The drake looked like a wingless red wyrm charging on all fours. It nearly filled the passage, making it difficult to discern the dragon priest behind it.
Scarcely slowing, the drake spewed slime. Aoth wrenched himself out of the way. The muck spattered the floor, where it sizzled and gave off vile-smelling smoke.
Unfortunately, the evasion deprived Aoth of the time necessary to cast a spell. Nor was there any ranged magic stored in his sword potent enough to neutralize the drake and its master too. Regretting the absence of his spear, he poised himself to receive the reptile’s attack.
The spitting drake sprang in an attempt to carry him to the floor. Somehow, though there was barely room for it, he sidestepped, released more of the power inside his blade to augment his strength, and stabbed downward.
He missed the drake’s neck but pierced its shoulder. The sword drove in deep, then tore free in a shower of gore as the beast plunged onward. A pulse of Cera’s yellow light gilding its crimson scales, the beast reared onto its hind legs to spin around in the narrow hall. When it lunged again it was on three legs, the maimed one curled against its chest, but that didn’t slow it down.
Aoth freed the last of the raw might stored in the sword, then heard the wyrmkeeper chanting at his back. A howl of frigid wind slammed into his back, knocking him forward. Off balance and chilled to the bone, he still tried to stab the onrushing drake. But it snapped, caught his sword arm in its teeth, and whipped its head.
Only the truesilver mail shirt he wore beneath his outer garments kept the shearing action of the fangs and the whipping action from severing his hand. As it was, the drake threw him to the floor, and the pressure of its bite was as unrelenting as it was excruciating. The armor wouldn’t protect him for long.
The drake lashed him back and forth. He tried to transfer his sword to his free hand but couldn’t reach it. He called darts of blue light from the blade to stab into the reptile’s body. It snarled with pain, but that was all.
Her voice a little stronger, Cera chanted. A shaft of dazzling light blazed out of her cell onto the side of the drake’s head and neck, burning red scales black and melting a slit-pupiled yellow eye.
Finally, recoiling, the reptile let go of Aoth. Then it glared in Cera’s direction, and he sensed it meant to spit more vitriol. He heaved himself to his feet, flung himself at the reptile, and stabbed. Sadly, the weapon no longer had extra force to lend, but, bellowing, he put every iota of his own strength and weight behind the stroke.
The sword punched in one side of the drake’s neck and out the other. The beast thrashed, and a flailing leg or tail clipped Aoth and knocked him staggering. As he recovered his equilibrium, the drake collapsed to lie twitching and bleeding on the floor.
He spun toward the wyrmkeeper. The priest was running and had already reached a branching corridor. He vanished around the corner before Aoth could even cast more shining darts from the sword, let alone recite an incantation. He growled an obscenity.
Which failed to improve the situation. So he turned back to Cera just as she came limping out of the cell. “If the whoreson didn’t recognize me-” he began.
Cera smiled wryly and ran a finger along his bare, sweaty temple. Which demonstrated that at some point during his struggles, his cowl had fallen back, giving the dragon priest a clear look at his head-shaved scalp, tattoos, glowing eyes, and all.
He grunted. “Right. He did recognize me. So, now can you run?”
“I think I can at least hobble quickly enough to reach the stairs before our friend assembles every wyrmkeeper on the premises at the top.”
“Satisfying as it might be to kill our way through the whole pack of them, we’re not going out that way. Or at least I hope not.”
“How, then?”
“Often if a rich man thinks he needs a secret area in his home, he thinks he needs a secret way in and out of the house as well. If there’s one down here, I shouldn’t have much trouble spotting it. Let’s look.”
When he saw how much trouble she was having keeping up, he put his arm around her and half carried her along. Then echoing voices called back and forth. The wyrmkeepers were coming after them.
They seemed to be proceeding cautiously, but it was still just a matter of moments before one of them caught sight of their quarry. Aoth had just about decided it was time to turn around and make a stand when he and Cera came to the largest room they’d seen so far.
The wyrmkeepers had turned it into the holiest part of their secret temple, complete with a sizable lacquered statue of their dragon goddess-batlike wings half unfurled, wedge-shaped heads glaring in all directions-that they’d somehow smuggled in. But what instantly snagged Aoth’s attention were the tiny cracks defining a rectangle on the back wall.
In his haste he all but dragged Cera across the room, and she gasped in pain. “Sorry,” he said, examining the hidden door more closely.
He found the catch and pressed it, and the panel clicked open. It was actually wood, with a stone veneer to make it look like the rest of the wall. On the other side was a tunnel. He and Cera scurried inside, and he shut the door.
“You realize,” she whispered, “I can’t see a thing.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ll guide you.”
He only had to do it for a short distance. Then they reached the end and a ladder leading upward. When he cautiously cracked open the door at the top, he found himself peeking out into a cobbler’s shop where the air was redolent of leather. The place was dark at that hour, the proprietor likely asleep upstairs.
He led Cera inside. A little light seeped through the oiled paper windows, enough for ordinary eyes to discern the essential nature of the place, and so she breathed, “We made it.”
He snorted. “Not yet. My guess is that the wyrmkeepers will run to Halonya, and she’ll run to Tchazzar. But maybe we can get to him first.”
FIVE
5 KYTHORN, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
Some of the horsemen and griffon riders still had work to do. They had to chase the enemy warriors who’d fled the battlefield. Oraxes couldn’t imagine how they’d find the energy. He felt utterly exhausted, and while his own contribution to the victory had required intense concentration, at least he hadn’t had armor weighing him down or needed to swing a mundane weapon over and over again.
He’d ridden out of Soolabax behind Gaedynn on griffonback. Since the archer was busy elsewhere, he had to find the stamina to trudge back into the town. He made it through the gate, then flopped down on the ground with his back against a wall. A steady stream of soldiers passed before him, their strange mix of satisfaction and weariness a match for his own. The scene stuttered as he repeatedly dozed, then jerked awake.
“The sellswords who looked after me said I should stay and loot the bodies with them,” said a soprano voice.
Startled, Oraxes snapped his head around. Meralaine was standing in front of him.
“But I was too tired,” she continued.
He dredged up a sneer. “Besides, it’s wrong to rob your friends.”
She stared at him for a moment. Then she said, “No zombie ever cheated me or threw stones at me just because I had green marks on my hands. There are worse friends than the dead.”
“And I guess that if you can’t find any living ones, that’s good.”
She sighed. “I thought that fighting the immolith together might help us be friends. But maybe not. Is it because you think I want to be the leader of the mages?”
He frowned. “Don’t you? You were certainly kissing Gaedynn’s boots.”
“I was not!” She hesitated. “But if I seemed like it, it was probably just because he and the other Brothers act like they don’t hate arcanists. Why would I care about being in charge of just three other people? Especially knowing how contrary the rest of you are. Especially since this Jhesrhi person will take over the job as soon as she comes back.”