R. Salvatore - If Ever They Happened Upon My Lair

Zhengyi didn’t offer them the courtesy of a quick death. He cast another spell and magically departed with his prize taken and his victory complete, leaving them to their slow, painful deaths.

“You thought you had won those months ago when you defeated the force that had slipped behind you into Vaasa,” Byphast scolded Zhengyi on a cold Damaran winter morning.

“I won the day, indeed,” the Witch-King replied, and he looked up from the great tome on his desk to regard the dragon in elf form.

“My kin are fleeing you,” Byphast went on. “Lord Dragonsbane is a foe we will not face again. The allies arrayed against you are more formidable than you believed.”

“But they are mortal,” Zhengyi corrected. “And soon enough they will grow feeble with age and will wither and die.”

“You believed your kingdom secured,” the dragon countered.

Zhengyi had to refrain from laughing at her, so shaken did she seem by his calm demeanor. For her observations were correct; it was indeed all crumbling around him, and he knew that well. Gareth Dragonsbane could quite possibly win the day in Damara, and in that event the paladin would, at the very least, drive Zhengyi into hiding in a dark hole in Vaasa.

“It amuses me to see a dragon so fretful and obsessed with the near future,” he replied to her.

“Your plan will fail!”

“My plan will sleep. Cannot a dragon, a creature who might raze a town and retire comfortably in her lair for a century or more, understand the concept of patience? You disappoint me, Byphast. Do you not understand that while our enemies are mortal, I am not? And neither are you,” he reminded her, nodding to the shelf beside his desk where several gemstone dragon skulls sat waiting for the spirits of their attuned wyrms.

“My power comes not from my physical form,” the Witch-King continued, “but from the blackness that resides in the hearts of all men.”

He slipped his hands under the covers of the great tome and lifted it just a bit, just enough for Byphast to note the black binding engraved with brands of dragons-rearing dragons, sitting dragons, sleeping dragons, fighting dragons. Zhengyi eased the book back down, reached into his belt pouch, and produced a glowing dragon skull gem.

“Urshula the black,” Byphast remarked.

Zhengyi placed the skull against the center of the opened tome and whispered a few arcane words as he pressed down upon it.

The skull sank into the pages, disappearing within the depths of the tome.

Byphast sucked in her breath and stared hard at the Witch-King.

“If I do not win now, I win later,” Zhengyi explained. “With my allies beside me. Some foolish human, elf, or other mortal creature will find this tome and will seek the power contained within. In so doing he will unleash Urshula in his greater form.”

Zhengyi paused and glanced behind him, drawing Byphast’s gaze to a huge bookcase full of similar books.

“His greed, his frailty, his secret desire-nay, desperation-to grasp this great treasure that only I can offer him, will perpetuate my grand schemes, whatever the outcome of the coming battles on the fields of Damara.”

“So confident.…” Byphast said with a shake of her head and a smile that came from pity.

“Do you seek to sever your bond with the phylactery?” Zhengyi asked. “Do you wish to abandon this gift of immortality that I have offered you?”

Byphast’s smile withered.

“I thought not,” said Zhengyi. He closed the great book and lifted it into place on the shelf behind him. “My power is as eternal as a reasoning being’s fear of death, Byphast. Thus, I am eternal.” He glanced back at the newly finished tome. “Urshula was defeated in his lair, slain by the knights of the Bloodstone Army. But that only made him stronger, as King Gareth, or his descendants, will one day learn.”

Byphast stood very still for some time, soaking it all in. “I will not continue the fight,” she decided. “I will return to the Great Glacier and my distant home.”

Zhengyi shrugged as if it did not matter-and at that time, it really did not.

“But you will not sever your bond with the phylactery,” he noted.

Byphast stiffened and squared her jaw. “I will live another thousand years,” she declared.

But Zhengyi only smiled and said, “So be it. I am patient.”