Blood of the Emperor (34 page)

“The battle’s out there!” the Praetus shouted after the Iblisi tearing after the dragon. “Where do you think you’re
going
?”

Dragonflight

J
UGAR’S EYES WERE WIDE despite the wind and the smoke.

Pyrash drove with determined speed across the city wall of Tjarlas and plunged between the soaring avatria that made up the inner city. The dragon had misunderstood the dwarf’s directions and now was banking first left, then right to avoid collisions with the buildings that floated around them like a forest of stalagmites threatening to spear the sky above them on every side.

Beneath them, the panic that had gripped the citizens of the city erupted into blind terror as they passed close overhead. Jugar knew that dragons had long been the fabric of cautionary tales told by the elves to their children. He enjoyed the idea that he and Pyrash were a nightmare incarnate to the elves below.

He would have relished it more, however, if he were not so terrified himself at the moment.

The various avatria of the central city speared the sky all around them. One of them, a spindle-shaped tower of jade contoured like a spiral of reeds loomed directly in their path. Pyrash banked hard to the left, his wings almost vertical to the ground, pressing the dwarf hard down into his saddle harness as the dragon turned.

Abruptly, there was a flash and a deafening clap of thunder. The dragon rocked under Jugar as the dwarf instinctively turned toward the sound.

Lightning was still crackling around an enormous, charred hole in the side of the reed-shaped avatria behind them. A ball of heat and smoke drifted upward from the gaping scar as flames took hold of the interior structure of the avatria and began burning furiously. Unexpectedly, Pyrash dropped out from under the dwarf, diving toward the ground. Jugar remained with the dragon only by virtue of the harness that connected him to the saddle. He reached forward in a panic, grabbing the tanned leather straps with a white-knuckled grip. He could hear the screams of terror from below mixed with the rising rush of the wind as together the dwarf and dragon plunged down the face of a large theater building, turning sharply to the right and pulling up just above the now rioting elves of Tjarlas packed into a long plaza below them. The dragon soared at enormous speed over the heads of the elven families and their Impress slaves, its foreclaws pushing off several statue columns in the center of the plaza.

Thunderous explosions sounded twice more behind Jugar. The dwarf twisted around in his saddle, looking back between the beating wings of Pyrash and past his long, barbed tail. Fire, stone, dirt, the dead and, worse, the injured blasted upward from the plaza twice in succession where moments before the dragon had passed. The crowd below was running madly, mindlessly, in their desire to be anywhere but the plaza. Jugar could see a number of bodies lying still on the cobblestones in the wake of the insane stampede.

Then he saw them rushing through the air behind his dragon. Elongated heads and black, lifeless eyes, black robes, Matei staffs—the Iblisi!

“The Inquisition wants to play, eh?” Jugar sneered. “More sauce for the feast.”

He had little time to enjoy the thought, however. Pyrash banked right again and plunged back into the thicket of shining elven towers floating just above the center of the city.

“Where are they?” Ethis shouted in frustration.

“They are before us,” Wanrah answered. The dragon was rushing through the central section of the city. The reed-shaped avatria before
them was nearly engulfed in flames. “Pyrash’s trail seems to be clearly marked.

“Keep going,” Ethis urged, craning his neck forward. There were more fires in the plaza ahead. “We’ve got to catch up with Jugar.”

“Do you think the dwarf needs our assistance?” the dragon asked.

“No,” Ethis answered. “I think he needs to be stopped!”

Searing light tore through the air just below Kyranish’s right wing. Drakis heard the sizzle of its passing moments before the thunderclap of it slamming into the onion-shaped avatria ahead of them. The force shattered the structure, breaking it in two large sections and several smaller ones. The subatria held below it, however, and the pieces of the building, flames now igniting in various places, remained floating before them.

Urulani grimaced as Marush, flying just three dragon’s lengths ahead of her, pulled in both his wings. The dragon counted on his momentum to carry him through the debris with Drakis on his back. Kyranish rolled over the top of the shattered avatria, righting herself and dropping again to follow behind Marush.

Still the black shapes behind them remained in fanatical pursuit.

“Who
are
they?” Urulani yelled across the wind and tumult from the back of Kyranish.

“An Iblisi Quorum,” Braun answered, clinging to the harness. “Rather impressive, don’t you think? They seem to be adapting quite well in the face of the impossible.”

“If we survive them, then I’ll be impressed later,” Urulani said as Kyranish banked suddenly left and then right again. Twin bolts seared the air, rushing past them and out over the city wall. Urulani could see the Legions under Hegral beyond the city wall, shifting westward as they moved toward the Emperor’s Gate. The bolts fell over Hegral’s Legions, cascading forks of lightning down among the warriors below. Urulani noted the elven warriors, in full battle armor, as well as their Impress Warriors filling the top of the city wall, shifting westward with the movement of the invaders on the plains beyond.

“I thought the Imperial Army had deserted this city,” Urulani yelled more out of frustration than a desire to be heard or answered.

“Find the Aether Well of the city and get me to it,” Braun shouted back. “Once the Well is inverted, it won’t matter if the city is filled with Rhonas warriors or not.”

Kyranish banked left with Marush. A plaza beneath them was strewn with dead elves and slaves of several other races as well, a series of large craters pocking the cobblestones. Marush plunged back among the avatria of the city with Kyranish following only seconds behind.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way!

“What do you mean it won’t matter?” Urulani asked.

“Once my own Devotions spell is functional and the Well is inverted, the Legions will be robbed of the Aether,” Braun explained, his voice growing hoarse from yelling over the wind. “We’ll have done what Queen Chythal asked. We can leave and the Legions of Rhonas will either stay behind these walls or be forced to walk home.”

“Then where is it?” Urulani demanded of the heavens, her eyes darting between the avatria towers flashing past her in a bewildering array.

“That’s it!” shouted the dwarf, his hand to the neck of Pyrash. The world around them had once again become surreal but the elegant black-and-white marble of the Farlight Palace with its beautiful silver trim was clear to his eyes. “Can you rid us of those pests behind us?”

“For a short time, master dwarf,” Pyrash answered. “They are most persistent.”

“Long enough to get me safely into that subatria garden?” Jugar asked.

“I believe so,” Pyrash chuckled. “So long as you do not care
how
.”

“I’m not particularly finicky about your methods, beasty, just so long as…”

Pyrash suddenly opened both his wings flat against the wind. The sudden halt in the air pressed Jugar forward, his hand slipping from the dragon’s neck. Desperately, he tried to grip the harness straps ahead of him. They both shuddered to a near complete stop in the air, their momentum and the curve of Pyrash’s leathery wings carrying them slightly upward.

The Iblisi behind them were caught off guard. They flashed past
the dragon and wavered in the air. Their concentration had been so completely on following the monstrous creature of the air that they were suddenly disoriented, their course wavering among the avatria forest around them.

Pyrash, on the other hand, knew exactly what to do.

The dragon beat its wings in great arcs reaching through the air, holding its position as it drew in a great draught of air, blending it with the gases belching up through its throat. In an instant, the gases mixed with the dragon’s exhale, igniting into a blue stream of plasma fire shooting from the dragon’s gaping maw. It engulfed one of their pursuers, who fell from the sky trailing smoke from burning robes and screaming in agony.

But this had not been the dragon’s target. Pyrash’s blue flames swung back and forth with the turning of his head, bursting through the shells of several avatria surrounding them. Each flashed into flame and smoke at once, filling the air around them with acrid smoke and heat.

Jugar began to cough and panic. He was used to darkness but this was different—this was a smoke so thick that he could not
see
. He struggled to reach forward with his hand, to find the dragon’s neck and give him a piece of his considerably upset mind…

The air suddenly cleared, the wind carrying Jugar’s tears from his stinging eyes. Jugar grinned.

There, before them, was the black-and-white tower of the Farlight Palace.

He placed his hand on the dragon’s neck. The world was suddenly bathed in a salmon hue of sunset in the dragon’s other world but the tower remained before them. “No chances, dragon! Take us straight in below the avatria and land in the subatria garden. That’s where the central Aether Well will be found. That’s where I’ve work to do.”

He lifted his hand from the dragon’s neck, reaching for the pocket of his coat. He rested it for a moment on the hard bump beneath the leather then, reassured, gripped the harness once more.

The Heart of the Aer was still with him.

Jugar knew it was one thing to bring down some small Aether Well of an obscure House on the edge of the Rhonas Empire but an entirely different matter to bring down a central Well of an elven city. He would have to demonstrate some delicacy in arranging the collapse of this Well.

Pyrash dove down toward the shadows beneath the avatria of the Farlight Palace.

After all, Jugar reasoned, he wanted to live to see the terrible results.