Zaehr kicked him hard, aiming her blow for a place most men would find difficult to ignore. Haladan simply laughed and tightened his grip on her neck.
“I was there at the dawn of creation. I have played games with your kind since you were rooting in the mud, before you even knew how to make fire. You are a pawn on a board so vast you cannot even see the squares.” Cold flames flowed around his hand, and Zaehr felt her strength being drawn away. “There was only one creature in this city that I feared, and she—”
“Was not alone.” The voice was a thunderclap, and the blow that accompanied it smashed the demon to the ground.
Zaehr fell back against the floor, dazed and weakened by the fiend’s touch. She heard terrible sounds, and the smell of sulphur and molten steel swept over her, threatening to drown her senses. She forced herself to her elbows. What she saw made her doubt her reason.
There was a dragon in the chamber, filling the hall behind her.
It was smaller than the massive silver beast that had died in Pride of the Storm, but it was still one of the most majestic and terrifying creatures she’d ever seen. About thirty feet from nose to tail, its thick scales were the color of wet blood. Long black horns swept back across its head, and its eyes were pools of flickering light. Vast jaws yawned wide, and fire filled the hall.
Zaehr lay just beneath the dragon’s head, and the flames passed over her. This was no natural fire, and the heat was dizzying. Where the flames touched stone the walls melted, liquefying and flowing away from the terrible heat. When the light faded, the gates of the Stormwind Keep were gone, melted by the dragon’s breath.
The demon was still alive, kneeling amid the cooling stone. The flames had burned away patches of fur and skin, revealing blackened muscle and steaming blood, but he rose to his feet, bearing his fangs in a fierce snarl.
The dragon flowed over Zaehr in a blur of scarlet scales. It smashed into Haladan, hurling the fiend into the empty streets of Oak Towers. The dragon followed, seeming to double in size as it emerged from the blasted entrance and spread its wings.
Whatever Haladan’s motives, he had courage. He hurled himself at his foe, lashing out with his dark fists. It was an act of desperation—and futility. Even as Haladan charged, the dragon lashed out with its powerful tail. The blow sent the fiend reeling. The dragon gestured with one claw, and Haladan froze in place. Zaehr could see a rippling field of energy surrounding the fiend, a nearly invisible fist, and as she watched in stunned silence she could hear ribs cracking one by one.
“You… you cannot… defeat us,” Haladan said, burning blood leaking from his mouth. “You are still… only mortal. I… cannot die.”
“Perhaps,” the dragon rumbled. “We have held you at bay for a hundred thousand years. The humans, the elves, the shifters… they live and prosper, in spite of your games.“ The dragon clenched its claw, and the fiend hissed in agony. “What are you? You are nothing. A worthless memory of a time long gone. A lord of dust and nothing more. You can kill us, but there will be others waiting to put an end to you. And someday, the younger races will be ready to face you on their own.”
“You—” Haladan began, but the dragon was done with conversation. It reached out, and its long black claws sank into the chest of the fiend. The demon’s eyes grew wide, and the burning stripes along his fur flared into brilliant light. But the dragon showed no signs of pain, and an instant later Haladan shuddered and was still. The flames along his fur slowly faded.
“Tolar!” Zaehr rolled to her feet, her burned lips drawn back across her fangs. Her companion was nowhere to be seen.
The dragon flung the corpse to the side, a casual gesture that sent the broken body skidding across the cobblestones. It turned to Zaehr, and as it fixed her with its luminous gaze she was gripped by pure, unreasoning terror—the raw panic a mighty predator instills in its prey.
“Tolar had no place in such a battle,” the dragon said. Its voice was thunder and steam, a rumbling hiss that Zaehr felt in her bones. Its crimson scales glittered in the torchlight, as if it was painted in fresh blood. This ruddy armor was punctuated by black ivory—two dark horns stretching back of its massive head, and ebon talons longer than any of Zaehr’s blades. Even its teeth were dark, as if burned black by the flames that licked around its jaws. But the true fire was in its eyes. The blazing orange orbs consumed her thoughts, reducing her to a frightened child. It took all her strength of will to tear her gaze away, to wrap one hand around the hilt of a curved dagger.
How had it come to this?
“This ends now!”
The rumbling voice tore Zaehr back into the present. The knife slid into her hand. Her wounds burned as she fell into a defensive crouch, ready to leap. The dragon towered above her, rearing back on its hind legs, jaws thrown wide. Time slowed to a crawl, and Zaehr could see the light rising in the gullet of the beast.
Fire, she thought. It had begun with fire.
Zaehr woke with a start. The image was still etched in her brain. A second torrent of fire bursting from the lips of the dragon, engulfing the body of the fiend and burning it to ash. The great beast turning to face her, and—
“Feeling better?”
“No.” Zaehr sat up and turned to face the speaker. “I don’t know why you won’t get me another healing potion.” Her wounds itched, and it was all she could do to keep from tearing them open.
“Do you know what Jorasco charges for such salves?” Tolar said, setting a cup of steaming tal by the side of the bed. “If I paid for mystical healing every time you hurt yourself, we’d be on the streets within a week.”
“I thought dragons slept on mountains of gold.”
Tolar’s face froze. “The dream again?”
“Yes.” She watched him carefully. He hid it well, but she could sense his discomfort every time she brought it up.
The truth was far less exciting than the dream. Her injuries had been worse than she’d thought, and she passed out before reaching the gates of Stormwind Keep. Inside, Tolar had managed to lure Haladan before Lord Dantian and tricked him into confessing before his master. Haladan had used magic to escape, but for the moment Dantian was satisfied. Haladan had been the one seeding his master’s thoughts with suspicions of House Tharashk. Now it seemed clear that it was Haladan and his cult that were responsible for the disaster. The danger to Lyrandar shipping might not be over—but at least Lyrandar had a better idea of who was responsible. As for the dead dragon, it remained a mystery. Dantian maintained that it must have been working with his treacherous chief servant, and at the moment, there was no reason to believe otherwise.
But somehow, it still felt… wrong. Tolar had taught her to follow patterns, to make sense of the jumble of facts. This seemed too simple, too convenient. After Tolar had left, she found herself lying in bed and thinking about her dream. The images were faint, already fading away, but she could piece together a trail from the faintest hints of scent, and memories were no different. She thought about an old man with a red beard and coat, a friend who didn’t want her to follow him. She pulled together fragments of sound and thought, reconstructing the words the dragon might have said when it turned toward her….
“You should not have come here.” The luminous eyes were fixed on her, but she could see that there was no anger in their gaze. This creature might be the world’s deadliest predator… but she was not its prey.
She lowered her knives. “Tolar?” she said.