10. The First Dragon

Worse than the physical pain was the memory of the wizard's threat. He meant to kill the king. The rebel duke had started this war, but the king had more than enough resources to quash a minor rebellion. The threat was not the duke, but the battle wizard who had joined him.

Yet even with Lareth assisting the rebel soldiers in battle, he was only one man. The threat had been of more lives lost before stability returned. More stupid soldiers like Cooper stretched dead on the battlefield. But this was something different. If Lareth could strike at the king personally, if he could actually succeed in this plan, he could break the kingdom. That was something Duke Brant never could have hoped to accomplish, but Lareth just might.

I winced beneath invisible blows, but I trembled in fear of the world torn apart. We wouldn't even need Claighan's dragonswarm. If Lareth killed the king, we could destroy ourselves.

But something struck me in the heart of my fear. There was an opportunity here. If I could just survive, if I could carry warning to the king, if I could thwart Lareth's plan I'd be a hero. Forget the amnesty, if I could help the king break Lareth's power, I could end this war. 

I found myself laughing at the thought, a low, dark chuckle that seemed to drive the wizard mad. He struck harder and harder, but I clung to my hope. Let him hurt me now. If I could just survive, I would destroy him.

He finally relented when the bell began to ring. I'd missed the supper bell while I was packing, but it certainly wasn't yet even bell. It rang differently, too, high and sharp and insistent instead of the slow, steady toll of the hour. It was a summons. Seriphenes had used his hour well.

A moment after the first tolling of the bell, the door to Seriphenes's office opened and Archus stepped through it. I'd gone five months without catching more than a glimpse of the apprentice. It hadn't been long enough. I would have been happier if it had been a lifetime.

The disgust in his eyes as they passed over me, curled up and crying on the floor, said he felt the same way. His gaze passed on to take in Lareth, too, and the two stood considering each other for some time.

They made a sharp contrast. Lareth wore his blond hair long and loose, and his blue eyes looked astonishingly pale against his sun-dark skin. His white tunic and black breeches had both been fine once, but they were both worn and well on their way to gray. He was probably still a year or two shy of thirty, but the years had not been kind.

Archus, though, could not have been more than nineteen. He held himself tall and straight, dressed in perfect black silk and satin to match his short, dark hair and his flashing eyes. It all stood in stark contrast to his pale, smooth skin. The only trait he shared with Lareth was his cruelty.

And contempt. The two regarded each other with undisguised disdain. Then Archus nodded, a peremptory gesture. "You've done your job. Now you should go."

The wizard sneered. "I do not take orders from children."

"You don't take orders from anyone but your own reckless folly," Archus said. "Regardless, there is quite a bustle of Masters about, and it would be worth your head if you were even glimpsed. So go back to hiding in your hole. I'll take care of the shepherd."

My stomach clenched at that, but there was nothing I could do. Chains of air bound me hand and foot, and a cruel muzzle pinched my mouth shut and left me barely enough room to breathe. I could only lay on my side and pant and pray.

The two of them stared in mutual hatred a moment more, until another peal of the bell pulled Archus's attention. He waved a hand in dismissal and turned away. He frowned, considering me like a puzzle, and then I felt the bonds of air stretch and shift, still clamped tight around me, but they rolled up my forearms like splints.

There was a break at my elbow, but more rigid force around my biceps, and around my thighs, and calves. I felt the air lock around me like perfectly-fitted pieces of plate armor. Then Archus considered his invisible handiwork for a moment and nodded in satisfaction.

He quirked a smile, bent a hand, and said, "Come." To my horror I obeyed.

Or, rather, the worked-air obeyed. The bonds around my right calf shifted, forward and up, and I had to bend my knee or let the bone break. The cuff drifted forward, then set itself, and the bonds on my left leg repeated the gesture. On the second step he moved my arms, too, jerkily at first, but before I reached the corridor he was controlling me like an able puppeteer.

I heard Lareth bark a laugh of approval behind me, and then the door slammed shut, and Archus guided me down and down to the floor of the tower and out into the red-tinged evening light.

The courtyard around the Tower of the Masters was mostly empty, though I saw the Chancellor hurrying across it at a distance. I fought Archus's bonds then. I struggled with all my might against them, but they might as well have been cast iron. I tried to scream against the muzzle on my mouth, but I couldn't manage much more than a moan, and he did not even look my way. Archus stepped up beside me, so I could see the satisfied smile on his face, and then he pushed me on ahead.

He led me around the northeast corner of the Halls of Learning, and onto the north edge of the Arena. The stark, dusty courtyard stretched half a mile before me, and as soon as we entered it I was overwhelmed by the bustle of motion. It had probably been this full when I had come to challenge Archus, but I hadn't had the attention to spare then. Now I had no control over my body, I could not even turn my head, so I stared out over the milling crowd as I trod inexorably ahead.

The whole of the student body seemed to be gathered in the Arena. All in a throng the students of the Academy were rushing out from among the buildings and into the courtyard. They didn't mill about, either. They organized into tight square formations and then moved smoothly to the south.

Among the rushing bodies I caught sight of someone familiar. Themmichus stood at the edge of the courtyard, standing on one of the rough stone outcrops to see over the crowd, eyes scanning desperately left and right. He was looking for me. I tried again to resist, to catch his attention. If Themmichus saw me with Archus he would know something was wrong. Muzzled or not, I'd find assistance from him. I threw my gaze hard against him, hoping to draw his attention with the weight of it, but he was mostly watching students flowing out from between the buildings. Archus and I were the only ones coming from the Masters' yard.

I had a thought, a spark of desperate hope, and I closed my eyes. I flashed through the exercises I'd learned from Antinus, and then for good measure worked through them again, settling into a distant, removed kind of calm. I could still feel my heart battering, feel the pinching pain every time one of Archus's cuffs bent me to his will, but it was a flutter on the edge of my mind. I focused my attention and imagined the world as I needed it to be.

I didn't try to touch Archus's working. One wizard can undo another's magic, but it is a challenge of skill and strength, and I could not yet challenge Archus at either. I only hoped to catch Themm's attention. I marched on forward, without spending a thought on the motion, and instead poured all my attention into a gust of wind, a puff of force to bump Themmichus around so he would see me and my captor.

I poured every ounce of will into it. I built the belief in my head as they had taught me. I felt it settling slowly together, jagged edges falling into place. It congealed until it was almost real, almost believable. I expected him to stumble, to turn. Any moment now—

And then I felt a horrible pain on the back of my head and light flashed behind my eyes. My head didn't move, pinned in place by Archus's bonds, so I took the full force of the invisible blow. It shattered my concentration, my focus, even my careful calm. I scrambled to put it back together, but beside me Archus growled, "Don't. I can see what you are doing."

I felt a cold fear claw at my stomach, but I fought to force it away. I tried to regain the necessary self-control, but panic pushed it off. We were ten paces away from one of the fast-forming knots of students, and I saw Archus was guiding me behind them. In a matter of moments we'd be lost among the crowd. And then I heard someone bark Themmichus's name, loud and impatient, and as I watched helpless he frowned, jumped down from his vantage, and scurried to join another of the formations.

Archus didn't. Instead he marched me along beside the rearmost of them, and we moved slowly, steadily south toward a high platform that had been raised over the floor of the Arena. Two Masters stood upon it, dramatic in their long black robes. My eyes fixed on Seriphenes and I trembled within my shackles.

He turned his gaze on me, and I saw a single satisfied nod from him. There was no smile in his eyes, no cruel delight, nor was there any hint of mercy. He seemed grim and entirely committed.

The Master beside him was Leotus. I tried again to scream as we stepped up to the foot of the platform. I opened my eyes wide. I struggled against my bonds, but Archus stretched them with a thought and stole any slack I might have used.

The Master's eyes fell on me, and he gave a little chuckle. "Well, well," he said, amused. "Our little shepherd boy has come to join in our hunt. I'm sorry, Daven, but the call was for wizards. I've seen first-hand how little you can do. You'd be better served to pursue a career in the King's Guard. Or return to your fields—"

"No," Seriphenes said, cutting him off. "I sent for him, Leotus. I have hopes that when he sees the power at work in a real-world environment, he might find the breakthrough he needs."

Leotus swept his gaze to Seriphenes, and he frowned. "That seems a risky scheme."

Seriphenes shook his head. "I've tasked Archus with keeping him safe. My apprentice shouldn't have any trouble."

"A cruel task, that," Leotus said. He turned to Archus and gave him a wink. "I suspect your boy would prefer to be the one that bags the beast."

Seriphenes ducked his head in a slow nod. "I've no doubt he would. But he yet serves his punishment for reckless indiscretion."

"Oh ho!" Leotus laughed. He shrugged. "That was months ago! You are a cruel master." But he turned, gesturing with his whole body toward the foot of the platform. A portal stood there, like the one Claighan had opened to send me from Gath-upon-Brennes, but this one was twelve paces wide from end to end, a long rent in reality that showed a window on a forest glade that must have been dozens of miles away. As I watched, the last of the students' block formations filed through it. I could see the rest gathered there, waiting, and scanned desperately for Themmichus among them.

"Well, go on then," Leotus said. "Join up with your classes. Archus, take the boy with you, I guess."

"No," Seriphenes said. He placed a hand on Leotus's shoulder and shook his head, then he made a gesture with his other hand and a smaller portal opened directly before me. This one was just wide enough for Archus and me to pass through together, and it showed a darker bit of land, trees pressed thick, and rocky ground sloping steeply up away.

"I'd prefer them to keep their distance," Seriphenes said. "They are merely to observe, after all."

Leotus opened his mouth to argue, but after a moment he shrugged. He threw a compassionate glance to Archus then hopped down from the platform. "Watch close," he called back over his shoulder and headed toward the wider gateway. "And keep safe."

My eyes snapped back to Seriphenes, and I saw the same grim nod once more. He fixed his eyes on Archus and said, "You understand what you must do?"

I felt Archus nod beside me, and Seriphenes gave a little sigh. "Very well. Pay attention, be sharp, and do not make a single foolish mistake. You understand?" Archus nodded again, and Seriphenes weighed me, his eyes fixed on mine for the space of three heartbeats. Then he turned away, and stepped gracefully down to the earth. He headed for the other portal, too.

"When this is done," he said, "come find me in my study. I must know the precise details."

"Yes, Master," Archus said. "You will not be disappointed." Then I felt the same sharp pressure against my arms, my legs, against the base of my spine, and the dark-eyed apprentice pushed me through the Master's portal and into the woods of the Sorcerer's Stand.

I tensed trapped muscles against the twisting sensations of the portal, but felt...nothing. My last experience with a portal had tossed my mind about like a toy, but this time it was as though I had stepped through an ordinary door. I opened tight-squeezed eyes and found myself upon the forested foothills of a lone, ancient mountain. I looked around as much as my bonds would allow me, eyes straining, but there was no sign of the clearing that held the other students. I was alone with Archus.

And then I saw the dragon, and for a moment I forgot the fear and hatred I held for my captor. Instead I felt only a bone-deep, primal terror at the serpent shape dancing on the wind.

It must have been over a mile away, sweeping high through the air and then diving, a streamer of flame flickering on the breeze before it. It darted from view, diving in a deadly sweep toward the woods below, but in my mind's eye I saw it falling toward fifty half-trained students entirely unprepared. It swooped beneath my sight, but moments later it was wheeling back up, pursued across the horizon by little flashes of fire and light and a beam of searing energy that I could see clearly despite the distance.

I heard distant shouts, barely more than a whisper from here, and I longed to know how much damage was done. I thought of Themmichus, so full of principle and promise, and I hoped desperately that he was safe.

And then Archus reminded me that I was not. He grunted once, then stepped up the hill past me and turned his head slowly, scanning the hillside. He settled on a spot above us and to the left, dropped a hand on my shoulder, and spoke a word.

This time there was violence and pain, invisible strands biting sharply into my flesh as they had done when Lareth moved me to Seriphenes's study, and a heartbeat later I stood on rocky ground clear of any trees. The armor bonds that had clad me were gone, too, forgotten or destroyed by the violent traveling, but my legs gave out and spilled me to the earth.

"What are you doing?" I cried. I panted short, sharp breaths until the world steadied around me, and then I scrambled to my feet and faced him. He paid me no mind, brows knit in concentration while he scanned the hillside above us again. My hand fell to the hilt of my sword and for a heartbeat I considered attacking him. With his attention so focused on the dragon, I thought perhaps I could cut him down before he responded.

But I was not here to kill Archus. I was not here to kill a dragon. I had a far more important purpose to serve. I had to save the king. I was free of Lareth and away from the Academy. I could join the garrison at Pollix, take up the amnesty, and send warning to the king. All I had to do was survive. I watched the back of Archus's head for a heartbeat, but he paid me no mind. Then I turned in place and sprinted down the hill.

I made it three paces before I hit a solid wall of air. My forehead cracked hard against it and I rebounded off, and before I could recover he stepped calmly up behind me, his boots crunching on the gravel. He said, "No, that is the wrong way."

His hand fell on my shoulder and he worked another traveling. Higher up the mountain now, and I heard him make a satisfied sound. He didn't release my shoulder this time, and his grip was all that kept me on my feet. I spun at the waist and threw a jab at his jaw, but he stepped back and summoned air again to bind me.

It was not the elegant plates he'd used before, or the smothering blanket Lareth had called. It was more a belt that snapped around my arms near the elbows and gradually contracted until my upper arms pressed tight to my ribs. He didn't watch, didn't even look at me.

His behavior was odd. He didn't sneer at me. Didn't mock or punish. I seemed an afterthought, and he spent as little effort on me as necessary. Instead, his attention was sharp and focused, bent entirely toward a purpose I did not know as he scanned the mountainside above us one more time.

A shadow passed over me, and Archus's head turned slowly to watch its source pass above. He traced its trajectory, and a slow grin crept across his face. He turned to me.

"Once more," he said, "and then this will be done."

He reached for my shoulder and I tried to flinch away. The belt of air restrained me, though, and he made a second grab, pinched his eyes shut, and sent us up the mountain again.

The spell released the bonds around me, but before my vision had returned he had it in place again. I felt its tug against my stomach as it began pulling back and up, driving my elbows even harder against my ribs before it lifted me off my feet and up into the air.

I remembered him doing that in the courtyard at the Academy, putting me on display for all the students to see my shame. This time there were no laughing, mocking eyes. This time there was only Archus. And me.

And the dragon.

We were just above the treeline now, high up the mountainside and several miles from the site where the dragon had attacked before. I could just see the black scar of its fire marring a bit of woods, the tiny flicker of distant flames among the ancient trees.

There were few trees here. Instead it was all rock and dirt. Archus stood below me on a little ledge, a rare flat bit of land among the steep slope of the mountain's peak. Several paces beyond him the earth stabbed sharply up in a sheer cliff. The weathered stone face showed sharp gouges, the sort buck deer sometimes left in the trunks of trees with their antlers, and here and there it showed spots of coal-black soot.

And on the ledge around Archus there were corpses—of deer and bears and timber wolves, of sheep and cows and farmers' hogs. Some were rotten, some were charred, but none of them were picked clean. Carrion animals had not touched them, but something had feasted here, again and again.

The shadow swept over me again, and Archus lifted me higher into the air with a force of will. I strained against my bonds, trying to look up to see the dragon above me, but I could barely move. I collapsed against the belt and screamed at Archus.

"What are you doing?"

His eyes were not on me. They looked past me, high into the sky, attention wholly focused on the circling dragon. His voice was distant, too, as he answered me. "I am showing you what a real wizard is capable of," Archus said. "I am to convince you that you do not belong among us. And that you do not dare betray my master." He watched the dragon for a moment, eyes growing wide, and then he smiled to himself. "I believe you will find my case convincing."

The darkness that passed over me then was complete, black as night, and it did not flash by. Instead I heard the distant sound of beating wings, rapidly approaching. The dragon was coming for me. I felt my shoulders and neck tense, felt my whole body go rigid, but there was nothing I could do. It was coming for me.

Then Archus raised a hand, and a moment later he produced a wrist-thick beam of energy like the one I'd seen stabbing up from the forest floor before. It lanced past my right shoulder and I heard a sound above me, a snort, a huff like that of an angry bull. I saw surprise and frustration on Archus's face, and then felt a great buffeting wind slam against me, and the dragon rolled right past me. If my arms had been free, I could have reached out and touched it.

The thing was unimaginably huge. Its head alone was three paces long, from the tip of its snout to the base of its curving horns. The neck was even longer, sinuous and scaled, and behind it came broad shoulders supporting massive membranous wings. The thing's rib cage was probably larger than my room at the Academy, its hind legs taller at the joint than I would've been standing. Its long tail swayed behind it, drifting left and right with an immense, lazy power.

Rocking in the wind of its passing, I watched it swing out wide to my right, and then it curled back and flew like an arrow straight at Archus. I saw its jaw fall open, heard a cry from Archus beneath me, and then the beast unleashed a gout of flame that washed like a wave off the sea, three paces wide where it hit the ground beneath me. The fire rolled forward, consuming the discarded corpses and flowing over Archus as the great beast thrummed past directly beneath me.

The monster's momentum carried it by, sweeping out over the trees, and it left behind a fitful dance of dying flames on the hard, bare stone.

And Archus, barely visible through a thin layer of ash and soot that hung several feet distant from his body.

He gestured as though brushing a bit of lint from his shoulder, and whatever magical shield he had woven dissipated, leaving the black cake to drift like snow to the charred rocks below. The dragon curled lazily around, and when it spotted Archus it roared in defiance and frustration and came rushing back. Terror made my muscles weak and watery, but Archus faced the dragon's charge with a deep, perfect calm and began to chant the words of a spell. My eyes flew from him to the dragon and back, and hanging helpless as I was, I hoped with all my heart that he would win.

The dragon did not waste its flame again. It swooped in low, legs flashing to a gallop as it reached the ground, and moved straight from flight into a full sprint across the rocky clearing and straight at Archus. The wizard's apprentice didn't flinch, didn't budge. He continued his low chant. And when the dragon was ten paces distant, Archus cried out in a voice of certain power and light flashed all around him.

It was a single flare of light, bright as a sun, and the flash of it blinded my eyes. It must have done the same for the dragon because the beast roared and faltered in its rush. It stumbled, tail lashing violently as it tried to hold its balance, but it tripped and skidded past Archus on its right side. If I had been free I would have dashed in to open the thing's belly with the Green Eagle's sword, then and there, but Archus merely turned in place, tracking its motion, and I saw a confident smile on his lips.

Then he spoke again, and a dozen little silver flames began to dance over his palms. The dragon climbed to its feet some short distance away. It seemed hesitant now—not afraid, but patient. It turned its head and looked down on Archus, almost mesmerized by the young man's spell. I recognized the glowing globes of force that danced in the air before Archus—the spell had been one of Themm's favorite tricks—but the number and size and intricacy of the power Archus juggled astounded me. The dragon tilted its head like a bird and watched, waiting.

Suddenly Archus shouted a command crisp and clear, and the silver flames flashed through the air. Still the bolts of power danced, weaving together and flowing apart as they flew toward the beast. It never moved, and the silver lights struck the beast full in the face. Themmichus had once knocked me down with a bolt a tenth as strong as Archus's, but now a dozen globes of focused power smashed into the dragon's flesh...and melted. The monster blinked down at Archus and I imagined I could see cruel laughter in its eyes. Archus must have seen that, too, but he held his ground. He was smart enough to change tactics, though.

He shifted his stance and lifted his arms into the wild, sweeping patterns of the more primal weather magic. I'd attended a handful of Leotus's theory lectures on them, but I'd never seen the magic worked. But hanging there, watching Archus fold his motions into the massive clash of wind and water, fire and earth, I could feel the air around me answer. The air sparked with energy, and unseen pressure pushed painfully against my eyes.

Below me as he flowed through the motions his satisfied smile fell into a fierce grimace. His graceful composure became a frantic dance as he fought forces he had merely caressed before.

Though Archus was lost in the magic, the beast was not, and it looked down at him through the eyes of an angry beast, not those of a wizard. So it watched (as I watched) and saw (as I saw) not a terrible wizard casting deadly spells but an enemy arrogantly offering an unprotected heart. I saw the danger and screamed to warn him, but in that instant a bolt of lightning flashed, a pure pillar of heavenly fire slamming down just beyond my reach. My voice was drowned by the twin roar of the thunder and the injured dragon as the bolt struck home.

I blinked furiously, frantic to know what came next. When finally I could see again, I beheld the dragon fallen on its side. A great wound gaped in the shoulder of its left foreleg and bled wet and black all along its ribs. The beast flopped once, then the neck and tail both swayed together and with an enormous strength the animal heaved itself back to its feet.

It fell back on its hind legs and raised up to a terrifying height. The long neck snaked left and right, the beast's eyes fixed on Archus, and I felt sure the thing could simply snap its long neck down and swallow him at a gulp.

But below me Archus kept his eyes fixed on the dragon's head, and perhaps he anticipated the same thing because he moved, shifting left and right, forward and back, almost like a duelist positioning, preparing himself to leap, to dodge the deadly strike.

But at the same time he was already caught again in the dance that would summon another lightning strike. Anger flooded through me—at Archus's arrogance and my own inability to act. I shouted at him, "Watch him, Archus! He has more dangers than his teeth!"

I saw a flicker of irritation cross Archus's face, but he paid me no more attention than that. I struggled against my bonds, but they had no give. "Wind and rain, Archus, let me go! I can help you!" Or I could run. Either way, I needed to be free.

But this time he didn't even frown. He focused all his attention on the storm above, and threw his arms high above his head. A second bolt flashed, searing across my vision, but I heard what I could not see as the dragon's spike-tipped tail lashed forward and drove clear through Archus's body. By the dragon's scream I knew that this bolt too struck true. But the soft, wet sound of the apprentice's body falling against the stone told me the fight was over. And then my bonds were gone, and I was falling.

I twisted in the air and hit the ground hard on my right shoulder. I pulled myself into a roll as I landed, tumbled several paces, and threw myself up off the ground. Still blind from the lightning strike I lurched into a sprint across the rocky ledge.

Fear clawed at my spine, at the back of my mind, and it settled cold and empty into my muscles. I tripped, stumbled three steps and barely kept my feet. My breath burned hot in the back of my throat, short and sharp, and I could feel death all around me. Distraction turned my ankle and sent me sprawling on the stones of the hillside, bloodying my face and my left hand, and I scrambled and slipped three times before I got to my feet.

And then I thought not of Archus, facing down a dragon, but of an old friend and enemy named Cooper. I remembered with a perfect clarity sneering at him and telling him he would die the first time he fought a true enemy. He would panic, and he would die. Some desperate shred of pride deep inside me refused to do the same.

I took one long breath and forced it evenly out. Discipline returned to me slowly. It was not one of the exercises Antinus had taught me, but one I'd learned myself from a battered old fencing text. I drew the fine, expensive sword from its sheath upon my hip and the cold weight of it in my hand did more than all the clever exercises to ground me in reality. In the space of three heartbeats I was on my feet again. By the fourth, I was moving at a sprint.

More of my training served me, then. Still half-blind, as much from fear as from the aftereffects of the lightning, I drew up my memory of the environment around me. I'd seen enough of it, hanging helpless in the air, and I skipped past a spill of loose stones and bounded over a fallen limb even as I heard the dragon suddenly stirring behind me.

Archus's second bolt must have done more damage than the first, and the dragon's own injuries had slowed it more than my frenzied shock had slowed me. It moved behind me now with the rustle of its great wings spreading and settling and the grinding clatter of its tail sweeping slowly across the broad rocky ledge.

I could not escape it in a rush down the hill, not as fast as that thing flew, and I had no hope of climbing higher. Instead I sprinted straight at the cliff face, trusting to a fragile memory and a desperate hope. Off to the left, near the end of the ledge, creeping vines grew up onto the cliff face and pooled against the ground, but in one spot, low against the ground, a shadow stood behind them.

I dove, even as I heard the dragon begin to pace behind me, and I prayed. My right shoulder and hip slammed against the ground, parallel to the cliff, and I twisted as I slid, stabbing my legs toward the cliff face. I braced myself against a jarring impact, but my feet tangled in the climbing vines and tore them free and then stabbed on down into the cliff.

There was a cave, almost a tunnel, little more than a pace tall and half that wide at its mouth. It was a chimney that might have reached deep into the dark heart of the mountain, but it narrowed quickly and I slammed to a stop, hips and shoulders scraping against the rough walls, ten or fifteen feet down into the tunnel.

For a moment I lay on my back in the darkness, staring up at a stone ceiling I could touch without sitting up. I gulped desperate breaths, from fear more than exertion, and I forced myself back through calming exercises until I could reason. My right arm stretched out behind me, above me, dragging the fine sword against the earth. I tried to roll that way, but a stabbing pain in my shoulder and arm told me it was useless.

I clenched my teeth against a nauseating wave of pain, took three slow breaths, then rolled the other way. I pushed myself up with my left hand, then reached out and took the sword up in that one. I pressed forward two short steps, back toward the dim light at the mouth of the cave. I settled into an awkward crouch, inched forward more, still ten feet back, and tried to see what waited for me without.

There was some small sunset light still, and it began to filter through as the sky cleared—the storm energies Archus had harnessed falling back into their natural patterns. But as I crept closer to the cave mouth, something moved across it and total darkness washed over me. Then I heard a snuffling sound, and a cruel red light appeared straight before me.

Firelight danced above and behind a long, forked tongue as slick and black as bitter blood. Around the tongue shone a double-row of teeth, razor sharp and stained with smoke and soot. Then it shifted and the beast withdrew half a pace, firelight still spilling dimly into the tunnel but far enough back that it could cast its gaze down in. The dragon stared at me. I saw myself reflected in its cauldron eye, saw it measuring, weighing, remembering its fight with Archus before.

And then the eye blinked closed. It took a little breath, and a puff of cold air washed up out of the mountain around me, sucked into the dragon's maw, and the flame went out.

Darkness fell.

I could still sense the dragon in the space above me. I could feel its massive presence, hear the clatter sounds of the great body's small motions against the graveled ground. I could not see it, though. I could not guess what it had in mind. It did not simply blast me with its flame, perhaps suspecting I could shield myself as Archus had done. I was too far back for it to reach with claws or teeth, but I thought of the spike-tipped tail that had ended Archus's life. Perhaps it would be awkward, but if the animal could position itself to sling that thing at me, I would have nowhere to go.

I raised the sword before me, steady in my fingers, and I did my best to imitate a dueling stance within the low and narrow cave. I made myself a tiny target, sideways to the dragon's position, and held the blade protecting me from hip to eye. It was remarkable how much of a swordsman's body could be protected with that narrow blade if he knew how to hold it.

But that required knowledge of his enemy's stance as well, and I was blind. I squeezed my eyes tight shut in the darkness, fighting to hold my self-control, and took deep breaths to steady anxious nerves. The darkness pressed in on me, a physical weight, and I wanted to scream my frustration.

I didn't. Instead I bit my lip and reached into my swordsman's calm to grasp at the exercises a wizard had taught me. I forced my mind to relax as my muscles were relaxed, forced my thoughts into discipline as I had trained my body. And halfway through the patterns Antinus had taught me I felt myself fall into a state of quiet self-awareness that I had never quite achieved before. I sensed a bitter weight pressing down on me, immobilizing me, and recognized it as my own fear. I reached out with my will toward that weight, cracked it, and it fell away. The thing that broke and fell was an imaginary thing, no more than a mental construct...but then, so was my real fear.

And as I broke the black weight in my mind, I felt my breath come easier. I felt my arms grow lighter. I reached out again, sensing with my new intuition, and felt the cold, inky darkness that washed around me like water. But when I reached out with my mind I found I could sense through it, feel the stone beyond, feel even the great beast looking down on me. Inside my head, I could see it.

And in that moment, for the first time, I understood. In that instant I could truly see. Just as Claighan had said I someday would, in that instant I saw the lines of forces and powers that were at work all around me. I saw the immensity of the mountain above, the durability and weight of each individual stone and the great ageless mountain in one seamless piece.

I could see the cold power of death in my light sword, and the bright, hot flare of blood where I had scraped my hand. I saw dancing threads of air outside the cave, a gentle breeze, and felt even the distant angry magic of the storm Archus had conjured. My body was trapped in that tiny tunnel, in total darkness, but my senses reached for miles. I had always paid attention to my surroundings—more than most—but for the first time in my life I was truly aware. I felt like I was seeing the world for the first time. Everything before had been a dream, soft, ephemeral, unreliable. But this was real. I had no doubts.

In the midst of all this revelation, though, there was a puzzle. I could see the threads of air dancing around the dragon at the cave's mouth, but I could not see the dragon itself. The dragon was not simply invisible to that second sight, but a terrible well of emptiness. Where the beast's head should have been, drawn in perfect clarity before my second sight, I saw instead a deep abyss into which the light of human power had never shone, a darkness magic could not touch. I understood then what Claighan had seen, what he had known. Perhaps some edges of human workings could injure or irritate this beast, but true magic would melt within that darkness like a snowflake in a blacksmith's blaze.

But I did not need my second sight to see the dragon. Not now. Bathed in understanding, I did what I could never do at Seriphenes's command. I saw the world as it was. The mountain was real. The sky was real. But light and darkness were flimsy, oft-changing things. I could see the darkness that lay around me, but I could see too the memory of the light the dragon's flame had spilled, the traces of sunlight that came and went. I fixed in my mind the image of the cave as it could be. As I wished it to be. I extended my arm before me, the blade held high, and commanded, "Light!"

And it was. A light flared to fill the cave and I saw in perfect clarity. There above me was the dragon, still staring down, watching me with the patience of ages. It hissed in fury at the sudden flare of light, and I remembered what Archus had done before. I felt a great thrill of accomplishment as the beast's head pulled back, open wide in an angry growl—

And then I had a plan. Still in that awkward crouch, still with my sword in the wrong hand, I braced my foot against the cave floor, tightened my grip on the hilt of that perfect weapon. I pressed up, sliding my forward foot along the stone floor an inch at a time, then dragging my right foot after. The dragon came close again, and I saw the fire kindle once more in the back of its maw. I made another little advance, sweating in a sudden heat, and forced myself to hold a fighting calm. I took one slow, measured breath. I forced it out. And with a final prayer, I lunged.

It should have been perfect. I came so close. The dragon never expected any physical threat from me, pinned and puny as I was. I fixed my eyes on the soft, blue palate at the top of its open mouth and shoved my heavy blade forward and up. But my back foot planted for the lunge and then, just as I threw my weight, my boot slipped against a smear of my own blood that I had left upon the stone.

And there was no room in the narrow tunnel for even that much error. My right foot lost its grip and my left foot extended too far. Even as the tip of Othin's blade struck true—I felt the shock as it parted tender flesh—even then I knew it was not the deathblow I had hoped for.

Before I had time for disappointment, my knee buckled and I crashed to the stone floor. I landed hard against the thick, scaled jaw of the beast. My extended arm was in its mouth, and as I came down my own weight ripped my arm open against the beast's double-row of teeth. My flesh tore open from shoulder to wrist. Blood gushed into the beast's open mouth, and I screamed in pain and terror.

In a moment of strange clarity, I watched a single, immense drop of the dragon's black blood pool on the pommel of my sword, and then it fell against my open wound.

In that instant my world exploded in fire, overwhelming every pain I'd ever known. Scrambling, frantic, I pushed away with my good arm, trying to get free, but already I felt the sulfurous poison of its blood coursing through my veins. I don't know when I stopped screaming, or if I stopped screaming, because the fires raging in my soul drowned out any earthly noise. I know I managed to shove myself some distance from the beast, but surely it wasn't far enough to put me beyond the reach of its wrath. In the instants before my world went black I wondered why it hadn't killed me yet. Or if it had.

---

When I woke an eerie silver moonlight hung in the low fog all around me. At first I thought I hadn't moved, for I was stretched out on a rock floor strewn with gravel, but after a moment I realized the soft shape beside me was the cooling form of Archus. That recognition should have brought some response, but my body was too weak and my mind too numb. I reached again for the calm I had found in two different disciplines, but both eluded me. There was nothing to push against, nothing to push away. I was adrift.

Far above me, I saw the perfect circle of the full moon riding high. I stared at it and struggled to remember. I thought of my injuries, my left arm torn to ribbons. I turned my head, and my awareness washed slowly around as though I were drunk or dreaming. I saw a scar seared into the flesh the length of my arm, a single jagged, sinuous shape from shoulder to wrist.

I remembered the sword that I had left in the dragon's mouth and felt a pang of regret. It had been a terribly fine blade. The thought skittered away, though.

I shook my head. I took a slow breath and pushed it away, but it did little to clear my head. I tried to sit up, but my body did not respond. I was too weak.

I rolled my head and looked around. Not at Archus on my left, but at the other forms that shared this plot with me. Corpses. Victims. All blackened now by the dragon's flame. I shivered at the thought and wondered how I had come to be there.

I brought you here.

The words exploded in my mind, and I screamed. I screamed until my throat protested, until I could not wheeze another breath. And even in the grips of my terror I felt a moment's strange curiosity. Behind that, as my breath ran out, I felt a deep, rolling laugh inside my head. And I felt the emotion of it, too, a giddy amusement. After a moment it subsided, and the dreadful fear flooded back into its place.

And in the silence, the same voice boomed within my mind. Who are you? What have you done? I felt the shape of the question but it was not a matter of discussion. It came like a demand, and I could no more withhold an answer than resist a tidal wave.

I answered without thinking. "I am Daven, son of Carrick, of Chantire and of Terrailles. I have fought a dragon and died." There was only silence, long and pensive, before the voice echoed through my mind again.

You have not died yet, human. First I would know what you have done to me....

I felt the thunder of its wings before the dragon slammed to earth above me. It planted two feet with talons like sickle-blades on either side of me. Its neck arced high, and its head stabbed down at me, teeth flashing. But it did not strike. It stopped far enough away to fix its massive eyes upon me, and it spoke again into my mind.

What is this treachery? How did you get into my head?

I felt the full force of the monster's hatred. It thrummed through my veins, cold and bitter, and I trembled beneath its gaze. I shook my head. "I don't know," I said. "I only wanted to live!"

The monster's laugh echoed in my mind again, and I saw fire dance in the back of its throat. You will not live, it said. And yet...I cannot kill you. There was nothing of mercy behind the words. There was fury, outrage, and it flared up in me as though it were my own. Tell me what you've done!

Again I could not resist the command, but I could not answer it either. I shook beneath the beast like a leaf in a furious gale, and after some time it relented. It pulled its head back, and after a moment withdrew a pace. I lay there panting until I could catch my breath, and then I sat up.

My gaze touched Archus then skittered away. I felt the presence of the other corpses again, and fear boiled deep in my stomach. I closed my eyes. "Why did you bring me here?"

The monster laughed inside my thoughts. I brought you here to die. For a moment silence settled again, and I felt the weight of the creature's patient, ageless pondering. But you have done something to corrupt my mind, wizard. Something I have never seen, nor has any whose mind I have touched. And I wish to know what it is you did before I kill you.

It should have been too much for me, but somewhere within me I found a new source of strength. I felt the beast's curiosity, too, and it stirred something within my mind in answer. I should have passed out from the pain or gone blank from the shock, but instead I bent my mind to the question. I pushed myself unsteadily to my feet and looked up into the giant face of the dragon. Cautiously, but with surprisingly little fear, I reached out and touched the tip of one of those sharp teeth. I felt the enormous power of the beast crouched before me, and I shook my head in quiet admiration.

"I did not come here to kill you," I said.

It laughed again. You could not touch me.

"And yet I did," I said, musing. "I never meant to. I did not wish to challenge you at all. I only want to leave."

Then you are smarter than those you came with, the dragon said, and against my wishes my head turned and my eyes fixed on the dead form of Archus. A hole as large as my fist pierced him just below the sternum. The earth was sticky with his blood. His face was smooth and still.

"I hated him." The words formed in my mind, distant, almost curious. They held no heat now. "He was a monster." I remembered his plan, and I nodded slowly. "He used me as bait to draw you to him."

He needn't have spent the effort. I would have come hunting after his power from a hundred evenings' flight.

I had no answer for that. I shook myself, though, and pushed the gruesome sight of him away. As I did, I regained enough control to turn my head. It was not enough. I took a long step away, and then another. I walked all the way to the end of the ledge before the dragons' thoughts stopped me in my place.

I will not let you live.

"I only want to go," I said. "If you would kill me, why haven't you done so already?" The beast didn't answer me. After a moment's silence I turned in place and stared up at the dragon. It reared over me as it had towered over Archus here. And, gradually, I became aware of the resentment and outrage burning against me. It was foreign, unnatural, and with an effort of will I forced it away. I stepped through the exercises Antinus had taught me and they gave me control enough to push the anger from my mind.

Even as I did the dragon roared. It blasted a burst of brilliant red fire high into the night sky and then moved. The spike-tipped tail lashed forward like a whipcrack. It flew like lightning. It drove at me just as it had at Archus.

The force that froze me in place then was not the one that had turned my head to look on Archus. It was not the alien authority that had stopped me short of running. It was fear, deep and terrible, and entirely my own. I froze while the tail lashed at my heart.

But it did not reach me. It slowed, and behind the barrier I'd built in my mind I could feel the dragon's perfect fury as its tail fell limp at my feet. The beast roared again and lunged forward. Talons as long as my arm raked at me and I jumped back. But the tail snaked around again, and though it hadn't been able to stab me it had no trouble wrapping around behind my legs and tripping me.

My shoulders hit the ground hard enough to drive the breath from my lungs and the dragon was upon me in an instant. Those talons slashed forward, straight at my head. But they missed. They scored deep into the stony earth on either side of my throat, but they did not touch my flesh.

The beast roared. It bellowed a rage as deep as the mountain's heart, and seared the sky with an arc of fire that burned into my vision and filled my nose with the stink of soot.

And then it collapsed on the ground before me. I could feel its emotions in a corner of my mind, confusion and frustration and pure, deep hatred.

For a long time I lay motionless, but the beast did not stir. I realized it was panting, catching its breath, and I felt some touch of hope. The monster had worn itself out. It hadn't been able to harm me. I felt a new pang of anger hot on the heels of that thought and shook my head.

If it couldn't hurt me, then I could leave. I climbed to my feet and saw its eyes narrow. It snorted, a hot huff of smoky air, but it did not move. I took a long step back, and a growl began in the monster's throat.

I am not done with you.

I shook my head and took another long, slow step away. "I have no quarrel with you."

Oh, but you do, the dragon said, and it rolled slowly to its feet. I glanced back, then eased one leg down over the ledge's edge. I found a foothold on the steeper slope below, braced a hand against the trunk of a tree, and lowered my weight down to the hillside.

You will not escape, human.

I watched it. The beast did not want me to go. I could feel the certainty of that in my own head. It wanted desperately to kill me. But something stayed its hand. Hope danced to life, deep inside my heart, and I felt an answering rage from the dragon. I bottled it away and turned my back and started down the forest slope.

I heard the dragon bellow again behind me. It was a force of nature, a timeless power that had apparently survived an assault by half a hundred wizards of various degrees of training—including two full Masters among them—and had absorbed the full fury of a fiercely-powerful apprentice and stretched him dead upon the ground. Even with my mental defenses in place, I felt a healthy fear of the beast I had left behind me.

But it could not kill me. I swallowed once, reached deep for courage, and pressed my way down the steep hillside. I had to struggle to keep my balance, mostly falling from the support of one tree to another. And then a thought crossed my mind. The dragon could not rip or tear me, but could it harm me indirectly? It had thrown me to the earth hard enough to steal my breath. What was to stop it tumbling boulders down upon me from above? As I half-fell down the mountainside, I couldn't help wondering if the dragon could just snatch me up drop me to my death.

I made it another ten paces down the hill before I heard the thunder of its wings. And then talons strong enough to score stone closed around my shoulders with an astonishing care. I felt the barest pressure beneath my collarbone and then my feet lifted away from the earth. With a touch gentler even than the band of air Archus had used to lift me the dragon rose high into the night.

Dizzyingly high. I saw the full expanse of the Sorcerer's Stand laid out in a single inky blot beneath me, the mountain a charcoal blotch in its heart. I imagined I could see the Tower of the Masters on the Academy grounds off to the east, and I really did see the pencil-thin trail of the Brennes curling across the landscape north and east, and where it pooled into a long, low lake I knew the flowered gardens of Gath-upon-Brennes graced its shores.

I should have felt terror from the heights, but it seemed natural. Right. I flashed through the exercises Antinus had taught me and fought a sudden grin at the sight that flooded me. Deep in a sea of elemental air, I swam within a world of whisper-light magic, and though some part of my mind screamed with a fear that the dragon meant to drop me I shook my head. In my mind's eyes I could already imagine a net of empty air, catching me as I fell and lowering me gently down.

I felt the dragon's answering rage, and it swung out in a wide circle that showed me all of the Ardain, from east to west. And in the distance I saw the great sea. Some perverse curiosity rose up in my heart, the same voice that had made me question the dragon's limitations, and I wondered what I would do if it tried to drop me to the sea. I could slow my fall. Perhaps. I thought I could.

But that was a simple working. Seeing wasn't enough to work the kind of magic the Masters used. I had no clue how to weave a traveling. If the beast dropped me far enough offshore, simple exhaustion would drag me under the waves, magic or no.

I felt the dragon's flash of satisfaction, and its lazy circle turned into a beeline for the coast. My calm shattered. The magic sight fled me. Fear bubbled up in my heart, and even my mental defenses failed. I felt my own fear wash away in the dragon's flush of victory.

"Don't," I cried. "Why? Why are you so determined to kill me?"

You are man, the dragon said. I am serpent. The question needs no more reason than that.

"I don't want to die!" There was no nobility in the words, no hint of courage or dignity. I was beyond such things. Terror reigned inside me, but I had barely thought the words before my own fear was subsumed by the dragon's deep, satisfied laughter.

Below us the edge of the earth flashed away, deep blue waters churning far, far away. The dragon soared on, until even at that altitude I could barely see the shore far away. I tried to twist within its grasp, scrabbling desperately for some grip on its talons. If I could hold on, if I could climb up its leg and find a better grip—

Stop that, the dragon grumbled in my mind, and I felt its will bear down upon me. The strength faded from my arms, from my grabbing fingertips. I did as Antinus had taught me, sought my self-control, and gradually regained dominion of my body. I forced my hand up higher, gripping the sharp-edged talon, and my other hand went higher still and found the hard plates like armor that covered much of the dragon's hide. If I could just reach those I could find a grip secure enough the dragon couldn't shake me off.

Stop that! it said again, and I felt a wash of the dragon's impatience and frustration. I felt its will battering at the back of my mind, but my grip on the talon only tightened. If I just remembered my training the beast could not overpower me. If I kept control of my thoughts, I could survive this. I set my jaw and reached higher still.

And then I felt my stomach lunge up into my throat. I was weightless. I felt the air rushing around me. The dragon's grip was gone, and I fell from nearly half a mile above the sea.

I screamed in terror, and in the back of my head I felt an echo of satisfaction from the dragon. I could see it, in my second sight, a deep and perfect emptiness within the night sky. I watched the winds wash against it, around it, and felt below me the ancient, patient, crushing powers of the waters that wear mountains down to sand. I could feel the energy flooding through me, too, the power of my own will, but it was miniscule and fragile against the water and the wind.

Despite the dragon's satisfaction at my scream I could feel a lingering irritation. I had driven it to act sooner than it intended. I found little confidence from that, even as terror clawed at the edges of my vision. I scrabbled desperately to grab at the strands of air around me, but magic didn't work like that. The threads I saw in my second sight were pure power, chaos energy, outside the reach of a wizard's will. I could bend their effects to make a working, but I could not use them directly.

To do a working I had to form a separate reality, and invest it with confidence and will. And focus. But I gained speed as I fell, far too fast toward the earth. My second sight receded, fading with my control, and I flew again through my exercises, and again, until I held some measure of control. And then I began building a reality. I thought of the net I'd imagined earlier. It had seemed so simple a thing. But as I fell faster and faster, the jagged edges of my working rattled apart and it disintegrated. I started over again.

Above me, the dragon swung around and passed back to the east, watching my fall. As I stared at it I saw something new pulsing through that abyss of black nothing. I saw a single weaving, pulsing thread of crimson that danced in a fragile maze throughout the dragon's form. It was mystifying and enticing and, for reasons I could not possibly explain, the sight of it gave me strength.

I needed to survive. I closed my eyes and saw a pillow of air around me, a cocoon soft and slow, a bubble that could absorb the crushing force of my landing and drop me lightly into the waters. The thought snapped into perfect clarity in my mind, and I poured all my will into it. I spoke to give it shape, "Wind, catch me," and I felt a gentle pressure against my back. I slowed, slowed—

And then I struck the water's surface with enough force to shatter bones and crush my body like a flower underfoot. I had taken too long. Far above me I felt the pale pang of deep emotion—satisfaction or regret I could not say—and that thin stream of red danced within the darkness off to the east, and out of sight.

And then the sea swallowed me, and I was gone.