Spellfire

There! That one. And that one. Carefully she drew the precious vials out and, cradling them firmly against her breast, wormed her way across the floor to a heap of cushions where she was wont to lie and study. At last!

The liquid tasted clear and icy on her tongue, with a tang of iron and an odd, faint scent. Symgharyl Maruel lay back and felt the potion’s gentle balm spreading down in a tingling, delicious, slow wave through her breast and shoulders and arms. The stabbing, sickening pain in her arm sank to a dull throbbing. Ah, good. Now the second one. Her long-ago mentor was a sentimental fool, but he knew a few tricks. It had been he who had insisted she cache these potions-potions not used until now.

Well, even if he came to Rauglothgor’s lair and stood against her, he could save neither the little thief, nor the powerless lacklore of a dweomer craefter who had tried to protect her. There’d been another in the cavern-a druid, by his garb-when she had come to her senses, and the two of them gone, with the stench of burned flesh at the cave’s mouth.- Doubtless Rauglothgor had cooked some of the reckless adventurers who’d attacked him. Perhaps the wench was dead, too, but not likely. She’d interested Rauglothgor. Well, too bad, Symgharyl Maruel thought savagely. The dracolich could be interested in her corpse.

The pain was almost gone. She could think again, and plan. She rolled up from the cushions and found her feet, noting her torn robes as she did so. Breeches and boots, yes, and a half-cloak. She’d be dragonriding, if all went well. Wands, rings, and potions too. Adventurers were trouble unless you brought art enough to overmaster their every attack. They’d give her no second chance.

Symgharyl Maruel began the complicated ritual of passing the magical and monstrous guardians of her main cache of art. Blood would spill, indeed.

Far away, in a high cavern within a mountain, another dracolich sat upon much gold, and before it knelt three men in armor. Its voice was a vast hiss that held the echo of hammers upon metal and the whistle of high winds through great leathery wings. It regarded the men before it through eyes that glowed chilling white as they floated in dark eyesockets. Otherwise, it appeared as a gigantic blue dragon, vast and terrible, its scales gleaming in the guttering light of the torches the men had brought with them.

“Treasure, yesss, good treasure,” it said. “As alwaysss. But I can only play with treasure ssso much. Pile it here, pile it there… as with all, I grow bored. Bored beyond waiting. You never entertain me! What newsss in the world without?”

“A dracolich’s lair is despoiled!” rang out a new voice. “The cult needs your great strength, O Aghazstamn!”

The dragon reared its spike-crested head with a great hiss. “Who comesss?” it enquired. Swords flashed as the cultists before it scrambled to their feet and turned to search out the intruder.

They had not far to look. Upon a coach of iron with chased gold and ivory panels, half-buried in a sea of gold coins, stood a woman in black and purple. She stood beautiful, proud, and alone, for all the world as if she had appeared there out of thin air. Of course, she had.

Nonetheless, the warriors of the Cult of the Dragon came toward her to slay, gold coins slithering under their feet. She raised a hand, and before them flashed the image of the dracolich Rauglothgor, its huge skeletal wings spread from wall to wall of the cavern. Aghazstamn hissed involuntarily, and spread its own wings with a mighty clap of air that scattered treasure like drops of rain and startled one warrior into a fall among the deeply sloped piles of coins. The image spoke in a deep, booming voice. “The Shadowsil, mage of the Cult of the Dragon, stands before you and would serve you. She seeks aid for one who is not used to asking for it; I, Rauglothgor, of the Thunder Peaks. I am beset by thieves, and they have loosed a balhiir that confounds my spells. Will you aid me? Half my hoard is yours, Aghazstamn, if you come speedily! Let the lady ride you. You can trust her.” And then the image slowly faded away.

Symgharyl Maruel stood calmly silent, arms crossed upon her breast. Her art had shaped the image that her ring of dragons had called into being. She knew not how Rauglothgor would take losing half his treasure, nor did she care, so long as the wench died.

The cult warriors had halted, awed, at the image’s speech, and now looked to the dracolich for direction, swords glittering in the torchlight. Aghazstamn’s wings lowered slowly; its head sank, snakelike gaze remaining fixed upon the mage. “That wasss not real,” it said finally, “and yet I know thee, sssmall and cruel one. You came to me before, not long ago. Did you not?”

“Aye, great Aghazstamn. I brought you treasure fourteen winters past. One of my first duties in the cult.” Symgharyl Maruel’s crossed hands both rested upon the ends of the wands she wore sheathed on her hips. Her eyes darted continuously from the warriors to the dracolich and back, but her voice and ma

“Ssso.” The dracolich put its great head to one side and regarded her, considering. It had been proud and great in life, and very curious. It had thought much on the intricacies of the art, and on death, and so had accepted the cult’s offer to die and become undead.

Aghazstamn had accepted young and missed many years of high flying and dealing death upon lesser creatures, of battling other wyrms in the clear air, and of mating in roaring silence, gliding together in the chill upper air. It regretted the losses. Now here was a call to war. To leave its safe lair and its rich hoard, to face enemies… enemies, hah! Puny humans, even as these at its feet were, waving their tiny steel fangs and making much outcry and commotion. To ride the high winds again, to see the lands spread out below, feel the cold bite of the air about as lesser creatures fled in terror, far below…

“Kneel to me, Ssshadowsil, and pledge to turn not against me nor aid Rauglothgor in altering the ssstated bargain. Do that, and I will accept.”

Symgharyl Maruel knelt among the coins, on the ornate top of a coach that had once carried young princes of Cormyr to hunt in the high country, before some forgotten wyrm had seized it, horses, royal blood, and all, and flown off. Hiding her smile in a low bow over the coins, she was rewarded by the great voice sounding again. “Mount, then. Warriorsss of the cult! Attend! Guard well my hoard in my absssence, and let not one coin be missssing when I return, nor any of you gone, or all will answer for it! Bow and pledge your obedience in thisss!”

The cult warriors, with frightened looks at Symgharyl Maruel, did so, and she wasted a flight spell in bravado (or rather, she told herself, began it a little early; she intended to have its protection about her when on Aghazstamn’s back, in case of a fall in aerial battle or treachery on the part of the great dracolich). She flew past them, skimming over the heaped coins, trade-bars, gems, and inlaid armor to reach Aghazstamn. She paused before the dracolich’s broad head and bowed again, eyes lowered-for it is not safe to meet the wise old eyes of a dragon, even if one is a great mage. Even less safe is it to peer into the awful floating, flickering orbs of a dracolich. She flew slowly up and around in a smooth arc to settle lightly upon a bone of its spine, between the wings.

“My thanks, great one,” Symgharyl Maruel said, as she drew gauntlets from her belt, settled the wands on her thighs for rapid drawing, and nestled herself in behind a fin she could grasp once her gloves were on.

“Nay, little one,” came the hissing reply. “My thanksss.” The great wings gathered above them as the dracolich leaped upward in a great bound into the darkness. The shaft from its lair twisted and bent back upon itself to entrap and discourage flying intruders, but Aghazstamn knew it well. The great wings beat twice, precisely in the rare spaces where they could spread. Suddenly there was daylight, and they burst out into it in a great roaring glide that curved up and became a climb. The great dracolich let out a roar that echoed back from the surrounding peaks, and it wheeled out over the Desertsedge and back again through the Desertsmouth Mountains, where of old had been the realm of Anauria before the Great Sand Sea swept its greatness away, and gained the name Anauroch.