The Ruin (16 page)

“That’s out of the question!” Iyraclea snapped. “Pavel said you and your friends possess the knowledge to solve the puzzle. That’s the reason I dealt with you mercifully. Now you’d better hope your own wits are equal to the task.”

Because, Dorn thought, the last thing she wanted was a band of magicians as powerful as the wizards of Thentia visiting the site. They quite possibly possessed the arcane strength to wrest control of the situation away from even the Frostmaiden’s high priestess and her terrible servants.

Kara stiffened, and her fingers clamped tight on Dorn’s. She turned to him, then, evidently recalling the hostile folk standing all around, quickly masked all traces of her excitement. Apparently she’d realized something important, and for whatever reason, had decided it was something she wouldn’t divulge to the Ice Queen unless the tyrant left her no alternative.

Unfortunately, it seemed likely that was exactly what would happen. Distracted, Dorn had missed the last few words of the conversation, but he took up the thread:

“… give you tonight and tomorrow,” Iyraclea said. “But then, come midnight, and every midnight after, I’ll offer one of you to the Cold Goddess. Starting with the halfling, I believe.” She sneered. “I’ve taken your measure, Wilimac Turnstone, and I very much doubt you’re scholar enough to contribute much to our efforts.”

Kara gave Dorn’s hand another squeeze, as if to reassure him that, one way or another, Iyraclea’s threat would never

come to pass. Will, meanwhile, offered the priestess a grin. “Now that’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “I’m the clever one. The charlatan’s the dolt. That’s the pox for you. It rots the brain.”

Iyraclea scowled. “All of you, resume the search!”

The gathering started to disperse. Intensely curious, Dorn looked forward to the moment when Kara could confide in him. Unfortunately, with the giantess once again slouching along in their wake, he supposed he’d have to wait a little while longer.

Enormous shadows swept across the ground, and something hissed and rustled overhead. Dorn looked up. Pale jagged shapes flapped and glided down from the heavens, as if the moon had shattered into pieces. Some of the white dragons and ice drakes—smaller than their companions but still big as a hay wagon and the team drawing it, with short, thick legs and wide, flat tails—lit on the ground. Others perched on battlements and rooftops. The reptiles’ sharp, dry odor suffused the air.

*****

“Your Majesty,” one of the dragons rumbled, a sneer in its tone. Taegan glanced about, seeking the source of the salutation, and winced when he found it. Its pale hide mottled with rot and its sunken eyes glowing in the gloom, a dracolich crouched on the gable-and-valley roof of a once-splendid house.

Jivex snorted. “What’s the matter, are you scared? We already killed one of those things.”

“l remember,” Taegan said. “l intend to dine out on the tale for the rest of my days. But as you may recall, Vorasaegha nearly tore it to pieces before we became involved, and even then, it was brisk work.”

Still, that turn of events had one positive feature: To all appearances, the sudden advent of the dragons had startled and unsettled the rest of Iyraclea’s minions. Even the Icy

Claws pivoted back and forth, keeping a wary eye on the gigantic reptiles looming on every side.

The gelugon that had been following Taegan and Jivex around was as distracted as the rest. The elf looked around, spotted Dorn, pressed a finger to his lips, and skulked in the half-golem’s direction. He didn’t know what was about to happen, but suspected he and his comrades would fare better united. Jivex flitted after him.

Meanwhile, Iyraclea emerged from the crowd to glare up at the dracolich. Unlike her followers, she appeared not a whit dismayed, and Taegan proffered a grudging admiration.

“Zethrindor,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“That’s what I was about to ask you.”

“Don’t be insolent! I ordered you and the rest of these wyrms to Sossal.”

“The war’s going well,” said Zethrindor.” His tail switched, breaking loose clay tiles to clatter and spill off the roof. “it’ll keep for a few days. But while we condescend to conquer a kingdom for the benefit of a human, you break your pact with Sammaster.”

“What do you know about it?”

“In exchange for our help, you promised to kill strangers. Instead, you plotted with them to pry into the wizard’s business.”

Taegan and Jivex closed the distance to Dorn—and Kara, too, the bladesinger observed. Pavel, Raryn, and Will were likewise heading toward the same spot.

“What do you care?” Iyraclea said. “You’re no true friend to Sammaster or anyone else. So why should it concern you if I play him false?”

“Because of the future he promises. I can’t have you stealing or tampering with a magic that will help to bring it about.”

Iyraclea curled her lip, and Taegan shivered as a sudden chill permeated the air. “But you’d steal it yourself in an instant, wouldn’t you, to improve your own position.”

“If it embodies the destiny of dragonkind, a drake should

look after it. That’s obvious, and even if it isn’t, I didn’t come here to debate. Produce whatever it is you’ve discovered, and even though you broke your covenant with Sammaster, we’ll keep faith with you. We’ll finish the subjugation of Sossal, and leave you in peace thereafter.”

“That’s easily done. Behold.” Iyraclea waved her dainty hand at an empty patch of dark, sigil-inscribed paving. “We found nothing, because there’s nothing to discover.”

“Truly? Well, in that case, you must be eager to return to your altars. Do so. Simply leave me your prisoners, as they’re clearly of no use to you, and they and I will poke around this curious place a little longer.”

“l think not. Go back to Sossal, complete your task, and content yourself with the plunder and feast of human flesh you win in the process. Otherwise, I’ll destroy every last one of you.”

The dracolich sneered. “A hollow threat, to say the least.”

“Hardly,” Iyraclea said. “Don’t you whites and ice drakes understand your own natures? You’re creatures born of cold. It infuses and sustains you, and the goddess who lends me her might is the source of it. With a mere thought, I can turn your own essences against you.”

“If Auril herself were here,” said Zethrindor, “perhaps I’d be afraid. Or maybe not. Sammaster proclaims the time of the gods is passing, and the age of the dracoliches is at hand.”

Without the slightest. preparatory shift to warn of his intentions, the wyrm sprang.

Iyraclea raised her hand, and defined by a whirl of fallen leaves, a twisting cyclone howled into existence between her and her plummeting attacker. The vortex hurled Zethrindor off course to smash down on the pavement. At the same time, the Ice Queen, gown lashing around her, lifted by another tame wind, perhaps, floated backward across the plaza, distancing herself from the white, cadaverous wyrm. She shouted words of power and swept her arms through sinuous passes. Suspended in midair like a curtain, rows of luminous blue blades appeared down the long axis of Zethrindor’s

body. Spinning like wheels, they hacked his rotting scales and withered muscle.

He roared, sprang clear of the effect, reared and cocked back his head, and spewed his breath weapon. Probably, like Taegan, Iyraclea expected frost, the substance whites usually expelled, and to which she was surely impervious, for this time she made no effort to defend. A plume of dark, billowing fumes washed over and made her flail in agony. Zethrindor had evidently cast a spell to change his breath into a green’s corrosive, poisonous exhalation.

The dracolich lashed his pinions, took to the air, and hurtled toward her—and that was when mayhem exploded on every side, as everyone else decided to join the fight. Some excited whites largely wasted their first attacks spewing frigid vapors that froze human barbarians but had no effect on the rest of Iyraclea’s retainers. The more clever whites, and the ice drakes, conjured blazes of magic, or sprang to engage their foes with fang and claw. Javelins and arrows flew to meet them. Spears stabbed and axes hacked. A gelugon materialized half a dozen lesser devils, crouching, snakybearded things armed with enormous saw-toothed polearms, to fight on its behalf. Ice wizards chanted incantations in their chiming, clashing, dispassionate voices.

Wings a silvery smear, Jivex hovered uncertainly. “Do we know what side we’re on?”

“Neither,” Taegan said. “We need to get out of the thick of it and under cover.”

“Make for that keep,” Raryn said, pointing a stubby finger. They all skulked forward, skirting lunging, wheeling, stamping combatants who, by virtue of their prodigious strength and size, could have trampled and killed them without even realizing they were there. They also had to dodge blasts of frost and lightning, flame and the distilled essences of death and disease, that dueling spellcasters hurled back and forth.

Grateful that he hadn’t exhausted his store of spells in the fight with the tirichiks—his captors had confiscated his grimoire and so prevented him from preparing any new

ones—Taegan augmented his natural agility and shielded himself in misty vagueness. His companions likewise enhanced their defenses. Like grouping together and slipping out of the midst of the fray, the tactic made sense, but didn’t really answer the question of how to extricate themselves from their current predicament. It seemed wildly optimistic to hope that Iyraclea, Zethrindor, and their sundry followers would all exterminate one another.

Abruptly the air grew hazy. Taegan smelled smoke, and a floating spark stung his cheek. He smiled, and the vapor thickened, massing together and taking on definition. A pair of red eyes glowed from a tapered, coalescing head, and Brimstone crouched before them.

Will laughed. “l was starting to wonder if you’d abandoned us.”

“The only way to rescue you,” the vampire whispered, “was to fetch something capable of creating a considerable diversion. It took a little time.” He turned to Kara. “Change form, singer. Together, we can fly Dorn, Raryn, Will, and Pavel out of here, and with Jivex’s assistance, conjure illusions and the like to hinder pursuit.”

“Sounds good,” said Will. “All but the part about dragging the charlatan’s useless arse along.”

Kara’s body swelled and heaved, and her smooth skin sprouted glittering scales. Brimstone murmured rhyming words. Then Raryn bellowed, “Watch out!”

Taegan looked around, spotted Icy Claws and frost giants glaring back, then felt an abrupt, excruciating chill. He cried out, and his muscles clenched. He struggled to get past the shock of it, while, their magic shifting them instantaneously through space, the gelugons appeared just in front of the would-be escapees. They lifted their lances high to thrust downward, and poised their massive bladed tails to bash and slice. Behind them, the giants scrambled forward. Their footfalls shook the ground.

A white spear leaped at Taegan. He jumped, beat his wings, rose above the stroke, and kept on climbing, veering

repeatedly to throw off his opponent’s aim. He’d avoided taking to the air before, lest it make him too conspicuous, but that was scarcely a consideration any longer.

He tried to ascend beyond the icy Claw’s reach, but despite its lack of wings, the devil too shot up off the ground. Sweet Lady Firehair, was there anything the towering, bug-faced fiends couldn’t do?

Taegan dodged two more spear jabs, meanwhile conjuring images of himself, reflections created without the necessity of mirrors, to baffle his assailant. The gelugon rammed its spear into one of the phantoms, popping it. At the same instant, Taegan lashed his pinions, hurling himself at the creature’s head, and aimed his makeshift dirk at one of the bulging, faceted eyes.

He hit the target. But instead of driving deep into the devil’s skull and brain, the giant’s spearhead simply scratched the surface of the eye and glanced off, as if it were made of polished stone. The baatezu lashed its tail at him as he hurtled past. Dismayed by his failure to incapacitate it, the giant nearly missed seeing the stroke in time to evade.

He realized he shouldn’t be surprised, might even have anticipated what had happened if the irrational fear the devil inspired hadn’t been gnawing at his mind. Some spirits were more or less invulnerable to weapons unless the blades bore magical enhancements. But the spearhead was the only weapon he had. All he could do was try to use it.

He drove home two more thrusts, but each merely chipped his adversary’s pale, gleaming shell. Hoping to fly faster than the Icy Claw could pursue, he then rattled off an incantation to heighten his speed, but while that made it somewhat more difficult for the devil to target him, it didn’t keep him out of its reach. It used its ability to blink through space to stay with him.

Struggling to stave off outright panic, Taegan insisted to himself that somehow, he could survive this confrontation. Then he glimpsed a flash of motion from the corner of his eye. He tilted his wings, dodging, and chunks of ice shot up from the ground to strike and destroy his last remaining illusory counterpart.

He saw that one of the ice wizards had conjured the attack. He assumed the transformed magician would keep right on throwing spells at him, but didn’t know what he could do about it. The gelugon was the more dangerous threat. He started to shift his attention back to the devil, then realized what was hanging at the mage’s hip.

It was Rilitar’s sword! Taegan had previously observed that one of the ice wizards had taken possession of it, perhaps to study the enchantments used in its manufacture, and that was the sword.

Taegan faked a shift to the right, then furled his pinions and dived at the foe on the ground. He didn’t know if he’d actually succeeded in buying himself a precious second, and didn’t glance back at the gelugon to find out, lest it slow his plunging descent.

The mage slashed his hands through a mystic pass. More chunks of ice exploded in all directions from a central point in midair. Taegan shielded his face with his arm, and dodged. Some of the missiles battered him even so, but he refused to let the pain balk him.

He slammed into the wizard and knocked the thing backward onto the ground. Crouched on top of it, he stabbed at the milky, rigid, impassive features, breaking the ice that was the spellcaster’s altered flesh and bone.