The Rite (35 page)

Each gold commenced another conjuration. The magical force gathering in the air around them sent rings of distortion expanding outward across the sky, like ripples in a pool

where someone tossed a stone. A shrill whine set Dorn’s teeth on edge.

Tamarand reached the end of his recitation first. Lareth made a retching sound and fell silent,

“By all the songs ever sung!” Kara exclaimed.

“What?” asked Dorn.

“Tamarand’s stolen Lareth’s voice, and thus, his ability to declaim spells. Perhaps we were too pessimistic. Maybe if Tamarand can keep away from the king, maybe he can win after all.”

Enraged, Lareth managed to lash his wings up and down even faster and draw even closer to his foe. He spat a blast of flame that would have squarely engulfed Tamarand except that the younger wyrm flickered out of harm’s way.

Tamarand dived, giving up altitude for the added speed gravity provided, at the same time starting an incantation. Compensating, Lareth swooped after him.

The mad gold nearly closed with his lieutenant, and Tamarand enunciated the final word of power. He tilted his wings, and easily, or so it appeared to Dorn, dodged the claws of his hurtling foe. In the moments that followed, he widened the distance separating him from Lareth. It seemed plain that enchantment had made him faster and more nimble in the air.

Thereafter, he dueled Lareth at long range. The elder gold spewed flare after flare of fire, but each fell short. Meanwhile Tamarand assailed his opponent with a succession of spells, shafts of multicolored light and streaks of gray shadow that carved no visible wounds but made Lareth flinch and flail.

“Surrender!” Tamarand bellowed. “I don’t want to hurt you, but you must see I have you at my mercy.”

Lareth simply flew at him yet again. Tamarand resumed his conjuring.

The magenta cleft in the sky folded in on itself and vanished, and a moment later, Tamarand stopped flickering, as the spells that had created the effects reached the ends of their existences. Lareth vanished and instantly reappeared just above and behind his deputy.

Horrified, Dorn realized what had happened. Back at the beginning of the duel, Lareth had invested himself with the power to translate himself through space not just once, but multiple times. Obviously the spell had a longer duration than the flickering. After using it once, Lareth, frustrated by his lieutenant’s ability to avoid attacks, had decided to forgo another such leap until the protective enchantment ran its course. That way, maybe he’d catch Tamarand by surprise.

As he did. His booming blaze of fiery breath seared the younger gold from head to tail. The edges of Tamarand’s wings burned and flaked away like dry leaves.

Lareth plunged down and forward. Tamarand flung himself to the side. The larger wyrm’s claws tore furrows in his seared, cracked hide.

Tamarand tried to evade his adversary, but their enchantment notwithstanding, his seared wings were slower than before. With his ability to shift instantly from one spot to another, Lareth had no trouble keeping up with the smaller drake. He slashed long gashes in Tamarand’s flanks, bit a chunk of flesh from his shoulder, and spat fire directly into his mask.

At last Tamarand struck back in the same brutal fashion. If he hoped to survive, he had no choice. His talons ripped at Lareth. At the same time, he snarled an incantation, somehow forcing the words out in a steady rhythm despite the recurring shocks as his sovereign scored on him again and again.

Lareth evidently recognized the spell, and perhaps feared it, for he attacked even more savagely, his fangs tearing such a gaping wound in Tamarand’s neck that Dorn winced, certain the hurt was lethal. But the younger gold kept chanting.

On the final word, power screamed across the mountains, and the whole world seemed to tilt. Dorris muscles cramped, and his belly churned with nausea.

Lareth’s body changed. For a second, the hunter couldn’t make out how, then realized the dragon had gone utterly limp, while his flopping, sagging shape had lost definition. It was as if the bones had melted away inside him.

Such an amorphous lump of flesh couldn’t extend its wings and fly. Lareth plummeted, and Dorn peered eagerly to watch the dragon king splash to pieces on the ground. But Tamarand dived and caught the other reptile. Lareth’s weight was too great for the smaller wyrm to support easily, but still he managed a relatively gentle descent, his burned and tattered pinions hammering.

“Yield!” Tamarand pleaded.

In answer, Lareth’s body jerked in his grasp, the limbs straightening and stiffening. Dorn belatedly recalled that for a gold dragon, or any other shapechanger, a transformation like the one the demented wyrm had endured was merely a momentary inconvenience.

Nearly restored, Lareth’s claws fumbled at Tamarand. In another heartbeat or so, they’d be firm and strong enough to shred him, just as his squirming jaws would strike and spew their fire. Except that Tamarand denied them the chance. Exploiting his master’s final moment of helplessness, the younger gold tore at him with fang and talon, then cast him down.

Dorn waited for Lareth to spread his wings and arrest his fall. He never did. He dropped like a stone, and disappeared into the cleft between two mountains. A moment later, aloud, , flat thump reverberated.

Tamarand spiraled down after his foe and disappeared into the gulf. Nexus and Havarlan spread their wings, sprang into the air, and followed. Awkwardly, because of her broken leg, Kara lowered herself to help Dorn haul himself onto her back. Then they too flew to see what had happened.

They all found Tamarand standing before Lareth’s shattered corpse at the shadowy bottom of the gorge, near a gurgling brook with mossy banks. Earlier, Dorn had resented Tamarand for being whole while Kara was injured. He had no cause for such rancor anymore. The dragon lord was even more grievously wounded than the hunter had anticipated, his hide such a blackened patchwork of gory cuts and seeping wounds that scarcely a glimmer of gold remained. The reek of blood and charred flesh utterly overpowered the odor of saffron that was his species’ usual scent.

His pain was surely excruciating, yet Dorn could tell that the dragon king’s most profound agony was of the spirit. As Kara touched down beside Havarlan, Tamarand raised his head and howled a long, wordless cry of lamentation. The wail echoed from the walls of the ravine.

Nexus inclined his head. “Your Resplendence,” he said.

Eyes blazing, Tamarand rounded on his fellow gold. “Don’t call me that! The King of Justice lies dead before you, foully murdered by a treacherous retainer!”

“The former King of Justice lies before us,” Havarlan said, “fairly overthrown in a lawful challenge.”

“I didn’t want to kill him,” Tamarand said. “I had no right.”

“You had every right,” the silver said. “What you lacked was a choice. By the end, we all recognized the necessity.”

“He was the wisest and noblest of us all. He was my liege lord and my friend,” said Tamarand. He turned to glare at Kara and Dorn. May the gods curse you for coming here this day.”

“Perhaps they will, Your Resplendence,” the song dragon said. “Meanwhile, we have a more general blight to concern us.”

“I told you not to call me that! I won’t be King of Justice. I won’t clamber over my brother’s corpse to usurp his rank.”

“If you won’t claim Lareth’s crown,” Nexus said, “who will?”

“I don’t care!” Tamarand snarled. “No one, perhaps. The silvers have no sovereign. Perhaps we golds would be better off if we didn’t, either.”

“I don’t care a thimble of piss what you call yourself,” Dorn said. But until we end the Rage, you’ve got to lead. Why else did you fight?”

“He’s right,” Kara said. “We must save our own race, and the small folk as well. All across Faerűn, flights of our evil kindred lay waste to the land, slaughtering multitudes, destroying towns and villages, and leaving desolation, starvation, and pestilence in their wake. In their despair and desperation, the survivors wage war on one another for whatever food, shelter, and treasure remains. Meanwhile, ensconced in their secret strongholds, Sammaster and his cultists spawn dracoliches in sufficient numbers to conquer the world.

“Armored against the Rage,” the dragon bard continued, “you metallic drakes can leave your havens and make your benevolent presence felt in the land once more. With your might, you can avert the calamities that threaten to drown the world in blood and darkness. That is, Milord, if you will have it so.”

Tamarand stared at her for what seemed a long while. At Last he said, “How quickly can you mute the frenzy in all the dragons gathered in this sanctuary?”

“I can only cast the spell a couple times each day,” she said. “To do so expends a portion of my power, just like any other magic. But if I teach the charm to the three of you, and you in turn share it with others, we can help all the sleepers fairly quickly.”

Tamarand turned to Nexus. “Can your sorcery translate our forces instantly to the Monastery of the Yellow Rose?”

“Not in the way you’re hoping,” Nexus replied, “not all at once. I can only shift myself and one other dragon at a time. Our people are simply too big and heavy for me to carry any more, and even I can only work that particular magic a few times in the course of any given day.”

“I think,” Havarlan said, “that if we go to fight a horde of reds and their ilk, we must arrive in strength. The chromatics will have little trouble overwhelming us if we appear a couple at a time.”

“Then we’ll apply Karasendrieth’s remedy to the fastest flyers first,” Tamarand said. When we judge we have a sufficient number, we’ll wing our way south, and pray we reach our goal in time. Let’s get started.”

Nexus, Havarlan, and Kara unfurled their wings. Tamarand however, made no move to do the same.

“Are you coming?” Nexus asked. “I mean to wake Marigold immediately, to tend your wounds and the bard’s.”

“I’ll be there,” Tamarand said. “I just need a moment to say farewell, and beg forgiveness.”

He turned away, back toward the fallen Lareth, his grief and guilt so palpable that Dorn, who’d never in his life expected to truly regret the suffering of any dragon except Kara and Chatulio, felt a pang of sympathy nonetheless.

11 Flamerule, the Year of Rogue Dragons

Scimitar in hand clad in enchanted armor carved from sacred oak, Christine Dragonsbane turned her warhorse, casting about to see where she was needed next. Then her mount’s head vanished, and blood gushed from the stump. The shock, the seeming impossibility of it, paralyzed her for an instant as the animal started to topple.

Recovering, she jerked her feet out of the stirrups and jumped clear. She landed hard, but without injury. As she scrambled to her feet, she realized some spell or huge, hurtling missile must have decapitated her steed.

She turned, seeking the source of the attack, then gasped. Its skin white as milk, a mane of coarse silvery hair tumbling over its massive shoulders, a creature as tall as five men tramped toward her. Even amid the shrieking chaos of the battle, it seemed unfair that anything so huge could draw so near without her spotting it until then.

The giant cocked its hand back. Christine flung herself to the ground, and when her foe threw the boulder, it flew over her head. The behemoth sneered, readied its meticulously shaped and polished club, and advanced.

Gareth hadn’t wanted Christine to ride to war, but couldn’t rebut her argument that if his strategy failed, she, like all of Damara’s people, was likely doomed no matter what. Such being the case, the only sensible course of action was for her to lend her druidic powers to the struggle.

When her husband realized he couldn’t change her mind, he’d ordered several knights to hover close to her and protect her, and they’d tried their best. But with the retreat begun, every rider had too much other work to do, for only horsemen could maneuver quickly enough to shield the spearmen and archers on foot from the goblins racing in pursuit.

A pair of Christine’s scattered bodyguards galloped back fast enough to interpose themselves between her and the giant. The one to her left was a Paladin of the Golden Cup brandishing a battle-axe. To her right rode a knight armed with a long, straight thrusting sword. He had spatters of blood staining his yellow surcoat and chose to fight with his visor open, so he could see better.

The sight of those protectors endangering themselves on her behalf steadied Christine. She had to help them. She drew a breath and began a prayer to the Oak Father, lord of the forests and all wild places, and her patron deity.

The paladin charged the giant and swung his axe. The weapon chopped a gash in the creature’s calf, the red crease vivid in its dead white skin. Ilmater’s champion galloped on, and Christine thought he was going to get clear. But the giant pivoted with appalling speed for a brute so huge and whirled its club low like a child swiping at a dandelion with a stick. The crashing impact of the prodigious weapon flung both rider and destrier up into the air. They smashed down a dozen yards away.

The knight in the bloodstained trappings rode round and round the colossal leg his comrade had injured. He stabbed repeatedly, trying to finish the task of crippling the extremity. The giant bellowed and poised its club for another stroke, but the cavalier saw the threat and danced his horse to the side. The bludgeon whizzed harmlessly by.

Christine completed her spell. Lightning blazed down from the clear blue summer sky to blast the giant. The enormous creature jerked and flailed. But it didn’t fall down, and after it regained control of its twitching limbs, it lifted its club to strike at the knight again.

Or so it seemed. But while the horseman watched the bludgeon, preparing to guide his destrier out of its way, the giant heaved its foot high and stamped down hard enough to shake the ground, crushing warrior and mount both beneath the sole of its hide boot. The knight died instantly, without making a sound. The middle of its body squashed nearly fiat, its legs splayed out, but somehow still clinging to life, the warhorse screamed. The giant laughed, the noise like stones grinding together, and spun back toward Christine.