Whisper of Venom

But that was even worse than the dragon head’s frigid breath, because it also sent terror howling through his mind. Suddenly, all he wanted to do was flee.

He looked around, but horribly could find no clear path to safety. His sellswords and the undead hawks were fighting on all sides. Apparently the griffon riders had discovered that their bows were of little use, for they were relying on their mounts to fight the raptors, beak to beak and claw to claw, with the losers falling to earth in pieces.

Get hold of yourself! snapped Jet. You aren’t really afraid! The skull lord put it in your mind!

Aoth realized it was true. He struggled to focus past the fear and activate the countermagic bound in one of his tattoos. A bracing sting of power restored him to himself.

But why let the skull lord know it? He mimed panic while the undead chimera wheeled and climbed for another pass. Jet floundered in flight like a mount infected with his rider’s distress or confused by nonsensical commands.

The chimera swooped at them. Aoth let it get close, then leveled his spear and spoke the single word necessary to release one of the spells bound inside the weapon.

The fiery blast sent the ram’s head tumbling in one direction and the dragon’s in the other. The wings tore away to drift like burning kites on the night wind, while the remains of the body dropped away beneath them. The skull lord’s six orbits stared upward in impotent astonishment or rage.

Are you all right? asked Aoth.

Just a little frostbitten around the edges, said Jet. That was like being back in Thay.

What it was, said Aoth, was a reminder that we have other things besides dragons to worry about. Twisting in the saddle, he looked to see which of his fellow griffon riders needed help.

Nala cradled the green orb in both hands and focused her will on it. If she established a psychic bond, she’d be able to summon dragonspawn a shade more quickly in a little while, when the defenders of Ashhold needed them.

As they would. Created from actual wyrm eggs with rituals imparted by Tiamat herself, dragonspawn had proved insufficient to win the last big battle in Tymanther. But surely this time would be different. The giants were fighting on their home ground, where the towering masses of rock and the cha

And after he won, the green would surely recognize just how valuable a weapon her talismans had been.

Nala needed that because the failure of her schemes in Djerad Thymar had cost her his favor. He’d granted her asylum among the giants, but hadn’t seen fit to include her in his great magical ritual or even explain what it was meant to accomplish. That had to change if she was ever to assume her rightful role as a high priestess of the Nemesis of the Gods. Indeed, if she was even to be certain of avoiding the grim fate he intended for every other Tymantheran.

Her mind reached into the globe in somewhat the same way that she might have stuck her hand through a hole. Then her companion, a giant shaman who was doing the same thing with a gray talisman, cried out.

Nala glanced around in time to see the adept flounder back against a basalt wall. Blood streaming from his mouth and his left eye, he heaved the globe away from him. It smashed against the rock face on the other side of the relatively narrow alley in which they’d taken shelter.

Nala felt a stab of outrage. She and her true acolytes had worked long and hard to make the globes. Then, perhaps because the giant’s distress alerted her, she sensed resistance in her own orb. A heartbeat earlier it had been a doorway. Now it was a trap snapping shut. She snatched her psychic presence clear before it could catch her.

“Betrayer,” the shaman mumbled. He pushed off the wall, swayed, and stumbled toward her, enormous gray hands outstretched.

“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “I didn’t ruin the talismans. The vanquisher’s wizards found a way to do it. If you’re hurt, let me help you.” She grabbed hold of one of the giant’s fingers and rattled off a healing prayer. Tiamat’s Power manifested as a glow of warmth at her core, which then streamed through the point of contact.

The giant grunted.

“Better?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, no longer sounding dazed. Although he seemed nonplussed that his menacing advance hadn’t frightened her.

“Then go find the other shamans. Warn them not to use the orbs. Or if they already did, heal them so they can fight.”

He studied her for another moment, and she in turn could see just how reluctant he still was to trust or obey any dragonborn. But at last he said, “All right.” He swiped blood from his face, turned, and loped away.

Nala headed for the other end of the passage and the shouting, crashing cacophony of battle. It was maddening that the talismans had failed-had, indeed, become a means for the enemy to cripple the adepts-but since they had, she needed to find a new way to make herself not just useful but indispensable to the defense.

The passage narrowed down to an opening narrow enough that no adult giant could squeeze through. It seemed like a good place to crouch and study the combat without being noticed.

Giants perched on the ledges and tops of the stony eminences, hurling javelins and rocks at foes who remained, for the moment, out of Nala’s view. Then motion flickered above one such elevated position, there and gone too quickly for her to see it clearly. A shaft of wood sticking straight up from the top of his bald, knobby head, a barbarian toppled and crashed to the ground. She realized a Lance Defender had swooped down and speared him.

A volley of crossbow bolts pierced several of the slain giants’ fellows and made the rest dive for cover. Then her countrymen came streaming through one of the broader passages dividing the towering stones.

By the Five Breaths, how she hated them! She’d brought them gifts that would have made them a great people, and they’d spurned them. Driven her into exile to live among savages. And now come to deprive her of even that miserable refuge.

In her heart, she begged the Dark Lady for revenge.

A long shape burst from the earth right in front of a company of Tymantheran spearmen. For an instant in the darkness, it looked like a new basalt spire suddenly rising to claim a place among the old ones. Then it swayed, opened its jaws, and roared.

The brown dragon bore ugly, half-healed wounds, yet it had come to fight the intruders anyway. Nala loved it for its courage.

It spewed hot sand, and dragonborn reeled, scorched and scraped bloody. The grit stayed in the air too, in a blinding, choking swirl. It afflicted Nala as much as anyone else, but she laughed anyway. Because she could just make out how helpless the soldiers were as the brown repeatedly struck and lifted its head, dispatching a foe with every bite.

Then white light flashed in the front rank of the foot soldiers. In the darkness, churning dust, and general confusion, Nala found it difficult to be sure, but it seemed to her that one of the soldiers vanished, and another dragonborn appeared in his place.

The newcomer was on horseback, and the horse was galloping. It only took it an instant to close the distance to the startled dragon, and then the rider’s lance plunged into the creature’s chest.

The brown jerked, then snarled and raised a clawed foot to retaliate. But at the same instant, a second lancer drove in on its flank and speared it in the base of its neck.

The wyrm thrashed, then tried to dissolve into sand. Nala could just make out its outlines softening and streaming. She surmised that it wanted to pour itself down the burrow to safety.