We can retreat for a moment, he said. Catch our breaths.
A man might have answered with an obscenity, but even griffons endowed with an equivalent level of intelligence didn’t grasp the concept. Still, Jet responded with a surge of disgust that conveyed the same message.
If we hold back, he said, it just gives the wyrm a chance to try the same trick again.
There is that, said Aoth. Let’s try this, then. He visualized the sequence of moves, making sure the griffon understood it completely. Then Jet lashed his wings and hurled them forward, straight at Vairshekellabex’s head.
When they were halfway to their target, Aoth hurled darts of crimson light. The dragon avoided them with a sideways curl of his neck. Then, jaws gaping, his head shot at his attackers. It was a move that would have surprised many an opponent. It seemed impossible that the creature could strike in such a blur of speed when he had to whip his head around in a horizontal arc.
But Aoth was ready. He pointed the spear, spoke a word of power, and a floating curtain of rippling rainbows burst into being. Vairshekellabex’s head stabbed through it, and he roared and convulsed as the various magical effects-heat, cold, poison, madness-ripped at his body and mind.
As he jerked his head back out of the sheet of light, Jet beat his wings and flew over it. The familiar then extended his talons and plunged them into the side of Vairshekellabex’s head just where it joined the neck. The sudden stop wrenched Aoth’s body, nearly breaking his own neck, or at least it felt that way. He set the point of his spear ablaze with power and drove it into the gray’s flesh. Jet clawed and bit.
Vairshekellabex raised a forefoot to swipe them to pieces as a man might brush away a mosquito. But he never completed the motion. Instead, he toppled forward, and Mardiz-sul and the other genasi in front of him scurried to get out from underneath. Jet sprang clear.
The dragon’s collapse shook the ground, and he rolled and flailed for a while. The tail was especially energetic, at first whipping even more furiously than before.
But gradually all the spasmodic motion subsided. Wheeling over the gray, studying him, Aoth decided the creature truly was dead. As he let out a long breath, he wondered who had finally delivered the deathblow.
Me, of course, said Jet, furling his wings and swooping toward the ground.
Below them, the genasi started cheering. They, too, had concluded that Vairshekellabex was really finished, and for the moment, the exultation and sheer relief of victory possessed them. There’d be time later to grieve for the several comrades who sprawled just as dead and mangled on the ground.
As Jet set down, Cera stood up from behind her rock. Aoth smiled to see her unharmed. Then Gaedynn and Eider landed.
“Why did you keep shooting for the neck?” asked Aoth.
“It was an experiment,” Gaedynn replied.
Aoth shook his head. “An experiment?”
Gaedynn grinned. “A dragon’s a big target, unworthy of my skills. I had to do something to keep from getting bored.”
As he prowled back and forth and up and down, peering, always peering, Alasklerbanbastos reassured himself repeatedly that he couldn’t possibly lose the phylactery, not in any ultimate sense. He was connected to it. He could feel it calling to him.
Still, it seemed to take forever to find it, and when he finally did, he saw why. Tumbling and bouncing down the steep wall of the gorge, the stone had landed in a drift of last year’s fallen leaves, mostly burying itself in the process.
His forefoot shaking, he picked it up. Its folds billowing as the breeze caught it, the servant he’d fashioned out of his own hide and his own pain looked silently on like a priest assisting with some esoteric rite.
And if it wasn’t quite that, it was at least a moment of utter profundity. Aoth Fezim was a despicable maggot, but he’d also been right. The gem was Alasklerbanbastos’s spirit. The key to existence and freedom for the most magnificent creature the world had ever seen. And finally that creature had it back.
High overhead, hoarse voices started cheering.
Nudged from his trance of near ecstasy, Alasklerbanbastos grunted. Vairshekellabex hadn’t been as powerful as Tchazzar, Gestanius, Skuthosin, or himself, but he’d been old and crafty. It was almost inconceivable that Fezim, the sunlady, and the firestormers had killed him without the help of their “tame” dracolich. Yet the cries of jubilation could signify nothing else.
Alasklerbanbastos decided it would be a short-lived celebration. While they were weary and their magic was depleted was the perfect time to strike at his enemies. He spread his wings, and they rustled instead of making the rattle of naked bone.
He’d had ample time to get used to that particular change since Fezim and his lieutenants had revived him in Calabastasingavor’s body, but even so it made him pause and think.
He’d just regained so much that it would be easy to overlook the fact that he had yet to recover everything. He still possessed only a fraction of the strength that was rightfully his.
In addition to which, the phylactery was vulnerable and would remain so whether he carried it with him or made some hasty attempt to conceal it. The only way to be truly safe was to hide it so well that no one would ever find it again.
So, he decided, retribution could wait for a little while. He’d seek out Fezim, Cera Eurthos, and their cronies soon enough.
He trotted a few steps, beat his wings, leaped into the air, and flew east. The skin wyrm tried to follow but couldn’t keep up.
That was all right. The thing had served its purpose. As he left it behind, he laughed to imagine it mindlessly wandering the mountains and killing whomever it encountered, continuing, if only in a minor, random way, Vairshekellabex’s campaign of terror against all who’d dared to encroach on his territory.
Gaedynn had heard of dragon caves that were vast mazes of tunnels twisting and forking through the ground for mile after mile. But Vairshekellabex’s lair wasn’t one of them. It couldn’t be. The whole earthmote wasn’t big enough to contain such a labyrinth, and in fact the hollow within the central outcrop sloped down for only a little way before coming to a dead end.
The dragon’s hoard, however, though it didn’t take up as broad a section of the floor as greed might have led one to imagine, was still pretty much what all the tales, poems, and ballads said it ought to be. The explorers faltered and caught their breath when the light of their torches gleamed on silver, gold, and gems.
By sheer good fortune, Gaedynn happened to be standing next to the gawking windsoul who’d disdained him for searching the dead sentry’s belongings. “It’s actually sort of a shame,” he said, “that you aren’t in it for the plunder.”
For a heartbeat the genasi looked back at him as if he didn’t understand the jape. Then he laughed a short, wild little laugh, scurried to an open chest, scooped up a double handful of coins, and let them fall back, clinking, through his fingers.
Across the chamber, other firestormers scrambled to get their hands on some of the treasure. Somewhat hesitantly, Son-liin moved to follow suit.
Gaedynn grinned. “I have a hunch you’ve never looted anything really valuable before.”
The stormsoul smiled. “Not really.”
“Stick with me, and I’ll show you how it’s done.”
Peering this way and that, he led her around the other genasi to the back of the collection. He picked up a small, intricately carved ivory box, opened it, took out the ruby ring inside, and held it up to the light.
“Now this,” he said, “is the kind of thing you want. Easy to carry and valuable enough to support you for the rest of your life if you live sensibly. Not that I’m advocating that. I recommend you sell it, squander the proceeds living like a princess, and then pillage something else.” He put it back in the box and tossed it to her.