your own way, I came to care for you, even though it was a mad, stupid thing for a spy to do. If we'd managed to flee together, I wouldn't have let any of my comrades hurt you. I would have done my utmost to convince you to stay with me and join our cause.' 'I don't believe you.'
'Kill me then, if that's your desire. I don't have the strength to stop you.'
He leveled his staff, but for whatever reason, found himself too squeamish. 'You won't escape so lightly. I'll take you with me when I leave, and turn you over to Orchtrien. Now hold your tongue, or I'll hurt you.'
He recited a counterspell, but the anchoring enchantment she'd laid on him remained in place. The great charm of unbinding he'd discovered in Orchtrien's grimoires might well have dissolved it, but after the loss of the copybooks, he hadn't had a chance to prepare another such for the casting.
Well, no matter. Winterflower's binding would fade away on its own in a little while. Until then, he simply needed to avoid detection. Wary that his erstwhile lover might not be as helpless as she pretended, and that it might be a bad idea to let her beyond his reach, he hauled her to her feet and dragged her along with him to the door. A word and a touch of his staff sealed the panel as securely as the sturdiest lock.
'Now,' he said, 'we wait.'
'Punish me however you want,' Winterflower said. 'I deserve it. But don't go back to Orchtrien. By his lights, your treachery was too grave a matter ever to forgive. Hell kill you whether you give him the books or not.'
'You just don't want him to have them. You think that as long as they're in someone else's possession, even mine, a chance exists that somehow, someday, the lore will wind up serving the cause of insurrection.'
'I'm trying to protect both you and the texts, you, because I love you, and the books, because they're vital. We rebel wizards devoted ourselves to mastering the wards against divination first of all, in the hope of shaking Orchtrien off our trail. Beyond that, we've scarcely begun to decipher the lore-I suppose that, after a century spent in the company of wyrms, you had an advantage in that regard. But we can already tell that here, finally, is our chance to oppose the dragons' might with a comparable strength of our own.'
Rhespen made a spitting sound. 'Nonsense. But suppose you could succeed, and establish an independent realm of your own. What makes you assume that kingdom, won by lies, theft, and seduction, would prove any better than what exists now?'
'Perhaps it wouldn't. But at least we elves would rule ourselves, according to our own philosophies and traditions. The forest would be sacred, and if our archers died in war, it would be to protect their own people and homeland, not to further a conqueror's dream of empire.'
Rhespen felt doubt, and a sorrowing softness, ache inside him. Scowling, he struggled to extinguish them. 'I told you to be silent. Another word, and I truly will smite you.'
She sighed, bowed her head in submission, and they simply waited until cries of alarm sounded beyond the windows. He hauled Winterflower to the nearest one.
The opening was narrow, and the wooden wall was as thick as Rhespen's arm was long. But by virtue of an enchantment, the window provided a broad field of vision even so, albeit stretched and distorted around the edges. Beyond it, sentries scurried along the ramparts, or raised their weapons to the sky. A shadow flowed over them, and something immense and golden flashed above the treetops.
'Orchtrien,' Winterflower groaned.
'Yes,' Rhespen said. 'I knew that if I could find you, he could, too, but I hoped it wouldn't happen as fast as this.'
Arrows flew up at the gold. Most failed to pierce his scales, and he seemed to take no notice of the ones that did. He cocked back his head, snapped it forward, and spewed flame in such abundance that he must have an enchantment augmenting the quantity.
The rebels had surely laid wards to keep their stronghold from burning. Still, the sweeping column of fire reduced mighty branches and sections of trunk to charcoal and ash in an instant. Warriors leaped from their stations to escape the onrushing flame, and for the most part, achieved only a death by falling. Smoke billowed through the air, though not thickly enough to hide the brightness of Orchtrien's exhalation. It carried the odor of seared flesh.
But not everything burned. Some portions of the fortress, including most of the central shadowtop, proved resistant. After trying and failing to ignite them a second time, Orchtrien roared an incantation.
Rhespen experienced the same fleeting sensation of heaviness, of being stuck to the floor, with which Winterflower had previously afflicted him. He could tell from the way she grunted and swayed that she felt it, too. No doubt everyone in the stronghold had.
Orchtrien snarled another rhyme, whereupon a gigantic dome of rippling rainbows shimmered into existence over the fire-ravaged stronghold. The gold then wheeled and flew away.
'Curse it!' Rhespen cried. Orchtrien had made certain that no one could flee with the stolen texts again, either by translating himself through space or eloping in a more conventional fashion.
'It's the end,' said Winterflower. She sounded almost matter-of-fact, but Rhespen could sense the anguish burning just below the surface. 'All the lives we sacrificed. My degradation. My deceit and betrayal of you. All of it for nothing.'
Rhespen drew a deep, steadying breath. 'I wonder… Orchtrien brought an army into the forest. He's gone to fetch it, and that gives us a little time. Let's see if we can put it to good use.'
Just before dusk, the shell of rainbows vanished.
Orchtrien had to dispel it to bring his warriors close enough to threaten what remained of the rebel stronghold. His colossal form glided over the charred, spindly remnants of the trees.
It was time. Rhespen looked at Winterflower, and she at him. The moment stretched on until it became clear that neither knew what to say. He settled for giving her a smile, then exited the library, walked down a little corridor, and stepped out onto a small platform in the open air, still foul with drifting, eye-stinging smoke and stench. He cast a series of enchantments on himself, raised his staff, and flew up above the treetops, where Orchtrien was.
Some dragons, like Bexendral, could hover in place with a certain amount of difficulty. Orchtrien had mastered the trick of halting and floating effortlessly in midair, as if he were weightless as a cloud. He did so as he regarded Rhespen with his burning yellow stare.
'I assumed,' the dragon said, 'that, having escaped your cell, you'd run as far from me as possible.'
Rhespen grinned. He felt as he had when he'd battled the green wyrm. He knew he should be terrified, but experienced a sort of crazy elation instead. It was exhilarating to defy one of the masters of the world.
'That might have been prudent,' he replied, 'but as you can see, you were mistaken. You often are, whether you realize it or not.'
'I was certainly mistaken about you. Have you always been a traitor, then, in collusion with Winterflower from the start?'
'No. She had to trick me into it, and after you explained the ruse to me, I was appalled at my folly. As recently as this morning, my one desire was to win your forgiveness.'
'Yet now it's plain, from your tone and manner as much as the place where I find you, that you mean to oppose me. Why?'
'This may amuse you: I'm not certain myself. The sacrifice of all those warriors, year after year? The injuries to the woodlands? Your pet devil? The humiliation of my people, obliged to grovel to an overlord of another race? The humans who cheered me specifically as a 'dragonslayer,' a hint that they too chafe under your rule? Or perhaps I simply resent the way you treated me in particular. In any case, you're correct. I do stand with the rebellion.'
'So be it, then.' Orchtrien spat a stream of flame.
Rhespen brandished his staff, and the bright, crackling jet forked to pass him by on either side.
'It won't be that easy,' he said, 'While you were bringing up your troops, I passed the time preparing spells I stole from your library.'
Unfortunately, even the great charm of unbinding hadn't eradicated the enchantment preventing teleportation, or obliterated the mystical barrier around the stronghold. But his afternoon of study had equipped him for arcane combat as never before.
Orchtrien lashed his wings and hurtled forward. Luckily, the enchantment of flight Rhespen had cast on himself made him just as quick and considerably more nimble in the air, and he whirled out of the way. At the same time, he rattled off an incantation and brandished a talisman shaped like a silver snowflake.
