The trick was hurting it enough. Over the course of the next several heartbeats Aoth inflicted several wounds on its snout and jaws, but the superficial punctures only made it more eager to rend him. And he couldn’t get past the tossing, jabbing horn to attack a different part of its body.
Meanwhile, lightning leaped repeatedly from the stormlizard’s body to his. At first he couldn’t feel it. Then it stung like insect bites. His protective magic was wearing away.
Trying to line up a shot, the kobold leaned from side to side. He slashed the wand through a zigzag pass and started a lengthy incantation. Aoth inferred that while lightning was the shaman’s favorite weapon, he knew other magic as well and had decided now was the time to use it.
Then Jet hit the kobold like a bolt from a ballista. His talons pierced the scaly little body all the way through, and his momentum whisked the corpse off the stormlizard’s back, all in the blink of an eye.
Enraged by Aoth’s stabbing spear, and his refusal to stand still and let himself be gored, the stormlizard didn’t even seem to notice its rider was gone. It just kept striking at the man on the ground.
Jet streaked in, plunged his claws into almost the exact spot where the kobold had sat, clung, and ripped away scaly blue hide and the muscle beneath with his beak. The stormlizard bellowed and rolled, trying to crush the griffon beneath it.
But Jet beat his wings and sprang clear. And when the stormlizard flopped over, it exposed its underside. Aoth willed fresh power into the head of his spear, charged, plunged it into the spot where he judged the beast’s heart ought to be, and instantly yanked it out for a second thrust.
Hot blood sprayed and spattered him from head to toe. He swiped the blinding gore from his eyes.
Just in time to see the stormlizard heave itself around, and its horn rip upward. He tried to jump away. The point caught him anyway and flipped him through the air to smash down on his back.
His chest ached, but when he looked down he saw the horn had only grazed him. It hadn’t breached his mail to cleave the flesh beneath.
And that had been the stormlizard’s final effort. Now it simply lay shuddering, more blood pumping out in diminishing spurts and its shimmering corona fading. One final arc of lightning crackled from the tip of a claw to the ground.
At that same instant, an idea popped into Aoth’s head.
He had no idea why. He’d resolved to concentrate solely on the assault, and he had. But apparently without him even being aware of it, some buried part of his mind had kept on worrying at his other problems, and now it was making a suggestion.
It was a suggestion he couldn’t take if his men still needed him. But when he glanced surreptitiously around, that didn’t appear to be the case. There were no more stormlizards coming out of the tunnels, and in general the Brotherhood seemed to have things under control. In battle, few things were ever absolutely certain, but he was willing to gamble they could carry on without him.
Smelling of singed feathers, wings rustling, Jet landed beside him. “Why aren’t you getting up?” the familiar asked.
Because, Aoth replied, speaking mind to mind, I’m horribly wounded. Don’t you see all the blood?
It’s the lizard’s blood. Its horn just bumped you.
You’re right. But no one else was standing close enough to tell.
Using his spear as a prop and doing his best to move like a man in hideous pain, Aoth rose and clambered onto the griffon’s back.
The staff seemed to quiver in Jhesrhi’s hand like a dog straining at a leash. She willed it into quiescence.
Patience, she thought. If this idiot scheme works, you’ll get the chance to make plenty of fire. But in the meantime, she needed to avoid sparking big, telltale flashes of light in the midst of all the gloom.
She peered from the brush Gaedynn had chosen to serve as their blind at the trail meandering down the hillside several yards away. Tchazzar’s captors traversed it often to take gray crawfish as long as her forearm and black eyeless pike from the murky river at the end.
Though she and Gaedynn were waiting for the dark men, their silence and the dusk that shrouded the wooded hills even by day kept her from spotting them until they were unnervingly close. One was a shadar-kai with a bow in his hand, a chain around his waist, and triangular scars on his forehead and cheeks. The other six were hunched servants carrying cast nets and baskets.
Jhesrhi whispered to the earth, and the patch of trail beneath the creatures’ feet turned to muck. They all plunged in up to their knees or deeper.
Gaedynn sprang to his feet and loosed his last two arrows. The first pierced the shadar-kai’s torso. The second stabbed all the way through a servant’s throat.
She willed the soil to well up higher around the foes who were still alive, like waves in a stormy sea. Dirt flowed over one and covered him entirely.
But the other three vanished, leaving holes in the ground. Prompted by instinct, Jhesrhi spun around. Two of the servants were right behind her. Covered in mud, ugly faces contorted, they sprang at her with their knives raised over their heads.
She spoke to the wind, and it howled and shoved them back. That gave her time to rattle off a charm of slumber, each syllable softer than the one before.
The little gray men collapsed. She killed one by ramming the butt of her staff into his forehead. His scimitar already bloody-from dispatching the servant who’d shifted elsewhere, presumably-Gaedynn trotted up beside her and slashed the throat of the other. The bodies exploded into dark vapor, and their killers stepped back to avoid it.
“Well,” Gaedynn said, “that was easy enough.”
“It will get harder once their friends find the corpses and realize we’re still in their territory. And hunting them as they hunted us.”
“Oh, I’m sure we’ll cope.” He strode to the mired corpse of the shadar-kai and removed the dead man’s quiver. He pulled out one of the many black arrows, sighted down the length of it, and smiled.
Cera sat cross-legged on a flat portion of the temple roof. The elevation brought her closer to the sun.
Amaunator’s radiance was shining just as brightly at ground level, so her ascent was purely a symbolic gesture. But every acolyte learned early on that where meditation was concerned, symbolism helped the practitioner achieve the proper frame of mind.
She studied the golden light reflecting from the rooftops around her. Then, when she felt centered, she lifted her eyes and gazed directly at the sun. No layman could have done so without pain and, if he persisted nonetheless, permanent damage to his sight. But the blaze simultaneously calmed and exalted her. It made her feel the majesty of her god.
Until a screech split the air, and a big black shape with outstretched wings cut between her and the object of her adoration. She felt a pang of dread, but the emotion disappeared when she recognized Jet for what-or, according to Aoth, who-he was.
“Sunlady!” cried the griffon.
“Yes?” she replied, thinking that even though she knew the beast could speak, it was a marvel to hear it nonetheless.
“Meet me in your garden! Now!”
She started to ask why. But then Jet swooped level with her rooftop, and she gasped at the sight of a crimson figure slumped on his back.
She clambered down her ladder and scurried through the interior of the temple with no regard for the dignity of a high priestess. As she burst out into the garden, Jet said, “A drake, or some creature like a drake, hurt him bad! I think he may be dying!”
Cera tried to put dismay aside and think with the calmness befitting a cleric and healer. “I’ll call my people to carry him to a bed.”