Коллектив авторов - Realms of the Dragons vol.1

He dashed out of the narrow space between one outbuilding and the next and on through another door.

Vercevoran had caught up with him, so he couldn't run around in the open anymore. His only chance was to take cover in enclosed spaces, slipping from one to the next before the dragon crashed in on him.

Time after time, a collapsing wall or roof nearly battered him and buried him in rubble. Again and again, he only escaped a storeroom, carpenter's workshop, or kitchen in the last second before the drake burst in. Meanwhile, he was grimly aware he was running short of outbuildings.

He scrambled out a window. To his left, Vercevoran roared. The noise had a different timbre than before. Something about it made Will pause in his frantic scuttling and try to determine what was going on.

His head and forelegs inside, wings, hindquarters, and lashing tail outside, Vercevoran had jammed in the doorway of the armory his quarry had vacated mere moments before. In a matter of seconds, the wall surrounding the opening would crumble and liberate the wyrm. But for the moment he was stuck.

Will stared at the creature's flank, — at the vulnerable point so temptingly exposed, the thin spot in the scaly hide with the pulsing heart behind. If he advanced quickly but silently, he had a fair chance of landing a mortal blow.

He glided forward, then, recalling what Pavel had said, he hesitated. The Zhents had enslaved Vercevoran. He wasn't responsible for his actions.

He spat. To the Abyss with Pavel's squeamishness. Will needed to kill the dragon or Vercevoran would kill him, simple as that. He skulked onward.

Too late. The wall shattered, and Vercevoran rounded on him.

Will spun around to flee, but his legs wouldn't run. They tangled, and as he fell, he realized a psychic assault had paralyzed him.

A great weight pressed him down into the mud. Vercevoran had his forefoot on him, and for a moment it seemed the reptile simply intended to crush him. Then, however, the dragon gripped him in his talons and lifted him toward his jaws.

Pavel planted both feet on the cerebrilith's breast, exerting every bit of his dwindling strength, and braced his legs to keep the tanar'ri from dragging him to its fangs.

The cerebrilith raked at his head with its other hand. He jerked up his free arm, and the creature's claws tore it from wrist to elbow. It was better than if they'd ripped his face away.

Still, it was only a matter of time before the demon, its blindness and the trauma of its various wounds notwithstanding, landed a crippling or lethal attack. With his weapon hand locked in his opponent's grasp, Pavel needed another way to strike at it, and the knife in his belt wouldn't serve. Since it bore no enchantments, it wouldn't pierce a tanar'ri's flesh.

He started gasping out an incantation, yanked the sun amulet from around his neck, and swept it through the initial pass. The cerebrilith snatched to stop him. Somehow Pavel managed both to avoid its groping talons and complete the figure properly as well. Golden light pulsed from the pendant.

He had to drop the amulet to receive the second luminous mace materializing inside his bloody fingers. He used it to beat at the demon's head, while the flying weapon he'd conjured previously continued to hammer its spine.

The demon collapsed and sprawled motionless, acrid fluids leaking from its wounds. Pavel didn't know which weapon had struck the, mortal blow, nor did he care. He pried his wrist from the tanar'ri's death grip.

The effort made his head swim. He was in danger of passing out. He wheezed a prayer that drew Lathander's warm, healing radiance into his body. He felt steadier, though still weary, weak, and sore. It would have to do, because he lacked the time for anything more. Will needed him.

Pavel scrutinized the glyphs on the floor. When he thought he understood them, how they interconnected and how to disassociate them, he croaked out the incantation and lashed his amulet through the proper pass.

To no effect. He could feel that nothing changed.

Perhaps that was because he didn't fully understand the bindings, but he wasn't going to comprehend them any better, not without hours of study. He simply had to try again with his final counterspell.

He drew a deep breath and declaimed the incantation with all the precision and force of will he could muster. A sweet and intricate harmonic, like a note sustained by a choir, sang through the hall. The painted words and symbols burst into flame, and the lights in the orbs atop the tripods guttered out.

Vercevoran stumbled. Helpless in the drake's grip, Will certainly hadn't done anything to cause it. Could it be that Pavel had finally set the reptile free?

Evidently so. Will had no extraordinary facility for reading what passed for a dragon's facial expressions, but still, as Vercevoran hissed and shook his head, he could see something-intelligence, maybe, or self-awareness-returning. It showed in the set of the wyrm's jaw, the flare of his nostrils, and the narrowing of his lambent eyes.

Then those eyes blazed. Vercevoran lashed his wings, a snap like a thousand whips cracking at once, and gave a prodigious roar.

Wonderful, thought Will, he's got the Rage, and he's still going to eat me. Pavel, you jackass.

But Vercevoran didn't pop him into his mouth. Instead, the dragon wheeled toward the Zhents the halfling hadn't even noticed until just then. The chaos following on Will and Pavel's intrusion had caught them by surprise, but the officers had managed to rally the men-at-arms to sort the situation out. The reavers stood in formation, facing the wyrm, but thus far, not attacking. They were hoping they didn't need to, that Vercevoran was still under the cerebrilith's control.

The dragon dashed that hope by setting Will down, then launching himself at his erstwhile masters. He hadn't fallen into frenzy after all, but that didn't keep him from hating those who'd presumed to bind him.

Will stood back and watched the slaughter. It only took a minute or so. Then the wyrm leaped up and flew away into the night.

Pavel reckoned he and Will had found the archives Sammaster had visited Hulburg to consult, records not scribed on paper but graven in stone. Dimly lit by the shafts of golden sunlight spilling through the doorway and the cracks in the roof, the cavernous temple of Oghma, god of knowledge, had endless lines of words and pictographs chiseled from floor to lofty ceiling on the white marble walls.

Pavel tried to feel excited, but perhaps because his half-healed wounds still ached, simply couldn't manage it. It was going to take days, maybe tendays, to decipher all that lore and determine which parts pertained to the frenzy, if, in fact, any of it did. It was time the search could ill afford.

"What's wrong?" asked Will.

Evidently Pavel had let his demoralizing reflections show in his expression.

"Nothing," said the priest, trying to shake off defeatism. "Let's each take a wall. You'll find a lot you can't read, but just look for anything pertaining to dragons."

"What is it exactly you wish to learn?" asked a cold bass voice.

Startled, the hunters jerked around to behold a tall, thin figure clad in shades of jade and olive. The slanted eyes in the hairless, ascetic face were likewise a blank and luminous green. Vercevoran had assumed an approximation of human form to fit inside the temple.

"Brandobaris's dirk!" Will swore. "Don't sneak up on a fellow like that!"

"What is it you seek?" Vercevoran persisted.

"Information on the Rage," said Pavel. "We're trying to determine how to stop it."

"Then you're fools," the dragon said. "Nothing can stop it. Yet I owe you a debt for freeing me, so if you wish, I'll help you."

The transformed reptile stalked through the temple, scarcely breaking stride to gaze at the various sections of wall. Pavel wondered if Vercevoran could actually be perusing all that information so quickly.