The Spectral Blaze

A swat from a leathery wing smashed an Imaskari spearman.

An umber-scaled dragonborn axeman ran to join Khouryn underneath Gestanius until the green’s jaws hurtled down and nipped away everything from the waist up. Gestanius spit out what she’d taken as she lifted her head again. The warrior’s eyes blinked once, seemingly at the sight of his severed legs toppling in front of him.

Cloudy with bits of dissolving flesh, steaming fluid poured down off Gestanius’s flanks. Jemleh or one of his colleagues was attacking her with acid.

Khouryn bellowed “East Rift!” and swung, burying most of the axe’s head in Gestanius’s flesh. When he wrenched it free, blood spurted, spattering his chest, beard, and flesh and blinding him till he sidestepped and swiped the gore in his eyes away.

Gestanius howled and snatched her foot off the floor, and Khouryn was ecstatic when it didn’t come stamping down again. She folded up her foreleg against her chest where he couldn’t reach it.

Khouryn barked a laugh and ran toward the rear of her body. If he could cripple a hind leg too, that would accomplish his purpose.

But before he could reach the limb, Gestanius roared a word that seemed to stab him through like a rapier. He fell on his face, and the sound hung in the air like the shivering note of a gong. It twisted and tore at him, and just as horribly, he somehow felt it twisting and tearing at the very structure of the world. It was magic so powerful and malign that it tortured reality itself.

Finally the sound faded. But Khouryn ached in every nerve and couldn’t focus his thoughts. When Gestanius sprang away from him, he almost didn’t realize that was a problem.

Almost but not quite. Gritting his teeth against a pang of sharper pain, he forced himself to lift his head.

Nearly as fast as ever despite her laming, Gestanius whirled to face him. He supposed it was an accolade of sorts that out of all the foes who’d been assailing her, he was the one she particularly wanted to dispose of.

And she very likely would, because when he glanced around, there didn’t seem to be anyone capable of distracting her from her purpose. The word of power had stu

Khouryn heaved himself to his feet and hefted his axe. “Try,” he croaked.

Gestanius opened her jaws, and a pale cloud gathered at the back of her mouth. The smell of acid suffused the air. Khouryn’s eyes watered as the air filled with noxious fumes.

Then a silvery waterfall poured down from the ceiling.

Or rather, it poured halfway. It gathered itself into a coherent shape in mid drop, and by the time it slammed down on top of Gestanius, it was Prax.

His weight drove the green down on her belly. He seized her neck in his jaws midway down and drove his foreclaws into her. She twisted her head and spit the acid she’d originally intended for Khouryn, but the angle was bad. Prax crouched low and the acid sizzled over his head. The talons on his hind feet raked deep, bloody furrows in Gestanius’s back.

But then the green whipped her neck and broke Praxasalandos’s grip on it, although his jaws came away full of flesh. She flipped over, crashed down on top of the quicksilver wyrm, and rolled. His claws ripped out of her back, and they tangled together, biting, tearing, each trying to coil around and immobilize the other.

And they continued to fight the same way when they fetched up against the cavern wall, like wrestlers, not pugilists or axemen. And that, Khouryn realized, meant that other, smaller combatants could get close to them without quite as much danger of getting squashed.

Still weak and shaky from the effects of the word of smiting, he scarcely felt capable of ru

When they reached the wyrms, they had to seize their opportunities, rush in, strike, and be ready to retreat in an instant, because while the dragons weren’t whirling and lunging around as they had before, they weren’t motionless either. They rolled and heaved, and any such shift could crush the smaller creatures stabbing and cutting in their shadow.

Khouryn struck, then ducked a stray swipe of Prax’s foot that might otherwise have smashed his skull. Off to the right, a couple of warriors shouted in excitement, but he had no idea why until the next time he had to retreat. Then he saw how Prax had looped his bloody, truncated tail around Gestanius’s neck like a garrote.

Frantic to break the chokehold, she tore at him, thrashing so madly that Khouryn didn’t see how he or any of his warriors could advance back into striking distance. But Medrash ran in as if he imagined the behemoths’ raking, flailing limbs couldn’t possibly touch him.

He shouted, “Torm!” and Praxasalandos snarled, “Bahamut!” Medrash thrust his sword deep into Gestanius’s chest, and the quicksilver dragon pulled the noose that was his tail tighter still.

Gestanius went rigid. Then her struggles started to subside, although everyone kept strangling, cutting, or hammering her for a while longer, just to make sure she really was dead.

ELEVEN

29-30 E LEASIS, THE YEAR OF THE A GELESS ONE

Aoth judged that the view from Arathane’s throne room was as spectacular as on his previous visit, but in a more forbidding way. There were gray-black thunderheads to the north, out over the sea. He hoped it wasn’t an omen.

He’d given a condensed account of the expedition to kill Vairshekellabex, and the royal audience had ground to a halt while various genasi priests and clerks had examined the wyrmkeepers’ papers and even authenticated the handwriting and wax seal on Mardiz-sul’s testament. Though Cera was doing her best to keep her composure, Aoth could see impatience gnawing at her. Gaedy

Each expert whispered his opinion to Tradrem Kethrod. When he’d heard from them all, the square-built Steward of the Earth turned toward the raised, silver throne and the slender young stormsoul sitting on it.

“Well, milord?” Arathane asked. Today she was wearing gold rings set with amethysts on her hair spikes.

“There are no clear, incontrovertible signs of forgery,” Tradrem said. “However-”

“However,” Gaedy

The earthsoul shot him a glare but continued to address the queen. “As I was saying: However, even if we assume that every word we’ve heard spoken or read from a piece of parchment today is true, it doesn’t prove that the dragonborn haven’t been raiding our villages. It simply provides some reason to suspect that this Vairshekellabex and his servants were doing it too.”

“With all respect, milord,” said Aoth, “that’s a tortured interpretation of the facts. What are the odds that Tymanther would conduct clandestine raids, and in the same year, Vairshekellabex’s wyrmkeepers would disguise fiends out of Banehold as dragonborn and dispatch them to commit exactly the same kind of atrocities?”

“Not so bad,” Tradrem said, “if Vairshekellabex noticed what the dragonborn were up to and decided to use their incursions as a smokescreen to hide his own outrages.”

“Your Majesty,” Cera said, “I will swear the most sacred oaths of my faith and my order that my companions and I are telling the truth. Vairshekellabex and his servants were solely responsible for the massacres. The gray wanted to see Akanul’s troops drawn beyond its borders to fight a pointless war. Surely you can see how that would make him more secure and able to slaughter and steal with impunity.”