25 Eleint, the Year of Rogue Dragons

The hobgoblins had left signs, white stones arranged into glyphs on the ground and symbols hacked into tree bark, for those able to interpret them. Raryn could, but didn’t need the warnings to sense the blight infecting the wooded hillsides, though most of the manifestations were subtle.

The trees weren’t monstrously deformed, but a little stunted and twisted, and already dropping their leaves as if resigned to the advent of autumn. Night birds fluttered from limb to limb, and animals scurried in the brush, but not often, and when Raryn caught a glimpse of one, it had a starved and mangy look. The gray mist hanging in the air was similarly unsettling. The chill it carried couldn’t bother him, but it felt slimy as well as wet.

Of course, even if a traveler missed all that, the horses’ refusal to proceed beyond a certain point had been the final giveaway.

Yes, something inimical had taken root there. The question, though, was whether it was the Nars’ Hermit or something less exotic. Offhand, Raryn could think of several creatures whose mere presence acted to corrupt the air, earth, and water in their environs. He and his partners sometimes earned their pay hunting them, and as often as not, it was Raryn’s job to range ahead of the others, looking for sign, spying out the lay of the land, and making sure they didn’t all blunder into danger in one clump.

He was performing the same function while Taegan and Jivex scouted from the air. With luck, somebody would spot something informative before they all probed too much deeper into this nasty place. It was giving him a headache.

He glanced back, making sure he wasn’t outdistancing his comrades on the ground. They were at the limit of his night sight, but he had little trouble making them out.

Or at least, such was the case at first. Gradually, though, the fog thickened, until Taegan and Jivex swooped down to join him.

“If we keep flying,” the avariel said, “we’re liable to lose track of the rest of you. The mist obscures you.”

“I suspect,” Raryn said, “it’s hiding something else, too. Because it can’t be natural, coming on like this. The weather’s wrong. We’ll wait here and let the others catch up. We should all be one group again.”

So they stood, turning, peering into swirling, billowing murk, listening to silence, for what felt like too long a time. Then, finally, shadowy figures appeared.

Raryn felt a jolt of alarm, but for an instant wasn’t sure why. By the time he realized the advancing party didn’t include a dragon in its true form, and that the enormous Brimstone with his luminous eyes ought to be visible if anyone was, Jivex was already flitting forward to greet the new arrivals.

“What kept you?” the faerie dragon asked.

No one answered. Instead, the white-haired thing masquerading as Kara snarled, baring its fangs, and pounced. As it attacked, some glamour fell away from it and its companions. No one could mistake the animate corpses for the bard, her friends, or anything alive. The stench of their rotten flesh burned in Raryn’s nostrils even from several paces away.

Caught off guard, Jivex simply hovered as the Kara-thing lunged at him. Raryn nocked an arrow and let it fly. The shaft streaked under the little dragon to bury itself in his assailant’s torso. Possibly more troubled by the enchantment bound in the point than by physical trauma, the creature stumbled and fell backward.

The other undead charged, and with a snap of his wings, Taegan sprang to meet them. He rattled off a charm as his sword darted left and right, and several phantom duplicates sprang into existence around him. Jivex whirled through the air, raking at the foes’ crumbling faces and glassy eyes as he shot over them.

Raryn exchanged his bow for his ice-axe and advanced to join the melee.

The bloated, hulking thing that had impersonated Dorn bashed at him with the branch it was using for a makeshift warclub, and he sprang inside its reach to avoid the blow. He struck at its knee, half severing its lower leg, and the undead toppled forward. He stepped behind it, poising his axe for a chop at its spine.

But that move brought him face to face with the little Will-thing, lurking behind its ally. Maybe it was a dead halfling. The decay, some patches wet, others dry and crumbling, made it impossible to be certain.

It sprang at him with a rusty dagger in either fist. He swept the axe around in a block that barely succeeded in deflecting both stabs, then split the creature’s skull.

As he strained to free his weapon, the Dorn-thing rolled over and reached for him. Taegan lunged, drove his point into its torso, and its upper body flopped back onto the ground.

“That’s the last of these,” the bladesinger said, “but there’s still no sign of our friends.”

“Then we’ll have to go find them,” Raryn said.

They hurried back the way they’d come, until they exited the fog nearly as abruptly and cleanly as if they’d stepped out of a house. Plainly, it was a creation of magic, and one of their comrades had cast a counterspell to scour a section of it from existence. It seemed evident, too, that the vapor must muffle sound, for since it no longer clogged Raryn’s ears, he heard Kara’s battle anthem, and other sounds of combat, clearly enough.

His missing friends stood in a circle with shambling corpses and floating, lunging shadows attacking from all sides. Brimstone and Kara—in dragon form—met the threat with spells and flares of their respective breath weapons. Pavel invoked Lathander’s red-gold light. Will slung stones and Dorn loosed arrows when they had the luxury, but they mostly used their swords when one foe or another charged into striking distance.

“Kara!” Raryn bellowed. “We need a way in!”

The song dragon turned in his direction and spat a bright, crackling flare of vapor. It blasted some of the undead into oblivion and left others floundering in what sufficed them for pain.

Raryn, Taegan, and Jivex raced forward, across the ground she’d cleared. Though it wasn’t entirely clear. A charred husk on the ground grabbed Raryn’s ankle, and he had to jerk free. Another corpse-thing shambled at him, and he veered to avoid it. A wraith in the form of a woman, luminous, transparent, body rippling like a banner in the wind, congealed out of empty air to bar the way, and together, he and the avariel chopped and slashed it from existence.

They rushed on into the circle, then turned to stand with their friends against a horde of foes that, for a time, seemed endless.

Raryn swung his axe again and again, until it grew heavy in his hands, the breath rasped in his throat, and his heart hammered in his chest. He knew that Will, cutting with his hornblade; Taegan, fighting by turns on the ground and in the air; and even Dorn, despite the indefatigable strength of his iron parts; must have been growing just as weary. The spellcasters were undoubtedly running short of magic, too.

But at last they were visibly thinning the ranks of the enemy. They only needed to keep fighting a little while longer, then all the undead would be gone. It was going to be all right.

Or so he imagined. Until he noticed the long shape crouched on the crest of a hill.

He wasn’t sure this was really the first time he’d caught a glimpse of it. Maybe it simply hadn’t registered before, as, amid the frenzy of battle, he’d mistaken it for the fallen tree it resembled in the misty dark. But he realized the hulking shape hadn’t been there when he’d first studied the ground ahead. It was something animate that had crept to its present position. Something powerful enough to command a horde of undead, which it had used simply to soften the searchers up for the kill.

A final ghoul sprang at Raryn, and he smashed its skull with the axe. Jivex crowed, “I win again!” Then the Hermit floated straight up into the air.

“Bright spirits of melody,” Kara breathed. “It’s a linnorn. A corpse tearer.”

Will snatched the warsling from his belt. “That’s a problem, isn’t it?”

As he scrambled to ready his bow, Raryn was certain the halfling was correct. The reptile was colossal, maybe even bigger than Malazan, with patches of mold and lichen encrusting its dark, slimy scales. It had no wings, or hind legs either, and must move along the ground with a strange combination of striding and slithering. Still, it was plainly some sort of wyrm, ancient and accordingly wise and powerful.

Raryn struggled to draw what comfort he could from the fact that he had two—three, if you counted Jivex—dragons on his side. Then, without warning, Brimstone wheeled, lashed his wings, and sprang at Pavel with outstretched talons.

Flying several yards above the ground, Taegan caught a glimpse of sudden motion below. He looked down. As if the situation wasn’t dire enough, Brimstone had evidently gone mad and decided to destroy the “sun priest” he so despised. Meanwhile, Pavel was gawking at the hovering linnorn like everybody else. He hadn’t even noticed his death hurtling through the air.

Taegan dived.

He couldn’t scoop up the human and fly away with him. His wings weren’t strong enough. So he simply slammed into Pavel and knocked him to the side. Brimstone crashed down on the spot his prey had just occupied and wheeled to attack anew. His sweeping tail tore through brush and tossed rotting leaves into the air.

Pavel had fallen to his knees and was plainly still befuddled. It was up to Taegan to thwart the smoke drake once again. He touched down and whirled, interposing himself between Brimstone and the cleric. The vampire struck at him, and he sidestepped. As the huge fangs clashed shut, he drove Rilitar’s sword into Brimstone’s jaw.

Brimstone pivoted and raised a forefoot high to rake or trample. Taegan beat his pinions, trying to take to the air, but the wyrm shifted, spreading and interposing one of his own gigantic bat wings to cut him off. Taegan had no choice but to touch down once more.

Claws flashed at him. He dodged, tried to cut at the vampire’s foot, and missed. Jaws gaping, Brimstone’s head shot forward—

Red-gold light warmed the night and gilded the drifting tendrils of fog. Brimstone screeched and recoiled. Holding his glowing amulet high, limping slightly, lean, intelligent face resolute, Pavel advanced on the drake. Evidently he hadn’t used up all his daily allotment of miracles fighting the ghouls and specters, and thanks be to Lady Firehair for that.

With Brimstone balked, at least for the moment, Taegan had the chance to glance around and see just how badly everything else was progressing. The Hermit hissed foul-sounding syllables, no doubt the opening words of an incantation in some devilish language. Wings pounding, Kara and Jivex soared toward the floating creature, even though its immensity dwarfed them both. Indeed, by comparison, the faerie dragon looked tiny as a gnat.

“Please!” Kara called. “There’s no need to fight! We only want to talk to you!”

The corpse tearer continued its conjuring.

“Kill it!” Dorn bellowed, loosing an arrow. “Don’t let it finish the spell!”

Kara managed another flare of bright, sizzling breath. Jivex optimistically spat his own glittering, euphoria-inducing exhalation at the Hermit’s snout. Arrows pierced mossy scales as big as a man’s hand. Will’s skiprocks battered their mark, one after another.

The harassment didn’t seem to bother the linnorn in the slightest. It certainly didn’t hamper its recitation. It growled three final rhyming words, and a cloud of dark vapor billowed into existence around it. Caught inside the murk, Kara and Jivex floundered in flight, and their hides blistered. Jaws spreading wide, the Hermit lunged to seize the dragon bard in the moment of her incapacity.

Dorn drove an arrow straight into one of the black pits that were the corpse tearer’s eyes. Even that didn’t make the creature react as if it were truly experiencing any pain, but perhaps it annoyed it, for it left off rushing at Kara to glare at the half-golem and spew black, roiling fumes from its mouth.

Taegan caught a whiff of the nasty-smelling stuff, and for a moment, his muscles twitched and shuddered. The bulk of the Hermit’s breath washed over Dorn, Will, and Raryn. All three staggered, but only the human and halfling caught their balance again as the fumes dissipated. Raryn collapsed and sprawled convulsing on the ground.

Meanwhile, Brimstone stopped retreating before Pavel’s advance and Lathander’s light. Eyes squinched nearly shut against the glow, he crouched, then charged forward into the aura of holy power like a man trying to smash down a door. Wings pounding, Taegan rushed to help his comrade stand against the drake.

Fighting Brimstone and keeping him away from the folk busy shooting and slinging at the Hermit left Taegan little opportunity to watch the rest of the battle unfold, but the few glimpses he caught suggested a catastrophe in the making. The linnorn possessed a seemingly inexhaustible store of spells, and no matter how everyone tried to hurt and hinder it, it cast them one after another.

A flying, rotating cylinder of blades shimmered into being in midair, shearing into Kara’s flank before she spun clear.

Flame streaked down from the sky to engulf Dorn, burning his human half and igniting his clothing. He flung himself on the ground and rolled to extinguish the blaze.

Jivex summoned a gigantic owl to fight for him, but with a single snap of its jaws, the Hermit annihilated the bird before it even finished materializing. The faerie dragon next attempted to blind his foe by conjuring a whirl of colors before its eyes. The linnorn seemed simply to will the illusion away, and it vanished. The Hermit then lifted its prodigious talons, and would likely have ripped Jivex from existence just as easily if Kara, still singing despite the bloody gashes in her side, hadn’t hurtled forward to distract it.

As he dodged a potentially bone-shattering flick of Brimstone’s tail, Taegan struggled not to panic. He and his friends had stood against chromatic dragons, a dracolich, a sunwyrm, demons, and plenty of other formidable foes. Surely they could defeat the linnorn, too.

But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t make himself believe it. Some other night, perhaps, but not then, when they were already spent and luck was running against them.

Unless …

He turned to Pavel and cried, “You have to hold Brimstone back by yourself!” He looked up at Jivex and Kara. “Flee! Get as far away as you can.” He beat his wings and leaped closer to Dorn, Will, and Raryn, who, though still shaking, was struggling back to his feet. “Keep shooting! Hurt the thing!”

“What do you think we’ve been trying to do?” snapped Will, spinning his warsling. “Treat it to a sausage and a jack of ale?”

“Make the Hermit focus on you so Kara and Jivex can get clear,” Taegan continued.

Dorn loosed an arrow. “What’s the plan?”

“Just trust me.” Taegan rattled off one of the few spells he hadn’t already expended.

The world flickered and leaped around him and he was flying above and behind the Hermit’s colossal head with its writhing hairlike cilia and encrustations of fungus. The reptile’s neck was like a twisting highway beneath him.

Back on the ground, tiny with distance, Pavel, his mystical abilities apparently utterly exhausted, battled Brimstone with his mace alone. Hornblade drawn, Will scrambled to help him. Dorn and Raryn kept shooting at the Hermit and had likewise taken up Taegan’s cry, bellowing for Kara and Jivex to get away.

The dragons were trying, but the corpse tearer wouldn’t allow it. Ignoring the barrage of arrows, it pressed Jivex and Kara so hard they couldn’t escape. Neither could turn tail without inviting a rear attack.

Taegan had hoped to put his own stratagem to the test before the Hermit even realized he was hovering nearby, but plainly, it wasn’t possible. Kara and Jivex wouldn’t break away unless he helped Dorn and Raryn distract the corpse tearer. He furled his wings and dived, hurtling at the linnorn’s eye.

Up close, the Hermit smelled foul, not with the rotten stink of a dracolich, but a stale, musty reek suggestive of inconceivable age. From instant to instant, its eye looked like black emptiness or a plate of obsidian large as a tabletop, depending on how the moonlight struck it. A few arrows jutted from the dark surface, moisture seeping from around the tips. Taegan’s sword made similar wounds, narrow punctures and cuts that only oozed fluid instead of gushing it.

Still, he succeeded in capturing the Hermit’s attention. The dark, enormous head at the end of the flexible neck jerked away, then straight back at him, jaws spreading wide to engulf him. He lashed his wings and flung himself clear an instant before the stained fangs clashed together.

The Hermit struck at him again, and then a third time. He dodged, swerving, each time only narrowly avoiding the prodigious teeth. Occasionally he had a chance to strike back. Rilitar’s slender blade pricked and sliced the reptile’s snout and came away black with slime.

Gigantic claws slashed down, catching him by surprise and only missing by an inch. The Hermit’s tail whipped around at him, and he swooped beneath it. In so doing, he caught a glimpse of Kara and Jivex past the linnorn’s body. They’d fled as directed, but the faerie dragon was starting to wheel back around.

“Go!” Taegan shouted.

The Hermit lunged at him, cutting off his view, then pressing him so fiercely he had no opportunity for another look. He couldn’t tell if his friend had heeded him or not.

The corpse tearer snarled an incantation, and Taegan felt a pang of ache and dullness shoot through him. His magical augmentations to his innate capacities disappeared, stripped away by the Hermit’s counterspell. The reptile followed up by spewing a blast of its smoky breath, but with a beat of his pinions, Taegan jerked himself clear. The vapor’s stink churned his guts and set him shuddering even so. The linnorn lifted its talons to shred him before he could recover, but then it faltered. Perhaps Dorn or Raryn had given it a particularly painful wound.

Regaining control of his limbs, Taegan thrust, dodged, and continued to evade. His heart hammered, and he panted.

Were Kara and Jivex far enough away? Since he didn’t see them and couldn’t divert his attention from the Hermit to look about, he’d simply have to assume so, for Sune knew, he couldn’t continue this way much longer.

He whispered an incantation, meanwhile continuing to defend with as much agility and vigor as before, for that was a bladesinger’s art. His swordsman’s magic was far more limited than the average wizard’s store of charms, but he could conjure and fence simultaneously.

Talons lashed at him. He dived below the stroke and articulated the final word of his spell. Power prickled across his skin and momentarily turned the drifting fog a ghostly blue, but otherwise, nothing seemed to happen.

He hadn’t known precisely what to expect, but he’d hoped for something. Perhaps the linnorn would hesitate, or leave itself vulnerable in some way. Instead, it simply kept on attacking, and, he suspected, there truly was no hope. For him, anyway. If he could keep the creature busy for a little longer, maybe one or two of his friends could escape.

He evaded raking talons, cut the Hermit’s haunch, and the reptile growled words of power. Taegan’s body stiffened into absolute rigidity. Unable to flap his wings, he plummeted.

He had little doubt the fall would kill him, but the Hermit evidently wanted to make sure. It plunged after him like a hawk swooping to catch a pigeon in its claws.

But it didn’t use its talons to pierce him, nor its grip, painfully tight though it was, to crush him. Instead, leveling out of its descent, it recited another spell that gave him back the use of his body. Not that he could use it for much at the moment.

“What did you do to me?” the Hermit snarled, its voice a rasping, discordant rumble like a scrape of blades and distant thunder muddled together. It spoke Elvish with an accent Taegan had never heard before. “I feel it squirming in my mind!”

“Ah,” Taegan wheezed. With the enormous digits clamping his torso, he could scarcely draw sufficient breath to speak. “That would be the Rage. Phourkyn One-Eye taught me a spell to crumble any wyrm’s defenses instantaneously. I must compliment you. Most dragons, experiencing frenzy all of a sudden, go berserk. They certainly aren’t capable of conducting a civilized conversation.”

“I’m no dragon. My kind and theirs diverged eons ago.”

“Apparently,” said Taegan, “not quite far enough for comfort’s sake.”

“Lift the curse!”

“A wise request, for, left to fester, it will obliterate your reason. I haven’t actually mastered the charm for dampening it, but fortunately, Lady Karasendrieth—the song dragon—has. Once you agree to conduct yourself in a more hospitable manner, I’m sure she’ll be delighted to oblige you.”

The Hermit glared. “I don’t succumb to threats. I’ll slaughter you all, raise you as my lifeless slaves, and command the song dragon to cleanse me of this taint.”

“That would be ill-advised. Who can say with absolute certainty that an undead Kara would still recall the spell, or be able to cast it if she did? Even if it all worked out as you hoped, it wouldn’t save you for long. The Rage is waxing ever stronger. It would swallow you eventually in any case. My friends and I are exploring all the dreariest corners of the northlands to prevent such a calamity from befalling dragons—and dragonkind—everywhere. Thus, it truly is in your best interests to welcome us as the benefactors we are. You could make a start by easing the pressure on my ribs.”

The Hermit didn’t release Taegan so much as toss him away like a piece of trash. Still, a couple wing beats turned his graceless tumble into directed flight, and he soared up in front of the linnorn’s huge, dark mask, oily with slime and with its seething tendrils, sickening to behold.

“Shall we join the others?” the bladesinger asked.

Kara had no idea why Taegan, Dorn, and the others had exhorted her and Jivex to flee. Perhaps they simply hoped that if the seekers split up, someone could escape, and they thought the dragons, with their wings and magical abilities, had the best chance.

If so, that might be logical, but she couldn’t abandon Dorn or any of her friends. It wasn’t in her. But perhaps she’d succeeded in making the Hermit believe she was forsaking the field, and then had some slim hope of taking the creature from behind. Her wounds throbbing, chest aching with the effort to produce still more breath weapon, she wheeled. Jivex, his mirror-bright scales stained with a coating of his own blood, did the same.

When they turned, though, they saw things had changed.

Still floating dozens of feet above the ground, the Hermit clutched Taegan in its talons. It wasn’t hurting him, though, nor was it casting any more spells or spitting additional blasts of its noxious breath. It seemed to be palavering with its captive.

That left Dorn, Pavel, Will, and Raryn free to deal with Brimstone, who, shrouded in sulphurous smoke, continued to attack. Bloody and reeling from the punishment they’d already taken, the hunters fended off the vampire as best they could.

“Brimstone’s the greater threat now,” Kara said. “We have to deal with him.”

“Don’t worry,” Jivex said. “He’s no match for me.”

They dived. Jivex created blazes of dazzling light immediately in front of Brimstone’s crimson eyes and blares of deafening noise by his ears. Pained, startled, the smoke drake thrashed, and failed to notice Kara’s hurtling descent. Commencing a battle anthem at the last second, when it was too late for the reptile on the ground to dodge, she slammed down on top of him, dug her claws into his flanks and her fangs into his neck, wrapped her tail around him, and covered him with her wings, pinning him in place.

Weapons raised, the hunters rushed forward. But before anyone could strike a blow, Brimstone’s body dissolved into smoke and embers. Kara fell through the cloud, which surged sideways as if a gale were blowing it. It coalesced back into solidity several yards away. Kara saw that Brimstone had a crooked leg and wing, and numerous rips in his mottled hide.

Still avid to make the kill, the others swarmed after him. “Wait!” Brimstone snarled. “When I attacked you, I was acting under coercion, but now the linnorn has released me from its control.”

Dorn’s only response was a sweep of his iron talons. Brimstone leaped backward, and the strike missed.

“The Hermit has been casting priestly magic,” the smoke drake said, “and divines of a certain stripe can command the undead. You know it’s so, Pavel Shemov! Tell your comrades!”

Pavel looked as if he would have liked nothing better than to ignore Brimstone’s plea and keep attacking. Still, he said, “Wait! It’s as he claims. The Hermit may well have forced him to turn against us. Though it’s the fundamental corruption inside him that makes it possible.”

“But we knew he was a vampire when we agreed to work with him,” panted Will, “so I guess there’s no point complaining about it now.”

Scowling, Dorn lowered his blade. “I don’t trust you,” he said to Brimstone, “but I suppose I do trust the strength of your hatred of Sammaster.”

The smoke drake sneered. “Like recognizes like.”

“It’s nice to see everyone getting along,” Taegan said. “Guests should behave with decorum in front of their host.”

Kara looked up. Black pinions half furled, the avariel came gliding down to earth with the gigantic, wingless linnorn drifting behind him.

With no spells left in his head, Pavel used his physician’s skills to tend everyone’s wounds as best he could, and they all drank their supply of healing elixirs dry. Otherwise, they would have been in no condition to attend to what the Hermit had to say.

At that, slumped around the crackling, smoky fire Dorn had built, they remained a weary and battered lot, each with his bruises, blisters, and swaths of bloody bandages on display. Only Brimstone, whose vampiric body shed wounds with unnatural speed, looked little the worse for the recent ordeal.

As if he’d discerned the tenor of Pavel’s thoughts, Will whispered, “If the Hermit decides to break its promise to the maestro, I imagine we’ll all wind up in its belly about a second and a half later.”

“Should that occur,” Pavel said, “I can only hope you’ll sicken a corpse tearer as much as you’ve always nauseated me.” Thanks to the sting of his burns and abrasions, he hadn’t yet managed to get comfortable. He tried leaning back on his elbows, and it helped a little.

“I gave you time to drink your draughts and apply your ointments,” the Hermit said. The greasy, lichen-spotted bulk of the creature loomed over everyone else, even Brimstone, and radiated not merely dislike but utter loathing, like an emperor forced to treat with beings made of dung. “Now ask your questions.”

“As you wish,” said Kara, in human form once more, “As we’ve already said, we seek a remedy for the Rage.” She proceeded to explain with a succinct storyteller’s clarity what plague Sammaster had unleashed on dragonkind, how they knew about it, and how they hoped to cure it. “So you see, you must aid us, if only for your own sake. Perhaps frenzy never touched you before, but it has now, and will never let you go, because Sammaster somehow altered the enchantment.”

“We suspect,” Pavel said, “he sought you out in the course of his explorations, though he may not have proffered his true name, or worn his true face, and you gave him information that advanced his schemes.”

The Hermit crouched silent and motionless for what seemed a long while, only the fine cilia spouting from its scales squirming sluggishly, like sated grubs in decaying meat.

At last it said, “A wizard did come, some years ago.”

“Why would you help him?” asked Will. “Because he’s a lich, and you’re partial to the undead?”

A cup of brandy cradled in his hand, managing a certain elegance even when half sitting, half lying on the ground, Taegan grinned. “No. Ghouls and phantoms are the linnorn’s slaves, not its friends. Sammaster had to compel cooperation, just as we did, and the shame of capitulation is the reason our new acquaintance is reluctant to discuss the incident. Isn’t that right, Lord Hermit?”

The corpse tearer glared. “He persuaded me it would be more convenient to answer his questions than to destroy him, and did so without planting a seed of dementia in my mind. Do you find that amusing? Consider this, then: If I had difficulty, how will you mites fare when you come face to face with him?”

“We’re hoping to duck that,” said Will. “We just want to break the curse, not fight its master.”

“But if we have to,” said Dorn, his bastard sword naked and ready to hand in case the Hermit turned on them, “we have some of the most powerful dragons in Faerûn on our side. We’ll kill whomever we need to kill. Now, tell us what you told Sammaster.”

“Very well,” said the linnorn. “As you surmised, he wanted to know all I could tell him of the age of the dragon kings, how they conquered, reigned, and finally fell.”

“I gather,” whispered Brimstone, “you know a good deal.”

The Hermit sneered. “Of course. I was there, watching from the shadows, reveling in their downfall. For the insanity didn’t touch me. Until tonight, I never dreamed it could.”

Will cocked his head. “So you helped the elves fight your own kind? Why?”

“I help no one, and dragons are not my ‘kind.’” The Hermit paused. “Once we might have claimed one another, but their race proved too greedy to share rulership of the world with us. The four-legs waged war against the linnorns, and at first we more than held our own. But their race was more fertile, more prolific, and over time, numbers told. They slaughtered the majority of us, and drove the rest into hiding.”

Pavel suspected he’d just heard a singularly biased explanation of the cause of the conflict. Scholar though he was, he knew little about linnorns. He doubted anyone did. But every source that mentioned the species at all alluded to their boundless capacity for hatred, perversity, and destruction. Perhaps even the tyrannical wyrms of old had found them too abominable to tolerate.

But he supposed it would accomplish nothing to challenge the Hermit’s account.

“When I lost my own realm,” the creature continued, “the event was naturally an affront to my pride, though otherwise, I scarcely cared about it. I’d already come to see my subjects—tiny, scurrying, ephemeral vermin like you—for the contemptible things they were, and could take no more satisfaction in ruling them than one of you might take in lording it over an anthill. Indeed, all those with whom I shared this plane of existence so disappointed me that I might have lost my reason, or slain myself in revulsion and despair, had I not also managed to establish an intimacy with the only entities worth knowing and honoring in all this botched, sordid excuse for a cosmos. The four-legs could steal my throne, but they couldn’t take that.”

“What ‘entities?’” Brimstone asked.

“The powers behind darkness and undeath,” the Hermit said. “The forces that casually spawn your kind as a byproduct of their true business, the way a carpenter makes shavings when he planes a board.”

Pavel felt a pang of disgust. “In other words, you became the priest of some evil deity.”

“You aren’t capable of comprehending what my words actually mean,” the Hermit said. “Pray to your own little god that you never find out.”

“I don’t care about your faith,” said Dorn. “Tell us about the coming of the Rage.”

“All right. It was delightful. It was vengeance, if only vicariously, and to this day, I regret that, dwelling alone in the barrens, I missed the beginning of it. Soon enough, though, I sensed a change in the world, and started investigating. I discovered dragons everywhere running amok, laying waste to their own dominions, slaughtering their chattels and protectors, and in their wanton, reckless bloodlust, leaving themselves vulnerable to their foes. I picked off several myself, when I had the chance.”

“You must,” said Kara, “have wondered about the cause, and tried to find out what it was.”

“Of course. I suspected the elves had unleashed some manner of curse, for of all the slave races, they possessed the most powerful magic. But if they were responsible, they’d covered their tracks well. Those I put to the question had no knowledge of it, and I couldn’t approach the enchanters, diviners, and lords who might. They stood at the heads of mighty hosts assembled to assail the drakes, and would have made no distinction between a four-legged wyrm and myself.”

“Still,” said Will, “you’re clever enough that you learned something, am I right?”

“Yes, halfling. In the end, I found out the elves had raised a secret citadel high in the Novularond Mountains.”

Raryn sat up straighter. “In the midst of the Great Glacier.”

“Not then,” the Hermit said. “The ice formed thousands of years later. Still, it was a strange place for a fortress, remote from the rest of the Tel-quessir’s holdings, and of no strategic importance. Thus, I surmised it might have something to do with the Rage. But I knew it would be imprudent to approach and investigate further, and as the millennia passed, other matters claimed my attention.”

“Until Sammaster jogged your memory,” said Will.

“Yes,” the corpse tearer said. “If I’d realized why he wanted to know—”

“You wouldn’t have told him,” said Dorn. He turned to Raryn. “This has to be the place where the old mages and priests constructed their mythal. Can we scout the site and still be back in Thentia by the Feast of the Moon?”

The dwarf nodded. “The Great Glacier’s dangerous traveling for any who weren’t born there. But follow my lead and we’ll be all right. It’s funny. I always thought I might go home again someday, but not like this.”

“You’ll have no joy of it,” the Hermit snarled, its eyes like pits of burning ink. “Venture on the ice, and you’ll meet disaster.”

The unexpected outburst shocked them all into silence. Then Taegan drawled, “I’m unclear, noble linnorn, whether you’re speaking prophecy, laying a curse on us, or simply attempting to compromise our morale. In any case, perhaps you’ve lost sight of the fact that if we fail, you’ll run mad as a pup in a hen house. Accordingly, more assistance and less menace might be in order.”

“I’ve provided what you asked and more,” the linnorn said. “Now I’ll seek my own cure, with my own resources. Be gone from my lands by midday, and never seek me again, lest you find me.” It wheeled and half stalked, half crawled away. Despite its immensity, it melted into the night almost instantly.

“Well,” said Jivex, “that last part was cheery.”

Brimstone spread his wings and departed shortly after the Hermit. Despite his own considerable store of arrogance, the vampire evidently took the corpse tearer’s command to be gone by noon seriously. That meant he needed to leave forthwith, since he couldn’t travel while the sun was in the sky.

With the night creature gone, Taegan grudgingly decided he ought to volunteer to take the first watch. Though he was every bit as weary as his companions, it was a fact of nature that elves required less rest than humans, and unlike either men or dragons, restored themselves by entering a dreamlike Reverie. He couldn’t lapse into that state involuntarily the way an exhausted sentry of another race might accidentally fall asleep.

He passed the time, and tried to distract himself from his aches and pains, by silently laboring to turn the expedition’s most recent adventure into a diverting anecdote, with himself as chief protagonist, of course. He could use the tale to add luster to his reputation if he ever took up the thread of his old life back in Lyrabar.

He assumed he would, if he survived. He’d worked hard to achieve that existence, and relished it thereafter. Yet it was strange. He seldom missed it as much as he would have expected. His current life, its rigors and outright terrors notwithstanding, had its own satisfactions.

He didn’t even mind trekking through places like windswept, empty Narfell and these dismal, haunted hills, and that truly was peculiar, given that conditions were no less rugged than those he’d escaped by forsaking his tribe. Perhaps the difference was that then, their primitive estate had been all he had, and all he was ever supposed to have or want. But since he’d carved out his place in civilization, and could return there whenever he—

He sensed a presence, and looked around. Dorn towered over him, the yellow firelight glinting on his iron arm and half-mask, the human side of his face in shadow.

“Can’t you sleep?” Taegan asked, keeping his voice low so as not to wake the others. “Burns are unpleasant, as I discovered when my academy went up in flames. Fortunately, after Pavel prays for fresh spells at sunrise, he should be able to ease—”

“I have something to ask you,” the human growled. “When you cast the magic to rouse the Rage, did you know how far Kara—and Jivex—needed to fly to be out of range?”

Hearing the anger in Dorn’s harsh rumble of a voice, Taegan rose to his feet, but otherwise made sure his demeanor remained casual and relaxed. A stance that communicated his readiness to defend himself might further provoke his companion. “I could estimate, from seeing how the spell operated in the Gray Forest, when it overwhelmed the Queen’s Bronzes but left the enemy wyrms untouched.”

“All right. But were you sure our drakes were clear before you recited the incantation?”

Taegan sighed. “I confess it: No. It wasn’t possible. The Hermit was blocking my view, and you saw how hard it was pressing me. Had I diverted my attention for even an instant, it would have killed me.”

“That means you could easily have driven Kara and Jivex insane.”

“Whereas the linnorn was about to rip them and the rest of us to shreds, which scarcely seemed preferable. I thought it time to take a chance.”

“You should have told me—” The hunter stopped. “No. Never mind. You made the right move, it all worked out, and I’m babbling like a fool.”

Taegan smiled. “Apology accepted. If I possessed a treasure like Kara, I’d be frightened of losing her as well. Though I must say, when I witness the burdens true love imposes on the smitten, I appreciate the advantages of pursuing romance as we rakes do in Lyrabar: Adore a lady for an hour or an evening, then saunter on to the next.”

Dorn grunted. “What do you make of the Hermit’s final words?”

“I wish I knew. Nexus or Firefingers might be able to take the measure of such an ancient and wicked being, but I’ll own up to something I rarely admit: I’m out of my depth. I do know we must press on to the Novularonds, no matter how appalling the weather, and no matter who tries to warn us off.”

“Right.” Dorn flashed one of his exceedingly rare grins. “A few months ago, I kept trying to quit this craziness, but there’s no escape, is there?” His usual scowl reasserted itself like a gate slamming shut. “I think I’ll try again to sleep.” He turned and limped toward Kara and their blankets.