Slathered in blood, dripping it on the stone floor, Malazan lunged at Dorn. He sidestepped, cut at the dragon’s mask, and his hand-and-half sword glanced off her scales. The gigantic red lashed her head to the side to catch him in her fangs, and he leaped backward. His foot landed and skidded in wet gore, throwing him off balance. The wyrm snatched for him with her talons—

And he woke flailing. Kara was leaning over his cot, touching his shoulder gently, and had to jerk away to dodge a sweep of his iron hand.

“Easy!” she said, her moon-blond hair shining in the gloom.

“I’m all right now,” he said, though that wasn’t entirely true.

Awake, he suffered the smoldering sting of his burns and blisters, wounds sustained when he didn’t quite manage to dodge a flare of Malazan’s fiery breath. The monastery had exhausted its supply of medicinal elixirs, and even with so many of its defenders slain, didn’t have enough priests to restore all those who remained to full health. Some men simply had to endure their wounds.

“I take it you were having a nightmare,” Kara said.

“Yes. I fight the battles when I’m awake, then have to do it all over again in my sleep.” Anxiety jolted him. “Battle. Malar’s claw, are the wyrms attacking?”

He scrambled up off the cot.

“No,” Kara said, taking hold of his forearm, restraining him. “Do you hear, everything’s quiet?”

He felt chagrined at his surge of panic. “Right. Sorry. I guess I’m too tired to think straight.”

“Everyone is,” she said, smiling. “But I’ve discovered something nonetheless. Do you sense anything different about me?”

He studied her. Something had changed, though he couldn’t quite tell what. The closest he could come was: “You seem … more like you were when I first knew you, in Ylraphon, and sailing down the Dragon Reach.”

“I am,” she said, “because I’ve virtually quelled the frenzy inside me. I recovered the enchantment Sammaster must use to keep the chromatics sane enough to serve his purposes. I tried it on myself, and it worked. Thanks be to Mystra that you held me to my task.”

“Then … this is it? We win?”

Some of the elation went out of her expression and she said, “Well, no. Remember, the Rage is waxing steadily stronger. In time, the defense will fail.”

“Still,” he said, feeling guilty to have dimmed her moment of triumph, “it buys us more time to solve the greater puzzle. Now we need to clear out of here, and give a dose of the remedy to your fellow rogues.” He sighed. “It will be hard to walk away from our comrades, but Cantoule swears the monks won’t abandon the monastery, no matter what.”

“We can’t, either. What I’ve gleaned thus far is only a fraction of the secrets concealed in the ancient books. We were right that we absolutely must save them, and the only way to do that is to break the siege.”

Dorn scowled, pondering the problem.

“That will take reinforcements powerful enough to make a difference against a horde of dragons,” he said, “and mobile enough to get here in time. With the rogues scattered across the North, that leaves the wizards in Thentia, though I hate the thought of it. They can’t unravel the answers we need if they’re fighting battles, certainly not if they die in them, and they might. They’re powerful, but for the most part, not veteran war mages. I don’t know how many of them could handle themselves in a conflict such as this.”

“I agree,” Kara said. “But we have an alternative. Lareth and other dragons who accept his authority are hiding somewhere in the Galenas, hoping their magical slumber will save them from the Rage. We thought of approaching him after our expedition into Northkeep, but decided we still hadn’t learned enough to persuade him that our scheme was superior to his.”

“But a charm to tame frenzy, even if only temporarily, ought to convince him, and he and the other metal drakes can fly south to save the monastery.” Dorn frowned and added, “That’s assuming we can find the refuge.”

“I hope we can. It’s probably not far from the bowl where Lareth convened his parliament of dragons.”

“Then that’s our plan. We’ll tell Cantoule, then you, Raryn, and I will leave through the caverns at once.”

“I understand that our task could scarcely be more urgent. Still, now that I’ve cleansed myself of the Rage, do you think we could steal just a few minutes for ourselves?” She lowered her eyes. “It wouldn’t be the long, sweet night I hoped for, but perhaps we’ll find some joy in it even so.”

Dorn felt a giddy surge of excitement. “I’m sure we will.”

Dorn and Kara found Raryn standing guard behind a breastwork constructed of broken stone. The burly dwarf took one look at them, and grinned.

“It’s about time,” he said.

Dorn felt his face grow hot, and dealt with the embarrassment by pressing on with the business at hand.

“The three of us are leaving,” he snapped.

“Why?” Raryn asked. Speaking in tandem, Dorn and Kara explained. But when they finished, the scout said, “That’s good news. But I think I’ll bide here for the time being. Chatulio blazed the trail through the caves, so you don’t need me to find the way out again, nor to talk to this King of Justice, either, I expect. But these lads”—he waved a broad, stubby-fingered hand at the haggard, dirty-faced monks standing guard alongside him—“might still need a dragon hunter to advise them. They’ve learned a lot, but maybe not all our tricks.”

“You realize,” said Dorn, “the monks can’t hold out much longer. Kara and I may not make it back in time. Or at all.”

Raryn shrugged. “Folk can only do their best, and let luck decide the rest. So the brothers and I will make our stand here, you’ll watch Kara’s back on her journey, and we’ll meet again when we can, in this life or the next.”

He held out his hand and Dorn clasped it.

Wineskin in hand Taegan sauntered through the tailor shop, inspecting the bales of cloth on their wooden spindles, passing judgment on each in turn.

“Hideous,” he declared. “Boring. Repulsive. Though admittedly, if I wanted garments the exact color of phlegm, it would do admirably. Garish enough to burn out a mole’s eyes. But wait!” He fingered the edge of an azure taffeta. “Is this from Sembia?”

“Yes, Maestro,” the tailor said. A tall, thin woman with long brown hair, she appeared more amused than vexed by Taegan’s disparagement of her stock. “You won’t find finer silk anywhere along the Moonsea.”

“I suspect that, unfortunately, you’re right,” Taegan said. “Do you think you could cut and stitch it into a proper doublet for me, as opposed to one of those shapeless tunics that, for some inexplicable reason, people seem to favor hereabouts?”

“I expect I could manage.”

“Then show me what you propose to line it with, and what you have in the way of fasteners.”

The tailor bustled away to fetch the desired items, leaving Taegan with Jivex and Rilitar. Neither was particularly appealing company at the moment. The normally garrulous faerie dragon had grown quiet, almost sullen, of late, perhaps from the strain of resisting frenzy. The elf wizard wore a frown.

“Your expression,” Taegan told him, “bespeaks a lamentable sobriety. Happily, the cure is at hand.”

He proffered the wineskin.

“No, thank you,” Rilitar said. “My friend, your … frivolity troubles me.”

Taegan hitched his shoulders and wings in a shrug. “I realize my concerns may seem eccentric here on the fringe of civilization. But I’m a gentleman of Lyrabar, and in that queen of cities, we prize stylish clothes, exquisite wines, and the pleasures of the table.”

“You didn’t seem to care about them so much when you first arrived.”

For a second, a vague anxiety stirred in Taegan’s mind, for it seemed to him that Rilitar’s statement was correct. Then he recognized it for the nonsense it truly was.

“I’ve always relished the finer things. If I didn’t seem to, it must have been because I fell into slovenly habits while traveling, cruelly separated from the amenities of urban life.”

“But should you let such trivialities preoccupy you when we have vital work in hand?”

“Do Jivex and I still patrol the town, seeking some sign of the chasme or its master?”

“Yes,” the elf said grudgingly.

“Are we doing all else that can be done?”

“I suppose.”

“Then please, permit me my petty amusements.”

“If I must.” Rilitar glanced down at Taegan’s feet. “I suppose a visit to the boot maker is next on the agenda.”

Once again, the avariel felt uneasy. “In fact, no. I like this pair.”

Was that actually the case, though? The boots were cracked, scuffed, a bit too loose, and a drab shade of brown, altogether wretched accessories to any rake’s ensemble.

Still, he thought, I have to keep them, precisely because they aren’t right. Because they aren’t even really mine. Then he realized that notion was another absurdity, and thrust it out of his mind.

Kara soared high above the bleak, snow-capped Galena Mountains. Seated astride her back, Dorn was cold despite the bright summer sun that made her blue scales sparkle like diamonds. He ignored the chill as best he could while scrutinizing the peaks below, even though it was unlikely that his merely human eyes would spot anything that her draconic sight, sharpened still further by enchantment, overlooked.

“Anything?” he called. He couldn’t quite break the habit of raising his voice when riding on her shoulders, with her head extended yards ahead of him, even though he’d learned her ears were keen enough to catch it even if he whispered.

“No,” Kara said, twisting her neck to glance back at him. “Perhaps I should have expected as much. Nexus is the greatest wizard among the golds. If he cast the spell to hide the sanctuary, it makes sense that we can’t find it. But I’d hoped he’d erect his barriers in such a way that dragons of goodly nature would have little trouble finding their way through. Alas, that doesn’t seem to be the case.”

“Because of Lareth’s spite, I imagine. You and the other rogues wouldn’t grovel to him, so he made sure you couldn’t change your minds and shelter in the refuge later on.”

“I pray that isn’t so. I’d rather believe Nexus had to cast the spells the way he did for some other reason.”

“Either way, what do we do now?”

“Keep searching. I don’t know what else we can do.”

So they glided back and forth, through the morning and into the afternoon, with the same lack of success, while frustration gnawed at Dorn and did its best to make him frantic.

Though not given to introspection, he recognized that he’d changed. Freak though he was, a woman had given him her love, and while the fact that she was also a dragon was a profound irony, in the end, it didn’t matter. Kara had made him happier than he’d believed possible, and in so doing, had taught him what it truly meant to be afraid.

For he dreaded losing her to the Rage as he’d never feared anything since the hour the red wyrm slaughtered his parents. The only hope of preventing it lay in finding Lareth’s refuge. It was too late to turn around and fly to Thentia. Raryn and the monks would never hold out that long.

So think! he told himself. There must be a way of find the sanctuary. If Pavel were here, he could puzzle it out. Try to use logic the way he would.

Start by admitting the haven was imperceptible to human eyes, and Kara’s senses, too. They hadn’t spotted it by direct observation, and weren’t going to.

But when they flew near it, what did they see instead? The semblance of an empty piece of ground, probably, but could the phantasm be perfect in every detail? Perhaps in the manner of a masterful painting or sculpture, but unlike a work of art, a part of Nature, even the most desolate, was never static. It was infinitely complex and constantly changing.

“Fly lower,” Dorn said.

“That will slow our search,” Kara replied. “We won’t be able to see as far.”

“It’s necessary. We need to look more closely at the ground.”

“If you think it will help….”

She furled her crystal-blue wings and swooped. The breeze fluttered his cloak and sleeves and ruffled his hair.

“I hope it will,” he said. “We’re not going to bother to spy for dragons or their tracks anymore, or the glow of enchantment.”

He imagined it to be a glow, anyway. He had no way of knowing what she actually saw when she perceived the presence of magic.

“Then what will we look for?” she asked.

“Pine needles that don’t smell right. A rill that sounds funny as it splashes over rocks. Brush that takes a second too long to rustle when a breeze kicks up, or shadows that don’t line up correctly with the sun. Anything wrong.”

“Tiny anomalies in the illusory landscape. It’s a good thought, and we’ll try it.”

And they attempted it for hours, while the sun sank in the west. Dorn began to despise himself for a fool, capable of conceiving only foolish, useless notions.

But then Kara said, “Look! Ahead and to the right …”

He leaned forward to obtain a clearer view past her shoulder, then said, “I don’t see anything.”

“Those crags yonder come together in a most peculiar fashion, too crowded and jumbled, the angles too acute. Look around, and you won’t see anything comparable among the neighboring peaks. I understand now. Nexus’s magic didn’t cover over the refuge with an illusion, not precisely. Instead, it blinds us to the sanctuary, and so we won’t wonder at the gap in our vision, tricks our minds into pulling the edges of the hole together.”

Dorn very much wanted to believe her, but feared she was making too much of a mass of rock. He’d seen stone shaped into many odd formations in the course of his wanderings.

He asked, “Are you sure?”

“I hope we both will be in a second. Now that I know where to target my own magic, perhaps I can strip away our blinders.”

She sang words of power, and the incantation echoed from the mountainsides. Loose stones clattered down the escarpments, and the vista before them seemed to split apart, making room for a new stretch of earth to ripple into existence. It was almost as if the mountains were giving birth. To a valley nestled between steep, rocky slopes, where dozens of metallic wyrms, their scales reflecting the sunlight like mirrors, lay motionless.

“You did it!” said Dorn.

“I accomplished the first part of it. Nexus has a second ward in place to defend the haven, though I can’t determine exactly what it does.”

“Can you dissolve it?”

She sang another spell, then said, “No. Not until it manifests, anyway.”

“Then how do we proceed?”

“We trigger it, and cope with the result. Hang on tight.”

Wheeling, she descended toward the depression among the peaks. Mouth dry, heart pounding, Dorn waited for something to strike at them. After a moment, he spotted what appeared to be an old man with a bald pate and a white beard standing on the high ground at the eastern edge of the refuge. Probably it was a dragon sentry who’d altered his form, the better to stave off frenzy. Whatever he truly was, he was waving his arms over his head, warning the newcomers away. He seemed to be shouting, too, but distance and the snapping of Kara’s wings covered up the sound.

The wind shrieked, and smashed into the flyers like a battering ram. It whirled Kara end over end, and tried to rip Dorn from her back. He caught hold of the dragon’s hide with his iron hand, plunging the talons into her scales. Even in that moment of terror, he hated the necessity, but had no choice except to cut her. Only the strength of his artificial arm could anchor him.

Even if she’d noticed the pain, Kara had more urgent matters to concern her. The gigantic whirlwind constantly threatened to smash her into the side of the mountain.

Her wings hammered. She had no hope of escaping the vortex, but by exerting herself to the utmost, managed to maneuver to a limited extent within it. For the first few seconds, it kept her from crashing against a cliff. She started singing a spell.

Lashed this way and that on her back, pressing himself against her body to deny the wind a purchase on him, nearly torn from his perch even so, Dorn occasionally caught a glimpse of the sentinel. The old man stood without difficulty on the rim of the valley. His robe wasn’t even flapping. Evidently the gale wasn’t blowing there, a circumstance that made Dorn hate him.

Kara finished her musical incantation. The vortex howled on, unaffected. She resumed her singing. Dorn’s heart sank, for though he couldn’t understand the lyrics, he recognized them as the same words, the same spell, as before. If it hadn’t worked the first time, it seemed unlikely to prevail ever, but evidently it was the only card she had to play.

For a second, Dorn saw the guard swelling into a winged and glittering shape, with a gold’s characteristic tendril “whiskers,” and a proud crest running almost the entire length of its body.

As Kara reached the end of her spell, thunder boomed, and the lightning that was a part of her nature blazed from the clear blue sky. But after the climactic note, the wind shrieked on, strong as before, and hurled her on through the air.

She began the counterspell once more. Lighting flashed and thunder roared in time with the melody. Dorn felt power accumulating around her, stinging his skin. Sparks danced and popped on his iron parts.

It’s going to work this time, he thought.

Then the great muscles heaved beneath her hide as she wrenched herself around in the air. A split second later, her ventral side smashed into a cliff face. As stones showered down and battered them both, Dorn understood that she’d twisted as she had to spare him the impact.

He couldn’t believe it mattered. Surely the collision had stunned or crippled her, and they’d roll down the mountainside together, the long tumble bashing and grinding their lives away. But she pushed off from the escarpment, pounded her pinions, and took flight again. Even more miraculously, neither the impact nor the pain of her foreleg breaking and a shaft of splintered bone stabbing through her hide had disrupted the precise enunciation of her song.

During the final phrase, the lighting burned so bright that Dorn had to hold his eyes shut, and the thunder boomed so loud it spiked pain through his ears. But then the whirlwind died all at once, as if it had never been.

Dorn slipped his bloody claws from Kara’s hide, then, as best he was able, gave her huge reptilian body a quick and clumsy embrace.

“This Nexus is no better a warlock than you,” he gasped.

“I love you for saying that,” Kara answered, “but we were very, very lucky.”

Below them, the gigantic gold spread its wings and leaped into the air.

“I guess now we need a little more luck,” said Dorn, readying his longbow. “At least I can help with this part.”

“Don’t shoot!” Kara said. “Not unless you’re sure he means us harm. That’s Tamarand, first among Lareth’s lieutenants. He doesn’t like needless killing.”

“Unless the Rage has taken hold of him.”

“He tried to wave us off,” she said, “so the whirlwind wouldn’t seize us. He wouldn’t have, if he were eager to see us dead.”

“Maybe not.”

Still, Dorn put an arrow on the string. He’d spent his life hating dragons, and even though he’d come to care for one in particular, that didn’t incline him to abandon his mistrust of the species as a whole.

Kara and Tamarand circled one another.

“Go away,” said the gold. “After much meditation, His Resplendence decreed that you and your fellow rebels are forbidden to avail yourselves of the sanctuaries. I’m not sure of his reasoning, but it doesn’t matter. You must depart, and weather the Rage elsewhere as best you can.”

“I must speak with Lareth,” Kara said. “Afterward, if it’s his will, I’ll go and never return.”

“You don’t understand. It will mean your death, and your companion’s too. I’m already derelict in my duty for not attacking you as soon as you quelled the wind storm.”

“I must speak with Lareth,” Kara repeated. “If I pay for the privilege with my life, so be it. I was right, Lord Tamarand. The Rage has a cause, and a cure as well. My friends and I have discovered part of the remedy, and know how to obtain the rest. But I need the help of the dragons hibernating here.”

The gold stared at her, then asked, “Can this be true?”

“Yes,” said Dorn, “luckily for the rest of you. Because her discoveries are the only hope for you strutting, preening golds and silvers.”

“Land,” said Tamarand, “and I’ll wake His Resplendence. I urge you to treat him with all the deference that is his due.”

The two dragons spiraled down and lit among the rows of their slumbering fellows. Once Dorn swung himself down from Kara’s back and stepped away from her, he saw that the punctures his claws had made and the broken foreleg she cradled against her breast were scarcely her only injuries. The collision with the mountainside had scraped and bloodied the entire underside of her body. In contrast, the golden scales of the larger wyrm gleamed without a single blemish, a fact that made the hunter’s jaw clench in another spasm of dislike.

“I regret,” Tamarand said, “that I’m no healer.”

“We can attend to my hurts later,” Kara said.

“I pray that’s so. I’ll take you to His Resplendence.”

Kara and Dorn followed where he led, the crystal-blue dragon bard hobbling on three legs, the half-golem trotting to keep up with his companions’ longer strides, past one immense, coiled, motionless wyrm after another. They meandered to avoid clambering over the sleepers, but Dorn soon made out where they were headed. At the northern end of the depression, somewhat separate from the other reptiles, lay a gold even huger than Tamarand—perhaps even more colossal than Malazan.

“It will only take a few moments to wake him,” Tamarand said.

The words of power hissed and rumbled from his throat. For a moment, the air took on a greenish tinge, and Dorn’s ears ached as if he was deep underwater.

Lareth groaned, the sound a bone-shaking rumble, and his yellow eyes fluttered open. He clambered to his feet and swung his head from side to side, peering about. He seemed confused, and Dorn felt a pang of foreboding.

Then the gold’s gaze locked on Kara. His eyes burned brighter, the glow perceptible even in sunlight. He lifted his head and his throat swelled, kindling its fire.

“No, Your Resplendence,” Tamarand cried, “please! I gave Karasendrieth permission to enter the refuge.”

For a second, it looked to Dorn as if Lareth was going to attack anyway, but then the King of Justice turned his glare on his deputy.

“I ordered you to kill anyone who overcame Nexus’s wards. Including the traitors. Especially them.”

“With respect, Your Resplendence,” Kara said, “I disagree with your plan for surviving the Rage, but that doesn’t make me a traitor to my people.”

“You’re a traitor twice over,” Lareth said. “Once for defying the decision of our conclave, and again for bringing a human here.” He sneered. “If, indeed, this gruesome mix of iron and flesh is human. Whatever he is, no outsider can know the location of the refuge. That’s the only way to keep it safe. Therefore, both you and he must die.”

“I’m prepared to,” she replied. “But first I have a tale to tell.”

“I won’t listen,” said the ancient gold. “I’ve wasted enough time attending to your folly.”

“Please,” Tamarand said, “hear her out. She says she’s found a cure for the Rage, or at least is on the verge.”

Lareth snorted. “No one can cure the Rage, because it isn’t a sickness. It’s simply an aspect of our nature. Your judgment is failing you, my brother, and in consequence, you’ve nearly failed our people and me. But you can redeem yourself. Help me kill the intruders as you ought to have done in the first place.”

Dorn yanked his sword from its scabbard and came on guard.

“Try it, then,” he spat. “Over the past few months, I’ve run up a nice tally of slaughtered wyrms. Blacks and greens. Ooze and magma drakes. It might be fun, adding a couple golds to the score.”

“Don’t confuse us with dragons bound to darkness,” Lareth said. “We’re a different order of being.”

“Well,” said Dorn, “that’s the question, isn’t it? Are you really any different from the reds and their kind, or do you just pretend to be? I used to believe all dragons were cruel and selfish. I had reason. Then I met Kara, learned how gentle and kind she is, and started to change my mind. But maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe she’s as much a freak among her race as I am among mine.”

“Please, Your Resplendence,” Tamarand said, “I can’t help but think it would indeed be harsh to slay these folk without even listening to their petition. Whatever her past transgressions, Karasendrieth came here in peace.”

“Very well, Tamarand,” Lareth growled, “only for the sake of our friendship.” He glowered at Kara. “Speak your piece, singer, and I suggest you make it convincing.”

“Thank you, Your Resplendence,” Kara said.

For the next hour, she recounted the story of the rogues, their allies, and their investigations, and did indeed employ all her bardic eloquence to make the complex narrative as clear and compelling as possible. Tamarand’s eyes grew wide with wonder and dawning hope.

But Lareth’s hostile, contemptuous glare never wavered, and at the end of it all, he simply snapped, “Now you stand thrice condemned. The third time for consorting with a vampire drake, as foul an abomination as ever stalked the world.”

“What of the rest of my tale?” Kara asked, her musical voice as calm and steady as before.

“Lies,” Lareth said, “or madness. It doesn’t matter which.”

“Can we be certain of that,” asked Tamarand “without a test? Karasendrieth claims she has a charm to quell the Rage. Very well. Let her cast it on me.”

“I won’t have her laying a curse on you.”

“I’m willing to risk—”

“No!” Lareth roared. The bellow echoed off the mountainsides, and flame crackled from his maw. “The snake wants to cast me down, and destroy our entire race! She’s already subverting your loyalty. I can see it! But she won’t succeed in her designs. I rule here! I, Lareth, King of Justice, and now I’ll mete out justice to her and her creature!”

He spread his wings.

Dorn felt sick with dread. Lareth was mad. They couldn’t reason with him, and with Kara injured, her magic already depleted by the struggle to still the whirlwind, the hunter was grimly certain they couldn’t defeat the gold, either. But it seemed they had no choice but to try. Since Lareth was about to take flight, the hunter thrust his sword point-first into the ground and snatched for an arrow.

Then Tamarand cried, “Abdicate!”

Startled, astonished, Lareth rounded on him. “What did you say?”

“Abdicate,” the smaller gold repeated. “You see insanity everywhere but festering inside yourself. But as your deputy, your comrade, and your friend, I must alert you, frenzy has you in its grip. I couldn’t bear to believe it, but it’s so. You must step down—for everyone’s sake, including your own.”

“Thus making you King of Justice,” Lareth sneered.

“I don’t aspire to your rank,” Tamarand said. “That has nothing to do with it.”

“You lie,” Lareth said. “But I forgive you. I understand you’re not yourself. But speak no more of this.”

“I must. If you won’t abdicate, then I challenge you for your position.”

Lareth bared his huge ivory fangs. “No gold has ever perpetrated such an insolence.”

“Yet the law permits it. As the keeper of our traditions, you should know it better than anyone.”

“Fine, then!” Lareth screamed, spewing fire. “Have it so! I renounce you and I will kill you!”

“We’ll see,” Tamarand said. “Let’s wake Nexus and Havarlan. The protocols require witnesses.”

Nexus proved to be another huge gold, whose narrow eyes and an unusually full “beard” of fleshy tendrils gave him a look of sagacity. Havarlan, Barb—or captain—of the martial fellowship of silvers called the Talons of Justice, was a lithe drake with a number of vivid scars crisscrossing her argent hide.

When apprised of what had transpired, both dragons were appalled.

“Your Resplendence,” said Nexus, “Lord Tamarand, I beg you to reconsider. Surely we can find a better way to resolve this disagreement.”

“It’s too late for that,” Lareth said.

“My friends …” Havarlan began.

“Too late!” the King of Justice snarled.

Dorn edged up beside Kara. “Is it too late?” he whispered. “Now that Lareth’s distracted, can you dose him with the cure whether he likes it or not?”

“No,” she said. “Perhaps Sammaster could, but my comprehension of the spell, my mastery of it, is incomplete. For me to cast it successfully, the recipient must consent.”

“Then we’ve got to help Tamarand. He’s outmatched.”

“We can’t do that, either. No matter how stealthy we tried to be, Nexus would likely detect it, and this is supposed to be single combat. If we meddled to influence the outcome, all these others would turn on us immediately. Probably even Tamarand would strive to strike us down.”

Dorn felt angry and sick with helplessness. “So all we can do is watch, even though our lives hang in the balance?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Lareth and Tamarand stalked to the opposite ends of the cut then, with beats of their gleaming golden pinions, sprang up onto the rim. Nexus hesitated as if giving them one final opportunity to relent, then spat a flare of blue and yellow fire straight up into air. The duelists took flight.

Each dragon climbed rapidly, striving to rise above the other, and quickly recited words of power. Lareth finished his incantation first. An oval of roiling reddish-purple light, or perhaps some otherworldly flame, expanded around Tamarand, engulfing him. It looked like a gigantic, demonic mouth opening in empty air.

The younger gold screeched in pain, spoiling his invocation. He furled his wings and dived, evidently to escape the hovering magical field as quickly as possible.

The result was that Lareth achieved the advantage in altitude. He climbed even higher and declaimed a second spell. Tamarand convulsed, floundering in flight. Watching from far below, Dorn couldn’t tell exactly how the magic had hurt the smaller gold, but it plainly had.

Still, Tamarand shook off the pain and struck back with a conjuration or innate power of his own. A dazzling light exploded into being in front of Lareth’s mask, so painfully bright that, from Dorn’s vantage point, it was as if the sun had instantaneously shifted across the sky. He squinched his eyes shut and twisted his face away.

When he looked again, through floating blobs of afterimage, Lareth was twisting his neck back and forth, casting about. Had the burst of glare blinded him? Not entirely, Dorn suspected, but Tamarand had also maneuvered to put the floating purple-red haze between them. The seething cloud wasn’t opaque, but to some degree, it veiled what lay behind it, and that, combined with the insult to Lareth’s eyes, seemed to have confused the elder gold as to the precise location of his foe.

Hit him now, Dorn silently urged Tamarand. Maybe he won’t see it coming.

But Tamarand didn’t attack. Instead, he cast what was evidently a defensive enchantment. His gleaming, serpentine body started flickering, present one instant, absent the next.

Meanwhile, Lareth succeeded in orienting on his foe, then snarled an incantation that, for an instant, made the air above him curdle and twist into leering spectral faces. He brandished his forefoot, and a jagged bolt of blackness sprang forth and hurtled unimpeded through the smoldering cloud, down at Tamarand.

Tamarand tried to dodge, raising one wing and dipping the other, but was too slow. Luckily, though, he disappeared just as the lance of shadow was about to stab him, then popped back into view a split second after it streaked by. Lareth roared in fury.

The two dragons began to conjure once more, even as they continued to maneuver. Lareth plainly wanted to close with Tamarand so he could bring his greater size and physical strength to bear. But evidently he couldn’t safely enter the seething oval cloud, even though he himself had created it. Accordingly, the younger gold was doing his best to keep the magical obstacle between them.

Tamarand completed an incantation. Lareth’s shadow surged up from the rocky, uneven ground below, swelled large enough to dwarf the immense creature who’d cast it, and stretching fantastically, reached for him with its claws.

To Dorn, the effect was terrifying, but Lareth seemed to pay it no mind, defying it, opposing its power with force of will, perhaps, and to good effect. The titanic phantom frayed into nothingness a moment before it would otherwise have seized him, and he had a normal shadow once more, flowing and wheeling across the mountainsides.

Lareth snarled the final phrase of a spell, vanished, and instantly reappeared on the other side of the wound in the air, directly above his foe. Wings furled, talons poised, he plummeted—straight through the space his target had just vacated.

The flickering had protected Tamarand again. But in Dorn’s estimation, it was an imperfect defense. Eventually, it would fail to snatch the smaller gold away at exactly the right moment, and an attack would strike him.

Yet for the time being, it had given him the advantage in height. Popping in and out of view, leathery wings pounding and flashing in the sunlight, he climbed, widening the vertical distance separating him from his adversary. Lareth leveled off, wheeled, and gave chase.

Tamarand angled his head down toward his foe and hissed. The sibilant sound was another sort of spell. Even though Dorn wasn’t the target, the magic made him feel groggy, sway, and stumble a step. Perhaps it was supposed to make Lareth fall asleep, but it had no effect on him.

“No,” Kara groaned. “No, no, no.”

“What is it?” asked Dorn.

“The shadow spell simply induces fear,” said the bard, “and the hissing deadens the mind. Tamarand’s trying to win without actually harming Lareth.”

“Is he insane, too? The king’s stronger. Tamarand can’t afford to go easy on him.”

“I know.”

Lareth spewed a plume of fire upward. Tamarand veered. The flame caught him visible and vulnerable, but only the periphery of the flare brushed him, blistering and blackening the end of one outstretched wing. Unfortunately, though, the evasive maneuver cost him a precious moment of furious climbing. His foe, a more powerful flyer, was rapidly beating his way up to the same altitude.

Each gold commenced another conjuration. The magical force gathering in the air around them sent rings of distortion expanding outward across the sky, like ripples in a pool where someone tossed a stone. A shrill whine set Dorn’s teeth on edge.

Tamarand reached the end of his recitation first. Lareth made a retching sound and fell silent.

“By all the songs ever sung!” Kara exclaimed.

“What?” asked Dorn.

“Tamarand’s stolen Lareth’s voice, and thus, his ability to declaim spells. Perhaps we were too pessimistic. Maybe if Tamarand can keep away from the king, maybe he can win after all.”

Enraged, Lareth managed to lash his wings up and down even faster and draw even closer to his foe. He spat a blast of flame that would have squarely engulfed Tamarand except that the younger wyrm flickered out of harm’s way.

Tamarand dived, giving up altitude for the added speed gravity provided, at the same time starting an incantation. Compensating, Lareth swooped after him.

The mad gold nearly closed with his lieutenant, and Tamarand enunciated the final word of power. He tilted his wings, and easily, or so it appeared to Dorn, dodged the claws of his hurtling foe. In the moments that followed, he widened the distance separating him from Lareth. It seemed plain that enchantment had made him faster and more nimble in the air.

Thereafter, he dueled Lareth at long range. The elder gold spewed flare after flare of fire, but each fell short. Meanwhile Tamarand assailed his opponent with a succession of spells, shafts of multicolored light and streaks of gray shadow that carved no visible wounds but made Lareth flinch and flail.

“Surrender!” Tamarand bellowed. “I don’t want to hurt you, but you must see I have you at my mercy.”

Lareth simply flew at him yet again. Tamarand resumed his conjuring.

The magenta cleft in the sky folded in on itself and vanished, and a moment later, Tamarand stopped flickering, as the spells that had created the effects reached the ends of their existences. Lareth vanished and instantly reappeared just above and behind his deputy.

Horrified, Dorn realized what had happened. Back at the beginning of the duel, Lareth had invested himself with the power to translate himself through space not just once, but multiple times. Obviously the spell had a longer duration than the flickering. After using it once, Lareth, frustrated by his lieutenant’s ability to avoid attacks, had decided to forgo another such leap until the protective enchantment ran its course. That way, maybe he’d catch Tamarand by surprise.

As he did. His booming blaze of fiery breath seared the younger gold from head to tail. The edges of Tamarand’s wings burned and flaked away like dry leaves.

Lareth plunged down and forward. Tamarand flung himself to the side. The larger wyrm’s claws tore furrows in his seared, cracked hide.

Tamarand tried to evade his adversary, but their enchantment notwithstanding, his seared wings were slower than before. With his ability to shift instantly from one spot to another, Lareth had no trouble keeping up with the smaller drake. He slashed long gashes in Tamarand’s flanks, bit a chunk of flesh from his shoulder, and spat fire directly into his mask.

At last Tamarand struck back in the same brutal fashion. If he hoped to survive, he had no choice. His talons ripped at Lareth. At the same time, he snarled an incantation, somehow forcing the words out in a steady rhythm despite the recurring shocks as his sovereign scored on him again and again.

Lareth evidently recognized the spell, and perhaps feared it, for he attacked even more savagely, his fangs tearing such a gaping wound in Tamarand’s neck that Dorn winced, certain the hurt was lethal. But the younger gold kept chanting.

On the final word, power screamed across the mountains, and the whole world seemed to tilt. Dorn’s muscles cramped, and his belly churned with nausea.

Lareth’s body changed. For a second, the hunter couldn’t make out how, then realized the dragon had gone utterly limp, while his flopping, sagging shape had lost definition. It was as if the bones had melted away inside him.

Such an amorphous lump of flesh couldn’t extend its wings and fly. Lareth plummeted, and Dorn peered eagerly to watch the dragon king splash to pieces on the ground. But Tamarand dived and caught the other reptile. Lareth’s weight was too great for the smaller wyrm to support easily, but still he managed a relatively gentle descent, his burned and tattered pinions hammering.

“Yield!” Tamarand pleaded.

In answer, Lareth’s body jerked in his grasp, the limbs straightening and stiffening. Dorn belatedly recalled that for a gold dragon, or any other shapechanger, a transformation like the one the demented wyrm had endured was merely a momentary inconvenience.

Nearly restored, Lareth’s claws fumbled at Tamarand. In another heartbeat or so, they’d be firm and strong enough to shred him, just as his squirming jaws would strike and spew their fire. Except that Tamarand denied them the chance. Exploiting his master’s final moment of helplessness, the younger gold tore at him with fang and talon, then cast him down.

Dorn waited for Lareth to spread his wings and arrest his fall. He never did. He dropped like a stone, and disappeared into the cleft between two mountains. A moment later, a loud, flat thump reverberated.

Tamarand spiraled down after his foe and disappeared into the gulf. Nexus and Havarlan spread their wings, sprang into the air, and followed. Awkwardly, because of her broken leg, Kara lowered herself to help Dorn haul himself onto her back. Then they too flew to see what had happened.

They all found Tamarand standing before Lareth’s shattered corpse at the shadowy bottom of the gorge, near a gurgling brook with mossy banks. Earlier, Dorn had resented Tamarand for being whole while Kara was injured. He had no cause for such rancor anymore. The dragon lord was even more grievously wounded than the hunter had anticipated, his hide such a blackened patchwork of gory cuts and seeping wounds that scarcely a glimmer of gold remained. The reek of blood and charred flesh utterly overpowered the odor of saffron that was his species’s usual scent.

His pain was surely excruciating, yet Dorn could tell that the dragon king’s most profound agony was of the spirit. As Kara touched down beside Havarlan, Tamarand raised his head and howled a long, wordless cry of lamentation. The wail echoed from the walls of the ravine.

Nexus inclined his head. “Your Resplendence,” he said.

Eyes blazing, Tamarand rounded on his fellow gold. “Don’t call me that! The King of Justice lies dead before you, foully murdered by a treacherous retainer!”

“The former King of Justice lies before us,” Havarlan said, “fairly overthrown in a lawful challenge.”

“I didn’t want to kill him,” Tamarand said. “I had no right.”

“You had every right,” the silver said. “What you lacked was a choice. By the end, we all recognized the necessity.”

“He was the wisest and noblest of us all. He was my liege lord and my friend,” said Tamarand. He turned to glare at Kara and Dorn. “May the gods curse you for coming here this day.”

“Perhaps they will, Your Resplendence,” the song dragon said. “Meanwhile, we have a more general blight to concern us.”

“I told you not to call me that! I won’t be King of Justice. I won’t clamber over my brother’s corpse to usurp his rank.”

“If you won’t claim Lareth’s crown,” Nexus said, “who will?”

“I don’t care!” Tamarand snarled. “No one, perhaps. The silvers have no sovereign. Perhaps we golds would be better off if we didn’t, either.”

“I don’t care a thimble of piss what you call yourself,” Dorn said. “But until we end the Rage, you’ve got to lead. Why else did you fight?”

“He’s right,” Kara said. “We must save our own race, and the small folk as well. All across Faerûn, flights of our evil kindred lay waste to the land, slaughtering multitudes, destroying towns and villages, and leaving desolation, starvation, and pestilence in their wake. In their despair and desperation, the survivors wage war on one another for whatever food, shelter, and treasure remains. Meanwhile, ensconced in their secret strongholds, Sammaster and his cultists spawn dracoliches in sufficient numbers to conquer the world.

“Armored against the Rage,” the dragon bard continued, “you metallic drakes can leave your havens and make your benevolent presence felt in the land once more. With your might, you can avert the calamities that threaten to drown the world in blood and darkness. That is, Milord, if you will have it so.”

Tamarand stared at her for what seemed a long while. At last he said, “How quickly can you mute the frenzy in all the dragons gathered in this sanctuary?”

“I can only cast the spell a couple times each day,” she said. “To do so expends a portion of my power, just like any other magic. But if I teach the charm to the three of you, and you in turn share it with others, we can help all the sleepers fairly quickly.”

Tamarand turned to Nexus. “Can your sorcery translate our forces instantly to the Monastery of the Yellow Rose?”

“Not in the way you’re hoping,” Nexus replied, “not all at once. I can only shift myself and one other dragon at a time. Our people are simply too big and heavy for me to carry any more, and even I can only work that particular magic a few times in the course of any given day.”

“I think,” Havarlan said, “that if we go to fight a horde of reds and their ilk, we must arrive in strength. The chromatics will have little trouble overwhelming us if we appear a couple at a time.”

“Then we’ll apply Karasendrieth’s remedy to the fastest flyers first,” Tamarand said. “When we judge we have a sufficient number, we’ll wing our way south, and pray we reach our goal in time. Let’s get started.”

Nexus, Havarlan, and Kara unfurled their wings. Tamarand however, made no move to do the same.

“Are you coming?” Nexus asked. “I mean to wake Marigold immediately, to tend your wounds and the bard’s.”

“I’ll be there,” Tamarand said. “I just need a moment to say farewell, and beg forgiveness.”

He turned away, back toward the fallen Lareth, his grief and guilt so palpable that Dorn, who’d never in his life expected to truly regret the suffering of any dragon except Kara and Chatulio, felt a pang of sympathy nonetheless.