Return of the Sorceress (23 page)

“I tried many times to change your father back, but I could not. And your father never transformed back into human form of his own accord. Whether because he could not or, and I think this more likely, the part of him that was the Beast wouldn’t allow it. Over time, I managed to forge a relationship of sorts with the Beast, and it became one of my servants.

“But because it was my recklessness that made you an orphan, I decided to raise you as my own son, to try to make up in some small way for what I had done. I hope I wasn’t too bad of a father to you.”

“No. You were a good father,” Davyn said. And in many ways, Maddoc had been. He’d taken care of Davyn, taught him, seen to his every need. Davyn was grateful for all that.

“I released you from the Gallery’s spell because you are my son, and because of the debt I felt I owed your birth parents. I am prepared to give you one last chance, Davyn. Renounce your friends, renounce Nearra, and help me complete Asvoria’s resurrection. If you do these things, I shall forget all about the events of the last year. It shall be as if they never happened. What do you say?”

Davyn was silent, thinking.

Maddoc pleaded. “After everything I’ve done for you, Davyn. This will be good for us. Good for Krynn.”

After several moments, Davyn nodded and said, “I renounce my former companions—all of them—and I will help you obtain Asvoria’s secrets.”

Maddoc grinned and clapped his bony, trembling hands together. “Excellent!” Then the joy drained out of his face and his tone became deadly serious. “I need your help.”

Another test, and one Davyn didn’t like the sound of. “What must I do?”

Maddoc reached into a pocket of his robe and brought out a crystalline dagger.

“This is the Dagger of Ulthus. At the proper time during the rite to complete the Emergence, you must plunge it into Nearra’s heart. It is a mystic blade and won’t harm her physically. But it shall wound her spirit in such a way as to allow Asvoria’s personality to assume control of her body. Will you do this thing for me …
son?”

Davyn looked at the dagger. The firelight made the crystal seem to glow with its own internal flame.

Davyn reached out and took hold of the mystic dagger.

“I will.” He slipped the blade beneath his belt.

“Oh, and Davyn? I need your assistance with one other task.” Maddoc smiled. There was a hint of madness in his eyes.

    F
rom the corner of his eye, Elidor saw Davyn vanish. One moment Davyn was running to attack the hybrid creature with the rest of them, and then the next—poof! He was gone. But Elidor didn’t have time to worry about his friend’s sudden disappearance.

Ordinarily, Elidor would’ve thrown his daggers at the creature’s eyes, but since the monster had six, and he had only two knives, he wasn’t sure what to do.

“Go for the legs!” Catriona shouted. “The thing can’t hurt us if it can’t walk!”

As the awful conglomeration drew near, Elidor feinted to the left. One of the dire wolf heads snapped at him, but the elf dodged and avoided its jaws. He darted behind the monster’s front left leg and saw the bony joints were connected by leather straps and bits of wire. He slashed out with both of his knives and sliced the leather into ribbons.

The patchwork beast came crashing down heads-first, and Elidor leaped out of the way just in time to avoid being crushed. He rolled as he landed and came up on his feet. He spun around and saw Catriona jump onto the beast’s back, right between
the decayed dracolich wings. Unfortunately, the hide beneath Catriona was decomposed dragonskin, and her feet broke through and lodged between the creature’s ribs.

“By the Oath and Measure!” Catriona swore. She struggled to free herself, but she was stuck fast. That didn’t stop her, though. She began hacking away at the monster’s necks with her dragon claws and blood sprayed the air.

The hybrid struggled to stand on its good front leg, and then it pushed once, twice, three times until it managed to rear back onto its hind legs. It was attempting to fling itself onto its back in order to crush the annoying pest that kept slicing away at it with her tiny metal claws.

The crowd roared its approval.

“Smash her like a bug!” a spectator shouted.

Then Elidor saw Ayanti gallop forward, Sindri still on her back, the kender’s arms wrapped tight around her waist. Ayanti circled behind the beast, careful to avoid its lashing tail. She lowered her head, and when the tail swung out of the way, the centaur charged. At the last instant before collision, she launched herself into the air—Sindri letting out a exultant whoop!—and rammed her left shoulder into the base of the monster’s spine.

The monster shuddered at the impact, then pitched forward and slammed onto the stone floor of the Pit. Catriona raised her dragon claws high and slammed them down into the back of the beast’s ursine head. She then did the same to each of the wolf heads. When she was finished, the monster’s bone legs twitched once, twice, and then fell limp. The creature was dead.

The crowd was momentarily stunned into silence by the outcome of the match, but then they gave voice to their disapproval, booing and shouting curses.

Elidor ignored them and rushed forward to see if Catriona had been injured when the monster fell.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

The red-haired warrior grimaced as she yanked one leg free, and then the other. Both were smeared with foul-smelling ooze.

“I may have to get a new pair of boots, but otherwise, I’m fine.”

Ayanti trotted over carrying Sindri, the kender grinning as if he’d just had the time of his life.

“We did it,” the centaur said in a tone of wonderment, as if she couldn’t quite believe it. “We won!” She frowned. “Hey, where’s Davyn?”

Before Elidor could tell her of their friend’s strange disappearance, the skin of the patchwork monster’s abdomen split open as a swordblade was thrust through from
inside
the beast.

The companions watched in horrified amazement as the blade sliced open the dead creature’s gut and then withdrew. Several pairs of hands reached out and gripped the flaps of skin, and then pulled the opening wider until was large enough for a quartet of figures to step out into the open air.

One of them spoke, a kender dressed in wizard’s robes of blackest night. “You know the old saying …”

“You might have won a single battle,” continued a shaggy female centaur with wild, unkempt hair.

“But one battle …” added a warrior with short red hair and a black patch over her left eye.

“Isn’t the war,” finished an elf garbed in the finery of a Silvanesti noble.

And then the newcomers—each of whom was wearing one of the companions’ faces—broke out in dark laughter, and the crowd above cheered with renewed enthusiasm.

The match, it seemed, was about to enter a second round.

Raedon’s back muscles burned and his wings felt heavy as lead. No matter how hard he’d tried, he hadn’t been able to break the spiders’ silvery strands. To make matters worse, the spiders had started pulling him down toward them inch by inch. As tired as he was, it would only be moments before he faltered and the spiders yanked him down into the thick of their webs.

Raedon, like all dragons, could cast spells, but he was young and his magical skills were not all they could be. He needed to be able to focus his complete attention on the spellcasting for it to be successful. His current predicament wasn’t exactly conducive to concentration.

Well, then, if he couldn’t defeat the spiders with his magic, he’d just have to resort to a somewhat less sophisticated method.

He continued flapping to keep himself aloft and curved his long supple neck around. He took aim at several strands that were grouped together, opened his mouth, and shot out a stream of acid. The foul-smelling liquid splashed onto the threads and sizzled and hissed. Raedon grinned in triumph. While the webbing might be too strong to break easily, it wasn’t resistant to a good dose of dragon acid.

But Raedon’s triumph was short lived. For while it was true that the acid was eating away at the silver strands, it was doing so with agonizing slowness. Not to worry, Raedon told himself. All he needed to do was work up another blast of acid.

Unfortunately, it looked as if the ivory spiders weren’t going to give him the opportunity. As if realizing their dinner was on the verge of getting away, spiders began hopping onto the strands attached to Raedon and scuttled along the silvery lines toward the dragon. Raedon didn’t panic, though. Instead of shooting acid at the threads he’d hit before, he adjusted his aim, opened his mouth wider, and sprayed a large blob of acid at the oncoming spiders.
The spiders squealed as the acid struck them, their bodies hissing and popping as they fell to the ground.

Now
that
was more like it! It seemed the spinners of the silver silk weren’t as tough as the material their bodies produced. All Raedon had to do was keep shooting acid until either the spiders let him go or they were all dead.

He prepared to unleash another acid blast, but before he could let it go, hundreds of spiders jumped onto the strands of webbing that adhered to him and began climbing upward with frightening speed. Every line attached to him—and there were at least a dozen—was completely covered with scuttling spiders. They obviously planned to overwhelm him before he could kill them all. But so many spiders were climbing the threads that there weren’t enough left in the trees to keep hold of the slack they’d gathered.

The lines slipped out of spidery grips and Raedon surged forward. He knew that the strands would soon snap taught, but if he poured on the speed, when they did, some of the spiders might be shaken off. Raedon ignored the pain in his wing muscles and flapped as hard as he could. He shot forward like a crossbow bolt. If he could build up enough momentum, he might just … be able … to …

He felt a sudden jolt as a dozen silver lines drew taught. He wobbled and for an instant he thought he was going to lose his aerial balance and go spinning toward the ground, ivory spiders swarming all over his body.

But then the threads began to snap, one after the other, with plinking sounds that reminded Raedon of lute strings breaking. His wings felt as if they were on fire, but he didn’t let up. Finally the last strand gave way and Raedon soared skyward, free at last. Raedon had a mild disposition, even for a copper dragon, but as he exulted in his escape, he let out a mighty roar.

But then he felt something tickling the tip of his tail. He glanced back and saw that the broken silver threads were still attached to his body, and they trailed along behind him like the tails of a dozen kites. Unfortunately, most of the spiders had managed to cling to the lines when they’d broken and had resumed their wire-walking act. The tickling sensation that he’d felt was the first of the spiders reaching his body. It didn’t hesitate. It scuttled along his tail, onto the base of his spine, and kept going. Raedon had a good idea what its final destination was—his eyes.

He didn’t know if the creatures were venomous, but if they were, their fangs must not have been capable of penetrating his copper scales, or else they’d be biting him now. But even if they weren’t venomous, once they reached his soft eyes and the fleshy interior of his mouth and began biting, he would be lost.

As the first of the ivory spiders came crawling up his neck, Raedon angled his head and spit a small stream of acid at it. The spider squealed and lost its eight-legged foothold on Raedon’s scales. Raedon was still flying quite fast, and the sizzling, smoking spider was caught by the wind and tumbled away toward the ground.

Raedon had no time to enjoy his modest victory. There were still far too many spiders scuttling toward his face. Raedon continued playing marksman—or marks
dragon
—picking off one spider after another with streams of acid. Sometimes he missed and acid splattered onto his scales, but without any harm to him. Like all dragons, Raedon was immune to his own breath weapon.

Flying with his head turned backward wasn’t easy or comfortable, but he had no other choice if he wanted to avoid being eaten. He continue to spit acid, sometimes hitting spiders, sometimes missing. He knew he couldn’t keep this up forever. His body could
only produce so much acid at a time. But he thought he’d managed to get almost all the spiders. There were only one or two left.