A backwash of angry bees, swirling madly, roared around the head of the beast as she lunged up and into the tunnel, cracking the walls as she smashed into them. The dragon vomited fire, though most of it came out as little more than smoke, the firegems within her belly lulled to sleep by the honey and sweet water she had been consuming. With her cruel talons extended, she swiped at the Dhracian as he exited the sluice, howling obscene sounds of threat in draconic words that even she did not understand.
Grunthor had almost caught up to Rhapsody by the time Achmed and the Dhracian cleared the fissure and followed them over the cracked clay dunes into the fading twilight. The desert wind spun devils of dust all around them, obscuring the horizon. “You’ll never make it on horseback, even if you can reach them,” the Dhracian said as they ran. “She will torch us all, especially if she can fly. We can’t outrun her.”
Achmed stopped, breathing heavily, and nodded. He pulled forth the cwellan and loaded three rysin-steel disks on the spindle.
The Dhracian stopped as well, but turned into the windstorm and began his cant, choking as the sand swirled into his mouth and sinuses. His cloak whipped around him but where he stood the wind died down, remaining still like a column of air, the eye within a swirling hurricane.
Just then the earth was rent asunder in a horrific spray of rock and sand as the beast reared up from the fissure, her massive body shattered the ground around the sluice. She was coughing red sputum and bees along with rancid fire, slashing her great tail back and forth across the sand, striking blindly at whatever she could reach.
Then she opened her wings, her crippled one healing but still black with bees, and attempted to take to the air.
Rhapsody came to a halt at the top of the dune overlooking the ruins. “Where are the horses?” she gasped to Grunthor.
The Sergeant-Major put his hand to his eyes.
“Can’t see ’em,” he shouted back over the scream of the wind. “Might o’ been buried in the sandstorm or trotted off— Oi left ’em loose-hitched in case we didn’t make it back. Duck, miss.”
Rhapsody slid on her heels and rolled, the squirming bundle in her arms, as a gigantic shadow passed over her head and landed, off kilter, on a ruined tower several hundred yards away. From atop the minaret, the beast looked around, scanning the horizon, the malice of her intent clear even at the distance.
“Get back in that cloak!” Achmed shouted. “She’s looking for your He sighted the cwellan on the beast in the distance, but the chaotic gusts of the whipping desert wind and the darkness cloaked her, making his shot uncertain and likely to go astray. “Can’t,” Rhapsody gasped as she struggled to stand with the baby in her arms. “It might expose—Meridion to—being seen—”
Come. Each of the three heard the word in their ears, a scratchy command behind them. They turned to see the Dhracian, his hand still held aloft. Before him a part of the air was motionless, still as doldrums inside the swirling currents, like a doorway in the air. Make haste. The beast comes.
Of one mind, Grunthor and Rhapsody ran straight for the door in the wind. Achmed maintained his sight on the beast in the distance while the Dhracian held it open. Come, Assassin King. You are nearest. At that moment the dragon caught sight of the movement in the lee of the ruins. She loosed a thin plume of caustic fire that rolled down the parapet and into the ground, setting fire to the minimal scrub vegetation there. Horrific screaming rent the night wind as the horses caught flame, their pathetic cries echoing up through the night.
A terrible stench tore through the air, the smell of brimstone and burning flesh. The dragon reared up and bellowed in frustration, then caught sight of other movement. Hobbled still by her torn wing, she leapt and glided to a lower ruin, a broken dome with arched windows, and steeled her sights on the four human figures running into the wind in the last light of the setting sun.
“Feint right, Grunthor!” Achmed shouted, then fired the cwellan. At that instant the beast recoiled and inhaled, a deep and horrible rattle in her chest that echoed over the desert plain. The shot caught her wing just as the Dhracian seized the Bolg king and pushed him through the door in the wind. Unbalanced, the wyrm stumbled forward on the dome and loosed her breath, this time a greater billowing wave of heat and light that scorched the ground and caused the mother-of-pearl coating of the ruins to glisten with the reflected radiance of a million candleflames.
The giant Bolg started to reach back for Rhapsody, but was himself shoved within the swirling vortex of wind, followed by the Dhracian. The Lady Cymrian, bringing up the rear, reached the door just in time to be engulfed in the flames of the dragon’s breath, her golden hair took on the light of a torch in full radiance as the fire swept around her, leaving her unharmed. She lunged inside.
The wind door closed, leaving the dragon alone in the darkness of the ruins. The only sight the three companions caught before the door in the wind opened again was being elevated high above the desert plain, wrapped in a strong, sand-ridden current of air that glided southeast, whipping the desert sand ahead of it as it gusted along. Then all sight was engulfed in the mighty roar of the desert wind, a vortex of swirling, primeval power that carried them along the waves of sound as they rose and fell, finally terminating in silence. When the gust that had carried them died away, the four people were standing at the base of a hilly dune not unlike the ones that they had been riding before they came to the ruin. The mountains in the distance were still there, but nearer; they had reached almost to the steppes before the piedmont of the Upper Teem.
Achmed turned to see Grunthor shaking his head as if trying to expel the screech of the wind, or sand, from his ears, then looked over to Rhapsody.
She was standing, her face white as the crescent moon, her arms filled with the ashes of the mist cloak.
And nothing more.
34
Well, that was a neat trick,” Grunthor said to the Dhracian, still picking the sand from his ears. “Oi’ve traveled the wind myself, but only when—” He stopped at the sight of the look on Achmed’s face, then turned around to see Rhapsody staring at the ashes in her arms. For a moment he could say nothing; seeing the expression on Rhapsody’s face was like watching the end of the world. When the words came to his bulbous lips finally, they were gentle.
“How now, Duchess—where’s the lit’le prince?”
Achmed shot him an acid glance.
The Lady Cymrian stood stock-still, not breathing. Then, after the shock passed, she began looking rapidly around her, her arms twitching, causing the remains of the cloak to drift gently down to the ground like black snow. Her eyes took on a mad light, a glitter of panic that was almost too ugly to behold, “We—we have to go back,” she stammered, turning around and scanning the ground. “I must—I must have dropped him. Please—o-open the door again—please, we have to go back—”