The Ruin (31 page)

“I think they’d rather go home,” said Will. “l also think you won’t be able to stop them.”

“Certainly not after your duel with Iyraclea,” Pavel said. “You were lucky and defeated her in the end, but she hurt you first. She leeched a goodly portion of your strength right out of you. Since then, I daresay you’re only a feeble shadow of what a dracolich is meant to be.”

“Which is why he doesn’t fight,” Jivex cried. Wings shimmering, he wheeled to regard a troop of arctic dwarves. “it’s like I told you.”

A whispering ran through the ranks of Zethrindor’s army. He roared, and the soldiers fell silent, everyone’s eyes, even those of the giants, wide with dread.

“l am your god!” the dead creature bellowed. “Be thankful I don’t slaughter each and every one of you for giving even the slightest credence to such lies.”

“If they’re lies,” said Dorn, “prove it. Fight us. Just you against my friends and me. That’s not too big a challenge for a dracolich, is it?” He hadn’t know he was going to say such a thing until he did, then he remembered he had no authority to speak for anyone but himself.

But Madislak nodded as if they’d planned it all beforehand. “Yes, Zethrindor. Defeat us and my company will surrender. I swear it by the oak and the unicorn’s horn. But if we kill you, your host goes home, and the war’s over.”

Zethrindor eyed them like a skeptical shopper in a marketplace, who deems a vendor’s offer too generous to be true. “Your army is doomed anyway.”

“Of course it is.” Hand shaking, Madislak wiped at the blood on his lips and chin. “That’s why I’m making the offer. But if you can kill us, it still works out to your benefit. Otherwise, my company will fight to the last man. You’ll lose troops slaughtering them, strength you could otherwise use to conquer the rest of Sossal.”

“Not only that,” Will said, “but if you refuse the dare, you’ll show your men you really are weak and afraid to fight. I’m not saying they’ll all rise up against you—or saying they won’t, either—but I guarantee they’ll start deserting whenever they get the chance.”

Zethrindor hesitated. Maybe he was wondering how a few taunts and unproven assertions had so tarnished his image of invincibility that, if he wished to maintain his absolute authority over his warriors, he needed to prove himself. But it seemed more likely he was simply marveling at the folly of the puny mites who imagined they had any hope at all of standing against him.

Either way, after a moment, he said, “You, old man, must

advise your company of the bargain, so they’ll know they are to lay down their arms after I kill you and these others.”

Madislak waved his free hand, the one that wasn’t clutching the spear for support. The scent of fresh greenery suffused the air, briefly masking the stench of Zethrindor’s corruption. “Done. My fellow druids understand.”

Zethrindor’s head cocked back, and his throat swelled. He was about to spit his breath weapon, and Dorn knew that single attack might well kill each and every one of them. He scrambled, hoping to at least dodge the central, coldest part of the fan-shaped blast of frost, and his comrades did the same.

All but Madislak, who, Dorn belatedly remembered, was likely incapable of such physical exertion with the arrow wound in his back. The stooped old man simply placed his hand on his sternum—possibly clutching a talisman concealed beneath his robes—and a barrier of yellow flame, long enough to shield him and his comrades too, and tall as any of the watching giants, leaped up from the ground. Zethrindor’s frigid spew extinguished the flames, but exhausted itself in the doing. It failed to reach its actual targets.

The dracolich snarled and crouched to spring at Madislak. Hurtling through the air, Jivex conjured an illusory swarm of scorpions onto Zethrindor’s head, but the phantoms melted away on contact. The faerie dragon then dived at the undead white, clawed, and streaked on by. Scattering so Zethrindor couldn’t target them all at once, the fighters on the ground scurried to position themselves on their adversary’s flanks. Dorn, Stival, and Natali loosed arrows, Will slung stones, and Pavel evoked a flare of hot golden light that charred and blackened a section of the colossal reptile’s scales.

Zethrindor pivoted and half clawed, half stamped at Pavel. The lanky blond priest dodged, and the dragon’s foot, when it slammed down, jolted the ground. The reptile surged forward, reaching for Pavel with his jaws.

Bellowing, Dorn dashed a few more strides, shot, and managed to drive an arrow into the undead’s silvery eye.

Screaming also, Will, Natali, and Stival assailed the dracolich with their own missiles. Wheeling above Zethrindor, flickering in and out of view as the use of other abilities interfered with his invisibility, Jivex created a whine loud and shrill enough to make any hearer wince. Dorn assumed he’d placed the source of the noise inside one of Zethrindor’s ears. With luck, the dracolich would find the torment excruciating, or at least distracting.

Acting in concert, Dorn and the other attackers managed to divert Zethrindor, and he left off chasing Pavel. Unfortunately, he also flexed his legs and spread his ragged, rotting wings to take flight.

Dangerous as Zethrindor was on the ground, he’d pose an even greater threat in the air. An unbeatable one, most likely. Dorn loosed another shaft. It pierced Zethrindor’s serpentine neck, but didn’t stop the white from lifting his gigantic leathery pinions.

Then, however, instead of sweeping vigorously downward and lifting him into the air, Zethrindor’s wings clenched and twitched in useless spasms. Dorn glanced around and saw Madislak still gripping the object under his clothing. Apparently it held a number of spells useful for fighting wyrms, which the druid had hoarded in anticipation of the hour when he and Zethrindor would meet in battle.

Zethrindor started snarling a charm of his own. The words of power chilled the air and sent cracks snaking and forking through the ground. Dorn had no idea what the magic was meant to accomplish, but knew he didn’t want to let the creature complete it.

Nor did he want to stand back and shoot arrows any longer. Reckless though it was, he yearned to tear and cut Kara’s killer at close range. infused with enchantment, his iron talons might do more damage anyway. He dropped his longbow, drew his sword, and charged.

He hoped to land at least one attack before Zethrindor sensed him, because he was rushing in on the side where his arrow had pierced the reptile’s pale, sunken eye. But when

the white’s head twisted, orienting on him, he realized the optic could still see. Just as it would still see when the process of decay advanced, and the soft tissue inside the bony orbit eroded away entirely.

The luminous eye also still possessed its power to freeze a foe in his tracks. Dorn’s muscles locked, and he lurched off balance. No, he insisted, no, I won’t fall down at this foul thing’s feet, and the crippling power lost its hold on him.

He gripped the hilt of his sword in both hands and cut at a hollow between Zethrindor’s ribs. The blade sheared through ivory scales, releasing a stomach-churning stink and a thick black ooze. The dracolich lashed his tail around, and Dorn flung himself to the ground, underneath the stroke. Zethrindor kept on declaiming his spell, the precise cadence and articulation unspoiled. Arrows and stones flew at his hide, some piercing, many glancing harmlessly away. Jivex bathed the dracolich’s dorsal surface in what appeared to be a bright jet of flame. None of that disrupted the incantation, either.

Zethrindor’s tail whipped back around and straight down at the still-prone Dorn. Unable to roll out of the way in time, Dorn twisted and caught the blow on his iron arm and the rest of his golem side. The move saved his life, but the impact still bashed him flat against the earth, knocking the wind out of him.

As he struggled to shake off the shock and scramble hack to his feet, he saw Will dart under Zethrindor’s belly and stab twice before scurrying back into the clear. Still, the white snarled on, chanting his magic into being. The gray clouds overhead spun and churned like whirlpools.

Then Pavel, wherever he was, shouted, “Lathander!”

Warm, redgold light pulsed through the air and gilded the trampled snow. Zethrindor jerked, and at last must have bungled his spellcasting, for the clouds stopped spinning, and the feeling of power massing abated.

Zethrindor snarled and took a stride away from Dorn.

Charging Pavel, evidently. Intent on distracting him from the priest, Dorn rushed after the dracolich, and sensed some or all of his other comrades racing after him.

Zethrindor leaped, widening the distance between himself and his pursuers, then, to Dorn’s surprise, whirled to face them. Pavel wasn’t his current target after all. They were, and by tricking them into chasing him, the white had induced them to bunch up.

He whipped his head back, and his neck expanded. A hint of pearly vapor steamed from his nostrils and mouth. Dorn realized that he and his companions had little hope of dodging the worst of the breath weapon this time. The distance was wrong.

“Behind me!” he bellowed. Raising his arm to shield his face, he turned his iron half toward Zethrindor.

The sheer force of the blast staggered him, as if he were attempting to stand before the sort of gale that flattened trees and houses. But the bad part was the terrible chill that pierced him to the core, that made his entire body clench as if he’d literally frozen solid.

Thanks, no doubt, to the protection of his inhuman side, and the blessings and spells of warding that Pavel, Madislak, and their ilk had cast on him earlier that day, he survived the attack. Maybe the people behind him had, too. But what did it matter? Hurt as they were, they couldn’t endure what would happen next. Zethrindor sneered, crouched to spring, and it was all Dorn could do to come back on guard. He was shaking as through crippled with palsy, and couldn’t even feel the sword hilt clasped in his numbed human fingers.

Then a shadow fell over him and Zethrindor, too. Startled, the white looked up, just as a shaft of brilliant light blazed down to cut his dorsal surface like a blade. The radiance, Dorn perceived, was the breath weapon of another dragon, a pale, glittering, almost translucent wyrm that looked as if it had been carved from diamond or crystal. It plummeted at Zethrindor and plunged its claws into him.

Grappling, ripping and biting, twisting around one another, the two reptiles rolled around the ground. Dorn stumbled

backward to avoid being crushed. In the process, he nearly fell over Will, who, like Stival and Natali, was trying to exert sufficient control over his shuddering, frostbitten body to distance himself from the duel. It was a mercy the three of them were still alive, but likewise obvious they were no more fit to resume fighting than Dorn himself.

Jivex, who’d evidently avoided Zethrindor’s breath, was still unharmed, and still gamely attempting to influence the outcome of the battle. He swooped and wheeled above the other, vastly larger reptiles, trying to blind Zethrindor with illusions, close-fitting constructs of pure glare, gigantic, swarming ants, and thick, tangled briars meant to hood him like a falcon. Unfortunately, the masks all dissolved as soon as the faerie dragon created them.

But maybe, thought Dorn, it wouldn’t matter. The crystal dragon was even bigger than Zethrindor. Maybe it could destroy the dracolich all by itself.

Or so he hoped until he spied the raw, gaping rent between the gem wyrm’s wings. The ichor streaming from the wound was clear as water, not red anymore. A shapeshifting spell altered the caster’s blood along with the rest of his body. But even so, it was apparent that the crystal dragon was Madislak, and that, even transformed into such a mighty creature, he still bore his debilitating wound. Such being the case, it was impossible to imagine he could win.

The dracolich wrenched his neck free of Madislak’s grasping talons, pointed his head at the druid’s, and vomited frost. The crystal wyrm convulsed at the touch of the freezing jet. Zethrindor took advantage of the other dragon’s momentary incapacity to rake away masses of glassy flesh.

Dorn took a shuffling step toward the confrontation. He knew it was ridiculous. He couldn’t fight as he was. But he had to try.

Then, his limp again apparent in his gait, Pavel came dashing up. “Wait,” panted the priest, “all of you, wait.” Rattling off prayers, conjuring ruddy light from his amulet, he infused his touch with warmth and restorative power.

The magic replaced the numb, shuddering weakness in Dorn’s human half with a kind of burning ache, but that was all right. It wouldn’t stop him from fighting, and evidently Will, Natali, and Stival felt the same. They drew themselves up straighter and grasped their weapons firmly.

“That’s it,” Pavel said. “I’m out of spells.”

Will spat. “Useless as ever.”

Dorn charged. The others followed.

Zethrindor was too busy tearing at Madislak to pay attention to smaller foes, but they were in constant peril even so. At any moment, the two intertwined wyrms might tumble over on top of them, pulverize them with a random tail sweep or wing beat, or catch them in a flare of breath. Dorn leaped away from such threats, then, when the danger passed, lunged back into the fray and cut at whatever part of Zethrindor’s shriveled, rotting form was in reach.

For all the good it did. The dracolich wasn’t slowing down, and soon began to growl another spell. Dorn and his comrades attacked even harder, recklessly and relentlessly, but without disrupting the conjuration.

Seething shadow bloomed in the narrow, inconstant space between Zethrindor and the crystal dragon. For a moment, Dorn thought the undead white had simply conjured a form of armor. Then, with a pang of horror, he realized what the manifestation truly portended.

It was too late to help Madislak, grappled as he was. Dorn needed to protect his other comrades. “Jivex!” he bellowed. “Get clear!”

His butterfly wings beating quick as a hummingbird’s, the faerie dragon distanced himself from the heaving knot formed by his gigantic kin. A heartbeat later, the darkness struck. Back in the plaza in the Novularonds, it had swept across the cobbles like a breaker rushing at the shore. This time it exploded up at the sky like a thunderbolt, or a tree compressing a century of growth into a single instant.