21-27 Marpenoth, the Year of Rogue Dragons

Like the tumbling snowflakes, Zethrindor floated on the wailing wind out of the west. Strangely, despite her avowed determination to conquer Sossal, Iyraclea had yet to take the field, but she had cursed the land with a fierce and premature winter. The assumption was that frigid temperatures and relentless blizzards would hinder and demoralize the defenders far more than it would the invaders from the Great Glacier, who faced such conditions every day of their lives.

Zethrindor was watching a huge white wolf lurking behind a stand of brush on a ridge. The beast scrutinized the string of poorly guarded ox-drawn supply carts slogging along the snow-choked trail below.

Sossal had turned out to be a country possessed of more than its fair share of skinchangers. The druids mastered the art in the course of their training, but apparently certain other folk were simply born with the knack. Zethrindor was reasonably certain the shaggy creature below was one such, a warrior wearing animal form to scout the convoy and evaluate whether his war band ought to attack.

The shapeshifter naturally wouldn’t decide in the affirmative if he detected a dracolich gliding overhead, waiting to pounce when he and his comrades took the bait, but Zethrindor doubted that would be a problem. The night was dark, and just in case it wasn’t black enough, he’d veiled himself in a spell of invisibility.

The wolf howled, and another answered. Then dozens of other lupines, some ghostly white like the scout, others gray, came slinking to join their comrade on the high ground.

In Zethrindor’s estimation, humans in general were weak, stupid, contemptible creatures. Still he had to concede the cleverness of an elite company formed entirely of werewolves. No wonder these particular pests had proved so difficult to hunt down.

The wolves’ bodies heaved and flowed, muzzles retracting, hind legs lengthening, paws melting into hands and feet, fur becoming woolen garments and scale and leather armor. A couple warriors grunted or gasped at the strain of transformation, but so softly even a wyrm’s ears could barely catch it. The humans driving and guarding the carts certainly wouldn’t.

As the warriors strung their bows and laid arrows on the strings, Zethrindor studied them, trying to pick their druid, his chief target, out from the others. Unfortunately, on first inspection, he failed to spot a telltale sickle, sprig of mistletoe, or the like.

Well, the conscripts with the carts were expendable. That was why Zethrindor had chosen them. So, for a moment or two, he’d permit the men of Sossal to attack without interference, in the hope that the druid would cast a spell and so reveal himself.

Arrows arced whistling through the air. Caught utterly by surprise, tribesmen dropped. The survivors clamored, cast wildly about, tried to ready their own weapons, but by then the attackers’ next volley was already in flight. Half the conscripts fell before the rest could even begin to mount any semblance of a defense.

Zethrindor snarled in exasperation. The druid had yet to attempt a spell, and why should he? The assault was going so well, it only made sense to conserve his power.

But if Zethrindor attacked, that would surely elicit a magical response, and if not, he supposed he’d just have to slaughter the entire enemy force. That had always been his ultimate intent anyway.

He furled his wings and dived at the archers. Some, sensing a disturbance in the air, looked up just in time to take a blast of his pearl-white breath in their faces. Coated in rime, they dropped.

By attacking, he forfeited his invisibility, but that was all right. His appearance was a weapon in itself, one that made some of the bowmen drop their weapons and run screaming down the hill, where the men of the Great Glacier, organized at last and furious to take revenge for the devastating surprise attack, met them with flying javelins, stabbing spears, and hacking axes.

But a number of the skinchangers stood their ground and loosed arrows at Zethrindor. Most missed or glanced off. A couple lodged in his scales, but caused him no distress.

He flung himself to the ground, crushing a warrior beneath his bulk. He raked with his talons and ripped the heart, lungs, and splinters of rib from another man’s chest. A snap of his jaws left a third in pieces, and a flick of a wing hurled a fourth off the hilltop.

Skinchangers scrambled to engage him. Some remained in human form to slash with swords or jab with lances. Others flowed back into lupine shape to bite with their fangs. It didn’t much matter. Zethrindor found he could kill them just about as easily in either guise.

The combat was both exhilarating and useful, but where was the cursed druid? He wondered if he’d already killed the wretch and just didn’t realize it. Then, in a burst of yellow glare and fierce heat, a salamander exploded into existence in front him. Shrouded in crackling flame, somewhat manlike from the waist up but scaly and serpentine below, the elemental spirit slithered forward, stabbing with its trident.

Zethrindor met it with a puff of his breath. The intense cold blew out its corona of flame like a candle, and it collapsed thrashing in agony. He ground it beneath his foot and looked around, trying to locate the human who’d conjured it.

There! Some ten yards away, a stocky human held a scimitar in a seemingly useless overhand grip, as if he could wield it like a dagger. The swordsmith had cast the silver pommel in the form of a unicorn’s head, emblem of the goddess Mielikki. It was evidently a talisman the druid had flourished to cast the summoning spell.

Zethrindor snarled an incantation of his own, and a barrage of ice balls hurtled through the air, to hammer the priest and throw him to the ground. He struggled to rise again, but slowly.

Intent on finishing him off before he could recover, the dracolich charged, and the warriors of Sossal, those who were left, scrambled to bar his path. Blades and lupine fangs flashed at him, and he tore his assailants into fragments of gory meat and bone.

It only took a moment. But that was evidently time enough for the druid to collect himself, because, as Zethrindor killed the last of the soldiers, much of his dorsal surface, from his beaked snout to the tips of his ragged, decaying wings, burst into flame. The hot pain balked him for an instant, until his innate resistance to hostile magic extinguished the blaze.

By then, the druid had reached a gnarled, leafless, stunted tree and stretched out his hand to touch it. His body began to fade.

With a surge of frustration, Zethrindor realized what was happening. A spell was about to whisk the priest beyond his reach, and since his breath weapon hadn’t yet renewed itself, he was probably too far away to do anything about it. He stared, trying to paralyze the human with his gaze, but the druid kept moving. His fingers clasped a branch, and his shape blurred into little more than shadow—

Crimson eyes glowing, a dark reptilian form, smaller than Zethrindor but dragon-sized nonetheless, pounced out of the darkness and caught the druid in his fangs. The newcomer wrenched the human away from the tree and shook him like a dog shaking a rat, likely breaking his neck. He then sucked and slurped at his victim, guzzling his blood before spitting the corpse out onto the ground.

Zethrindor had sensed the undead nature of the stranger as soon as he appeared, and wondered if he too might be a dracolich—but then recognized him for a vampire.

The blood-drinker glided forward. Before his transformation, he’d evidently been a smoke drake, albeit a remarkably large one, and still gave off a harsh smell of combustion. A choker of platinum, ruby, and diamond encircled his neck. Zethrindor wondered just how easy it would be to take the treasure, either through intimidation or combat, then set the notion aside for the moment, anyway. With the conquest of Sossal to complete, he had more important matters to concern him. Such as finding out about powerful new entities popping up unexpectedly in the middle of the disputed territory.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“I’m called Brimstone,” the smoke drake whispered. He glanced about, evidently making sure no potential dangers remained on the ridge. They didn’t. Most of the skinchangers were dead. The others had either run away or lay shrieking and moaning in agony. “I hope I was of some assistance.”

“I didn’t need any,” Zethrindor said. “In fact, I was looking forward to killing the druid myself. Still, I suppose your intentions were good.”

“I’m glad to hear you say so,” Brimstone said. “I’ve spent the past couple nights flying around Sossal, trying to locate you. It appears the war’s progressing well. What a shame you and the other wyrms will reap such meager benefits from your victories.”

We’ll see about that, Zethrindor thought, when the time comes. “Why were you seeking me, vampire? What do you want?”

“To offer some genuine assistance, or, at the very least, information. First, I suppose I ought to provide some context. In my humble way, I’m like you: Sammaster turned me undead long ago, during the course of his early experiments. Unfortunately, after he moved on to making dracoliches, he ceased to pay me the deference which was my due. Our association ended badly.”

Zethrindor snorted. “No true wyrm tolerates disrespect from any human, magicians included.”

“Is that why you take orders from him, and how he could loan you to Iyraclea as if you were some sort of indentured servant?”

Anger brought Zethrindor’s breath weapon welling up to chill his throat and the back of mouth, for all that it would be of minimal efficacy against another undead. “Have a care how you speak to me!”

Brimstone lowered his head. “Pardon me, High Lord. I meant no offense. I’m simply trying to explain why it is that for centuries, I’ve nursed a grudge against Sammaster, trying to wreck his schemes, and those of the cult he founded, whenever I could. Earlier this year, I learned he’s become obsessed with an ancient shrine or mystic’s stronghold—some sort of place of power at any rate—located somewhere in the northlands.”

“Why?”

“That, I can’t tell you. But haven’t you suspected there’s more to his schemes than he’s letting on? Does it really make sense that he’d toil to change the face of the world, only to play a subordinate role in the Faerûn to come? Isn’t it more likely he intends to set himself above you dracoliches and reign supreme, to continue controlling you as—if you’ll forgive my bluntness—he’s sought to manipulate you all along?”

“Sammaster is secretive, and naturally, I don’t entirely trust him. But he has his uses.”

“Obviously. Yet if his covert designs proceed unchecked, if they go too far for anyone to stop them … Let me continue my tale. I resolved to find and investigate the wizard’s hidden lair. To that end, I reluctantly allied myself with the sort of folk you and I would normally destroy. A priest of Lathander. A song dragon. Wyrm hunters. Because they too had resolved to fight Sammaster, and guided by my hatred, I believed that was all that mattered.”

A warrior with a shredded belly and legs gave a piercing scream. Irritated by the noise, Zethrindor pulped him with a ground-shaking lash of his tail. “You speak as if your attitude has changed.”

“I loathe Sammaster,” Brimstone said, “but events have reminded me he’s not the only detestable thing in the world, nor is vengeance the only good. No matter how many times I helped them, my miserable allies, vermin unworthy even to speak my name, showed me only scorn. Now their own stupidity has ended their potential usefulness. Indeed, it has turned them into yet another difficulty.

“Meanwhile,” the smoke drake continued, “dracoliches proliferate, even as the Rage spreads chaos and devastation, preparing the way for your eventual conquest. I realize now, I can’t stop it. Nothing can. The best I can hope for is to be granted an important position in the Faerûn that will be.”

Zethrindor tossed his wings in a shrug. “You’re not a dracolich.”

“And only they will reign. Except that’s Sammaster’s stipulation, not yours, and brings us back to the question of who will really make the decisions.”

“Well, I suppose that if you proved exceptionally useful, you might find a role as a king’s most trusted officer, or even the master of some small principality all your own.” But not, Zethrindor thought, if he had anything to say about it. Brimstone impressed him as far too wily and ambitious to trust in such a role. Still, why not feign willingness to consider such a concession, and find out what the vampire had to offer in return?

“Thank you, High Lord, that’s all I desire. I mentioned that my worthless companions had come to grief. In fact, their current predicament came about as a direct result of Iyraclea’s covenant with Sammaster. In exchange for your services, she promised to kill any strangers found wandering on the Great Glacier. It was the wizard’s ploy to keep his enemies away from the ruin he’d discovered, a site somewhere in the Novularond Mountains.”

Zethrindor cocked his head. “Sammaster underestimated Iyraclea if he imagined she’d keep such a pledge without trying to find out why it mattered to him.”

“How true. But as you’ve surely noticed, he is deranged, and such folk, no matter how clever, inevitably make mistakes. At any rate, instead of killing my allies, Iyraclea captured them and put them to the question. Soon enough, they broke and divulged what they knew, with the result that the Ice Queen herself now seeks Sammaster’s hidden lair in hopes of mastering the power there.

“As you can imagine, I don’t want her to control it, either. Dragons must have it, to guarantee our supremacy in the days to come. But I know my limitations. I don’t have the strength to confront Auril’s high priestess, gelugons, and frost giants all by myself. But a dracolich leading a flight of whites could do it.”

Zethrindor scowled, pondering.

He was far too wise to take everything Brimstone said at face value. The threat of a magic potent enough to grind all dracoliches into subservience seemed particularly farfetched. Yet aspects of the vampire’s story dovetailed neatly with his own suspicions of Sammaster and Iyraclea. It explained why the dead man had urged him to serve the tyrant of an under-populated wilderness, and why the Ice Queen had deemed it expedient to send every last wyrm off the glacier.

If some great power lay hidden in the Novularonds, Zethrindor wanted it, and not for the benefit of dragons in general, either, but to assure the ascendance of a single wyrm: himself.

The drawback was, his army would have to get along without its commander and the rest of the whites and ice drakes for a time, but their position was strong enough that they shouldn’t get into any calamitous trouble. Since the tundra landwyrms couldn’t fly, his troops would even have some dragons remaining to deter the enemy from attempting anything too ambitious.

“All right,” said the dracolich, “we’ll go. Rest assured, I’ll reward you if the journey proves worthwhile, and destroy you otherwise.”

“Fair enough. How soon can we depart? You understand, I can only travel by night.”

Teeth clenched, body trembling, Raryn heaved the oblong boulder over his head, and onlookers cried out in triumph, or cursed and moaned in dismay, depending on how they’d bet. Taegan, who’d arrived too late to place a wager, simply marveled. One expected such feats from Dorn, with his hulking frame and oversized iron limbs, but it seemed miraculous that the squat little dwarf could be so strong.

Raryn tossed away the stone, and it thudded down on the icy ground. Victorious human barbarians and frost giants congratulated him, clasping his hand and pounding his massive shoulders, and collected their winnings, mostly in the form of amber beads and ivory scrimshaw, from the losers.

Farther up the trail, Iyraclea, clad in her gauzy white gown, gave the order to form up. Grumbling, folk clambered to their feet, shouldered their packs, and the column tramped on up the steep, slippery path.

Like Jivex, who, scales flashing rainbows, was flitting about gobbling the insects which apparently thrived in all climes, even those as inhospitable as the Novularonds, Taegan had no need to hike. Rather to his surprise, the Ice Queen had given him permission to use his wings, with the understanding that if he tried to flee, both he and his friends would suffer for it.

He spread his pinions, then noticed how Raryn’s mask of hearty good fellowship had dropped away. The dwarf’s ruddy, white-bearded face wore a somber frown.

Taegan suspected he knew what the problem was. He refolded his wings and tramped closer to the hunter, so they could have a private conversation as they climbed. In theory, the seekers were Iyraclea’s “honored guests,” but even so, at the start of their journey, their captors would have moved to break up any such exchange, for fear the outlanders were plotting mischief.

Accordingly, the prisoners had worked to ingratiate themselves with Iyraclea’s minions and so defuse their suspicions. Kara regaled them with songs, jokes, and stories. Jivex created amusing illusions. Pavel used his prayers to conjure food and cure fevers. Dorn, Will, and Raryn helped scout, forage, and track game; or performed stunts for their fellow wayfarers to bet on.

None of it changed the attitude of the vicious gelugons, or the silent, emotionless ice wizards. But gradually, the human tribesmen and even the brutish giants relaxed their vigilance.

Though unfortunately, not enough to return the prisoners’ weapons. Will had attempted to remedy the lack by pilfering items their captors were unlikely to miss. One of the frost giants, for example, had packed an extra head for his ponderous spear. Taegan carried the double-edged length of iron tucked in his boot to serve as a makeshift dagger.

“I know how you feel,” he murmured.

“I’m all right,” Raryn said.

“I understand what it is to be ashamed of one’s own people.”

“Well, it’s new to me. I was proud to be Inugaakalakurit. Yet my own village—my own brother!—betrayed us.”

“I confess, I wasn’t entirely pleased about it, either. But I daresay they believed they had no choice. Consider the Icy Claws. You and I have overcome our share of perils, but I can’t even look at the things without my bowels turning to water. Your people had to contend with the baatezu, dragons, and Iyraclea’s magic and seizing of hostages. I’m not ready to pardon their treachery, but I do comprehend it.”

Raryn sighed. “Maybe the one I should really hate is the Ice Queen, for oppressing them and breaking their spirit, and I do. But the person I’m most disgusted with is me. I promised to keep the rest of you safe, and instead I marched you straight into disaster.”

“No one could have foreseen what happened.”

“I should have. I should have sensed that the glacier had changed since my younger days. The signs were surely there, if only I’d had the wit to notice. A ranger knows, they’re always there.”

“Nonsense. The place was a desolate slab of ice when you left, and the same when you returned. Unless we’d happened upon a troop of gelugons playing hide-the-cherry, what could possibly have alerted you?”

Half hidden behind his shaggy moustache, Raryn’s lips quirked upward. “Well … nothing, maybe. So I suppose I should stop rebuking myself and concentrate on the work that lies ahead.”

“That’s the Raryn we toast with brimming cups.” Taegan grinned. “Of course, it would help to know exactly what form said work will take. Is it actually feasible to work with Iyraclea?”

“Maybe. She truly does seem to want to thwart Sammaster. But never trust her. Do you know, she tried to turn Pavel into one of her ice men, and unlike the wizards, he wouldn’t even have been of any particular use to her afterwards. The transformation would have broken his bond to the Morninglord and cost him his magic. She attempted it out of simple cruelty, or just so her goddess could score a petty victory over the power who’s her opposite.”

“Believe it or not, I’d already discerned that she lacks a certain generosity of spirit. But if she shares our disinclination to see crazed dragons and dracoliches overrun the world….”

Taegan realized Raryn had stopped listening. Instead, the dwarf peered upward, his face intent. His nostrils flared as if he were a hound taking a scent.

“What is it?” Taegan asked

“The air’s getting warmer,” Raryn said, “and I can smell living plants.”

“High above the glacier amid these freezing winds? That suggests some sort of enchantment is active hereabouts.”

“I imagine so. Which means we’d better make up our minds about Iyraclea fast, because it looks like we’ve found the heart of the Rage.”

The Ice Queen must have thought the same thing, because she exhorted her followers to hurry on toward the mountaintop. Before long, Taegan too could feel the slope growing warmer, until he had to start opening his heavy garments for comfort’s sake. Snow, ice, and bare, frozen earth and rock gave way to moss, grass, and shrubs. The human tribesmen gazed at the greenery in wonder alloyed with mistrust. The huge frost giants, virtually born of cold and possessed of a total affinity with it, sneered and spat.

It seemed likely Iyraclea felt the same, but if so, her eagerness for discovery masked the underlying distaste. “What are you waiting for?” she cried. “Scout ahead!”

The Icy Claws vanished, transporting themselves through space, reappearing moments later to report to their mistress in their rasping, infernal tongue.

“Pardon me,” Taegan said.

Eager to see what the ice devils had found, he lashed his pinions and leaped into the air. Silvery butterfly wings a blur, Jivex streaked upward to accompany him. They flew high to obtain a panoramic view of that which awaited them, and it made Taegan catch his breath. The mountaintop was hollow like a bowl, and inside gleamed a castle, or perhaps something more accurately described as a small walled town.

The avariel had only seen an elven city once before, in the dream Amra conjured in the Gray Forest, and the long-vanished inhabitants had shaped that glorious place from living trees. In contrast, the builders of the citadel below had worked in granite and marble, but their deceptively delicate-looking spires and battlements, simple and intricate by turns, embodied a similar aesthetic and achieved a comparable beauty. They’d shared the woodland elves’ fondness for broad, straight boulevards and had evidently loved gardens as well. With no one to tend them, the lawns and flowerbeds had surrendered to tangled brush and weeds, but grown mighty with the passing ages, the weir trees had flourished. Autumn had begun stripping them of their foliage, and their leaves blew rustling through the vacant streets.

“Curse it,” sighed Taegan, addressing the remark to all his fellow avariels, “see what splendor elves create. Everyone but us.”

Jivex wheeled past him. “Come on!” the faerie dragon said. “What are you waiting for? Let’s find the heart of the Rage and finish up.”

As they all searched the crumbling citadel, forcing warped doors, prowling through dusty, echoing rooms, climbing spiraling stairs to the tops of watchtowers and groping their way down into lightless cellars, Dorn stuck close to Kara. Sammaster had left traps at key points along his trail of discovery, and it seemed likely he’d prepared something particularly nasty at the end.

Dorn wished the bard could shift to dragon form, for she was vulnerable as any other woman in her current shape. But he understood the wisdom of concealing her true nature from Iyraclea and the priestess’s retainers, including the paunchy, saggy-bosomed, blue-haired female frost giant tramping along behind them, ostensibly to assist in their efforts but most likely to keep an eye on them as well. Iyraclea had probably decided it did no harm to slacken the prisoners’ reins while everyone stayed together, but more vigilance was required when the expedition split up.

Fortunately, the giantess’s bulk kept her from squeezing through the smaller spaces, and it was there Dorn and Kara could confer in private, so long as they kept their voices down. Standing in the dark, empty bedroom at the rear of some long-dead dignitary’s apartments, the bard shook her head.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “We’ve been searching for hours and haven’t found anything.”

Dorn shrugged. “It took days to search Northkeep.”

“Then, there were only a few of us, and we were working underwater.”

“Is it possible we don’t recognize the … contrivance that makes the Rage when we see it?”

Kara brushed a stray strand of moon-blond hair away from her face. “It is possible, but I doubt it. In magic, appearance often supports reality. An enchanter puts on an impressive display to create a powerful effect. Thus, I’d expect the source of the Rage to be imposing, awe-inspiring, not some funny little knickknack in a drawer. There’s another consideration as well.”

“What?”

“You know that even with the proper ward in place, I still feel frenzy gnawing at my mind.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I expected that in close proximity to the source of the sickness, I’d suddenly find it harder to bear, but I haven’t. It’s as bad as before, but no worse.”

“Then this is the wrong place?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what to think. The corpse tearer was right, elves did build it, far from their usual haunts. You can see their sensibilities reflected in every line. They surely had a reason. But—”

Muffled by the walls of the building, a trumpet blared. Other horns echoed the call.

“Out!” bellowed the giantess, her deep, heavily accented attempt at Common Tongue only barely intelligible. “Come out! Queen wants us!”

Dorn suspected it wasn’t for anything good. He used his fingers of flesh and bone to take Kara’s hand, then led her out under a blackening sky, where the first stars were already shining.

In the citadel, the largest thoroughfares radiated from a central hub. This nexus was a circular expanse paved with a dark green stone like malachite, each hexagonal flag inscribed with a character from an alphabet Dorn didn’t recognize, and it was there Iyraclea had decided the expedition would rendezvous. By the time Dorn, Kara, and their lumbering, malodorous escort arrived, the last purple traces of sunset had vanished from the western sky. With all the ghost-pale gelugons, giants, and ice wizards prowling about in the gloom, the plaza resembled a scene from a nightmare, or a vision of one of the Hells.

Yet despite her flawless beauty, and her diminutive stature compared to many of her monstrous servants, the most frightening entity present was Iyraclea herself. Ensconced on an elevated throne she’d evidently shaped from conjured ice, she radiated power and displeasure.

“Well?” she demanded. “Has anyone found anything?”

“Not yet, Your Majesty,” Kara said. “But we’ve been at it less than a day.”

“I have Auril’s sacred rituals to perform,” the Ice Queen replied, “a realm to rule, and a war to oversee. My time is precious, and if it turns out you’ve wasted it, you and your friends will suffer.”

“I told you the truth,” said Pavel, standing between a barbarian warrior and Will. “About Sammaster, the Rage, and all the rest of it. What would have been the point of lying?”

“I don’t know,” Iyraclea said. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“August and radiant queen,” said Taegan, “the ancient elves enchanted this stronghold to keep the weather clement, and thousands of years later, the charm still holds the mountain’s chill at bay. Wise as you are, surely you understand the builders wouldn’t have lavished such powerful magic on the fortress unless the place was important. We may prove unable to unravel its secrets, but I know others who can, the learned sages who’ve pondered these mysteries for months. Please, allow me to fetch them.”

“That’s out of the question!” Iyraclea snapped. “Pavel said you and your friends possess the knowledge to solve the puzzle. That’s the reason I dealt with you mercifully. Now you’d better hope your own wits are equal to the task.”

Because, Dorn thought, the last thing she wanted was a band of magicians as powerful as the wizards of Thentia visiting the site. They quite possibly possessed the arcane strength to wrest control of the situation away from even the Frostmaiden’s high priestess and her terrible servants.

Kara stiffened, and her fingers clamped tight on Dorn’s. She turned to him, then, evidently recalling the hostile folk standing all around, quickly masked all traces of her excitement. Apparently she’d realized something important, and for whatever reason, had decided it was something she wouldn’t divulge to the Ice Queen unless the tyrant left her no alternative.

Unfortunately, it seemed likely that was exactly what would happen. Distracted, Dorn had missed the last few words of the conversation, but he took up the thread:

“… give you tonight and tomorrow,” Iyraclea said. “But then, come midnight, and every midnight after, I’ll offer one of you to the Cold Goddess. Starting with the halfling, I believe.” She sneered. “I’ve taken your measure, Wilimac Turnstone, and I very much doubt you’re scholar enough to contribute much to our efforts.”

Kara gave Dorn’s hand another squeeze, as if to reassure him that, one way or another, Iyraclea’s threat would never come to pass. Will, meanwhile, offered the priestess a grin. “Now that’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “I’m the clever one. The charlatan’s the dolt. That’s the pox for you. It rots the brain.”

Iyraclea scowled. “All of you, resume the search!”

The gathering started to disperse. Intensely curious, Dorn looked forward to the moment when Kara could confide in him. Unfortunately, with the giantess once again slouching along in their wake, he supposed he’d have to wait a little while longer.

Enormous shadows swept across the ground, and something hissed and rustled overhead. Dorn looked up. Pale jagged shapes flapped and glided down from the heavens, as if the moon had shattered into pieces. Some of the white dragons and ice drakes—smaller than their companions but still big as a hay wagon and the team drawing it, with short, thick legs and wide, flat tails—lit on the ground. Others perched on battlements and rooftops. The reptiles’ sharp, dry odor suffused the air.

“Your Majesty,” one of the dragons rumbled, a sneer in its tone. Taegan glanced about, seeking the source of the salutation, and winced when he found it. Its pale hide mottled with rot and its sunken eyes glowing in the gloom, a dracolich crouched on the gable-and-valley roof of a once-splendid house.

Jivex snorted. “What’s the matter, are you scared? We already killed one of those things.”

“I remember,” Taegan said. “I intend to dine out on the tale for the rest of my days. But as you may recall, Vorasaegha nearly tore it to pieces before we became involved, and even then, it was brisk work.”

Still, that turn of events had one positive feature: To all appearances, the sudden advent of the dragons had startled and unsettled the rest of Iyraclea’s minions. Even the Icy Claws pivoted back and forth, keeping a wary eye on the gigantic reptiles looming on every side.

The gelugon that had been following Taegan and Jivex around was as distracted as the rest. The elf looked around, spotted Dorn, pressed a finger to his lips, and skulked in the half-golem’s direction. He didn’t know what was about to happen, but suspected he and his comrades would fare better united. Jivex flitted after him.

Meanwhile, Iyraclea emerged from the crowd to glare up at the dracolich. Unlike her followers, she appeared not a whit dismayed, and Taegan proffered a grudging admiration.

“Zethrindor,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“That’s what I was about to ask you.”

“Don’t be insolent! I ordered you and the rest of these wyrms to Sossal.”

“The war’s going well,” said Zethrindor.” His tail switched, breaking loose clay tiles to clatter and spill off the roof. “It’ll keep for a few days. But while we condescend to conquer a kingdom for the benefit of a human, you break your pact with Sammaster.”

“What do you know about it?”

“In exchange for our help, you promised to kill strangers. Instead, you plotted with them to pry into the wizard’s business.”

Taegan and Jivex closed the distance to Dorn—and Kara, too, the bladesinger observed. Pavel, Raryn, and Will were likewise heading toward the same spot.

“What do you care?” Iyraclea said. “You’re no true friend to Sammaster or anyone else. So why should it concern you if I play him false?”

“Because of the future he promises. I can’t have you stealing or tampering with a magic that will help to bring it about.”

Iyraclea curled her lip, and Taegan shivered as a sudden chill permeated the air. “But you’d steal it yourself in an instant, wouldn’t you, to improve your own position.”

“If it embodies the destiny of dragonkind, a drake should look after it. That’s obvious, and even if it isn’t, I didn’t come here to debate. Produce whatever it is you’ve discovered, and even though you broke your covenant with Sammaster, we’ll keep faith with you. We’ll finish the subjugation of Sossal, and leave you in peace thereafter.”

“That’s easily done. Behold.” Iyraclea waved her dainty hand at an empty patch of dark, sigil-inscribed paving. “We found nothing, because there’s nothing to discover.”

“Truly? Well, in that case, you must be eager to return to your altars. Do so. Simply leave me your prisoners, as they’re clearly of no use to you, and they and I will poke around this curious place a little longer.”

“I think not. Go back to Sossal, complete your task, and content yourself with the plunder and feast of human flesh you win in the process. Otherwise, I’ll destroy every last one of you.”

The dracolich sneered. “A hollow threat, to say the least.”

“Hardly,” Iyraclea said. “Don’t you whites and ice drakes understand your own natures? You’re creatures born of cold. It infuses and sustains you, and the goddess who lends me her might is the source of it. With a mere thought, I can turn your own essences against you.”

“If Auril herself were here,” said Zethrindor, “perhaps I’d be afraid. Or maybe not. Sammaster proclaims the time of the gods is passing, and the age of the dracoliches is at hand.”

Without the slightest preparatory shift to warn of his intentions, the wyrm sprang.

Iyraclea raised her hand, and defined by a whirl of fallen leaves, a twisting cyclone howled into existence between her and her plummeting attacker. The vortex hurled Zethrindor off course to smash down on the pavement. At the same time, the Ice Queen, gown lashing around her, lifted by another tame wind, perhaps, floated backward across the plaza, distancing herself from the white, cadaverous wyrm. She shouted words of power and swept her arms through sinuous passes. Suspended in midair like a curtain, rows of luminous blue blades appeared down the long axis of Zethrindor’s body. Spinning like wheels, they hacked his rotting scales and withered muscle.

He roared, sprang clear of the effect, reared and cocked back his head, and spewed his breath weapon. Probably, like Taegan, Iyraclea expected frost, the substance whites usually expelled, and to which she was surely impervious, for this time she made no effort to defend. A plume of dark, billowing fumes washed over and made her flail in agony. Zethrindor had evidently cast a spell to change his breath into a green’s corrosive, poisonous exhalation.

The dracolich lashed his pinions, took to the air, and hurtled toward her—and that was when mayhem exploded on every side, as everyone else decided to join the fight. Some excited whites largely wasted their first attacks spewing frigid vapors that froze human barbarians but had no effect on the rest of Iyraclea’s retainers. The more clever whites, and the ice drakes, conjured blazes of magic, or sprang to engage their foes with fang and claw. Javelins and arrows flew to meet them. Spears stabbed and axes hacked. A gelugon materialized half a dozen lesser devils, crouching, snaky-bearded things armed with enormous saw-toothed polearms, to fight on its behalf. Ice wizards chanted incantations in their chiming, clashing, dispassionate voices.

Wings a silvery smear, Jivex hovered uncertainly. “Do we know what side we’re on?”

“Neither,” Taegan said. “We need to get out of the thick of it and under cover.”

“Make for that keep,” Raryn said, pointing a stubby finger. They all skulked forward, skirting lunging, wheeling, stamping combatants who, by virtue of their prodigious strength and size, could have trampled and killed them without even realizing they were there. They also had to dodge blasts of frost and lightning, flame and the distilled essences of death and disease, that dueling spellcasters hurled back and forth.

Grateful that he hadn’t exhausted his store of spells in the fight with the tirichiks—his captors had confiscated his grimoire and so prevented him from preparing any new ones—Taegan augmented his natural agility and shielded himself in misty vagueness. His companions likewise enhanced their defenses. Like grouping together and slipping out of the midst of the fray, the tactic made sense, but didn’t really answer the question of how to extricate themselves from their current predicament. It seemed wildly optimistic to hope that Iyraclea, Zethrindor, and their sundry followers would all exterminate one another.

Abruptly the air grew hazy. Taegan smelled smoke, and a floating spark stung his cheek. He smiled, and the vapor thickened, massing together and taking on definition. A pair of red eyes glowed from a tapered, coalescing head, and Brimstone crouched before them.

Will laughed. “I was starting to wonder if you’d abandoned us.”

“The only way to rescue you,” the vampire whispered, “was to fetch something capable of creating a considerable diversion. It took a little time.” He turned to Kara. “Change form, singer. Together, we can fly Dorn, Raryn, Will, and Pavel out of here, and with Jivex’s assistance, conjure illusions and the like to hinder pursuit.”

“Sounds good,” said Will. “All but the part about dragging the charlatan’s useless arse along.”

Kara’s body swelled and heaved, and her smooth skin sprouted glittering scales. Brimstone murmured rhyming words. Then Raryn bellowed, “Watch out!”

Taegan looked around, spotted Icy Claws and frost giants glaring back, then felt an abrupt, excruciating chill. He cried out, and his muscles clenched. He struggled to get past the shock of it, while, their magic shifting them instantaneously through space, the gelugons appeared just in front of the would-be escapees. They lifted their lances high to thrust downward, and poised their massive bladed tails to bash and slice. Behind them, the giants scrambled forward. Their footfalls shook the ground.

A white spear leaped at Taegan. He jumped, beat his wings, rose above the stroke, and kept on climbing, veering repeatedly to throw off his opponent’s aim. He’d avoided taking to the air before, lest it make him too conspicuous, but that was scarcely a consideration any longer.

He tried to ascend beyond the Icy Claw’s reach, but despite its lack of wings, the devil too shot up off the ground. Sweet Lady Firehair, was there anything the towering, bug-faced fiends couldn’t do?

Taegan dodged two more spear jabs, meanwhile conjuring images of himself, reflections created without the necessity of mirrors, to baffle his assailant. The gelugon rammed its spear into one of the phantoms, popping it. At the same instant, Taegan lashed his pinions, hurling himself at the creature’s head, and aimed his makeshift dirk at one of the bulging, faceted eyes.

He hit the target. But instead of driving deep into the devil’s skull and brain, the giant’s spearhead simply scratched the surface of the eye and glanced off, as if it were made of polished stone. The baatezu lashed its tail at him as he hurtled past. Dismayed by his failure to incapacitate it, the giant nearly missed seeing the stroke in time to evade.

He realized he shouldn’t be surprised, might even have anticipated what had happened if the irrational fear the devil inspired hadn’t been gnawing at his mind. Some spirits were more or less invulnerable to weapons unless the blades bore magical enhancements. But the spearhead was the only weapon he had. All he could do was try to use it.

He drove home two more thrusts, but each merely chipped his adversary’s pale, gleaming shell. Hoping to fly faster than the Icy Claw could pursue, he then rattled off an incantation to heighten his speed, but while that made it somewhat more difficult for the devil to target him, it didn’t keep him out of its reach. It used its ability to blink through space to stay with him.

Struggling to stave off outright panic, Taegan insisted to himself that somehow, he could survive this confrontation. Then he glimpsed a flash of motion from the corner of his eye. He tilted his wings, dodging, and chunks of ice shot up from the ground to strike and destroy his last remaining illusory counterpart.

He saw that one of the ice wizards had conjured the attack. He assumed the transformed magician would keep right on throwing spells at him, but didn’t know what he could do about it. The gelugon was the more dangerous threat. He started to shift his attention back to the devil, then realized what was hanging at the mage’s hip.

It was Rilitar’s sword! Taegan had previously observed that one of the ice wizards had taken possession of it, perhaps to study the enchantments used in its manufacture, and that was the sword.

Taegan faked a shift to the right, then furled his pinions and dived at the foe on the ground. He didn’t know if he’d actually succeeded in buying himself a precious second, and didn’t glance back at the gelugon to find out, lest it slow his plunging descent.

The mage slashed his hands through a mystic pass. More chunks of ice exploded in all directions from a central point in midair. Taegan shielded his face with his arm, and dodged. Some of the missiles battered him even so, but he refused to let the pain balk him.

He slammed into the wizard and knocked the thing backward onto the ground. Crouched on top of it, he stabbed at the milky, rigid, impassive features, breaking the ice that was the spellcaster’s altered flesh and bone.

The magician stopped moving. Taegan jerked the sword from its scabbard, felt the surge of confidence and vitality that gripping the hilt always produced, leaped up, pivoted, and the gelugon was there, looming over him, ivory spear leaping at him.

He parried the thrust, beat his wings and rose back into the air, slashed at one of the devil’s chitinous forearms. The elven sword bit deep, and the Icy Claw gave a buzzing cry.

Grinning, no longer frightened, Taegan cut it twice more before it could shift the lance to threaten him anew. He hovered before it, inviting an attack, and knocked it aside when it came. That enabled him to close the distance to the gelugon’s barrel-shaped torso. The Icy Claw’s tail swept at him, but he twisted out the way, thrust his sword into its chest, yanked it out, and followed up with a cut to the juncture of the baatezu’s head and shoulders.

The gelugon floundered backward. It glared and shuddered as if it was straining to bring one of its supernatural abilities to bear. Then it collapsed.

Taegan couldn’t tell if he’d actually killed it or not. He hoped so, but wasn’t willing to invest any time making sure. The sooner he rejoined his friends, the better.

But perhaps he had time for one thing. He lit on the ground, kneeled beside the ice wizard, and rummaged through the creature’s pockets and satchel. The transformed spellcasters naturally had no need of warmth, and stripped of their human emotions, cared nothing for modesty. But they needed the odd robe, haversack, and such to carry their talismans and other magical gear.

Taegan heaved a sigh of gratitude when he pulled a familiar blue-bound volume from the wizard’s satchel. Of course, it made sense that the same mage who’d taken possession of his sword had likewise appropriated his book of spells.

The avariel also retrieved his scabbard, then lashed his wings and climbed high enough to oversee a significant portion of the frenzied, chaotic battlefield. His heart sank at what he found. The assault on his comrades and himself had thoroughly scattered their little band. On first inspection, he failed even to spot the majority of his friends.

But he did at least see Brimstone shrouded in a cloud of his smoky breath. The drake pivoted back and forth, ripping with fang and claw at the frost giants who hacked at him in turn with their pole-axes. Pinions sweeping up and down, Taegan rushed to help the vampire fend them off.

Kara charred a gelugon’s white carapace black with a bright, crackling flare of her breath. The baatezu collapsed twitching, its body smoking. At the same instant, however, hailstones hammered down from the empty air to bruise and bloody her scales.

She pivoted and saw another ice devil glaring at her. Resuming her battle anthem, she beat her wings and leaped at the thing. It braced its spear to impale her as she plunged down at it, but she broke the lance with a swat, pierced and felled the Icy Claw with the talons on her other forefoot, and reached to grip its head in her jaws.

Chitin crunched between her fangs. The dense flesh inside was unpleasantly cold, and had a foul, bitter taste. She didn’t let that deter her from biting the beetle-like head in two.

She spat out the vileness in her mouth and lifted her foot away from the mangled body beneath. No longer pinned, the Icy Claw’s thick, bladed tail whipped up at her. By some dark miracle, the creature still lived.

The blow sliced the side of Kara’s face, and a ghastly chill stabbed through her entire body. It couldn’t quite keep her from stamping down and grinding the gelugon’s midsection to paste, but she shuddered through the process, and went right on shaking. The spasms made her slow and clumsy.

This will pass, she told herself. I just need a few seconds. Then frost blasted down on her, encrusting her dorsal surface with rime and turning her pain to utter anguish.

She hissed at the shock and looked up. One of the larger whites, old and powerful enough that a sprinkle of pale blue and gray scales showed among the ivory ones, was diving at her. She tried to spring out from underneath, but didn’t make it. The chromatic’s claws rammed deep into her back and slammed her to the ground.

The same giantess who’d guarded Dorn throughout the day chased him, sagging breasts and rolls of fat bouncing, driving him before her with sweeps of a long-handled, stone-headed warhammer. He backed and jumped away, looking for an opening to lunge inside her prodigious reach and make an attack of his own.

But she wouldn’t give him the chance. Despite her bulk, she wielded her weapon adroitly, just as she advanced and when necessary, retreated with considerable agility. She always remained close enough to threaten her smaller foe, yet maintained enough distance to keep him from striking back.

In time she’d likely make an error, but Dorn wasn’t willing to wait. He didn’t know what had become of his comrades, and didn’t dare look away from the giantess to find out. But his instincts yammered that he had to finish with her fast, so he could help the others. Otherwise, something terrible was going to happen.

The giantess feinted a backhand blow. Pretending the move had fooled him, he shifted in the direction she wanted him to go. She whirled her weapon over his head and struck from the other side. He lifted his iron arm to shield himself and twisted.

The hammer clanged against his metal parts. It couldn’t break them, but it was likewise true that the iron couldn’t stop the human half of his body from suffering a portion of the jolt. He cried out, and the blow flung him down on his side.

He lay still, pretending to be crippled. The giantess leered down at him, then swung the hammer over her head to administer the death blow. At last the weapon was out of his way, and she was standing still. He scrambled up and at her.

She struck, and the hammer crashed down on the cobbles at his back. She tried to skip backward, but not quickly enough. He lunged behind her and ripped at her hamstrings with his claws.

Blood gushed, her knee gave way, and she fell backward. At once she let go of the hammer, rolled, and reached for him with her bloated, filthy fingers. He swept his iron arm back and forth, slicing her hands, until she snatched them back. He jumped in to rip at the artery in the side of her neck.

More blood sprayed, spattering him from head to knees, the coppery smell mingling with the sour stink of the giantess’s flesh. She flopped down on her face. He spat gore from his mouth, wiped it from his eyes, cast about, and faltered in horror.

Though the battle raged everywhere, it was at its most furious in the center of the plaza. Her gown burned away, her snowflake-and-diamond-painted skin raw and blistered, Iyraclea floated in the air at one end, while Zethrindor, his dead flesh ripped and hacked, crouched at the other. The two hurled blasts of blue and silver radiance, bolts of shadow, screaming winds, and pounding barrages of hail back and forth. The discharge of so much magic was nauseating to behold. An observer had a visceral sense the spells were beating at the substance of the world itself, and might conceivably break through.

Between and around the commanders, their minions battled like warring ants grappling under the feet of a pair of duelists. Some of Dorn’s companions had gotten caught amid the fracas. Brimstone, Taegan, and Raryn were fighting three giants and an Icy Claw.

What appalled Dorn, however, was Kara’s situation. She’d managed the shift to dragon form, but even so, a huge white held her pinned and was ripping gashes in her crystal-blue hide.

Dorn ran toward her, and several of Iyraclea’s human warriors scrambled to intercept him.

He had no choice but to kill his way through them. The first to fall bore a kind of primitive sword, a length of bone studded with chips of flint. Once he snatched that up to wield in his hand of flesh, he could slaughter them a little faster, but still not fast enough.

As he clawed and hacked, parried and sidestepped, he caught glimpses of Kara. Flailing with her wings, she broke free of the white’s coils and scrambled away. The chromatic, however, simply pounced after her and bore her down once more.

Curse Taegan, Brimstone, and even Raryn! Couldn’t they see what was happening? Why didn’t one of them break away from their own little skirmish and help her?

Dorn drove his knuckle-spikes into the last barbarian’s heart. Ahead of him, the white roared and reared up from Kara’s shredded, motionless body.

Dorn sprinted toward the two dragons. Kara couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t.

Iyraclea shouted, “Auril!”

The cry was deafening, like a shrill thunderclap. She thrust out her arm at Zethrindor and curled her fingers in a clutching motion. White vapor steamed from the dracolich’s decaying flesh, and he bellowed. Dorn realized the Ice Queen was leeching forth the cold that was, as she’d warned him, a vital part of his nature.

But Zethrindor wasn’t finished yet. He snarled words of power that cracked and crumbled the facades of buildings at the edges of the plaza. Dorn felt a pressure, a seething malignancy accumulating in the air.

All the countless characters graven on the cobbles shined like cats’ eyes reflecting light. Brimstone, Taegan, and Raryn faded, their forms becoming vague and ghostly. Before they quite finished disappearing, though, Zethrindor screamed the final syllables of his incantation.

A towering mass of shadow appeared in front of the dracolich, then swept forward like a wave racing toward the shore. Giants and wyrms scrambled to get out of the way. Those who failed broke part into small fragments, which then crumbled to powder. The darkness likewise obliterated the paving stones in its path, and as soon as the first of them shattered, the symbols on all the others stopped gleaming.

The wave raced on amid swirling dust. It surged over Kara’s body, and Raryn, Taegan, and Brimstone’s misty forms, and they too disappeared. At the opposite end of the square, it engulfed its actual target and halted with a suddenness no mundane matter could have matched. It clasped Iyraclea’s slender form like amber encasing an insect.

Fissures ran through her skin as if she were a clay figure on the verge of breaking. Yet she didn’t perish immediately, as lesser beings had. She chanted the Frostmaiden’s name, and her body glowed like ice refracting sunlight, the blaze piercing the surrounding murk. She grew taller, as though the Cold Goddess was lending her more strength than a human-sized frame could contain.

Then, however, Zethrindor roared another word, and the Ice Queen thrashed in agony. She was woman-sized again, her inner glow guttering out.

“Aur—” she croaked, and a jagged crack split her luscious mouth and perfect face in two. Her left foot dropped away from its ankle. Then the shadow devoured her completely.

Afterward, the magic dwindled and disappeared like water draining into the ground. Evidently exhausted, Zethrindor slumped down. Dorn looked around and saw nothing but drifts of dust and the broad new scar across the plaza. He hefted the gory bone-and-flint sword and marched toward the dracolich.

Will smiled at the fur-clad spearmen spreading out to flank him. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to fight the dragons?” he asked. “They’re the ones trying to kill your queen.”

The barbarians kept coming.

“Have it your way, then.” The halfling faked a lunge at one, then whirled and charged the other.

Startled, the second human nonetheless managed a spear thrust, but his aim was off, and Will didn’t even have to dodge. He simply rushed on in, drove his pilfered skewer into his opponent’s groin, and dodged around the stricken man as his knees started to give way. He was sure the other tribesman had run after him hoping to take him from behind, and he intended his maneuver to interpose the wounded barbarian between them.

Sure enough, when Will spun back around, his remaining opponent was right where he’d expected him to be, hovering as if he couldn’t make up his mind whether to circle right or left. He was still thinking about it when a flying, glowing, red-gold mace bashed him in the back of the head. The tribesman pitched forward.

Will turned and felt relief at the sight of Pavel standing unwounded, a pilfered spear clutched in his hands. The halfling tried to think of a fitting insult to greet his friend, then glimpsed what was happening at the center of the plaza. Shocked into silence, he pointed. Pavel pivoted in time to watch the heaving, rushing darkness consuming all in its path. Even Iyraclea failed to resist its power.

As the ravenous power ebbed away, Will spotted Dorn starting toward Zethrindor. Even in the dark, the big man’s asymmetrical frame was as unmistakable as his intentions.

“Come on!” Will said. He ran toward Dorn, Pavel sprinted after him, and the flying mace brought up the rear.

It occurred to Will that this headlong dash was no way to skirt trouble. But maybe it would be all right. Some of the combatants on the battlefield were still busy fighting one another. Others, wounded or weary, needed time to regroup, and perhaps in the present circumstances, many of the towering gelugons, giants, and wyrms simply regarded a scurrying human and halfling as inconsequential.

One giant, an axe in either fist, his beard braided, did come stamping to intercept them. But Jivex swooped down out of the dark and puffed sparkling vapor in the behemoth’s face. The giant tottered backward giggling like a happy drunk. The seekers raced on by.

Up ahead, Dorn halted and came on guard, iron arm extended, sword cocked back. Will felt a jolt of fear. The idiot was going to shout out a challenge, like a paladin in one of poor Kara’s stories, and he was still just a little too far away to do anything about it.

Pavel snapped, “Silence!”

Though Will wasn’t even the target, the magic imbuing the word made him feel something akin to a slap in the face. Dorn froze.

That gave Jivex time to catch up to him, and the small dragon wheeled around the half-golem’s head. “Don’t be stupid!” he snarled.

“No,” Pavel panted as he and Pavel stumbled to a halt, “don’t. With Iyraclea dead, the drakes have won. They’ll need some time to deal with the rest of her troops, and to collect themselves, but then they’ll remember us. This is our last chance to slip away.”

Painted and stinking with blood, Dorn spat. “I don’t want to get away. I promised to keep Kara safe. I failed. But at least I’m going to avenge her.”

“You can’t beat Zethrindor,” said Pavel, “certainly not with all these other wyrms ready to back him up.”

“You go if you’re going.”

“Lathander teaches that suicide’s a sin.”

“Then bugger Lathander and you, too.”

“We’re all sad about Kara,” said Will, “but she’d want us to go on, and wreck Sammaster’s plans. The way I see it, he’s the one who really killed her, and pissing in his tea kettle will be our true revenge.”

“How are we supposed to do that?” Dorn retorted. “The search failed. We discovered nothing here. We just lost Kara—and Raryn, and the others.”

“We did find something,” Pavel said. “Unfortunately, Zethrindor destroyed it, but perhaps just hearing about it will help our friends in Thentia solve the puzzle. We need to return and tell them.”

“You go,” said Dorn. “You’re the scholar, fit to help with mysteries and such. As I just proved, I’m useless.”

“Damn it!” said Will. “With Raryn gone, you’re the best hunter, forager, and pathfinder. Pavel and I don’t have a rat’s chance in a dog pit of getting off the glacier unless you help us. I know you loved Kara, but was she really the only one you ever cared about? Don’t the rest of us mean anything?”

Dorn closed his eyes as if at a pang of headache. “We’ll get off the ice if we can.”

“Then what’s our next move?” Pavel asked.

“We climb down the other side of the mountain. When the wyrms think to hunt us, they’ll do it along the trail.”

Pavel frowned. “Are you sure the climb is possible?”

“How could I be? We’ve never seen the ground. Now get rid of the shining mace. We can’t have it floating along behind us like a firefly attracting attention.”

Zethrindor had imagined that once he became a dracolich, he’d never experience pain or weakness again. Iyraclea had disabused him of that notion. He felt sore from snout to tail, and it was an effort just to raise his head to regard his followers with the proper imperious demeanor.

He managed, though, despite the throb of his torn neck, and gave Ssalangan a glower. “Has anyone discovered anything of note?”

“No,” said the living drake, “not yet, but everyone’s still searching.”

Zethrindor was aware of that. He could hear the crashes as dragons forced their way through openings and into spaces too small to accommodate them, and their gleeful cries as they made a game of the destruction. Their victory had left them in high spirits. Because, dunces that they were, they evidently didn’t realize that by the foulest of luck, the prize they’d fought to win had slipped through their talons.

“Tell them to stop,” Zethrindor said. “They won’t find anything. The plaza itself was the secret. I started casting my spell of annihilation an instant before it became apparent, not that I could have avoided destroying it even if I’d known. I had to defeat Iyraclea. But the magic is lost. Curse it, anyway!”

“At least,” Ssalangan said, “Iyraclea will never take possession of it. Sammaster’s plans will move forward without her interference. We’re all going to be dracoliches and the lords of Faerûn.”

This cheery assessment so irked Zethrindor that for a moment, his aches and weariness notwithstanding, he considered rearing up and giving the lesser white a taste of his claws. Then, however, it struck him that, in his own witless way, Ssalangan might have stumbled within hailing distance of a valid point.

“It is true,” the larger wyrm rumbled, “that I’ve freed us from the indignity of serving a human, and Sammaster won’t even be able to reproach me for it.” He leered. “For I killed to preserve his secrets, did I not?”

“Of course,” Ssalangan said. “So what do we do next?”

“Complete the conquest of Sossal for our own benefit. I’ll be the first of the new dragon kings, and you lesser wyrms, my barons. But before we fly east, bring me Iyraclea’s prisoners, the ones who didn’t disappear. I want to question them.” He supposed he might as well make one last attempt to probe the hidden aspects of Sammaster’s grand design before putting the matter behind him.

Ssalangan hesitated. “I don’t think we have them.”

“Did they die in the fighting?”

“It’s certainly possible, but I haven’t seen the bodies. To be honest, I don’t think anyone’s given them a lot of thought. They were just a pair of humans, a halfling, and some sort of winged lizard. Surely the song dragon was the important one, and we know what became of her.”

Zethrindor glared, and Ssalangan cringed.

“Find the corpses,” the dracolich growled. “If someone’s already eaten the meat, identify the bones, and the cripple’s iron parts. If you can’t locate them, it likely means they’ve fled. Choose members of our company to hunt them down. Make it clear: The hunters can kill three of the four, but I want one alive to interrogate.”

“By the silent dirk!” said Will, his voice shaking with the cold. The halfling was only a few feet above Pavel, but the darkness reduced him to a shadow. “If I hadn’t already figured out you were a fake, pretty boy, this so-called ward you cast on me proves it. It isn’t doing anything!”

“The spell I used on you,” Pavel said, stammering in his turn, “protects the recipient from fire and such. I knew you wouldn’t want to become overheated.”

“Shut up!” snarled Dorn from farther down the slope. It was the first time he’d spoken in a long while. “Keep moving!”

Pavel obeyed. He groped with his foot for the next toehold, and the one after that, even though everything about the descent was hellish.

He was weary unto death, and felt as if he could scarcely suck in an adequate breath of the thin mountain air. The moaning wind shoved and tugged at him, trying to dislodge him from the steep, icy rock, and despite the protective enchantment he’d cast on himself, the cold soaked into his bones.

He didn’t have any more such spells ready for the casting. If the ones currently in place failed before night’s end, he, Will, and Dorn might well freeze to death.

Though not if Zethrindor’s minions caught them first. Earlier, Pavel had heard a great rattle of leathery wings from the mountaintop. The wyrms roared and screeched to one another as they took flight. He’d cringed in fear that the entire horde was going to descend on the fugitives forthwith, but that hadn’t happened. To the contrary, most of the drakes had evidently departed the vicinity. But he suspected at least one had remained to hunt for his friends and him.

If so, it had every had advantage at the moment, including the ability to see in the blackness. If not for Jivex flitting about scouting the steep slopes and sheer drops, his wingless companions would have had no hope of finding a way down.

Dorn’s iron hand grated and clashed as he clawed handholds in the rock. Pavel suspected that he’d hear that rhythmic crunching in his nightmares, assuming he lived long enough to experience any more. He shoved his toe into another of the gouges the half-golem had torn in the mountainside.

Or at least he thought that was what it was, and perhaps that was why, in his misery and exhaustion, he forgot to test it before entrusting it with his weight. Rock crumbled beneath his foot, and he plummeted down the precipitous incline. He snatched, but found nothing to grab.

As they crept from the ancient stronghold, he and his friends had plundered the bodies of dead tribesmen, collecting all the gear they could. One of the barbarians had carried the sturdy braided leather line they’d used to rope themselves together. In theory, it might have enabled Will to arrest Pavel’s fall. But when the line jerked taut, it tore him loose, and they both were sliding and spinning down the slope.

As he hurtled past Dorn, Pavel tried again to grab something solid. His fingers only closed on a lump of snow. A bulge in the stone bounced him into empty air, and he fell.

Something jabbed into his shoulder. For an instant, he didn’t understand what, then glimpsed a blur of pale wings from the corner of his eye. Jivex had caught hold of him and fangs bared in a snarl of strain, was trying to hold him up. It was to no avail. The reptile was deceptively strong, but not strong enough to cope with so much weight.

Stone cracked, the rope jolted Pavel to a stop, and Dorn cried out. Will tumbled past the priest, and the line gave another painful jerk as he, too, abruptly stopped falling to dangle below his friend.

Pavel looked upward, at the spot where Dorn clung with his talons driven deep into the rock. The inhuman strength of his iron arm had served to anchor them all. Though, to judge by his contorted features, not without strain to the flesh-and-bone half of his body.

“Get off me!” Pavel gasped. “Your weight makes it that much harder for him.”

Jivex spat. “Try to help and what thanks do you get?” He sprang clear.

Will swung himself against the slope and grabbed hold of it. Pavel stretched out his arms and accomplished the same thing, relieving Dorn of the last of his burden. Then the three of them simply clung to their perches for a time. Pavel shivered, and his heart hammered.

When he felt able to speak, he wheezed, “We have to rest for at least a little while. Otherwise, we’ll make mistakes.”

Will snorted. “Well, plainly, the imbecile among us will.”

Jivex flew up from the well of darkness beneath them. “There’s a ledge not too much farther down.”

They climbed on down to the shelf, then collapsed there, shapeless, silent, shivering lumps in their layers of loose, thick clothing. Pavel looked to the east, through the vaguely discernible gap between two mountains, hoping to see a first hint of dawn lightening the sky. It wasn’t there.

But the sun will rise, he insisted to himself. Lathander sheds his grace on the world every morning, without fail, and when he does, everything will be better. The air will grow warmer, we’ll be able to see our way, and I can prepare new spells. We’re going to survive.

Such being the case, they’d need to drink. He fumbled scoops of snow into a waterskin.

Perhaps his display of activity helped his companions shake off a bit of their own lethargy. Jivex, who’d been lying coiled and motionless, wings spread to cover him like a blanket, lifted his head and said, “Explain again about the paving stones.”

“All right.” Pavel resealed the waterskin and stuck it beneath his bearskin mantle and the garment beneath, where his body heat would thaw the contents. “My guess is, the elves built their true stronghold, the actual source of the Rage, somewhere even more remote than the Novularonds. Someplace they thought the dragon kings couldn’t possibly find it, or march an army against it even if they did. But because that site was so far away from their own lands, they had to figure out a practical way to go back and forth themselves. To supply it with laborers, guards, building materials, provisions, and what have you. The outpost we discovered was their solution. The plaza was a kind of magical door. Open it, and people and goods could travel between the two citadels.”

“What did open it?” asked Will, face shadowed by his hood with its white fur trim.

“I imagine,” said Pavel, “Brimstone figured it out, and invoked the magic to whisk himself, Raryn, and Taegan away. Perhaps he thought it was their only hope of escaping the giants and Icy Claws of Iyraclea. Or else he realized Zethrindor was about to unleash a power that would obliterate everything in its path.”

Jivex nodded. “So our friends did get away.”

Pavel hesitated. “It’s possible. I pray they did. But they were still visible, still in a state of transition, when Zethrindor’s power sliced into the stones and disrupted the old enchantments. That means the sending could easily have gone wrong, and if it did….” He spread his hands.

“Even if they did make it out the other side,” said Will, “the gate’s gone now. They can’t come back through, and we can’t follow. Curse it! Do you think Brimstone’s enough of a sorcerer to quell the Rage by himself?”

Pavel shrugged. “Maybe, but we must also ask, are he, Raryn, and Taegan, by themselves, able to withstand whatever guardians and traps Sammaster left to protect the place? We wondered why we didn’t encounter such things on the mountaintop. I’m reasonably certain they were waiting on the other side of the portal.”

Jivex snorted. “Well, you warmbloods can whine and hang your heads, but I say, it’s going to be all right. Taegan’s not very clever—that’s part of the reason he needs me, to do the thinking—but he’s good at chopping things with a sword.”

Pavel dredged up a smile. “Well said. We won’t despair.”

“What we had better do,” said Will, “is give some hard thought to our own situation, and I have. Jivex, at first light, you need to strike out on your own.”

The drake shook his head. “That’s stupid.”

“No,” Pavel said. “It’s likely the first sensible thing the simpleton’s ever said. Flying, you can travel faster than we can. You can carry word to Thentia faster.”

“Forget it,” Jivex said. “We’ve lost some of our friends, and that’s bad. If we split up again, things will be worse. Don’t you understand, you people need me.”

“We don’t matter.” Will grinned. “I can’t believe I just said that. But maybe we don’t, compared to stopping Sammaster.”

“We’ll stop him together,” Jivex said.

“But—”

“No!” the faerie dragon snapped. “I’ve made up my mind.”

With that, they all lapsed back into their cold, exhausted silence. Except, Pavel realized, for Dorn, who’d never emerged from it in the first place. Who, filthy with dried blood, simply slumped staring out at the night.

Once again, Pavel wondered what he could possibly do to comfort Dorn in his grief and despair. He was a priest of the Morninglord, and the big man’s friend as well. He ought to be able to think of something. But he was still stymied some time later, when Jivex abruptly sprang to his feet. The little wyrm’s head swiveled this way and that, and his nostrils flared.

“What is it?” Pavel whispered.

“I was right,” Jivex said. “Zethrindor did leave somebody behind to hunt us, and he’s not ranging along the trail, not anymore, anyway. He’s on our side of the mountain. Don’t move, or make any noise.” The reptile faded into invisibility, then, with a telltale flutter of wings, took flight.

A moment later, the world dissolved into an incoherent jumble of twisting shadows and oozing smears of phosphorescence. Pavel gasped, then realized what had happened. Jivex had covered the ledge in an illusion to shield his companions from hostile eyes. The chaotic smear of light and dark was how the effect looked from the inside.

It was a good trick, and Pavel wished he could make it better still by shrouding the company in silence. But unfortunately, he only had a couple spells left in his head, and that wasn’t one of them.

Nothing to do then, but crouch motionless, holding his breath, heart pounding. Until something on the slope above rasped, “Got you! You hid. Conjured … funny noises, led me wrong. But you couldn’t … cover your scents. Now show yourselves!”

Pavel kept quiet, in the hope that the wyrm couldn’t tell exactly where they were and was trying to get them to give their location away.

“Suit yourselves,” said the guttural, halting voice. Something pounded, and the stone beneath Pavel shook. Then came a rumbling crescendo of a noise. He realized with a stab of terror what it must portend.

“Hang on to something!” he shouted, throwing himself flat and groping for handholds.

The streaming snow and chunks of stone the dragon had smashed loose from the mountainside swept over him a heartbeat later. With Jivex’s magic bewildering his sight, he couldn’t see the onrushing tide, but he could certainly feel it. Pebbles stung him. Ice particles sifted inside his garments to chill his skin. The wave shoved at him, striving to fling him out into space. He lost his grip, slid, his foot slipped over the edge … then the pressure abated.

“Is everyone all right?” he gasped.

“What’s your idea of ‘all right?’” Will replied.

“I’m still here,” said Dorn.

“Show yourselves,” called the wyrm, “or … I knock down more.”

Pavel drew breath to explain the illusion wasn’t under their control, but then it winked out of existence. Jivex, wherever he was, had evidently dissolved it.

With it gone, Pavel could see the enormous shape of the ice drake clinging to the sheer rock ten yards above his head. Head pointed downward, the creature had driven the claws at the ends of its stumpy legs and even the tip of its wide, flat tail into cracks in the stone to anchor itself, and had likewise spread its wings for balance. The black eyes in its bone-white mask glared downward.

Pavel lifted his spear with its long, broad flint point. It felt awkward and unfamiliar in his grip. The mace and crossbow were his weapons of choice, along with the magic he’d all but exhausted already.

Will and Dorn were in slightly better shape. The former had a sling, the latter, a bow, and both items had no doubt been crafted as skillfully as the barbarians knew how. But they were poor stuff compared to arms and armor infused with Thentian wizardry.

The three hunters aimed their weapons to threaten the ice drake, and it sneered back. “You throw sticks and rocks,” the creature said, “and I throw … real avalanche.”

“You could have done that already,” said Will, “if you simply wanted to kill us. What do you want?”

“Zethrindor needs … prisoner to question,” said the wyrm.

Will drew a long breath. “Then here’s the bargain. Take me. I’m the lightest. You’ll have an easy time carrying me. But my friends go free.”

“No,” Pavel whispered. “You can’t trust it.”

“As long as it’s up there and we’re all down here,” Will replied from the corner of his mouth, keeping his voice just as low, “we’re pretty much helpless. This is our best chance, so shut up!”

The ice drake hung, evidently pondering Will’s offer. At last it said, “I agree. First, everyone, throw weapons off … the edge.”

Will laughed. “Not likely.”

“Then no deal.”

“That means you’ll have to fight us. Maybe we’ll all die, and then what will Zethrindor say? Maybe Lady Luck will smile on us and we’ll even manage to hurt you. Look, my friends can’t throw away their weapons. They need them to hunt. But I’ll disarm myself, and they’ll set the bow and spear down. Then I’ll climb up to you. How’s that?”

The drake grunted. “Do it, then.”

Pavel laid his lance on the ground, and Dorn put down the bow. Will made a show of divesting himself of the weapons he’d collected, his sling, pouch of stones, two knives, and a hand-axe. Afterwards, he clambered upwards. Few observers would have recognized what an able climber he actually was. He faltered and fumbled, his skills evidently eroded by weariness, weakness, and the cold.

Pavel wondered what the wyrm would do once Will came within reach. Grip him and render him helpless, perhaps, then trigger an avalanche anyway. Or else summarily kill him and thus reduce the number of foes arrayed against it. It might adopt the latter course if it believed one of the humans was better able to answer Zethrindor’s questions.

Will struggled nearly all the way up, then stopped. “Please,” he whined, “I can’t do this.”

“We made … bargain,” the reptile said. It yanked one set of foreclaws out of the rock and reached for the halfling.

Will cringed. He stretched out his right arm and leg, found something to grab and a place to set his foot, and shifted himself to the side, keeping just out of harm’s way. The action made it clear he wasn’t as spent and feeble as he’d pretended, and Pavel felt a flicker of hope.

“Stay still!” the ice drake snarled. “Still, or I hurt … you, kill everybody.” It pulled the rest of its talons and the end of its tail from their moorings and crawled across the mountainside.

Will had a stone in his grasp. He hadn’t divested himself of every last weapon after all, though his cunning hands had made it appear so. He flung the rock and hit the drake in its black, glistening eye. The creature shrieked and recoiled.

An instant later, dust puffed into being in the space surrounding the ice drake, clinging to its body and with luck, clogging its eyes, ears, and nostrils. The powder looked black in the darkness, but Pavel knew that in better light, it would gleam like gold. Jivex, whose talents included the ability to conjure the stuff, rippled back into view. He hurtled at the larger reptile, clawed its flank as he streaked by, and tilted his wings, wheeling for a second pass.

Dorn snatched up his bow and drove an arrow into the ice drake’s belly. Pavel brandished his amulet and recited an invocation. The amulet glowed red and warmed his gloved but still half-frozen fingers. A shrill noise screamed through the air and split the ice drake’s hide like a blade.

The immense creature lost its grip on the slope and tumbled toward the shelf, smashing loose chunks of stone, ice, and snow to plummet with it. Pavel supposed this was what they’d wanted, to knock the dragon from its perch, but he realized that in so doing, they’d more or less unleashed the very rattling, rumbling avalanche with which their foe had threatened them.

He scrambled to the side, trying to get out from under the wyrm itself, anyway. Falling pebbles pummeled him. One clipped him on the head. It dropped him to his knees, dazing him, but he forced himself up and onward. It occurred to him that he might be safest pressed up against the mountainside so he lunged in that direction, and something else came down on top of him. This time it was a great mass like a giant’s hand, blinding, smothering, squashing him to the ground. An instant later, a tremendous impact jolted the ledge, and he pictured the whole thing breaking off and plunging into the valley far below.

That didn’t happen, though, nor, evidently, was he dead. He thrashed and floundered clear of the snow that had buried him, to find himself almost within arm’s reach of the ice drake.

The creature rolled to its feet and spread its wings. Dorn lunged at it, sunk his iron claws into the base of one pinion, and ripped out a handful of pale, bloody muscle.

The ice drake snarled, whirled, and, evidently discerning Dorn’s location despite the dust encrusting its body, snapped at him with its fangs. He twisted out of the way and drove his knuckle-spikes into its snout. The reptile raked with its talons, and he blocked with his artificial arm. That kept the claws from piercing his flesh, but the force of the blow knocked him stumbling backward, toward the drop-off. The drake lunged after him.

Pavel poised his spear and charged, yelling to distract the wyrm. It stopped its advance and lashed its tail at him. He ducked beneath the horizontal blow, sprang back up, and thrust the lance into the reptile’s hind leg.

It lifted the limb high, jerking his weapon from his grasp, and stamped down. He jumped back to avoid being crushed. The ice drake started again to scuttle toward Dorn. Jivex dived from overhead and bathed the white wyrm’s head in a jet of his sweet-smelling, glittering breath. It didn’t seem to have any effect. Will, who at some point had made it back down onto the shelf safely, scurried underneath the ice drake and drove a long knife into its belly.

The creature roared and stamped, trying to trample its tormentor. Will evaded the attacks and kept stabbing, only rolling clear when the drake smashed its entire underside onto the ground. By that time, Dorn was on its flank, punching, tearing, and hacking with his flint-and-bone sword whenever practical. For want of any better weapon, or any more attack spells, Pavel emulated Will and started throwing rocks.

A manifestation of Jivex’s magic, bangs like thunderclaps exploded from the empty air around the ice drake’s ears. Pavel felt a stab of fear that the noise would trigger another avalanche. But it was probably stupid to worry about that with a wyrm trying to rip them all to pieces.

He hurled another stone. Will scuttled under the ice drake, stabbed, and rolled clear. Dorn clawed gashes in its pallid hide. Jivex swooped, lit atop its brow, and ripped at its eyes.

Zethrindor’s minion tossed its head, flinging Jivex clear, spread its jaws, and struck at him. Jivex beat his wings, narrowly avoiding the attack, and retreated. The ice drake lunged after him, and lurched off balance when the stone appeared to dissolve beneath its feet. Actually, Pavel realized, that bit of rock had never existed in the first place. Jivex had extended the ledge by dint of an illusion, then lured their foe into empty space. With the clinging dust and blasts of noise addling its usually keen senses, the larger reptile had failed to penetrate the deception.

It twisted as it started to fall and caught hold of the lip of the drop-off with the claws of one forefoot. Dorn sprang in and attacked the extremity with his sword. The wyrm struck at him. He blocked with his iron arm, then returned to tearing and cutting.

The ice drake lost its grip and tumbled down the mountainside, the constant banging receding with it, sounding in concert with duller thumps as it smacked against the rock. The wyrm got its feet underneath it, vaulted into empty space, and sought to spread its pinions. One unfurled, but the other, damaged by Dorn’s claws, didn’t. The reptile shrieked as it continued to fall.

Jivex wheeled. “I win!” he cried.

Will grinned. “That was neatly done,” he panted. “Is anyone hurt? Dorn, you bore the brunt of it.”

The half-golem grunted and sat back down to stare out into the dark.

All the world had become a dull, shapeless seething, rather like the murky stirrings a person sometimes saw upon closing his eyes. Somehow Kara could perceive it even though she no longer possessed eyes, nor any semblance of a body, just as she sensed Brimstone, Taegan, and Raryn suspended along with her. Just as she felt the void eating away at what was left of her, like fire or acid. The sensation wasn’t painful, exactly, but it was terrifying and disorienting, so much so that it was difficult to think.

But she had to think, and remember. Had to understand what was happening. At first, nothing would come but images, moments charged with emotion but bereft of context. Dorn leaping back from a sweep of a giantess’s warhammer. Brimstone whispering words of power. A prone, mangled gelugon slashing her face with its tail.

She pieced the scraps of recollection together like a mosaicist placing stones to make a picture until finally she understood.

The Icy Claw had hurt her, and a powerful white had attacked her immediately thereafter, borne her down and wounded her severely. It was going to kill her if she didn’t get away from it.

She crooned a spell as she struggled, and manifested the charm when she tore free of her adversary’s coils. A phantom Kara crouched before the white, while the real one retreated, shrouded in invisibility.

A master trickster like Chatulio might have conjured an illusion convincing enough to fool the white for a long while. Kara’s effort would only flummox it for a heartbeat or two at best. Her wounds throbbing, she cast about for a source of help or refuge.

Nothing. Just the roaring frenzy of dragons, frost giants, gelugons, barbarians, and ice wizards struggling on every side, the titanic clash of Iyraclea and Zethrindor looming above every other battle. Brimstone, Taegan, and Raryn were nearby, fighting giants and a devil, but appeared to be in nearly as much trouble as she was. They certainly couldn’t rush to her aid.

She could only think of one tactic that might serve to save her. She believed she understood the enchantment bound in the plaza, and even how to command it. She’d direct it to whisk her to the other side of the magical gateway, her and the hard-pressed vampire, avariel, and dwarf, too. She wished she could take Dorn, Jivex, Will, and Pavel, also, but she’d lost track of them amid the chaos.

As the white leaped onto her ghostly double, she sang an invocation under her breath, and the magic bound in the cobbles sprang to life. Obedient to her thought, it gathered her, Raryn, Taegan, and Brimstone into a cool, tingling embrace while leaving their foes untouched.

Then, however, Zethrindor created a towering wave of shadow. The rushing darkness crumbled stones to dust, damaging the pattern of forces the array had been designed to maintain and manipulate.

For that reason, the enchantment didn’t shift the travelers all the way to the endpoint. Instead, the disruption stranded them inside the gate, in a timeless, somehow cancerous emptiness.

Their only chance was to force the damaged enchantment to function as originally intended, and maybe, just maybe, she could manage it. Of all dragonkind, song dragons were the greatest wanderers, with a natural affinity for magic facilitating travel. Unfortunately, she was relatively young, and had yet to grow into mastery of sending spells and the like. Still, perhaps she could exert influence over such an effect while already trapped inside.

She probed the weave of forces around her, trying to discern where it had broken and how to patch it. When she believed she knew, she started to sing. She had no lungs, mouth, or ears to hear, but the music sounded clear and precise in her imagination.

In response, disruption blazed through the bodiless essence of her, ripping, seeking to scramble her into something other than she was. She struggled to continue thinking, to cling to knowledge of her own identity, to insist on being herself and not some shattered unreasoning thing, and eventually, the threat of crippling metamorphosis abated.

In the aftermath, she thought she comprehended what had happened. Mired in the damaged enchantment, she was like a person buried beneath a tangle of fallen timbers. Her only hope of escape was to shift some of the massive lengths of wood, but in the process, she ran the risk of bringing the whole mass smashing down on top of her.

She wondered how many errors she could make, how many punishing jolts she could sustain, before they obliterated her.

But no, enough of that. She wouldn’t dwell on the consequences of failure, nor even admit it was a possibility. Seeking to determine why her first effort had gone wrong, she reexamined the mesh of the elves’ enchantment, then tried a new song.