“Oh, well,” the Lord Mayor said, unafraid. “It was fun while it lasted.”
Then the house fell on them both, and the world crashed down in fire and darkness. Moonsong smelled hair and flesh burning. Then nothing.
Stagheart shouted in incoherent anguish, reaching out for Moonsong as she collapsed. Then, with a deafening roar, a deluge of blazing plaster and smoldering timbers poured down on her, and she disappeared.
“No!” he roared.
Recklessly he surged forward into the burning rubble. Muscles straining, he lifted pieces of smoldering wood and heaved them aside. He burnt both his hands as he dug, but he didn’t care. Tears washed Kurthak’s blood from his face. He called Moonsong’s name again and again.
When he lifted a charred board and saw her hand, he let out a ragged cry of relief and dread. Working quickly, he picked up debris and heaved it aside. He grabbed beams he should not have been able to lift; desperation fueled his strength, however, and he tossed them away like twigs. At last, he uncovered Moonsong’s body.
Burning pitch covered half her face, searing her flesh. Sobbing, he clawed it away, not noticing as blisters rose on his fingers. Underneath the tar, Moonsong’s skin was bright red. He ignored the sight of it and put aside the sweet stench of seared skin as he lifted her up and carried her out of the wreckage.
He didn’t go back for Paxina; there was nothing more he could do for her. The house’s upper floors, which had fallen on Moonsong, had been made of wood and plaster, but the lowest, the one that had buried the Lord Mayor, had been hewn of fitted stone. Where Paxina had been, moments before, there was only a crude cairn of jagged rubble.
Stagheart glanced around. The yard was all but empty: the ogres were all dead, and most of the kender were gone. Buildings were crashing to the ground everywhere, sending storms of cinders shooting up into the smoke-darkened sky. The heat of the burning city made it hard to breathe.
Holding Moonsong’s limp form close to him, trying not to jostle her, he began to run. He sprinted through pools of blood, skirted around huge and small bodies, then came to a halt at the edge of a dark shaft that led down beneath the ground. A pile of corpses marked where the kender had made a stand, holding off the ogres while their fellows fled. Stagheart stared at them a moment with raw, red eyes, then dashed down the stairs, out of the shambles of Kendermore.
Of the ten thousand kender who had stayed behind to defend their city nearly half perished in the battle. Those who fled through the tunnels emerged several leagues to the west and quickly caught up with the far greater numbers who had escaped through Kendermore’s sundered walls. They struggled wearily onward through the dead forest, straining toward the distant fields of Balifor. Word of Paxina Thistleknot’s death spread quickly, and the kender wept for her, but they did not slow their pace. There was still a long way to go.
Less than an hour after the last survivors escaped Kendermore, however, one young kender glanced back at the plume of black smoke rising from the city’s ruins and cried out in terror. The fleeing kender stopped, turned, then echoed his exclamation with sobs and screams of their own.
In the distance, too small yet to see clearly but growing steadily larger, a red, winged form streaked across the sky.
Chapter 26
Malystryx shrieked angrily as the barren land streaked by beneath her. She flew high over the Desolation, the wind roaring in her ears. Far ahead of her lay the parched bones of the Kenderwood. A black, smoky finger stuck up from its midst, pointing defiantly toward the empty, blue sky. She stared at it balefully, knowing she looked upon the downfall of Kurthak the Black-Gazer’s horde. She knew, too, that the kender were still alive.
“Not for long, miserable wretches,” she sneered. “You have won nothing. I will turn your bones to ashes.”
She soared onward, the Kenderwood inching steadily closer.
His arms burning, Riverwind lowered himself toward the floor of the cavern. Eight feet above the ground, he lost his grip and fell, landing hard and grunting with pain. He lay on his back a moment, his chest heaving, then forced himself to stand.
“You all right?” Kronn called from above, his voice echoing hollowly off the walls of the cave.
Riverwind nodded weakly. “Yes,” he lied, his face contorting with agony as he clutched at his stomach.
“All right,” the kender declared. “Look out below. I’m coming down.”
Wrapping the rope about himself, he swung over the ledge and started to descend. He rappelled down, pushing off the cavern wall as he slid recklessly down the rope. In less than a minute he stood on the ground beside Riverwind, panting and flushed.
“Whew,” he said, grinning. “I forgot how dizzy that makes me.” He crouched down, clutching his knees as he cleared his head. After a moment he knelt, then plucked a small, leathery shard from the floor of the cave. He held it up as he stood, showing it to Riverwind. “Eggshell,” he said, and gestured across the floor. The edges of the cave were littered with such fragments. “Just like you said-she laid a whole clutch of them, then destroyed all but one.”
Together, they looked across the cavern at the ash-heap and the abomination nestled in its midst. “The strongest one,” Riverwind said.
They stood still for a moment, then exchanged determined glances. Kronn reached over his shoulder and drew his chapak from his back, smiling grimly. “All right,” he declared.
“Let’s be done with this.”
Riverwind and Kronn crept across the cavern floor. As he walked, the old Plainsman stole a furtive glance up at the ceiling. The cleft in the rock was empty. Squaring his jaw, he looked toward the egg.
It was even more repulsive up close than it had been from above. Its leathery shell gleamed dully, and it seemed to pulse as they approached. The stink of brimstone that hung about it was almost suffocating. The ash pile surrounding it rippled, and glints of light danced about it, faster with every step, bobbing like a multitude of golden will-o’-wisps.
They stopped at the edge of the ash pile. Riverwind reached to his belt, his fingers clasping about the handle of Brightdawn’s flanged mace. Drawing the weapon, he stepped forward.
The instant his foot touched the ashes, the flitting motes of firelight stopped moving. With a noise like a distant blast of wind, they blazed brightly and began to coalesce. He stared in horror as they gathered together, forming a lithe, wriggling shape.
The serpent was fifty feet long, and its red-gold scales glittered as it coiled protectively around Malys’s egg. Its hooded head rose above Riverwind and Kronn, baring a mouthful of long, needle-sharp fangs and hissing like water thrown on hot stones. Two bright, blood-red spots glowed malevolently in the depths of its eye sockets.
“Branchala shave me bald,” Kronn swore devoutly.
In an eyeblink, the serpent’s head surged down, toward Riverwind. He tried to leap away, but its jaws clamped fast around his right ankle, fangs sinking deep into his flesh. Gagging with pain, he swung Brightdawn’s mace, bringing it down on the serpent’s head. The blow bounced harmlessly off the monster’s skull. Then the serpent raised its head again, jerking Riverwind off the ground.
The old Plainsman flailed his arms in the air, hanging upside down from the fiend’s mouth. Beneath him, Kronn raised his chapak and struck at the serpent’s body with all his might. Its scales turned the blow harmlessly aside. Tightening its grip on Riverwind’s leg, the serpent began to shake him violently, frying to snap his spine.
Riverwind fought ferociously, battering the serpent with his daughter’s mace. Each blow was strong enough to crush a man’s ribs, but the serpent ignored them completely, continuing to thrash him back and forth. At last the mace fell from Riverwind’s hand, landing with a puff in the bed of ashes. He continued to struggle, beating at the serpent with his bare fists.