Paul Kemp - Shadowstorm

"They're still coming, lads! Ready now!"

Two lightning bolts shot through the breached wall and cut a swath through the Selgauntan ranks. Dozens of men fell, their bodies smoking. Other men stepped forward to fill the holes in the ranks.

Drums, trumpets, and a roar like an onrushing tide sounded as the Saerloonian army charged through the wall. They poured through the debris, blades high, standards flying.

"Fire!" Rorsin shouted, and a few hundred crossbow bolts winged into the Saerloonian army. Scores of men fell dead and their comrades trampled their corpses as they charged.

The men of Selgaunt met the charge with steel and sword. Metal crashed on metal. Men shouted, screamed, killed, and died. Bolts of magical energy flashed here and there on the battlefield as each side's wizards made their presence felt.

Above the plains the Shadovar city hovered. The flying creatures and their riders did not descend.

"Why are they waiting?" Tamlin shouted to Variance. "We need them now!"

The Saerloonian forces outnumbered his forces three or four to one.

"The Nightseer's purposes are his own," she answered. "They will come."

The Saerloonian forces surged forward. Blades rose and fell. The Selgauntan line buckled, broke in places. Saerloonians rushed through the openings. Selgaunt's men were crumbling as surely as the city's walls. The Saerloonians were too many.

Tamlin snarled, spotted a Saerloonian war mage hovering above the combat. The mage pointed a metal rod at Rorsin and the archers, and a cloud of black gas formed around them. Men fell to their knees, clutching their throats, dying. Others vomited and tried to stagger free.

"Counter that," Tamlin ordered Variance, and intoned the words to his own spell. When he finished, he put his fists together and a ray of white-hot energy streaked from him. It struck the Saerloonian mage in the face and neck as the man aimed his wand at another cluster of Selgauntan soldiers. The man pawed at his melting face, screaming, then fell out of the air, dead.

Meanwhile, Variance pointed her holy symbol at the killing black vapors and intoned a prayer to Shar. The power of her counterspell prevailed and the vapors dissipated.

Tamlin eyed Variance with envious eyes. "Shar is generous with the power she grants her faithful."

Variance threw up her faceguard and pointed to the sky.

"The Nightseer is returned. Only now will you see the true power that Shar grants."

Tamlin looked into the sky. Rivalen was streaking toward the walls, the shadows about him churning, giving him the appearance of an approaching storm.

Furlinastis circled over the fog cloud, the tips of his huge wings brushing the treetops with each downbeat. He scanned the swamp nearby.

Cale knew he could not hide from the dragon for long, so he did not try. He stepped out from the shadows, showed himself, and intoned the words to a spell.

The dragon heard him and roared. Beating his wings with enough force to strip nearby trees of leaves, Furlinastis wheeled around and streaked toward Cale, mouth open, eyes hard.

Cale held his ground, pronounced the final word to his spell, and pointed his finger at a point ahead of the dragon. Where he pointed, a towering wall of translucent silver energy flashed into existence. The dragon's flight carried it into the wall head first and stopped it dead. The weight of the dragon's own momentum smashed it in a heap against the barrier and the impact sounded like a hundred war drums. The magical wall flared, buckled, and dissipated, but it had done its work. The dragon could do nothing but futilely flap its wings as it fell into the swamp and sent up a spray of foul water.

Cale wasted no time. He shadowstepped to the space near the wing joint on the dragon's back. The shadows that shrouded the dragon tugged at him.

The dragon is not at fault, First of Five, a voice in the shadows said to him.

Cale ignored it and said to Riven and Magadon, Now! And bring light, Mags. Everything you have.

He reversed his grip on his blade and drove Weaveshear through scales and deep into the dragon's wing joint. Black blood spurted around the blade. Furlinastis would not fly again soon.

The dragon roared and bucked, whirled its neck around to snap at Cale, but Cale dived from its back and rode the shadows away before the jaws could reach him.

He materialized in knee-deep water a long dagger's throw from the creature's flank. Magadon and Riven appeared before the dragon. A blazing ball of white light burned above Magadon's head and the mindmage's arrow, already nocked and drawn, glowed a brilliant crimson. Riven stood beside him, as tall as an ogre.

The dragon did not hesitate. It roared and expelled a cloud of deadly breath. The life-draining shadows engulfed Riven and Magadon but Cale's protective spells still warded his companions. They bounded out of the cloud, coughing but alive, Magadon's light still burning.

The mindmage stopped to fire his bow, and his charged arrow pierced the dragon's scales as if they were cloth. The missile hit the creature in the throat and sank to the fletching. Another followed, another. The dragon beat its wings, hissed in pain.

Riven sped forward, his magically enlarged sabers bleeding shadows. Furlinastis lashed out with a claw. Riven parried with one saber while he slashed at the dragon's exposed leg with the other. The blade ripped through scales, sliced tendon, and sent up a spray of blood.

The dragon reared back and spat a short couplet of arcane words. Instantly the mud around Cale's feet began to harden into rock. From their exclamation of surprise, he guessed the same thing was happening to Riven and Magadon. They would all be immobilized.

Cale responded instinctively and shadowstepped out of the mud and into the branches of a large tree. He saw Riven stick both his sabers in the hardening ground and do a handstand on their hilts to get his feet free of the mud until it hardened fully into rock. Magadon tried to pull himself free but was stuck fast.

Riven flipped to his feet and rushed forward on the hard earth, blades spinning. He leaped and parried a pair of claw attacks, got in close, and slashed twin gashes in the dragon's face when it darted its head down and tried to snap him in half. Furlinastis hissed, spun his body ninety degrees, and cracked his tail, as thick as an old oak, at Riven. It hit the assassin squarely in the side. The impact blew Riven's breath from his lungs and sent him careening into the water.

The dragon roared, lunged forward as if to finish Riven, and Cale struck. He chose a dark spot in the crook of the dragon's back where his long neck met his chest. Shadowstepping, he put his hands on the creature's scales and cast a spell that poured baleful energy into the dragon.

Scales cracked and blood seeped through the fissures. The dragon roared, spun around, and the abrupt motion sent Cale flying. Before he could interpose his blade, the dragon's jaws snapped closed on his thigh and jerked him into the air.

Cale screamed as the dragon shook him. His regenerative flesh could not keep up with the injuries and he felt his leg tearing away.

Magadon's calm but strained voice carried over the battlefield. "Give in to it," he said, and Cale did not know to whom or what Magadon was speaking.

Cale, upside down in the dragon's jaws, caught a glimpse of the mindmage. An ochre light haloed his entire body, and the veins in his brow, face, and bared arms stood out like latticework. The same ochre light formed around Furlinastis's head. The dragon's eyes-normally as black as onyx-turned as white as Magadon's.

The dragon dropped Cale and he hit the swamp in a heap. Adrenaline and his shadow flesh allowed him to endure the pain, and he leaned on his sword to climb to his feet.