The Ruin, page 29
In that first moment, she couldn't count the newcomers, though she did perceive that they had the dragons on the ground outnumbered. Nor could she identify the various species in all their diversity, especially since she'd never actually encountered most of them before, merely their descriptions, in books or recitations of esoteric lore.
But she did spot a gigantic hellfire wyrm, with bony spikes stabbing up from its head and shoulders, and the color of its scales inconstant, oozing from one shade of yellow or crimson to another as if the creature were made of flowing magma.
Also a howling dragon, long and spindly of body, with deceptively short and delicate-looking limbs. Topaz eyes dotted with minute pupils glared from its mask, and a ruff of spines encircled the back of its head.
Near the howling drake swooped a pyroclastic dragon, massively built, its hide a mottled confusion of dark patches mixed with streaks and blotches of fiery red and gold. Its wings were gray and fragile in appearance, like charred parchment.
All were wyrms native to other levels of existence, ones likewise home to fiends, malevolent deities, and the damned. Plainly, Sammaster had compelled or purchased their aid as he had that of his Tarterians and shadow dragons, and arranged for them to appear and attack if intruders unsealed the castle.
And they attacked with all the advantages of height and surprise. Commencing a battle anthem, Kara lashed her wings and sprang into the air. With a great clatter of pinions, her rogues, and the drakes who had eventually made common cause with them, followed after her.
Even as they took flight, Nexus and some of the others rattled off incantations. Celedon, Drigor, and the spellcasters of Thentia did the same. Floating shields and barriers of congealed light shimmered into existence between Sammaster's minions and their intended prey.
But not enough of them, not in time. As they dived, the lich's sentinels spat a dazzling, shrieking assortment of breath weapons, blasts of flame, lightning, and hammering sound that crisscrossed and overlapped as they hurtled down. The attacks found the gaps in the defensive enchantments and would surely have killed folk on the ground if some of the metallics hadn't deliberately placed themselves in the way. Wardancer stretched her wings wide to catch every bit of a pale burst of frost. It coated her dorsal surface in rime and made her wobble spastically in flight.
But she survived. Everyone in Kara's field of vision survived, and it was time to strike back. Wheeling, she spotted a chaos dragon-changing color repeatedly like a chameleon, only fast as the beat of a panicked heart, even the shape of its body in constant flux-within reach.
She flapped her wings and flew at it, her breath tingling and ready in her chest and throat. She opened her jaws and spat a crackling plume of vapor infused with lightning.
The flare struck the chaos dragon's flank, and it convulsed. At once, she sang words of power to evoke a stabbing shaft of the same force. Sammaster's minion struggled to swoop beneath the attack, and partially succeeded. The lightning didn't hit it in the torso as intended, but still burned a hole in each of its upraised pinions.
A pair of arrows streaked up from the ground and drove deep into the chaos drake's belly. It shuddered, wings flailing out of time with one another, and slipped down the sky until Kara was above it. She dived, talons poised to catch and pierce.
The chaos dragon's throat swelled. Its abilities fluctuated with its form, and this time it spat a stream of acid like a skull drake. Kara dodged, and the corrosive stream merely grazed the tip of one of her wings. The stuff burned, but not enough to balk her
She leveled off, seeking to shred the chaos wyrm's wings from above and streak on by. She did rip the leathery membranes, but her foe caught her hind leg in its fangs before she could fly clear, and they plummeted together.
So be it. At least she was on top, and less injured than the chaos dragon, and so the fall ought to hurt it worse than it did her. She spread her wings to make the descent a little slower, and she and her adversary tore at one another. It spat, shrouding them both in vile-smelling smoke. For a moment, she felt bewildered, empty-headed, but then her thoughts snapped back into focus. She breathed more lightning straight into the other dragon's mask and seared its left eye to molten ruin.
They crashed down hard. Bones cracked inside the chaos dragon's body, the jagged ends stabbing through its hide, but it kept fighting, and she matched it strike for strike and rake for rake. Iron talons, bastard sword, and ice-axe already bloody, Dorn and Raryn rushed to help her.
Dorn's blade sheared deep into the chaos dragon's neck. It bucked and flailed so hard that it finally broke Kara's hold on it, but then flopped helplessly onto the ground, its heaving flanks and rolling eyes the only indication it was still alive.
Its hide continued changing color, but the transformations came more slowly.
Raryn lifted his axe and smashed in the side of its skull, finishing it. Dorn turned to Kara. "Are you all right?" he asked.
She inspected her lacerated, bloody leg, charred, blistered wingtip, and the rest of the hurts the chaos wyrm had given her. They might well have killed or crippled a human, but drakes were more resilient.
"Fine," she said, then glimpsed plunging motion overhead. "Watch out!"
The three of them leaped for safety, and a pyroclastic wyrm smashed down on the patch of ground where they'd just been standing. Kara sang a spell, Dorn scrambled to place himself on their new adversary's left flank, and Raryn darted for the right.
Veiled in concealments, Sammaster watched the battle, assessing the capabilities of his foes. To say the least, they were impressive.
He'd opened the netherworld to rain annihilation on their heads. Drawn forth dragons powerful as demigods to attack with the advantages of numbers, surprise, and the high air. They should have slaughtered their targets in a matter of moments.
But it hadn't happened that way. Indeed, at this early stage of the battle, the metallics and their allies were striking back so hard as to put his otherworldly minions on the defensive. It was remarkable. Dragons like Nexus, Tamarand, and Havarlan were, of course, famous for both their natural and mystical prowess. But the Thentian spellcasters were likewise giving a decent account of themselves.
For a moment, Sammaster feared it was all going wrong, and strained to quash the feeling. Nexus and his allies were winning only because he'd been content to stand and take their measure. But he was ready to act, and the balance would quickly shift.
He would have liked to reveal himself to his foes and defy them, Mystra, and the whole sneering, lying, treacherous world. But such bravado would be imprudent. Though he had no fear of destruction, he needed to survive, to ensure that his plans came to fruition, and if all his adversaries concentrated on overwhelming him, it was just barely conceivable they might succeed. Because he wasn't as strong as he would have been if he'd known he was heading into battle. Over the past few days, he'd expended a considerable portion of his spells furthering the Sacred Work, and hadn't gotten around to preparing new ones. Summoning the Hell wyrms had drained him yet a little more.
Better, then, to lurk in the shadows. He could still dictate the outcome of the struggle. First, by supplying direction to his minions. Drawn from different realities, they lacked leaders and teamwork. They were a mob, not an army, and that was the first thing he needed to change.
He murmured, and magic carried his commands to his allies' ears, just as it constrained them to obey. Ordering one to attack and another to break off, concentrating strength where it could do the most damage and maneuvering endangered troops to safety, he shifted his wyrms around like pieces on a lanceboard. He supposed that in so doing, he had the edge over Tamarand. Standing unnoticed, he could monitor the entire conflict in a way that was impossible for the beleaguered gold.
Soon, his generalship started to make a difference, but he saw no reason to leave it at that. Though he couldn't conjure thunderbolts and the like without revealing himself, he had plenty of subtler spells in his repertoire. Magic that wouldn't burn telltale trails through the air.
He took a mouse's femur from one of pockets, whispered a charm, and snapped it in two. A huge bronze floundered in flight as some of its own bones shattered. A pyroclastic dived to blast the metallic with its blazing, bellowing breath.
Another incantation turned a young-ish silver to lifeless stone, and it plummeted toward the ground. Unfortunately, Nexus saw the danger, translated himself through space, and caught the shield drake in time to keep it from crashing down and shattering. He then restored it with a counterspell. But at least while he was busy attending to that, he wasn't hurling attacks at Sammaster's forces.
A third charm poisoned a copper wyrm's own magic, and when it attempted to cast a curse of sluggishness on an abyssal drake, the lethargy manifested in its own mind and body. The abyssal drake wheeled, seeking an advantageous position from which to attack, and the copper struggled uselessly to compensate.
Sammaster smiled, then noticed the half-golem warrior loosing an arrow. The shaft drove deep into the juncture of a howling dragon's wing and shoulder, precisely where it needed to hit to cripple the reptile's ability to fly. No longer able to flap the spasming pinion properly or extend it fully, the howling wyrm struggled to glide safely down to the ground. A brass swooped to intercept it.
In a battle like this, it was generally sensible to ignore mere archers and swordsmen as the least of the threats on the opposing side. But Sammaster had more than once noticed this particular warrior striking to considerable effect. Why allow the pest to persist when it would be so easy to neutralize him? The lich peered at the black expanse of the sky, crisscrossed with multicolored flares of dragon breath and arcane energy, seeking the proper tool for the job.
Wheeling around her blurry, constantly altering opponent. and the illusory duplicates it had conjured, Havarlan murmured a charm, then beat her wings and hurled herself at the chaos drake. She'd hoped the sudden action would take it by surprise, but it tilted its wings and veered off. Its phantom twins did the same, aping its motions precisely.
Well, if she couldn't catch it napping, she'd simply have to outmaneuver it. She whipped herself around, and the chaos dragon was in front of her again. She spat her breath weapon.
Infused with the countermagic she'd just invoked, the plume of glittering vapor obliterated the illusory wyrms, aura of blur, and, she hoped, any other mystical defenses the chaos dragon might have in place. It stiffened the creature's muscles into rigidity, too, and unable to beat its pinions or shift its tail for balance, it tumbled.
She doubted her breath would paralyze the hardy chaos dragon for any length of time. in Havarlan's experience, Lady Luck favored the bold and clever, but rarely was she so generous as that. But the attack had rendered the otherworldly reptile helpless for a moment, and that was all the time a Talon of Justice needed to streak in and bury her claws in its body.
They fell together, she raked and bit at the chaos dragon, and once it recovered its mobility, it struck back. The very taste of its constantly shifting flesh and blood altered in her mouth, but somehow, always managed to be vile.
Her probing, digging talons grazed a beating heart, then lost it again, as if the chaos wyrm's constant transformations shifted even its internal organs around. She groped, found the pulsing, leathery mass once more, gripped it in her claws, and squeezed hard enough to shatter oak.
That finished the chaos dragon. She writhed free of the corpse's convulsing coils, leaped away from it, and unfurled her wings just in time to keep from crashing to earth along with it.
She skimmed along the ground, then climbed. Had she just emerged victorious from a single combat, she might have roared in exultation. But this was a clash of armies, from what she could observe, a victory for her side as a whole was anything but certain, and the truly irksome, disquieting thing was that she couldn't tell why.
Perhaps the human wizards, priests, and warriors knew, since they weren't so much in the thick of it as she had been. She spotted a knot of them on the ground, near a huge, derelict stone battering ram left over from the siege millennia before, and spiraled down to land beside them.
"Something's wrong," she said. "The enemy has the edge again, and I don't understand why."
"Sammaster," Brimstone whispered. She turned to discover that the vampire had slipped up behind her. Blood caked his jaws, and it was likely he'd been drinking it, for his wounds were squirming and puckering shut.
"What about Sammaster?" asked Will, gore-not his own, fortunately-spattering his brigandine, warsling dangling in his hand.
"He's here," the vampire said, "directing his troops and casting the occasional spell. I'm certain of it."
"Could he hide himself so well," Havarlan asked, "that even dragons wouldn't detect him?"
Will grinned. "No offense, lady, but I'm no lich, and even I can do that when I have to."
"If he is here," Havarlan said, "we must find and attack him."
"And do something else, too," panted Pavel. At some point, he'd lost his helmet, and sweat plastered his blond hair to his brow. "Some of us need to enter the citadel, find the heart of the Rage, and destroy it, while the rest keep Sammaster and his wyrms from pursuing. I suggest we 'small folk' go in, because you metallics fight better than we do, and also because I wouldn't be surprised if the ancient elves built the interior of the place in such a way as to make it difficult for dragons to move around."
Havarlan grunted. "I don't like dividing our strength. You humans may not feel as mighty as dragons, but you're making a contribution. If you withdraw from the fight, Sammaster's forces may well overwhelm those of us who remain."
"They might do that anyway," said Scattercloak in his bland, androgynous voice. "But if we ruin the lich's plans first, then we still prevail."
"All right," Havarlan said, "but be careful. You may well encounter additional traps and guardians."
"Celedon and I," said Will, "can handle trip wires, false flooring, and the like, while the wizards turn the squamous spewers and such into cider and cheese. So let's get to it."
All the small folk who'd happened to be standing close enough to hear the plan-which was to say, Pavel, Will, Celedon, Drigor, Darvin, Scattercloak, Sureene, and Firefingers-scurried toward the mouth of the barbican. For a moment, Havarlan wanted to call them back, but resisted the impulse.
Instead, she rounded on Brimstone. "Of us all," she said, "you're the only one who actually knows Sammaster, and you're also a scrier. Can you pinpoint his location, or must we pull Nexus out of the fight'?"
"I'll find him," whispered Brimstone, eyes smoldering, jeweled collar catching the ambient silver glow.
"Tell me when you do." She lashed her wings and soared upward, toward a pair of hell wyrms attacking one of her followers.
Dorn and his comrades were fighting what Kara said was an abyssal drake, a hybrid of red dragon, wyvern, and demon. Singing, wings sweeping up and down, she wheeled around it, staying beyond the range of its breath while hammering it with spells, many of them lightning in one form or another. Since abyssal drakes apparently lacked the intellect to master sorcery, it couldn't retaliate in kind.
Meanwhile, her allies assailed the otherworldly reptile from the ground. Dorn and Raryn loosed arrows. Baerimel and Jannatha blasted it with magic.
The abyssal drake dived at the humans and dwarf. Its long neck swelled and cocked, and its jaws opened. Dorn and his companions scrambled to avail themselves of what little cover existed.
The abyssal drake changed from black to red-black as it swooped into the field of silvery light. Its head whipped forward, but no stream of hellfire erupted from its mouth. Kara had evidently cast a charm to choke off its breath weapon.
It looked startled, and the bard blasted it with a dazzling, sizzling flare of her own breath. The attack charred one of its pinions, and it plummeted, jolting the earth as it slammed down.
It rolled to its feet and charged the nearest human target, who happened to be Baerimel. The temple mage froze.
Dorn dropped his bow, grabbed his hand-and-a-half sword, and lunged, interposing himself between the drake and its prey. It might run right over him, but if so, it would do it with his outstretched blade buried in its throat.
It recognized the threat, and stopped short to snap at him. He sidestepped, tore its snout with a backhand blow of his knuckle-spikes, and came back on guard. Its tail whipped around its body in a stroke that was just a blur at the periphery of his vision.
He tried to dodge, but also twisted to present the iron half of his body to the attack. The poisonous stinger struck his shoulder with a clang. It didn't breach the armor, but it staggered him.
By that time, though, Raryn had started chopping the drake's flank with his axe. Jannatha and Baerimel aimed wands at it, the former, assailing it with darts of yellow light, the latter, with a barrage of ice. The punishment kept it from pressing the attack against Dorn, and Kara plunged down on top of it, driving her claws deep into its back. She struck at its neck with her fangs.
Gripping his sword with both hands, Dorn cut repeatedly. His comrades attacked just as relentlessly, until finally, its scales a patchwork of burns and gory wounds, loops of gut hanging from a rent in its belly, the abyssal wyrm expired.
Dorn looked to Kara, crouching on top of the kill. He had to make sure she was all right, and though their adversary had scratched and bitten her, it appeared she essentially was.
She gave him what he'd come to recognize as a dragon's smile, reflecting both love and a gentle mockery of his concern.
Then her head twisted, orienting on something new, something that, until that moment, no one had perceived. "Look out!" she cried.
Pivoting toward the threat, Dorn assumed his fighting stance, iron arm extended in front of him, sword cocked behind. A dragon swooped at him. It looked like one of the shield dragons might if some disease dulled, crusted, and pitted its silvery scales with the appearance of corrosion.
