The Ruin (36 page)

Then a cloud of hummingbirds popped into existence around it and jabbed at it with their needle beaks. Startled, the Tarterian spewed hammering force at them instead of Taegan, cutting a clear space through the middle of the flock but not destroying them all. The remainder continued to harass it, and it struck at them with tooth and claw.

Its distraction afforded Taegan an avenue of escape. He swung around the reptile, placing it between the other two wyrms and himself, and as he did so, Jivex’s voice sounded from somewhere close at hand.

“How did you ever survive this long without me?” the faerie dragon asked.

To Pavel’s relief, the gate actually had transported him, Tamarand, and Jivex to the valley they’d glimpsed before the grand divination went awry, but also into the midst of a situation so chaotic that it took him a moment or two of casting about to make any sense of it.

Exiting the portal, he and his companions found themselves on barren, bone-littered ground, with Kara and Brimstone locked in snarling combat close at hand. Three of

the black, green-eyed wyrms-Tarterian dragons, if he could

trust a reference he’d read as a seminary student—glided overhead.

Jivex whirled and sped away. He must have spotted something else requiring his attention. But before Pavel could determine what, one of the black, speckled wyrms overhead cocked its head back and whipped it down. Its jaws snapped

open wide, and a grayish, expanding burst of breath weapon exploded from its gullet.

Tamarand lashed his pinions and leaped. The blaze of force pounded down, jolting and cracking the frozen earth, smashing crumbling skeletons, but missing its targets. All three Tarterians maneuvered, orienting themselves to strike at the gigantic gold even as he roared an incantation.

A floating circle of white radiance appeared around Tamarand’s body, and a pair of sizzling lightning bolts leaped upward from the ring. Each stabbed into the belly of one of the Tarterians, and the reptiles convulsed. At the same time, the gold crouched low and shrugged, spilling Pavel to the ground.

Tamarand then leaped, beat his gleaming, leathery wings, and took to the air. A flare of Tarterian breath bashed him, made him wobble in flight, but failed to knock him down. He riposted with a blast of fire, and his assailant plummeted, its tattered wings burning like dry leaves.

Meanwhile, Wardancer sprang through the portal with Will perched at the base of her serpentine neck. The bronze looked around, then flapped her wings and climbed to join the aerial combat. Unlike Tamarand, she hadn’t opted to deposit her rider on the ground first, and the halfling pulled the warsling from his belt.

Their departure left Pavel to deal with Kara and Brimstone, at least until more of his comrades emerged from the gate. As always, mere proximity to the vampire made him clench with loathing, and his instinct was to do everything in his power to help Kara destroy him. But perhaps that would be wrong. Brimstone was an ally, too, and at the moment, arguably not responsible for his actions. His exile in this desolate place had likely left him starved for blood.

Thus, instead of casting attack spells, Pavel simply evoked flares of Lathander’s warm, redgold light from his amulet. The tactic worked to a degree. Brimstone hissed, twisted his head away from the glow, and attempted to scramble backward. Unfortunately, Kara still held him gripped in her talons

and coils and wouldn’t release him. She simply took advantage of his temporary incapacity to inflict further harm. “Stop!” Pavel shouted. “Let him go!”

Somewhere close at, hand, Raryn bellowed the same thing. But she didn’t heed t hem . Pavel belatedly realized both dragons were mad, the vampire with blood thirst, Kara, with the Rage, and he had no idea what to do about it.

Then Nexus was there, huge as Tamarand, so huge that even Brimstone and Kara appeared small in comparison. He declaimed a rhyme, and some unseen force seized hold of Kara, yanked her away from the smoke drake, and flung her torn, bloody body through the air. Nexus wheeled, keeping track of her, and started another incantation.

That meant it was still Pavel’s job to control Brimstone. Unfortunately, fangs bared, the vampire was already pivoting back in his direction. Pavel could keep producing blazes of dawnlight, but what would happen when he’d exhausted the capability?

Then Pavel noticed the Tarterian Tamarand had burned. The dark wyrm was still on the ground, its smoking wings apparently too charred to bear it aloft once more. Its neck swayed this way and that as it sought to aim a breath or supernatural attack at the gold soaring overhead.

Pavel pointed, shouted, “Look there!” and when Brimstone failed to heed him, forced the reptile to flinch and turn with another pulse of holy light. “There’s blood! Take it from an enemy, not your allies!”

Brimstone hesitated, then lashed his wings, pounced on the other dragon’s back, and buried his oversized fangs in its throat. They rolled, tangled together, spat blasts of breath at one another.

Pavel thought he should help Brimstone, but peered about first, lest some menace steal up on him unnoticed.

Nexus held Kara pinned beneath him as he recited the spell to quell the Rage. Obviously, the ward she’d previously established had failed, and the gold sought to conjure a replacement. Snarling and hissing, the song dragon struggled

beneath him, and Pavel recalled with dismay that supposedly, only Sammaster had achieved such mastery of the enchantment that he could impose it on an unwilling subject. Nexus must hope that, despite all appearances to the contrary, Kara wasn’t wholly lost to madness.

Dorn hovered near the confrontation. Maybe he thought it would help if Kara could see him.

Meanwhile, dragons and their riders lunged one pair at a time through the portal. Some of the wyrms staggered, or crouched down shaking, as something afflicted them, and Pavel surmised that the Rage must be even stronger here near the source. But none of the metallics succumbed. They shook off their distress, then they and their human comrades threw themselves into the confrontation with the Tarterians.

Some battled close at hand, fighting the wyrms Tamarand had initially engaged. Azhaq spat pale, glittering vapor that paralyzed Brimstone’s opponent but had no effect on the vampire, who then guzzled and slurped the live wyrm’s blood. Gloved hands gesturing, Scattercloak murmured a rhyme, whereupon gashes split a flying Tarterian’s hide.

Other dragons and their riders streaked away in the direction Jivex had gone, to confront the three Tarterians wheeling in that portion of the sky.

In both cases, the end result was the same. The guardian drakes were powerful, but so were the newcomers, who also had them outnumbered. One by one, the Tarterians fell.

Which meant no one needed any further assistance from Pavel after all. He turned back around to see how Kara, Nexus, and Dorn were faring.

The gold roared the concluding syllable of his incantation. Kara kept on thrashing. Dorn rushed in close to her head. If she snapped at him, or spat lightning, he had no hope of avoiding it.

Heedless of the danger, he placed himself before one of her glaring amethyst eyes and rested his human hand on her brow. “It’s me,” he said, “and you’re alive. You can’t let the frenzy swallow you now!”

She shuddered, then sang the same words of power Nexus had just spoken, the sound both lovely and full of anguish, or perhaps, supreme effort. Gradually, almost imperceptibly at first, she shrank back into human form. Nexus stepped back and so avoided crushing her.

When she was entirely a woman once more, Kara and Dorn embraced. She started weeping, and so did he. The latter was a sight Pavel had never seen, nor ever expected to.

Dorn and Kara slipped away from the others as soon as they could manage it discreetly. At first, they had better things to do than talk. But afterwards, as they lay twined together wrapped in their cloaks, she explained how she’d survived.

“Maybe I should have guessed,” he said, playing with a lock of her moon-blond hair. “After all, I realized you’d discovered something, so maybe I should have wondered if it wasn’t you and not Brimstone who woke the magic in the cobbles. But curse it all, I’d just seen you die!”

She smiled. “Did you believe only Jivex and Chatulio could conjure illusions’? Perhaps I should be offended.” Her levity gave way to a gentler tone: “Truly, I’m sorry my trick deceived you and caused you pain.”

“Don’t be sorry for something that saved your life! I just wish… after I watched it happen, nothing meant anything. I wouldn’t be here with you now, or alive anywhere, most likely, if Pavel, Will, and even Jivex hadn’t looked after me. I’m ashamed of that. You deserve a better man—”

She laid a finger across his lips. “Let’s make a pact,” she said. “You won’t abuse yourself for all your supposed shortcomings, and I won’t berate myself for my inability to withstand the Rage.”

He smiled. “That sounds all right.”

Kara’s head turned, and after another moment, Dorn heard what she was hearing: the rhythmic scuffing of footsteps on frozen earth and rock. He’d laid his sword ready to hand, and

he gripped the hilt, cast away his makeshift blanket, leaped to his feet, and assumed his fighting stance.

Carrying the new bow, axe, and harpoon his friends had brought in hopes of finding him alive, Raryn emerged from the darkness to behold his partner poised for combat, except for a total lack of clothing. The dwarf’s lips quirked upward behind the shaggy white mustache, and Kara giggled.

Dorn gave her a look of mock reproach. “You can see in the dark,” he said. “You could have told me who was coming.”

“l wanted to,” she said, “but, hero that you are, you sprang into action so quickly!”

“Sorry to intrude,” Raryn said. “But Firefingers thinks the magic keeping us out of the castle is about to give way. I thought you’d want to be there.” He gave them a nod, turned, and tramped back down the slope.

Shivering, Dorn pulled on his garments, and Kara did the same. They kissed once more, then descended the trail until they reached a spot affording a view of the ruined citadel.

To Dorn’s eyes, the pile was mostly just a shapeless black mass in the gloom, but silvery light illuminated the vicinity of the white-walled barbican, and the dragons and smaller folk assembled there working their magic. Their chanting droned.

Kara studied the scene, then said, “Yes! Nexus and the others are breaking through.”

“Then

we win?” It was wonderful, yet also strange to think that the year-long struggle might conclude so quietly. To realize that, here at the end, after all his battles, he’d likely just stand looking on while dragons and wizards finished the work.

“I think so,” Kara said.

6 Nightal, the Year of Rogue Dragons

The ferule of his staff thumping on the ground and hard-packed earthen floors, Sammaster prowled through the Cult of the Dragon’s newest stronghold, making sure all was as it should be.

He’d masked his withered skull-face with the semblance of life, and eliminated the scent of corruption wafting from his person, but even so, as he encountered his followers, many seemed nervous. Perhaps they feared he’d overheard them grumbling about the dearth of creature comforts, the long hours of arduous labor, or the surly, impatient ingratitude of the Sacred Ones for whom they toiled.

He actually sympathized with their discontents. Though a lich had little use for such amenities, he certainly recalled how the living craved tasty, plentiful food, warmth, slumber in soft beds, and diversions at the end of a hard day’s work.

Unfortunately, the cult had hastily built this enclave—a palisade surrounding a collection of low, ramshackle structures with sod roofs—in the hills north of the steppeland called the Ride. Its remoteness from civilization ensured that the conspirators’ enemies wouldn’t discover and destroy it as they had so many others, but likewise obliged them to endure primitive conditions.

It was the inexorable progress of the Rage, however, that necessitated the lengthy, grueling work shifts. The curse kept waxing stronger, and would soon become so virulent that even Sammaster would no longer be able to suppress it in the minds of individual dragons. He had to produce enough dracoliches to fulfill Maglas’s prophecy before that came to pass, because, lost to derangement, the rest of the chromatics would reject transformation thereafter.

As for the arrogance and sour humor of the reptiles— well, that was dragons for you. They were more magnificent than the very gods, but could also comport themselves like petulant, malicious, selfish children. It made sense once one realized that the even the oldest were ultimately immature and incomplete. It was only in undeath that they achieved their full potential.

So, when Sammaster caught one of his underlings flagging or shirking, he sought first to lift his spirits. To make him laugh, encourage him with praise, inspire him by describing the glorious world to come, or tempt him with promises of reward. But if such measures failed, he had no choice but resort to threats, and when even those proved insufficient, punishment.

Because the cultists simply had to keep working. Even if they were coming to hate and fear the increasingly erratic creatures to whom they’d pledged their worship. Even if their service had begun to feel like exile and slavery. Even if it turned out that the future held no reward for them but the knowledge that they’d played a part in fulfilling destiny’s plan. For ultimately, that fulfillment was the only thing that mattered.

Of course, Sammaster was the person who truly bore the responsibility for creating the Faerűn to be, and sometimes, when his spiteful, envious foes thwarted one or another of his schemes, it weighed on him like a yoke of iron. Sometimes his setbacks made him feel pathetically inadequate, and he yearned to pass the burden to another. But there was no one else, and even if there had been, he actually knew it was his calling that defined and empowered him. Forsake it and his wizardry notwithstanding it, he’d revert to the hapless wretch Mystra, Alustriel, and so many others had abused and betrayed.