Five Kingdoms (54 page)

“The dragon seems agitated by the light of
Pearl Moon
,” Xu Liang said while they hurried across the north wall, toward the center of it. “I will utilize that to our advantage by casting a shield. The shield will also protect us while you take aim at its eyes.”

“It will not require much aim,” Shirisae told him. “
Firestorm
tends to know my targets and makes its own path. Like lightning, the magic makes a connection that is first unseen before it strikes.”

It was evident, even in their rush that Xu Liang’s scholar mind was at work with the information that had been given to him. He fell immediately silent and the manner in which his brow creased suggested a new concentration. He excelled at more than one focus, however, and did not overlook the center position on the wall when they came to it.

The dragon was agitated, seeking either escape or a target for its revenge. Possibly, it had only destruction on its mind—a beast of war awakened for a single purpose. Observing it, Shirisae could not firmly decide if this was destiny or a coincidence of nature.

A veil of blue filtered her vision, which became not of a creature testily stomping over debris both human and structural, but of a spirit of chaos manifested to destroy. The swiftness of its focus while it made a sudden and direct path toward where she and Xu Liang stood was alarming. It launched its rending wail. Shirisae watched the air distort before them, a funneling of dust and debris expanding toward the wall, protected currently by Xu Liang and the Moon Blade. To delay would be to risk the mystic’s strength and possibly his safety. She raised
Firestorm
and looked into the glare of Chaos.

Strands of silver reached for the dome, snatching into it, fortifying it against the dragon’s assault. The combined forces cracked the sky, arcing a heavy chain of power over the city. It scattered in all directions through the air, seeming to redistribute the dragon’s assault. The sound rolled overhead, like thunder. Xu Liang lowered the Moon Blade afterward, and Shirisae thrust
Firestorm
toward the dragon, setting loose a second chain of magic, which snaked around the dragon’s neck and head. The light disturbed and distracted it.

Alere was already on his way, daring fate as only one of the Verressi could.

Finding a place
from which to strike at the spine of such a beast was not so easy as it seemed in idea. Tristus was to take advantage of the dragon’s preoccupation with the others in order to stage his attack. The simplest part was returning to the ground level. From there, he and a handful of soldiers—plus one stubborn dwarf—made their way quickly and discreetly to one of the intact buildings. The one selected appeared a string of residences or offices with all of the rooftops connecting to one another. One of the soldiers, carrying a ladder, propped it against the building and anchored it with Tarfan’s help.

“Thank you,” Tristus said to both of them. To Tarfan alone, he said, “See to it that you make it back to the wall in time, Master Fairwind.”

“See to it, pup, that you get your backside onto that roof in time,” the dwarf quipped in return.

“How is Alere managing?” Tristus asked.

Tarfan took a look around. “Can’t see so much as a feather of him,” came the report.

The owl feather he wore. Tristus recalled while he set about climbing. When he made it onto the canted roof, a man passed his spear up to him. He stood once he had it firmly in his hand, then turned to look for the beast and his companions. The dragon was in the process of reeling from
Firestorm’s
attack. And Alere was riding out to the monster.

Be safe, my friend
, Tristus prayed, and set about crossing the rooftops. He kept low for the time present in order to better maintain his footing against the constant disruption to the buildings caused by its colossal attacker. Moving with equal caution beneath a covered walkway was Guang Ci. Tristus hoped that he would be able to disable the beast long enough for his ally to have fair opportunity to make his contribution.

The dragon cried out fiercely, halting Tristus and drawing his attention back to Alere, who was in those very moments passing beneath the dragon, sword raised, trailed by the glow of its magic while arcs of that same power preceded him and his borrowed mount. The dragon listed to one side, toward Alere. Tristus’ heart seemed to plummet into his stomach for an instant, and he set off running across the rooftops.

In the moments that passed—slower than time seemed to allow for—the dragon recovered itself and Alere routed himself away from its upper body. The tail coiled inward like a snapped rope, but the elf ducked low and managed to guide the horse safely from its erratic course. The beast turned its head, a defiant shriek physically chasing Alere as it tore a path of destruction after him. Tristus moved as quickly as he could while the dragon was turning itself to pursue the elf. Further strikes from Shirisae helped to confound it, but it was difficult to tell whether or not any of the damage beyond what had been done to the wings was lasting.

Alere was well out of Tristus’ line of sight by the time he arrived near to the dragon. With no further roof to carry him, he came to an abrupt halt at the edge facing the beast, planted his feet, and spun
Dawnfire
. The very action seemed to draw the attention of the beast. It craned its neck around. Its body remained aligned with the roof. Tristus released the disk generated by the Dawn Blade. The force pushed him backward several steps while the magic launched forward with the toll of its battle cry, raking across the dragon’s back, following its spine for only a brief span before drifting off its shoulder and driving heavily into the already ruined yard.

The dragon was driven awkwardly earthward. Guang Ci and Jiao Ren both emerged from their hiding places. Tristus stood breathless while the two Fanese warriors rushed to the defense of their capitol and of their empress.

The dragon lay
stunned on its side. Guang Ci ran as quickly as he was able. The Night Blade seemed to grow heavier as he drew nearer to the beast, as if it was swelling with a physical power. By the time he reached the dragon, it seemed more as if it was refusing to be wielded. The dark energy of the weapon distorted the air around it, spreading an inky blackness that bled onto Guang Ci’s hands and stained his view when he dragged the blade forward. The fantastic odor of the dragon assailed him as well, and beneath its belly he could see a small field of dark fluid that seemed to immediately reflect the Night Blade’s magic. It was as if there was some relationship between beast and sword, one that elected to favor the beast over the sword’s bearer.

You wanted this!
Guang Ci reminded the Night Blade.

The aura of the weapon seemed to contradict him in those moments, its power dragging heavier. Again, it seemed it wanted him to obey it…to wield it as if it had designs of its own, that it could realize through the one carrying it.

I wield this Blade for Sheng Fan!
Guang Ci enforced.
For the safety of my Empress, for the glory of my lord Xu Liang, and for the peace of the people!

He lunged forward with all of his strength, drawing the Night Blade steadily forward. In the corner of his vision, Jiao Ren had arrived with the Sun Blade. A malicious radiance drove from the Night Blade, through Guang Ci. The sword released itself to his strength, and his swing happened with no ability to control it. Beside him, Jiao Ren was driving the near flaming tip of the
Spear of Heaven
into the dragon’s chest, precisely when
Behel
was penetrating the beast’s wall of flesh. Both weapons delved deep into the dragon, and met one another at some point inside. Guang Ci was only aware of an eruption of deep, mournful chords before he was flung through the air at tremendous speeds. The streak of the Sun Blade’s aura raked across his vision like a falling star in the night.

Rise and Fall of the Sun

A
t first, Xu
Liang believed that the dragon had thrown both Jiao Ren and Guang Ci from it. But with the delay in the creature’s movement, it became quickly clear that they had been thrown from each other with force similar to that which had locked the Storm and Twilight Blades in Yvaria. For several moments, he could only stare at the sight of both Blades and their bearers hurtled in opposite directions, as if by the hands of a giant deity. It seeped into his thoughts gradually that they had attacked with poor timing. He could only assume that urgency to strike before the dragon rose and ambition to quell the beast altogether had not allowed Jiao Ren to wait for Guang Ci’s attack to be completed.

It scarcely seemed to matter what order they had attacked in now; the dragon was returning to its feet.

“What now?” Shirisae asked, not as one beleaguered, but as one eager to carry on fighting.

“We find another way,” Xu Liang told her, because there was no other answer.

Jiao Ren held
onto the
Spear of Heaven
throughout his flight across the courtyard, as if it were somehow a safe purchase. Instinct would not let him release it, and so he flew with it, arcing briefly skyward and then rapidly descending to the ground and across it. He tumbled so swiftly and the entirety of the event was such a shock that he scarcely felt any of it. When at last the spear took hold of the earth, he let go the shaft and rolled only a short distance further before coming to a stop on his back. For several moments, he couldn’t tell if he was breathing, but then it began to ache all over to do so.

The outsiders reached him first. The ghostly pale one, followed by the man with eyes the color of sky. Their names had been told to him, but he could not recall them in the moment. Their language was a blur of foreign sounds. He felt as if he was falling from consciousness.

“We have to
move him,” Tristus said while he began an attempt to heal the general, after an impressive leap from the rooftops that might have done him a fair amount of harm as well if he’d landed wrong. “If we don’t, the three of us are going to get trampled.”

Alere wasn’t arguing that point. Still, there options for safety seemed few.

The dragon had renewed the clamor of its movement—evident in the quaking underfoot—though it was not yet in sight. Jiao Ren had been thrown a tremendous distance, and presumably Guang Ci had flown equally far, though in the opposite direction.

The crackling of light from
Firestorm
let them know that Shirisae and possibly Xu Liang as well were engaging the dragon once again. It would be foolish to waste the time their efforts were giving them. Alere looked for a location to move to that was neither too far nor overly exposed. A toppled awning propped beside a covered walkway seemed ample shelter, at least for a brief period.

“There,” he said to Tristus, pointing in the direction.

The knight glanced over his shoulder, eyeing up what Alere was referencing and approving of it with a quick nod. He abandoned his healing efforts and together, they lifted Jiao Ren from the ground, moving quickly toward the shade of the fallen awning. Once Jiao Ren was laid back down and Tristus resumed his cleric’s work, Alere placed himself near the edge of the portion of roof that would be no shelter at all if the dragon came too near, and watched for the enemy.

Tarfan would not
have believed it if he hadn’t seen it himself, with his own dwarf’s eyes. No sooner had he once again topped the miserably steep staircase of the city wall, and there came a sound like the enragement of the gods—the same sound that had nearly taken the elves’ blades from them not all that long ago. But rather than a berserker tearing the weapons apart in direct defiance of the gods, it was a lone Fanese guardsman flying through the air, like a thrown sack of root vegetables. And somehow, in the midst of his pell-mell flight, he righted himself in the air and took only the mildest tumble before he stabbed the Night Blade into the earth and refused to travel any further. It was the most astounding act of defiance Tarfan had seen since Tristus’ feat in Yvaria, and it was damned impressive, particularly as
Behel
gave off a low moan that might have been protest, and in the process belched a ring of darkness out around itself and its bearer. Afterward, Guang Ci got to his feet and was off as if he’d never been removed from the battle, even for a moment.

There was excited and panicked murmuring around Tarfan, though not all of it was on account of Guang Ci. Much of it was over the dragon, which, like all dragons, refused to be put down without raising the very hells. That might have been the one thing a dragon and a dwarf had in common. With a cursory look over his shoulder at the stunned assortment of troops gathered on the wall, Tarfan shrugged and made for the stairs. If those damned artifacts weren’t going to take care of this neat and tidy, then he wasn’t about to stand around waiting for the end to announce itself. He had a hammer, and whatever this dragon represented, it appeared made of blood and bones.

Tarfan felt somewhat exhilarated by his decision, but more so by the sight of well-armed and armored Fanese men leaving the wall at both ends. He couldn’t take all the credit for their movement, since half or more of them probably couldn’t see him over the stairwell, but he did take a fair amount of pride in men—and a single dwarf—in those moments, that they had all come to the decision to act at the same time.

The dragon’s steps
were no longer sure. More than likely, it had taken on too much injury and, if the manuals were correct, the wound at its belly had become toxic, owed to the natural poisons it carried in its gut. The manuals also claimed that dragons could regenerate if allowed to rest, which meant that they could not simply wait for it to die. The final two strikes had failed, though not entirely. Damage had still been done to the region of the lungs and heart, even if the wounds had not been delivered with any immediate finality. The key now was to avoid its enraged flailing and its desperate wails. While Xu Liang would have preferred so ancient a beast to have a swifter, more dignified end, fate had not allowed it.

The dragon placed itself between buildings, as if by some instinct to retreat into a recess, just as it seemed to slumber within the caves. It emitted a rolling growl while it looked through eyes damaged by the intensity of Firestorm’s light upon Xu Liang and Shirisae.

A wave of pity crashed over Xu Liang, but it could not last when, within the dragon’s glare, he perceived a defiant sneer. The ancient beast seemed suddenly not so ancient at all. Xu Liang recalled the dream of the nest, and then what he’d seen of it beneath the city, and what of that nest had risen to the surface behind the larger beast. He realized that it was only a small display of what was possible.

“There are more,”
Xu Liang heard, possibly from the mouth—or the mind—of the dragon.
“They are stronger. They will be released.”

Soldiers rushed from the wall in those moments. The sounds of their coming seemed to imbue the dragon with a second wind. It wheeled its head quickly around to face the oncoming troops. Xu Liang envisioned disaster.

“Shirisae,” he said, feeling somewhat drained by the rush of events, and by the weight of what he felt could be glimpsed of the future in the dragon’s threat. “Stop them.”

The fire elf responded at once, turning toward the soldiers and raising the Storm Blade into the air. Fierce strands of silver lightning shot to the sky, alarming the men and halting their charge. Xu Liang stayed by her side, so that his people may know that he was in support of her actions, that they had not been the rogue actions of an outsider who might have been against them for any reason.

It was in the midst of considering his next action that Guang Ci emerged from behind a broken pavilion, charging at the dragon. Though Xu Liang briefly felt the same instinct to stop him that had inspired him to call out to his guard once before, he withheld this time. Instead, he cast a wind spell, just enough to divert the dragon’s lunge with open maw so that Guang Ci was able to run beneath it and with both hands, stab once more into the dragon’s chest.

The dragon wailed in agony, lurching up and toward Xu Liang and Shirisae. With the waning of his own strength, Xu Liang felt that he could barely lift the Moon Blade to summon its protection. He managed with the help of Shirisae’s hand to support his arm. As in the Temple of Divine Tranquility, the Phoenix appeared, wings outstretched to shield all those behind it. The dragon’s strike was delivered back to it, with a single flex of its fiery wings. The dragon was thrown onto its side by the returned force of its own assault. It clawed reflexively, trying to rise once again, with the Night Blade lodged in its flesh.