Troy Denning - The Siege

"On occasion," Galaeron said. "The Tomb Guard had an arrangement with several young blues."

Instead of asking about the arrangement, Ruha nodded and started across the plain after Aris. "Then we must hurry."

Galaeron caught her shoulder and pointed toward a fan of alluvial gravel spilling out of the foothills that separated the Saiyaddar from the parched slopes of the Scimitar Spires.

"We stand a better chance hiding," he said. "A young dragon will be arrogant in its approach, and we can take it by surprise." "You would use your friend as bait?"

"He's the one who scared up the birds." Galaeron's tone was defensive. "I'm just trying to keep us all alive."

Ruha considered this, then started along the edge of the plain. "Your plan makes sense-though it would be better if he had been given the chance to volunteer." "He volunteered when he let his thirst put us in danger," Galaeron said, joining her.

"Perhaps so," Ruha said, "but had you taken his water-skins from the flying disk instead of your shadow blanket, his thirst would not be so great."

Galaeron's only reply was an angry scowl. They were only about halfway to the gravel fan when the birds suddenly began to flee southward. Ruha pulled Galaeron into a bramble thicket and crouched on her haunches, pulling a clump of thorny stalks over their heads so they would be concealed from the air. Aris did not seem to realize anything was wrong for another dozen steps, when he noticed the fleeing birds and stopped to turn around. He spent several moments searching the plain behind him, calling out to Galaeron before finally raising his gaze skyward and looking north toward the oasis where they had seen the dragon.

Though Galaeron was hiding close to five hundred paces away, he was close enough to see the giant's jaw fall and his shoulders sag. Aris spent another moment searching the plain behind him, then, still carrying the heavy shadow blanket, turned and ran for the foothills, angling toward a narrow gully not far from where Galaeron and Ruha were hiding. "Good," Galaeron whispered.

He began to fashion a tiny stick figure out of shadow-silk. Ruha looked to the sky. It was only a moment before she nudged Galaeron and the cross-shaped shadow of a small dragon began to sweep across the Saiyaddar. Galaeron finished his effigy, then pointed it at Aris and uttered an incantation. A circle of shadows appeared around the giant. One after the other, they peeled themselves off the ground and assumed Aris's form, then fanned out in a dozen different directions.

An angry cackle sounded from the sky, then the dragon swooped into view, its blue scales flashing like sapphires in the dusky light. It leveled off a dozen feet from the ground and, starting at one end of the fleeing replicas, opened its mouth and loosed a huge bolt of lightning that stretched in front of three of the fleeing shadow giants.

Lacking any wits of their own, the images continued straight into the bolt and vanished from sight.

"This is a smart one," Ruha whispered, pulling a small flint and steel from her aba, "and it wants us alive."

"It wants me alive," Galaeron corrected. "Don't overestimate your value-or Aris's-to the Shadovar."

The dragon breathed again, spraying another bolt of lightning in front of four more running giants. This time, they stopped and fled in the opposite direction. The dragon wheeled on a wing tip and extended its claws, slashing through two illusionary giants on its first pass. The dragon pulled up less than fifty paces from them, exposing its thin belly scales as it wheeled around to snatch up the fleeing giant Ruha started to rise from their hiding place, pointing the flint and steel at the dragon's abdomen to cast what Galaeron knew would be a fire storm. "Not yet!" Galaeron hissed.

He caught her arm and pulled her back down, then pointed his effigy at a figure he knew to be a false Aris. He whispered the same spell, and a circle of shadows appeared around each of the remaining giants on the plain. They began to rise by the dozen and flee in every direction. The dragon roared in frustration and blasted the nearest circle with its third and final lightning bolt.

By unlucky chance, his target proved to be the correct one. Aris bellowed in pain and went down on his face, then the dragon was on him, pinning him to the ground with a huge claw and hissing something angry that Galaeron could not quite hear from so far away. "Coward!" Ruha hissed, throwing off the brambles. "You should have let me attack when we had a shot at his belly!"

She started across the plain at a run, pointing her fingers at the huge dragon. Blood boiling at her insult, Galaeron started after her-then stopped as she poured a volley of golden bolts into the wyrm's flank. The resulting blast sent a fountain of blue scales spraying into the air, along with a fair amount of draconian blood and flesh.

The dragon roared and brought its huge head around-only to receive another volley of the witch's golden bolts in the snout. This time, the eruption sent a nostril, two horns, and one slit-pupiled eye tumbling away over its shoulder. As surprised by Ruha's power as was Galaeron, the creature spread its great wings and launched itself into the air.

It was clutching Aris and the shadow blanket in its massive claws.

Ruha switched to her flint and steel, crying out a Bedine fire spell and striking sparks into the air. A long line of tiny meteors streaked into the air, taking the dragon in the right wing and burning several dozen melon-sized holes through the leathery skin. The creature pitched right and plummeted a hundred feet toward the foothills, then leveled off and began to fly for freedom-still clutching Aris and the shadow blanket.

Galaeron was not going to let it escape with his shadow blanket. He fashioned a strand of shadowsilk into a noose, then uttered a long string of magic syllables and flicked the loop after the fleeing dragon. The filament stretched to nearly half a mile in length, allowing Galaeron just enough time to slip his end of the line under his foot before the noose expanded to the size of a wagon wheel and flipped itself up to slip over the dragon's head.

A version of a Tomb Guard enchantment used to capture fleeing crypt breakers, the spell worked even better with shadowsilk than with elven thread. As soon as the dragon hit the end of the line, the noose closed and the filament contracted to a small fraction of its previous length, both cutting off the wyrm's air supply and jerking it around to crash down within a few dozen paces of Galaeron.

The stunned wyrm impacted face first, then lay in a crumpled, convulsing heap as it clawed in vain at the magic line. Keeping his foot on his end of the line to keep the noose tight, Galaeron leveled his palm at its already mangled head and drilled a hole through its skull with a single shadow bolt. His body was filled with so much shadow magic that it was almost numb, but he didn't mind at all. The cold felt good.

Ruha came to his side and paused as though to say something, then thought better of it and went to the dragon's head. "Dead," she confirmed. "Good."

Galaeron stepped off the magic line, which vanished as soon his foot lost contact with it, and started forward as Ruha crawled over the wyrm's neck to its underside. "And my blanket?" he asked. "Still in one piece?"

Ruha snapped her head around to glare at him. "Yes, the blanket is still in one piece." She dropped out of sight behind the dragon, then added, "Which is more than I can say for your friend." "Aris?" Galaeron broke into a run. "He's hurt?"

"Yes, and badly." Ruha peered over the wyrm's back, then said, "That is what happens when you use someone for dragon bait."

Galaeron reached the dragon's back and clambered over to find Aris trapped beneath the wyrm's body. There were four talon punctures in his chest and one arm was twisted around behind him at an impossible angle. The giant's gray eyes were barely open, and when they fell on Galaeron's face, they looked away.