Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) (68 page)

It seemed that the goblins had brought along one of
their dragon-gods. It was an unusual addition to a goblin assault, and an
unfortunate one. Dragons were lazy, indolent creatures, content to remain idle
for scores of summers at a time while their minions amassed wealth to give to
them in tribute. However, for all their sloth, dragons were the most ferocious
creatures imaginable. The goblins would have been wiped from the lands entirely
long ago had it not been for the pact they had formed with the dragons,
elevating them as deities in exchange for protection. For a dragon to join in
attacking Raynesdark, there must have been something that it wanted greatly.

Despite his great age and vast experience, Rashan had
never battled a dragon before, nor even strongly considered it. During his time
as warlock—the first time, anyway—Kadrin was feared as a conquering,
expansionist empire. None but Loramar had dared attack them, including the
goblins. However, launching an attack on the goblin lands was nothing to be
considered. While a single dragon taking initiative to attack a Kadrin city was
troubling, invading them and having
all
the dragons of the pact allied
against him was unquestionably stupid, unthinkable even.

He knew he would need to gather aether before he left.
The transference spell by itself required massive amounts of aether, and the
area around the palace was always a bit dry of aether to begin with.

Not to be helped, with so many sorcerers about
.

After that, he would need a reserve in case he ended
up in the thick of battle immediately upon arrival. He had no misconceptions
about sneaking up on a dragon—or even the goblins, quite frankly—when using a
transference spell. They just caused too much disruption in the aether to pass
unnoticed by anyone sensitive to it.

It was sorely tempting to draw the aether right out of
the Sources of the useless slackwits that had been inflicted upon him. Of all
those at court, he could count a handful worth the space they took up: Lord
Dergh was a shrewd and keen man, the Duchess Wensaka had sent a reliable knight
to court in Sir Darwey, and there were a pair of house sorcerers he would have
much liked to recruit back into the Imperial Circle … perhaps a few others but
no more than that few.

It was tempting to rid himself of them and use their
aether to go into battle with, but no, he would not. Murder in the name of
justice, and you might find yourself ruling a kingdom. Murder in the name of
convenience, and you find yourself a pariah, no matter how powerful. He might
hold the Empire together for a while through fear, but eventually alliances
would form against him and he would not survive the aftermath.

Instead Rashan dashed down the stairs of the dais and
quickstepped across the large audience chamber, watching as a path presented
itself in the direction he faced, courtiers elbowing and jostling each other to
remove themselves from his way. A few tried to ask questions or favors of the
regent as he passed, but he studiously ignored them.

I am in charge, at least for now. When I say an
audience is at an end, there are no further petitions.

Once free of the press of bodies in the audience
chamber and free of the rather ill-defined obligation to maintain decorum, he
broke into a run. The dark jest he had played out in his head about the Sources
of those courtiers had given him an idea.

*
* * * * * * *

The lizard was an obstinate beast, unused to the
weight of a human on its head. It bore Jinzan’s heft but disliked having to.
The lizard and rider were both camouflaged with magic, appearing as little more
than a distortion of the air to those at a distance, no more substantial than
the wavy look the air gets above a fire. The complex system of bladders and
tubes that wound around the lizard to keep warm was well-heated by Jinzan’s
aether, and the creature carried him, but he had to take a harsh hold on its
reins to keep its willfulness in check.

He had taken it on a northerly vector, heading away
from the main body of the goblin army. The walls were not so damaged to that
side of the city, where worked stone met unworked. The cannoneers had wanted to
breach the central area of the wall to best make use of the road for the
approach, and the far northerly and southerly ends of the wall had taken fewer
shots than had the rest. But it was to the north that his destination lay.
Between the city wall and the castle, there was an entrance to the old upper
mines. There was no map that showed the location of the Staff of Gehlen, but it
was known to be in the upper mines.

Chapter 33 - Dragon Goddess

Down the corridors Rashan raced, as fast as his legs
would carry him without expending magic to quicken his pace. Palace servants
fled at his approach, and a few even threw themselves to the floor to escape
his path. For all his lack of stature and smooth, youthful features, he was a
terrifying sight when focused. White hair and black cape streamed out behind
him, the latter billowing, and his vile sword bounced at his hip, occasionally
tapping the floor with its scabbard. It was the eyes, though, that frightened.
They were cold, unblinking, staring eyes that saw a destination and brooked
nothing pass between him and it. None who saw that gaze wished to have their
own visage reflected in it.

He came to the flight of stairs he sought, heading
down into the dungeons below the palace. Not slowing his pace, he hopped as he
reached the corner and kicked against the wall to make his turn. He touched
just one stair and leaped down the rest, then repeated the maneuver as he
descended two more flights.

The halls of the lower levels were much as he
remembered them from a few days earlier, when he had darkened the mood with
flickers reminiscent of torchlight. He turned not to the special wing of the
dungeon reserved for sorcerous prisoners but rather toward the cells where
plainer men were left to rot.

He slowed his pace to a brisk walk as he entered the
cell block. The jailor on duty he dismissed with a wave of his hand and a
perfunctory “begone,” which was more than enough instruction to set the stout
man to flight.

The first door the warlock came to was of solid iron,
with a small, barred window at an average man’s eye level. The window was too
high for Rashan’s eyes by more than a head, but he could easily discern the
Sources of the men locked up within. They were nothing special, these Sources,
save one simple distinguishing fact: they were expendable.

Reaching up, Rashan grabbed the door by the little
window that was the only opening in the solid iron plate that constituted its
bulk. With a quick tug, he ripped the door from the wall, tearing thick iron
bolts from the stonework in the process. He tossed the heavy iron door down the
corridor ahead of him, and it rang with a great clatter of iron on stone.

The prisoners within mistook the violent opening of
their cell for a jailbreak and clamored to reach the door. The first two to do
so dropped dead at Rashan’s feet, as the warlock tore the vital aether
completely from their Sources. Even down in the depths of the dungeons, men had
heard of the warlock’s return, and seeing their fellows fall at his whim was
enough to turn back the rest and set them begging mercy of the demon.

There was none to be had.

Rashan cleared that cell of living prisoners and two
more after it. The screams had set the dungeons into a panicked frenzy.
Violent, desperate men lashed out when the door to their cell were ripped open,
but they were pathetic wretches—murderers, rapists, and thieves, not a warrior
among them, not that it would have mattered. Rashan scythed their aether free
of them and built up the power he felt the need to bring with him to the
battlefield that Raynesdark had become.

Not bothering even to levitate himself free of the
ground, Rashan formed the sphere of aether around him that would swap places with
an identically sized spot at his destination. Should the dungeons in the
emperor’s palace sport a sod-filled hole a demon’s-height deep, so be it.

The aether surged into Rashan as he drew in whatever
remnants were left about after draining the prisoners, and then suddenly the
sphere vanished.

I come for you, dragon.

*
* * * * * * *

The defenders scrambled to avoid the path of the
dragon’s flight as she banked and turned toward the city to come at them from
the northwest. The stone-built houses became their battlements in the new fight
to hold off the dragon while the goblin infantry poured into the city. The
cobblestones thumped beneath thousands of booted feet in what had turned into a
large-scale version of the children’s game hide-from-his-lordship, with the
dragon playing the part of the lord, seeking the humans and scolding them with
fire instead of words.

It was the dragon’s third pass. The first two had left
wide holes in the Kadrin defensive lines and shallow, smoldering channels where
the dragonfire had melted the streets and washed the newly molten rock away.

“Engage the goblins!” Brannis ordered. “Keep close to
them so the dragon cannot burn us at will without hitting her own forces as
well.”

Brannis hoped that his knights were relaying his orders
as he gave them. He lacked the vantage necessary to see the bulk of his troops,
with them running in and between buildings, ducking for cover as the dragon
approached. They stopped at any opportunity to hold their ground against the
goblins or push them back from a small area.

Will it even matter?
Brannis wondered.
If we kill every one of those goblins, we still
have no plan to deal with that dragon.

The dragon was the size of a tavern, or a warship, if
you did not count the massive wingspan or the tail. Her maw could swallow men
whole, with fangs the size of swords. Brannis had gotten a close view on the
last pass, as Jadefire flew past just above the rooftops not ten paces from
him.

Brannis had been issuing orders and checking on the
goblin advance, and neglected to take account of the dragon’s approach. He
turned when he heard the great intake of breath that preceded her blasts of
dragonfire. She was bearing down right for him, picking out his gaudy armor as
a likely enough target for her fiery breath. Brannis was caught in the middle
of the road, with no time to make it to cover on either side before Jadefire
closed in to incinerate him.

Brannis prepared to die.

*
* * * * * * *

The sphere of aether appeared on the plains before
Raynesdark, near the city, but still on flat ground among the advancing goblins
host, near the rear. Most of the goblins had already reached the mountain and
were either on the road or already within the city’s walls. A pair of severed
spearheads lay just outside the stone circle of the dungeon floor that Rashan
had brought with him.

All across the battlefield, aether-sensitive
combatants took note of his arrival. Several had noticed the power that was
unleashed with Iridan’s hellfire spells, but the transference the demon performed
had just ripped a chunk of the world loose and transported it across half the
Empire. The aether necessary to accomplish that was more than any of them, save
the dragon, could have even channeled. The aether shook with the force of his
arrival, and the currents of the sea of goblins around him shifted.

Rashan found himself surrounded by infantry, startled
to be sure, but accustomed enough to magic that they recovered their wits and
brought spears to bear against him. The warlock allowed a spear tip to slide
off his shielding spell and reached out absently to grasp its owner by the top
of his head and twisted, snapping the neck. He was not so much as looking at
the enemies all about him, but searched for the reason he had come so far to
join the battle. With his highly developed aether-vision, he was able to locate
the vast and powerful Source, even as it was obscured from his view by the
buildings of the city as it flew low above them.

Ahh, found you,
Rashan thought.

Then something curious happened. There was a twisting
in his gut that he had not felt in a long time, since before he had become a
demon. It was a feeling that he had thought lost to him, a weakness that he had
overcome permanently.

He was afraid.

He had led armies into battle for over a hundred
summers in the service of the Kadrin Empire, had thrown down castles and
slaughtered kings and armies alike, and hardly remembered the fear that came in
deadly conflict. He had faced the horrors of Loramar’s dead horde, and vaguely
recalled a similar unease to what he now felt. But a century of placid
existence among others of his kind, and the occasional killing of those who
were unable to threaten him, had softened his heart. Worse, it had taken away
something that might possibly have been necessary for true bravery: the
knowledge of mortality. A man who accepts death as his inevitable fate will not
shy from spending his death well; it was the stuff from which knights and
heroes were forged.

But Rashan had unlocked the ultimate secret: eternal
life. He was not indestructible, though he was formidable in every way he knew
possible. But the thought whispered inside him that rather than risking just
the manner and timing of his death, he risked the fact of it entirely; he had
hundreds, if not thousands of summers or more of his existence ahead of him,
and the possibility of losing that hit him in a manner he had not anticipated.

He saw the great Source and knew the creature it
represented. A dragon was the best the gods had created, more formidable,
longer lived, and with a stronger Source than any other race they had forged.
Like him, they were nearly impervious, save for extraordinary means, and their
vast ages ought to have given them a perspective similar to his own. Their
supreme arrogance was the thing that goaded them to combat for the satisfaction
of greed and pride; they mostly believed there was nothing that could truly
oppose them.

Perhaps he could use that, if he could convince the
creature he was dangerous enough.

Rashan did not engage the dragon but instead turned
his focus fully on the enemy army that surrounded him. Without even paying it
attention, he had been killing those who got too close to him.

Lightning stabbed out from his hands, shattering
goblin bodies by the score. Superheated chunks of goblin gore splattered the
snowy plains and fellow goblins alike. Turning, he unleashed a shock wave of
air that sent even more goblins to their deaths, pinwheeling into the air like
leaves before a gale, spears and limbs becoming missiles to further maim their
comrades as the pieces landed.

An aether bolt took him in the side, hammering against
his shielding spell but not getting through.

A strong one, for a goblin,
Rashan mused.

He turned and used the hellfire spell he had taught
Iridan, noticing a slight resistance from two goblin sorcerers caught in the
blast, as their own shielding spells were crushed just before their bodies
burned. With the failing light of dusk, the lingering flames of the dead
goblins’ clothing and spear shafts stood out against the growing blackness. In
the city above, hitching posts, rain barrels, and the thick woolen coats of the
unarmored militia provided similar light to Raynesdark as night set in.

*
* * * * * * *

Ni’Hash’Tk dove low for the shining knight, lining up
for a killing blast of dragonfire, speeding low above the rooftops as she
approached. Her lungs filled, and she drew aether to give her dragonfire its
power. Before she loosed her deadly breath, she noticed just how fine was the
armor the human knight before her wore. She saw the sword in his hand, and saw
not a deadly weapon but a priceless masterwork of aether-forged steel.

Rather than ruin the spoils of her conquest—and aside
from having the city for her son’s lair, this knight’s armor and Avalanche were
the finest prizes she had seen—she belched a halfhearted gout of flame down a
side street as she passed, her momentum carrying the flames in a strafing run
along several buildings. The stones blackened with the heat, but without
concentrated fire, the buildings did not melt or topple as had so many others
under the dragon’s withering assaults. Dropping even lower, she prepared to
scoop up the shining knight in a claw and kill him carefully, lest she damage
the armor needlessly.

*
* * * * * * *

Brannis saw Jadefire’s dragonfire spew errantly to the
side and watched as the window shutters ignited and awnings transformed into
ash. He saw the dragon approaching even lower and realized she was going to
attack with claw and fang.

She is going to eat me,
he thought suddenly.

He hesitated, trying to decide which way to dive when
she made her strike, and realized that the dragon’s reach and quickness meant
he would likely be doomed either way.

Thinking quickly, he waited to the last moment and
held Avalanche out before him, blade up, and dropped to the ground, releasing
the blade to hang in the air above him. The dragon’s claws moved to close
around him but found an immovable impediment instead. The dragon’s scream of
pain was deafening, heard across the city and down upon the plains. The angle
of the blade had not been such that the dragon’s toes were severed upon the
impact, but the claws that caught upon the blade were bent back unnaturally,
breaking bones and wrenching toes from their proper places at the end of the dragon’s
forelimbs. The sudden jerk was also enough to skew Jadefire in her flight.
Already perhaps too low above the rooftops, she pitched forward far enough upon
grasping Avalanche that she could not keep her wings from snagging among the
buildings.

With a great crash, the dragon hit the cobblestone
streets of Raynesdark, her wings wrenched back by stone walls that could not
withstand the force of her breath or her bulk, but which held firm—though not
unscathed—against the impact of her massive wings.