terrible butterfly leaving its chrysalis. She sprang from the hole, away from the mountain, and her membranous wings caught the hot wind that gusted among the jagged hills that surrounded Blood Watch.
As she flew, she surveyed the Desolation she had shaped. It continued to grow more barren with the passage of time-even now, after only a few days of sleep, she could see how the land had changed. Flats of hot mud had dried and cracked. The last stubbornly hardy grasses had finally withered and fallen to dust. To the east, a thick plume of smoke and ash marked the birth of a new volcano. She regarded the Desolation proudly, soaring high above it. Then with an exultant screech she angled downward again, toward a narrow ridge of brown rock that stretched between two looming, fanglike peaks. She swooped in, the hot wind buffeting her body, and saw two tall figures standing atop the balk. Her lips curling back from her massive fangs, she dove.
The two ogres watched her descend, shock registering in their faces as she streaked straight toward them. She screamed, and the towering brutes covered their ears. They ducked as she swept over their heads, skimming barely ten feet above the stone of the ridge. Malys laughed mockingly and banked, watching them struggle to their feet again. She came around, spotted a large outcropping of rock on the nearest peak, and winged mightily toward it. She settled onto the perch gingerly, testing it first to see if it would bear her enormous weight. It held, and she folded her wings, glaring down at the ogres.
They were nearly half a mile away. She could have flown across the distance in little more than a heartbeat, but she let them come to her instead. A few minutes later, Kurthak and Baloth knelt before her.
“Wretch,” she snarled at the hetman. “Have you forgotten your place? I should burn you where you stand.” She sucked in a long, slow breath, flames crackling in her throat.
Baloth quailed, his face stiff with terror, but Kurthak the Black-Gazer mastered the almost overwhelming force of her dragonfear and returned her gaze. “You’d be wise not to do that,” he told her. “I bear news you must hear.”
Malys angled her head, her forked tongue flicking between her teeth. “Do you, now?” she asked. “What news could be so important that you would abandon your own army to bring it to me? Who did you leave in charge? That lackwit of a champion? I see you brought a new dog to skulk at your side,” she added, her gaze falling heavily upon the hairless ogre.
Baloth fell back a pace, unsteadily, but Kurthak grabbed his arm, stopping him from running away. ‘‘Tragor leads the horde, yes,” the Black-Gazer answered evenly. “He only needs to hold them where they are until I return. As to the word I bring, it is this. Riverwind of Que-Shu is among the kender.”
A silence descended over the ridge, broken only by the moan of the hot wind among the crags, and the rumblings of the restless earth beneath their feet. Ogre and dragon faced each other, neither speaking a word. Then Malys arrogantly tilted up her chin, her lip curling once more.
“Who?” she asked.
Kurthak blinked, surprised. “Riverwind of Que-Shu,” he repeated.
Malys thumped the mountainside with her tail. The impact knocked stones loose from the peak, sending them bounding down its slopes. “I do not know this man,” she said evenly. “Who is he that his presence in Kendermore would make you leave your place?”
“He’s a Hero of the Lance,” Kurthak said.
“A what?”
The Black-Gazer stared, dumbfounded; then his eyes narrowed as he tried to understand the dragon’s joke. He soon realized, however, that Malys was serious. “You haven’t heard of the Heroes of the Lance?” he asked. “But they’re known everywhere in Ansalon!”
“I am not from Ansalon,” Malystryx replied. “And I care little for the legends of mortals. This Riverwind is one man. He is of no concern to me. You should not have left your army, Black-Gazer. You will not leave it again, even if more of your precious ‘Heroes’ arrive in Kendermore.”
Stunned by her intransigence, Kurthak could do nothing but bow his head obediently. “Yes, Malystryx.”
“Very good,” she said to him. “Now come here, Black-Gazer. I have a gift for you.”
Kurthak walked forward, his legs moving against his will. He tried to stop himself, but he kept on moving until he was less than ten yards from Malystryx. He winced at the heat that emanated from her immense body.
“Kneel,” she breathed.
The word lodged in his mind, driving out all thoughts of resistance. He knelt. Gracefully, she extended a long, taloned finger and touched its tip to the middle of his forehead. Back along the ridge, Baloth winced and turned away, waiting for the dragon’s claw to plunge through Kurthak’s skull.
Malys’s touch, however, was gentle, almost a caress. She held her talon against him, and whispered words in a strange language the ogre didn’t understand. The air seethed with unseen energies. The Black-Gazer tensed as magic coursed both around and within him.
He sucked in a long slow breath, shivering. His good eye glazed, becoming as vacant as the empty socket that had once held its twin. His lips formed words, but it was the dragon’s sibilant voice that issued from his mouth.
“My mind to yours,” Malystryx said, her voice coming from two tongues at once. “I am in your thoughts, Black-Gazer. I can see inside your mind. And you are in mine. If you come to Blood Watch again, I shall destroy you. But,”-her voice became acerbic with irony-“if you should choose to warn me of anything more, you need only call to me with your mind. Our thoughts are linked. I can speak to you, and you to me, though we are a hundred miles apart.
“Listen for my call, Black-Gazer,” she continued. “The time will come when I am done working my magic upon the Kenderwood. I will tell you when to attack. The kender will be yours to do with as you please, and their forest will be mine to shape to my whim. I will raise a new lair, a peak to dwarf even Blood Watch, where Kendermore stands.” The dragon and ogre both smiled at this.
Kurthak took a deep breath, then answered with his own voice. “I don’t understand,” he mumbled. “Why don’t you attack them yourself?”
“I could do that, yes,” said the dragon. “But I choose not to-yet. I must conserve my strength, Black- Gazer.”
“Why?” Kurthak asked.
“To shape the land, as I’ve told you,” she answered. “To corrupt the Kenderwood-and the kender. But there is also another reason-one that only Yovanna and I know. Shall I tell it to you, Black-Gazer?”
“Yes. Tell me.”
Malys’ crimson lips curled into a cruel, mocking smile. So did Kurthak’s.
Standing away from them, forgotten for now, Baloth shut his eyes tight, whimpering wretchedly as Malystryx spoke.
The attackers rushed the base of the wall, howling for blood. Atop the battlements, kender scrambled to repel the assault. Shouted orders rang through the air as Kendermore’s defenders ran this way and that, flinging debris down upon the invaders. Below, the attackers toppled beneath the pelting bombardment and lay still upon the ground. The kender atop the wall raised a hearty cheer for every foe who fell and did not rise again.
“The cauldrons!” Brimble Redfeather barked hoarsely. His wrinkled face was red from shouting. “Don’t just throw things at them! Use the cauldrons!”
At his order, dozens of kender scurried to several huge cast-iron pots that stood atop the wall. The cauldrons, which had been brought from Kendermore’s many feasthalls and hauled up to the walls, could each hold enough riverbean stew to feed a hundred kender. Today, though, they brimmed with something other than stew.
“Don’t touch them!” Brimble shouted as several kender reached for the cauldrons with bare, curious hands. “You’ll burn your fingers off, you lamebrains! They’re scalding hot, remember?”
The kender snatched their hands back, grinning sheepishly at what they had almost done. “Sorry.” one of them said.
“Don’t be sorry, doorknob!” Brimble roared back. He jerked his thumb down at the ground below, where the attackers continued to surge against the base of the wall. “Pour the stuff on them! Now!”
“Right!” the kender replied. Crabbing pry bars from the catwalks, and working in teams of twenty, they levered the cauldrons up. Muscles bulged and teeth gritted as, groaning with the effort, they tilted the enormous kettles toward the edge of the wall. The contents of the cauldrons lapped against their rims.
