Dave Smeds: The Schemes of Dragons

A wave of retaliatory magic struck like a hammer against his skull. Lightning sprang from every corner of the room. It hissed and snapped inches from his skin. He landed on his side. Alemar and the others were slammed back down the hallway.

Toren staggered to his knees, ignoring the lacerations on his cheek. The stench of sulphur and singed clothing smote him. He clenched the gauntlets together, hanging desperately to his spell. His snare held, barely. He crawled forward. He had to get nearer. The spell was weaker than it should have been. But the closer he got to the Dragon, the tighter he could focus his strength.

Another counterattack rocked him to the floor. Suddenly everything vanished. Fog surrounded him, a grey mist so thick he could not see his own hands. He wormed his way forward, refusing to be stopped.

"Which way?" Alemar demanded, voice weak and distant. Toren snarled, finally realizing the nature of the counterattack. He was crawling the wrong way. Alemar cast energy toward him. He seized it, supplemented it, and blocked the counterattack. The mist evaporated. He and his fellow assassins lay sprawled in the center of the foyer.

Match stared sightlessly upward, hands around his throat, face purple from suffocation. The aura of life fizzled out before Toren could attempt to break the spell.

The modhiv shuddered. The snare snapped. Crying in fear, he wove a new one, felt it settle once more on its victim.

You won't get away, he vowed. Spittle dotted his lips. He gasped and climbed to his feet, skin crawling with minuscule, flea-bite pinpricks of terror. How could Gloroc be so powerful?

Within three steps, the marble floor disappeared. He fell. Slick, cavelike walls whisked by beside him. Below loomed a floor strewn with spearlike stalagmites. He twisted, but the points were too closely placed. One of them was aimed straight for his heart.

Toren cast a screen of interference. The illusion shattered. He was once again on the floor of the corridor. He was not falling, but he was holding the tip of his drawn dagger in front of his own chest. The blade gleamed with a coating of whitish unguent. The potent odor of the dragonsbane nearly emptied his stomach.

Alemar and the others cried out. They were safe, but barely; Tregay's knife point lay only a finger width from his skin.

Sweat streamed down Toren's neck. With Alemar hot on his heels, he bolted to his feet and charged toward the great doors.

Just ahead the floor opened, and a chasm much like the previous one appeared. This time Toren could tell it was real. It was too late for him or Alemar to stop. "Jump!" Toren ordered, and leaped into the air. As their feet came down, circular disks of energy flew out from the gauntlets, providing pads to land on. Four steps took them across. Geim and Tregay loped just behind. Ebben hovered at the edge, trembling, not willing to bridge the gap.

Toren abandoned the rebel. The Dragon's maneuvers had weakened. No time to hesitate. He jammed the gauntlets against the entrance. The doors flew open.

"Look out!" Toren shouted. He dived to the side, as did the three men just behind him. A purple bolt of dragonflame shot past them. It caught Ebben standing in the foyer. He exploded.

Momentarily blinded by the brilliance, Toren instinctively brought the gauntlets up and bolstered the snare for all he was worth. A keening scream deafened them. Toren opened his eyes.

The hall stretched before him, incredibly high and long. In the center of the room a dragon writhed, caught in the center of Toren's phantom net. It beat its wings furiously against the stone floor, screeching in agony and outrage.

And on the right side, close to one of the walls, loomed a second dragon, jaws outstretched in feral hatred, eyes glittering. The edges of the snare barely contained its massive body.

"By my grandfather!" Toren cried, just as the second dragon spat. A bolt raced straight toward Toren, who threw power desperately into his ward, spreading it out to shield his surviving companions. The flame thundered off, corona dancing to the vaulted ceiling. Char rained down.

Toren's snare, despite his best efforts, collapsed to half its size. The second dragon spun. A portal suddenly popped into existence. The great serpent dived through it. An instant later the window snapped out of existence.

At long last, the power flowing through the gauntlets focussed into a single, irrepressible beam. Toren, blinking, strands of his long hair curled into wisps from the heat of the dragonflame, nearly fainted from the force of the energies. He tightened his snare. The remaining dragon screamed and sagged to the floor, pinned, thrashing weakly.

Toren stumbled forward. "Knives!" he shouted.

Alemar, Geim, and Tregay brushed past, brandishing their daggers. They hovered just out of the dragon's range. Feeble as the creature's movements were, one sweep of its tail or wings could crush them.

Toren, barely able to lift his feet off the floor, continued on until he felt the wind of the dragon's panting. It raised its forward claw a few inches and dropped it. Toren reached out and buried his fingers in the flesh of its neck. It stiffened and with a final whimper ceased all movement, save for the fluttering of its eyelids.

"Now!" Toren shouted.

Alemar plunged forward and sank his dagger to the hilt in the dragon's belly. Tregay and Geim followed through on the other side. They abandoned the weapons and darted back out of the way.

Their haste was unnecessary. The dragon did not shift. Finally it sank into a limp pile. Its head glanced off Toren's ward and came to rest at his feet.

Toren opened his hands. The web of energy coalesced and disappeared into the gauntlets. He swayed. Alemar and Geim caught him as he fell and dragged him away from his dead opponent.

Tears rolled down the modhiv's face. He had done it. He had been the correct candidate. Had there been only one dragon, Match and Ebben need not have died. He brushed the gauntlets against his bruised face. His cheeks were numb. All of him was numb.

"Two dragons," Alemar whispered.

The pounding of many boots rang in the foyer. Geim and Tregay sprinted to the great doors and slammed them shut. Toren cast a lock spell.

"That will hold them," he said, and coughed up a slug of vile phlegm. "At least until a wizard arrives."

"We've got to get out of here!" Geim said.

"Not yet," Toren said grimly. He turned to the side wall and concentrated. The portal opened.

Through the opening they saw a room much like the one in which they stood. Over a hundred men-at-arms crowded up to the opening. Four finely robed figures waited behind them, auras bright with the power of high wizards, one of them no doubt of the Ril. The escaped dragon towered at the rear of the room. One arrow-quick shake of its snout told Toren that it had completely recovered from the attack.

As soon as the window opened, the guards rushed forward. The lead row simply disappeared, out of view. The one-way nature of the portal prevented their entry. The second row halted, shaking their pikes and swords, shouting in anger.

Toren locked eyes with his giant enemy. "Gloroc," he said.

"Foul little creatures!" the Dragon hissed. "My parents were not enough for the likes of you! You have killed my sister as well! Escape if you can, but I shall find you!"

Tregay and Geim staggered backwards, caught unprepared by the waves of hate accompanying the words, which penetrated where physical substance could not. Toren let it wash over him without effect.

"I've been a fool," the modhiv murmured under his breath. Alemar stared at him quizzically.

Toren smiled wryly, realizing how artfully he had been duped. Of course Struth would want a candidate to use the gauntlets. Since Faroc and Triss had had more than one offspring, Toren's enlistment was simply a means of evening the odds.