Meanwhile, the wyrmkeepers were climbing too. Sphorrid chanted a spell of his own.
Oraxes finished first and shrouded himself and his mount in a haze that ought to make them particularly hard to target in the predawn gloom. It didn’t blur his own vision, but he felt a sudden chill in the air around him as the enchantment sprang into being.
An instant later, one of his enemies’ drakkensteeds spewed a flare of fire at him, while another spit a puff of what was surely poisonous or corrosive vapor. They evidently had no compunction about striking at one of their own kind if directed to do so. Sphorrid roared the last word of his spell, thrust out his hand, and for an instant the luminous head of a ghostly blue dragon glimmered around the extremity. The illusory wyrm spit a crackling zigzag of lightning that Oraxes assumed to be entirely real.
The flames fell short, and the other two attacks missed, although not by much. So far, so good, but the cloak of blur wouldn’t last much longer. Glaring at Sphorrid, Oraxes started another incantation. Then, on the final word, he wrenched himself around and thrust out his hand at the wyrmkeeper seated behind Meralaine.
He hated doing it. He was terrified of hitting her instead of her keeper or of killing the beast beneath her and making her fall. But he needed her in the fight.
And because she was bending over the neck of her drakkensteed as he had, the shaft of blue-white light that leaped from his fingertips blazed over her and stabbed at her startled captor’s neck. The priest jerked then went limp, his throat and upper torso covered in frost and his heart stopped by a shock of bitter cold.
Or at least Oraxes hoped he’d stopped it. Before he could be sure, his drakkensteed lashed its wings and flung itself sideways. The motion nearly dumped him off its back, and for an instant, he thought that was precisely what the beast had intended. Then, claws poised to catch and rend, another reptile and its acolyte rider plunged through the space his own mount had just vacated.
“Get the girl!” Sphorrid bellowed. The acolyte pulled his drakkensteed out of its dive and wheeled in Meralaine’s direction. Oraxes could tell that he had indeed killed her captor, leaving her in control of his mount. Unfortunately he could tell it primarily by the clumsy, floundering way the beast had begun to fly. When it came to riding a winged creature, Meralaine was even more of a beginner than he was, and she was plainly overcontrolling, confusing, and irritating the reptile.
Sphorrid kept on pursuing Oraxes. He thrust out his hand, and a glowing, transparent red dragon head appeared around it to spew flame. Acting in advance of Oraxes’s tardy prompt-and thank the Queen of Air for it!-his mount just managed to swoop beneath the blast. He replied with a bright, booming thunderbolt, and Sphorrid dodged with a veer to the left. The wretch made it look easy too.
They traded attack after attack, neither quite managing to score. Meanwhile, the other wyrmkeeper maneuvered to get both above and behind Meralaine, who was evidently still struggling to direct her own steed. Oraxes was frantic to go to her aid but knew Sphorrid would kill him if he tried.
Meralaine’s adversary had nearly reached the perfect position from which to attack when, suddenly flying more smoothly, the drakkensteed on which she was sitting wheeled to face it. The priest in the saddle sat up straighter. Oraxes realized Meralaine had reanimated the dead man so he could control their mount.
Their foe still had the advantage of the high air. But Meralaine shouted a word that made him cringe instead of doing anything useful, and at the same instant, the newly made zombie commanded their drakkensteed to use its breath weapon. The plume of poison mist reached just high enough to wash over the head of the living wyrmkeeper’s mount. It flailed and plummeted, and the man on its back screamed as it carried him down.
Perceiving that he had no allies left, Sphorrid turned his steed and fled. It was the wrong move. It kept him from dodging the thunderbolt that Oraxes threw after him. Charred and mangled, the wyrmlord and his mount also fell and broke into pieces when they smashed against the ground.
Oraxes and Meralaine followed them down and made absolutely certain both priests were dead. He took a deep breath and said, “Well. That was interesting.”
Meralaine swiped strands of hair out of her pale, sweaty face. “What’s the plan now?” she asked.
Oraxes tried to think. “We bury the bodies, and act oh so surprised if someone else comes from Luthcheq to ask what happened to the first band of busybodies. We watched them leave for home and have no idea why they never arrived.”
“That might work.” She waved her hand at the two surviving drakkensteeds. “What about these brutes?”
He strained to figure out if they could afford to keep them or set them free or if they needed to kill and hide them too, even though the animals had just helped to save their lives. He couldn’t sort it out.
“By the seven cold and broken stars,” he said, half laughing and half annoyed, “give me a moment, will you? Just a moment to catch my breath.”
SEVEN
23-24 E LEASIS, THE Y EAR OF THE A GELESS O NE
Praxasalandos oozed through a seam in the rock. It was a perfect way to stalk his prey. He could pace the Imaskari and dragonborn almost step for step, and they never even suspected he was near.
He found a spot where a crack connected his secret path to the open cavern. It wasn’t much of an opening, but it provided enough room for him to form an eye out of the liquid metal that was his body.
The intruders were still resting-in many cases, sleeping-and showed no signs of moving on in the immediate future. It made sense that they were tired. They’d marched a long way, sometimes taking the wrong tunnel and needing to double back despite the dwarf’s skill as a pathfinder. They’d also fought a pack of cave drakes that Praxasalandos had sent to hinder them.
The difference between the scene from before and what Praxasalandos looked at was that the dragonborn called Medrash was up and prowling around. Somewhat to his dismay, Praxasalandos had discovered that the explorers had a fair assortment of formidable individuals among them, but nonetheless, Medrash, his kinsman Balasar, and Khouryn, the dwarf, stood out from the rest. They were natural leaders in a way that transcended rank, although they possessed that too. Eliminate even one of them, and it would weaken the expedition significantly.
So that was what Praxasalandos intended to do.
He dissolved the eye before anyone noticed it then, guided by a kind of tactile instinct as reliable as sight, streamed back the way he’d come. He seeped out of the granite in a tunnel that connected to the area he’d just surveyed but beyond a dogleg, where none of his prey could see him.
There he compressed his mass as he solidified it and simultaneously sculpted it into an unaccustomed shape. The process was more difficult than assuming his natural form, but not much, not for a dragon possessed of his breed’s singular gifts.
When he was done, he peeked around the bend. There was an Imaskari sentry stationed there, but the human with his pale, mottled skin couldn’t see him hiding in the dark.
Praxasalandos kept peering out at intervals until finally Medrash was in view. Then he undertook the final and most difficult detail of his masquerade: putting a glowing lantern in his hand. Because obviously the real Balasar wouldn’t have wandered away from his comrades without a source of light.
It took a couple of heartbeats, long enough for Praxasalandos to feel a pang of doubt.
What was he doing? Why was he setting snares for folk who’d never done him any harm, especially when, judging from their standards and insignia, some of them worshiped Bahamut? Why was he serving Gestanius, a despicable creature that, by rights, any self-respecting metallic should oppose?