The Rite (8 page)

Finally, inevitably, the moment he dreaded arrived. The blue swooped lower . but not at them. It had spotted the ogres instead, and was making a pass over the ravine. Will heaved a sigh of relief.

Somewhat to the halfling’s surprise, the blue didn’t attack at once. Rather, it climbed high into the sky again, then circled. The gray clouds started changing, massing into looming shapes like anvils. Light flickered in their bellies. The wind blew harder, flinging grit into the air.

Pavel tied his horse to a branch, then beckoned for Will to follow him. Keeping low, the halfling obeyed, but only until they’d skulked to the edge of the trees, where he heard the wind howling, and the ogres clamoring down in their gorge. The blue hadn’t yet attacked them with fang, talon, or breath weapon, but it had done something on its initial pass. Will just hadn’t been able to tell. In any case, the important thing was that he and Pavel could talk.

“Hold it!” he said. “What do you think you’re doing, breaking cover?”

“If we’re lucky,” said Pavel, the blue won’t notice us. It’s busy changing the weather.”

“But why risk it?”

“To help the ogres,” Pavel replied as he crept forward. “I’ve never hated you,” observed Will, following, “as much as I do right now.”

As they stalked toward the ravine, Will felt as exposed and vulnerable as ever in his life. Even an expert housebreaker generally required cover to go undetected, and the barren moor had little to offer. He silently prayed to Brandobaris, Master of Stealth, to hide him and his demented friend, too.

And perhaps the god heard, for the blue didn’t dive at them. Not yet.

As they reached the ravine, thunder boomed. Will peered cautiously over the edge, then narrowed his eyes in surprise. Because to all appearances, the terrain at the bottom had changed, from hard, pebbly ground to muck, patches of which steamed, bubbled, and looked as if they’d burn the foot of

anyone who trod in them. Stranger still, the lower portions of the gully walls had disappeared to reveal further expanses of the same hellish mud flats. Most of the ogres regarded the altered landscape with alarm and confusion. The shaman with the blood-red eye chanted and lashed his flint-tipped spear through a mystic pass, but whatever magic he was attempting, it didn’t seem to be working.

“The blue cast an illusion.” said Pavel.

“Obviously,” said Will, “but why?”

Raindrops started falling.

“For that,” said the priest.

He brandished his pendant, recited a prayer, and grew taller, more impressive, the very definition of strength and wisdom. It was a glamour he used to make it easier to influence others. He stood up straight, revealing himself to the ogres. From the way the long-armed brutes with their warty hides gawked, it was obvious they could see him, though Will suspected that from their vantage point, Pavel appeared to be floating in midair.

“What you’re seeing isn’t real,” Pavel called. Lightning flared, thunder roared, and the rain started hammering down in earnest. “You’re still in the ravine. Grope around, find the walls, and climb out, or at least, partway up.”

His magically augmented force of personality wasn’t enough to deflect the ogres’ reflexive hatred of humans. Several heaved their long, heavy spears. He had to leap backward to avoid being spitted.

Will was still hunkered down behind a bump in the ground. He popped up just long enough to spin his warsling and let fly. The skiprock cracked into one ogre’s skull, then rebounded to strike another in the ear. The brutes lurched off balance, their heads bloodied.

“I’ll kill the next fool who raises a weapon,” he shouted. Pavel stepped back to the brink of the gully. “You’re caught in an illusion.”

The ogre with the crimson eye snarled like a beast. “I know that, sun priest, but I can break us free. My god is stronger than yours.” He gripped his spear in both oversized knotted fists and raised it over his head in what was plainly the start of an invocation.

“I didn’t cause this,” Pavel said, “a dragon did.” That made the shaman hesitate, and his followers babble. “The point was to disorient you and stop you from moving, and to hold you in place for the next attack. It’s coming now. Listen, and you’ll hear it.”

Will strained, and after a moment caught the sound despite the intermittent bang of thunder and the constant drumming of the rain. It was a steady roaring, hurtling down the channel below him.

The shaman heard it, too. “Feel around!” he shouted. “Grab on to something and climb, if you can!”

The ogres had perhaps three seconds to obey his commands. Then the wall of water raced into view.

Will knew that even the torrential rain couldn’t have produced a flash flood so quickly. The blue must have employed still more magic to amplify the force and volume of the surging water. It slammed into the ogres like a battering ram and swept over them like an avalanche, so that all but the few who’d managed to clamber highest on the invisible walls were lost from sight. The halfling was certain the rest were as good as dead.

But when the water level dropped, he saw he was mistaken. Some ogres lay broken or had simply disappeared, but the majority, reeling, coughing, and sputtering, remained. They wouldn’t for long, though, unless they pulled themselves together.

“Get ready to fight!” he shouted. “The dragon’s coming right behind the flood. It’s almost on top of you!”

He couldn’t see the blue yet. The sheets of rain hid it. But it would follow up fast.

Still knee-deep in streaming water, the ogres lifted their spears, stone axes, and war clubs.

“Spread out!” Pavel shouted, and some of them waded apart.

A moment later, a vertical thunderbolt blazed down the gully and through the midst of them. Those whom it struck were charred black and killed. The ogres on the periphery of the dazzling, sizzling flare, or who received some of its force through the water on the ground, jerked in agony.

The blue lunged into view. Perhaps because the ravine was too narrow for it to comfortably spread its wings, it had opted to fight on the ground. It raked, and tore one still-paralyzed ogre apart; struck, and bit another in two.

The giantkin plainly needed someone to buy them time to rally. Will had no idea it was going to be him until he leaped over the edge of the ravine.

Will was an accomplished climber and acrobat. Still, as he half rolled, half scrambled down the nearly vertical slope, he was pushing his skills to the limit. The rocky outcroppings were slick with rain, and once he dropped low enough to enter the heart of the illusion, he couldn’t even see them anymore. He had to rely on pure instinct to snatch for handholds in what appeared to be empty air.

Somehow he found the first of them, then realized he couldn’t just tumble on down to the gully floor and attack the dragon’s belly as he’d initially intended. The water was deep enough to submerge him completely, and would likely sweep him away. He certainly wouldn’t be able to fight.

In desperation, he kicked off from the slope, trying to turn his barely controlled fall into a leap that would carry him where he needed to land. He slammed down atop the blue’s heaving back at the juncture of the wings. He grabbed hold of a scale to anchor himself, drew his hornblade, an enchanted, exquisitely balanced halfling sword, and plunged it into the dragon’s flesh.

The blue jerked, nearly breaking his grip on it. The enormous, wedge-shaped head with its ragged ears and the long horn jutting up from the tip of the snout swiveled around. It jaws gaped, and it struck.

Will flipped backward to avoid the attack, and would scarcely have been surprised if he’d kept on helplessly rolling right off the dragon’s bucking, rain-slick back. But he grabbed, managed to grip another scale, and stabbed with the hunting sword. Striking a shower of popping sparks, a tiny fraction of the lightning that was a part of the blue’s essence, the point glanced off the creature’s natural armor.

The dragon stretched its neck back, reaching with its jaws. The angle was awkward for it, but it was renewing the attack so quickly that Will scarcely had time to find his balance, while the shuddering, inclined surface beneath him was treacherous in the extreme. Dodging would be even harder. Maybe too hard.

But before the blue could strike, a glowing mace, red like the sun at dawn, appeared above its head. The hovering weapon swung despite the lack of a corporeal hand to wield it and bashed the wyrm’s mask. At the same time, a ball of flame splashed against the blue’s sinuous neck. Will knew Pavel had conjured the former attack, and assumed the ogre with the red eye was responsible for the latter.

The assaults must have hurt. The blue snapped its head forward and charged, rushing the shaman, whose hand burned like a torch. The sudden jerk nearly broke Will’s grip on the wyrm’s hide, but not quite, and he stabbed once more, driving the point several inches into flesh. For a moment, the sword seemed to vibrate in his grip, and the muscles in his arm jumped and clenched.

A rank of ogres with leveled spears stood between the blue and their leader. It smashed through, trampling one defender to pulp, but at least they’d slowed it momentarily, and driven a couple lances into its chest. The shaman retreated and lobbed more fire. Other giantkin splashed through the stream to engage their colossal foe. Pavel’s mace of light streaked through the air and bashed the reptile in one slit-pupiled eye. At the same time, the human discharged a bright ray of light from his out-thrust hand. The beam burned a hole in the dragon’s wing.

Will kept on cutting and stabbing. He rather hoped the blue had forgotten him, but no. The end of its sinuous tail suddenly whipped up and around to flick him away like a troublesome fly. He wrenched himself aside to avoid the first swat and leaped over the second one. He knew he couldn’t keep dodging for long.

Then, however, raising a prodigious splash, the blue fell on its belly. Apparently the ogres had wounded at least two of its legs to such a degree that they couldn’t support it anymore. The wyrm’s wings pounded as it tried to take flight, but it couldn’t quite manage without a running or jumping start.

The blue laid about furiously. More ogres perished, seared and withered by a fresh blast of lightning from its maw, torn to pieces between its fangs, or shattered by hammering blows of its tail It just wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t even falter.

The shaman ran at it, rammed his spear into the base of its neck, and scrambled on to fling himself at its chest. The giantkin’s body sported countless stiff spikes like a porcupine’s quills. No doubt he’d sprouted them via enchantment, and as he slammed himself repeatedly against the dragon, the spines stabbed it again and again.

The blue lurched partway onto its side and lifted its foreleg to claw at the shaman. But before it could, Pavel’s flying mace smashed it in the center of its brow. Bone crunched. The creature convulsed, nearly flinging the halfling from his perch.

The blue spat another thunderbolt, but into the air, not at any foe. Then the head at the end of the long neck toppled into the coursing stream like a collapsing tower. Rustling, an enormous wing flopped down, too, after which the drake lay motionless.

The shaman clambered up over the blue’s carcass toward Will. The halfling had no choice but to fight. With the water still high, and giantkin gathered all around, he had nowhere to run.

“Stop!” Pavel shouted. The command carried a palpable charge of magic, and the shaman froze in place.

Will considered cutting him down before mobility returned, but instinct stayed his hand.

“If you have any sense,” Pavel called, you can see that we want to be your friends. We’ve been trailing you for days, waiting for an opportunity to make contact.”

“Without you dumping our arses in the stewpot,” muttered Will.

The shaman glowered up at Pavel, then finally growled, “Climb down, little sun priest, and we’ll talk.”

Wearing her dragon form, perched on a mountainside with her companions, Kara took a final look at the scene across the valley. She didn’t look hopeful. The situation hadn’t changed for the better since she’d first observed it.

Sure enough, her keen sight confirmed the discouraging truth. The Monastery of the Yellow Rose, a huge fortress perched atop a different peak overlooking the shining white expanse of the Glacier of the White Worm, was still besieged. A score of dragons, a motley collection of reds, fangs, and other species, crawled or lay motionless about the landscape, while several others glided in circles overhead, watching the stronghold from on high. The only time the vista had materially changed had been when the wyrms mounted an assault, an attack so furious it was a miracle of valor that the monks had managed to repel it, their massive fortifications notwithstanding.

Are we sure we all want to do this?” Kara asked. “It will be dangerous, and if we do get in, it may well be impossible to get out again.”

Dorn shrugged. “Pavel’s convinced Sammaster spent a long time in the monastery in disguise, I guess—learning something important, and I think this proves it. Those wyrms don’t look like they’re in frenzy. They’re too patient. I think they’re still sane, and the lich sent them here to make sure nobody else gets a chance to read whatever he discovered.”

“He likely found out somebody stole his folio,” said Raryn, leaning on his harpoon. “We expected it to happen eventually.

Now he’s trying to cover his trail.”

“Anyway,” said Dorn, if this is a site that he particularly wants to keep people out of, then plainly, we need to find out what’s inside.”

“But you and Raryn aren’t scholars,” Kara said. “You likely won’t be able to contribute much to the research.”

“We can stand with you against whatever trouble rears its head,” Dorn replied. “It’s what we came to do.”

Raryn nodded and said, “We’ll stick.”

Kara sighed. “I just think—”

“Enough!” Chatulio snapped. Having abandoned the appearance of a horse, he too stood revealed as the dragon he was. His bright blue eyes, shining orange scales, and the gap in his upper front teeth usually made him look merry—to other wyrms, anyway—but at the moment, they didn’t mask his irritability. “The small folk are set on coming, so let’s get on with it.”