Hands shaking, she lifted her staff and tried to focus her will. She felt Scar shuddering too. He was trying to find the strength to take to the air again. Then the construct lumbered into striking distance, and she and her mount were out of time.
A second griffon swooped onto the siegewyrm’s back. Clinging, Eider tore and bit. Gaedynn leaned out of the saddle and smashed with a long-handled maul. Bone chips flew.
The skeletal dragon twisted its neck to retaliate. Eider lashed her wings and flew beyond its reach.
Meanwhile, veering to avoid the jagged bones sprouting from the earth, archers charged the undead wyrm. Jhesrhi saw that most of the ones who dared were sellswords of the Brotherhood. They battered their huge foe’s legs with mace and axe.
Oraxes and Meralaine attacked the thing as well. Jhesrhi hadn’t spotted them, but, sensitive to magic, she could half hear them chanting incantations even amid the clamor of battle. She could also see it when their wizardry produced its effects. Oraxes created a flying blade of yellow light to hack at the siegewyrm’s neck. The necromancer’s power pulled darkness boiling out from between its ribs and through the cavities in its skull and, judging from the way it jerked, hurt it worse than anything else so far.
But not enough to stop it. Its lashing tail knocked men flying through the air. One archer plunged down on a spike of bone and, impaled through the midsection, writhed there screaming. The siegewyrm struck and bit another man to pieces. It stared, and three more mercenaries crumpled in agony just like Scar and Jhesrhi had.
Gaedynn and the others had saved them. She had to return the favor, or the siegewyrm might kill them all.
Weak and shaky with pain as she was, she might in other circumstances have found it impossible even to make the attempt. But fortunately she had a cure for her debility, since her comrades had bought her the chance to use it.
She fumbled with the buckle securing the pouch on her belt. Something flickered at the edge of her vision. She turned her head.
Another length of bone was leaping up from the ground, at an angle. She jerked herself sideways. The spur stopped growing when the jagged point was a finger joint short of her face.
She sat frozen for an instant, then finished extracting the pewter vial from the bag. The potion inside was tasteless but warm, and the glow spread out from her stomach to melt away her pain.
She drank half, then dismounted. She showed the bottle to Scar, and the griffon raised his head and opened his beak. She poured the remaining liquid in, and his feathered throat worked as he swallowed.
The elixir worked as quickly on him as it had on her. He gave a rasping cry, then whirled around to face the siegewyrm.
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s kill the wretched thing.” She swung herself back into the saddle and, begrudging the time it would have taken to refasten the safety harness, urged Scar into motion. He trotted, leaped, beat his wings, and carried her skyward.
Where she could see that while her allies had inflicted a degree of damage on the automaton, it showed no signs of breaking down anytime soon. Meanwhile, with nearly every bite and sweep of its tail, it was doing grievous harm to the men scrambling around it.
Jhesrhi didn’t have the natural affinity with lightning that she did with earth, fire, wind, and water. But she hurled a bright, roaring thunderbolt anyway, in the hope that the siegewyrm would prove more susceptible to it than it had to flame.
It didn’t.
How should she attack it, then? It must have some weakness. She peered down, searching for a clue to what that might be.
Another mage-Oraxes or Meralaine, she assumed-assailed it with a conjured burst of flame. The flash produced a metallic glint at certain of its joints, particularly the points where bones from different dragons fit together.
Evidently artificers had cobbled the construct together with wires and hinges. Smiling, Jhesrhi whispered sibilant words to the powers of rust and corrosion.
Tendrils of vapor swirled around the siegewyrm, and the metal in its joints sizzled like bacon in a frying pan. It lurched as its left hind leg started to separate from the rest of it.
Oraxes and Meralaine chanted, using their magic to heighten the effect of Jhesrhi’s spell. The fumes thickened, and the sizzling noise grew louder. The hind leg finished falling off, and the right wing broke into several pieces. Slumping, the entire construct looked on the verge of collapsing into a heap.
But it wasn’t finished yet. Somehow it managed a final lunge that sent sellswords reeling and put it in striking distance of the two adolescent mages from Luthcheq. Oraxes jumped in front of Meralaine.
Then Eider slammed down on top of the siegewyrm’s skull, which broke away from the neck bones behind it. At last, the entire automaton disintegrated into clattering pieces. Eider flapped her wings and returned to the air before the skull finished its tumble to the ground.
The sellswords raised a cheer. Oraxes and Meralaine hugged. Gaedynn flashed Jhesrhi a grin, as he had on many other occasions when they’d accomplished some notable feat or desperate endeavor together.
But then something, joy or authenticity, went out of the smile like he’d remembered something unpleasant. She realized he somehow knew she’d promised to stay in Chessenta.
She wanted to tell him it had been a difficult choice. That she’d made it partly to help the Brotherhood, and that she still wasn’t sure it was the right one.
But even if there were time for it, and even if they were close enough to converse without shouting, what difference would it make? The two of them had never been like those children embracing below, and they never could be.
Feeling old and bleak inside, she pointed to signal her intention to join up with Aoth and his squad of griffon riders. Gaedynn gave her a casual wave of acknowledgment and sent Eider swooping toward the ground.
THIRTEEN
5 FLAMERULE, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
Medrash assumed it would be immediately apparent when Skuthosiin joined the fight. The fact that the dragon had yet to do so meant that he was still trying to finish his ritual.
Accordingly, Medrash, Balasar, and others who rode with them pushed toward the heart of Ashhold. Unfortunately, with almost every step of the way contested, their progress seemed excruciatingly slow. Medrash fought the urge to spend his Power freely and clear the path as expeditiously as possible. He was certain he was going to need it later.
One of the hound-sized shadow dragons swooped down out of the black, smoky sky. Had he been forced to rely on his eyes alone, he might not have seen it until its fangs were already in his throat. But he felt it too, as a sickening, plunging locus of vileness. That gave him time to swing his sword. His lance had shattered early on, on a giant’s crudely fashioned granite shield.
His blade split the murky creature’s skull, and it dissolved into black, rotten-smelling smoke. At the same instant, Balasar grabbed one of the crossbows hanging from his saddle and shot it one-handed. The quarrel hit the giant, who’d been about to heave a boulder, right between the eyes. The missile slipped from the barbarian’s hands to tumble banging down the side of the basalt eminence on which he stood. He toppled after it a heartbeat later.
The riders pushed on to yet another point where the way diverged. Pulling on the reins, Balasar swung his chestnut steed to the right.
“No,” Medrash said. “It’s the other way.”
“Are you sure?” Gritting his teeth, Balasar worked the pull lever of the weapon he’d just discharged. “It’s a maze in here.”
“I’m sure,” Medrash replied. Now that they were close, he could feel the unnatural power of the ceremony-or perhaps of Skuthosiin himself-just as he had the foulness of the shadow thing.
He led his fellow riders, and the foot soldiers trailing along behind, around two more turns and through two
