Don Bassingthwaite - The Killing Song

Fleeing prey and pursuing predators had converged on the Gathering Light. Singe had to give the kalashtar and Adarans credit-the hall was admirably situated for defense. The walkway and ramp that led down to the sunken courtyard before the building were broad, but allowed only a single means of access, while the courtyard itself left anyone in it exposed and fighting up stairs to enter the hall.

The same features made the Gathering Light a trap. A few burly bugbears held the walkway and the top of the ramp. A handful of goblin archers perched on the roof of one of the other buildings that overlooked the courtyard, loosing arrows into the fray. At the sides of the Gathering Light, Singe spotted fighting in alleys that must have led to other exits from the buildings. The members of Biish’s gang were forcing back anyone who tried to escape. The refuge of Fan Adar had become a prison.

It was a sight to rival any the spectacle projected into the sky and far more terrible. A statue of a kalashtar woman with crystal eyes standing in the center of the courtyard was the only fixed referenced point. All around it, Adarans fought hobgoblins in a seething mass of bodies, bare fists and strange weapons against sharp swords and heavy axes. Herons darted in and out of the fighting, clawing with talons and battering with wings. The doors of the hall had been forced open and light spilled out onto the battle. A line of Adarans stood against those who tried to enter, but that line crumbled even as Singe watched. Goblins leaped across their fallen foes and sprinted inside. They didn’t get far-thin, high-pitched cries rose and faltered-but the way had been opened.

There were no kalashtar fighting. Some stood here and there in the midst of the heaving conflict, but none of them moved except when they were jostled by the combat. The Adaran humans tried to protect them. Biish’s people ignored them. The kalashtar themselves stood with their faces raised like flowers toward the sun, staring at the peaked roof of the hall’s porch.

A solitary heron perched there, acid-green eyes staring down at the scene below. The bird looked like all the others, but there was a focused intensity about it that hinted at a greater power hidden in that feathered form. It was Dah’mir.

Singe caught a glimpse of slackness entering Dandra’s face and his heart almost stopped-the protection of Ashi’s dragonmark shouldn’t have faded so quickly-but before he could even speak, she blinked and drew a shuddering breath. “I called out through kesh,” she said. “There’s nothing! Dah’mir’s presence has captured them all!”

Singe stared at Dah’mir. The heron was as still as the statue in the courtyard-he must have thrown all of his concentration into controlling the kalashtar. As long as it kept him out of combat, that didn’t seem like such a bad thing. “Don’t try to fight him!” he said. “Concentrate on stopping Biish for now!”

“Singe!” Natrac cried. “Look there!” He pointed with his knife hand and Singe looked. In a corner of the courtyard protected by the descending ramp, hobgoblins guarded a group of nearly a dozen kalashtar, fighting back any Adaran who approached. Vennet stood with them, leaping about and screaming as his cutlass slashed air and flesh indiscriminately.

The captive kalashtar were too far away for Singe to be certain, but he had a feeling that all of them carried psicrystals. They were Dah’mir’s targets, the ones the dragon had arranged all of this just to capture.

Singe’s hand tightened on his rapier. He spun around and gestured for Mithas. The coaches carrying the sorcerer and his men hovered only a short distance away. Many of the mercenaries were staring in open amazement at the battle going on below, but Mithas at least maintained a professional alertness.

“Free the side doors!” Singe shouted at him. “Evacuate any kalashtar you can. Carry them out if you have to!”

Mithas raised a fist in acknowledgment and slapped the gawking steersman of his coach. Singe turned to Natrac, Ashi, and Dandra. “Dandra, you and Natrac help defend the main doors. Ashi, you and I will break the guard on the captives.”

All three nodded in understanding. Singe looked to Rhazala. “Take us down to the court-”

A harsh shout in Goblin from below interrupted him, and an instant later, a flurry of arrows struck the belly of the coach. “They know we’re here!” said Ashi, peering over the side. “It looks like the goblin archers are waiting before they loose again- Rond betch! Singe!”

Singe looked down again-and saw that Dah’mir had turned away from the battle to face them. He moved no further but acid-green eyes seemed to flare with hatred.

Like soldiers responding to some silent drill command, the herons that had been swooping over the battle broke away. They began climbing toward the coach, wings hammering on the air. Singe glanced at Dandra. Her eyes were burning.

“I’ll take the herons,” she said tightly. “You take the archers.”

“Done.” Singe pointed at Rhazala. “Down!”

The goblin screamed something that was probably unflattering, but thrust at the steering rod all the same. The coach dropped.

The sight of the Gathering Light invaded-defiled-by Biish’s gang brought an anger out of the depths of Dandra’s spirit like nothing she had ever felt before. Maybe it was because the hall should have been a place of haven and community. Maybe it was because Dah’mir thought he could so casually seize kalashtar and bend them to his will-as the coach dropped, she saw old Shelsatori dragged unresisting through the fighting and thrust among the dragon’s other captives. Maybe it was because if they failed here, more kalashtar would experience the anguish that she and Tetkashtai, Medalashana, and Virikhad had experienced, stripped and sundered to meet an ancient evil’s ambition.

That wasn’t going to happen.

The droning chorus of the whitefire rose around her, a throbbing counterpoint to the arcane words of the spell that Singe wove. She gathered her will and the psionic power coalesced in a hot shimmer around her hand. For a heartbeat, she waited as the distance between the climbing herons and the dropping coach closed-then she screamed her rage, thrust her hand forward, and released the fire.

Pale flame roared from her palm in a gout that lit up the night. Caught in the blazing cone, the herons screeched as the whitefire consumed them. They fell out of the sky like balls of burning pitch, greasy feathers trailing stinking smoke. New shouts broke out below as the burning remains fell into the fight in the courtyard. Vennet’s voice rose above them all. “No! No! Storm at dawn, no!”

Dandra ignored him.

One of the foul birds had survived and kept climbing even as the flames ate at it. She fell back a short step as it surged up over the side of the coach and plunged toward her face with talons flailing.

The thin blade of a rapier thrust past her and sheared through the bird’s scrawny neck. The heron dropped away, following the rest of Dah’mir’s unnatural flock into death. Dandra swung around to look at Singe. Beyond him, she caught a glimpse of four dead archers with the marks of fiery magic smoldering in their chests as the coach dropped past the roof line. The wizard’s eyes met hers with a fierce passion, though his words remained focused on the situation at hand.

“Clear us a place to land?” he asked.

She gave him a brief smile-then swung back to the side of the coach and vaulted over it into the night.

Rhazala’s gasp followed her, but it took Dandra only a thought to draw the fabric of space around herself and slow her descent. She fell like a cat into the battle below, screaming as she dropped. “Adar! Adar! Bhintava adarani!”