Douglas Niles - The Puppet King

Completing his circuit, he found himself again beside his wife, who held their baby against her breast and stood at the edge of the bluff, looking down with a hard, unflinching expression. He touched her arm and she looked at him, and still her expression was devoid of fear. Porthios was profoundly moved by her strength and deeply aggrieved at his own inability to protect her or to shield all the elves from this unspeakable onslaught.

“How long ago do you think Samar left?” asked the prince, knowing it would take at least two days for the Silvanesti to reach the griffon aeries in the Kharolis and return.

With a look at the still stationary sun, Alhana shook her head, yielding to a measure of discouragement. “Not more than twenty-four, maybe thirty hours at the most,” she said. She didn’t voice the obvious conclusion, but Porthios knew that she understood as well as he did: Even if they answered the elven plea for help, the griffons would never get here in time to save them from this onslaught.

“My prince, they approach quickly, right below here!”

Darrian spoke urgently from nearby, and Porthios ran to look over the edge. He saw that several of the shadows had surged above the rest, slithering across the rough surface to ascend the steepest portions of the bluff.

“Drop some rocks on them,” he ordered curtly, and immediately the elves pushed and prodded, breaking loose several of the granite spires that jutted from the edge of the precipice.

Slowly, grudgingly, the rocks worked free of their foundations. First one, then several, and finally a cascade of boulders tumbled down the slope, bouncing, cracking, breaking into smaller pieces, sending fragments shooting far away from the face of the bluff. Sounds of collision echoed and pounded through the air, rising into a rumble like a constant thunder, shaking the ground under their feet. Debris showered through the shadows, and then the first of the rocks smashed into the attackers with crushing force.

A cloud of dust obscured the slope. Porthios squinted, trying to see through the murk, to determine if the shadows had been affected at all by the crushing rockslide. Finally the cloud settled lower, and the elves raised a cheer when they saw that the heights of the slope had been swept free of shadows.

But the cheers quickly faded as the dust continued to blow away. Far below, among the jumbled boulders near the base of the slope, the shadows still seethed. They crawled over jagged stones, swept through the gaps between large rocks, and once again resumed their inexorable progress up the hill. It was impossible to tell if their numbers had been thinned by the rockslide. As far as Porthios could tell, the shadows still seemed to cover the whole slope.

Still, the rocks had delayed the onslaught. Porthios sprinted around the top of the bluff, telling all of his elves of their success, encouraging them to wait until the shadows were very close. On the far side of the mountain, the attackers had crept far up the slope, and here the rocks began to fall immediately. Soon they were tumbling from all around the rim of the summit, as everywhere elves worked to loosen stones, continued to send an avalanche of granite into the unnatural shades.

For long hours, the elves battled, sweating under the merciless sun, prying loose every rock that showed any signs of instability. And when those were gone, they set to work on the more firmly footed stones, chopping with weapons, digging and scraping with swords, and working makeshift levers quickly whittled from some of the mountaintop tree trunks. They threw smaller stones by hand, even dumped clods of dirt and loose tree trunks into the creeping darkness.

But finally it was clear that the deadly shadows were not going to be stopped by any such onslaught. Each time they were bombarded, they came back more quickly than before, sweeping across the increasingly barren slope with relentless, lethal purpose. Porthios imagined that the mountain was sinking into a morass of darkness. The black outline completely masked the bottom of the slopes and rose inexorably up the sides.

Some of the shadows slithered through the ravines that led straight to the top, and the few elves with magical weapons held out valiantly but were gradually forced to fall back to prevent themselves from being surrounded and overwhelmed. Porthios ran from one position to another, stabbing and slashing with his sword, exhorting his elves to greater effort. He rushed to a place where the shadows began to creep over the crest of the bluff, chopping and hacking, surrounding himself with the horrible gurgling sounds of the creatures’ death throes. His arm was leaden with fatigue, and sweat ran unimpeded into his eyes. He knew he couldn’t last much longer.

“Look to the west!” At first the cry was voiced by a lone elven child, standing and pointing through the hazy sky.

Others took up the cry, and Porthios squinted, making out huge winged shapes soaring toward them. These were dragons, he saw immediately, and he soon discerned that their colors were green and white. The relentless approach of these ancient enemies sent a shiver of terror through his body. Groans of fear rose from the elves, who now all but collapsed underneath a wave of hopelessness. How could the gods abandon them so thoroughly?

“Fall back! Form a ring in the middle of the summit!” cried the prince. Why had he allowed Samar to leave and take his dragonlance with him? He shook away the regret, knowing it was a petty reaction and understanding that a lone lance, however bravely wielded, would have no chance of stopping a force like this, numbering at least six or eight dragons.

And now the wyrms were sweeping into an aggressive dive, swirling around to encircle the upper slopes. The tactic startled the prince, who thought the dragons would have merely swept forward in level flight. They banked along the face of the bluff, apparently ignoring the terrified elves who huddled so miserably on the crest.

Even more surprising was the target of the dragons’ attack as they dived down to sweep the slopes of the bluff with blasts of frost and gaseous breath. Icy gusts of cold roared across the rocks, leaving the granite ice-limned and slippery, sweeping away the shadows in the fury of chilly death. Clouds of green gas billowed across the mountainside, permeating through the shadows, sending the horrid darkness recoiling rapidly downward.

“They’re here to help us!” Alhana cried in delight, the first elf to vocalize the stunning truth.

And then all the elves were cheering as the chromatic dragons, clans that had been regarded as evil throughout all the ages of elven history, relentlessly attacked the lethal shades. Porthios killed a few of the shadows that moved up to escape the dragons, but most of the dark forms abandoned the attack to slip hastily, soundlessly down the mountain. Some of the shadows withered under the brutal onslaught of dragon breath, while most retreated, slipping and sliding down the slope to finally gather in the shelter of the forests clustering close around the mountain’s base.

Finally the dragons rose to circle overhead while one, a massive green, came to rest on the summit of Splintered Rock. Porthios was struck by a sense of familiarity, especially when the wyrm opened its mouth and spoke in smooth, cultured tones.

“Porthios of the elves, I am pleased that at last we meet.”

The prince tried to calm the quaking of his knees as the dragonawe swept over him. “I... we are all grateful for your assistance,” he said. “And I am surprised that you know me.”

“I came from Silvanesti. There I tried to kill you,” the dragon said, without any tone of apology or regret. “I must say, it seems a good thing that I failed.”

“I, for one, am glad,” said Alhana smoothly, stepping forward to take Porthios by the arm. “And what is the name of this dragon who has rendered us such crucial aid?”