise,
this book is not the craft of your
kind. The Great and Dire Tome of Ages is the ancient craft of
dragons
.

“What?” Sanych blurted, pausing in the act of
smoothing her hair down.

Our gift to mortals
, the dragon’s
thoughts rumbled.
Our bestowment of power, that they might not
envy us. For millennia, it was used by your kind to craft wondrous
things. Cities rose by the words on its pages, and the seas and
their denizens were tamed so that exploration might be safer in
your tiny tree-craft. Realms and empires expanded and firmed
against the push of the unknown. Our gift was used well, and it
pleased us. Though it was used by many masters, it began to spend
more and more time hidden away; the era of humans was at hand, and
they did not require the book’s assistance to create further
wonders.

Meena and Sanych both stood in silent
shock.

Then, slowly, the world waned. The color
leached out of all we saw. Magic left the seas, the skies, the
mortals themselves. Gradually, we dragons left our overland homes
behind and moved deeper within the throbbing heart of the earth:
the only place that yet held any color for us
. He waggled his
claws.
You see my faded hues, existing so close to the surface
as I do. I was once emerald and platinum. I gleamed like a child’s
daydream. What little magic I now retain is barely enough to hold
me together. I am shreds of a memory, nothing more.

The great dragon sighed, his lungs soughing
like an enormous bellows.
The fade of our magic also twisted the
book we gifted to mortals. Its power entropied from order into
chaos. This is why there is no magic left in your world that can
counter it: it is dragon magic gone sour.

“You…can’t destroy it?” Meena said, her face
gone slack.

A wash of amusement flooded Sanych’s mind as
the dragon considered Meena’s words
. I can, immortal mortal. And
I will, for you have carried on the dragons’ ancient work these
last centuries. Once, we sculpted the kingdoms of men, and they
were the better for it. You have done the same. But long since have
I tired of holding this mortal form together. If my fading should
balance the scales between dragons and mortals, then I welcome
it.
The dragon’s mental tone held a distant
eagerness.

“Then I must ask you one more thing,” Meena
said, her face gaunt. “Destroy me with it.” She stepped to the book
and picked it up. Its silver wrapping was entirely gone, and wave
after wave of its twisted power ate at Meena’s flesh, only to be
replaced and destroyed again.

~~~

Geret, Salvor and Ahm struggled to fight their
way through a dozen Enforcers and back to the tunnel entrance, away
from the fervent heat of the plodding golem behind them. Geret
shoved a squat Enforcer into Salvor’s path. The nobleman’s fiery
blade snapped the man’s sword in two, and his return stroke lifted
his head from his shoulders. A moment later, the man was tumbling
head after heels into the lava below.

“You have all the fun,” Geret said, feeling
the golem’s heat strengthening behind him.

“I do,” said Salvor. “And you should back up
and let me have fun with this fellow, too. The cultists are too
many.”

“You want to fight him alone?”

“I have to fight him alone.”

Geret watched as Salvor turned and sliced a
chunk of the golem’s arm away, then dodged beneath its fist, which
cracked the wall and showered him with smoking gravel.

The nobleman laughed aloud, taunting the
magical creation. “You fight like my aunt! Where’s your stirring
spoon?” His blade severed the creature’s arm. The enormous hunk of
rock tumbled between them, nearly landing on Salvor’s boot. Then
thick globs of hot lava exuded from the creature’s elbows,
hardening into new forearms. Glowing fingers flexed.

Salvor paused in mid-swing, glaring.
“Cheater.”

Behind him, Geret turned to Ahm, who was
trapping the remaining Enforcers between two metal
walls.

“I can’t leave him to fight it alone,” Geret
said. “It’s a
lava monster
!”

“He’s the one with the magic sword. Yours
would melt in an instant against that creature.”

“Then make me one as well, without Narjin’s
fire!”

A moment later, Geret jogged up beside Salvor,
magic sword gleaming.

~~~

Destroy you, immortal
mortal?

“The
Tome
made me what I am; destroy
its magic within me and let me die.”

I see your mind is set,
the great
beast’s thoughts rumbled.
Very well. I will take your
immortality as well as the broken book that curst you with
it.

Meena nodded, stepping to the edge of the
island. The hot wind whipped through her short red hair. Sanych
covered her mouth, her eyes filling with tears that evaporated
before they could fall.

The Shanallar looked over her shoulder, her
eyes already far away. “Farewell, Sanych. Take care of that
princeling of yours.”

Sanych could barely speak. “Thank you, Meena.
For everything!”

“No, thank
you
. Thank you,” Meena
breathed, a prayer to the universe.

Sanych dropped to her knees, hugging herself,
unable to look away. The hot mineral winds whipped her hair into
knots.

Farewell, mortal
, the dragon thought to
Sanych. You an
d your Oathen will triumph in harmony.
The
dragon unfurled his leathery green wings with a snap, flinging bits
of molten lava through the air. With a clap of air, his wings swept
down, propelling him out of the lava and into the air. His slender
tail arced, its green scales fading to grey.

A soft, melodic note reached Sanych’s ears,
growing louder and more harmonic in moments. Sanych felt pacified,
humbled. For a moment, she forgot her name, her purpose, forgot she
even possessed magic, such was the wonder of the dragon’s final
song.

The dragon reached his apex and began to arc
back down toward the island. His long, slender neck extended toward
Meena, and his jaws opened.

Sanych gasped. Hadn’t Meena been eaten enough
times already?

The dragon’s mouth closed over the Shanallar
and the
Dire Tome
. Dragon, book and woman vanished. A
strange sensation pressed against Sanych’s ears, like a sound too
high to hear; it resonated with of the loss of an irreplaceable
wonder.

She closed her eyes.
As the era of dragons
ended long ago, so closes the era of the Shanallar.

Realizing she could not take the blazing heat
of the lava much longer, Sanych
blinked
onto the ledge near
the tunnel exit, seeing Oolat still begummed to the wall, crying
and cursing over the loss of his precious
Tome
.

Her eyes slitted. The
Tome
’s chaos
might have been an accident, but its use by Dzur i’Oth had been oh
so purposeful. She stalked toward the man.

“Come to battle me again, little one?” he
spat.

She didn’t reply. Her hands raised, white
power flaring in her palms. “For the Shanallar.”

The man’s white eyes widened in disbelief as
Sanych stepped closer and splayed her fingers. Onix Oolat vanished
under her raging magic, screaming in denial, leaving only hints of
grey ash in the globs of dragon goo that remained, unharmed, on the
wall.

The very, very least I could do for you,
Meena
, Sanych thought, letting her tears begin to
fall.

A rocky clatter and Geret’s sudden alarm
jerked her out of her incipient sorrow. She looked across the lava
pit and gasped in horror.

The lava golem was exploding, its molten guts
flying. The creature’s mighty chest blew straight toward Geret.
Salvor darted in front of his prince and shoved him back toward
Ahm, who had just crushed the last Enforcer on the rim with a
massive metal cube.

Sanych
blinked
across, throwing out
beams of light that dissolved some of the flying chunks of melted
rock in midair. But as quickly as she had arrived, she was still
too late to stop them all.

Dozens of half-liquid rock chunks had already
thudded into Salvor’s body, spinning him to the floor. Flesh and
fabric melted away. He managed only a short cry of agony before
crashing onto the ledge and lying still.

Geret had skidded to one knee a few paces
behind Salvor. He and Ahm began to thread their way back to Salvor
through the smoking golem fragments.