Tyros couldn’t fathom that being the case, and so that left only one option. He studied the clouds, looking for a telltale shape.
At last he saw it, drifting in and out of the dark clouds, tiny aerial figures diving from its base. An astonishing sight to see, even for one who had seen it before.
A castle in the sky. This one stood tall and narrow, yet even from a distance, Tyros could see that one of its towers had collapsed and another leaned threateningly. Still, despite the damage it had suffered in some past battle, it no doubt filled the hearts of many below with fear.
A flying citadel. The secret of creating such floating castles had been known to mages and clerics of both darkness and light for centuries, only to be lost and then rediscovered from time to time. In this case, the entire castle had been ripped from the surrounding ground, an island of earth coming up with it. The island likely contained the dungeons and underground passages that had been built along with the original structure. One ruined citadel that Tyros had investigated had even included the family tombs, resulting in a ghoulish array of skeletal corpses at the scene of the flying castle’s crash.
Up in the citadel, Tyros knew, a wizard or a cleric, perhaps both, guided the behemoth. Officers of the dragonarmies would be commanding archers to rain death down upon the city. More draconians would be leaping to the ground below. Of course, to the fortress’s human commanders, the draconians were merely fodder, to be used to open the way for their masters.
The flying citadel rocked in the increasingly harsh winds, its operator no doubt having to struggle. Tyros peered at what seemed to be the tallest remaining tower. Inside would be what someone had termed the Wind Captain’s Chair, the place where a chosen one would actually pilot the edifice. Tyros strained futilely in an attempt to hear the chanting of the wizards and clerics aboard, an essential part of keeping the citadel afloat. Deep inside, some sort of arcane device would be aiding their task, but the ruined citadels he had studied had not left enough for him to understand just how that device might work.
To be up there now … Even with Gwynned under siege, the ambitious spellcaster dreamed of investigating the leviathan. Yet to reach it, he would have needed a castle of his own. A castle or …
“Where are they?” he muttered.
“Where are who?” Leot asked. Realization dawned. “Oh! You mean-”
Tyros thrust his hand out into the downpour, pointing to the dark skies. “Sunfire!”
Like a fiery comet soaring through the storm, a great golden dragon raced toward the flying citadel. Sunfire made his home in a cave in the mountains to the east, and since the war, he had made a pact with Gwynned and the surrounding areas to protect the entire region. In return, the people of Northern Ergoth respected his privacy and, on occasion, presented him with food.
“I wouldn’t like to be riding him today!” remarked Leot.
Tyros would have traded anything to be astride the golden dragon’s back, but that honor this day went to three men more versed in such feats. In combat, the great golden dragon often carried one human rider, generally a knight with a lance. However, against a citadel such as this, three men generally rode, men prepared for what amounted to a suicide mission in many ways. With Sunfire’s aid, they would try to board the castle, choosing as their target the highest tower. Tyros himself had determined from past experience that the highest tower inevitably contained the chamber housing the Wind Captain’s Chair. The chosen warriors, veterans all, would do their best to seize control of that chamber. At the very least, they would try to destroy it … even at the cost of their own lives.
Such had been the plan that Tyros himself had designed and suggested more than a year earlier. It had worked once, although those men had perished in bringing their target down. That in itself had tarnished the Red Robe’s vaunted reputation somewhat, but no one could deny that his plan had succeeded. Still, it had irked Tyros that some blamed him more for the three lives lost than the many saved.
Sunfire alone, though, fulfilled only half of Tyros’s plan. He scanned the heavens, looking for the other half … and spotted what he sought. Glisten, Sunfire’s sparkling mate, dived down past the other dragon, two men no doubt on her back. She looked as if she sought to roost on the underside of the citadel, which the female would do if that proved possible, but her true mission also concerned those aboard her. Sunfire’s humans had a tactical mission in mind; Glisten’s were there to see that they would have the chance to succeed.
Glisten carried mages, veteran war wizards. No youngster such as Tyros, even though he had devised many of the very routines that they would utilize. The dragon himself had vetoed the presence of Tyros, insisting that he would only trust human wizards with robes of white.
“No human who wears robes of blood will battle at my side!” the gold had rumbled, heedless of the insult he had thrown at Tyros. “White follows the light and black the darkness, but red wavers too much in the middle, a friend who might suddenly become a foe!”
The words remained burned in Tyros’s memory even now. He knew that members of his order, if they chose a different path, had a tendency to lapse toward the black robes more than the white. Such defections had occurred just before the start of the war and had left a stain on the Order of Lunitari, god of neutral magic. That the dragon would respect the followers of Solinari, god of white magic, Tyros had understood, but Sunfire almost gave the black robes of Nuitari more respect than the red robes, even though the former were the enemy.
“I should be up there,” he muttered. He could have proven to Sunfire that some followers of Lunitari could be trusted.
Leot pulled him back into the tower. “Forget such a foolish notion, Tyros! If you want to play a part in this battle, we can do so from down here, and it’s time we begin, at that!”
Tyros blinked, staring at the rotund White Robe. He had never seen Leot so possessed. Suddenly the bearded, balding figure no longer looked so clownish. Tyros recalled that some of Leot’s own order rode atop Glisten and understood his friend’s determination.
Still, thoughts of the flying citadel again pulled Tyros to the window, despite his companion’s protests. He looked up but could see neither the dragons nor the castle.
“Tyros!”
“Go on without me!” he finally snapped at Leot. “I’ll be there soon. I promise!”
The other spellcaster eyed his friend briefly. Then, with a frustrated expression, Leot turned and left the chamber.
Tyros at last located the flying citadel. Sunfire flew above it, trying to come near enough to land his precious crew. Glisten circled about the fortress, flashes of light occasionally bursting around her as she and her companions kept the mages and archers in the castle occupied.
A dark form moved from the clouds. Tyros’s first thought was that an enemy dragon had joined the fray. Then he saw that the invaders had not one but two flying citadels, which helped explain the large number of draconians dropping out of the sky. The invaders had thrown all they could at Gwynned.
Neither dragon had noticed the second citadel, but instead of aiding its counterpart, the newcomer shifted away from the battle. Tyros studied the second fortress and saw why. It looked more battle-worn than the first and wobbled in the high winds. A few winged figures dived from its battlements, but otherwise it seemed almost empty. Against the dragons, it wouldn’t have had a chance.
Tyros had just begun to turn his attention back to the first citadel when he noted yet another form lurking in the clouds. A third citadel? He doubted that the invaders could have so many at their command.
A sleek, ebony shape emerged from the clouds above Glisten.
A black dragon. A male, and young, too. Although it was only two-thirds the size of Sunfire, the black had the advantage of surprise over the massive gold’s mate. Tyros pictured savage claws rending the wings of the female. Despite the ludicrousness of his actions, the mage could not help leaning out to shout a warning. “Above! Look out from above!”