Elminster's Daughter

"How dare he!" the song dragon roared into the wind of her own furious flight. "How dare he!"

She ducked one shoulder and turned a little westward without slowing, cleaving the air so fast that breathing was hard and her wings hummed and hissed in their battle with the air.

"Such an insult to all dragonkind! Such colossal arrogance! Even if some wyrms submit willingly to ages-long slumber and eventual perilous service, the wizard's plan endangers us all! Once Vangerdahast has developed binding spells that work on dragons, anyone who steals them or acquires them after his passing can use them against any dragon!"

Her voice was ear-splitting, but the heedless skies made no reply. With a snarl of seething fury she ducked her head and beat her wings in earnest, darting furiously on toward the green vast-ness of the King's Forest.

On to the sanctum where the villain Vangerdahast was lurking.

Nineteen

DRAGONRAGE AND DECEPTION

Deceit and falsehood wound me more deeply than mere daggers— poisoned or not. Thy tolerance may, of course, differ.

Selemvarr of Pyarados,

"The Old Red Wizard"

My Century of Might and Folly:

A Career In Robes of Red

Year of the Gauntlet

Outside the kitchen there was a mighty crash, and someone screamed. The ground shook, setting the lanterns to swinging, and Myrmeen started for the window in a wary crouch, blade drawn.

Vangerdahast did not look up from his spell. "Not now" he snapped. "How am I ever goin—"

"Vangerdahast" the Lady Lord of Arabel snapped, "get over

here! There's a dragon digging out your sanctum like a dog hunting for bones!"

"Eh? A wyrm? Excellent! I can try my—"

"I doubt either of the two War Wizards it's just flung away over the trees would agree with that 'excellent' of yours," Myrmeen interrupted crisply. "And I doubt this sword of mine will do much more than amuse our unexpected guest! I've never seen this sort of dragon—silver blue, but with the shape of a copper wyrm. . . ."

Vangerdahast made a small sound of exasperated a

"A song dragon! Well, now!" He rubbed his hands together. "I wonder how her human form strikes the eye?"

Myrmeen gave him a strange look at about the same time as the massive tail outside swung toward the window in a suddenly looming slap. The windows crashed in, riven spells bursting into crawling fingers of lightning that wrestled with the glass, splinters of frame, and dislodged stone blocks—then stabbed out in all directions. The Lady Lord shrieked as one bolt found her armor and writhed briefly up and down her, and Vangerdahast grunted as another made one of his rings burst apart without triggering its magics, almost casually flinging him across the room as it did so. The north end of the kitchen groaned as unseen pantries beyond it collapsed, the chambers beyond them dug open and flung apart.

"Wizard!" a great, roaring voice hammered at them. "Where are you, wizard?"

Vangerdahast's answer was three carefully enunciated words that called up the defenses of the sanctum.

The shields all around him flared 'white and flowed forward, in a gathering charge that flung the song dragon back across the glade. Helmed horrors came racing through the shattered trees like arrows, converging on the thrashing wyrm. A pale green radiance began to gather around Vangerdahast, leaking out of the empty air like so many humming sparks to settle around him, cloaking him in rising power.

"Lass," he growled, in obvious discomfort, "see yon stone? The one with the rune on it?"

Myrmeen looked up at him from where she lay sprawled and gasping on the floor, face white and hair scorched . . . then turned her head to look where he was pointing.

"Pluck it up, and drink all you need of the healing potions beneath," the former Royal Magician of Cormyr grunted, striding past her with green radiance surging and building around him. "For once have a little sense and crawl away somewhere to lie quiet and keep out of the way. In all that battle-steel, you're nothing but dragonbait: Yon wyrm breathes lightning-gas!"

The Lady Lord of Arabel stared after him . . . and with trembling hands, as she lay on the floor, tried to unbuckle and shake off her armor. Vangerdahast cast a glance back at her, shook his head in disgust, and flexed his hands.

Green radiances flashed, and all over the sanctum wands, rods, rings, and odd diadems and orbs flashed, quivered, and grew green haloes of their own.

Outside, the helmed horrors were hacking and stabbing at the rolling, tail-lashing dragon, unaffected by the cloud of gas that gouted from its jaws. Scaled claws snatched and flung them often, and from time to time tore one apart in a flare of white radiances, the pieces of armor tumbling separately to earth.

Vangerdahast calmly watched the song dragon writhe and roll its way through the forest, toppling trees in all directions. If it started working magic, he'd smite it with the whelmed power of the sanctum, but until then, as long as his horrors held out . . .

These guardians didn't last very long, anyway. The flight enchantments he gave them gnawed endlessly at the magics that animated and bound them together, so they were a loss he could bear. The imprisoned criminals who'd elected to be put into dreamsleep so their sentiences could be used for these horrors would have sudden awakenings and probably an unpleasant burst of nightmares, scaring their jailers and adding to the meal preparation burden in the few remote keeps of the realm that had been turned into jails . . . but they'd be there again when new horrors were needed.

The horrors were swarming like angry hornets around the coiling and rolling wyrm, smashed away in their dozens when it slashed out with wings or tail, only to dart right back in and jab, jab, and hack again. There came a brief shimmering in the heart of that fray, and Vangerdahast lifted a hand, eyes narrowing.

In the next instant, the dragon collapsed, that great sleek scaled body in the heart of the darting, armored cloud suddenly falling away to being . . . not there.

And a staggering, panting woman clad in a few tatters of rose-pink gown suddenly stood before the shattered windows, calling, "Vangerdahast? Wizard? Where are you? We must have words together!"

"I am here," Vangerdahast replied calmly, the green radiance rising up in front of him like a wall. "Had I known you were coming, I might have been more welcoming. As it is, I'd prefer that your next words to me be your name and your business. Unless, of course, you'd like them to be your last words."

The woman put a hand on the shattered window-frame and ducked gracefully to climb down into the kitchen. Her state of dress made her lack of weapons plain to any eye, but Myrmeen, still sprawled on the floor, laid down the potion vial she'd just emptied and reached for her blade again.

"My name, Lord Vangerdahast, is Ammaratha Cyndusk," the woman replied, stepping down onto the counter between two plate-racks in a catlike crouch. She was tall, well-built, and wise-eyed. "In human shape I dwell in Marsember, and folk there know me as Lady Joysil Ambrur."

'Ah, the lass who likes to know all secrets," the wizard replied, nodding. "And must now have learned this one of mine. Who told you, may I ask?"

"A Harper whose name you'll not learn from me—who told me a War Wizard spoke of it to another War Wizard. Before I throw my life away trying to end yours, I'd like to make sure I understand correctly: You're developing spells to hunt, lure, and control dragons, intending to accumulate a collection of dragons whom you'll bind—with other spells you're also working on—as sleeping defenders of Cormyr, in much the same way as the Lords Who Sleep formerly guarded the realm?"