Anthology: The Realms of the Elves

The wyrm had attacked by surprise, in the middle of the night. Rhespen estimated that it had slaughtered half his men. Others, terrified, had scattered and were lost to him. He'd somehow managed to keep the rest together and to retreat with them under the cover of a conjured darkness and other sleights intended to hinder pursuit.

But he was certain that wasn't the end of it. The green would surely track them, and likely find them before the sun climbed into the sky.

He raked his fingers through his hair, struggling to devise a plan, then said, "We have to assume that for some reason, His Majesty didn't hear my call, which means we need to look after ourselves. Divide the men into four groups. Have them he down and bury themselves in the snow there, there, there, and there." He pointed to indicate the proper spots.

Serdel frowned. "Do you think that will fool a drake, Milord?"

"Not by itself, but it's a start. Now move! The wyrm could appear at any moment."

As soon as the men-at-arms covered themselves over, Rhespen summoned several whirlwinds to smooth away the telltale signs of their burrowing. When the spirits of the air completed their work, only the footprints the soldiers had left prior to their division into the four squads remained.

He then conjured the illusion of fifty frightened warriors scurrying along, fast as the snowdrifts and their exhaustion would allow, at the terminus of the trail. Because the insubstantial phantoms couldn't make new tracks, the display had to remain more or less stationary, with the individual figures stepping in place, but he hoped that wouldn't be a problem. Dragons flew so fast that the green might well spot and overtake the illusion before it noticed the column wasn't making any forward progress.

The object was to give the reptile safe targets on which to waste its magic and poisonous breath. Though adult, it wasn't as huge and ancient as, say, Orchtrien, which meant it didn't command as many spells, and that its lethal spew took longer to renew itself after repeated discharge. It had already been profligate in its use of those resources during the initial attack. If Rhespen could trick it into exhausting the rest He smiled bitterly. Why, in that case, it would still be a wyrm, the most fearsome creature in the world, a behemoth quick and nimble as a cat, with scales as protective as plate, and claws and fangs capable of obliterating any lesser being with a single slash. Dragons sometimes killed each other, but it was preposterous to imagine that elves and men could do it.

Still, better to try than die a coward.

He summoned a spirit of earth and bade it lie quiet inside a patch of soil near his illusion, took up a position behind a gnarled, leafless birch, and shrouded himself in invisibility. After that, there was nothing to do but wait. He wondered how Winterflower fared, and if she would ever learn how he'd met his end.

Then the green came hurtling out of the north.

Its eyes glowed yellow, it appeared more charcoal-colored than green in the wan dawn-light, and hornlets jutted like warts from its brow and chin. A drake's senses were so sharp that it was by no means certain that either the warriors' covering of snow or Rhespen's own masking spell would keep it from detecting them, and he held his breath until the creature's headlong trajectory made it clear that it was intent only on the illusion.

He made the phantom warriors shriek and cringe, and when the reptile swept over them and spat its fumes, collapse as if the lungs had rotted in their chests. The green wheeled, snarled words of power, and tendrils of filthy-looking vapor oozed into existence among the figures on the ground. Rhespen commanded more of his puppets to stumble and drop.

But not all of them. He "had to leave the green something to attack with tooth and talon, a reason to plunge to earth, and he needed the cursed reptile to do it soon, before it perceived the true nature of the targets he'd conjured to befuddle it.

It dived. It slammed down with a ground-shaking impact that would have pulverized any genuine creatures of flesh and bone caught underneath. It clawed and bit at several more of Rhespen's phantasms, at which point it unquestionably discerned their lack of substance.

He shifted the focus of his concentration to the waiting elemental, and the spirit exploded up out of the ground. A massive, almost shapeless thing compounded of rock and mud, it possessed an eyeless, featureless lump of a head, and long, flexible arms like enormous snakes with three-fingered hands at the ends. Its lower body was just a legless, undifferentiated mass linking it to the earth, but that didn't constrain its mobility. It could slide wherever it wished like a wave flowing on the surface of the sea.

It rushed the surprised green, seized hold of one of its batlike wings, and tore and twisted it, just as Rhespen had instructed. He knew his agent, mighty though it was, was no match for the dragon. But if it could deprive the green of its ability to fly before it perished, that would eliminate another of the reptile's advantages.

The green tried to wrench its wing up and out of the elementaPs hands, but the spirit of earth maintained its hold. The drake contorted itself to bring its foreclaws and fangs to bear. It ripped chunks of its attacker's substance away.

Rhespen decided he needed to help his servant. He declaimed a spell and swept his staff in a mystic pass. A mass of snow rose from the ground, congealed into a long, glittering icicle, and flew at the green.

The spear of ice pierced the base of its neck, and the shock of the injury made it stiffen and falter in its attack. The elemental, or what was left of it, heaved on the wyrm's now-tattered wing, and bone snapped. A jagged stump of it jabbed outward through the reptile's hide.

The green tore the elemental to inert clods and stones with a final rake of its talons. Then, hissing in fury, crippled pinion drooping and dragging, it rounded on Rhespen, who'd relinquished his invisibility by flinging the frozen lance.

He should have been terrified, but he realized with a pang of surprise that he wasn't. Rather, relished the success of his tricks and the green's resulting discomfiture. Perhaps the prospect of his imminent demise had unhinged his reason.

The wyrm lifted its head and cocked it back. Its neck and chest swelled repeatedly, pumping like a bellows. A foul scent suffused the air, stinging Rhespen's eyes. Evidently the creature believed it could muster one more blast of venom.

Rhespen snatched a little cube of granite from one of his pockets, brandished it, and rattled off an intricate rhyme. The green's head shot forward, its jaws gaped, and at that instant, he declaimed the final syllable of his incantation. A plug of stone appeared in the back of the dragon's mouth. Instead of jetting forth at its intended target, the wyrm's breath spurted uselessly around the sides of the obstruction.

The green's head jerked up and down as it tried to spit out the stone that choked it.

"Now!" Rhespen bellowed. "Hit it now!"

Like the elemental before them, his men-at-arms surged up from their places of concealment. As Rhespen had insured by their placement, and the positioning of his illusion, the dragon fought in the center of the four squads.

Spears and arrows flew. The majority glanced off the dragon's scales, but some penetrated. Raising his staff high, Rhespen created a mesh of sticky cables to bind the wyrm's head to the intact wing lashing atop its back. The idea was to hinder the green in its effort to retch the stone out, but its thrashing tore the web apart immediately.

The green's jaws clenched, the obstruction at the back of its mouth crunched, and it spat out the granite plug in fragments mixed with ivory shards of broken tooth. It oriented on one of the groups of warriors and took a stride, commencing its charge.