Even in the dark, Kara recognized the gold by the way he carried himself in flight, his long neck bent in a distinctive S curve. The two of them had been comrades at one time, fighting to turn back a horde of orcs and ogres from a human village—which didn’t mean she wanted to deal with Llimark just then.

She thought of diving to hide in the Flooded Forest but realized it would be pointless. He’d spotted her before she’d noticed him, as evidenced by the fact that he was winging straight toward her. If she tried to evade him, it would only arouse his suspicions.

Instead, she maneuvered toward him, and they circled one another as dragons often did when they wished to converse on the wing.

“Hello, old friend,” she called.

“Karasendrieth,” Llimark replied. “King Lareth commands that you accompany me into his presence.”

“I don’t understand” she lied.

She flicked her wings, trying to gain a little altitude without him realizing she was shifting into a more advantageous position for combat.

It was a mistake, for he noticed and compensated, and must have known she contemplated resistance.

“You do understand” he said. “Did you think you and your fellow rogues could conduct all these bizarre experiments and stick your noses into strange corners of the world without the lords or the Talons noticing? Azhaq caught Cejor in the act of brewing some useless potion, and she gave up your name, not that Lareth needed it to guess you were involved. You’ll tell him the names of the rest of the rebels, then submit to Nexus’s spell immediately.”

“We’re not ‘rebels,’” she replied. “And Lareth has no authority over anyone but his fellow golds.”

“He does for the time being, while it’s necessary. Why can’t you accept that?”

“Why can’t you see that my plans don’t conflict with his? If my comrades and I can’t find a cure in time to avert the frenzy, I give you my word we’ll sleep with the rest of you.”

“Lareth told you, your efforts will produce disunity and dissension, and that could be disastrous.”

“I disagree.”

She pondered whispering the spell to steal his breath weapon but decided against it. He’d probably hear, and it might provoke him into attacking.

“Curse it,” he said, “it doesn’t matter whether you agree or not. You simply have to obey. Otherwise, my orders are to compel you, or if necessary, kill you outright. I beg you not to let it come to that.”

Kara sighed and said, “You volunteered to hunt me, didn’t you, so no one would have to hurt me? You thought I’d defy a stranger but give in to a friend.”

“Was I correct?”

“Can’t you understand how wrong this is? Never before have golds attempted to dictate how their kin must behave, let alone threatened to slaughter them over a simple difference of opinion. Lareth claimed the Rage is already rotting my judgment, but I think he’s the one whose mind is failing, he and all those who follow where he leads.”

“That’s absurd. The king is the eldest, wisest, and noblest of us all, thus surely the best able to stave off frenzy.”

“We don’t know that,” Kara replied. “We don’t know anything. That’s the problem I’m trying to correct.”

“Not anymore. Will you relent?”

“No,” she answered. “Will you, for the sake of the battles we fought together? You can tell Lareth you couldn’t find me.”

“No, I can’t,” Llimark replied. “Forgive me, my friend.”

He spread his jaws wide and blasted out a plume of vapor, obviously hoping to subdue her without injury. That was why he hadn’t used his flame. But the breath weapon he had employed was devastating enough. If it struck her, it would wash away a significant portion of her strength, after which, she would likely be no match for him.

She snapped one wing low, the other high, and veered off in a steep descent. It worked. She dodged his breath, but the maneuver had brought her below him, exactly the vulnerable position she’d hoped to avoid.

He followed up at once, roaring words of power. She twisted, seeking to blast him with her own breath and so disrupt his conjuring, but it took her a second too long to orient on her target. Llimark finished the spell and a cloud of filthy fog boiled into existence around her. It reeked of decay, and the mere touch of it on her scales made her stomach twist with nausea. Unable to abide it, retching, she floundered clear. By that time, the gold was swooping at her.

She folded her wings and fell like a stone, avoiding him. Unfortunately, by the time she managed to level off, she was gliding only a few yards above the surface of the black water, which was to say, nearly out of space to maneuver. Zigzagging back and forth, she sang a spell.

Four exact images of herself, each moving precisely as she did, shimmered into being around her. Since Llimark’s ears and nose were as keen as his eyes, it probably wouldn’t take him long to pick out the real Kara from the false. But he faltered for an instant, and she finally managed to spit, her lightning crackling upward.

To be precise, her exhalation wasn’t a thunderbolt in the purest sense but a burst of sparkling vapor charged with the essence of lightning. Wings pounding, Llimark veered to avoid it. He was a shade too slow, and it caught him in the chest. He flailed spastically, and for a moment, she thought he might fall.

He didn’t, though. He regained control and swooped at his foe. Like Kara, he was relatively young for a dragon, yet still resilient enough to survive one such attack.

She couldn’t hurl another, not right away. After each expenditure, a wyrm’s breath required time to renew itself. She climbed, her illusory counterparts mirroring her actions. She also started to sing a spell.

As he plunged at her, Llimark breathed flame, and it was Kara’s turn to try to dodge the expanding burst. The blaze washed over her flank, and the fierce heat made her cry out in pain. It spoiled her incantation and the magic died unborn.

The fire’s touch also burned Kara’s phantasms from existence. Llimark drove on at what had become his only possible target. Still stuck at a lower altitude, the song dragon tried to fling herself out of the way. Unfortunately, the brush of his searing breath had left her slow and clumsy, and he scored on her anyway. His talons ripped her shoulder and the base of her wing, and he flashed on past.

For a second, she only felt a kind of shock, and the pain flared. The stroke of her wings uneven, the wounded one scarcely able to beat at all, she floundered, struggling to stay aloft. Llimark wheeled, orienting on her.

“Yield!” he roared. “You can’t win now.”

“I can’t surrender,” she replied. “Not when it’s possible my friends and I are our people’s only hope.”

“Then I’m sorry,” he said.

He climbed, evidently preparing to dive at her. It gave her a moment to prepare for the next attack. Her lightning still hadn’t returned to her, and she could feel that it wouldn’t, not in time, so she started singing another incantation.

He evidently heard, and as he commenced his dive, responded with his own bellowed cabalistic rhyme. Somehow he finished first, and for an instant, the world blazed as bright as the sun.

Squinting her eyes shut, Kara flinched from the glare, but managed to sing the last few notes of her spell with the proper rhythm and intonation. Power seethed inside her claws. The problem was, she could no longer see where to direct it. For the moment, she was blind, her field of vision a meaningless chaos of sickly yellow afterimage.

She listened for the rustle of his wings, then cast the magic at the sound. A heartbeat later, he slammed into her and grappled, his talons digging into her hide, his tail twining around her. Evidently he meant to cling to her and rip until she capitulated or died.

Twisting her neck, she struck at him. By sheer good luck, her jaws snapped shut on solid flesh, and her fangs plunged through his scales deep into the muscle beneath. Her final spell had found its target to soften Llimark’s natural armor.

The unexpected pain made him fumble his grip on her. She thrashed, broke free, and at last felt hot tingling power poised in her throat. Still guided solely by sound, scent, and touch, she spat sizzling lightning.

Llimark screamed. She braced herself for his next attack, but it didn’t come. After a few seconds, she heard something big splash down in the Reach.

When her sight returned, she peered down at the water but couldn’t see the gold. Had he sunk beneath the waves? Had she killed him? She prayed it wasn’t so.

Still, she couldn’t search for long. She had to attend to her own survival. She could feel that her torn, throbbing wing wouldn’t bear her up much longer. Indeed, a wave of faintness warned that she might not even cling to consciousness, or life itself, for any length of time.

Kara glided to the road that ran along the shore, landed, and shifted to human form. In that guise, she wouldn’t frighten the humans on whose kindness she must now depend, and with luck, it would hide her from any other dragons hunting her at Lareth’s behest. She stumbled on toward Ylraphon.