Elenai found Lelanc where she’d last seen her upon the battlement, under the twinned moons. It had somehow seemed easier to release the ko’aye the first time, but then she hadn’t been in quite as much of a hurry.
Lelanc awoke and reared, wings wide, ready to throw herself into the attack. She let out an ear-splitting battle cry and searched the walkways and stone embrasure for enemies.
“Where is Cerai?” Lelanc demanded. “Where has she fled?”
Elenai had thought about what she’d say as she’d pounded up the stairs. “There’s a way out from here,” she said. “But you and Kyrkenall and I have to hurry.”
The ko’aye called out once more, then looked down at her. “Hurry from what? Other enemies?”
“A great storm comes,” she said, which was the simplest way to explain matters. “I’ve talked Cerai into letting you go, but we’ve not much time.”
“I will kill her!”
Elenai had worried talk with the ko’aye would be difficult, and decided on blunt truth. “She’ll turn you into a statue before you can even get close. And I can’t stop her. But we can get you away from here if you meet me down by the stables.”
Lelanc flapped her wings twice and set all four feet on the ground. Her eyes shone in the moonlight, eerie and unknowable.
“What you say of her powers may be true,” Lelanc said. “But my heart cries for vengeance. For the city of my sister. For Rylin.”
“Rylin lives,” Elenai reminded her, and Lelanc’s head rose.
“How can this be? This is not one of her lies?”
“I heard this from my commander, not Cerai. Rylin was wounded, but he escaped the city.”
“That is a glad thing,” the ko’aye said.
“Yes. But we have to hurry. A magical exit is going to be readied for us.”
Lelanc’s head bobbed back and forth on the end of her swanny neck. “I do not know your meaning.”
“I’m not entirely sure I do, either,” Elenai admitted. Rialla had died before the Ko’aye alliance, so there was no point in mentioning her name. “Kyrkenall’s old friend, a sorceress, has come, and says it’s our only chance to get out of here quickly. Lelanc, we’re caught in the midst of … two storms, and the wind is heavy between them. I’m not sure where they’ll take us, but I swear that if you come with me and Kyrkenall we will look out for you.”
Lelanc’s head lowered, then raised once more. “You have helped, and I am grateful. But I will find my own way.” She turned to put front feet on an embrasure. Before Elenai could say anything more, the ko’aye pushed out and soared away, flapping to gain altitude.
Elenai cursed inventively as she watched the ko’aye climb toward the moons, a little surprised at her vocabulary. Too much time with Kyrkenall, she guessed.
There was nothing more to be done, so she hurried back to the stairwell and down, and out toward the stables, a two-story building built into an interior wall of the wide fortress courtyard. A group of Cerai’s guards stood watching while Cerai spoke with the glowing figure of a woman in the midst of the compound. Kyrkenall was only a little distance from the stables, attention held raptly by the two women.
“What are they doing?” Elenai asked as she strode up, a little breathless after having run up and then down five flights of stairs. “Has Rialla said anything about what she’s doing here, or what this is all about?”
“No! She keeps saying that she doesn’t have time, and that we’ll talk later! They’ve been going back and forth about magical theory now since just a little after you left.” Kyrkenall seemed to take real note of her for the first time. “Where’s Lelanc?”
“I don’t know.”
His voice rose. “You don’t know?”
“She flew off! She said she’d find her own way.”
“That’s great,” Kyrkenall growled.
“There wasn’t much I could do about it,” Elenai said, irritated by Kyrkenall’s attitude. “Are you sure this is truly Rialla?”
That garnered another hard look. “She sure looks and acts like her. Apart from being glowing and transparent.”
“But why didn’t she know who I was when she’s been talking to me in my dreams?”
“You’re asking me?”
“Maybe you should ask her.”
“I’ve tried asking her all kinds of things and all she’ll answer with is a ‘not now.’”
“And why is she here, now, rather than talking to us in our dreams?” The more she’d thought about it the less Elenai liked an already bad situation. “Before we walk into the middle of some huge spell,” she said, “don’t you think some clarity would be nice?”
Kyrkenall’s brows drew together, then he brusquely nodded his assent and started forward.
Elenai came after and soon they stopped two spear lengths out.
Rialla turned and considered them. Somehow her ghostly image looked even more unnerving here under the moonlight. Cerai’s nonchalant confidence was mostly absent. Now the alten was pensive.
“If you’re ready,” Rialla said, her voice once again reaching Elenai’s mind while the ghostly alten’s lips worked silently, “where’s Lelanc?”
“We need some answers, Rialla,” Kyrkenall said. “How do we know it’s really you? And how are you even here? I put you in your tomb more than ten years ago! And why don’t you know Elenai when you’ve been talking to her in her dreams?”
Rialla’s head tilted a minute degree, birdlike. “So I will die,” she said wistfully. “Or at least my physical form will.”
“You already have.” Kyrkenall sounded both confused and sad.
“I haven’t done this in an order that would make sense to you.” She looked at Elenai again. “If you said we’ve met before then I must have found something important to tell you I don’t know yet. But please, you must hurry. It’s vital you get to Darassus, or it will end badly. And I don’t know how many times I can try this.”
That left Elenai only a little less confused than before. She wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Are you wanting me to leave Lyria?” Kyrkenall asked. “Out in the middle of nowhere?”
“Your horse is safer here.” Rialla turned to Cerai, speaking to her with little warmth. “Watch carefully.” She looked to the sky and stared. Elenai followed her glance and saw Lelanc circling.
Elenai watched from the inner world as Rialla worked her magics. The strange woman shone with diamond brilliance, glowing more brightly even than the hearthstones when they were active. With a complex cast of threads, Rialla shifted the winds ahead of them until they whipped furiously. Beneath their feet the ground lurched but she gave no sign of noticing.
Heliotrope energies spiraled before them and opened into a shimmering white tunnel through which sunlight poured, as well as the sound of screaming.
“Go,” Rialla cried, her voice rising with the wind. “Go now!”
Kyrkenall flashed Elenai a resigned and faintly amused look and then walked through. His one step stretched impossibly long and then he stood at the far end of the tunnel, a tiny figure.
Behind her she heard the unmistakable call of a ko’aye and looked over her shoulder to see Lelanc gliding low, eyes bright red points, claws forward. She was trying for Cerai. As the would-be goddess threw herself flat, Rialla’s mouth turned down in annoyance. She gestured and the portal stretched to catch the ko’aye’s wing tip. It then swallowed the creature whole and Rialla turned her gaze upon Elenai. The phantom alten was silent but her meaning was clear—get moving!
And so Elenai started forward, and saw blurred land and skyscape rushing past on either hand even as that distant point rushed at her like an arrow.
She stepped through into the Arena Altenera, its center field set up as if for an awards ceremony, for the competition tools and ramps were vanished and a stage rose in their place. Lelanc was picking herself up from the floorboards near the edge. Her barbed tail rose menacingly behind her.
A quick glance showed her the hole in reality vanish in a wink, as though it had never been.
Elenai turned to take in the rest of the environment, discovering a heart-dropping scene of carnage. Much of the east end of the stadium had fallen in upon itself. The back arches had toppled onto the stands, pulverizing the benches beneath, as well as people that had been sitting there. The structure smelled of blood, dust, and fear. Trailing streams of people raced for the exits, leaving sprawled figures behind them, the dead and the dying and those who wouldn’t leave them.
Stranger still,what she first took for the immense white carving of a winged lizard rested in the rubble of the western seating area, complete with lifelike statues seated upon its back. But its rear legs and tail moved feebly, and looking through the inner world she understood that the beast and its riders had been haphazardly struck with life-suspending magics similar to those employed by Belahn and Cerai. This, then, was one of the Naor dragons, in Darassus itself, and it must have been the source of this terrible damage. Cerai had been right, and the Naor were already moving on the city. But who here had the power to petrify such an immense creature?
She set aside unanswerable questions and walked toward Kyrkenall and the bearded man in the khalat talking with him, whom she now recognized as Rylin.
On stage edge, a handful of exalts and men and women in flowery white shirts were working themselves to magical exhaustion to keep other fragile stadium walls from collapsing inward. Elenai activated her hearthstone, sent tendrils of energy to revitalize them, then bolstered their efforts with an ease that would once have surprised her, conjuring lines of force from the artifact to lend support to the fractured stone.
One of the exalts, a lean, hawk-nosed man, used her magics to imitate and surpass her work. Perhaps because he was more practiced with hearthstones, he stabilized the failing stone swiftly and sent his energies around the stadium to address other strained areas.
Seeing that he and his followers had command of the situation, Elenai left her hearthstone active for use and turned to join Kyrkenall. She was almost struck in the face by Lelanc’s wing as the ko’aye bounded up to chatter excitedly at Rylin, who beamed at sight of her.
Kyrkenall summarized the situation without pause for pleasantries. “The queen opened a rift and vanished through it with the hearthstones right before we turned up in the same place.”
Elenai ignored a host of questions that information inspired and offered a hypothesis. “Maybe Rialla keyed in on that opening.”
“Maybe. It doesn’t matter right now. The Naor are here in force. This dragon must have been sent to scout ahead and spotted a target too good to pass. It’s not alone, because there are six more, and a small army on monstrous ground-walking beasts. Our scouts reported that they’re something like eshlack, but about ten times larger, and there are men riding on them. They’re less than a half hour southeast and on a direct course for the city.”
“Of course they are.” Elenai was a bit surprised at her equanimity and supposed there were too many shocks to fully register.
“So. Rylin’s going to try and get Lelanc into the air—”
“If you’re willing.” Rylin bowed to the ko-aye, who screeched fiercely in return.
“And I think you ought to see if you can wake that dragon and ride it,” Kyrkenall finished.
“You want me to ride a dragon?” Elenai asked. “I don’t have the slightest—”
Kyrkenall spoke over her as if he wasn’t aware of any particular difficulty. “The moment it attacked the hearthstones, the hearthstones trapped it, kind of like what happened with N’lahr. So maybe you can figure that out.”
“You don’t ask much.”
“You told me not to treat you like a squire,” he reminded her. “It only takes one dragon to take down a wall. And they’ve got six. I don’t think Rylin and one ko’aye can handle six dragons, do you?”
“The dragons are kind of like puppets,” Rylin offered. She eyed him for a moment, trying to accustom herself to his look with the scruffy beard. “At least that’s what I gathered. The pilot magically controls them.”
Lelanc cawed. “Come, Rylin! It is time to kill the nest rippers!”
Rylin nodded, then halted in mid-turn. “I’m going to fly to the captain of the south gate and consult, then take the fight to the Naor. I hope I’ll see you up there. And that dragon can hold five—get some of the exalts to go with you. We’ll need all the help we can get.”
“You trust them?” Kyrkenall’s voice dripped with scorn.
“Yes.” The broad-shouldered exalt who’d been leading the repair efforts had already started toward them and Rylin waved him forward. “This is Thelar. He stood with me. And the others stayed to help Darassus.”
“The archway will hold now,” Thelar reported, then turned to Elenai before pointing up to the dragon. “If you mean to take this thing into battle, I mean to assist.” His manner was a little challenging, as if he expected opposition.
Elenai wasn’t at all certain she could get the creature moving, much less released from its hearthstone encasement, but she cut Kyrkenall off before he could object once more. “I’ll be glad for whatever help you can give,” she said.
Soon he and two more exalts were hurrying with her to the dragon. Kyrkenall came with them, grumbling under his breath.
Elenai reached the side of the beast and pressed her hand to its scaled maw. “Assuming I wake it, there are live Naor up there,” Elenai called to Kyrkenall.
But she discovered he was already clambering along its back. “I’ll be ready,” he said.
She supposed he would.
Thelar eyed the dragon dubiously. “I’m not sure how we can get this casing off.”
“Let me try.” Elenai stretched out with her magical perceptions, threads of intent brushing the surface of the trapped beast. She’d learned a lot since she’d looked upon the hearthstone accident that had trapped N’lahr. This circumstance might be similar, but the execution was different. This time she had edges to work with, and this time, she had experience.
She sank her threads into the hearthstone, called upon its magics, and touched the surface of the restraint.
Elenai hadn’t felt the pull of probability for long days, but it was there now, guiding her forward toward points of attachment upon the crystal. This had never before occurred when she or her companions weren’t under direct threat. Whether pursuing other possibilities led to disaster or merely delay she couldn’t know, but she worried this was not her own doing.
Rialla had shepherded them here, none so gently in Lelanc’s case, almost as though they were game pieces that had to be arranged just so on the board if she were to win the match. She had steered Elenai through dreams. And once Elenai had begun working a hearthstone, Rialla’s hearthstone, she had become aware, in moments of crisis, of paths that led to jeopardy. Elenai wished to be no one’s instrument, even for a good cause, but now was not the time for hesitation. Later she would learn the truth. For now, she followed that line of probability toward success. And for once she did not smile in the wash of the hearthstone’s power, nor exult as the crystal encasement fell away from the dragon.
She suddenly found herself in the presence of an immense, slitted green eye, and the head shifted to snap at her with teeth as long as her leg. She leapt back, falling into Thelar, who steadied her, then swatted it with a blast of pain. It moaned and moved its head away.
“Shall we?” she asked, and pointed to the rope ladder built into the saddle structure along its neck. She climbed up behind the trio of Exalted Ones as the dragon shook its head and struggled to rise off the loose and likely uncomfortable rubble.
Kyrkenall had already dealt with the Naor by the time she arrived. Five bodies lolled on the chairs stretching back past the pilot, an arrow through each. The driver himself had been stabbed through the neck. Kyrkenall was readying to take the same bloody blade to the straps holding the pilot in place.
“Just untie them,” Elenai said quickly. “Don’t you think we’ll need to belt in?”
Kyrkenall grunted. “Right.”
Thelar directed the others to the chairs at the rear. There were two banks of two chairs, and two individual seats along the neck, where the creature’s spines were shorter.
Elenai quickly took in their surroundings, noticing then that the arena was close to empty, apart from a few still visible in the tunnel exits, and those attending the casualties. One of the exalts moved among the wounded now, joining a dozen others, some of whom appeared to be healers. Rylin had vanished upon Lelanc.
Thelar and the other exalts finished dumping the dead Naor overside and were inspecting the weapon caches built into their backless seat areas. One was a red-haired woman with a mole above her lip, the other a pale, balding man with expressive and intelligent eyes.
“If this works,” she called out, “save your attacks until we’re closer.They should see us as a friendly until then.”
Kyrkenall turned and addressed them. “This dragon has spare warriors. So will the others. And that means that they’ll be firing on us. Do you have defensive magics?”
The other two nodded. Thelar answered in the affirmative.
“Focus on that. Elenai’s probably going to have her hands full driving this thing. And I’m going to be shooting the Naor mages controlling the other dragons.”
“Understood, Alten,” Thelar said, then looked back to his companions. “You heard him. Ready with wind gusts. M’vai, you guard our left, Folahn the right, and I’ll fill in the gaps and look to above and front.”
Rylin’s friend seemed to have a decent tactical approach, Elenai decided. Now it was time to find out if all this clever planning would amount to anything. She reached into the dragon’s mind with tendrils of energy. She’d never touched the thoughts of a creature like this—it seemed to lack a will or purpose of its own, though it exhibited some primitive urges and reactive reflexes. It was experiencing pain as a sharp stone stuck into a tender underpart, and that accounted for the restless shifting of its hind limbs. All she had to do was link threads of intent to the beast, and … There, she had it lift its weight from the offending projection and it stilled. This was a little simpler than she imagined. There were no branching futures to follow, no battle for control. She experimentally raised its left wing and brought up a cloud of dust. But how to get it to fly?
“Looks like you have it!” Kyrkenall said practically in her ear.
“Oh yes,” she replied archly.
“Do you really have it?” Kyrkenall asked, sounding more concerned.
She glanced over her shoulder to find him gripping her seat, which was strapped into the leather band that encircled the beast’s great neck.
“I can get it to move,” she said. “Can I get it moving in a coordinated fashion? Can I get it airborne?”
“Looks like you’d better.” He glanced behind him, then leaned forward so she could hear him better. “They’re all strapping in.”
“Shouldn’t you?”
“I’m fine for now. But you ought to, right?”
She tied herself in with the cross braces and sought through the commands she guessed might set the monster in motion.
She sent impulses through the dragon’s legs and got it to stand fully. Unfortunately, the rubble shifted under its weight and it took a moment or two to find a solid balance. It was more challenging still to get the legs to climb over the torn building, but after a little bit of wobbly experimentation she learned that rather than trying to control each individual leg she could simply command the thing to head in the direction she wanted, and it did the rest. She guided it through the destruction its crash had generated, arriving at the practice field just outside the arena. At the sight of the dragon, those still fleeing into the city cried out in alarm. She should have foreseen that. She certainly hadn’t planned to panic anyone.
How to get it into the sky, though? She tried flapping the wings and that didn’t do much except raise dust.
“Maybe you can have it climb back to the top of a stadium wall and drop off,” Kyrkenall suggested.
“Not one of your better ideas,” she told him over her shoulder. “And you really ought to belt in before I try to get it into the air.”
“All right.” He retreated, walking with ease along the animal’s spiny back. She waited until she was sure he was buckled in, then set the creature’s wings beating, and started it away from the people into an ungainly lope. Earlier she’d told it to move. Now she simply urged it to fly. Swinging its wings more and more strenuously, it ponderously rose into the air and over the field, just missing the roof of a house. It struck a chimney with a massive back leg and sent bricks flying. She felt that impact register as mild discomfort. They climbed until they were level with the top of the arena behind them. The wind streamed coolly into her face, bannering her hair behind her. Only then did she wish she had grabbed a helmet. She’d left it in her travel gear.
Kyrkenall startled her with a strange noise, and she glanced back to see him whooping with joy, one fist pumping the air. Behind, the other passengers were settled in. Thelar was serious and quiet. Beside him, the one Thelar had called M’vai seemed keyed up and avidly gazed to left and right, and Folahn, in the rear, looked as though he’d swallowed a bite of bad fish.
She set the creature climbing higher, exhilarated by the speed and the growing distance between them and the ground. Her magical endurance had more than doubled since she’d taken up hearthstone use, but she realized that every command she gave sapped her energies. She’d have to be careful, because she didn’t want to have to draw on a hearthstone in the midst of battle. That Naor blood sorcerer, Chargan, might notice. She called to Kyrkenall. “You see the Naor yet?”
“There. On your left.”
A great dust cloud climbed heavenward, about two leagues out. She banked the dragon over Darassus, stunned by a beautiful view of the great domes and the sparkling Idris in her channel. Soldiers raced down from the watchtowers on the high bluffs east of the capital, and squires guided the frightened masses through the gates into the inner city housing the palace and the Altenerai buildings. Those walls, at least, made a complete defensive circuit.
How long might the outer wall hold? How long did it have to hold? She didn’t see many soldiers posted on its heights. Probably the defense forces had been deployed to Alantris or Vedessus. How had the Naor gotten so far, so fast, without word reaching Darassus? Fine questions, but right now she had only one task. She set the dragon climbing higher. The view was frightening and thrilling all at once, and she wished she had opportunity to truly enjoy it.
They spotted distant winged shapes in the sky beyond, not six, but seven of them, circling, and lumbering, fast-moving monstrosities on the ground at the van of the great dust cloud. Gods. There were so many.
She caught a movement to their right and turned her head to see Lelanc lifting up from the tower beside the south gate. She carried a single figure in a blue khalat. Rylin, who raised a hand in greeting.
Elenai responded in kind and took the dragon west, gaining altitude in a wind current above the bluffs.
“What are you doing?” Kyrkenall shouted up to her.
“Putting the sun at our backs!”
He let out a bark of approving laughter and then fell silent as she began the long swing back east, the bright sun behind her.
She wondered what the Naor would think of the return of this dragon. They’d have been too far away to see its landing in the stadium, so it was unlikely they’d expect their enemies to control it. They’d be surprised to see it flying from the west, of course, but maybe they’d hold their fire.
Or maybe they’d be incredibly suspicious. She shouted for everyone to be alert and ready.
She studied the seven opposing dragons as they glided high above the Erymyran farm fields. Though broadly similar in design, with leathery wings, long trailing tails, and fierce maws at the end of serpentine necks, the colors and characteristics varied. Each carried at least three riders, and four dragons were long enough that five Naor sat in metal studded saddles upon their backs. They came on in a wedge, with perhaps a hundred feet of air separating each. The largest, of a faded yellow hue, was in the lead.
Only a little ways behind, on the distant ground, great black beasts longer than most houses advanced across the farm fields southeast of the city. Apart from a few hundred Naor riding horses, the rest of the enemy soldiers had packed upon platforms fastened to the backs of the beasts. There had to be forty or more soldiers on every one of the horned monstrosities, and there looked to be nearly three dozen of the beasts in all. Calculating quickly, she estimated there were no more than two thousand Naor. Not so large a number, if the walls held, but capable of wrecking havoc if the walls went down. Was this just some huge destructive raid?
The drum of immense hooves upon the plains thundered like an unending storm.
She bore in on the leftmost dragon, a green-scaled monster larger even than their own. The Naor riding it wore furred jackets and hats. Only the pilot was armored, complete with a heavy helm with cheekguards. He and the five arranged on the dragon behind him turned to look as Kyrkenall let loose a flurry of arrows
The pilot tore at the shaft sticking out of his shoulder plate, only to catch one right through his helmet cheek piece. As he shuddered in his death throes, the dragon sank from formation, and Elenai heard the screams of the warriors seated along its length. Nothing, though, got the monster beating its wings once more, and it dropped like a stone.
The remaining dragon pilots were swift to react. Two broke formation immediately, turning to flank Elenai’s dragon, and a smaller third one with pretty iridescent wings climbed.
Another flew straight on for the city, the domes of which gleamed in the light of the lowering sun.
Elenai glimpsed Rylin and Lelanc diving through the air above another monster, and then she was too busy turning her own animal to watch. Her stomach lurched during the speedy, winding drop. One of the pursuing beasts released its great roar as she swung out and away and their dragon shook beneath them. She’d hate to feel what a direct attack would do, and wondered how to command her own animal to roar.
Javelins fell from the beast above, and her team of weavers spread gusts of wind. The weapons dropped harmlessly to the right.
A blue beast swept in on their left, so close that its wing tip touched their dragon’s. One of their warriors proved a fine marksman, for an arrow point struck Elenai’s collar. It didn’t pierce the highly woven fabric, but it felt like she’d taken a fist punch to the side of her throat. Elenai struggled to stay upright, alarmed when she felt her dragon wing-beat seize up. Pain or no, she retained control, raking her gaze left. One spear stood out along her dragon’s wing, as Elenai detected a little of their dragon’s irritation there, like a splinter.
The blue’s pilot had whipped up a shield that now boasted several arrows, as did the warrior in back of him, slumped in his chair. One of the exalts must have attacked the Naor warriors to the rear, for they held motionless, hands clasping javelins they didn’t throw.
“Hold steady,” Kyrkenall shouted at her, even though she’d been doing exactly that. Then, with astonishing precision, he sent two arrows into the blue animal’s largest wing joint.
Almost immediately it fell away and into a spiral, one wing hanging useless.
“Two down!” Kyrkenall shouted.
“Three!” Thelar corrected. “Rylin got one!”
It was then that the agile dragon with the shimmering wings bore down on them from above, right out of the sun.
Kyrkenall launched arrows at its underside as it swooped past. Elenai dived, and it felt as though her heart and stomach both caught in her throat. The barbed tail that swung down missed her head by a sword length. Behind her came a masculine shout of pain cut off in mid-voice. She twisted in her seat.
The bald exalt, Folahn, had been torn from his chair. He now hurtled limply through the air, blood streaming after.
Gods, she prayed, let him already be dead. She could too well imagine the terror of being conscious during that long way down.
A huge yellow dragon with great black spikes along its spine and jaw swept on for them from the right, pale wings slapping the air. The spearmen along its back lifted weapons expectantly. Elenai struggled to turn her dragon but its spear-injured wing made it sluggish despite that it registered little pain. Behind her Kyrkenall fired and cursed, for a sorcerous red energy wave, like vaporous blood, rose before the scaly beast, sweeping every shaft away. This, the dragon that had been in the lead, carried more than one sorcerer.
Its maw opened and Elenai gritted her teeth, activated the hearthstone, desperate enough for the extra spell energy to risk it. She felt M’vai and Thelar whipping threads of attack toward the enemy beast’s pilot, only to be rebuffed.
She wasn’t sure if the pain or the gleeful voice came first. This time Chargan sent her the feel of fire surging through her veins, and he laughed. I had hoped we would meet again.
He was somewhere nearby, either on a dragon or below, and had been waiting for the chance to key into her hearthstone.
She cycled the stone closed, saw the yellow beast nearing to fifty feet, and struggled to get her dragon to swerve. Any moment, she knew, the enemy monster would roar.
A savage screech rang through the air—the piercing call of a ko’aye. Elenai saw the Naor dragon pilot look suddenly over his shoulder just as a javelin drove through his side.
A flock of five ko’aye struck from on high, claws gleaming. Foremost among them was one of blue and white, with a scarred neck, and astride her was a lean, dark-haired man in a blue khalat.
N’lahr and Drusa had dropped out of the clear blue to join the battle. Elenai laughed in delight and relief at sight of them both, not just for their timely arrival, but because the commander was alive and well. She’d feared their last conversation had rendered him permanently immobile.
As the wounded pilot flailed, the dragon’s wing-beats faltered and its deadly blast never came. The ko’aye ripped Naor warriors from their seats and sent them plunging, screaming as they dropped.
Elenai grinned in relief and heard Kyrkenall whoop with joy behind her. In moments the attack crippled the spiked yellow dragon and it followed its fellows to the earth.
Elenai scanned the sky and saw the other ko’aye racing to aid Lelanc and Rylin, locked in combat with a copper colored dragon. Below, the front rank of great black beasts had passed them by, and those that came after were half obscured by their dust.
Drusa and N’lahr glided in beside them. The ko’aye’s head turned and she let out a caw of greeting. “The travel was long. But it is good to send our enemies into the red!”
Elenai saw the saddle holding the commander in place was a slapdash affair with numerous buckles and ropes. A canister of javelins was strapped along his right leg.
“You’re late!” Kyrkenall called over the whipping wind. “But the stylish entrance makes up for it!”
N’lahr smiled, then pointed into the distance with his javelin. “We’ve got to catch those headed for Darassus! The walls have to hold.”
Two dragons were closer to the city every moment, one a huge silver, and the other, farther back, the lighter gray with iridescent wings that had slain Folahn. She felt her pulse rise and set her sights on the one closest to Darassus.
N’lahr saluted them with his weapon. Drusa screeched and bore him upward.
Elenai discovered she could still shout when she called to the mages behind her. “Conjure a wind at our back!”
The exalts did so in moments. She felt the push of it not only through her magical senses, but against the dragon’s wings. They picked up speed almost immediately.
Kyrkenall shouted to her, his voice almost lost by the roar of the wind. “I’m out of arrows—dropped a bunch on your last dive! Two javelins left!”
She didn’t bother shouting back that he’d better make them count. They passed over the front rank of the gigantic Naor beasts below, and she peered ahead at the shimmer of silver scales covering the dragon in the lead. What she’d first taken as blotches she now recognized as crimson hand-prints painted all along its serpentine body.
Thelar shouted something that sounded like a warning. She couldn’t understand him over the wind. Then she saw a bloodred spike of energy from below rip a jagged slash through their dragon’s left wing.
“What was that?” Kyrkenall shouted.
Elenai reached out with her senses and felt a second powerful sorcerous strike building below. She veered left, and her unnerving roll saved them from a strike against the dragon’s belly, though the red slash tore a gap through the other wing. She felt her control slipping. The creature didn’t seem to be capable of registering much pain, but it certainly was in distress. She forced their animal to fight on, beating its wings faster to compensate.
Ahead of them, the silver beast dropped altitude and speed as it closed on the outer wall, and Elenai knew with certainty they weren’t going to reach it in time.
She heard its great roar. A thirty-foot span beside the closed Darassan gate blew into rubble. Only a three-to-four-foot height of wall remained. Beyond it lay a tract of blasted masonry. The attack didn’t seem to have hurt many soldiers, who weren’t present in large numbers. Probably most had been sent on to reinforce Vedessus and Alantris.
The dragon swept on, low over the city. Elenai swallowed in dread, knowing when it passed the titanic statue of Darassa the pilot meant to blast the inner wall as well. She funneled all the magical energies left her to build the wind behind them. They shot forward, closing quickly.
“Get me beside it,” Kyrkenall shouted in her ear. “I’ve got this.”
Weak from the exertion, she turned to find him out of his seat, grasping the straps of her chair with one hand and holding a javelin in the other. She could scarce believe it. “What are you doing?”
“Our exalts have their hands full keeping you airborne. Get me in close. I’m going to drop over.”
“You’re insane!”
“I’ll be fine,” he said with a grin.
They soared beyond Darassa’s statue as the silver dragon passed over the spired dome of the temple of Kantahl, heading in a straight line for the wall about the palace grounds. Thousands still poured through the streets and into the inner city, and individual figures pointed up at them.
The dragon’s rearmost Naor pitched javelins at them, but Thelar and M’vai used dwindling energies to direct them harmlessly away. In moments Elenai had their beast above the silver. Without so much as a farewell, Kyrkenall leapt over the side.
He landed near a prominent dorsal spike, rocked unevenly for a heartbeat, then advanced to slice the head from one of the rearmost riders as the man raised a bow. He jammed a javelin into his companion with his off hand. Kyrkenall leapt onto the saddle, whipped free the javelin, then drove it through the neck of another archer, turning too late to fire. Two warriors rose to fight him but he crouched under one blow and bowled into the man so he tumbled over the side, then sliced through the next and advanced on the pilot. He put his sword to the man’s throat.
Elenai, flying above and aside, could only stare in amazement.
Kyrkenall’s dragon veered up and over the center of the city. Elenai tried to stay just above.
“Elenai,” Thelar shouted, his voice hoarse. “The little one’s come back!”
Too late she saw the smaller dragon that had slain Folahn diving at them from above, claws outstretched. Three other ko’aye trailed it, along with Drusa and N’lahr.
She swerved, and the legs of Elenai’s dragon struck Kyrkenall’s. The archer’s blade drove into his pilot’s neck and his dragon began to drop. The ground lay yet a killing distance below.
Elenai turned hard, chasing Kyrkenall’s dragon. The archer had latched onto the the pilot’s saddle and she saw his eerie black eyes swing up at her.
“Grab the rope!” Thelar shouted breathlessly. The exalt had sliced free some restraining straps and used sorcery to stretch them toward Kyrkenall.
He could make that, she thought. That was a shorter leap than up to the ledge of their ko’aye cave.
Kyrkenall met her eyes, stepped back. And then, instead of jumping for the rope on his right, he whirled and threw himself into empty space to the left.
She gaped, knowing sheer horror, knowing her friend had just fallen to his death. A heartbeat later the talons of the little dragon struck just back of where Thelar sat. Elenai’s dragon spun as she fought dizzily for control, the city a colorful blur below.
A smaller winged figure dove past, and as she righted their dragon she saw Lelanc snatch Kyrkenall’s shoulder. The ko’aye might as well have grabbed a lead weight, for she and Rylin and the archer plummeted like a stone. Lelanc beat her wings frantically to slow the drop, but it looked terribly swift even still.
Elenai fought her dragon back into the air. Its strength was almost finished. She swooped to the left, to avoid smashing into Vedessa’s temple bell. N’lahr and the flock of ko’aye climbed after the gray dragon. She didn’t think she could follow. Her attention was still diverted by Kyrkenall’s fate. Lelanc had angled left, and some twenty feet above a channel of the Idris she released her burden. Kyrkenall plunged and struck the water with a splash. The ko’aye’s own precipitous fall almost ended the same way, but Lelanc pulled out of the steep descent and skimmed the surface before rising once more. People hurrying over a nearby bridge cheered as Kyrkenall surfaced, and a group ran to help him from the river.
Elenai struggled for control, tasting blood through gritted teet, as her dragon shuddered beneath her. She’d managed to bite her lip. She saw Kyrkenall’s silver dragon smash into the cobblestone streets of the marketplace just back of the statue of Darassa. As Elenai flew past it looked as though the goddess had turned in sorrow to weep because the huge animal had fallen. A crash that would be her fate if she couldn’t guide her failing beast. Blood sprayed with every lift of its wings.
“Its wings are bleeding badly,” Thelar called up to her.
Behind her, N’lahr and the ko’aye still wove around the dragon with the iridescent wings. Elenai’s own dragon was dying; she could be no aid to them. She wasn’t sure she could be aid to herself. She managed a low path over the outer walls, thinking they’d done enough damage to the city already. Her gaze roved over the oncoming Naor, found them less than a half mile away.
“Help me steady the winds!” she cried. But there was nothing more to be done, and a moment later they met the ground at nearly fully speed.