Aoth aimed his spear at the sack-wyrm and growled the first words of an incantation intended to tear it to shreds. Then he heard a thump, and the rocky ground jolted beneath him.
He looked around. Alasklerbanbastos had made another leap, away from the griffons and off the line that Aoth had closed with his body. Now there was nothing but clear space between the dracolich and the priestess who had dared to chastise and control him.
Still chanting, Aoth resolved to turn his spell on Alasklerbanbastos. Then it came to him that there was a better tactic.
“Cera!” he bellowed. “Throw the stone! Over the side!”
Startled, she glanced over at him, then grinned and dropped the mace of metal and wood in her hand. She reached into her belt pouch, snatched out the shadow gem, and flung it into space.
Alasklerbanbastos froze. The empty wyrm did too, as though consternation had leaped from the mind of the creator to the creation.
“That’s your soul falling into the gorge,” panted Aoth. “Your existence. Your liberty. You and your friend can stay up here and fight us, or you can go look for it.”
Alasklerbanbastos roared. Then he ran at Cera. But when she scrambled out of the way, he didn’t pivot with her. He simply pounded onward, leaped off the edge, and plunged out of sight. After a heartbeat, the empty dragon did the same, although, its loose folds catching the air, it fell more slowly.
That, said Jet, speaking mind to mind, was actually a little bit clever.
I thought so, Aoth replied.
Or at least it would have been if you’d come up with it sooner.
Aoth snorted. You and Eider, stop loafing. Put your passengers on the ground and go back for the next four.
As the griffons did as instructed-and a watersoul dropped to his knees and puked-Aoth headed for Cera, who hurried to meet him. They hugged for a moment as best they could with weapons, shields, and armor in the way. Their gear clinked together.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said, “except that I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “I’m the one-”
At their backs, toward the center of the earthmote, something roared.
“Curse it!” he said. “Come on!” He strode in the direction of the noise, and she followed.
Tiny flames rippling through the asymmetrical mask of lines on his face, Mardiz-sul scurried toward them. “That’s Vairshekellabex!” he said.
“I imagine so,” Aoth answered.
“But… we don’t have our own dragon to pit against him anymore!”
“If we fight, we have a chance,” said Aoth. “If we don’t, we can be absolutely sure Vairshekellabex will kill us. So I recommend fighting. Collect those three”-he indicated the other new arrivals with a poke of his spear-“and come on.”
He’d done his best to project toughness and determination, but inwardly he understood Mardiz-sul’s dismay. Their situation was likely to turn out bad. Vairshekellabex might already be on the wing, soaring overhead to blast the intruders with his breath. Aoth scanned the sky but didn’t see the wyrm.
And when he and his companions reached the center of the floating island, he realized why. Vairshekellabex, or the front end of him, anyway, was evidently caught under the heap of fallen stone in the mouth of the cavern. Gaedynn stood watching with his customary air of insouciance, as if the gray’s situation were faintly amusing but of no actual significance. Shielded behind an outcropping, Son-liin lay unconscious on the ground.
Cera crouched beside the girl.
“She’s just napping,” Gaedynn said. “She strained herself. Some of us had to take up the slack when others weren’t where they were supposed to be. What was it, Alasklerbanbastos slipping the leash? Whoever could have predicted that?”
“Tell me what I need to know,” Aoth rapped.
Gaedynn’s flippant demeanor fell away. “You see we trapped the gray. But I can’t imagine it holding him for long. Right before the stone fell on top of him, he cast a spell. Something to make him stronger or faster, maybe, since it didn’t do anything else that I could see.”
“Right.” Aoth turned to Mardiz-sul and the other genasi. “Surround the cave entrance.” He pointed to the watersoul who’d vomited, leaving stinking spatters of puke on the front of his brigandine. “Except you. You run to the bridge. Whatever happened there, our squad should have it under control by now. Leave one man to stand guard and fetch the rest. Everybody, move!”
The genasi burst into motion. The watersoul sprinted with the inhuman speed of his kind, as if an invisible current was sweeping him along.
Cera looked up from her examination of Son-liin. “She just fainted,” the priestess said.
“Then leave her,” said Aoth. “We have to get into position too and break whatever enchantment Vairshekellabex already cast, if we can.”
He and Gaedynn positioned themselves squarely in front of the cave. The dragon was going to attack someone, and for the moment, it needed to be the warriors who had the best chance of surviving. Cera crouched behind a boulder off to the left. It would give her some protection without hindering her spellcasting.
His pulse beating in his neck, Aoth aimed his spear and chanted a spell whose purpose was to dissolve other enchantments. Cera murmured the start of a prayer.
Then the heap of stone fell in on itself. Vairshekellabex had finally succeeded in dragging his head and neck out the back end of it. A deep voice hissed a word of command, and the whole mound shattered into bits of gravel, which instantly hurtled from the mouth of the cave like a thousand slung stones.
It was pure reflex that made Aoth raise his targe in time to cover his face and eyes. The barrage clattered on his armor, stung him all over, and sent him reeling backward.
He caught his balance and looked around. Grinning, Gaedynn was rolling to his feet with one bloody pock on his cheek and another on his chin. He’d plainly saved himself from worse by dropping flat, as Cera had by cowering behind her boulder. And everyone else had been standing to one side or the other of the barrage.
Aoth returned Gaedynn’s smile. He surmised that they’d just experienced the result of the magic Vairshekellabex had conjured previously. It had been a spell of blasting prepared in advance, then triggered by a single word of command. Since it had been discharged, it was one less thing to worry about.
But when Vairshekellabex lunged out into the open, it became immediately apparent that there were plenty of other reasons for concern. One earthsoul yelped at the dragon’s size and speed, or maybe at the sheer horrific grotesquerie of the jutting, tangled fangs.
Aoth took a step, shouted a word of power, and hurled crackling lightning from his spear. The dazzling flare burned into Vairshekellabex’s chest, and the gray threw back his head and howled.
Gaedynn loosed an arrow. The shaft stabbed into the underside of their foe’s scaly neck.
Bobbing up from behind her stone, Cera stretched out her arm and said, “I pray for your holy light.” A brilliant beam shot from her fingertips and stabbed a smoking, black-edged hole in one of the dragon’s wings.
Mardiz-sul ran forward, shouted, and swung his sword at Vairshekellabex’s flank. The blade burst into flame as it arced through the air.
And at that point, all the other genasi started fighting too, shooting crossbow bolts and flinging javelins. Thank the Firelord, thought Aoth. Now we’ve got a chance anyway.
Vairshekellabex’s tail whipped through the air. Mardiz-sul ducked barely in time to keep it from smashing his skull. But at the same moment, the wyrm lunged forward. He was coming at Aoth and Gaedynn, but one of the spines on the hock of his hind leg snagged the firesoul’s sword arm, catching between two links of mail then popping free in a splash of blood.