Richard Byers - The Spectral Blaze

Then the dragons hurtled into view.

Being wyrms, they unquestionably perceived the foes gliding and wheeling in front of them. But if Oraxes’s enchantments were working as promised, the dragons didn’t see as many griffon riders as were actually there. They registered only a handful and were experiencing a subtle psychic pressure to disregard those and look elsewhere for a more significant threat.

The illusion would hold for only a breath or two. But that was time enough for a first barrage of arrows and spells. Hurtling forward on Jet, his blue eyes glowing in the gloom, Aoth hurled a dazzling thunderbolt from his spear. Gaedynn nocked and loosed shafts fast as the eye could follow. Jhesrhi brandished her staff, and fire leaped from the top to lash a sapphire dragon across the eye. The creature screamed and she and her weapon laughed together.

Even though fire magic was likely to prove useless against him, she’d wanted to engage Tchazzar. She felt he was her responsibility. But it had been impossible to predict exactly where he’d appear, and chance had put them on opposite sides of the fight for the moment.

Her eagle plunged past the sapphire wyrm’s head and along its neck, and she seared it with another burst of flame. It swatted at her with an enormous wing, but her mount swooped safely under the stroke and, with a sweep of its own pinions, bobbed up again.

Elsewhere, her comrades were likewise streaking by dragons before the creatures could turn and retaliate. The defense worked because the colossal reptiles weren’t as nimble in flight as a griffon or a spirit of the wind.

From then on, the fight would be tougher. But as the eagle wheeled, Jhesrhi insisted to herself that it wouldn’t be any worse than the worst of Thay. Then her steed vanished beneath her, and she plummeted toward the rooftops below.

She tried to speak a word to slow her fall, and darts of amber light stabbed into her body. The jolt of pain made her botch the spell.

But fortunately the entity that had been the eagle shook off its own distress. Although it didn’t resume the form she’d given it, it managed a screaming invisible updraft that arrested her fall just short of someone’s chimney.

Bobbing like a cork in a brook, she looked around for her attacker or, as it turned out, attackers. A skinny, wrinkled, bent old woman and a bearded young man with a wart at the corner of his eye were perched on a rooftop a stone’s throw away. Jhesrhi winced because she recognized them both. She’d met them the night Aoth had convened a meeting of Luthcheq’s mages and on several occasions since.

“You’re fighting on the wrong side!” Jhesrhi called, voice grating with the lingering ache in her chest.

“No,” the elderly sorceress quavered. “Tchazzar set us free, and you’re betraying him.”

“It isn’t like that,” Jhesrhi said. “But if you won’t fight on the right side, just go away. Don’t make me hurt you.”

Instead of answering, the old woman gripped her staff with both hands and raised it over her head. Tears of blood slid from her eyes, and suddenly it made Jhesrhi feel dizzy and sick to her stomach to look at her. Meanwhile, the male wizard held a doll of jointed wood up to his face and whispered in its painted ear. Ghostly imps like deformed fetuses flitted and flickered around him, half-visible one instant, gone the next.

Jhesrhi could tell both her foes were casting lethal magic. And they’d started first. But neither of them was a battle wizard. Pointing her staff, she rattled off words of power, twice as fast as their author had intended but still with the proper rhythm and intonation, and she was the one who finished first. The resulting blast of fire tore her foes apart, along with much of the roof beneath them.

She sighed and, tainting her own true emotions, the staff’s excitement only made her sorrow worse. But she thrust regret aside and, whispering rhymes in one of the languages of Sky Home, set about helping her mount return to avian form.

Pain ripped through Gaedynn’s head, and parts of his visual field shattered into a distorted patchwork like stones in a mosaic. He cried out, then, focusing his will despite the pounding anguish, he pushed the psychic intrusion out of his skull as Aoth and Jhesrhi had taught him. The headache subsided, and his sight returned to normal.

“My turn,” he gritted to the sapphire dragon sweeping along beneath him and Eider. He had little doubt that it was the foe who’d attacked him. Together with a number of other griffon riders, he’d been doing his best to bring it down, and by all accounts, gem wyrms possessed exotic psychic abilities.

He loosed an arrow, and it plunged deep into the muscle at the base of the dragon’s right wing. The creature convulsed and, with its wings no longer outstretched to catch the air, plummeted.

Gaedynn grinned as it smashed down on top of a house and plunged on through the roof. But satisfaction turned to disgust when it emerged from the newly ruined structure by shoving through a wall.

The fall had plainly hurt it. Its left wing was torn and crumpled, and one bull-like, forward-curving horn had broken off short. But it still looked able and willing to fight.

Indeed, it had even found itself some allies. Gaedynn had been too busy shooting and dodging dragons to register much of what was happening on the ground. But he saw that by wretched luck, the creature had fallen right in front of a company of Tchazzar’s soldiers circling to threaten the Brotherhood and its allies on their right flank. Like sensible folk, the common warriors balked at the violent and unexpected advent of such a huge, fearsome creature. But they had a couple of wyrmkeepers with them, and the priests hurried forward to palaver with the dragon. No doubt, since it could no longer fly, they were urging it to join the fight on the ground.

If it did, the results could be devastating. Seeking a way for his earthbound comrades to withstand such an attack, Gaedynn looked around and found the genasi, fairly close at hand but standing idle. Despite Tchazzar’s threats, no one had attacked them yet, so they hadn’t abandoned hope of avoiding battle.

Guiding Eider with his knees, Gaedynn sent her streaking over his embattled allies, then plunged her down behind some of Brotherhood’s own archers. Startled, the nearest bowmen recoiled. Then three sellswords started jabbering at him at once.

Ignoring them, he cast around and found Son-liin. “Come here!” he called, shouting to make himself heard above the roaring, pounding clamor of battle. “Mount up behind me!” She scurried to obey. “Where are the mages?”

The stormsoul pointed. “That way.”

Gaedynn sent Eider bounding in that direction, and mercenaries scrambled out of the way. The young wizards gaped at him.

“Before,” Gaedynn said, “you made the riders in the air seem fewer than we were. Now Son-liin and I have to seem like more than we are.”

Oraxes frowned. “Well, if I-”

“Don’t explain it!” Gaedynn snapped. “Do it! Now!” Sweeping his left hand in a serpentine fashion, Oraxes murmured too softly for Gaedynn to make out the words. But perhaps Meralaine could, somehow, because she joined in at the end.

As soon as they finished, Gaedynn sent Eider leaping back into the air. “Now,” he said to the girl mounted behind him, “I need you to be the genasi-est genasi anybody ever saw, with sparks flying everywhere. The foe has to see what you are despite the dark.”

“All right,” she said. “But what are we doing?”

“Killing a dragon,” he said. “Well, just hurting it, probably. But do your best.”

He wheeled Eider over the Akanulan formation. A few of the genasi sensed them passing and looked up.