Song of the Dragon (55 page)

“Closer?” the chimerian shouted over the roar of the fires burning from the shore to the heart of the village. The Iblisi were incinerating them from thirty yards away.

“We can't hurt them if we're not close enough for our weapons.”

“What about the Sondau?” the chimerian asked over the din. “Don't they have archers?”

“Great ones, but their volleys aren't hitting their marks,” the manticore answered, his face peering over the sands toward the advancing enemy. “Something is deflecting them.”

“I can only imagine what
that
might be,” Ethis groused.

“If we can get around their flank,” Belag said, licking his incisors. “Then we'd be close enough to taste their blood.”

“Around their flank?” Ethis drew himself up next to Belag. “Do you
see
a flank?”

“At the water's edge,” Belag pointed. “We just need to draw them closer to the village . . .”

Two small hands clapped them both on the back at the same time.

“Fellow warriors, take heart! The Wind-princess of Nordens has come to your aid!”

With that, the Lyric leaped blithely over the seawall and began running with all her might toward the burning village.

“NO!” Belag roared.

Drakis floated upside down in the night. He had to close his eyes from time to time to avoid being dizzy, but he clutched his sword in his right hand so hard he thought the grip might snap.

The fires spread by the Iblisi drifted below him. The heat from them was making him sweat, and this worried him as much as anything because he somehow knew that a single drop falling from his brow could easily call death upon him.

He twisted slightly as he opened his eyes. The dwarf was back behind the ridge of stone beyond the lane of fire.
Trust the little fool not to mention that he had some skill in magic. Just when was he going to tell the rest of us,
Drakis thought,
at my funeral or after?

Beneath him he could see his target: a robed Iblisi just below him, his staff gushing fire across the landscape only three feet below him. Drakis opened his left hand, readying it for the plunge, his right hand coiled with the sword, ready to strike.

The dwarf had said they never look up.

He hoped this worked.

Suddenly, Drakis fell from the sky.

In a swift motion, Drakis grabbed the sharp chin of the elf beneath him and, using the Iblisi's shoulders as leverage, swung his knees down his victim's back. The tip of his sword connected at the base of the throat just above the collarbone and slid with satisfactory force into the rib cage and tore through the creature's heart.

In the next moment, Drakis lay on the ground surrounded by the dense ground cover of the jungle with the dead elf lying on top of him.

That's one,
Drakis thought.
But it's not enough. They're moving too fast.

In the next moment, he was yanked skyward by the dwarf's magic once again.

“Wait! Look!” Ethis shouted.

The Lyric ran across the line of Iblisi, diving at the last moment behind a tree. The trunk exploded into a thousand splitters, toppling the tree—but she was no longer there.

The Iblisi saw her at once, their Matei staffs shifting to strike her with their full force. Blue and red rods of light arced toward her, waves of flame and sound engulfed her . . .

. . . But never
reached
her.

“She
is
the Wind-princess!” Belag said with shock.

“Wind-princess or not,” Ethis said with a smile as he pointed, “look what she's doing!”

The Iblisi continued to train their power against her as she darted about the village ruins, drawing them inward and away from the beach.

“There's your flank, Belag,” Ethis said. “But I've got something I have to tell you before you go . . . something you have to do that can mean all the difference in the world to us all.”

The manticore looked quizzically at the chimerian.

“You must do this for Drakis,” he said, reaching into his pocket.

Drakis once again floated over the landscape. They were moving too fast, and this was taking far too long. Good plan or not, the end result would be the same.

Another of the Iblisi was below him now. He needed the dwarf to move him just a little more to the left.

The fires below were unbearable. The heat was making it hard for him to concentrate, and his eyes stung.

He opened his left hand again and drew back his sword.

The dwarf was moving him slowly, carefully . . .

A gust of wind drifted over the fires, carrying with it a wave of smoke just as Drakis drew in his breath.

He coughed.

The Iblisi looked up just as Drakis fell. He jumped sideways but not far enough. Drakis caught him on the way down, dragging him along, but the sword did not enter properly and plunged into the elf's body at an angle.

The elf screamed.

Drakis tore the blade from the body of the elf just as Jugar's magic dragged him into the air.

Two of the Iblisi leaped into the air to follow.

D
RAKIS FLIPPED OVER IN MIDAIR, turning toward the rustling sound behind him. Two of the Iblisi were rising into the sky in his wake, their dark reddish robes rustling as they rushed toward him. He gripped his sword and was suddenly aware of how useless it was; there was no place in the sky where he could plant his feet and get any leverage with which to strike a blow.

The dark spirits of death flew closer to him by the moment as he watched in helpless horror.

In that instant the two figures vanished in a roaring vortex of whirling sand. Drakis felt the magical power that supported him in his flight falter for a few, staggering moments and then vanish altogether as the cyclone tossed and tumbled the robed figures in its grasp. Drakis fell, his free hand clawing at the air. He glimpsed the beach rushing up toward him just before he closed his eyes . . .

Something shoved him sideways, and in the next moment he was rolling across the sand.

Drakis pushed his feet under him, dragging his sword from the sand and taking a defensive stance though what he saw astonished him. The Sondau raiders were crouched down, prepared to meet the enemy, but it was Jugar who was commanding the cyclone.

The vortex was spinning along the shore, dancing before the short, upstretched arms of the dwarf. Jugar's face was nearly beet-red with the effort as he stood with his feet pressed hard against the sand and the Heart of Aer in his left hand shining with a purplish light that made Drakis uneasy just to look at it. Jugar glanced at Drakis, saw that he was once more on his feet, and flicked the wrist of his extended right hand.

One of the Iblisi shot from the vortex, spinning with frightening speed directly toward Drakis. The human warrior's trained muscles reacted before the thought entered his mind; he raised the blade over his head and stepped into the onrushing target. The whirling target did most of the work against the keen edge of the blade, nearly dividing the elf in two across the abdomen. As the target fell squealing to the ground, Drakis quickly reversed the blade in his hands and plunged it down directly into the creature's heart.

“Three,” he counted. As he turned to stand, more movement caught his eye. “Jugar! More! On the ground!”

The dwarf shifted at once. The vortex collapsus, tossing the suddenly freed Iblisi into the jungle trees. Drakis heard with satisfaction the elf slamming into a tree trunk with the sound of a smashing melon. Instantly, this was followed by an enormous wave drawn up from the bay. Its sea-foam face rose higher and higher, shimmering in the light of the burning village as it arched over and crashed down upon the advancing reddish robes. The waters flowed on into the village and over the fires, snuffing out a wide swath of the flames and filling the air with dense smoke.

Through the smoke leaped four more of the robed horrors—one of them soaring directly toward the dwarf, its Matei staff pointed at his heart.

The dwarf turned toward his attacker, but the Sondau chose that instant to rise up. Three of them intercepted the Iblisi charging Jugar, physically knocking the magic-wielding elf down as he approached the ground. The Iblisi obliged them, countering with his staff in a blur of moves, killing the three of them where they stood around him nearly at once. More of the Sondau had joined in the fray but they, too, were faring no better.

Drakis ran to the dwarf. “Jugar!”

“I'm nearly done, boy,” the dwarf said as he tried desperately to catch his breath.

“Get up! We've got to keep moving!”

“We can't hold them,” the dwarf grimaced. “Back, Drakis! We've got to get back to the boats!”

Drakis dragged the dwarf to his feet. The Sondau line of battle was literally evaporating into a bloody mist before the power of the Iblisi magic.

They turned toward the boats that were still hovering near the shore, still struggling to load people aboard.

They ran, knowing that the Iblisi would be right on their heels. They had tried to purchase enough time for the ships to get away, and they knew they had failed.

Soen strode through the village, a circle of frost crackling around him wherever he stepped. His footfalls froze the fires beneath them, snuffing them out in a swath behind him.

As he walked he became two . . . walking side by side with a duplicate of himself.

Then he became four, then eight, sixteen, thirty-two.

Each laid frost in his wake, turning the fires of the village cold, their light extinguished with each step.