Through the mental link, they felt more than saw his scorching doom. 'No!' Inri screamed. 'Ryla!' She began a spell of escape.
But then the words stopped as a blade protruded through her chest and blood leaked from her lips. Ryla slid the katana out and spun the elf around. Inri blinked, too stunned even to gasp in pain, and the dragonslayer took her head off with a backhand slash. The headless body tumbled over the ledge, and down into the dragon's lair.
Alin looked up at Ryla with absolute confusion. The dragonslayer smiled and planted a kiss on his forehead. Then she made her way down toward the dragon, stripping off her armor piece by piece as she went. When she reached the bottom, she stood before the beast with only the silver ring on her right hand.
The dragon growled and pulled back, as though to pounce, but Ryla laughed. Laughed!
'Oh, come now Kalag,' she said. 'Surely you recognize me.'
'You broke the rules, Rylatar'ralah'tyma,' the dragon growled.
Alin's limbs froze at the mighty sound, but his hair rose for an entirely different reason. The name-Rylatar-he had heard that name before.
The dragon continued, 'You're not allowed to change. The rules-'
'Are our rules, anyway,' she countered with a dismissive wave. Then Ryla ran her hands down her arms and over her beautiful, bare skin. 'Really Kalag, you'd rather I were horribly scarred by some lowly green's acid gas? My beautiful body…'
The wyrm scoffed. 'You're hideous as it is,' he hissed.
A lovely pout appeared on Ryla's lips. 'You don't like the ring?' she asked, holding it up as though modeling it for him. The silver sparkled in the firelight.
The dragon's lips pulled back in a sneer.
Ryla shrugged and said, 'Fine.'
She slipped the ring off her finger, and the bard watched with a mixture of horror and wonder as her body rippled and grew, her skin sloughing off and revealing crimson scales and deep indigo wings. Her head lengthened and her sparkling white teeth became fangs. Within a breath, Ryla had grown to the size and shape of the other dragon. Her red scales sparkled in the firelight.
'Eyes like fire, atop a golden spire,' Alin found himself singing under his breath.
His mind seemed far away. As it stretched and snapped, he was vaguely aware that he had lost something.
'A thought occurred to me, about the age,' Ryla growled. 'We should assume elf bodies in the future… just so we don't seem too young.'
''We'?' Kalag asked.
'Oh, yes,' Ryla said. Her talon held out the tiny silver ring to the other dragon. 'I'm done being the hunter- time for me to be the hunted. I found you, now it's your turn to hunt me.'
The dragon looked at the ring and asked, 'Why do you do it?The adventurers? Why?'
Ryla rumbled, as though with mirth. 'I enjoy the deception,' she said. 'And I brought you meat. What are you complaining about?'
'I wonder, sometimes, if you're not fond of them,' Kalag growled.
'I'm not fond of anything,' retorted Ryla.
'Sharp death in hand, whose passion knows no name…' Alin sang as he felt reason fleeing.
He fought the desire to babble incoherently, but it wasn't for fear that the dragons would hear him, but only because it would disrupt his song.
'Then you won't object when I eat the little bard who's hiding up there,' reasoned Kalag.
'Actually, I would object,' Ryla replied.
Kalag shot her a look that could only be a dragon's form of jealousy, and Alin would have shivered if he had maintained his sanity. Instead, he chuckled.
Ryla caught the glare and said, 'I propose a new hunting game: one where we're the hunters, he's the hunted, and he gets a head start.'
Alin's ears pricked and shivers of terror shot down his spine. His shattered mind hardly registered the threat, though. It was too busy putting words to his music, music twisted by madness.
'Mercy? From you, Rylatar?' Kalag smiled. 'Very well then. How much of a head start?'
'Oh, five years will suffice,' she said. 'The lives of dragons are long-it will be but a summer's day to us, but a lifetime of fear for him.'
'This bard must be special, to warrant such treatment.'
At the notion, Ryla scoffed-an action that sent flame lancing out to melt a stalagmite.
'If you must know,' she said. 'It's because he's composing a very nice ballad. This way, he'll have time to finish it.'
'Ruling her land, queen of the hunting game!' the maddened bard sang with a smile as he climbed to his feet.
Then came the most hideous sound he had ever heard- and would always hear as he ran-booming and thunderous, but dark and mocking:
A dragon's laugh.
THE ROAD HOME
21 Marpenoth, the Year of the Shield (1367 DR)
'Worthless band o' cutthroats, scoundrels, and knaves,' the dwarf spat, climbing atop a scarred oak table. His hard eyes searched the war weary faces of the crowded inn. 'Who among you slakes his thirst with blood and fills his belly with battle? Who in all of Moradin's creation has so little fear of death?'
'The Company of the Chimera!' the dwarf bellowed, answering his own query with a triumphant roar. 'The finest company of rogues ever to cast dice with the Gods of War!'
The common room erupted with cheers that shook sawdust from the ceiling. Flagons were raised high and naked blades flashed in the smokey light of fat-lamps. For two tendays the Company of the Chimera had occupied the Inn of the Seven Silvers, cowing the locals until none dared to pass the inn's double doors. Hired to guard over the Sembian waystation and twenty miles of the Dawnpost highway, the mercenaries had done more damage and caused more terror than any brigands in memory.
'Join us, dragon-tribe girl!' Tombli stabbed a blistered finger toward the long-limbed barbarian sitting by an open window. 'Or are the women of the North as icy as their winters?'
Clad in tanned pelts and an oiled sealskin cape, Saskia was immune to the frosty draft that had driven her companions close to the crackling hearth. With pale white skin and crystal blue eyes, she might have been cunningly carved from ice herself, were it not for the raven black hair that spilled to the middle of her back. A notched sword rested against her shoulder, the barbarian's only companion. She surveyed the company, their noses red with drink, their bellies soft and full.
'Keep your toasts,' Saskia said. 'I'll take my drink with warriors.'
'If the copper-counting lords of Sembia choose to pay our band to watch over their packs of ratty bondsmen, then I say let them pay!' Tombli dropped from the table. 'We've earned our season's keep and not a Chimera has fallen.'
'Your peace is killing us, little man.'
Tombli loosened the jeweled dagger at his waist, the symbol of his devotion to Abbathor, the dwarf god of greed and avarice.
'As captain of the company, I command you to drink.'
The barbarian wrapped her arms around her bastard sword and pulled the hood of her cape down over her eyes.
Snarling, Tombli stole a brand from the crackling fire. He kicked the door of the inn open wide and cast the
