She hunched forward, and Donegan leaped back. Behind them, horses and soldiers bristled. From the hole came a low, throaty growl, a resonating rumble befitting a beast of a dragon’s stature.
“Form up!” Sir Donegan commanded.
He turned his charger and thundered back to the ranks. Maryin pulled her cowl back over her head and face and appeared to melt into the shadows at the pool’s edge.
The growl continued for a few moments, then gradually receded.
Lances were lowered, swords were drawn, and wizards and priests prepared their spells.
Then it was quiet once more. And through the long hush, no great monster sprang from the hole.
When Donegan and the others finally dared to approach, they stood on the edge of the deep, wide, funnel-shaped pit, looking to the broad tunnel at its base, which ran off both east and west.
“It would seem that we have found our wyrm,” Sir Donegan told his troop.
“Are we certain that a dragon dug this pit?” another knight asked.
“There are spells that can facilitate such things,” Fisticus the wizard replied. “As there are beasts.…”
“A dragon?”
“There is little turmoil a dragon cannot create,” Fisticus explained. “Such a wyrm as the one that attacked Palishchuk those days ago would have little trouble boring through the soft ground of the Vaasan summer.”
Sir Gavaland, another Knight of the Order, said, “One would think that if the dragon meant to announce its presence in such a manner, it would have burst forth to attack us in that moment of surprise.”
“If it knew we were here,” Donegan replied.
“The growl?”
“A purr of satisfaction before settling down to sleep?” the wizard offered. “Such beasts are known to growl as often as a man might sigh or yawn.”
“Pray it is a yawn, then,” said Donegan, “and one announcing that the beast is ready for a long and sound nap.” He looked around at his soldiers, grinning from ear to ear beneath his upraised visor. “One from which it will never awaken.”
That brought a host of nods and grins from the rank and file.
Off to the side, Maryin neither nodded nor grinned. She knew what was coming, and what her role would be, before Sir Donegan even motioned to her to enter the pit. It occurred to her that perhaps she would do well to don her heavier plate mail and hire an elf to handle the scouting.
Under the water, Zhengyi nodded with contentment as he watched the troop disappear over the pit’s rim. His spell mimicking the dragon’s roar had been well placed through use of his complimentary enchantment of ventriloquism, or so it would seem.
The Witch-King knew that he should be away at once-back to the south and Damara, where the battle raged-but he lingered a bit longer in the pond, and when all of the soldiers had gone into the pit save those few left to guard the horses, he emerged again on the northeastern bank.
The three fools standing with the horses still stared at the pit, oblivious to the danger, when the Witch-King came calling.
She knew that her elven cloak could protect her from prying eyes, but still Maryin felt vulnerable as she edged her way down the enormous tunnel-certainly high and wide enough for a dragon to charge through it. Lichen covered the walls, emitting a soft light, like starlight in a forest clearing. Though thankful for that illumination-for it meant she had to carry no torch-at the same time she feared the glow might make her just as plain to the wyrm’s clever eyes.
She felt the beast’s presence before she smelled or heard it-a pervasive aura of fear hung in the air.
Maryin went down to all fours and crawled along. No retreat would be fast enough if the beast spotted her, so her only hope lay in not being detected at all.
She rounded a bend and held her breath as she peered into a distant chamber. There it was, and it was not the beast that had recently attacked Palishchuk. For even in the dim light, she could see that its scales glistened black, and not white.
She retreated slowly for some time, inching out backward. Then she turned and ran, two hundred yards or more up the tunnel, to where Donegan and the others waited, including the armored horses of the knights Donegan and Bevell.
“A large black,” she explained in as soft a voice as possible while she drew the chamber’s layout for them in a patch of soft dirt.
Fisticus and the other wizards went to work, coordinating the spells they would need to fend off the acidic breath of a black dragon.
“A white would present fewer challenges,” the lead wizard complained. “Our spells to defeat its freezing breath are more specialized and complete.”
“Perhaps I can borrow some fence paint and change the beast’s color while it sleeps,” came Maryin’s sarcastic reply.
“That would be helpful,” Fisticus shot back without hesitation.
“Enough,” Donegan scolded them both. “Black dragons are comparable to whites-at least it’s not an ancient red awaiting us.”
“We have spells specifically to defeat the fiery breath of a-” Fisticus began.
“And any red worth its scales would have mighty spells to dwarf your own,” Donegan interrupted. “In this case we need only defeat the black’s initial spray and get our forces in close. Once by its side, we will take the beast down quickly.”
Fisticus nodded and moved to stand next to Maryin’s map. “The distance from the tunnel to the beast?” he asked. “And where in the approach are we likely to be engaged?”
Getting into the heart of the dragon’s lair was little challenge for the Witch-King. In his two-dimensional shadow form, Zhengyi merely slipped into a crack in the stone and slithered his way down. Now he stood off to the side of the main floor, not far from Urshula but concealed by the nature of his form and by enchantments so that the dragon did not sense him.
He watched with great amusement as the stealthy female knight crept back down again to observe the dragon. A pair of wizards followed, magically shielded and hidden.
“Pathetic,” Zhengyi mouthed under his breath.
He raised his bony hand and added an illusion-from the dragon’s perspective-to further hide the intruders, for he did not want Urshula to detect the approaching force too soon.
The wizards cast their spell and hustled away, and as he considered their creation, Zhengyi had to admit their cleverness. Nodding, he knew what was coming next. He waved his hand again, and his illusion disappeared.
Urshula’s eye opened just a bit. Zhengyi watched the muscles along the dragon’s great forelegs tighten with readiness. Down the tunnel came the warriors in a sudden charge, weapons and armor clattering.
Urshula sprang into a crouch, his great horned head swiveling in line.
Zhengyi marveled that the soldiers did not break ranks. Not one of them fled from the sight of a great dragon. Glad he was that he had come back to the dragon’s lair, for the fortitude of the troop of knights could not be underestimated.
Urshula crouched back, and Zhengyi felt the beast’s rumbling inhalation, the preparation for its first devastating strike. The warriors did not slow, approaching the place where the wizards had set their enchantment. Urshula’s neck shot forward, his jaws opening wide, a cone of acidic spittle bursting forth.
It hit a barrier-a solid, impenetrable wall of magical force-and spattered and sizzled. Only a bit of it splashed over the wall, stinging a few of the warriors. But their charge was not slowed. They parted and flowed around the edges of the magical barrier in perfect unison. On the near side, their troop flowed back together, guided by the armored knights, and closed in on the confused dragon.
Urshula reared and lifted his head high-and was promptly engulfed by a fireball, then a second and a third before he could even react. And when he ducked back down, the warriors were there, slashing, stabbing, and hacking away with abandon. They filtered around the wyrm, cheering and shouting, trying to overwhelm the beast with sudden and brutal fury.