himself staring at a white sliver of bone that stuck out from the side of his boot near his ankle. His head swam, but he could still cast a spell. He looked toward Gethred, and their eyes met in the darkness of the cavern.
'I can't rise, Erzimar,' the half-elf whispered. He tried to grope his way toward the sword blade, but groaned and fell back. 'Save yourself if you can, my friend. There is no shame in it.'
Erzimar held the half-elfs gaze, and nodded. He could teleport-it only took a word-but he could never reach any of the others with his limbs broken. Numb with shock, he saw no other alternative.
'Selran,' he gasped. 'Come close if you want to live. I can teleport us away from here, but you must take my hand.'
He reached out to the ranger.
Serpestrillvyth coiled down into the passageway. Its bright green scales gleamed in the dim light, and its eyes danced with malice. It cocked its head sideways, looking at the tracker.
'Kill the wizard,' it said.
Eyes glazed, the ranger raised his bow, drawing the arrow's red fletching back to his ear. Erzimar stared up at Selran in horror, understanding finally that the ranger was not a coward, was not petrified with fear, but instead was enslaved by the dragon's enchantments, helpless to do anything unless Serpestrillvyth commanded it. Erzimar hesitated for one awful moment before he managed to begin speaking his spell.
'I can't stop it,' the ranger sobbed. 'Gods help me, I can't!'
His fingers parted, and the bowstring sang.
Erzimar grunted, and looked down at the arrow quivering in his breastbone. A deep hot hurt welled up in the center of his chest, and he reached up to pluck at the arrow, only to find his arm didn't work.
Did Serpestrillvyth dominate him when it took the Sundered Shields? he wondered dully. Or did it enslave him before that even, and use Selran to lead the previous company to their doom?
He tried to speak, to ask the ranger which it was, but soft darkness stole up from the floor and quieted his questions in its empty embrace.
The ranger stood weeping, his bow still clutched in his hand. The dragon hissed softly in pleasure and slowly slithered closer, bringing its great scaled head close to Selran's face.
'Ah, Sselran. Why do you weep? I did this, not you, little archer.'
'Kill me,' the ranger whispered. 'Oh, by all the gods, kill me and have done with it.'
'Kill you? When you have proven sso useful to me? No, I think I will renew my enchantmentss. You will sserve me a long time yet.'
Serpestrillvyth coiled around the ranger, tracing its claw over Selran's heart.
'Now, go back to Pelldith Lake and tell them how these brave fellowss met such a poor end. Tell them they should ssend for more heroes, more dragonslay-erss, for I will be hungry in a tenday or two.'
WAYLAID
Marpenoth, the Year of the Unstrung Harp (1371 DR)
'You can't just go traipsing through Silverymoon Pass by yourself, girl! I don't care what sort of package you have to deliver, or to whom. It's the middle of winter! If an avalanche doesn't kill you, the beasts will! No book is worth all that.'
Those words-delivered at Lynaelle Dawn-mantle's back as she had walked out the door of the Silverlode Arms two days previous-had seemed innocuous to the girl. But caught near the summit of the pass in a howling, stinging blizzard, with a huge white dragon rearing above her, Lynaelle realized with sudden clarity just how foolish she had been to ignore the proprietor's admonitions.
She desperately wished she was still sitting in the common room of the Silverlode, enjoying one of Hostwyn Bramblemark's fine meat-and-mushroom pies. Instead, gaping jaws of icy white descended toward the half-elf wizard from out of the swirling curtain of snow, a massive, tooth-lined cavern of a mouth that very easily could engulf her whole, and was just about to.
Lynaelle wanted to scream, to run, but she could not. She found herself rooted to the spot, stark terror holding her fast. She couldn't breathe. As the fangs neared her head, the girl clenched her eyes shut, trembling and praying to Mystra that the end would be quick.
The stabbing pain of death did not come.
Lynaelle opened one eye and found herself staring at another eye, an orb almost as big as her balled fist and the color of glacial ice. That lone eye regarded her from a mere foot or two away, staring at her with a mixture of curiosity and malevolent eagerness while the winter storm raged all around them. The larger eye was set into a bony face, all shiny blue-white, smooth and glistening, like the frozen skull of a bird with a hooked beak, but with hundreds of icicle-teeth as long as the half-elf s fingers. The head bobbed low at the end of a serpentine neck covered in thick, jagged plates.
A dragon.
Lynaelle's knees lost their strength, and she crumpled into the snow that surrounded her. She realized she was holding her breath and exhaled sharply, then drew one shuddering gasp of air. The act nearly made her pass out, for she caught the scent of the beast's own breath, a cold, chemical odor that made her cough and choke. It reminded her of the distilled goat urine the smith back in Galen's Ford used to use to temper his forge work.
A dragon.
The beast's neck stretched up and away, connecting to a body that loomed high above the girl, indistinct in the swirling haze of snow. Lynaelle could barely make out two broad, leathery wings, bent and ribbed like the bat's, fanning out to either side of the huge monster. Even at five paces away, they were nothing more than a slightly darker shade of gray in the overwhelming white of the snow storm. And still they blotted out all light. They could have easily reached and engulfed the girl where she cowered, still trembling. A dragon!
'You will serve,' the beast said, it's voice deep and hard-edged, like the sound the glaciers made when they scraped together.
Just hearing the dragon's voice made Lynaelle's heart flutter wildly in her chest, and she cringed at the sound of the words, not understanding them but wanting to flee their harshness. She tried to make herself very small, sinking into the waist-deep snow, thinking only of escape. She thought to hide, to cast a spell to take her away from the dragon.
Terror prevented her from remembering any magic at that moment.
Before Lynaelle could even turn away, a great talon-tipped claw raised up and reached for her, digits extended wide. The girl screamed and flailed, trying to roll over in the drift and scramble away. But the cumbersomeness of her heavy clothes and fur-lined cloak, along with the weight of her pack and the depth of the snowdrift, impeded her efforts. The huge claw shot forward, enveloping her.
As the claw closed tightly around her, Lynaelle expected to be crushed. But the dragon's death grip did not squeeze her unduly, nor did the talons gouge into her flesh. Nonetheless, the power of the dragon's grasp was undeniable, and the girl knew she was trapped as surely as if she were bound in iron. She found her arms pinned tightly to her sides, her cloak bunched up awkwardly, half covering her head. She felt the book, the damnable book covered in oilcloth in her pack, poking painfully against her spine. Snow pressed in and packed all around her, also trapped in the dragon's grasp.
Lynaelle sobbed, her wail muffled in the fur of the cloak, and she felt herself lifted from the ground, hoisted into the air easily. She struggled between the desire to peer out and see where the beast was taking her and the terror-filled urge to bury her face and clench her eyes closed, as if that could shut the world out, make the dragon go away.
She felt a sudden lurch, and the air was whistling fiercely against her head, whipping the hood of her cloak off and causing her long, straw-colored hair to lash about. Snow pelted her exposed skin, stinging her face. Curiosity won out for a moment, and she opened her eyes a fraction to see, but there was nothing but an endless swirl of white. She could sense that she was aloft, that the dragon was flying, for there was a rhythmic rolling motion that
