"Charge!" shouted Legionnaire Longtooth, leading another warband toward the monsters.
But they no longer faced just a horned lizard and a Gila monster. Now vast snakes emerged from the cleft-king rattlers wider than a charr and longer than a warband. They, too, had rocklike bodies and bad tempers.
They ate Longtooth and his soldiers.
Ferroc had slowed to a halt, marching in place. At least he wasn't backing up-a fact that changed when he realized that giant horned lizards and Gila monsters and rattlesnakes were nowhere near as terrifying as whatever would create giant horned lizards and Gila monsters and rattlesnakes.
Who cared what came out of the cleft? What was coming out of the mountain?
The witnesses had been right. The mountain was moving, shifting, growing.
One of the foothills shuddered. Gravel and sand sifted down its side, revealing rows of horns. Beneath one curve-a curve that looked suspiciously like a giant eyebrow-opened something that looked suspiciously like a giant eye. More rocks shifted, and another eye appeared, surrounded by horns.
"Do you see what that thing is?" Ferroc shouted.
"Attack!" commanded another charr, charging up the hill. A dozen warriors followed.
Before they reached the thing, an enormous snout shuddered up out of the mountainside and bared great fangs. Fire bloomed out of the mouth, engulfing the charr.
As the horrible breath poured over them, they solidified like statues.
By all rights, the charr warriors should have died, but they were still moving-twisting, becoming something different. Fur became scales, hackles became spines, and everything seemed made of crystal. They no longer looked like charr, but like… giant stone monsters. And they turned around and stalked toward the remaining warbands.
Ferroc was unabashedly backing away now. Whatever was happening on this strange mountain, it was beyond him.
Then the titanic head broke free of the mountainside and rose on a muscular neck. The neck looked as if it would stretch from one end of the Black Citadel to the other. It was rooted in powerful shoulders of stone, and wing nubs, and actual wings. With an earthquake, the gigantic wings cracked free of the encasing ground and rose ponderously into the air. Those wings stretched to the unseeable distance on either side of the mountain.
They blocked out the sun.
Across the ridge, spikes of stone flexed slowly.
Rocks sloughed from scaly ribs.
Talons cracked out of bedrock.
The dragon rose from the mountain.
It was the biggest living thing Ferroc had ever seen. It was the mountain-a thousand feet high with a wingspan that shadowed the world.
The dragon inhaled its first breath in millennia and then released it in a titanic shriek.
The sound crossed all registers, pounding Ferroc's chest and hurling him back. He hit the ground, his ears bleeding. He tried to scream, but no air was left in him.
The sky had no room for another scream.
Then it all went silent.
Ferroc staggered to his feet and looked up.
The dragon was spreading its crystalline wings. They became the sky. Sinews flexed, and bones folded, and miles of wing gathered the air. A sandstorm roared out. It struck Ferroc and hurled him across the wastelands. He crashed to the ground-how strange not to hear the sound of it!-and felt his bones break.
He was going to die.
An Elder Dragon-a creature of legend that Ferroc had never thought to see with his own eyes-was rising above him.
Another gale.
The thing must have lifted into the air. A thousand tons of dragon was hurling down a million tons of air.
Ferroc Torchtail crawled across the ground. His broken limbs ached, but he struggled to find cover.
Then the dragon's breath flooded over him.
He was transfixed.
Transformed.
Hackles melted to spines, hair to scales.
Legs crystallized.
Ferroc was becoming something new. The dragon's kiln-hot breath was hardening fear into fury and turning him into a giant.
Then the golden gale moved on, pouring on new ground and baking it and transforming it. The dragon scudded away like a thunderhead.
Ferroc stood in the burned and branded wake of the beast, and with his last conscious thought, he hungered to serve Kralkatorrik.
Chief Kronon and his ogre warriors and their hyenas had penetrated deep into southwest Ascalon, only half a day's march from Ebonhawke. They had destroyed three human scouting parties already and planned to kill plenty more before storming the fortress. Charr had already laid siege there, but Kronon and his tribal allies would charge across their backs and take the walls of Ebonhawke.
The life of Chiefling Ygor was worth a hundred charr and a thousand humans.
What was this, though? A black cloud rolled across the sky, spitting lightning. What kind of storm was this, with eyes that glowed like coals?
A golden thunderstroke broke across Chief Kronon and his warriors.
It bathed them. It broiled them. It turned their muscles to crystals and their bones to stone.
He felt that he was dying.
He felt that he was solidifying-a pupa becoming a wasp.
He grew twice his height before his hide hardened. Then his bones warped to basalt. His hair elongated into stony spikes.
When the thunderstroke ceased, it left Chief Kronon and his army rocklike and massive, more powerful than ever. It left their hyenas like lions carved of stone, except that they moved.
The beam passed on, but the dragon's mind remained. It suffused Chief Kronon's thoughts-gritty like sand. Itchy. It made him forget vengeance for the dead chiefling. It made him only want to follow.
Chief Kronon watched the beam go. It was heading south, toward Ebonhawke.
That was where the master was going.
Chief Kronon flexed crackling arms. "Follow!" he shouted. Even his voice rang like crystal. "Follow!"
"Kralkatorrik is coming," Glint announced in her sanctum. "Fighting him will not be like fighting me. Your golems and weapons cannot harm him. There is only one thing that can."
With a grace that belied her size, Glint slid past the companions and reached the other side of the sanctum. She snatched up the crystal spear that hung there and swung it twice before her. It moaned hollowly as it cut the air.
"This spear was carved from one of Kralkatorrik's own spines," Glint explained. "It can pierce his hide, can find his heart." She thrust it out to Rytlock. "Take it!"
Rytlock stared for a moment at the spear, then clamped his claws around it.
"You must strike the killing blow, right here." Glint motioned to her side, tapping a groove between her ribs. "You must be running when you deliver the stroke, with all your weight behind the lance. Can you do that?"
"Yes."
"I will battle him in the air. I will drive him down toward you. He may be on the ground for only a moment. That is when you must strike."
Snaff piped, "I can help you keep Kralkatorrik on the ground."
"How, little one? Fighting Kralkatorrik is like fighting a sandstorm."
Snaff grinned. "Yes. I have some experience with sand. One of my best friends was made of the stuff."
"This is no time to brag," Zojja said.
"I'm not bragging," Snaff tutted. To the dragon, he said, "I'm an expert in creating powerstone portals into minds. They are portals, except that you don't walk through them with your body, but with your mind. No one else has even attempted this kind of work."
"And how will you survive in the mind of an Elder Dragon?" Glint asked. "It has no reason. It has only hunger. Rage. Greed."
Snaff nodded. "I play to the hunger, rage, and greed. I become the itch that must be scratched."
"How?" Glint asked bluntly.
Snaff strode over beneath the emerald tree. "What are these green gemstones hanging here?"
"They are petrified drops of blood from Kralkatorrik-blood from his last battle. For thousands of years, I have gathered them from the sands of the desert and hung them on that tree, keeping them from mortal hands. They are magically potent."