A chain of cracks and loud bangs echoed over the water, the arms of the war engines slamming against their stops. Most of the missiles and nets splashed harm- lessly into the water, but three harpoons lodged deep in Cypress's flanks, and one net tangled in the spindly bones of his wings. The men who had hit quickly looped their lines around stakes driven deep into the ground, while those who had missed rewound their skeins.
Cypress roared. He whipped his fire-shrouded head around his body, and the instant the golden flames touched the harpoon lines and the net, they flashed and dissolved. The dragon's wings siffled through the air, and he began to rise again.
'Shut your eyes, Maces!' Pierstar ordered. 'Now, Ruha!'
The witch uttered her counterspell. At the end of Cypress's neck, the fiery globe burst apart with a white flash so brilliant she saw it even through her eyelids.
Summoning her stone spell to mind, she grabbed her rock and looked toward the dragon.
Cypress hung over the lake almost motionless, the tips of his skeletal wings fluttering as though that tiny motion were enough to hold his hulking mass aloft. At the end of his neck hung a smoking lump of melted bone that vaguely resembled a head. Glowing masses of cinder filled his empty eye sockets, and his long snout had fused into a stubby, tangled mass of fangs and jaw. Only his ebony horns had emerged from the conflagration unscathed, and even they made the air shimmer with heat.
Ruha hissed her spell and hurled the stone. The rock disappeared with a thunderous crack. It reappeared in the same instant, shattering Cypress's temple. The dragon's wing tips stopped waving. His gruesome chin dropped as he watched the splinters of scorched bone flutter into the water below. He brought his head up and looked toward Baldagar Manor.
You!
Ruha barely managed to stuff the lasal leaves into her mouth before a fiery yellow sun burst inside her head.
She heard Pierstar and his men cry out in astonishment, then felt herself sailing backward across the roof.
Chew the leaves, she told herself.
Even as the words reverberated through her skull, she slammed down and went tumbling across the roof. If the fall caused her any injury, the witch did not know it; she could feel only the anguish inside her mind, a fiery agony such as she had never felt. Swimming in boiling tar would have hurt less, or falling naked upon At'ar's blaz- ing face. She glimpsed Cypress's murky figure swooping down toward Baldagar Manor; then she rolled one more time and came to rest on her face.
A lasal haze filled Ruha's head, but the dragon's fury was so great that the fog merely diffused the fire and did not drive it from her mind. The golden blaze became a choking yellow mist, not nearly as hot, but as thick as syrup. She heard screaming and realized it was her own voice.
That is but a portion of my pain. The building shook beneath Cypress's weight, and the voices of screaming
Maces joined with that of the witch. Soon, you shall bear it all.
'Not all.' Ruha found the strength to raise her head and saw the dragon standing in the middle of the roof, a cloud of dark acid billowing around his mangled snout.
'You cannot make Yanseldara love you, and that pain I will never bear!'
Then I will make you bear another kind of agony.
Cypress's tail thrashed in anger, smashing through the parapets and sweeping half a dozen men over the side.
He stooped over, reaching out as though he had forgotten't he had only stubs where once he had claws; then a win- dow shutter slammed open.
Ruha's world detonated: the sky went silver with lightning, meteor showers and ice storms chased each other down from the heavens, tongues of flame crackled through the air, crimson bolts and sapphire rays raced from every direction. The dragon's stump disintegrated before her eyes; a deep, rumbling growl reverberated through her bones, and the roof of Baldagar Manor began to come apart. She leapt up to run for the parapets and felt the floor vanishing beneath her feet.
The witch landed amidst a shower of snapped planks and beams, her body erupting into pain despite the cushioning of the soft furniture favored by Elversult merchants. She lay a long time without moving, half- expecting Cypress's scorched skull to appear above her at any moment. Instead, the yellow glow and fiery pain faded from her mind and, much to her surprise, so did the lasal haze-no doubt burned off by the ferocity of the dragon's attack. At length, the terrible aching in her body also faded, and she began to realize that, other than the dull throbbing of a few new bruises, she had survived the fall uninjured.
Ruha clambered out of the debris and found herself standing amidst the ruins of the mansion's top story, where the family's servants and young children had once kept their chambers. She picked her way toward the front of the building, too dazed to think about what she was doing, and discovered that this floor of Baldagar
Manor now held nothing but the shattered remnants of the inhabitants' belongings, two dozen groaning Maces, and the smoking, mangled corpse of a ten-foot river monitor.
As the witch's ears stopped ringing, she grew aware of a loud, chugging roar coming from the direction of the water. She rushed forward, then climbed over a collapsed wall onto what had once been a private balcony overlook- ing Hillshadow Lake. In the center of the lake, a murky green waterspout was stretching skyward, as though try- ing to grasp a small whirlwind with flashing ribbons of silver and black luminescence.
Ruha heard someone clattering over the collapsed wall behind her. She turned to see Pierstar Hallowhand's bat- tered form limping toward her, his eyes fixed on the waterspout in the center of the lake.
'What's that?' he croaked.
'That?' The witch whispered an incantation and raised her hand, then started to spin her finger in the direction opposite the whirlwind. The vortex began to lose speed, and the two ribbons came apart. The silver light circled the shoreline once, then streaked away toward the Jailgates and vanished from sight. The black one was caught by the waterspout and dragged into
Hillshadow Lake, where it darkened the water only briefly before sinking into the muddy bottom. 'That was nothing-a fool for love, I fear.'
Epilogue
Even the Shou did not have a table with enough sides for all those at the
Great Banquet of Apology, so the ser- vants had set the platters of candied duck and ginger hart upon a round table and arranged seven chairs around it in evenly spaced intervals.
Prince Tang himself welcomed each guest at the door, and when Yanseldara entered the room, he produced a long oaken staff with three gnarled fingers gripping the finest ruby from his personal trea- sury. He held it before him and bowed very low.
'I find this in dragon's lair, Lady Yanseldara,' he said.
'I am sorry that I must smash original topaz.'
Yanseldara accepted the staff with a sincere smile.
'The topaz was ruined by Cypress's touch, and I thank you for crushing it. I accept this magnificent ruby as a token of the new friendship between the Ginger Palace and Elversult. I shall treasure it always.'
Vaerana rolled her eyes, then leaned close to Ruha and, in a voice much too loud, whispered, 'I'll treasure it more if they really stop selling poison!'
The servants gasped, and Lady Feng shot an indignant scowl in the Lady Constable's direction. Hsieh quickly stepped forward and smoothed matters over by person- ally taking Vaerana's arm.
'If we are all here, perhaps we sit down.' The proces sion filed somewhat uncomfortably to the table, where the mandarin scowled and turned to Prince Tang. 'I see seven chairs, but only six guests.'
The prince pointed to a chair with no goblet or flatware. 'This is for Lady Ruha's friend. Captain Fowler. It is most unfortunate he cannot join us.''
The explanation only drew a deeper scowl from Hsieh.
