Cael dashed across the balcony and dragged Alynthia to her feet. She stared at him as though she didn’t know him but allowed him to pull her along. They dived between the columns just as a lightning bolt smashed the balcony behind them to rubble. Sir Kinsaid’s powerful voice shouted orders for the roof to be opened, orders for the dragon to hunt them down and kill them.
Cael led them blindly. The explosion had cut off their escape route, so he took the first set of stairs he could find and raced up them, Alynthia in his wake. They entered the main levels of the lord’s palace as chaos swept the corridors. Servants dashed here and there, screaming conflicting directions to either save the palace treasures or fight the fire. Most chose instead to save themselves and ran heedless of the pleading of their fellows through any door or window they could find. It was a simple enough matter for the elf and his companion to blend into this confusion, except for the sword gleaming in his fist. Wherever they ran, whomever they encountered screamed and fled in the opposite direction.
Cael spotted a door leading out into a garden. He turned in that direction, where many servants were pressed into the doorway, trying to escape the palace. With a shout, he charged into them, brandishing his weirdly glowing blade high above his head. In less than a heartbeat, the way was cleared as the servants dispersed, screaming. Cael pulled Alynthia through the door, then shoved her aside as a sword whistled between them and crashed in sparks against the stone floor. Cael parried a second slash with his blade, then reversed the attack with a thrust that sent a guard staggering back, his breath gurgling through the hole in his chest. At a cry from Alynthia, Cael spun, barely knocking aside the attack of a second guard. The guard continued his onslaught with an overhand swing, which Cael caught but seemed unlikely to hold. The guard laughed cruelly as he pressed down. The two blades scraped against each other as the guard tried to overpower the elf, forcing him to his knees.
Cael disengaged his blade and lunged aside. With a deft twist, he sent the guard’s sword spinning away to land with a rustle among a clump of bushes, thirty yards away.
A third guard charged from the shadows. Cael turned, letting a poorly aimed thrust slip past his chest. He brought his own blade up, cutting through ‘mail and flesh to grate against the man’s spine. The guard fell with a groan against the wall.
The elf spun, finding the second guard with a dagger in his raised fist. The man collapsed toward him, dropping his dagger, clawing at the one sprouting from his back. Alynthia had finally come to her senses. Now she rushed to Cael’s side and dragged her blade from the man’s body.
“Let’s get out of here,” she snarled to the elf.
They flew off through the night-darkened gardens of the lord’s palace.
At this late hour, there ought to have been few people about. Though at first they saw no attackers, Cael and Alynthia did hear arrows and crossbow bolts whistling and smashing through the trees above and around them. Pandemonium reigned. In the palace behind them, many of the windows glowed with light. Bells rang out stridently from various quarters of the city. Shouts could be heard and torches seen within the garden itself.
The two thieves halted under the shadow of a leaning oak near the edge of the gardens, at the corner of Horizon Road and Lord’s Way. Through the trees ahead, they could see the gleaming lights of the Temple of Paladine, the grounds of which occupied the opposite corner of this usually busy intersection. However, at this time of night, the streets were deserted and dark.
“What happened back there?” Alynthia asked as she stripped off her cloak and dark trousers, revealing the street clothes beneath.
“Which do you mean? With me or the sword?” Cael asked. He passed his hand down the length of the blade, returning it to its ordinary staff form, then leaned it against the trunk of the tree.
“Both!” she snapped. “Are you really that stupid, or were you just trying to get us killed? That was a dragon!”
“Yes I know.”
“So, what happened?”
“I never really believed it. My shalifi told me that when the sea elves gave him this staff, they said that it was made at the same time as the sword once owned by Tanis Half-Elven, that it was made in Silvanost during the second Dragon War, and that of the three great swords of that time, this one was the most powerful.”
“What do legends have to do with anything?” Alynthia asked.
“Have you never listened to the songs of the bards?” Cael said in dismay. “The tale of the Sla-Mori and the rescue of Pax Tharkas?”
“What about it?”
Cael sighed. “In the Sla-Mori, it is said, "Tanis either found or was given by the dead hand of the great elf king, Kith-Kanan, the sword known as Wyrmslayer. It was the buzzing of this sword when it was brought too close that awoke the dragon Flamestrike.”
“So?” Alynthia queried.
“My sword buzzed!” Cael almost shouted. “In the presence of a dragon.” He tossed aside his mask and ran his fingers through his beard, brushing it out.
Alynthia shook her head. “There is only one way out of the Old City now-the docks. We cannot pass the gates at this hour, especially not with the alarm raised.”
“We could use Claret’s tunnel,” Cael suggested.
“They blocked it up after your capture.”
“To the docks then.”
A deep rumble shook the ground, setting the trees to swaying. “Another explosion,” Cael said. They looked back through the trees, half-expecting to see the towers of the palace crumbling, flames leaping into the night sky. Instead, they saw a gargantuan shadow rise above the palace. Great leathern wings spread wide to gather the air as it soared upward from some hidden place beyond the trees.
“Gods, what a dragon!” Cael sighed in awe.
Alynthia tugged madly at his sleeve, but the elf seemed rooted to the spot, spellbound.
“So terrible. So beautiful,” he muttered.
With a grace that belied its massive size, the dragon’s massive wings beat once, twice, lifting it slowly higher. The wind from those wings struck them seconds later with a force like a gale. Trees around them cracked and crashed. Cael sidestepped a falling branch that would have crushed him like a fly. He turned and found Alynthia lying on the ground, blood pouring from a cut above her eye. She stared around in a daze. He helped her to rise.
“What happened?” she asked thickly.
“Can you run?” he asked.
“I think so,” she responded.
He grabbed his staff, and together they lurched from the trees and into the street. Above and behind them, thunder growled in the cloudless sky as a shadow rose above Palanthas.
They hurried across the street and into the dark safety of an alley, Cael running, Alynthia stumbling behind him, pulled along by his hand on her elbow. Because he did not know the way, he followed no planned course. Instead, he tried to steer them north according to his best guess. Alynthia said nothing. Whenever they paused, she shook her head as though trying to clear the fog in her mind.
Far overhead the shadow followed them ominously. The city, raised in alarm by the explosions at the palace, now cowered in fear. Screams of terror pierced the night. As Cael and Alynthia scurried through alley, court, and garden, people looked out in terror from their windows, their eyes searching the dark starry skies. Lightning arced across the heavens, thunder boomed, and the ground shook. Fierce winds ripped down street and alley, carrying with it a tide of trash and leaves, dust and sand, stinging the eye and cutting the flesh with its ferocity. Ever and again, a shadow passed between them and the stars above, blot- ting out the waning moon, a shadow that bellowed and roared like a whirlwind.
Still, somehow, Cael got them to the waterfront. With the northern way now blocked by the sea, Cael turned west. They raced along the docksides where captains bellowed orders to their frightened crews and dockmasters were racing about, battening down cargoes or staring in terror at the sky.