The Ruin (37 page)

A roar and a crash jolted him from his meditations.

He turned. Knotted together, clawing, biting, and lashing one another with their tails, Chuth, a green drake, and Ssalangan, a white, rolled through the wreckage of the cookhouse. Cultists scurried to distance themselves from the fight. Other wyrms gathered around to watch.

Sammaster supposed it could be worse. The destruction of the kitchen with its ovens, hearth, and larder would pose a hardship to the humans who depended on them, but had the dragons demolished one of the shrines or workshops involved in the Sacred Work, their confrontation could have set the process back by tendays.

As it still might, if he didn’t intervene. He flourished his staff and shouted, “Stop!” Magic amplified his voice into an earth-shaking boom.

The brawling dragons froze, then slunk apart, off the collapsed cookhouse and the squashed, motionless human bodies visible inside. Once again, the wyrms reminded Sammaster of children. Children caught misbehaving.

“What’s this about?” he asked.

Chuth spat, suffusing the air with a noxious, stinging hint of his breath weapon. “This pale little newt claims that he, and the vermin who flew in with him, deserve the right to change before the rest of us.”

“Yes,” said Ssalangan. “As near as I can make out, you lot have spent the last few months lying around doing nothing.

My companions and I performed a vital service. Therefore, we’ve earned the right to become dracoliches first.”

Sammaster wondered again precisely what Ssalangan and the other whites had accomplished, or bungled, during the course of their “vital service.” The reptiles claimed they’d finished subjugating the Great Glacier for Iyraclea, losing Zethrindor and several other comrades in the doing, but were vague about the details. Sammaster suspected they were withholding information they thought would displease him.

Such perversity was frustrating, but he hadn’t felt he could press too hard. He might be the architect of their destiny, but he was also, in the final analysis, their servant. Besides, a thousand other matters clamored for his attention.

Like this present bit of folly. “We’ve already decided in what order you drakes will undergo the ritual,” he said. “The matter doesn’t require further discussion.”

“Curse you!” Ssalangan snarled, blood seeping from claw marks on his alabaster neck. “It isn’t fair!” Other whites growled and hissed in agreement.

“I beg you to be patient,” Sammaster said. “After months of preparation, we’re finally ready to begin. I promise that by year’s end, you’ll all be dracoliches.”

“I don’t even want to be undead,” Ssalangan grumbled, “at least not yet, not for hundreds of years. I’m only doing it because you and these miserable humans swear the frenzy’s never going to end. If I thought—”

“What do you perceive when you look inside yourself?” Sammaster said. “The Rage has festered in your mind for an entire year. Is it dwindling, or growing ever stronger?”

The white grunted and turned away, unable to refute the point but also unwilling to concede it. Sammaster smiled to the limited extent that his shriveled countenance was still capable of it, then the world flared a luminous red and tolled like a colossal bell.

Or at least it did for him. No one else appeared to sense anything out of the ordinary, nor was there any reason why

they should. He’d created the ward to alert only himself.

“I have to go,” he said. “I’ll return as soon as I can.” He rattled off a charm and thumped the butt of his staff on the ground. The world shattered and remade itself in an instant.

As intended, his spell of translocation deposited him behind an arched window in one of the watchtowers overlooking the elven citadel’s forward aspect. It was the destruction of his enchantment of twisted space that had triggered the mystical warning, and the folk in front of the barbican were still congratulating themselves on their success in breaching it.

They hadn’t sensed his arrival, nor spotted him framed in the shadowy window, and that gave him a chance to study them. He recognized some of the metallics, like Nexus, Havarlan, and Tamarand, and had he believed that any of his enemies could ever reach this hidden, isolated place, he might have expected to encounter them here. But the rest of the motley band was an astonishment. He could see no sign of the Chosen, Harpers, or deities who’d thwarted him in the past. In their place blathered the mages of Thentia, a potential problem he’d believed he’d neutralized. A hulking warrior with two iron limbs, and a black-winged avariel. A dark wyrm with luminous red eyes—could it actually be Brimstone, who’d turned against him so long ago?

It was maddening, inconceivable, that all they’d all found their way here, through the labyrinth of perils and obfuscations he’d created to prevent it. Fury came shrieking up inside him, directed less at the intruders than at himself, a worthless dunce who’d somehow managed to fail yet again.

But no, it wasn’t true. He hadn’t failed, not while he himself was the final protection, still in place. He, and the minions sworn to rush to his aid, if ever the ruined castle needed defending.

Down below, his enemies, still oblivious to his presence, started organizing themselves into search parties. It gave him time to armor himself in charms of protection. Then he

twisted a tarnished silver ring on his bony finger and whispered a single word.

The night blazed as if the stars were all falling at once.

With a bit of trepidation, Kara began the shift to dragon form. The Rage would grind at her more forcefully in that guise, but she thought she could bear it for as long as it would take to find and destroy the source of the curse, and her draconic prowess might prove useful if Sammaster had left still more guardians or traps inside the castle. Her wings leaped forth from her shoulders, she dropped to all fours, Dorn stepped back to give her expanding body room, then the black sky flared white.

She looked up, at luminous circles like a dozen full moons, and realized they were gates. Serpentine shadows with bat-like wings appeared in the rounds, taking on definition, solidity, even as the portals faded, until the reptiles were wholly present, and the wounds in space, entirely healed.

In that first moment, she couldn’t count the newcomers, though she did perceive that they had the dragons on the ground outnumbered. Nor could she identify the various species in all their diversity, especially since she’d never actually encountered most of them before, merely their descriptions, in books or recitations of esoteric lore.

But she did spot a gigantic hellfire wyrm, with bony spikes stabbing up from its head and shoulders, and the color of its scales inconstant, oozing from one shade of yellow or crimson to another as if the creature were made of flowing magma.

Also a howling dragon, long and spindly of body, with deceptively short and delicatelooking limbs. Topaz eyes dotted with minute pupils glared from its mask, and a ruff of spines encircled the back of its head.

Near the howling drake swooped a pyroclastic dragon, massively built, its hide a mottled confusion of dark patches

mixed with streaks and blotches of fiery red and gold. Its wings were gray and fragile in appearance, like charred parchment.

All were wyrms native to other levels of existence, ones likewise home to fiends, malevolent deities, and the damned. Plainly, Sammaster had compelled or purchased their aid as he had that of his Tarterians and shadow dragons, and arranged for them to appear and attack if intruders unsealed the castle.

And they attacked with all the advantages of height and surprise. Commencing a battle anthem, Kara lashed her wings and sprang into the air. With a great clatter of pinions, her rogues, and the drakes who had eventually made common cause with them, followed after her.

Even as they took flight, Nexus and some of the others rattled off incantations. Celedon, Drigor, and the spellcasters of Thentia did the same. Floating shields and barriers of congealed light shimmered into existence between Sammaster’s minions and their intended prey.

But not enough of them, not in time. As they dived, the lich’s sentinels spat a dazzling, shrieking assortment of breath weapons, blasts of flame, lightning, and hammering sound that crisscrossed and overlapped as they hurtled down. The attacks found the gaps in the defensive enchantments and would surely have killed folk on the ground if some of the metallics hadn’t deliberately placed themselves in the way. Wardancer stretched her wings wide to catch every bit of a pale burst of frost. It coated her dorsal surface in rime and made her wobble spastically in flight.

But she survived. Everyone in Kara’s field of vision survived, and it was time to strike back. Wheeling, she spotted a chaos dragon—changing color repeatedly like a chameleon, only fast as the beat of a panicked heart, even the shape of its body in constant flux—within reach.

She flapped her wings and flew at it, her breath tingling and ready in her chest and throat. She opened her jaws and spat a crackling plume of vapor infused with lightning.

The flare struck the chaos dragon’s flank, and it convulsed. At once, she sang words of power to evoke a stabbing shaft of the same force. Sammaster’s minion struggled to swoop beneath the attack, and partially succeeded. The lightning didn’t hit it in the torso as intended, but still burned a hole in each of its upraised pinions.

A pair of arrows streaked up from the ground and drove deep into the chaos drake’s belly. It shuddered, wings flailing out of time with one another, and slipped down the sky until Kara was above it. She dived, talons poised to catch and pierce.

The chaos dragon’s throat swelled. Its abilities fluctuated with its form, and this time it spat a stream of acid like a skull drake. Kara dodged, and the corrosive stream merely grazed the tip of one of her wings. The stuff burned, but not enough to balk her

She leveled off, seeking to shred the chaos wyrm’s wings from above and streak on by. She did rip the leathery membranes, but her foe caught her hind leg in its fangs before she could fly clear, and they plummeted together.

So be it. At least she was on top, and less injured than the chaos dragon, and so the fall ought to hurt it worse than it did her. She spread her wings to make the descent a little slower, and she and her adversary tore at one another. It spat, shrouding them both in vile-smelling smoke. For a moment, she felt bewildered, empty-headed, but then her thoughts snapped back into focus. She breathed more lightning straight into the other dragon’s mask and seared its left eye to molten ruin.

They crashed down hard. Bones cracked inside the chaos dragon’s body, the jagged ends stabbing through its hide, but it kept fighting, and she matched it strike for strike and rake for rake. Iron talons, bastard sword, and ice-axe already bloody, Dorn and Raryn rushed to help her.

Dorn’s blade sheared deep into the chaos dragon’s neck. It bucked and flailed so hard that it finally broke Kara’s hold on it, but then flopped helplessly onto the ground, its heaving flanks and rolling eyes the only indication it was still alive.

Its hide continued changing color, but the transformations came more slowly.

Raryn lifted his axe and smashed in the side of its skull, finishing it. Dorn turned to Kara. “Are you all right?” he asked.

She inspected her lacerated, bloody leg, charred, blistered wingtip, and the rest of the hurts the chaos wyrm had given her. They might well have killed or crippled a human, but drakes were more resilient.

“Fine,” she said, then glimpsed plunging motion overhead. “Watch out!”

The three of them leaped for safety, and a pyroclastic wyrm smashed down on the patch of ground where they’d just been standing. Kara sang a spell, Dorn scrambled to place himself on their new adversary’s left flank, and Raryn darted for the right.

Veiled in concealments, Sammaster watched the battle, assessing the capabilities of his foes. To say the least, they were impressive.

He’d opened the netherworld to rain annihilation on their heads. Drawn forth dragons powerful as demigods to attack with the advantages of numbers, surprise, and the high air. They should have slaughtered their targets in a matter of moments.

But it hadn’t happened that way. Indeed, at this early stage of the battle, the metallics and their allies were striking back so hard as to put his otherworldly minions on the defensive. It was remarkable. Dragons like Nexus, Tamarand, and Havarlan were, of course, famous for both their natural and mystical prowess. But the Thentian spellcasters were likewise giving a decent account of themselves.

For a moment, Sammaster feared it was all going wrong, and strained to quash the feeling. Nexus and his allies were winning only because he’d been content to stand and take

their measure. But he was ready to act, and the balance would quickly shift.

He would have liked to reveal himself to his foes and defy them, Mystra, and the whole sneering, lying, treacherous world. But such bravado would be imprudent. Though he had no fear of destruction, he needed to survive, to ensure that his plans came to fruition, and if all his adversaries concentrated on overwhelming him, it was just barely conceivable they might succeed. Because he wasn’t as strong as he would have been if he’d known he was heading into battle. Over the past few days, he’d expended a considerable portion of his spells furthering the Sacred Work, and hadn’t gotten around to preparing new ones. Summoning the Hell wyrms had drained him yet a little more.

Better, then, to lurk in the shadows. He could still dictate the outcome of the struggle. First, by supplying direction to his minions. Drawn from different realities, they lacked leaders and teamwork. They were a mob, not an army, and that was the first thing he needed to change.

He murmured, and magic carried his commands to his allies’ ears, just as it constrained them to obey. Ordering one to attack and another to break off, concentrating strength where it could do the most damage and maneuvering endangered troops to safety, he shifted his wyrms around like pieces on a lanceboard. He supposed that in so doing, he had the edge over Tamarand. Standing unnoticed, he could monitor the entire conflict in a way that was impossible for the beleaguered gold.