Mirabeth took his arm, and he dropped to the floor, pulling her down, trying to shelter her beneath his arms from the killing cloud that must inevitably follow. He remembered the charred bodies in his village and the slain bandits on the bridge at Loreloch; somehow it seemed almost a certain destiny that now he, too, would meet his death by fiery dragonbreath.
He heard another sound, an utterance of short, barking words, but that noise was quickly swallowed by the roaring blaze of an infernal furnace. Danyal was reminded of the sound of a blacksmith's forge, when the fire had been stoked and the bellows were pumping. This was that same hungry, crackling howl, except magnified to an impossible extent, as if he himself were watching the fire from within the chimney.
But he wasn't getting burned!
The truth penetrated his numb sense of shock with an almost diffident appeal to his senses. Danyal blinked, feeling Mirabeth trembling underneath him. He looked up and saw a wall of fire before them. Above, oily flames crackled and raged and on both sides as well. He felt the heat against his skin, as if he was staring into a hot fireplace, but neither he nor Mirabeth was being touched by the lethal blaze.
Nor, he saw, were Foryth, Emilo, Kelryn, or the two black-robed wizards. One of the latter held up a hand that looked like a skeleton's, clothed in sickly skin; it was the force of that gesture, Dan suddenly knew, that was parting the flames, carrying the dragon's lethal breath to either side.
Abruptly the fire ceased, and in its absence, the cavern felt utterly cold and dark. Though the air was still baked and illuminated by the streams of fiery lava flowing throughout the vast enclosure, it might have been a winter's night by comparison to the dragonfire.
The other wizard extended a hand toward the monster, the gesture swift and menacing. Dan had time to notice that the limb was more manlike than the first mage's skeletal digits. The fingers that now extended were long, slender, and clearly dexterous, but they were undeniably cloaked in flesh and pink, living skin.
Another word split the air within the cavern, a barking cry that sent a shiver down the lad's spine, and he knew that he was witness to still more powerful magic. The arcane sounds were harsh against his ears, and the feeling they left in his belly was not unlike the sensation of getting kicked very hard.
A wash of pale light expanded outward from the wizard's hand, a growing cone that encompassed much of the dragon and cast its chilly glow onto an expanse of bubbling lava and the smoking wall of the cavern beyond. The liquid rock instantly darkened, frozen hard, cracks wrenching violently outward across the floor.
And in the eerie glow of that spell, Danyal felt a bitter, piercing chill, a coldness that seeped through his clothes and his skin, striking so deep that it seemed to ice the blood in his veins. Even as he felt that cold, the youth understood another thing: He absorbed this penetrating effect from watching the spell-the real cold was a force of powerful magic attacking everything that was caught in the wash of that pale, icy light.
Blasted full in the chest by the arcane onslaught, the dragon reared backward with a shrill cry of pain and rage. Red scales, strangely rimed in thick frost, tumbled free from the monstrous shape as the serpent writhed away from the hateful chill. Flayze tried to strike with a massive wing, to brush the wizard away, but the leathery membrane was brittle and clumsy, crippled by the attack of cold magic.
Dan was vaguely aware of the gray-robed stranger in the background. The man was still making notes, though he showed little interest in the events being enacted before him. He had turned the silver hourglass over; now sand, glowing like powdered diamonds, filtered slowly through the glass's neck.
And still, except for Danyal, no one else in the cavern had seemed to notice him.
But it was the dragon who again commanded their attention. Flayze roared, the sound like the crash of a massive thundercloud, sending the companions and Kelryn Darewind reeling back from the onslaught of sound. Only the two wizards held their ground, black robes flapping around their legs as they regarded the crouching form of the infuriated dragon.
The whiplike tail lashed around, a crimson tendril of crushing power, but the fleshly mage pointed and barked a command. A spear of crackling lightning ripped through the air, striking the dragon's tail and shattering the last half of the supple limb. With a howl, Flayze pulled the bleeding stump into a coil around his feet.
But the dragon's wings were flexing now as the slowing effects of the ice magic wore off. The great head lashed forward, jaws gaping as it snapped toward the nearest of the two black-robed shapes.
The wizard blinked out of sight just before the serpent's jaws clamped shut. Danyal whirled in surprise, seeing that the mage had transported himself to the other side of the cavern. There he raised a hand and sent another searing bolt of lightning hissing and sparking into the dragon's side.
Still roaring, Flayze whirled back, but Danyal sensed that the dragon moved purely in reaction to the attacks of the two wizards. Indeed, as the crimson jaws lashed toward the target who had just released the lightning bolt, the other magic-user pointed a finger-this one, Dan saw clearly now, as bony and thin as any skeleton's-and released a great barrage of glowing, sparking balls of magic.
The arcane missiles struck the dragon's neck, one after another searing through the layer of armored scales. The great serpent moaned, the sound curiously plaintive emerging from such a monstrous being. Flayze thrashed again, more weakly this time, and tried to extend a reaching forelimb, only to have the leg blasted by another onslaught of magic missiles.
Finally, with a shuddering groan, the massive red dragon collapsed to the floor and lay still, dead.
CHAPTER 45
Third Bakukal, Reapember
374 AC
"My lord Fistandantilus!" cried Kelryn, throwing himself at the feet of the nearest of the wizards. "You have appeared in answer to my prayers!" He reached out as if to wrap his arms around the figure's legs, but then hesitated, rising to his knees, staring hopefully upward.
The black-robed figure ignored the man, turning a shadowy face toward the other gaunt, shrouded form. Though the two were dressed alike and approximately the same size, the nearer sorcerer was somehow more substantial, more solid than the other.
Both, Dan realized, were equally frightening.
The second wizard drew back its hood to reveal a visage of ghastly horror. Danyal recognized the skull of Fistandantilus, except that now that bony visage was attached to a skeletal neck, extending out of a corpselike body. The arms that moved the sleeves of the robe seemed vaporous and incorporeal, while the face bore that same, teeth-baring grimace that the companions had seen on the inanimate skull. The hands were skin stretched taut over bone and seemed to float, unattached physically, at the ends of the wide sleeves.
And the eyes of the skull had changed, Dan saw with a dull throb of horror. Instead of cold shadows within the empty sockets, there glowed a spark of heat in place of each eye, a crimson spot of burning fire that seemed to penetrate Danyal's skin, to shrivel his insides with the force of hatred, violence, and cruelty. It was as if the pure evil of this creature had somehow been condensed into illumination, and that vile brightness now glittered wickedly from the dead sockets.