Whisper of Venom

Until-after what was likely only a matter of heartbeats, even though it seemed like forever-the phantasmal gauntlet vanished, and Medrash saw that the fire beneath was gone.

That was the only way he could tell. His hand was still ablaze with pain. Yet even so, he felt a surge of satisfaction, and when Skuthosiin’s head whipped around to goggle at him, that only made the moment sweeter.

“Sorry,” Balasar called. “Were you using that fire?”

Skuthosiin’s eyes flicked to the giant shamans. “Kill them,” he snapped.

The adepts produced some of Nala’s globes, held them at eye level, then gasped and staggered.

“Oops,” Balasar said.

Medrash drew a bit more of Torm’s Power to quell the throbbing in his hand. It didn’t end it altogether, but it muted it. When he tried to grip the wire-wrapped hilt of his sword, he found that he could.

“You see how it is,” he said. “We know how to counter all your tricks. Surrender, and perhaps Tarhun will show you mercy.”

“Surrender?” Skuthosiin repeated. “Are you insane? Do you think I really need tricks, or any sort of help, to slaughter mites like you? This is the end of you and all your people.” He sprang forward.

Medrash rode to meet him. Balasar and the other riders pounded after him.

The fight was going to be terrible. In all probability, many dragonborn would die. But Medrash was satisfied because his comrades hadn’t quailed, and, in his furious eagerness to engage, Skuthosiin had opted to stay on the ground where lance and sword could reach him. And as more and more Tymantherans, including the mages, arrived in the heart of Ashhold-

Something seared Medrash’s back. His steed pitched forward and fell. On either side of him other horses dropped as well, and yellow flame glinted on the riders’ armor.

He hit his head hard, and something cracked. Suddenly everything seemed dim and far away. Unimportant. Some instinct insisted that he try to get up anyway, but he discovered he couldn’t move.

Her mouth still warm and tingling, Nala rejoiced to see that Medrash wasn’t standing up, or stirring at all.

Despite her best efforts, the paladin and the other riders had gotten ahead of her and interrupted the ritual before she could reach the center of the giants’ refuge. But even though that disruption was sacrilege, from a practical standpoint it might actually have been for the best. Because her miracles would play a greater role in Skuthosiin’s victory and show him how valuable she truly was.

She’d drawn down Tiamat’s glory to augment the power of her breath weapon, then spat it at the horsemen. The burst of fire dropped half a dozen riders. Her only regret was that Medrash and Balasar weren’t close enough together for her to burn both of them. But the paladin was the more important target, and if the Dark Lady smiled on her, she still might be the one to kill his clan brother.

She glimpsed a glint from the corner of her eye and turned toward the spear points swinging in her direction. For of course the foot soldiers among whom she’d advanced had seen her blast their mounted comrades. They’d stood stupefied for a heartbeat, but they meant to strike her down for her treachery.

She had no time for another prayer, whispered or otherwise, but her own i

She darted out of the massed infantrymen, racing closer to Skuthosiin and the riders assailing him. Some of the foot soldiers hesitated to follow, but others scrambled after her.

She judged she had just enough time and distance for an incantation. She hissed Draconic words of power, touched the end of her thumb to the tip of her middle finger to make her hand resemble a saurian head, then, quick as a striking serpent, jabbed it at four different spots on the ground.

Each as big as a dragonborn, four rearing, snarling wyrms appeared where she’d pointed. Her pursuers quailed until they realized the apparitions were incapable of doing actual harm. By then she was close enough to Skuthosiin for the green to lash out at anyone who dared to keep following, and no one did.

Clouds shrouded Selune and the stars. To Aoth, the air smelled like a storm was coming.

It is, said Jet, and its name is Alasklerbanbastos.

I know, answered Aoth. Because the deepening darkness seemed blacker and felt somehow dirtier than just the clouds could explain, while the breeze carried a hint of old rot as well as the imminence of lightning. It was like the worst of his experiences in Thay, with something unimaginably strong and vile rising to poison all the natural world. I just wish he’d get on with it.

Back on the ground for the moment, Tchazzar incinerated a formation of kobolds with a blast of flame. Either he was trying hard to convince the Great Bone Wyrm that he was squandering his power-or else, in his excitement, he really was.

Whether he was thinking, the result was the same. At the northern edge of the battlefield, pieces of darkness seemed to thicken and arrange themselves into a structure, like ghostly hands were building it. And even wyrmkeepers and vampires instinctively shrank away.

In a moment, a murky skull with a spiked snout sat atop the stacked vertebrae of the neck, and fleshless wings arched to either side. Then, inside the core of the thing’s body, lightning flared repeatedly from rib to rib, and its eye sockets lit with a spectral glow. The structure changed from dark to leprous white as lengths and curves of shadow turned into bone.

Alasklerbanbastos strode forward. Chessentans who were nowhere near him screamed. So did some of the Threskelans.

Go ahead, said Jet, if it will make you feel better.

Aoth snorted. If he’d ever done any screaming, it had been a long, long time ago. But even to a man who’d survived the nastiest parts of the War of the Zulkirs, the Great Bone Wyrm was an appalling spectacle. Now that the two of them were in the same place, he could tell that the dracolich was even bigger than Tchazzar. And as they advanced on each other, and warriors left off struggling to scurry out of the way, it was difficult to resist the idea that here were the only combatants and the only fight that really mattered.

Aoth spat away that notion as well. Whatever their pretensions, neither wyrm could stand up to a proper army all by himself. That was why they bothered to command armies. Besides, what was about to happen would be very little like the duel of titans his imagination was suggesting.

Or so he hoped. Jaxanaedegor and his followers were taking their time about striking at their master. Aoth hoped they were simply making sure they’d take the dracolich completely by surprise when he’d have nowhere to run.

The battlefield was strangely quiet as the undead colossus and the self-proclaimed deity approached each other. That was because a good many warriors were simply standing and watching, and it enabled Aoth to make out the words when the wyrms spoke in the same esoteric form of Draconic that Jaxanaedegor had used when he first appeared to Tchazzar. Or maybe it was their i

“I invoke the Five Hundred and Fifty-Fifth Precept,” Alasklerbanbastos said. “To the death, and wi

“That’s exactly how it will be,” Tchazzar replied. “For I promise I’ll find your phylactery.”

“Take it if you can.” Without cocking his neck back or doing anything else that might have warned of a live dragon’s intent, Alasklerbanbastos simply opened his fleshless jaws and spat lightning.

The flare dazzled Aoth, and the thunderclap spiked pain into his ears. The attack pierced Tchazzar and made him thrash.