His sword glanced off the wyrm’s scales. Eshcaz flicked his head sideways, and the great bony mass of it smashed into Anton like a battering ram, flinging him through the air and down on the floor. Claws loomed above him and slashed, and he rolled out from underneath. The dragon immediately leaped, trying to smash down on top of him. He scrambled back and just got clear. When Eshcaz slammed down, the cavern shook.
Anton got his feet planted, poised the greatsword to cut, then glimpsed motion at the periphery of his vision. He had to forgo his own attack to jump away from another sweep of Eshcaz’s talons.
Well, he thought, at least I managed to cut the bastard once. He feinted left then scuttled right, trying to get back on the red’s flank. Eshcaz sneered, and with a quickness incredible in a thing so huge, matched him shift for shift. Wisps of smoke seeped from his nostrils and between his fangs.
Tu’ala’keth rolled and rolled, and still fire clung to her like a horde of leeches. She wondered if Anton who had, after all, betrayed her in the endhad lied about the way to put out such a conflagration. Perhaps rolling intensified the flames.
But they finally guttered out, either because she’d smothered them or because the curse that had kindled them had run out its time. She tried to lift her head, and even with the fire gone, her entire body cried out in agony.
She slumped back down and might even have stayed that way, too daunted to try again, except that Eshcaz was roaring and snarling, and once she noticed, she remembered how wrong that was. She shouldn’t be able to hear the red. Silence was an essential component of the defenses against him.
Despite the torture of charred skin cracking and splitting, she managed to take a look around. The surviving ‘chitls and locathahs appeared as helpless as she was. Though she hadn’t truly been able to see through her shroud of flame, she’d had a vague impression of a succession of mystical attacks hammering them, and it was evidently so.
Eshcaz was on their side of the cave, and no wave or waterspout was forming to shove him back. Plainly, all the wards were gone. The red would no doubt have finished off his original adversaries already, except that a lone human had appeared from somewhere to challenge him. He had an octopus tattooed on one arm and wielded a huge sword with shadow drifting and twisting inside the steelimpossible as it seemed, it was Anton!
Naturally, he couldn’t prevail against Eshcaz. It was miraculous he’d lasted any time at all. But magic had hurt the dragon. If Anton could keep the creature busy a little longer, it was at least remotely possible it might finish the job of killing the red.
Of course, she didn’t mean her own personal magic. Even if she were still capable of articulating a complete incantation with the necessary precision, it simply wasn’t strong enough. But the remaining spells bound in Yzil’s book might serve.
She expected to find the pages lying right beside her. When she didn’t, though, she dimly recalled dropping them at the moment she burst into flame then reeling blindly about before she fell. She looked around and spotted them scattered a few feet away. As weak and anguished as she felt, it was like peering through a scrying mirror and observing them on the far side of the world.
She started crawling on her belly. Her silverweave rattled and clinked. Bits of ruined skin broke off and flaked away.
The pain was like a tide trying to sweep her into darkness, and she had to fight the desire to let it take her. Umberlee, she thought, Umberlee, Umberlee, Umberlee. It was as much of a prayer as she could manage.
Finally she reached the sheets of horn. Certain she was on the very brink of losing consciousness, she pawed through them to find the first spell she needed. That was almost as difficult as crawling. Her cooked fingers couldn’t bend or grasp.
Here! Here it was, but could she actually use it? Though mercifully short compared to an entire spell, the trigger phrase required accurate enunciation, too, and she wasn’t sure she even still had a voice. Maybe the fire had burned that away also.
She sought to steady herself, to hold back the pain that might otherwise have made stammer and stumble, then tried to whisper. The words came out faintly but clearly.
Magic washed over her like the caress of the sea. Pain faded. Scorched and blistered skin blurred, flowed, and became smooth and soft. Her dorsal fin, which had nearly burned away, extended into the high, scalloped crest it had been before.
She looked at the battle just a few yards away. Somehow, Anton was still on his feet. Perhaps Eshcaz was playing with him. The dragon’s chest pumped, and his neck swelled in time. If she’d seen a lesser air-breather doing that, she would have inferred it was winded. But the red’s strength seemed inexhaustible, and judging from the smoke streaming from his mouth and nostrils, she suspected he was actually recharging his depleted breath weapon.
Once he accomplished that, his foes would have no hope at all. She hastily returned to the pages of Yzil’s book. They were depleted, also, the majority of spells cast already, and most of the remaining ones, duplicates of invocations that had already failed to put the dragon down.
But one potentially crippling spell remained. She would have attempted it already, except that it required the caster to touch the target, and she and her allies had hoped to stay away from him. But now that their defenses had fallen, that was no longer a consideration.
She murmured the trigger phrase, and an aching throbbed deep in her right hand. It was bearable enoughcompared to the agony of burning, it was almost laughablebut even so, she could sense the profound malignancy it represented. Fortunately, it was incapable of inflicting its devastation on her.
She cast about, found her trident, snatched it up in her off hand, and ran forward. Though seemingly intent on Anton, Eshcaz must have heard her coming or else felt the bane she harbored in her flesh, for he whirled to face her.
His neck bulged, and his head cocked back. His flame had renewed itself, and he was about to spit it at her, while she was still nowhere near enough to touch him. Nor did she have any realistic hope of dodging the great expanding blaze that was his breath.
But Anton rushed the foe whod pivoted away from him. Its seething darkness smeared with gore, the greatsword swung high and swept down to bury itself in Eshcaz’s side.
It must have found a vulnerable spot, for the dragon convulsed, and the spasm made him spew his flame too high. Tu’ala’keth threw herself to the floor, and the crackling flare passed harmlessly above her. The fierce heat was unpleasant, but did her no harm.
Eshcaz rounded furiously on Anton, which required twisting away from her. She scrambled up and charged. The red lifted a foreleg to rake at the swordsman, and she planted her hand midway along the limb.
She winced at the blistering heat of the reptile’s body. Then the power she’d invoked leaped from her flesh into his, and he screeched. His scaly hide split again and again, into a Crosshatch of gashes. Between the cuts, sores opened to seep and fester, and knotted tumors bulged. A milky cataract sealed one blazing golden eye.
The dragon shuddered and took a stumbling step. Tu’ala’keth stabbed him repeatedly with her trident. She suspected that, on the other side of the gigantic creature, Anton was attacking just as relentlessly, doing his utmost to take advantage of Eshcaz’s vulnerability.
Then, unbelievably, the red regained control of his ravaged body. A wing snapped down out of nowhere to swat Tu’ala’keth to the ground. Eshcaz poised his head to seize her in his fangs. She tried to spring back to her feet, but dazed, could only clamber clumsily. It wasn’t going to be quick enough.