It made Dorn edgy simply to float at anchor with the sail lowered. He glowered out across the purplish expanse of the Moonsea and saw the same nothing as before.

“To Baator with this,” he growled.

“He promised he’d join us,” Kara said with a sigh. “Please, give him a little longer.”

“Just because we’ve fooled the Zhentarim up to now, that doesn’t mean they won’t eventually figure out we stole one of their patrol boats. Besides, we’re wasting daylight, and we’d have to be even stupider than we evidently are to do this after dark.”

“On the other hand” said Raryn, “if we’re going, we might as well go as strong as possible.”

His long hair and goatee shining particularly white in the sunlight, the arctic dwarf sat on a coil of rope sharpening the point of his new harpoon with a hone.

Upon reaching Thentia, the hunters had discovered that, wonder of wonders, their partners among the city’s motley collection of wizards had been doing their jobs for a change. Instead of squandering all their time on bizarre experiments, they’d actually enchanted some items to replace the gear the travelers tended to lose or damage in the course of fulfilling their commissions. The mages had, for example, produced a new bastard sword and quiver of arrows for Dorn, and a new curved hornblade and pouch of skiprocks for Will.

Most of those weapons and pieces of armor were packed away. They wouldn’t help the hunters where they were headed. Fortunately, by rummaging through the wizards’ storerooms and scouring the marketplace, they’d managed to lay hands on a few implements that would.

“I’m tired of waiting, too,” said Will from the top of the mast. “We could at least toss Pavel overboard and see what happens. Then the rest of us will know what to expect.”

“I had a similar thought,” the priest replied, wrapped in a garment that, out of the water, appeared to be nothing more than a leather cloak. “The gods know, you’ve never been good for anything else, but perhaps you could finally play a useful role as chum.”

The patrol boat jolted as if it had run aground on a reef or sandbar, though that was plainly impossible. Dorn and his companions staggered, fighting for balance.

All around the sailboat, beautiful mermaids leaped into view and somehow pirouetted along the surface of the lake, with only the tips of their green, piscine tails touching the waves. Then their comely faces warped into grotesque ugliness. They puffed out their cheeks and spat prodigious jets of water. Though Dorn tried to dodge, the frigid spray soaked him anyway.

Or at least it seemed to, but the next instant, he was dry, and the mermaids vanished like popping soap bubbles. Kara sighed like a mother enduring the antics of a mischievous child and peered over the side.

“We know it’s you, Chatulio,” she said. “Show yourself.”

A dragon with scales the metallic orange of newly minted coppers swam out from under the boat, and treading water with his feet and wings, lifted his head to peer over the side. His blue eyes shining, he gave the bard a gap-toothed leer.

“I just thought I’d show the small folk what I can do.”

Kara replied, “Thus wasting magic we may soon need to save our lives.”

“If you can’t have a laugh, what’s the use of living anyway? Introduce me to your friends.”

That took a few moments then, with Chatulio looking on curiously, it was time to make the final preparations. Essentially it was a matter of casting spells and drinking potions. Pavel prayed for Lathander’s blessing, bolstering the party’s vigor, courage, and luck. Kara sang a charm that would enable her to breathe underwater. Dorn gulped a lukewarm, sour-tasting elixir that was supposed to confer the same benefit, and a sweeter one generally employed to give a person the power to float up into the air. Under water, it would keep the weight of his iron limbs from dragging him helplessly to the bottom.

Still, when he picked up his long spear and joined his companions at the side, he felt a pang of trepidation. As a child, he’d loved to swim, but that was long ago. Evidently sensing his anxiety, Kara touched him on the arm. He didn’t know how that made him feel or how to respond.

“Last one in’s a three-legged tortoise,” said Will.

He sprang high and somersaulted into the water, and his comrades jumped after him.

Dorn had to force himself to stop holding his breath. The first inhalation of water was cool in his lungs, more substantial than air, but not unpleasantly so. He experimentally willed his weight away, then brought it back a bit at a time until he achieved the neutral buoyancy that served a swimmer best. Meanwhile, Kara swelled into dragon shape, while Pavel’s cloak spread itself into the winged, rippling shape of a manta ray. Dorn had to peer closely to make out the human form within. The hunters hoped that if they had to fight, the disguise would give the cleric a chance to weave his magic unnoticed by those who might otherwise do their utmost to disrupt the casting.

Dorn pointed at the bottom, and they all swam downward around the anchor line, toward the spires of Northkeep.

A thousand years ago, it had been the first human city on the Moonsea, until a “Dark Alliance” of giants, chromatic dragons, ores, and other hostile creatures sacked it, then performed a magical rite to sink the very isle on which it sat. As best as Pavel, Kara, and Brimstone could guess, it was the first location Sammaster had visited and written about extensively, and it certainly seemed a plausible site to harbor ancient and forgotten lore, about the madness of wyrms or anything else.

Yet as Dorn contemplated the devastation spread out below him, he wondered if such a secret could possibly have survived the conflict that had broken the ramparts, the upheaval that thrust them beneath the currents, or all the centuries that had passed since, wrapping the feet of the towers in weed and miring them in silt. Even if it had, could seekers who lacked Sammaster’s level of arcane power and knowledge find it in a sprawling, ruinous underwater warren or recognize it if they did?

For that matter, could they even survive the attempt? Because Northkeep, though devoid of life, was still inhabited. Dozens of grisly tavern tales agreed that the ghosts of those who’d perished in the fortress-city’s defense abided there still and had a brutal way with trespassers. On moonless nights, they rang the bells in the tallest towers, perhaps to warn mortals away. The sound was audible for miles across the water. Growing up in Hillsfar, Dorn had heard it himself, and wrapped his pillow around his ears to muffle the eerie tolling.

Keeping a wary eye out for wraiths and other dangers, Dorn and his companions dived lower, toward the imposing castle-like complex at the center of the ravaged city. There stood the palace of the lord of Northkeep, the residences of the dignitaries of his court, and temples consecrated to the gods they’d worshiped. If seemed the most likely place to hold the secret of the Rage.

Battle, or the plunge to the bottom of the lake, had opened breaches and fissures in many a wall, and caved in sections of roof. Descending swimmers could enter the damaged buildings in a hundred different ways. Dorn chose to lead his allies down into the central courtyard and view the mansions, fortifications, and shrines somewhat as the living inhabitants of Northkeep must have experienced them. He hoped it would give him a sense of the place, and that in turn would help him guess precisely where to start the search.

It seemed worth a try, anyway. But when they’d swum so low they could almost have planted their feet in the muck on the bottom, and the high arched entryways to stone bastions and graceful spires yawned all around, the world turned black in a single instant, as if the water had changed to ink, or the sun in the sky overhead had winked out.

Fighting panic, Dorn thought he knew what was actually happening. The phantoms of Northkeep had conjured the darkness to help them dispose of the intruders.

Dorn’s spear was enchanted, and his iron arm was a magical weapon in its own right. He had at least a slim chance of defending himself against the dead, but only if he could see them. Floating blindly in the cold murk, he prayed that one of his spellcasting comrades possessed a magic sufficiently potent to wipe the darkness away.

Time crawled by, measured out by his racing heartbeats, punctuated by uninterpretable little noises that jabbed at his nerves. Were Kara, Pavel, and Chatulio trying but failing to make light, or were they dead already? Had the spirits possessed the wit to strike at them first?

Finally brightness glowed through the water. Spear leveled, Dorn turned, seeking the spectral men-at-arms of legend. They weren’t there, but something else was. Malevolent dragons had given their lives to cast down Northkeep, and their gigantic skeletons burst forth from their hiding places in the silt, stirring dirt into the water in the process. Points of red light burning deep in the eye sockets of their naked skulls, the entities oriented on the intruders.

Dorn was reasonably certain it wasn’t a haunting in the truest sense of the term. Necromancy had animated the wyrm skeletons as it had the human corpses serving the Cult of the Dragon in Lyrabar. Conceivably Sammaster himself had laid the trap to insure that no one else would carry secrets out of Northkeep.

Thanks to their own magic, Dorn and his companions were no longer sightless and helpless, but they were in serious trouble nonetheless. Lacking vital organs, the undead were notoriously difficult to destroy in the best of circumstances. It was going to be even harder employing only such weapons and spells as were efficacious underwater.

Wheeling in the cloak that, among its other virtue, let him swim as fast and as nimbly as a manta ray, Pavel dodged the raking talons of a rearing skeleton, then brandished his sacred amulet. A red-gold beam of Lathander’s light blazed forth and burned the creature to powder.

Another skeleton flung itself onto a copper dragon. The metallic drake’s body exploded into leering clown faces, which then blinked out of existence. Wings stroking to propel him through the water, the real Chatulio appeared out of nowhere above the undead construct and seized hold of the length of vertebrae between the bony armature of its wings. He tore at the creature with his jaws.

Ducking and twisting, avoiding gnashing fangs and scrabbling claws by inches, Raryn thrust his harpoon at a skeletal wyrm’s head. The point only chipped and scratched the bone, but while the dead thing was intent on the dwarf, Will squirmed between two of its ribs, and safely ensconced inside its torso, attacked the withered ligaments binding it together with his knife.

With her song, eerily distorted by the water but still somehow as beautiful as ever, Kara conjured a block of ice into being within the rib cage of another skeletal drake. The white expanding mass shattered the unnatural thing into fragments.

That was as much as Dorn could take in before he found it necessary to focus on his own onrushing opponent. The bony thing snapped at him and caught his iron arm in its jaws. He simultaneously wrenched himself free, breaking a couple of its fangs, and drove his lance into an eye socket. He hoped that if he could hit one of the points of crimson phosphorescence, maybe that would kill it.

But when he pulled the spear back, the light was still smoldering at the back of the cavity, and the skeleton was as active as ever. It reared and slashed at him with its talons. He caught the stroke on his metal arm and so prevented it from ripping him apart, but the sheer force slammed him down into the muck on the floor of the lake. Blindness swallowed him once more as the silt covered his face. The undead wyrm clutched and squeezed him in its claws. The left side of his body with its shell of iron could take the pressure. It was obvious from the pain that the right side couldn’t.

He tore frantically at the bony phalanges with his own claws until the members came apart then floundered upward out of the mud. The undead drake bit at him through the murky water, and he punched with his knuckle spikes. The impact jolted him backward but likewise unhinged one side of the creature’s jaw. He assumed that, mindless and lifeless, the construct didn’t feel pain any more than he felt it in his metal limbs, but some reflex made it snatch its head back anyway.

That gave Dorn an opening. He flung himself in close and clawed at the base of its long, fleshless neck. The spinal column broke apart, scattering loose vertebrae wide as dinner plates, and the skeletal drake’s head tumbled away from the rest of it. The body collapsed, more bones separating or twisting into awkward relationships to reduce it to an inert and meaningless jumble.

Dorn turned, seeking the next threat. His first chaotic impression was that while they had more skeletons to dispatch, he and his comrades were holding their own. Then Kara’s song swelled. Even if, perchance, she wasn’t using some esoteric or occult language, he had no hope of comprehending the words. The water robbed them of sense. But somehow they conveyed an urgency that made him cast frantically about.

The warning didn’t help as much as Kara must have hoped. When Dorn turned himself into the right attitude, the creature was already striking at him.

The thing was huge as a wyrm and resembled the dragons he’d encountered in certain respects, yet it was nothing he’d ever seen or even heard reports of hitherto. In its essence, it was a colossal serpent with dark, slimy scales, yet possessed of stunted wings and legs, far too small to enable it to walk or fly, but useful, perhaps, when it swam. Its long tail split into two writhing, whiplike appendages, which it lashed at its target. A man couldn’t effectively swing a flail or even a sword at the bottom of a lake. The water offered too much resistance. But the drake was so prodigiously strong that it suffered no such limitation.

Dorn tried to dodge and shield flesh with iron, but surprise and the water cost him a critical moment, and he knew with a sickening certainty that the beast was going to strike him a solid, perhaps lethal blow. Then Kara lunged between the human and the aquatic wyrm. Its tail struck her instead.

Evidently the tips of the appendage were as sharp as blades, for they split her shimmering hide, then sliced deeper as it pulled them along in a wicked, drawing cut. Twin clouds of blood billowed forth, mixing with the muddy water to make it even more difficult to see.

Kara snapped at the water dragon. It twisted clear of the attack, then instantly lashed her again. She convulsed at the shock. The aquatic wyrm coiled around her like a python, then proceeded to constrict, bite, and slash at her at the same time. She kept trying to fight back, but her foe clasped her so tightly that it was impossible for her to strike a telling blow.

Enraged, Dorn kicked forward, but the wyrm was cunning. It had, after all, waited for the newcomers to focus their attention on the skeletons before attempting a surprise attack. Perhaps it had even manufactured the initial darkness. At any rate, it saw no reason to allow a second foe to jab and claw at it before it finished with the first. A flick of the forked tail sufficed to shoot it several yards out of reach.

Wishing that he’d claimed the manta ray garment for himself, Dorn labored after the creature through water that tasted of dirt and Kara’s blood. Perhaps amused by his pursuit, the dark-scaled wyrm let him close almost into spear range before widening the distance once again. As far as the human could tell, the trivial exertion in no way slackened the serpent’s grip or otherwise hindered its efforts to kill the song dragon. Kara’s struggles grew weaker by the second. A wing and hind leg protruded from her adversary’s slimy coils at odd ankles, manifestly dislocated or broken.

Dorn realized he couldn’t swim fast enough to overtake the huge, yellow-eyed snake thing until the latter decided to permit it, not without help, anyway. He peered through the cloudy, filthy water. His friends were still battling skeletons, fighting so hard they might not even have noticed the water drake and surely couldn’t break away to confront it even if they had.

Or so it seemed. But then Chatulio, hard-pressed though he was by a pair of enormous undead wyrms, spun away from their gnashing fangs and raking talons to peer across the battlefield at Kara’s captor. A mass of scuttling crabs abruptly appeared on the aquatic drake’s head and the uppermost section of its body, where they started pinching and picking away with their claws.

Mad as a hound covered in stinging ants, the dark drake convulsed and bent its body in a circle, swatting at its own throat and skull to dislodge the crustaceans. It maintained its death grip on its feebly squirming captive, but evidently forgot about Dorn, for it finally let him swim close enough to strike.

The half-golem drove his spear twice into the coils of scaly muscle gripping Kara. The dark wyrm’s body twisted, whipping its head into position to bite. Though raw little pockmarks freckled its mask, it didn’t have crabs worrying it anymore. Either the skeletons had shaken Chatulio’s concentration and so put an end to his magic, or the aquatic dragon had rid itself of the harassment in some other way.

It struck. Dorn ducked under the attack, then sank his talons into a patch of the slimy, scaly hide behind its jaws. Whatever else happened, the filthy thing wasn’t going to retreat beyond his reach. Dorn drove his spear into the underside of its throat.

Its neck swelled, and its jaws opened wide. Evidently it truly was some sort of dragon, for it was unleashing a breath weapon. In air, the exhalation might have leaped forth in the usual cone or streak. Underwater, a dirty stain billowed in all directions.

Its touch made Dorn’s mind turn slack and dull, so that all its contents—rage, fear, his very awareness of what was happening—threatened to slip away. He clamped down on them, resisting the stupefying effect with all his will, and at that same instant, the wyrm snapped its head in an arc.

The sudden jerk nearly shook Dorn loose. It did make him fumble his grip on the spear, which slipped from his grasp. His iron hand was the best weapon remaining to him, which meant he needed to hang on with the other one to free it up. He prayed his human fingers were strong enough to keep him anchored.

Dorn ripped at the serpent’s scales and the meat beneath. It breathed, and the murk diffusing through the water burned the half-golem’s skin.

Acid, he thought, clenching himself against the pain, squinting in the hope that the stuff wouldn’t sear his eyes out.

He found a spot that, when attacked, made the water wyrm convulse—a vulnerable place, maybe a particularly sensitive cluster of nerves. Dorn clawed it furiously, and the huge creature slashed at him with its tail blades. He twisted and caught the stroke on his iron half. The impact jolted him but couldn’t cut through the armor.

The dragon swung its tail back for another blow, and though he couldn’t have explained how, Dorn understood what could happen next if he was strong, quick, and skillful enough to make it happen. It was a sort of fighter’s intuition that sometimes spoke when he needed it most, an instinct he’d first discovered in the arena.

He clawed some more. The creature’s pain needed to be constant and unbearable. It whipped its tail at him, and he flung himself clear of its body. If his timing was off, or he failed to push off with sufficient agility, the blow would hit him, and almost certainly cleave flesh. Even if he survived that by releasing his grip, he’d given up the only advantage he possessed. If his trick failed, it was unlikely the wyrm would give him the chance to hurt it any further.

But the ploy worked. Frantic, maybe spastic with pain, the serpent slashed the tail blades deep into its own throat, half-severing the amber-eyed head. Its blood streaming upward like smoke from some great fire, it drifted toward the bottom.

Dorn pulled at its coils but couldn’t loosen them. Then something cut off the sunlight shining down from the surface, casting him into shadow. Certain some new horror had arrived to menace him, he looked up. Bearing several bite and claw wounds along his flanks, Chatulio swam above him. The copper used his talons to pry the motionless Kara from her bonds.

By the time Chatulio finished, the rest of their comrades had gathered around. Each was wounded, even Pavel, who, in the manta cloak, had seemed to have the best chance of escaping injury. Heedless of the blood leaking from his own gashed leg, his handsome face grave and intent, he set about the business of trying to save Kara’s life. The water garbled his words in a way that, in other circumstances, might have seemed comical. Dorn could only hope Lathander still understood the prayers.

The priest’s hands shone with rich golden light. Then, at the tops of the ravaged towers rising throughout the city, bells began to toll. Strangely, the water didn’t muffle or warp that sound in the slightest.

No, Dorn thought. It isn’t fair that this should happen when we’ve just finished a fight, when we’re hurt and exhausted and have already expended a goodly portion of our magic. It doesn’t even make sense. Why is it the wraiths never attacked the skeletal dragons or that gigantic serpent?

Maybe Sammaster has a way of suppressing the phantoms, he continued to muse, a forbiddance that lost its power with the demise of his agents. Maybe the spirits had no objection to letting other entities defend their domain for them, or perhaps those dead things reserve their spite for the living.

Dorn supposed that ultimately, the reason didn’t matter. The only thing that did was that, at the worst possible moment, the ghosts of Northkeep were coming forth.

Taegan crept through the canopy, stalking from one branch to the next, peering. Jivex flew close at hand. The faerie dragon was invisible, but at certain moments, Taegan could hear the flutter of his wings or catch the leathery tang of his reptilian scent.

They were hunting pickets. While the queen’s men regrouped, Taegan had managed to locate the cultists’ stronghold, and he and his comrades hoped to take the enemy unaware. As best they could judge, Sammaster’s minions didn’t expect an assault. They imagined that any surviving Warswords had fled the Gray Forest in disarray. Moreover, the expedition’s spellcasters, working in concert with the faerie dragons, could mask the entire company in illusion. Thus, a surprise attack seemed feasible.

But only if someone first eliminated the sentries the cult had posted around their citadel. Otherwise, one of the guards was bound to discern something amiss. Taegan and Jivex’s ability to move stealthily through the foliage, above the eye line of the average picket, made them good choices for the task.

Taegan spotted a pair of hobgoblin warriors on the ground ahead. Evidently their kind kept watch by day, while the werewolves took over the duty after dark. The goblinkin with the thick russet hair on its hide stood idly fingering its bulbous blue nose. The slate-colored one squatted staring at the ground. After a moment, Taegan perceived that the creature had stirred an anthill with the dirty dagger still in his hand and was watching the insects scurry around.

“I’ll take the red one,” Taegan whispered. “You take the gray.”

“There are just the pair,” Jivex replied. His hushed, reedy voice and tickling breath came right into the avariel’s ear. Taegan was so startled, he nearly jumped and revealed his presence to the hobgoblins. “If you’re going to deal with the red, then of course I have the gray.”

“It’s gratifying to discover you can at least count as high as two.”

Jivex gave an affronted sniff and Taegan skulked forward. Presumably Jivex was doing the same. The fencing teacher maneuvered around behind the hobgoblins then sprang to the ground, spreading his wings just enough to insure a safe landing.

He was still trying to be quiet, but the hulking goblinkin with the rust-colored hair sensed him anyway. As it pivoted, it poised its round wooden shield in a middle guard and lifted its spear for a thrust.

Its defensive posture wasn’t enough to save it. Taegan had used bladesong to heighten his strength and agility and sharpen his sword to a supernatural keenness, and it was simplicity itself to stab over the top of the targe and drive his blade completely through the creature’s skull. The hobgoblin collapsed.

As he jerked his weapon free, Taegan looked around to see if Jivex needed help. Evidently not. His invisibility forfeited in the act of attacking, scales rippling with rainbows, the faerie dragon clung between the gray hobgoblin’s shoulder blades, biting and tearing. Blood spurted from the torn arteries in the warrior’s neck. The goblinkin tried to scream, yet only managed a soft gurgling before it fell.

Taegan smiled wryly. Jivex’s small size and impish, almost childlike demeanor had initially led him to assume that faerie dragons were peaceful creatures dependent solely on trickery for self-protection. It had been mildly disconcerting to find out they could fight as savagely as panthers when necessary.

Jivex spat out a mouthful of gore and said, “That tastes disgusting. I ought to get a sword. Should we look for more guards?”

“No. We’re only a stone’s throw away from the stronghold itself. I doubt they have pickets posted any closer in.”

Taegan dragged the corpses into a patch of brush and kicked old rotten leaves over the blood they’d shed. With luck, it would keep any casual passerby from discovering them. Then he and Jivex skulked back to the place where many of their comrades waited. Once they reported their success, they had nothing to do but wait for the others performing the same chore to do likewise.

Taegan drifted over to Vorasaegha, who was turning her huge bronze head this way and that like a traveler in an exotic land.

“The world seems so strange,” she rumbled, “like a dream. I dwelled here for more than a thousand years, but still, I’ve been gone so long. …”

Taegan mistrusted the fey, abstracted note in the bronze’s voice.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Her emerald eyes blinked and she said, “What? Yes, fine.”

“I’m relieved to hear it, because Sune knows, we need you.”

“Perhaps,” Vorasaegha said. “But in the old days, the elves were mighty fighters in their own ri—”

Uthred scurried up to them. The mage’s long, yellow-brown beard was matted and tangled after his days of living rough, bereft, apparently, of a comb.

“Everyone’s back,” he reported, “and we killed all the sentries. Are you ready, Lady?”

“Yes,” Vorasaegha said.

She, Jivex, Uthred, and the others who commanded the proper magic assembled to collaborate on the ritual that would conceal the entire company.

Meanwhile, the men-at-arms gave their weapons and armor a final check, and priests prayed for the blessing of Ilmater, Selûne, and the rest of Impiltur’s beneficent gods. A subtle shimmer spread through the air. When it passed, Taegan could still see his comrades perfectly well, as was necessary if they were to advance in an orderly fashion. But supposedly no hostile eye could glimpse them.

Their officers formed them up then led them forward through the trees. Their progress made a certain amount of noise. The wizards and clerics had deemed it best not to wrap the company in magical silence, lest it hamper further spellcasting once combat began, and Taegan winced at every creak of leather, clink of mail, or rattling branch. Still, he felt they were advancing about as quietly as a sizable force could, and they reached their destination without incident, spreading out to assault it on three sides.

The stronghold stood in a bare wound in the midst of the wood, where either wizardry or the strength of dragons had torn the trees from the earth to make a space for it. Some of the uprooted giants still littered the ground, perhaps to hinder the advance of an attacking force. Others had likely gone to feed the cultists’ fires, or make them furniture.

At the center of the clearing rose a citadel so rough and irregular in form that one could almost mistake it for a natural rock formation. Sammaster had evidently conjured masses of ruddy sandstone up out of the ground then crudely sculpted them into walls and keeps. The result lacked any semblance of grace but looked dauntingly defensible.

Taegan and his companions halted at the edge of the trees that were still standing. Archers nocked arrows. Uthred and another magician floated up into the air, achieving the height necessary to hurl attack spells over the top of the ramparts at targets inside. Vorasaegha stared at the stronghold and whispered under her breath, while Taegan shrouded his body in blur.

A paladin raised his sword then swept it toward the ground. The arrows flew, and hobgoblins on the battlements fell. An instant later, shafts hurtled from the east and west as well. Thunder cracked, and streaks of lightning burned through the air. Blasts of fire exploded inside the citadel, tongues of yellow flame leaping so high they showed above the top of the wall.

It seemed a promising beginning. Taegan reflected that in its essentials, war truly did have a fair amount in common with a duel between single opponents. If one army surprised the other, the former enjoyed a considerable advantage.

Still, not everything was proceeding as the queen’s men had hoped. Responding to Vorasaegha’s incantation, a section of castle wall wavered and became semitransparent, revealing the murky shape of a wyrm on the other side. A hobgoblin on the battlements sank into the stone walkway beneath his feet as if it was quicksand. Then, however, the wall became opaque and solid again, trapping and crushing the shrieking creature’s legs. Sammaster’s magic was evidently stronger than the guardian bronze’s, and she couldn’t unmake an object he’d conjured into being.

Vorasaegha roared and charged into the open, toward the high gates that were likewise slabs of sandstone, apparently intent on battering them down by brute force. Knights and men-at-arms charged in her wake, some carrying crudely fashioned siege ladders. Taegan and Jivex raced along with them. The avariel wasn’t yet willing to fly. He feared it would make him too conspicuous a target. But by beating his wings, he covered the ground in long leaps that kept him at the forefront of the charge. Meanwhile, arcanists and archers shot over the heads of their comrades at their foes within the fortress.

Roaring, batlike wings rattling and eclipsing broad swaths of sky, black and green dragons soared up from within the castle, and even paladins faltered at the terror of it. Vorasaegha reared, spat lightning, and engulfed in the dazzling flare, a skull wyrm burned and crashed to the ground. A wizard—Taegan didn’t see who—attacked a green with cold, encrusting its flank in frost. It wasn’t enough to kill the reptile, but it hissed in pain and wobbled crazily in flight. Heartened, the Warswords drove on.

Into the Abyss, or a fair approximation of it. In the mad confusion of the moment, Taegan couldn’t even tell how many dragons the cult had left—at least half a dozen, he thought—but several opted to defend the approach to the gate, clawing, biting, squashing men with their sheer bulk, spewing poison and casting spells. Individually, none of the chromatic drakes was a match for Vorasaegha, but no matter how furiously she fought, she couldn’t aid all her allies at the same time. Some of them simply had to fend for themselves.

A green wyrm swooped and spat corrosive fumes. Taegan dived out of the way, and the gas only stung his eyes and skin and made him cough. Jivex also made it clear. Several men were less fortunate. They collapsed, skins blistered, lungs rotting in their chests.

With a ground-shaking thump, the dragon set down to finish off anyone who still lived. A paladin of Ilmater lurched up from the earth and the charred, dead horse he’d been riding, rasped out the name of his god, and hacked at the green’s mask with his greatsword.

The blade bit deep. Though still coughing painfully and uncontrollably, clumsy with it, Taegan rushed forward to help the knight. The dragon clawed, tore away part of the paladin’s plate armor, and ripped bloody furrows in the flesh beneath. The knight riposted with another stroke that cut deeply and split the wyrm’s left eye. The dragon roared and spewed greenish-yellow vapor. Unable to weather a second such assault, the human collapsed.

Hating the green, and himself for reaching it a heartbeat too late to aid the paladin, Taegan thrust his sword into its chest. It started to whirl in his direction, and he took a chance and stabbed again before leaping back.

The gamble paid off. The paladin had already sorely wounded the wyrm, and Taegan’s second thrust either killed it or at least stole the strength from its limbs. It fell on its side, and he gave it three more stabs, trying to make sure it was really was out of action. Jivex lit on its snout and clawed away its remaining eye.

Taegan cast about, trying to determine what to do next. It was hard to tell. Dragons and humans were still fighting almost within sword’s reach. But maybe, just maybe, Vorasaegha and his other comrades were holding their own, and their struggle was only one part of the battle. To win, the Warswords needed to penetrate the castle, and so far, it didn’t look as if that was happening. Though the queen’s men had hit hard at the start of the fight, the cult had plenty of minions and had succeeded in positioning many of them atop the walls. There, with the advantage of the high ground and the crudely shaped battlements to shield them, they’d thus far succeeded in keeping any of Sambryl’s troops from climbing up to their level and surviving for any length of time.

Scrambling back from a black drake’s lashing tail that might otherwise have broken his legs, Taegan wheezed—his lungs were still sore, curse it—“Conjure more protection if you can!”

He used bladesong to sheathe his limbs in invisible armor—weightless, imperceptible to a casual touch, yet resistant to cuts and blows—and to make himself so unnaturally fast that the rest of the world seemed to slow to a crawl.

Jivex faded from view.

Taegan made sure no drake was hovering directly overhead, ready to rip him to bits of bloody meat and loose feathers, then he spread his pinions and flew at the top of the battlements. Presumably Jivex was speeding at his side. Arrows and javelins hurtled at the avariel, but they either missed or glanced off his shell of enchantment.

Two hobgoblins and a werewolf in beast-man form poised themselves to repel him. He knocked a pair of stabbing spear points aside with a sweeping parry, then dispatched one of the goblinoids with a chest cut. Snarling, the shapechanger lunged and raked at him with its claws. Dodging the stroke, he grabbed the lycanthrope by the wrist, flew backward with a beat of his wings, dragged it forward over the ramparts, and let go. The plummet to the ground might not kill a werewolf, but at least it got the brute out of Taegan’s way.

The remaining hobgoblin aimed his lance for a second thrust, and Jivex appeared right in front of him and puffed sparkling vapor into his face. The brutish warrior smiled blissfully, stupidly, and was still smiling when Taegan shoved him off the wall walk to crash down in the castle courtyard.

The fencing master lit on the elevated path and pivoted to confront the foes already driving in from the right. Jivex hovered at his back to meet the ones on the left.

Taegan’s adversaries pressed him hard. Still, occasionally, after he killed one, it took the next a fraction of a second to scramble forward to engage him. With his accelerated reactions, that gave him enough time to glance over his shoulder and see how Jivex was faring. Thus, he glimpsed the second plume of euphoria-inducing breath that neutralized several foes at once, the mind-altering charm that persuaded a werewolf to change sides until its own packmates ripped it apart, and the gigantic eagle that flew down from the sky to harry the cultists.

Both Taegan and the faerie dragon were staying alive and holding their position. The avariel doubted they could do it for long, but luckily that wasn’t necessary. Some of the Warswords had spotted them. The humans planted their scaling ladders below the length of wall walk their allies had cleared of the enemy, then scrambled upward.

Once he thought that enough men had reached the battlements, Taegan shouted, “The gates!”

Without even glancing to see who besides Jivex was ready to follow, or if folk without wings yet had a clear path on which to descend, he leaped down into the courtyard. Perhaps it was mad to charge on in advance of his comrades yet again, but his blood was up, and it felt right.

When he reached ground level, a werewolf in its four-legged guise pounced at him, and he spitted it on his sword. His blade was still stuck in it when a tawny-haired hobgoblin bellowed and charged him with a spear. He sidestepped the attack and tripped the brutish warrior as it blundered by. It recovered its balance and whirled around just in time to receive a slash to the belly. Clutching the wound to keep its guts from spilling out, it crumpled to its knees. Meanwhile, Jivex dazed a few of its fellows with another puff of sparkling breath.

The attackers scrambled onward toward the massive, asymmetrical stone leaves, the gigantic timber that barred them, and the contrivance of windlasses, chains, pulleys, and counterweights evidently needed to swing them on their hinges. Then, somehow, Taegan abruptly sensed a presence so vile, so overwhelming, that it stopped him in his tracks then dragged him around to face it. Silver-white wings flickering, Jivex also wheeled, prey to the same compulsion.

Trembling, heart pounding, Taegan belatedly recalled how the cultists in Lyrabar had liked their underground crypts. Evidently their counterparts in the forest had dug out their own burrows, where, perhaps, they wove their foulest magic in the perpetual dark. In any case, a ramp leading down into the earth descended into shadow in the middle of the courtyard—maybe it had been there all along, veiled in illusion, or maybe a charm had just then opened it—permitting the dracolich to slither forth into the light of day.

It stank like carrion, and its withered green hide bore patches of black, wet rot. It was plainly a dead thing, like the zombies Taegan had fought in Lyrabar, but infinitely more terrible. Where they had lurched and shambled awkwardly, it, for all its hugeness, prowled like a hunting cat. The zombies’ ashen faces had been slack and mindless, but the dracolich’s sunken yellow eyes burned with an intelligence as keen as it was cruel.

Taegan had known since the previous battle that the cult had already created a dracolich, but he’d dared to hope that some of his allies had already engaged and destroyed the thing. No such luck. It had sat out the first minutes of the fight, but evidently it meant to purge the fortress of intruders. Some of the humans on the ramparts moaned or wailed at the sight of it. The hobgoblins and werewolves raised a savage cheer and hurled themselves at the queen’s men with renewed ferocity.

The undead green took a stride toward Taegan. Shouting, he broke through the dread that had unmanned him, not banishing it utterly—for how could anyone look at the dracolich and not know fear?—but at least compressing it into something that didn’t reach into and strangle the part of him that knew how to fight. He came on guard and only then recalled Rangrim’s warning: Don’t meet its gaze, and you’ll be all right.

The memory came back to him too late. He already had looked into its luminous eyes, and he froze once more—but not out of fear. Some supernatural power made his muscles clench and lock. At his side, something thumped on the ground. He couldn’t turn his head to see what, but after a moment, realized it must have been Jivex. The faerie dragon was paralyzed too, and unable to beat his wings, he had fallen from the air.

Taking its time, the dracolich stalked closer.

“Did you actually think you were winning?” it asked. “Nothing you and your humans have done means anything. You could kill every one of my slaves, and it wouldn’t matter. I’m strong enough to wipe out the lot of you, all by myself. I’ll show you just how easily small folk die.”

It reared, evidently preparing to breathe. Werewolves and hobgoblins scrambled, distancing themselves from Taegan and Jivex. Then a shadow swept across the courtyard.

The dracolich looked up and spat its acidic fumes into the air. An instant later, a beam of scarlet light spat down and burned through the creature’s torso. It roared, and Vorasaegha dived out of the sky and plunged her talons into its body.

The two colossal wyrms grappled, and intertwined, rolled back and forth across the courtyard, tearing at one another with fang and claw. Some of the werewolves, hobgoblins, and cultists failed to scurry out of the way in time, and the dragons crushed them to jelly, perhaps without even noticing they were there. Sometimes the reptiles slammed into one of the walls, and the jolt knocked other folk toppling off the battlements. Taegan wondered how long it would be before the dragons smashed down on top of Jivex and him.

The struggle between the two drakes so pounded at the senses that it took the avariel a few seconds to notice the flying orb, a thing like a disembodied eye, flitting around the periphery of the battle. It seemed to be something Vorasaegha had conjured into existence, for it assaulted the dracolich with one magical effect after another, just as, apparently, it had first discharged the crimson lance of heat. An orange beam spattered the undead green’s flesh with steaming, smoking acid. A yellow one became jagged, crackling lightning, which seemed to do it no harm. A blue beam made it falter for a second—which allowed Vorasaegha to score with a couple deep claw slashes—and sent a grayness rippling through its scales. Then its natural color and agility returned.

As the fight proceeded, both wyrms suffered enormous, ghastly wounds, but perhaps Vorasaegha was faring better than her opponent. She was even huger and presumably stronger, and the floating eye gave her another advantage. She broke free of the dracolich’s coils, slammed it onto its back, and crouched on its torso. Her forefeet pinned it in place while the hind ones raked away chunks of decaying flesh. She opened her jaws to bite. Then the undead green laughed, and she hesitated, not paralyzed—her wings were still flapping, her hind talons ripping a little—but rattled somehow. Without her will directing it, the hovering orb stopped shooting magic.

“I know you,” the dracolich said.

“No,” she said.

“But I do, Vorasaegha, and you’re even deader than I am. You no longer belong in this world, and you know it. You feel the wrongness of it in every breath you take.”

“I return when the elves need me.”

“The elves are no more, your pact is ended, and the quarrels of this latter-day world are none of your affair. Return to your rightful place, spirit. Return to your rest.”

She won’t do it, Taegan thought. She doesn’t have to. The dracolich didn’t throw a spell on her or anything. It just talked to her.

Certainly he had the feeling that Vorasaegha didn’t want to abandon the fight. She shook her head and gripped the undead green’s hide as if to anchor herself to the world of the living. Yet she faded, dwindled, and finally shattered into a drift of dust and chips of bone.

The dracolich rolled to its feet and pivoted toward Taegan.

“Now,” it said, “where were we?”