For Alias, the next few moments were frozen in time. Steam rose about her and water splattered to the floor, but the principals of the tableau stood motionless: the dragon considering the value of her eyesight and the length of the warrior’s blade, Alias trying to remain perched on the creature’s scaly nose, Ruskettle awaiting the outcome, so eager to witness it she would not flee like a sensible person.
Finally Mist hissed, “This time, little lawyer, you win.”
“I accept your surrender,” Alias replied. She kept her gaze on the creature and her sword over Mist’s nose. No blanket of condensing steam poured from the beast’s mouth to indicate she had cooled her inner fires.
Mist has no intention of honoring the pact, Alias realized. She wants me dead even more than ever, but she doesn’t dare try to kill me unless she can get the tell-tale bard with the same blow. All she has to do is breathe fire once I’m standing beside Ruskettle.
Alias’s mind scrambled for a scheme to delay the dragon’s attack, hoping that the halfling had enough wits to play along. “I’d like to be let down over there by my friend,” the swordswoman said.
“But, of course,” Mist replied, her tone full of sugary venom. The dragon kept her head perfectly steady as she swung her neck over to the ledge, anxious that Alias should not slip or lean on the blade and drive it into an eye.
Alias hesitated before she stepped off Mist’s snout. Winking at the halfling, she said, “That ring of fire resistance makes you a lot braver than usual, bard.”
“What? Oh, yeah. The ring of fire resistance. Well, you know my motto: If you got it, might as well flaunt it. You think I’d have risked singing to a dragon without one?”
Alias leaped from Mist’s head to the ledge and sidled behind the halfling, as if to use her tiny body for a shield. The swordswoman’s heart pounded as she ordered the dragon, “Now go fetch the chest of gold you promised me.”
Mist’s eyes narrowed to tiny slits. Steam rose from her nostrils. Tymora, make her believe the ruse! Alias prayed silently. The dragon turned her head away from the ledge and lumbered toward a pile of gold. Alias swallowed hard.
“Why didn’t you kill her when you had the chance?” Ruskettle whispered through clenched teeth.
“And fall to my death or get crushed by a dragon in her death throes? No, thank you. That wasn’t what I was paid for. Now, let’s get out of here.”
“What?” the bard asked.
“We’re leaving,” Alias replied, grabbing a handful of the halfling’s cloak. Alias slipped into the passageway leading out of the lair, trying to tug the halfling with her, but Ruskettle jerked herself loose.
“We have to wait for the gold,” the bard insisted.
With an exasperated growl, Alias grasped the small woman by her shoulders, pulled her into the passage, and shoved her in the lead.
Their way dimly lit by the runes embedded in Alias’s flesh, Alias prodded and pushed at the halfling until they reached the upper cavern where the swordswoman had waited for Akabar’s scouting report. Once they reached this point, however, Ruskettle twisted from her grip and dropped angrily to the floor. Alias slipped her sword arm into her cloak before the halfling caught sight of the glow of the sigils.
“Why’d you do that?” the bard demanded. “She was going to get us some gold!”
“Stupidhalfling!” Alias panted, her words running together. “Mist is a red dragon! That makes her as greedy and as untrustworthy as an Amnite merchant! The only thing that stopped her from burning us to cinders was the fear you would escape and tell someone.”
“But she believed your story about me having a ring of fire resistance.”
“For the moment. But if she had sniffed any jewelry on you when she first kidnapped you, she would have made you take it off. You aren’t wearing any rings. Any minute now she’s going to remember that, and then—”
Cool air from the outside rushed down the passage. Alias could picture Mist sitting by the ledge, inhaling deeply, smoke from her hidden forges pouring out of her snout.
“Come on!” the swordswoman shouted, picking up the halfling, tucking her under her arm, and running for the surface exit. Ruskettle was unexpectedly heavy, and between the extra weight and having to check her footing, Alias felt as though she were running underwater.
A roar began behind her, a deep rumbling sound. Harsh cries followed—ravens, she realized, caught in the conflagration. Her back grew uncomfortably warm as the dragon’s breath chased her down the passage. If she didn’t reach the exit quickly, the approaching wall of super-heated air would do her in before the beast’s metal-twisting flames even reached her.
The heat grew unbearable, and Alias wondered if she might already be burned so badly that she would die but her muscles and mind didn’t know that yet. The halfling was still squirming in her arms as she made a final leap toward the opening in the mountainside, praying to Tymora that she would clear it before the hot air singed her flesh and the fire stripped it from her bones.
The moment Alias cleared the stone passage, Dragonbait’s tail snaked out from the right. The powerful muscles in the scaly, green ribbon knocked the swordswoman and her passenger down the slope of greasy grass.
Alias looked back. The opening where she had been only an instant before was now filled with flame and soot. The rock about the cave entrance melted in the heat, twisting and flowing until the passage was sealed shut. Silence settled over the mountainside.
Dragonbait rubbed his mildly scorched tail and gave a reptilian whimper. Akabar, upon hearing the sound of the dragon’s inhalation, had assumed a safer position several paces away from the back door. He now looked down at the soot-blackened women with amusement.
Alias looked down at Ruskettle, and it suddenly dawned on her why the halfling had been so heavy. On her tumble down the hill, the bard had lost, in order, Alias’s dagger, two pouches of gold coins, an opal the size of a cockatrice egg, a handful of jade statuettes, a ratty scroll, and a large, ornate book marked with the sigil of Akabar Bel Akash.
For half a score of heartbeats, Alias lay among the flowers of the mountain meadow. She gasped in the thin mountain air, trying to will away the stabbing pain in her chest and the searing agony across her back. She imagined the dragon-heated metal of her chain shirt burning through her jerkin and inwardly cringed.
Dragonbait, having knocked her and the halfling out of the direct path of the dragon’s breath, was at her side immediately, his clawlike hands on her shoulders, helping her rise. He smelled heavily of woodsmoke, but his chivalrous aid helped make Alias feel a little better.
Farther down the slope, the halfling was scurrying about, trying to recover the items lost in her tumble. She grabbed one of the leather-bound tomes, but a sandal-clad foot suddenly appeared and held it tight to the ground.
“I believe,” Akabar Bel Akash said, “that this particular item is mine.”
The halfling gulped. “You were the wizard in the caravan,” she piped, wheels visibly turning behind her eyes. “Of course. I brought this from the dragon’s lair to …” she sighed deeply, “… to return to you.”
Akabar harumphed and, keeping his foot atop the book, reached over and picked up the age-torn scroll lying near it.
“That’s for you, too,” the halfling offered, jamming the opal and the jade figures back into her pockets.
Alias had by this time removed her charred cloak and shucked off her chain mail shirt. The cloak was a total loss; the heavy cloth had taken the brunt of the blast. The heat had been enough to fuse portions of her chain into solid lumps along the back and leave the light leather jerkin beneath hard and cracked. The leather must have insulated her back just enough though, for what she could see of her skin there, while pink, was not charred.