Enormous, sparkling, floating ice crystals leaped into existence directly in front of Orchtrien. As he streaked through them, their razor edges gashed his scales and ripped his leathery wings.
The dragon wheeled, roared words of power, and spat. The exhalation leaped forth in the form of dozens of winged serpents composed of living flame. Flying as fast as arrows, they spread out with the obvious intent of encircling Rhespen and attacking from all sides.
Recognizing that he had no hope of evading them all, Rhespen called to the spirits of the air. Whirlwinds sprang into existence all around him then leaped to intercept the snakes. The vortices engulfed, shredded, and extinguished the creatures of fire.
Rhespen experienced an instant of satisfaction, which gave way to fear when he perceived that, while he was busy dealing with the serpents, Orchtrien had taken advantage of his preoccupation to attempt to close with him. The wyrm had climbed above him then furled his wings and plummeted, talons poised to seize and rend.
Rhespen whipped himself to the side. One of the dragon's claws caught a fold of his cloak and tore the garment from his shoulders, giving his neck a painful jerk. The scalloped edge of a colossal pinion swept past, nearly bashing him. Then Orchtrien was below him, turning, lashing his wings to gain altitude once more.
Lower still, all the way down on the ground, the royal army began its assault on what was left of the rebel stronghold. Tiny with distance, but the unnatural white of his long hair conspicuous even so, Maldur waved a line of warriors forward. Rhespen could only hope that one of his fellow elves would succeed in killing his longtime rival, because, the Black Archer knew, he was unlikely to find an opportunity himself.
Indeed, orienting on him anew, Orchtrien already required his attention. He hammered the dragon with a downpour of acid that seemed to do him little harm. Orchtrien riposted with a charm that turned a portion of his adversary's blood to fire and poison in his veins. Rhespen convulsed in agony, and rather to his surprise, the pain abated. The spell had injured him, perhaps grievously, but not enough to kill him instantly. Most likely one of his defensive enchantments had shielded him from the full effect.
As twilight faded into night, he and Orchtrien fought on, assailing one another with all the powers at their disposal, fire, cold, lightning, terror, blight, transformation, and madness. Meanwhile, warriors battled on the ground, and in each case, the struggle proceeded about as Rhespen had anticipated.
The stolen texts had augmented his powers considerably, but Orchtrien, who'd had centuries to master the secrets contained therein, was still the better mage, and in addition, possessed an overwhelming superiority in toughness and stamina that enabled him to weather attack after attack. Despite the damage to his wings, the dragon still flew as fast and maneuvered as ably as ever, still hammered his opponent with spell after spell. Blistered and frostbitten, his whole body aching, Rhespen was running low on magic, and questioned his ability to cast much more of it in any case. Pain and fatigue eroded his concentration.
The defenders in the trees were in just as desperate a condition. From the little that Rhespen had been able to observe, they'd fought well, but they needed more than valor to withstand their foes. Orchtrien had simply killed too many of them, and burned too much of their system of fortifications, before the present battle even started.
Sadly, there was nothing to be done about it. Nothing but keep resisting for as long as they could.
Rhespen conjured an animate blade seemingly made of inky shadow. It was all but invisible against the night sky, and as he sent it flying at Orchtrien, he dared to hope that even a dragon might not see it coming.
Orchtrien disappointed him by snarling a rhyme. White flame outlined the dark blade, and it crumpled in on itself and disappeared. The milky blaze, however, remained. It floated in the air for another heartbeat then flung itself at Rhespen.
He tried to dodge, and the streak of white fire twisted to compensate. It splashed against his chest.
The impact didn't hurt, indeed, he didn't even feel it, and wondered if somehow, miraculously, the spell hadn't affected him. Then he realized he was falling. The flame had burned away his charm of flight, and most likely, all his defensive enchantments as well.
With the aid of his staff, he could at least float and so keep from plummeting to his death. He could only move straight up and down, and had little hope of dodging his foe's subsequent attacks. He began to conjure the phantom duplicates that had confused the ghargatula. Then something slammed into his back, and he passed out.
When he woke, his various pains had given way to numbness. Yet he still had a feeling that something was hideously wrong, and when he looked down at himself, he found out what it was. Dark with blood, one of Orchtrien's talons stuck out of his chest. The dragon had gotten behind him somehow, struck, and driven the claw completely through his torso.
'Poor fool,' Orchtrien said, actually sounding a shade regretful. 'Did you really imagine that, because you killed a green, you could defeat me?'
'I did defeat you,' Rhespen croaked, praying it was so.
Winterflower spent a month in the hut by the sea before accepting the grim truth that no one else was coming to keep the rendezvous.
After Orchtrien's initial assault, everyone had known the rebellion was doomed. But they'd dared to hope they could save the stolen texts, so other elves could employ them another day.
The question was, how? Orchtrien's first enchantment precluded the use of sending spells, and the shimmering, multicolored cage he'd dropped over the stronghold would prevent anyone from fleeing on foot until such time as his army surrounded the place.
At that point, however, the shell would come down. Accordingly, the rebels had entrusted one of the copybooks to each of a number of runners, who would employ magic, guile, and their knowledge of the terrain to try to slip past the advancing royal troops and vanish into the forest.
It might work-but not if Orchtrien oversaw events on the ground. His wizardry was too powerful, his senses too acute, and he'd be too intent on divesting his foes of their plundered lore. Therefore, Rhespen had volunteered to engage the dragon high in the air and keep him occupied long enough for his newfound allies to attempt their escape.
He'd managed it, too, even though it had surely cost him his life. The problem was that even so, none of the other runners had made it through the enemy lines. Maldur and his ilk had killed or captured them all.
So everyone else had died to salvage a single text-and what a text it was! Winterflower and the other runners had divided up the copybooks in haste, without paying any particular attention to who was getting what. Later on, when she'd had the leisure to examine the tome in her possession, she'd discovered it wasn't really a spellbook at all, but rather an abstract metaphysical treatise on the fundamental nature of dragons and their links to the forces of creation, to the elements of nature and the stars.
Thus, it couldn't teach her how to strip hundreds of people at once of the ability to employ teleportation, or how to imprison an entire stronghold in a bubble of force. It couldn't provide her with any sort of weapon or tool at all. Her mouth twisting, tears stinging her eyes and blurring her vision, she lifted it to fling it onto her mean little fire.
But she couldn't bring herself to do it, couldn't bear to concede finally and completely that all the sacrifice had been in vain. Orchtrien had kept the book locked away in his tower of wizardry, hadn't he? Surely that suggested it could serve some practical purpose.
She conjured a floating orb of soft white light, opened the volume, and started to read it again.
Eighty-nine years later, late in the spring, Orchtrien and his court repaired to the gardens to enjoy the balmy night air and the spectacle of the comet. Burning a fiery red, its tail spanning much of the heavens, it was a fascinating sight. Indeed, the dragon could hardly tear his eyes away from it.
Though everyone wanted him to-all the tiny, scurrying folk wheedling and whining for his attention. He reminded himself that it was part of being the king, and a part he usually enjoyed, but at the moment, that didn't make it any easier to tolerate.
In his present humor, the jabbering, blathering mites seemed as contemptible as gnats, and when he felt obliged to glance down at them, he discovered the light of the new star still colored his vision, as if he saw them through a haze of blood.
Something about that made him feel excited and uneasy at the same time. He shifted his gaze back to the sky, and a hand stroked his foreleg, startling him.
'Let's go to my chambers,' a husky voice purred. He looked down at a human woman, and after a moment
