THE VIOLENCE OF DRAGONS

HALF BLINDED BY THE ACID THAT HAD WASHED OVER HIM, BATTERED

violence of the dragon collisions, Tos?un nevertheless remained keenly aware that he and his mount were flying at great speed right into a mountain.

And one of the copper dragons was close behind, and if they turned, he would again feel the pain of acidic dragon breath. Still, he tugged and yanked this way and that.

?Turn, you fool!? he screamed continually at Aurbangras, and finally the dragon did manage to swerve?right at a wall.

Tos?un threw his arms up and cried out, but the wyrm went over it. Just beyond, though, Aurbangras hit the snowy slope and went into a fast skid. The dragon reared up, kicking and clawing.

The drow rider remembered a moment in his youth, riding for House Barrison Del?Armgo in a battle against a rival House. His Underdark lizard, running full out, had hit a patch of magically slickened floor. This moment brought him back to that, the mount then, as now, rearing and scrabbling futilely.

And then as now, the lizard caught a lip and flipped over forward. Tos?un instinctively held his seat on the bucking creature?and this time, foolishly.

Aurbangras turned his neck out wide and dipped his shoulders into a roll, slamming Tos?un facedown in the snow, rolling right over him, bending him over backward so fully that the drow?s buttocks slammed against his shoulderblades. The dragon kept rolling, but Tos?un did not, other than to unwind weirdly, like a crushed flower trying to lift up once more, before he flopped uselessly to the side.

He knew immediately that many of his bones were broken, and knew too that such a word didn?t begin to describe his pulverized hips.

He flopped over to the side and lay there in the snow, and felt strangely calm, with a curious absence of pain or cold?or anything else. He felt disembodied at that moment, as if his eyes had flown free of his body to watch the unfolding drama in front of him. He saw the copper dragon go flying away, saw the robed human come rushing down the cliff.

And he saw the fight, though it couldn?t be real, he told himself, because no man could fight like this, no man could resist the kill of the dragon.

Aurbangras breathed a cloud of icy death over where the man stood?or where the man had been standing, at least. Like a striking serpent, the human had leaped to the side, curled and rolled, and avoided the blast completely. And right back in he leaped, as if flying, his feet in front of him to kick the dragon on the flank, and with such power that the wyrm was jolted.

That was not possible.

The wyrm bit, serpent neck snapping the head down. But the man was under it, punching and kicking, flipping and kicking still, and out he came to the side even as Aurbangras dropped straight down to crush him.

Now lower, the dragon took a kick in the face that sent his head swinging the other way,

and the man landed on his feet and went right in. Tos?un noted the wound Aurbangras had suffered under one foreleg, the bloody gash in such stark contrast to the white scales. The human noted it too, clearly, for he stabbed there with his hand, fingers extended, driving them right into the gash and pulling back the hand with ligaments and muscle in it.

The dragon roared and bit at him and clawed at him and rolled at him, but the man was always just ahead of every strike. The great tail came sweeping around, but the man was up impossibly high, and the tail went beneath him harmlessly.

And the man touched down, then flew again, running up the dragon?s side and back. When the wyrm tried to bite at him, he leaped upon that head, holding fast to a horn with one hand, swinging in against the wyrm?s face.

Eye to eye, then fist to eye as the man drove his hand right into that sensitive orb?plunged it into the liquid depths.

The wyrm?s shriek shook the mountain. The convulsive snap of the dragon?s neck sent the man flying, spinning, though he somehow managed to right himself and touch down in the snow in control.

He stood right in front of Tos?un then, and the drow thought himself doomed.

But no. The enraged dragon advanced, and Tos?un saw its fanged maw right behind the human.

Drizzt saw his doom, the dragons speeding together for a collision that would spell the end of him, and likely of them. He got off one more shot, aimed perfectly for the head of the drow riding the white wyrm, but again that shield came flashing up to block, stealing from Drizzt the satisfaction of slaying Tiago before they both died anyway. He wondered for a moment if this impending doom had been unintentional, an expectation on the part of both wyrms that the other would of course veer aside.

But now it was too late. So suddenly, they were there, together, to crash.

Drizzt cried out, as did his counterpart riding the white wyrm, and reflexively closed his eyes as he braced.

But nothing happened.

The drow blinked and looked around in confusion. How could it be?

He looked back and saw the great white dragon, spinning around, roaring in rage, focusing on Tazmikella, and in doing so, ignoring Ilnezhara, who sped up past the wyrm and spat forth a cloud of gas that engulfed the white and Tiago. And up went Ilnezhara, into the roiling blackness of the Darkening, and so too was Tazmikella climbing again, determined to get into the opaque cloudstuff.

?How?? Drizzt asked, shaking his head. He knew his mount couldn?t hear him, and he didn?t want to distract her anyway. On came the huge white wyrm, determined to intercept. It was flying quite a bit slower now, Drizzt realized, and he remembered Ilnezhara?s breath and the magical properties it exuded.

The drow quickly gauged their respective speeds and the distance left to the Darkening, and he held his breath. It didn?t seem to him as if Tazmikella would make it. He looked to the clouds, hoping that Ilnezhara would come forth once more and distract the dogged pursuit.

But she was not to be seen.

Taulmaril thrummed in Drizzt?s hands, the drow archer leading the angling white dragon perfectly, putting every shot in line with Tiago.

But the Baenre noble was laughing at him, and Drizzt understood that he had no chance of getting an arrow past that buckler. Tiago was too quick, too agile, and too well guarded, and unaffected by the magical slowing breath of Ilnezhara.

Drizzt thought that he should focus instead on the wyrm, but just shook his head helplessly. It was too late. The white wyrm had them.

But then it didn?t.

It was gone, as if it had simply disappeared. No, not disappeared, Drizzt realized, and then he knew why the dragons hadn?t collided previously, as Tazmikella once again cast her spell, a minor teleport that carried her along an extra-dimensional corridor right through the plummeting white dragon?s path. And now Tazmikella and Drizzt were clear to the Darkening, and into it they flew, even as the white, far below, began its turn back into a climb.

Tazmikella began to cry out, a short series of high-pitched shrieks, stuttered in length and frequency, and it took Drizzt a few moments to understand that she was communicating with her sister in code, and likely to make sure they didn?t inadvertently crash into each other.

For indeed, Tazmikella was flying almost blind, with patchy blackness limiting her vision all around. Ilnezhara?s responding shrieks were the only warning Drizzt got before the other copper dragon flew right past, so very close, the black clouds swirling and rolling in her passing.

She was riderless, Drizzt realized, and he swallowed hard and feared for Afafrenfere.

He had no time to dwell on that, however, for another form shook the clouds the other way, a much larger and more ominous form.

Tazmikella rolled over hard to the left and twisted as she went into a straight dive. They plunged out of the Darkening, the world opening suddenly wide below them, but the dragon cut sharply and climbed right back in, even as the white came swirling out.

This was the stuff of nightmares to Drizzt. He didn?t dare shoot his bow now for fear of hitting Ilnezhara, for who knew where she might be? Or where the white wyrm might be. For a long while, into and out of the blackness they soared and rolled, dived and climbed, sometimes below, sometimes above.

A great form passed to the left, another to the right, then one above and later one below, and whether it was the white or Ilnezhara, Drizzt could hardly tell.

And so it went, the seemingly endless nightmare.

They came out the top of the Darkening to find the white wyrm waiting. It roared and lunged, and Tazmikella threw herself aside, the dragon?s maw snapping just short of her vulnerable neck. They brushed and crashed as they passed and Drizzt barely avoided a wing buffet that would surely have launched him from his seat?then ducked just in time to avoid the cut of Tiago?s sword, as the skilled drow managed a passing attack.

Drizzt somehow leveled his bow right before Tazmikella dropped back down into the darkness, and the skilled ranger fired off a trio of arrows.

But Tiago?s shield was there yet again. The shots, as fine as they had been, had no chance of hitting the skilled warrior with that magnificent shield.

Back into the nightmare they flew. A cry to the left side told Drizzt that the white wyrm had encountered Ilnezhara, and the pitch of the screech made him believe that Ilnezhara had taken the worst of it.

Or maybe, he realized as Tazmikella calmly swerved and dipped, Ilnezhara was again communicating to her sister.

Out of the darkness dropped Tazmikella and Drizzt, this time dipping lower as she flew out to the left. The swirl of the black clouds above told them that a wyrm was there, barely inside, and Drizzt put up his bow as Tazmikella circled directly underneath.

The drow saw the white scales, and so Taulmaril hummed, silver arrows shooting up to slam at the underbelly of the great white wyrm. They did little damage, but even that was enough to mitigate the mounting frustration Drizzt felt with his inability to get a clean shot at Tiago.

And Drizzt noted something, and he nodded, planning his next shot. That would have to wait, however, as back into the Darkening flew Tazmikella.

The sisters called back and forth, and so they were striking at the white dragon, little hits and nothing more, a quick nip or tail slap and off they spun aside, one after another.

?Sparrows on a hawk,? Drizzt whispered, recalling that familiar scene when he watched a pair of smaller and more agile birds chasing some magnificent bird of prey across the sky, away from their nest.

And he would play his role, of course, his bow always ready now, his arrows flying fast whenever he saw the white scales. He shot for the dragon now and not Tiago, not wanting an errant arrow to fly past and knowing that he?d never hit Tiago with that shield anyway.

Patience, Drizzt told himself. He knew that he?d get his chance.

They flew silently then, in darkness, and the hair on the back of the drow?s neck stood on end. The white wyrm had figured out the game, he feared from the sudden total silence.

But Tazmikella didn?t share his worry. Once more, Drizzt lurched forward and banged his face on Tazmikella?s shoulder as the dragon suddenly shot straight up. Out of the Darkening they came, in a sharp bank, and Drizzt turned Taulmaril back, expecting the white dragon to burst out behind them.

The black clouds swirled into a spinning vortex and out came a wyrm, but it was Ilnezhara, not the white, and Drizzt barely held his shot.

Ilnezhara rolled right over and plunged back into the blackness, and now Drizzt did see the white, right at the edge and similarly rolling in pursuit.

And there was the white dragon?s belly?there was Drizzt?s target?and he let fly once and then again, the arrows streaking in, the second shot skipping across unyielding scales to clip through the leather of the girth of Tiago?s saddle.

?Block that,? Drizzt whispered with grim satisfaction.

Despite his agony, despite his pulverized hip and his expectation that he was going to die anyway, Tos?un found a measure of satisfaction as his wounded and angry dragon mount hovered over the doomed human.

The maw opened wide, teeth as long as a tall man?s leg, and the dragon snapped at the

monk, who barely leaped back in time to avoid being bitten in half.

Now he was close to Tos?un, so close that the drow could reach out and grab his leg. He moved to do just that as the wyrm closed in again, but this time when the dragon opened his toothy maw, he didn?t bite.

He breathed.

Just before the killing frost descended over Tos?un, ending his misery, he found even his tiny satisfaction stolen from him, for the man in front of him, the man he thought in his grasp and caught by the breath, simply broke apart into floating shards of light, like a thousand tiny flower petals floating down on a gentle breeze.

And the cold settled in, and the drow remained frozen in place, his expression one of abject disbelief.

Fireballs ignited one after the other, half in the Darkening and half below it.

Out came the white dragon, now riderless, roaring in rage. But its movements remained slowed by Ilnezhara?s magical breath, and the dragon sisters had each other fully in sight, and had the battlefield precisely as they wanted it.

Once again Drizzt was reminded of the sparrows chasing off a hawk, as Tazmikella and Ilnezhara spun and rolled, under, over, and all around the great white wyrm, biting at it, breathing at it, hitting it with magical fireballs and lightning bolts and magic missiles, and through it all, Drizzt kept up a steady stream of stinging arrows.

At one point, Drizzt heard Tazmikella laugh at her own cleverness?and what a curious sound that was!?when she conjured a wall of stone right in the white dragon?s speeding path. The monstrous dragon cracked through it easily enough, sending shards of stone flying and falling the miles to the ground, and truly the wyrm seemed more perturbed than injured.

But that only added to the dragon?s mounting frustration, so clearly evident every time it snapped futilely at one sister or the other, invariably behind the flight.

Every breath weapon now came as a cloud of slowing gas, the sisters determined not to let that enchantment fade, determined to keep the superior wyrm unable to catch them. Their bites might sting the white, but its great maw could prove lethal.

Out to the north they flew, over the huge battle raging just beyond the Frost Hills. Suddenly the white dragon simply folded its wings, letting the pull of Toril do what it could not, free-fall, gaining it the speed at last to be away from the nuisance of the copper dragons.

Ilnezhara moved to pursue, but Tazmikella called her back with a shriek.

?The spell of breath is wearing thin,? Tazmikella warned her sister as they flew side by side.

?Then stay up high, near the blackness,? Ilnezhara agreed.

The three of them, the sisters and Drizzt, watched the great wyrm, a brilliant white speck far below. It came out of its drop, and indeed seemed to be moving with all speed again.

But to the north, speeding for the Spine of the World, where, the sisters knew, the Old White Death made his home.

?So it ends,? Tazmikella said.

?You killed his son!? Drizzt said in warning, expecting the white dragon to return with

fury.

?Not yet,? Tazmikella corrected.

?Arauthator is chromatic,? Ilnezhara scoffed at Drizzt, swiveling her huge head so that she was quite?and unnervingly?near to him. ?He cares nothing for his son.?

?More treasure for him to hoard now, likely,? Tazmikella agreed. ?Fear not, Drizzt. The wyrm has fled.?

?Let us go and finish this,? Ilnezhara said, and she banked immediately, swerving back the other way, toward Fourthpeak and the wounded Aurbangras.

He understood the tendrils of murderous coldness filling the air around him, but the sensation was distant and did not hurt him. He understood then the true relationship between his spirit and his corporeal form, just a brief glimpse at the seam between thought and reality, between the physical and the spiritual, between the higher planes and Faerûn.

Brother Afafrenfere hadn?t willed himself to such a lightness of being?certainly that had been Grandmaster Kane?s doing?nor could he fully understand it or appreciate it. Somehow, some way, he was extraplanar, simply removed from the battlefield and from certain death from the white dragon?s breath.

He felt the wounded drow expire?felt and didn?t see. He wasn?t seeing anything at that time, not in any sense of sight that he had known as a corporeal creature. Still, the reality was as clear to him as if he had watched the drow?s spirit exiting the corpse.

He felt light. He felt ? joined. Joined with everything. No object seemed solid to him, as if he was nothing more than a beam of light through water, where everything, living or inanimate, was simply translucent, and so, incorporeal.

He knew that he was on another level of perception here, and he didn?t dare try to sort it out, keenly aware?perhaps it was some mental nudging from Kane?that all of this was quite beyond his understanding, and that trying to sort it out might indeed drive him to madness. Even the beauty in this state, and it was all beauty to Afafrenfere, overwhelmed him to the edge of his sensibilities and threatened to drive him over that edge.

He was guided back to the event at hand by Grandmaster Kane. He sensed the mighty life energy of the wounded white dragon, and stronger still came the emanations from the returning copper dragons.

He felt the violence, as if all of time-space was trembling under the power of three dragons entangled on the mountain slope. He couldn?t hear the battle, but its vibrations resonated within and all around him.

Sound began to return, distantly at first, but growing louder, the shrieks of pain and rage, and Brother Afafrenfere knew that he was reconstituting.

His eyes blinked open, the sensation of sight confusing him for a moment until he sorted it out.

In front of him lay the battered white dragon, Ilnezhara perched upon its stretched neck, holding it down. Behind her, Tazmikella chewed into the white?s belly, tearing out giant entrails. On her back, Drizzt held on and kept trying to look away.

A long while later, it was over, the white dragon quite dead, and Afafrenfere glanced back

to see the drow who had been riding the wyrm all twisted and crushed, encased in the ice from his own mount?s killing breath.

?Now, let us finish this,? Tazmikella said, her maw and face all bloody and with a long strand of the white dragon?s intestine hanging garishly from one tooth.

Afafrenfere shuddered as he recalled the dragon?s elf form, so pretty and attractive. This other side of Tazmikella, a level of viciousness beyond human sensibilities, shook him.

He heard her call though and could not ignore her, so he went to Ilnezhara and took his seat. Off they flew, leaping from the mountain with victorious cries that echoed down to King Connerad?s forces below, to Bruenor and the Gutbusters on the Surbrin Bridge, and to King Emerus and his charges now pressing the orc force to the field just north of the Surbrin Bridge battle.

Ilnezhara and Afafrenfere soared off to the north to join in the larger battle just beyond the Frost Hills, but Tazmikella and Drizzt headed straight for the bridge. They flew low over the field and low over the dwarves holding strong on the structure.

As they neared the eastern end, Drizzt fired off his arrows. Low came Tazmikella, barely above Bruenor?s head, but to the dwarf?s laughter and cheering. Her great claws closed around the head and shoulders of the frost giant trying to press through Bruenor?s stubborn block.

That frost giant went up into the air and made a most impressive bomb when Tazmikella hurled it into the throng of orcs pressing in from the east.

The minions of Many-Arrows began to break ranks, fleeing from the battle, some running back to the east, others to the north and the cover of the Glimmerwood.

Around came Tazmikella, and she hurried the fleeing monsters along with a blast of acid. Drizzt?s arrows nipped at them and cut them down.

?Secured!? Drizzt shouted when they turned back to the bridge to see Bruenor taking most of his force back across to the western edge, leaving only a handful to guard the now-empty eastern ramp.

Catti-brie smiled and waved at the drow and his dragon mount, then turned over the bridge rail and dropped a fireball on the field just to the north, in the midst of the back ranks of orcs battling King Emerus.

?I go to join my sister,? Tazmikella said to Drizzt. ?Will you stay or come with me??

?The bridge,? Drizzt asked. He wanted to be with Catti-brie and Bruenor then, in this moment of victory.

Tazmikella set him down and sped away, and Drizzt moved up beside his wife and matched her magic with his silver arrows.

The orcs were caught between three forces now, between the Surbrin Bridge and Mithral Hall?s eastern door. They had nowhere to run. Many jumped into the River Surbrin and were swept away on icy currents. Much later, rumors came back to Mithral Hall that a handful of the orc swimmers actually managed to crawl out of the river on the other bank.

That handful and the giants of Shining White were the only monsters who got off that field alive.

CHAPTER 21

Date: 2016-06-13; view: 145