The Rite (2 page)

made wyrms rampage across country killing everything in their path.

The king’s men were elite warriors all. Even so, a few threw down their weapons and shields and ran, overwhelmed by fear. Others lost control of the panicked steeds whose mettle they’d trusted too well, and the destriers bore them helplessly away. But most of the company stood its ground.

Volleys of arrows thrummed and whistled through the air, and flares of fiery breath leaped and hissed in answer. The first dying men and horses screamed. The air above the heath sparkled and rippled, and Igan felt a momentary surge of vertigo, as a number of spellcasters conjured attacks all at once. One of the flying dragons fell and hit the earth with a crash. Warriors cheered, but the celebration was premature. The wyrm heaved itself to its feet, shook itself like a wet hound, and charged the nearest group of humans.

Igan realized something else that struck him as peculiar. “The mages we’re guarding haven’t attacked yet.”

“They’re working on it, I expect,” the sergeant said. “I guess some spells take longer than others.”

“How can they even see past the illusion Goodman Marsk conjured to pick a target?”

“I reckon they can do it because they’re wizards. Now stop worrying about their job and do yours. Which is to shut up and stand ready.”

Embarrassed, Igan resolved to do just that, for after all, he didn’t know himself why he was so concerned with what the warlocks were or weren’t doing. It was just a manifestation of his jitters, he supposed.

A sinuous shadow at the heart of a bulb of glowing light, the leaping dragon—a fang dragon, if Igan wasn’t mistaken—rushed at the archers who were harrying it. Swirling tendrils of black mist appeared in its path, and five radiant spheres, each a different color, hurtled at it. Unfortunately, the spell effects failed to hinder it in the slightest. To Igan, it looked as if the curls of mist and brilliant orbs withered out of existence on contact with the reptile’s shimmering aura, before they could touch its body.

The archers scattered, but they weren’t all quick enough. The fang dragon pounced in among them and started killing. It struck so fast its motions were a blur, and every snatch of its talons, snap of its jaws, flick of a wing, or lash of its tail left at least one man mangled on the ground.

A party of lancers charged it. Their course carried them in front of the drake that was blazing hot, casting them briefly into vivid silhouette, enabling Igan to pick out Dragonsbane galloping a pace or two in advance of the others. The youth smiled, anticipating the deadly blow his master was about to strike, for how could it be otherwise? The king’s very name bespoke his skill at slaying wyrms.

Then the greatest champion in Damara swayed like a cripple in his saddle. The point of his lance flopped down to catch in the ground, and the pressure tumbled him backward over his horse’s rump. The knights riding closest to him hauled on their reins to keep from trampling him, and veered into the comrades on their other flanks. Other lancers, focused on the fang dragon, raced on without realizing anything was wrong.

“Ilmater’s tears!” Igan cried. “What happened?”

“A dragon struck him down with a spell,” the sergeant answered. “They’re sorcerers, you know.”

Igan did know, but he still wasn’t sure the older warrior was correct. It was his impression that all the drakes had been busy with other targets at that particular moment.

Something implored him to act. It might have been the whisper of a god or merely the urging of his own folly, but either way, he meant to heed it. He dropped the long, heavy lance—a good weapon for fending off a dragon but otherwise awkward for a combatant afoot—drew his broadsword, wheeled, and strode toward the illusory cart. The sergeant called after him, but Igan ignored him.

The interior of the phantasm resembled an artist’s palette, but with all the dabs of luminous, multicolored paint twisting and crawling around one another. Fortunately, the space was only a few feet across. Two more strides carried Igan out the other side before he could lose either his bearings or the contents of his stomach.

When he emerged, a single glance confirmed the worst of his suspicions. One of the mages lay dead or at least insensible on the ground. After striking him down, his companions had proceeded to the real point of their treachery.

Pulling as if it were a garrote, Sergor held the end of a thin black cord in either fist. In the middle, the tight coils cutting into it, hung an entangled rag doll. Though the figure was crudely fashioned, its tinsel crown, fringe of yellow beard, and the golden chalice emblem stitched to its torso made it plain it represented the king. The other two traitorous warlocks stood facing it, crooning to it in some sibilant, esoteric language, weaving their hands in cabalistic passes. Their fingers left fleeting smears of deeper blackness on the night.

Egan rushed in. He wanted to kill Sergor first, but the wizard saw him coming, squawked a warning to his fellows, and scrambled backward out of range. Igan had to content himself with a thrust at a different target. The traitor was still turning when the point drove into his side. He crumpled.

As Igan yanked his blade free, Sergor’s other comrade jabbered a rhyme. Something flickered at the edge of the squire’s vision. He pivoted in time to see the jagged length of conjured ice fly at him, but not in time to dodge. The missile exploded against his chest. Though the shards failed to pierce his breastplate, a pang of ghastly cold stabbed through his torso and doubled him over.

As he struggled against shock, he heard both magicians chanting, and realized with a surge of dread that he couldn’t reach either one in time to stop his conjuring. He would have to endure two more magical attacks.

Then, however, the sergeant strode out of the illusory cart. Judging by the way he goggled, he hadn’t realized anything was amiss. He’d simply come to drag an errant squire back

to his assigned duty. But he only needed an instant to recover from his surprise. Then he lowered his spear, ran forward, and rammed it into the belly of the mage who’d produced the dart of ice.

That disrupted the one casting, but Sergor finished a split second later. He thrust out his hand and a bolt of yellow flame leaped from his fingertips. Igan tried to jump aside, but the fire brushed him anyway, searing him.

Refusing to let the pain balk him, Igan charged. Sergor scrambled backward and commenced a rhyme. His hands swirled in a complex figure. Power howled through the air. But the whine died abruptly when Igan’s sword smashed through the warlock’s ribs.

As soon as Sergor collapsed, Igan felt the fierce heat gnawing at the left side of his body, He dropped and rolled until the fire went out. By that time the sergeant was standing beside him.

“What is all this?” the old warrior asked.

“A rag doll… we have to find it . Sergor must have dropped it so he could throw other—”

Igan saw the doll and snatched it up.

The black cord still cut into the cloth figure even though no one was pulling on the ends. Igan hauled off his steel gauntlet so he could use his fingertips more deftly, and with considerable difficulty, stripped the binding coils away. Then he ran back through the illusory cart to survey the battlefield.

He cursed when it appeared that the king was as crippled as before. Some of his retainers were trying to hoist the big man in his heavy plate over the back of his horse so they could take him to safety, Others had positioned themselves between the fang dragon and the stricken monarch. The gigantic reptile, still cloaked in its shimmering aura of protection, lunged, raked, and bit amid a shambles of shredded human and equine corpses.

A rider on the wyrm’s flank chopped at its foreleg with an axe. In response, the drake simply shifted the limb and brushed the axeman and his mount. An armored knight and charger might have been able to withstand such a comparatively light bump, except that the edges of a fang dragon’s scales were as sharp as blades. They stripped away the steel and leather layers of protection to flay the flesh beneath.

The dragon snatched up another warrior in its jaws, chewed, swallowed, then pounced at the knot of men surrounding the king. Its bulk smashed through the final rank of defenders, reducing the scene to chaos. Men dropped, pulped and shattered. Horses bolted. The wyrm was within easy reach of Dragonsbane, and those who’d hoped to remove the king from harm’s way had no choice but to turn and fight.

Igan looked around, hoping to see other men-at-arms rushing to the king’s aid. Nobody was. They were busy fighting the other wyrms.

Igan snatched up the lance he’d dropped and ran for Rain, still tethered among a dozen other horses to the twisted steel stake his rider had screwed into the ground. The sergeant scrambled after him. They untied their mounts and swung themselves into their saddles, but the older warrior’s steed balked at going any closer to the dragons. Igan was on his own.

As he galloped onto the field, the fang dragon steadily obliterated the king’s defenders, one every heartbeat or so.

“Steady, Rain,” Igan crooned. “Steady, good boy, don’t be scared, just do it the way we practiced…”

The closer he rode to the dragon, the better he could see it, and the more hideous it became. Its hide was dark and mottled, and bony spurs projected from its joints. The tail forked into two long, bladelike projections, and the orange eyes smoldered. Resisting his swelling dread as best he could, Igan galloped to within several yards of it, and it turned its glittering gaze on him.

Rain whinnied in terror as some magical force the wyrm had invoked heaved him and his rider twenty feet into the air. It slammed them down again a second later.

Igan lay on his side. For a moment, he couldn’t remember why, where he was, or what was happening. Then he realized that when the dragon had dashed him and Rain to the ground, it must have knocked him unconscious for a time. He was lucky it hadn’t done worse than that, almost certainly luckier than poor Rain, who sprawled motionless, his weight pressing down on his rider’s leg.

Igan kicked his feet out of the stirrups, then awkwardly squirmed and dragged himself out from under the destrier. By the time he stood up, the dragon, intent on other foes, had pivoted away from him. Still, he had to take a steadying breath, gathering his courage, before he could bring himself to poise the lance and run at the creature.

It sensed him coming, swung back toward him, but not quite quickly enough. By more good fortune, the lance punched through what must have been a thin spot in its scales and jabbed deep into the base of its neck. The drake let out a weak hiss, stamped, reached in a shuddering, faltering way to seize Igan in its jaws, then flopped over onto its flank.

It occurred to Igan then that he likely had won his spurs today, but he didn’t even care. Only Dragonsbane mattered. He scurried to his master, helped to carry him from the field, and stayed with him for the remainder of the battle, watching as various learned folk attended him. At first the clerics worked alone. Then, when their efforts proved unavailing, they sent for wizards to help them.

That was no use, either.

Out on the heath, the company slew the last surviving dragon, and Drigor turned to the onlookers and announced what everyone already realized: don’t understand. His Majesty isn’t dead. He isn’t even wounded. But neither Master Kulenov nor I can rouse him.”

Cloaked in the diminutive form of an aged gnome with nut-brown, wrinkled skin, Lareth, King of Justice, sovereign of the gold dragons of Faerűn—indeed, of all metallic wyrms, until the present crisis passed—sat on an outcropping, watched the morning sun creep higher into a clear blue sky, and wondered about the taste of human flesh.

He’d never sampled it, of course, or the meat of any sentient creature, even a slinking goblin or brutish ore. No metal dragon had. It was against their laws, to the extent that such proud and independent beings could be said to have any.

He’d never questioned the wisdom of such a prohibition, but now he didn’t see the point of it. Naturally no dragon of goodly character would eat a human of similar inclinations, but if you had to kill a wicked man to stop him from doing evil, wherein lay the harm of devouring the body afterward?

Was the meat so succulent that the wyrm might develop a compulsion to eat it on a regular basis? Lareth tried to imagine a feast as delicious as that, the sweet, warm, bloody flesh melting on his tongue, the dainty bones cracking between his fangs and giving up their marrow—

And avidity gave way to a surge of nausea. Lords of light, what was the matter with him?

Of course, he knew the answer. It was the Rage, madness and bloodlust nibbling at his mind. He needed to rest, but first he’d have to wake another sentinel to take his place.

Knowing he’d sleep better in his natural form, he swelled into a gleaming, sinuous creature with a gold’s characteristic “catfish whiskers,” twin horns sweeping back from the skull, and wings that sprouted at the shoulders to extend almost all the way down to the tip of the tail. He turned, spread his pinions, and leaped upward. Below him, in a valley nestled among the frigid peaks called the Galenas, dozens of his kin lay slumbering, their scales—gold, brass, silver, bronze, or copper—glittering in the sun.

Furling his wings, Lareth landed beside a fellow gold nearly as huge as himself. It was Tamarand, first among the lords. Tamarand was snoring, an odd little puff and whistle that made Lareth smile for a moment. Then he recited the incantation Nexus, greatest of all draconic wizards, had

taught him. Power groaned through the air, and tufts of coarse mountain grass caught fire.

Tamarand’s blank, luminous amber eyes fluttered open. He heaved himself to his feet, then inclined his head in a show of respect.

“Your Resplendence…”

“I need you to take over for a while,” Lareth said. “I… the frenzy was …” He realized he didn’t need or want to explain the shameful impulse that had crept unbidden into his mind. “Just take over.”

Tamarand eyed him. “Are you all right?”

Under the circumstances, the question shouldn’t have annoyed Lareth, but it did anyway. It even made fire warm his throat and brought smoke fuming out of his maw and nostrils before he stifled the emotion.