Palishchuk would become a tiny oasis of resistance with no help forthcoming from anywhere in the Bloodstone Lands. They would not hold out for long, and Zhengyi had not yet given up hope that the half-orcs would ultimately throw in with him. They were half-orcs, after all, and would not likely be as deterred by moral issues as were the weak humans, halflings, and others of Damara.
“These heroes hid within the city?” Zhengyi asked, getting back to the problem at hand.
“Nay, they came forth quite willingly. When I escaped the chains and the spears and flew off to the north, they burst out of Palishchuk’s gate in pursuit.”
“And you killed them?”
Byphast’s twisted expression gave him the answer before the dragon began to speak. “They are accompanied by mighty wizards and priests. Their knights glow with wards to defeat my deadly breath; their armor sings with magic to deter the rake of my claws.”
“A small band?”
“Fifty strong and well designed to do battle with dragons.”
“Byphast would not normally flee from such a group.” Zhengyi did nothing to keep the contempt out of his voice, nor from his expression, as he narrowed his eyes and sneered.
“If forced to do battle with them-if ever they happened upon my lair-then I would surely destroy them,” the dragon replied without hesitation. “But scars would accompany that win, I am sure, and in that place, at this time, they were not worth the trouble.”
“You serve Zhengyi.” Even as the Witch-King took the conversation in that direction, Byphast’s statement, if ever they happened upon my lair, resonated in his thoughts.
“I agreed to fight beside Zhengyi’s forces,” the dragon replied. “I did not agree to wage such battles alone in the bogs of Vaasa.”
Zhengyi produced a phylactery, the one to which Byphast had attuned herself. If the dragon was slain, her energy and life-force would transfer to the phylactery, and she would become undead, a dracolich.
“You forget?” the lich said.
“It is a final safeguard, but not one I am anxious to use. If in the course of events I am slain, then so be it. That is the risk my kind need take whenever we come forth into the world of lesser creatures. But I’ll not chase after the undeath you offer.”
“Ah, Byphast, it is a piteous thing to see a creature of your reputation reduced to such fear.”
Lizardlike eyes narrowed, and a low growl escaped the dragon’s elf lips.
“Very well, then,” said Zhengyi. “I will deal with the intruders myself. I’ll not have them nipping at my heels all the way through Damara. Go and rejoin the commanders at the front. Lay waste to the foolish Damarans who stand in our way.”
Byphast didn’t move, nor did her expression change from the hateful look she shot Zhengyi’s way.
If that threat bothered the Witch-King at all, though, he didn’t show it. He turned his back on the wyrm in elf’s clothing and stalked back to his vast encampment.
“Donegan!” cried Maryin Felspur, Knight of the Order.
“
“Sir Donegan,” Maryin corrected herself with outward humility.
She didn’t have her helmet on, though, and her smile betrayed her tone. Serving as scout for the group, the lithe Maryin was the least armored of the knights, and her horse, a fine, strong young pinto, barely larger than a pony, wore only protective breast- and faceplates. Maryin preferred the bow and used her speed to skirt the edges of the encounters with Zhengyi’s minions, thinning their ranks at advantageous points so that Donegan and Sir Bevell could best exploit their enemies.
Donegan did not dismount. His mail of interlocking plates made such movements tedious, particularly in trying to get back up onto the nearly eighteen-hand charger. Instead he leaned over as far as his encumbering suit would allow and lifted the visor of his helmet.
Maryin crouched beside a depression, a tear in the ground that was half-filled with brown water.
“Only a creature the size of a dragon could make such an imprint,” Maryin said.
Donegan straightened and scanned the area. He noted a second and third imprint behind and several more ahead but beyond that, nothing.
“Master Fisticus,” he called to the leader of the trio of wizards, “pray you and your companions ready your components and our shielding spells. These tracks are not old, and it would appear that the wyrm has taken to the air. It could swoop upon us from on high at any time, and I’ll not have its deadly breath decimating our ranks before we’ve had a chance to engage the beast.”
“Perhaps we should slide back toward Palishchuk, my lord,” Maryin offered quietly. “In reach of their ballistae-”
“Nay,” Sir Donegan began before Maryin had even finished. “The wyrm is too smart to be goaded near the town again. The half-orcs nearly brought it down the first time.”
“If it is the same dragon.”
That thought gave Donegan pause, for he could not dismiss the reasoning. Until a few months ago, Donegan had seen only one dragon in all of his twenty years of adventuring, and that was a small white up near the Great Glacier. With the coming of Zhengyi, the Knight of the Order had learned far more than ever he had intended regarding dragonkind, for evil chromatic wyrms of many colors filled the sky above the Witch-King’s advance. Reds and whites had laid waste to many villages, including Donegan’s home town, and the knight had done battle with a pair of blues, an encounter that had cost him a horse and had left a blackened line of lightning scarring across the back of his otherwise silvery armor.
Too many dragons, Donegan thought. Far too many dragons.…
Zhengyi stood on the northeastern bank of a small pond a few miles to the north of Palishchuk. Gone were the human trappings of his former self; he saw no need for such vanities out there, alone. He had his hood back, revealing his skull, the splotchy patches of hair, and the flaps of rotting skin. His robes smelled of mildew, hanging in tatters and showing green spots of mold. He clutched a twisted oaken staff, leaning on it heavily, and stared out to the south.
He saw their approach, the glint of the sun off their lance tips, off the armor of their mounts. He heard the thunder of hooves and marching soldiers.
The remnants of the Witch-King’s lips curled in a wicked smile. He thought of Byphast’s declaration: that she would not go against such a contingent except in her lair.
Any dragon would fight against any odds to protect its lair. To the death.
More flashes showed in the south. They followed the trail Zhengyi had dug with his magic, thinking it the tracks of a dragon.
He lifted his twisted oaken staff again, located a suitable spot, and uttered a command word. The ground erupted where he’d pointed his staff. Clumps of dirt flew into the air. The magic dug at the soft ground, bursts of energy tore up and threw aside yards of ground as efficiently and powerfully as a dragon’s talons might.
Zhengyi glanced southeast, to the distant troop of warriors. Perhaps they had noted the disturbance, perhaps not. They would be there soon enough, in any case. His spell completed, the deep hole dug, Zhengyi stepped into the water. It did not feel cold to the Witch-King, of course, for he could no longer experience any such sensations. In any case, no chill was more profound than the icy embrace of death.
His robes floated out behind him as he stepped in deeper, and soon he was under the water, not breathing, not moving. As the surface stilled, Zhengyi’s otherworldly eyes peered through the film to the northeastern bank. His trail would take them to the dig.
He clutched his staff more tightly, preparing the next spell.
Maryin crept along the muddy ground, staying low and letting her elven cloak, a garment of magical
