in her mind. She immediately charged, and when instinct told her she was close enough, thrust with the trident. The attack crunched through the dragonkin’s scaly hide and into its broad body. It grunted and fell, dragging the weapon along as it went down.
The slap of rushing footsteps and swish of a dragging tail sounded to her left. She freed the trident, pivoted, ducked, and thrust. Though she was still fighting blind, her luck held. The three-pointed lance punched into another target. The reptile floundered backward, dragging itself clear of the tines, and kept on reeling away.
By now, she could hear the wearer of purple declaiming the tongue-twisting rhymes of a counterspell. Violet phosphorescence seethed through the air, scouring the darkness away.
That at least enabled her to see the two dragonkin she’d just speared. As she’d hoped, both were hurt too badly to continue fighting, and by neutralizing them, she’d cut a gap in the noose that had been tightening around her. Beyond lay one of the tunnels, admitting shafts of sunlight.
In all probability, running out onto the mountainside would only delay the inevitable. Still she bolted in that direction.
At that point, Eshcaz reared and cocked his head back. His throat swelled, and Tu’ala’keth realized that even a few more seconds were too great a boon for a blundering fool like her to ask. The red was going to incinerate her here and now.
But the wearer of purple screamed, “No! Please! You’ll burn the slaves, too, and we need them!”
Eshcaz spat a plume of dazzling flame. But it was directed at the ceiling, not the floor. Perhaps he was venting his wrath at being balked.
Tu’ala’keth sprinted onward, around cowering thralls, until another dragonkin, one she hadn’t noticed hitherto, jumped in front of her. Ruddy with yellow markings and a scarred, truncated tail, this one was armed like a warrior, with shield and sword. It cut at her head, she tried to block with the trident, and it deceived the parry to slash at her flank. The stroke hurt her ribs and knocked her lurching off balance. But it didn’t cleave her flesh; her silverweave had spared her any lasting harm. She thrust low; the trident crunched into the reptile’s knee; and it went down. It tried to heave itself around into position to threaten her anew, and she finished it off with a stab to the torso.
At that moment, something snapped, a sound like the crack of the whips, or the noise the sails on Shark’s Bliss made when a sudden gust of wind swelled them, but vaster. The cave darkened as something cut off much of the light spilling in through the gaps in the upper walls. Slaves screamed and scrambled. Tu’ala’keth realized Eshcaz had spread his prodigious wings and was jumping off the ledge, intending to kill her with fang and claw instead of fire.
Heart hammering, she sprinted. As the dragon slammed down behind her, jolting the floor, she reached the opening, saw it was only a few more strides to the other end, and pounded onward.
She felt heat and sensed immensity at her back. She plunged out of the passage and wrenched herself to the side. Flame boomed out of the tunnel, blistering her skin even though it didn’t actually touch her.
Now what? she wondered wildly. She was no safer than before. In another instant, the wyrm would lunge from the hole-But no. If it was going to do that, she’d already hear it coming. She took another look at the opening and registered what, in the course of her frenzied flight, she’d failed to realize before. This particular passage was too narrow for a creature as huge as Eshcaz to negotiate.
But of course he had other ways to go in and out. She’d only increased her lead by a matter of moments. That was how long she had to find a way to save herself.
She cast about and saw a chance.
She clambered along the steep slope. She thought she’d grown used to this strange world where people had to worry about slipping and falling but suddenly she felt slow and clumsy again. The bloody trident was merely an encumbrance now, and she dropped it to slide and bounce down the escarpment.
She resisted the temptation to glance about. It would only slow her down, and anyway, she was sure she’d still know when her pursuer burst out into the open.
At last she reached her goal, a spot beneath which the face of the island became a sheer vertical cliff. The green sea crashed to white foam against the jutting rocks far below.
Someone had once told her air-breathers had an instinctive fear of falling. She doubted sea-dwellers did, but nonetheless, the prospect daunted her. Could anything plummet such a distance without dashing itself to pulp?
Maybe it was possible, with the aid of magic, and certainly she had no option but to try. She gripped the drowned man’s hand and chanted, and Eshcaz exploded from a breach farther up the mountain. He unfurled his crimson wings with their purple edges, obscuring much of the sky, and the bright sunlight shining through the membrane made them glow like stained glass.
Tu’ala’keth rattled off the final syllables and hurled herself over the edge, endeavoring, as best she could in her unpracticed way, to imitate the divers she’d observed among the pirates. She tried to fall head down, with her body straight, so she’d enter the water like a knife stabbing into flesh… if she didn’t crash down on one of the rocks.
She silently spoke to the wind she’d summoned, bidding it to blast up at her from below. Afterward, she couldn’t feel any difference, but perhaps it was slowing her down a little.
Gloom engulfed her. She glanced upward. Wings folded, foreclaws poised to catch and impale, Eshcaz was plunging toward her and looming larger by the instant. Because of the braking power of the wind she’d summoned or through some trick accomplished flyers mastered, he was dropping faster than his prey.
Tu’ala’keth reversed her instructions to the wind. Her only hope now was that it could blow her down even faster than she would naturally fall.
The heaving surface of the sea was dull and gray with the dragon’s shadow. She smashed into it with stunning force, missing one of the fanglike rocks by less than the length of her arm, and plunged deeper. The stone swelled wider toward the base, and she had to shake off the shock of impact to stick out her hands and push off, lest she batter and scrape herself against it.
Above her, Eshcaz leveled out of his dive and hurtled along just above the waves. Had he tried to follow her into the water, he would have slammed his huge body into one or another of the rocks, but perhaps he would have turned aside regardless. As he’d said himself, he was a creature of earth and sky, not the sea.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t still dangerous. She stroked and kicked, swimming deeper, looking for a refuge.
Overhead, a sudden brightness bloomed. Water seethed and bubbled as the wyrm’s breath boiled it. But Tu’ala’keth had already descended far enough that the worst of the heat failed to reach her.
She found a hollow space in the roots of the island and hastened inside. A blaze of jagged shadow stabbed down through the water. But it was yards away, and she realized Eshcaz had aimed the magic by guesswork. He’d lost track of her, which meant that, much to her own amazement, she was quite possibly going to survive.
CHAPTER 9
What.”
Diero Agosto asked, “will the shalarin do now?”
“I don’t know,” the spy answered through gritted teeth, his bruised, scabby, bloodstained face glistening with sweat. He lay spread-eagled on the long, splintery table that was the rack, wrists and ankles wrapped in sturdy leather cuffs.
“Will she return here?”
“I doubt it. You made it clear you won’t help her. But I don’t know.”
From the corner of his eye, Diero saw the dragonkin take hold of the windlass. From his stance, it was plain he meant to give it a vigorous turn or two.
The wearer of purple rounded on the hulking reptile. Annoyance made his voice shrill: “No! I didn’t tell you to do that.”
The creature grunted. “Want truth, right?” Diero sighed. “He’s telling the truth. He did from the start.”
As far as the wizard was concerned, his fellow Turmian had behaved with admirable good sense. He had
