And, repulsive as the dragon was, the fire leaping out of the fissure was worse. When Medrash had seen it before, it had simply burned yellow like most flames. Now it changed color from one moment to the next. It was red, then blue, then green, then bone white, then shadow black.
Medrash could just discern that something was inside the fire-or, to be more accurate, coming through it. Using it as a passage from somewhere else. Whatever it was, its several parts swayed in a way that reminded him of Nala, and, even barely glimpsed, it radiated a terrifying feeling of might, malice, and contempt.
He realized he absolutely had to stop it from emerging into the mortal world. And do it now, before the mere threat of such a disaster panicked his companions. Which meant there was no time to look for the vanquisher’s wizards and ask them to help.
He reached out to Torm. Cold and bracing as a mountain spring, Power surged through him and collected in his hand.
He didn’t know a specific prayer to disrupt such a ceremony. But, guided by instinct, he focused his thoughts on the idea of forbiddance, tucked his sword under his shield arm, lifted his empty hand high, and swung it down at the ground.
Made of steely shimmer, a huge, ghostly gauntlet appeared in midair, swept down, and covered the source of the fire with its palm. Startled, the giant adepts cried out and recoiled.
Pain seared Medrash’s actual hand, as if it were bare and he were really using it to smother a fire. He had a muddled impression that his flesh didn’t burn constantly. Perhaps it charred one instant, froze the next, and suffered some other sort of injury the moment after that.
But he couldn’t really sort out the differences in sensation. It took all the will and focus he could muster to hold his hand in place despite the agony, and to keep the Loyal Fury’s Power pouring into it.
Until-after what was likely only a matter of heartbeats, even though it seemed like forever-the phantasmal gauntlet vanished, and Medrash saw that the fire beneath was gone.
That was the only way he could tell. His hand was still ablaze with pain. Yet even so, he felt a surge of satisfaction, and when Skuthosiin’s head whipped around to goggle at him, that only made the moment sweeter.
“Sorry,” Balasar called. “Were you using that fire?”
Skuthosiin’s eyes flicked to the giant shamans. “Kill them,” he snapped.
The adepts produced some of Nala’s globes, held them at eye level, then gasped and staggered.
“Oops,” Balasar said.
Medrash drew a bit more of Torm’s Power to quell the throbbing in his hand. It didn’t end it altogether, but it muted it. When he tried to grip the wire-wrapped hilt of his sword, he found that he could.
“You see how it is,” he said. “We know how to counter all your tricks. Surrender, and perhaps Tarhun will show you mercy.”
“Surrender?” Skuthosiin repeated. “Are you insane? Do you think I really need tricks, or any sort of help, to slaughter mites like you? This is the end of you and all your people.” He sprang forward.
Medrash rode to meet him. Balasar and the other riders pounded after him.
The fight was going to be terrible. In all probability, many dragonborn would die. But Medrash was satisfied because his comrades hadn’t quailed, and, in his furious eagerness to engage, Skuthosiin had opted to stay on the ground where lance and sword could reach him. And as more and more Tymantherans, including the mages, arrived in the heart of Ashhold-
Something seared Medrash’s back. His steed pitched forward and fell. On either side of him other horses dropped as well, and yellow flame glinted on the riders’ armor.
He hit his head hard, and something cracked. Suddenly everything seemed dim and far away. Unimportant. Some instinct insisted that he try to get up anyway, but he discovered he couldn’t move.
Her mouth still warm and tingling, Nala rejoiced to see that Medrash wasn’t standing up, or stirring at all.
Despite her best efforts, the paladin and the other riders had gotten ahead of her and interrupted the ritual before she could reach the center of the giants’ refuge. But even though that disruption was sacrilege, from a practical standpoint it might actually have been for the best. Because her miracles would play a greater role in Skuthosiin’s victory and show him how valuable she truly was.
She’d drawn down Tiamat’s glory to augment the power of her breath weapon, then spat it at the horsemen. The burst of fire dropped half a dozen riders. Her only regret was that Medrash and Balasar weren’t close enough together for her to burn both of them. But the paladin was the more important target, and if the Dark Lady smiled on her, she still might be the one to kill his clan brother.
She glimpsed a glint from the corner of her eye and turned toward the spear points swinging in her direction. For of course the foot soldiers among whom she’d advanced had seen her blast their mounted comrades. They’d stood stupefied for a heartbeat, but they meant to strike her down for her treachery.
She had no time for another prayer, whispered or otherwise, but her own innate vitality was sufficient for a second blaze of fiery breath. She spat it, and the two warriors who were threatening her reeled backward.
She darted out of the massed infantrymen, racing closer to Skuthosiin and the riders assailing him. Some of the foot soldiers hesitated to follow, but others scrambled after her.
She judged she had just enough time and distance for an incantation. She hissed Draconic words of power, touched the end of her thumb to the tip of her middle finger to make her hand resemble a saurian head, then, quick as a striking serpent, jabbed it at four different spots on the ground.
Each as big as a dragonborn, four rearing, snarling wyrms appeared where she’d pointed. Her pursuers quailed until they realized the apparitions were incapable of doing actual harm. By then she was close enough to Skuthosiin for the green to lash out at anyone who dared to keep following, and no one did.
Clouds shrouded Selune and the stars. To Aoth, the air smelled like a storm was coming.
It is, said Jet, and its name is Alasklerbanbastos.
I know, answered Aoth. Because the deepening darkness seemed blacker and felt somehow dirtier than just the clouds could explain, while the breeze carried a hint of old rot as well as the imminence of lightning. It was like the worst of his experiences in Thay, with something unimaginably strong and vile rising to poison all the natural world. I just wish he’d get on with it.
Back on the ground for the moment, Tchazzar incinerated a formation of kobolds with a blast of flame. Either he was trying hard to convince the Great Bone Wyrm that he was squandering his power-or else, in his excitement, he really was.
Whether he was thinking, the result was the same. At the northern edge of the battlefield, pieces of darkness seemed to thicken and arrange themselves into a structure, like ghostly hands were building it. And even wyrmkeepers and vampires instinctively shrank away.
In a moment, a murky skull with a spiked snout sat atop the stacked vertebrae of the neck, and fleshless wings arched to either side. Then, inside the core of the thing’s body, lightning flared repeatedly from rib to rib, and its eye sockets lit with a spectral glow. The structure changed from dark to leprous white as lengths and curves of shadow turned into bone.
Alasklerbanbastos strode forward. Chessentans who were nowhere near him screamed. So did some of the Threskelans.
Go ahead, said Jet, if it will make you feel better.
Aoth snorted. If he’d ever done any screaming, it had been a long, long time ago. But even to a man who’d survived the nastiest parts of the War of the Zulkirs, the Great Bone Wyrm was an appalling spectacle. Now that the two of them were in the same place, he could tell that the dracolich was even bigger than Tchazzar. And as they advanced on each other, and warriors left off struggling to scurry out of the way, it was difficult to resist the idea that here were the only combatants and the only fight that really mattered.