The Ruin (17 page)

The magician stopped moving. Taegan jerked the sword from its scabbard, felt the surge of confidence and vitality that gripping the hilt always produced, leaped up, pivoted, and the gelugon was there, looming over him, ivory spear leaping at him.

He parried the thrust, beat his wings and rose back into the air, slashed at one of the devil’s chitinous forearms. The elven sword bit deep, and the Icy Claw gave a buzzing cry.

Grinning, no longer frightened, Taegan cut it twice more before it could shift the lance to threaten him anew. He hovered before it, inviting an attack, and knocked it aside when it came. That enabled him to close the distance to the gelugon’s barrel-shaped torso. The Icy Claw’s tail swept at him, but he

twisted out the way, thrust his sword into its chest, yanked it out, and followed up with a cut to the juncture of the baatezu’s head and shoulders.

The gelugon floundered backward. It glared and shuddered as if it was straining to bring one of its supernatural abilities to bear. Then it collapsed.

Taegan couldn’t tell if he’d actually killed it or not. He hoped so, but wasn’t willing to invest any time making sure. The sooner he rejoined his friends, the better.

But perhaps he had time for one thing. He lit on the ground, kneeled beside the ice wizard, and rummaged through the creature’s pockets and satchel. The transformed spellcasters naturally had no need of warmth, and stripped of their human emotions, cared nothing for modesty. But they needed the odd robe, haversack, and such to carry their talismans and other magical gear.

Taegan heaved a sigh of gratitude when he pulled a familiar blue-bound volume from the wizard’s satchel. Of course, it made sense that the same mage who’d taken possession of his sword had likewise appropriated his book of spells.

The avariel also retrieved his scabbard, then lashed his wings and climbed high enough to oversee a significant portion of the frenzied, chaotic battlefield. His heart sank at what he found. The assault on his comrades and himself had thoroughly scattered their little band. On first inspection, he , failed even to spot the majority of his friends.

But he did at least see Brimstone shrouded in a cloud of his smoky breath. The drake pivoted back and forth, ripping with fang and claw at, the frost giants who hacked at him in turn with their pole-axes. Pinions sweeping up and down, Taegan rushed to help the vampire fend them off.

Kara charred a gelugon’s white carapace black with a bright, crackling flare of her breath. The baatezu collapsed twitching, its body smoking. At the same instant, however,

hailstones hammered down from the empty air to bruise and bloody her scales.

She pivoted and saw another ice devil glaring at her. Resuming her battle anthem, she beat her wings and leaped at the thing. It braced its spear to impale her as she plunged down at it, but she broke the lance with a swat, pierced and felled the Icy Claw with the talons on her other forefoot, and reached to grip its head in her jaws.

Chitin crunched between her fangs. The dense flesh inside was unpleasantly cold, and had a foul, bitter taste. She didn’t let that deter her from biting the beetle-like head in two.

She spat out the vileness in her mouth and lifted her foot away from the mangled body beneath. No longer pinned, the Icy Claw’s thick, bladed tail whipped up at her. By some dark miracle, the creature still lived.

The blow sliced the side of Kara’s face, and a ghastly chill stabbed through her entire body. It couldn’t quite keep her from stamping down and grinding the gelugon’s midsection to paste, but she shuddered through the process, and went right on shaking. The spasms made her slow and clumsy.

This will pass, she told herself. I just need a few seconds. Then frost blasted down on her, encrusting her dorsal surface with rime and turning her pain to utter anguish.

She hissed at the shock and looked up. One of the larger whites, old and powerful enough that a sprinkle of pale blue and gray scales showed among the ivory ones, was diving at her. She tried to spring out from underneath, but didn’t make it. The chromatic’s claws rammed deep into her back and slammed her to the ground.

The same giantess who’d guarded Dorn throughout the day chased him, sagging breasts and rolls of fat bouncing, driving him before her with sweeps of a long-handled, stoneheaded warhammer. He backed and jumped away, looking for

an opening to lunge inside her prodigious reach and make an attack of his own.

But she wouldn’t give him the chance. Despite her bulk, she wielded her weapon adroitly, just as she advanced and when necessary, retreated with considerable agility. She always remained close enough to threaten her smaller foe, yet maintained enough distance to keep him from striking back.

In time she’d likely make an error, but Dorn wasn’t willing to wait. He didn’t know what had become of his comrades, and didn’t dare look away from the giantess to find out. But his instincts yammered that he had to finish with her fast, so he could help the others. Otherwise, something terrible was going to happen.

The giantess feinted a backhand blow. Pretending the move had fooled him, he shifted in the direction she wanted him to go. She whirled her weapon over his head and struck from the other side. He lifted his iron arm to shield himself and twisted.

The hammer clanged against his metal parts. It couldn’t break them, but it was likewise true that the iron couldn’t stop the human half of his body from suffering a portion of the jolt. He cried out, and the blow flung him down on his side.

He lay still, pretending to be crippled. The giantess leered, down at him, then swung the hammer over her head to administer the death blow. At last the weapon was out of his way, and she was standing still. He scrambled up and at her.

She struck, and the hammer crashed down on the cobbles at his back. She tried to skip backward, but not quickly enough. He lunged behind her and ripped at her hamstrings with his claws.

Blood gushed, her knee gave way, and she fell backward. At once she let go of the hammer, rolled, and reached for him with her bloated, filthy fingers. He swept his iron arm back and forth, slicing her hands, until she snatched them back. He jumped in to rip at the artery in the side of her neck.

More blood sprayed, spattering him from head to knees, the coppery smell mingling with the sour stink of the giantess’s flesh. She flopped down on her face. He spat gore from his mouth, wiped it from his eyes, cast about, and faltered in horror.

Though the battle raged everywhere, it was at its most furious in the center of the plaza. Her gown burned away, her snowflake-and-diamond-painted skin raw and blistered, Iyraclea floated in the air at one end, while Zethrindor, his dead flesh ripped and hacked, crouched at the other. The two hurled blasts of blue and silver radiance, bolts of shadow, screaming winds, and pounding barrages of hail back and forth. The discharge of so much magic was nauseating to behold. An observer had a visceral sense the spells were beating at the substance of the world itself, and might conceivably break through.

Between and around the commanders, their minions battled like warring ants grappling under the feet of a pair of duelists. Some of Dorn’s companions had gotten caught amid the fracas. Brimstone, Taegan, and Raryn were fighting three giants and an Icy Claw.

What appalled Dorn, however, was Kara’s situation. She’d managed the shift to dragon form, but even so, a huge white held her pinned and was ripping gashes in her crystal-blue hide.

Dorn ran toward her, and several of Iyraclea’s human warriors scrambled to intercept him.

He had no choice but to kill his way through them. The first to fall bore a kind of primitive sword, a length of bone studded with chips of flint. Once he snatched that up to wield in his hand of flesh, he could slaughter them a little faster, but still not fast enough.

As he clawed and hacked, parried and sidestepped, he caught glimpses of Kara. Flailing with her wings, she broke free of the white’s coils and scrambled away. The chromatic, however, simply pounced after her and bore her down once more.

Curse Taegan, Brimstone, and even Raryn! Couldn’t they see what was happening? Why didn’t one of them break away from their own little skirmish and help her?

Dorn drove his knuckle-spikes into the last barbarian’s heart. Ahead of him, the white roared and reared up from Kara’s shredded, motionless body.

Dorn sprinted toward the two dragons. Kara couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t.

Iyraclea shouted, “Auril!”

The cry was deafening, like a shrill thunderclap. She thrust out her arm at Zethrindor and curled her fingers in a clutching motion. White vapor steamed from the dracolich’s decaying flesh, and he bellowed. Dorn realized the Ice Queen was leeching forth the cold that was, as she’d warned him, a vital part of his nature.

But Zethrindor wasn’t finished yet. He snarled words of power that cracked and crumbled the facades of buildings at the edges of the plaza. Dorn felt a pressure, a seething malignancy accumulating in the air.

All the countless characters graven on the cobbles shined like cats’ eyes reflecting light. Brimstone, Taegan, and Raryn faded, their forms becoming vague and ghostly. Before they quite finished disappearing, though, Zethrindor screamed the final syllables of his incantation.

A towering mass of shadow appeared in front of the, dracolich, then swept forward like a wave racing toward the shore. Giants and wyrms scrambled to get out of the way. Those who failed broke part into small fragments, which then crumbled to powder. The darkness likewise obliterated the paving stones in its path, and as soon as the first of them shattered, the symbols on all the others stopped gleaming.

The wave raced on amid swirling dust. It surged over Kara’s body, and Raryn, Taegan, and Brimstone’s misty forms, and they too disappeared. At the opposite end of the square, it engulfed its actual target and halted with a suddenness no mundane matter could have matched. It clasped Iyraclea’s slender form like amber encasing an insect.

Fissures ran through her skin as if she were a clay figure on the verge of breaking. Yet she didn’t perish immediately, as lesser beings had. She chanted the Frostmaiden’s name, and her body glowed like ice refracting sunlight, the blaze piercing the surrounding murk. She grew taller, as though the Cold Goddess was lending her more strength than a humansized frame could contain.

Then, however, Zethrindor roared another word, and the Ice Queen thrashed in agony. She was woman-sized again, her inner glow guttering out.

“Aur—” she croaked, and a jagged crack split her luscious mouth and perfect face in two. Her left. foot dropped away from its ankle. Then the shadow devoured her completely.

Afterward, the magic dwindled and disappeared like water draining into the ground. Evidently exhausted, Zethrindor slumped down. Dorn looked around and saw nothing but drifts of dust and the broad new scar across the plaza. He hefted the gory bone-and-flint sword and marched toward the dracolich.

Will smiled at the fur-clad spearmen spreading out to flank him. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to fight the dragons?” he asked. “They’re the ones trying to kill your queen.”

The barbarians kept coming.

“Have it your way, then.” The halfling faked a lunge at one, then whirled and charged the other.

Startled, the second human nonetheless managed a spear thrust, but his aim was off, and Will didn’t even have to dodge. He simply rushed on in, drove his pilfered skewer into his opponent’s groin, and dodged around the stricken man as his knees started to give way. He was sure the other tribesman had run after him hoping to take him from behind, and he intended his maneuver to interpose the wounded barbarian between them.

Sure enough, when Will spun back around, his remaining opponent was right where he’d expected him to be, hovering

as if he couldn’t make up his mind whether to circle right or left. He was still thinking about it when a flying, glowing, redgold mace bashed him in the back of the head. The tribesman pitched forward.

Will turned and felt relief at the sight of Pavel standing unwounded, a pilfered spear clutched in his hands. The halfling tried to think of a fitting insult to greet his friend, then glimpsed what was happening at the center of the plaza. Shocked into silence, he pointed. Pavel pivoted in time to watch the heaving, rushing darkness consuming all in its path. Even Iyraclea failed to resist its power.

As the ravenous power ebbed away, Will spotted Dorn starting toward Zethrindor. Even in the dark, the big man’s asymmetrical frame was as unmistakable as his intentions.

“Come on!” Will said. He ran toward Dorn, Pavel sprinted after him, and the flying mace brought up the rear.

It occurred to Will that this headlong dash was no way to skirt trouble. But maybe it would be all right. Some of the combatants on the battlefield were still busy fighting one another. Others, wounded or weary, needed time to regroup, and perhaps in the present circumstances, many of the towering gelugons, giants, and wyrms simply regarded a scurrying human and halfling as inconsequential.

One giant, an axe in either fist, his beard braided, did come stamping to intercept them. But Jivex swooped down out of the dark and puffed sparkling vapor in the behemoth’s face. The giant tottered backward giggling like a happy drunk. The seekers raced on by.

Up ahead, Dorn halted and came on guard, iron arm extended, sword cocked back. Will felt a jolt of fear. The idiot was going to shout out a challenge, like a paladin in one of poor Kara’s stories, and he was still just a little too far away to do anything about it.

Pavel snapped, “Silence!”

Though Will wasn’t even the target, the magic imbuing the word made him feel something akin to a slap in the face.

Dorn froze.

That gave Jivex time to catch up to him, and the small dragon wheeled around the half-golem’s head. “Don’t be stupid!” he snarled.

“No,” Pavel panted as he and Pavel stumbled to a halt, “don’t. With Iyraclea dead, the drakes have won. They’ll need some time to deal with the rest of her troops, and to collect themselves, but then they’ll remember us. This is our last chance to slip away.”