The Ruin (4 page)

Kara responded by singing a soaring arpeggio so compelling that, despite himself, Will twisted around to look at her. He wouldn’t have been surprised if every owl, reindeer, fox, and mouse on the steppe, or even the blades of grass, had done the same. Awash in golden phosphorescence, the bard appeared as beautiful as Sune Firehair herself. It seemed impossible that any of the Nars could escape her spell.

Until another outcry sounded, this one loud enough there was no mistaking the mingled screams of a horse and its rider.

Nar steeds were prized partly for their mettle, but the noise spooked them even so. They shied, reared, whinnied, rolled their eyes and tossed their heads, and their riders struggled to control them. The delight in the nomads’ faces gave way to perplexity and fear. The magician hammered his temples with the heels of his palms, then shouted words of power, staccato and harsh as an axe chopping wood.

Will jumped up and spun his warsling. The skiprock flew as true as he’d expected, hit the warlock in the head, then bounced away without even rocking him in the saddle. Apparently the tribesman, prior to making his approach, had cast his own ward to armor himself against missiles.

The Nar bellowed the final word of his incantation. A ring of shimmering distortion expanded outward from his position. For an instant, as it swept over Will, his joints ached as if he were some withered ancient crippled with arthritis.

But the real problem was that the magic freed the other Nars from Kara’s enchantments, as they demonstrated by clamoring in fury. The chief shouted orders, directing some of his men to attack the bard and the rest to help him find and kill the foe who was stalking them in the dark.

A dozen arrows hurtled at Kara, only to shatter uselessly against her willowy form. Will doubted the magic could withstand many more, however. Though no spellcaster himself, he’d spent enough time around such folk to know that every such impact chipped away at the invisible shield.

He didn’t understand exactly how things had gone so wrong, but it seemed plain that he and his friends had no choice left but to fight. He slung a skiprock, and a rider toppled from his mount. Dorn or Raryn—Will didn’t see where the attack came from—drove an arrow into another barbarian’s chest.

Pavel, however, shouted, “No! Defend yourselves, but don’t kill them!”

“He’s right!” Kara cried. As a woman or dragon, she was beautiful, but midway through the shift from one to the other, she was a heaving, swelling thing vaguely sickening to behold. “Don’t hurt—”

The Nar wizard interrupted her with a fan-shaped flare of fire that blistered her half-formed blue-crystal scales. She hissed and recoiled.

Pivoting back toward Pavel—who at some point during the last few heartbeats had conjured a halo of redgold light around himself—Will said, “What’s your idiotic idea this time?” Before the priest could answer, though, riders came thundering at them.

Arrows flew. Will dived onto the ground, and they streaked over him. But Pavel was no acrobat, and the halfling worried that his friend had been hit. When he looked around again, though, the priest was unscathed. His magical aura, buckler, and shirt of mail had evidently protected him.

Will could only pray to the Master of Stealth that such luck would continue, because the god knew, the prohibition against killing placed them at a considerable disadvantage. Nars charged, and he slung a skiprock. It cracked against one horse’s head, rebounded to strike another’s, and both animals toppled. The halfling hoped the riders had survived the spills.

Pavel shouted rhymes and swept his gold-and-garnet sun amulet through mystic passes. A black horse, the target of one spell, wheeled and galloped away, bearing its rider helplessly along no matter how he yelled and dragged on the reins. A second conjuration froze a nomad as if he were a statue, and his mount, sensing its master’s incapacity, veered off.

But two attackers remained, and had nearly raced into sword range. Will tucked his sling back in his belt and poised himself for what he must do next.

A Nar charged him. The halfling somersaulted, dodging pounding hooves and a sweeping scimitar. That brought him alongside the horse’s flank. He sprang, and just managed to grab hold of the rider’s dyed leather garments.

It was a feeble hold, and while he fumbled for a stronger one, the Nar attacked him. The nomad couldn’t use the scimitar to slash in such close quarters, but he could bash with the heavy brass pommel.

The blows hammered down on top of Will’s head, splashing sparks across his vision. Refusing to let the jolts of pain paralyze him, he finally achieved a secure grip on the Nar’s belt.

He snatched out his dagger and drove it into the horseman’s thigh.

The shock of the wound made the nomad stop beating at Will’s head for a moment anyway. The halfling then struck with the pommel too, smashing blows into the nomad’s kidney and solar plexus. The Nar jerked and flailed. Will clambered higher up the horseman’s body and landed a strike to the jaw, snapping the larger combatant’s head back. The nomad’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he toppled sideways, out of the saddle, carrying Will along with him. Will sprang clear, performed a shoulder roll, and swarmed to his feet without injury.

Well, without further injury, anyway. His head throbbed, and blood streamed down into his eyes. He wiped it away and looked around, just in time to see Pavel catch a scimitar cut on his buckler.

The force of the slash made the priest stagger a step, but failed to disrupt the rhythm of his incantation or the precision with which he flourished his medallion. When he reached the end of the spell, the Nar’s eyes opened wide. He dropped his sword, hauled brutally on the reins, jerking his mount around, and rode away as fast as he could.

“Right,” said Will. “Maybe I’d cheat and scare them away with magic, too, if I was too cowardly to risk a fair fight.”

“Perhaps I’d fight as you do,” Pavel said, “if, like you, I had no particular use for my head. Will you survive?”

Will explored his gashed scalp with his fingers. “I think so.”

“A pity.”

Pavel peered about, spotted a dark Nar mare with a white blaze and socks, and crooning to the animal in a reassuring tone, slowly advanced on it. The horse retreated. Pavel whispered a prayer and gripped his amulet. Though Will wasn’t the target of the spell, mere proximity to the magic made him feel irrationally relaxed and happy, even as it seemed to dull the shouts, clash of metal on metal, and other sounds of combat stabbing through the darkness. Pavel eased toward the mare again, and she allowed him to swing himself up into

the saddle. He rode to Will and hauled the halfling up behind him. Then he turned the horse to survey the battlefield. Will took the opportunity to do the same.

The Nars were brave, he had to give them that. Even Kara’s shift to song dragon form hadn’t scared them into breaking off the attack. Or perhaps, knowing they had another foe skulking somewhere in the darkness, they simply didn’t know which way to run. In any case, they were fighting savagely, and still trying to avoid unnecessary slaughter, the seekers defended themselves as best they could.

Singing a fierce battle anthem with incantations threaded in, Kara fought a duel of spells with the Nar warlock. He battered her with a flare of jagged shadow that ripped one of her wings, and she responded with a wave of silvery light that seemed to have no effect on him.

Exploiting the prodigious strength of his iron arm, Dorn caught hold of a stallion’s neck and dumped the animal and its rider onto the ground. Jivex dazed several attackers with a jet of his sparkling breath, Taegan, likewise on the wing, dodged a lance thrust and bashed his opponent with the flat of his elven sword, while Raryn parried a scimitar stroke with the shaft of his harpoon.

That was much as Will had time to take in before Pavel rode in the opposite direction from the battle.

“Aren’t we going to help the others?” the halfling asked.,

“They’ll be fine,” Pavel said. “If the Nars push her to it, Kara can slaughter the lot of them, all by herself. But perhaps we can spare her the necessity.”

“How?”

“By stopping Brimstone.”

“He’s the one who attacked the Nars? How do you know?”

“Because I can feel him lurking somewhere nearby, as you’d feel the pangs of a broken tooth. Now stop blathering and look for him.”

Brimstone, Will reflected. It made a certain amount of sense. Since he and his comrades traveled by day, the

vampiric smoke drake couldn’t journey with them. Accordingly, he was exploring Narfell on his own, but made contact with his partners periodically. They’d actually been expecting him to turn up for a while, and certainly the wyrm would have no qualms about massacring a company of Nars for any number of reasons.

Blood dripped down Will’s face. He swiped at it, then caught an acrid smell of smoke and combustion, and spotted a long, sinuous shadow.

“There he is!” he said. “Swing left!”

Pavel tugged on the reins, and in another moment, Brimstone came into clear view.

Red eyes glowing like hot coals, rubyand diamondstudded platinum collar gleaming, a couple arrows jutting from his dark scales, Brimstone crouched among the shattered bodies of horses and men, with one living Nar squirming helplessly beneath each forefoot and another flopping in his jaws, impaled on the elongated fangs. The vampire’s throat worked, and he made a gulping sound, as he sucked his current victim dry of blood,

The mare balked at approaching the wyrm any closer. His features taut, Pavel simply dismounted and let go of the reins. Will had to jump off quickly to keep the horse from running away with him.

Pavel raised his amulet above his head. “You know,” said Will, “Brimstone is our ally. We could try just talking to—”

Warm golden light shined from the sun symbol. To Will, it felt pleasant. But Brimstone squinched his eyes shut and twisted his head away until the glow faded.

He didn’t recoil sufficiently to release his prisoners, though. Rather, he pulled the corpse from his fangs with a flick of his forked tongue, spat the body out, and sneered, in his eerie, sibilant whisper, “Sun priest.”

“Let them go,” Pavel said.

“Have you gone mad?” Brimstone asked. “I saw you lying in wait for the savages as Karasendrieth’s music lured them in for the kill, and I decided to make your task that much easier

by slaying some of them myself. Which is to say, I’m helping you.”

“Well, actually—” began Will. The drake’s shining eyes shifted to him, and despite himself, he faltered. Even for a seasoned hunter of wyrms and other dangerous creatures, there was something particularly horrible about Brimstone, something Pavel, Lathander’s agent and thus a sworn foe of the undead, felt even more intensely.

Will took a breath and began again. “Really, we hoped Kara’s song would lull the Nars into being friendly. We were only ‘lying in wait’ to protect her if it didn’t work out.”

Brimstone snorted, suffusing the air more strongly with the hot, bitter stench of his breath. “Be that as it may, they meant to kill you. They’re enemies, and their deaths needn’t concern you.”

“You know,” said Will, looking up at Pavel, “at this point, it probably is too late—”

“Quiet,” Pavel rapped, without taking his unblinking eyes off the drake for even an instant. “Set them free, abomination.”

“I weary of the blood of hobgoblins and yetis,” Brimstone whispered. “It’s poor stuff compared to the ichor of men. You have no legitimate reason to deny me this prey, and I intend to keep it. Be thankful I don’t take your blood instead.”

“Back away,” Pavel said. He shouted the opening words of a spell. Brimstone bared his fangs and charged, hurtling forward with appalling speed.

Curse it! Will thought. Over the past several months, he’d dodged death at the hands of countless foes, only, it appeared, to perish under the fangs and talons of a creature at least nominally an ally. He slung a skiprock at the huge ruby in Brimstone’s collar. It was supposed to be impossible for an undead dragon to wander far from his horde. Back in Thar, Pavel had conjectured that the choker contained the magic enabling Brimstone to break the rule, and that destroying it might thus slay the drake as well.

The missile hit the gem, but to no effect, and Will had no time

to fling another. Already Brimstone loomed over his intended victims. Already he was pouncing into striking distance. “Lathander!” Pavel shouted.

Yellow light, hotter and brighter, blazed from the upraised amulet. Brimstone screeched and balked, though his momentum almost carried him right over the human and halfling. Patches of his charcoal-colored scales burned away.

Will didn’t think he’d ever seen his friend conjure such a fierce light before, but then, Pavel had changed. The struggle to end the Rage had put a hitch in his walk, etched new lines in his handsome face, and maybe strengthened his faith as well.

Still, though, the magic was insufficient. When the flare faded, Brimstone, blinking as though half-blind, his charred hide steaming, whirled back around toward the priest. His throat swelled, and his head cocked back at the end of his long neck, as he prepared to discharge his breath weapon. Pavel stood poised to try and dodge.

Will darted between the dragon and the human. “Sammaster!” he cried. “Remember him?”

Brimstone hesitated.

“You hate him more than anything, don’t you?” Will continued. “That’s why you’re here, and why you need Kara and the rest of us, Pavel and me included. You’ll never get your revenge without us.”

The wyrm sneered. “You have an inflated opinion of your own importance. I suspect that if the two of you died here and now, the search would proceed without you.”

Maybe, thought Will, but the important thing is, you’re talking again instead of attacking. Your temper’s cooling a little.

With an effort of will, he managed to turn his back on the drake and face Pavel. “And you,” the halfling said, “you’re acting just as stupid, though naturally, in your case, it comes as no surprise. Stopping the Rage is what’s most important, right, and to do that, we need Brimstone the same as he needs us. By the Hells, he already rescued Dragonsbane and saved your homeland, didn’t he?”