Margaret Weis - Dragons of Summer Flame

“And I can’t fight from dragonback,” Palin agreed. Flare alighted on the ground. Steel gave Palin his arm, swung the young mage off the saddle. Steel started to withdraw his grasp. Palin kept hold of the knight’s hand for one brief second.

“You know what to do?” he asked anxiously.

“Cast your spell, Sir Wizard,” Steel said coolly. “I stand ready.”

Palin nodded, clasped Steel’s hand tightly.

“Farewell, Cousin,” he said.

Steel smiled. For an instant, the dark eyes were warm.

“Farewell...” He paused, then said quietly, “Cousin.”

Flare, with a shrieking battle cry, leapt into the air.

Their own courage ignited by Steel’s words and example, the knights of darkness and of light lifted their fallen standards and flew to the attack.

Chaos was ready for them with confusion and madness and terror and pain. Fire burned, and nightmare creatures gibbered. Wielding the dragonlances, the Solamnic Knights attacked the fire dragons. The silver dragons risked the deadly flames to carry their riders close. The knights, sweating in the awful heat, squinted against the fiery light and threw the lances. Their faith and their strong arms launched them straight and true. Several of the fire dragons fell, plunging to the ground to explode in a rush of flames. Many of the silver dragons fell, too, their faces burned, eyes blinded, their wings scorched and shriveled.

The dark knights fought the daemon warriors, slashing at them with accursed swords. The blue dragons battled with claw and lightning. But whenever a weapon struck the heart of a daemon warrior, the cold of the dark void that had existed before the beginning of time caused the metal to shatter, froze the hand that held it. The knights bore the pain, switched the blade from the useless hand to the good, and fought on.

Palin stood well behind the front line of knights and, for the moment, he was out of the battle. The fury of the knights’ onslaught drove the daemon warriors and the fire dragons back, put them on the defensive. They would not be on the defensive long. Chaos, with a wave of his gigantic hand, was bringing up reinforcements, not from the rear, but creating them from the bodies of the fallen.

Palin had to cast his spell quickly. He opened the spellbook of Magius to the correct page. Holding the spellbook in his left hand, Palin took hold of the Staff of Magius in his right. He ran through the words of the spell one last time. Drawing a breath, he started to speak them, looked up and saw Usha.

He had not noticed her before. She had been hiding behind the broken altar. But now she had risen to her feet, was watching the battle fearfully, holding the Graygem in her hands. What was she doing here?

He longed to cry out to her, but was afraid that doing so might draw the father god’s deadly attention to her presence. Palin needed to go to her, to protect her. He needed to stay here, to cast his spell, to protect the knights.

The magic began to writhe and crawl about in his head; the words to the spell started to slip away, to hide in the crevices of his shattered concentration. He could see the words on the page, but he couldn’t think how to pronounce them, how to give them the correct enunciation that was all-important. They were fast becoming meaningless gibberish.

Love is my strength!

Once again he was back on that terrible beach, watching panic-stricken, paralyzed with fear for his brothers’ lives, wanting to help so desperately that he had been an utter failure. It was useless to say the odds were overwhelming, that he’d been wounded, that they had never had a chance...

He knew he had failed. And he was destined to fail again.

We learn from our failures, Nephew, came a soft, whispering voice.

The words to the spell suddenly made perfect sense. He knew how to pronounce them.

He placed the staff in position, spoke the words clearly, strongly. "Abdis tukngf Kumpul-ah kepudanya kuasahan!" He waited, tensely, eagerly, for the sparkling tingle in the blood that was the beginning of the magic.

"Burus longang degang birsih sekalilagang!"

The magic wasn’t there. He was near the end of the spell. He knew he’d spoken it correctly, knew he had made not one mistake. Only a few more words...

"Degang kuashnya, lampar terbong kilat mati yangjahat!"

Chaos towered over him. Fire burned him. Death surrounded him. Steel would die, Usha would die, Tas and Dougan, his parents, his two little sisters, and so many others...

Sacrifice. Sacrifice for the magic. What have you ever sacrificed for the magic, Nephew? I gave up my health, my happiness. I gave up love — of my brother, of my friends. I gave up the only woman who might have loved me in return.

I gave this all for the magic.

What will you give, Nephew?

Palin spoke the last two words of the spell. "Xis vrie." And then he added, quietly, calmly, “I give myself.”

The words on the page of the spellbook began to shine with a silver-white radiance. The radiance seeped through the red leather binding into Palin’s hand.

A shivering, tingling sensation swept over him. He was filled with the ecstasy of the magic, sublime pleasure, exquisite pain. He was not afraid of anything, not of failure, not of death. The radiance flowed through Palin, gathered within him, within his heart.

Atop the Staff of Magius, the crystal, clutched in the dragon’s claw, began to glow with a silver-white light. The glow grew stronger, brighter, until it shone more brilliantly than the flames of Chaos. The silver armor of the Solamnic Knights reflected the light, brightened it. The black armor of the dark knights absorbed the light, but did not dim it. The scales of the silver dragons glinted like diamonds in the magical light. The scales of the blue dragons were glittering sapphire.

Where the light struck the daemon warriors, they screeched in pain and anger. The shadow-wights wafted away, like smoke sucked up into a chimney. The fire dragons swerved to try to avoid the light, and fell victim to the silver shining dragonlances.

Chaos became aware of the light. Seen out of the corner of his eyes, the flash was annoying, irritating. He determined to get rid of it.

Chaos shifted his attention from leading his legions, searched for the damnable light. He discovered the staff and the small and insignificant being holding it. He looked at the light, looked directly into it...

The magic surged through Palin with a jolt that drove him to his knees. Yet he held the staff steady. The light burst out of the crystal, shot a bright, blinding beam of radiant white straight into the giant’s eyes.

“Now, Steel!” Palin shouted. “Strike now!”

Steel Brightblade and Flare had been hovering on the edges of the fighting, impatiently awaiting their moment. The waiting had been difficult for them both. They had been forced to watch comrades die and could do nothing to aid them or avenge them. Steel had seen Palin falter, had urged him silently to hold on. His cousin’s success brought intense satisfaction and—it must be admitted—a warm and unexpected feeling of brotherly pride.

He did not need Palin’s yell to know when to commence his attack. The moment the light from the crystal smote Chaos full in the eyes, Steel raised his sword, dug his spurs into Flare’s sides.

Chaos howled in rage and fury, sought to shut out the light that had stabbed into his head, blinding him and hurting him. But his lidless eyes could not close. Whirlpools of darkness, they sucked everything they looked at inside, including the debilitating light.

Flare flew straight for Chaos. The giant wrenched and jerked his head about, trying to break the light’s hold. Steel guided the dragon, shouted words of encouragement, urged her through the roaring flames that were the giant’s hair and beard.