“Wicked dragon, when you present yourself before the Ten Courts of Yen-Wang-Yeh, know that Prince Tang sends you there—and may the Great Judge sentence you to an eternity in all Eighteen Hells!”
Tang brought his hand down. He felt the topaz shatter beneath the stone, then heard his mother cry out as a powerful concussion hurled them both against the chamber walls. There was an ear-splitting wail and a deafening roar; then two flashing lights whirled through the room, one as silver as the moon and the other as black as obsidian. The prince’s head felt as though it would split, and he found himself struggling for breath against a tremendous weight. He closed his eyes and beseeched his ancestors to make ready for him in the Celestial Bureaucracy.
The prayer went unanswered. Almost as soon as they had begun, the wailing and the roaring died. The flashing lights vanished, and the terrible weight was lifted from Tang’s chest. He found himself lying on his back, gasping for breath and staring at the low ceiling, still lit by the crimson glow of General Fui’s spirit.
“Tang?”
The prince turned his head and saw his mother lying beside him. She looked even paler and older than usual. “Yes, Lady Feng?”
“Now may we go?”
* * * **
Together, Ruha and Pierstar looked out over Hillshadow Lake’s steaming waters, waiting for the dark figure at the bottom to rise and attack. The war wizards had begun to arrive and take their positions, both on Baldagar Manor and the adjacent mansions. The witch was rubbing a round, fist-sized stone between her palms, wondering if she had misjudged Tang and desperately hoping she had not. She could lure Cypress from the water at any time, but the ensuing battle would mean nothing if the prince had not smashed the spirit gem.
The stone grew warm in Ruha’s hands. She continued to rub her hands over it, more to calm her nerves than to increase the effectiveness of her magic. She would have time to hurl only one spell at Cypress, but she did not want it to be so powerful it drove him away. Her job was to draw the dragon onto the roof of Baldagar Manor. Pierstar and his Maces would do the rest.
The ballista crews hiding in the adjacent buildings closed their window shutters. The last of the war wizards arrived and took their places, and still the dragon did not move. Ruha’s heart sank, and she reluctantly turned to face Pierstar.
“I fear Prince Tang has not changed. Perhaps I …”
A dreadful sputter broke over the parapets, and Ruha let her sentence trail off. She looked toward the lake and saw huge geysers of steam rising from its heart. Just beneath the roiling green surface, the amber globe of her sun spell was rapidly growing larger, with the murky figure of Cypress’s body rising beneath it like a swelling black cloud.
“Prepare yourselves!” yelled Pierstar.
An anxious clatter rattled across the roof as the Maces and their war wizards steeled themselves for battle.
Cypress erupted from the lake with the roar of a volcano, flinging a spray of boiling water and hissing steam in all directions. Though the golden fire had burned the scaly hide completely off his wings, that did not prevent them from lifting him into the air as the charred bones curled and undulated like so many clattering fingers. It was impossible to see through the blazing globe at the end of his neck, but the rest of his body, aside from a broad scattering of melted scales and the scorched stumps at the ends of his arms, looked remarkably intact.
Ruha set her stone on the parapet, then tucked two of Hsieh’s lasal leaves into the sleeve of her aba, where she would be able to reach them quickly.
A chain of cracks and loud bangs echoed over the water, the arms of the war engines slamming against their stops. Most of the missiles and nets splashed harmlessly into the water, but three harpoons lodged deep in Cypress’s flanks, and one net tangled in the spindly bones of his wings. The men who had hit quickly looped their lines around stakes driven deep into the ground, while those who had missed rewound their skeins.
Cypress roared. He whipped his fire-shrouded head around his body, and the instant the golden flames touched the harpoon lines and the net, they flashed and dissolved. The dragon’s wings siffled through the air, and he began to rise again.
“Shut your eyes, Maces!” Pierstar ordered. “Now, Ruha!”
The witch uttered her counterspell. At the end of Cypress’s neck, the fiery globe burst apart with a white flash so brilliant she saw it even through her eyelids. Summoning her stone spell to mind, she grabbed her rock and looked toward the dragon.
Cypress hung over the lake almost motionless, the tips of his skeletal wings fluttering as though that tiny motion were enough to hold his hulking mass aloft. At the end of his neck hung a smoking lump of melted bone that vaguely resembled a head. Glowing masses of cinder filled his empty eye sockets, and his long snout had fused into a stubby, tangled mass of fangs and jaw. Only his ebony horns had emerged from the conflagration unscathed, and even they made the air shimmer with heat.
Ruha hissed her spell and hurled the stone. The rock disappeared with a thunderous crack. It reappeared in the same instant, shattering Cypress’s temple. The dragon’s wing tips stopped waving. His gruesome chin dropped as he watched the splinters of scorched bone flutter into the water below. He brought his head up and looked toward Baldagar Manor.
You!
Ruha barely managed to stuff the lasal leaves into her mouth before a fiery yellow sun burst inside her head. She heard Pierstar and his men cry out in astonishment, then felt herself sailing backward across the roof.
Chew the leaves, she told herself.
Even as the words reverberated through her skull, she slammed down and went tumbling across the roof. If the fall caused her any injury, the witch did not know it; she could feel only the anguish inside her mind, a fiery agony such as she had never felt. Swimming in boiling tar would have hurt less, or falling naked upon At’ar’s blazing face. She glimpsed Cypress’s murky figure swooping down toward Baldagar Manor; then she rolled one more time and came to rest on her face.
A lasal haze filled Ruha’s head, but the dragon’s fury was so great that the fog merely diffused the fire and did not drive it from her mind. The golden blaze became a choking yellow mist, not nearly as hot, but as thick as syrup. She heard screaming and realized it was her own voice.
That is but a portion of my pain. The building shook beneath Cypress’s weight, and the voices of screaming Maces joined with that of the witch. Soon, you shall bear it all.
“Not all.” Ruha found the strength to raise her head and saw the dragon standing in the middle of the roof, a cloud of dark acid billowing around his mangled snout. “You cannot make Yanseldara love you, and that pain I will never bear!”
Then I will make you bear another kind of agony.
Cypress’s tail thrashed in anger, smashing through the parapets and sweeping half a dozen men over the side. He stooped over, reaching out as though he had forgotten he had only stubs where once he had claws; then a window shutter slammed open.
Ruha’s world detonated: the sky went silver with lightning, meteor showers and ice storms chased each other down from the heavens, tongues of flame crackled through the air, crimson bolts and sapphire rays raced from every direction. The dragon’s stump disintegrated before her eyes; a deep, rumbling growl reverberated through her bones, and the roof of Baldagar Manor began to come apart. She leapt up to run for the parapets and felt the floor vanishing beneath her feet.
The witch landed amidst a shower of snapped planks and beams, her body erupting into pain despite the cushioning of the soft furniture favored by Elversult merchants. She lay a long time without moving, half-expecting Cypress’s scorched skull to appear above her at any moment. Instead, the yellow glow and fiery pain faded from her mind and, much to her surprise, so did the lasal haze—no doubt burned off by the ferocity of the dragon’s attack. At length, the terrible aching in her body also faded, and she began to realize that, other than the dull throbbing of a few new bruises, she had survived the fall uninjured.