“Stay on this one!” the drow warrior cried. “That is Drizzt Do’Urden, the greatest treasure! When he is dead, Lady Lolth will be in our debt!”
The Old White Death swung his head to the left, to watch the flight of his son, and Tiago pleaded desperately. So close! He could see Drizzt on the back of the other copper, directly in front of him, white hair and green cape flying.
It was Drizzt! Of course it was Drizzt!
So close!
“She will gain height and plummet upon your son!” Tiago screamed. “You must catch her!”
Arauthator snaked his great head all the way around to stare his rider in the face, and for a heartbeat, Tiago surely thought his life was at its end.
“You think I care for the fate of Aurbangras?” the dragon said. “He failed, and so he will die.” The white dragon’s head swiveled back around as he lined up with the fleeing copper wyrm, his great leathery wings beating with tremendous power.
Tiago glanced at the wounded and desperately fleeing Aurbangras, and chuckled at the absence of familial affection; Arauthator would make a good matron mother.
“We will kill this one and its rider, and the other will lead us to her treasures,” Arauthator explained.
Tiago held on for all his life as the dragon gained speed with every great pump of his wings. They were flying at a steep angle toward the Darkening, flying upward, but from the mounting velocity, it seemed more to Tiago as if they were diving. At first he thought the copper wyrm would make it into the roiling blackness in the sky above, but now he was not so sure of that.
Neither was the copper dragon, Tiago realized. She turned around suddenly and dived back the way she had come, flying straight for Arauthator.
Tiago’s eyes widened with surprise and then with fear, and widened more when a steady stream of silvery arrows came flying forth from Drizzt, soaring down at him and his mount.
Arauthator didn’t flinch, didn’t turn, and didn’t slow, and in a heartbeat he had no time to turn, the wyrms speeding together. Tiago braced and sucked in his breath. He knew he was about to die, was certain he could not survive the collision. He brought his shield up at the last moment, the powerfully-enchanted buckler blocking an arrow that would have laid him low. Then a second and a third thumped against the barrier, and it didn’t matter to Tiago. He knew that the crush of the wyrms would surely kill him anyway.
“Be quick,” Brother Afafrenfere whispered to his dragon mount, though he knew Ilnezhara, speeding along, couldn’t hear him, and knew she didn’t have to. The monk glanced back to see the huge white soaring upward in pursuit of Tazmikella and Drizzt.
Up ahead of Ilnezhara, Afafrenfere noted the uneven movements of the badly-wounded smaller white dragon, tattered wings flapping wildly as the wyrm tried to keep level and upright. The white wyrm couldn’t seem to turn, for it flew straight for the higher reaches of the great mountain that housed Mithral Hall. On the dragon’s back, the drow rider tugged left and right frantically, as if trying to force the dragon to bank this way or that.
He might was well have been trying to move the mountain.
Afafrenfere heard his mount chanting, casting a spell. A couple of heartbeats later, a volley of blue-green glowing bolts of arcane energy shot forth from Ilnezhara, flying faster than dragonflight, swerving around the white dragon’s waving tail. But what good would such minor spells be against the power of a dragon? And then they crossed the last expanse to stab into the drow rider.
He winced and hunched, clearly in pain, and looked back, cursing in a language Afafrenfere did not know. He held forth his hand and called upon his own magical powers, and a globe of darkness appeared in the air right in front of Ilnezhara.
The monk ducked reflexively, but he needn’t have bothered. The dragon flew through the darkness in an instant, emerging out the other side. Up came the monk, back steady in his seat, and confused that the drow would even bother to attempt something that feeble, until he realized what it was.
It was desperation, blind desperation and a scream against impotence.
The mountain loomed huge now. Up ahead, the white dragon did manage to turn a bit to the right, to the north, and was about to slam head-on into a rocky outcropping. At the last instant, the white just barely lifted up over that jut of stone.
Ilnezhara cut a turn that had Afafrenfere’s face twisting under the strain. He kept his gaze aimed at the rocky outcropping, though, and saw beyond it now to the fleeing white dragon, which had crashed into a sloping face of deep snow and skidded along, digging deep grooves and piling the white stuff up in front of its chest, trying to gain some semblance of control. On its back, the drow worked frantically and screamed continually, and so he should. The dragon flipped over the snowbank it had piled, tumbling wildly, and when it came over, no rider could be seen.
Like an avalanche, the white wyrm rolled, spinning around, its wings twisting and snapping and sticking out at unnatural angles. Right to another rocky jut it skidded, crashing against that one hard and awkwardly, and settling there.
“I will finish it!” Afafrenfere yelled to his mount. “Go to your sister!”
In response, Ilnezhara swerved right up near to the cliff, above where the white had crashed. There, the monk leaped for the stone. As Ilnezhara veered up and away, Brother Afafrenfere, infused with the knowledge of Grandmaster Kane, half fell, half ran down the sheer rocky cliff, his hands and feet working in a controlled blur to continually break, and so control, his fall.
He came down onto the snowy slope moments later. He glanced back to a black spot near the first rocky jut, to the twisted form of the drow rider. But the dragon was the greater danger; Afafrenfere paid the drow no more heed and sprinted the other way, toward the twisted form of the white dragon.
But the wyrm wasn’t dead and as he neared, the great horned head whipped around and lifted up high, towering over the monk, who looked very tiny indeed.
A collective gasp escaped the orcs and their allies when the white dragon smashed upon the mountain high above.
“Enough, Jarl,” Felloki said to his leader.
Jarl Orelson shook his head as he looked around. In front of him, Mithral Hall’s eastern gate lay open, but an army of stubborn dwarves would allow no passage. Behind him, his allies had been locked away from the fight. The defense of the bridge would not falter.
In the north, the dwarves were winning.
In the sky, the dragon allies of the dwarves were winning.
Jarl Orelson nodded at the frost giant warrior they called Boomer. “Collect ours,” he said, and Felloki nodded grimly and began gathering up the giants of Shining White.
And when they were gathered together around their Jarl, he led them away to the south, their long legs taking them far from the battlefield with every stride, easily outpacing those orcs and goblins who thought to similarly flee.
The war had ended for Shining White, Jarl Orelson had decided.
It was time to go home.
At the Surbrin Bridge, the cheering heightened as the white dragon went crashing into the mountain.
“Hold strong, boys!” Bruenor yelled, and he swatted aside another orc before he crunched yet another’s ugly face with his shield as it tried to shoulder him aside.
Bruenor Battlehammer would not be moved.
The dwarves were holding, and the press from the eastern bank was thinning.
All was going as they had planned—indeed, as they had desperately hoped when they had planned.
The cheering reflected that, from all but one.
Catti-brie couldn’t take her gaze from the dark sky far above, where the huge white flew into a swarm of silvery arrows. Even from so far away, Catti-brie could see that the dragons were about to collide at full speed, so far above the ground.
“My love,” she whispered in farewell.
CHAPTER 20
THE VIOLENCE OF DRAGONS
HALF BLINDED BY THE ACID THAT HAD WASHED OVER HIM, BATTERED from the burns and the sh
eer violence of the dragon collisions, Tos’un nevertheless remained keenly aware that he and his mount were flying at great speed right into a mountain.
And one of the copper dragons was close behind, and if they turned, he would again feel the pain of acidic dragon breath. Still, he tugged and yanked this way and that.
“Turn, you fool!” he screamed continually at Aurbangras, and finally the dragon did manage to swerve—right at a wall.
Tos’un threw his arms up and cried out, but the wyrm went over it. Just beyond, though, Aurbangras hit the snowy slope and went into a fast skid. The dragon reared up, kicking and clawing.
The drow rider remembered a moment in his youth, riding for House Barrison Del’Armgo in a battle against a rival House. His Underdark lizard, running full out, had hit a patch of magically slickened floor. This moment brought him back to that, the mount then, as now, rearing and scrabbling futilely.
And then as now, the lizard caught a lip and flipped over forward. Tos’un instinctively held his seat on the bucking creature—and this time, foolishly.
Aurbangras turned his neck out wide and dipped his shoulders into a roll, slamming Tos’un facedown in the snow, rolling right over him, bending him over backward so fully that the drow’s buttocks slammed against his shoulderblades. The dragon kept rolling, but Tos’un did not, other than to unwind weirdly, like a crushed flower trying to lift up once more, before he flopped uselessly to the side.
He knew immediately that many of his bones were broken, and knew too that such a word didn’t begin to describe his pulverized hips.
He flopped over to the side and lay there in the snow, and felt strangely calm, with a curious absence of pain or cold—or anything else. He felt disembodied at that moment, as if his eyes had flown free of his body to watch the unfolding drama in front of him. He saw the copper dragon go flying away, saw the robed human come rushing down the cliff.
And he saw the fight, though it couldn’t be real, he told himself, because no man could fight like this, no man could resist the kill of the dragon.
Aurbangras breathed a cloud of icy death over where the man stood—or where the man had been standing, at least. Like a striking serpent, the human had leaped to the side, curled and rolled, and avoided the blast completely. And right back in he leaped, as if flying, his feet in front of him to kick the dragon on the flank, and with such power that the wyrm was jolted.
That was not possible.
The wyrm bit, serpent neck snapping the head down. But the man was under it, punching and kicking, flipping and kicking still, and out he came to the side even as Aurbangras dropped straight down to crush him.
Now lower, the dragon took a kick in the face that sent his head swinging the other way, and the man landed on his feet and went right in. Tos’un noted the wound Aurbangras had suffered under one foreleg, the bloody gash in such stark contrast to the white scales. The human noted it too, clearly, for he stabbed there with his hand, fingers extended, driving them right into the gash and pulling back the hand with ligaments and muscle in it.
The dragon roared and bit at him and clawed at him and rolled at him, but the man was always just ahead of every strike. The great tail came sweeping around, but the man was up impossibly high, and the tail went beneath him harmlessly.
And the man touched down, then flew again, running up the dragon’s side and back. When the wyrm tried to bite at him, he leaped upon that head, holding fast to a horn with one hand, swinging in against the wyrm’s face.
Eye to eye, then fist to eye as the man drove his hand right into that sensitive orb—plunged it into the liquid depths.
The wyrm’s shriek shook the mountain. The convulsive snap of the dragon’s neck sent the man flying, spinning, though he somehow managed to right himself and touch down in the snow in control.
He stood right in front of Tos’un then, and the drow thought himself doomed.
But no. The enraged dragon advanced, and Tos’un saw its fanged maw right behind the human.
Drizzt saw his doom, the dragons speeding together for a collision that would spell the end of him, and likely of them. He got off one more shot, aimed perfectly for the head of the drow riding the white wyrm, but again that shield came flashing up to block, stealing from Drizzt the satisfaction of slaying Tiago before they both died anyway. He wondered for a moment if this impending doom had been unintentional, an expectation on the part of both wyrms that the other would of course veer aside.
But now it was too late. So suddenly, they were there, together, to crash.
Drizzt cried out, as did his counterpart riding the white wyrm, and reflexively closed his eyes as he braced.
But nothing happened.
The drow blinked and looked around in confusion. How could it be?
He looked back and saw the great white dragon, spinning around, roaring in rage, focusing on Tazmikella, and in doing so, ignoring Ilnezhara, who sped up past the wyrm and spat forth a cloud of gas that engulfed the white and Tiago. And up went Ilnezhara, into the roiling blackness of the Darkening, and so too was Tazmikella climbing again, determined to get into the opaque cloudstuff.
“How?” Drizzt asked, shaking his head. He knew his mount couldn’t hear him, and he didn’t want to distract her anyway. On came the huge white wyrm, determined to intercept. It was flying quite a bit slower now, Drizzt realized, and he remembered Ilnezhara’s breath and the magical properties it exuded.
The drow quickly gauged their respective speeds and the distance left to the Darkening, and he held his breath. It didn’t seem to him as if Tazmikella would make it. He looked to the clouds, hoping that Ilnezhara would come forth once more and distract the dogged pursuit.
But she was not to be seen.
Taulmaril thrummed in Drizzt’s hands, the drow archer leading the angling white dragon perfectly, putting every shot in line with Tiago.
But the Baenre noble was laughing at him, and Drizzt understood that he had no chance of getting an arrow past that buckler. Tiago was too quick, too agile, and too well guarded, and unaffected by the magical slowing breath of Ilnezhara.
Drizzt thought that he should focus instead on the wyrm, but just shook his head helplessly.
It was too late. The white wyrm had them.
But then it didn’t.
It was gone, as if it had simply disappeared. No, not disappeared, Drizzt realized, and then he knew why the dragons hadn’t collided previously, as Tazmikella once again cast her spell, a minor teleport that carried her along an extra-dimensional corridor right through the plummeting white dragon’s path. And now Tazmikella and Drizzt were clear to the Darkening, and into it they flew, even as the white, far below, began its turn back into a climb.
Tazmikella began to cry out, a short series of high-pitched shrieks, stuttered in length and frequency, and it took Drizzt a few moments to understand that she was communicating with her sister in code, and likely to make sure they didn’t inadvertently crash into each other.
For indeed, Tazmikella was flying almost blind, with patchy blackness limiting her vision all around. Ilnezhara’s responding shrieks were the only warning Drizzt got before the other copper dragon flew right past, so very close, the black clouds swirling and rolling in her passing.
She was riderless, Drizzt realized, and he swallowed hard and feared for Afafrenfere.
He had no time to dwell on that, however, for another form shook the clouds the other way, a much larger and more ominous form.
Tazmikella rolled over hard to the left and twisted as she went into a straight dive. They plunged out of the Darkening, the world opening suddenly wide below them, but the dragon cut sharply and climbed right back in, even as the white came swirling out.
This was the stuff of nightmares to Drizzt. He didn’t dare shoot his bow now for fear of hitting Ilnezhara, for who knew where she might be? Or where the white wyrm might be. For a long while, into and out of the blackness they soared and rolled, dived and climbed, sometimes below, sometimes ab
ove.
A great form passed to the left, another to the right, then one above and later one below, and whether it was the white or Ilnezhara, Drizzt could hardly tell.
And so it went, the seemingly endless nightmare.
They came out the top of the Darkening to find the white wyrm waiting. It roared and lunged, and Tazmikella threw herself aside, the dragon’s maw snapping just short of her vulnerable neck. They brushed and crashed as they passed and Drizzt barely avoided a wing buffet that would surely have launched him from his seat—then ducked just in time to avoid the cut of Tiago’s sword, as the skilled drow managed a passing attack.
Drizzt somehow leveled his bow right before Tazmikella dropped back down into the darkness, and the skilled ranger fired off a trio of arrows.
But Tiago’s shield was there yet again. The shots, as fine as they had been, had no chance of hitting the skilled warrior with that magnificent shield.
Back into the nightmare they flew. A cry to the left side told Drizzt that the white wyrm had encountered Ilnezhara, and the pitch of the screech made him believe that Ilnezhara had taken the worst of it.
Or maybe, he realized as Tazmikella calmly swerved and dipped, Ilnezhara was again communicating to her sister.
Out of the darkness dropped Tazmikella and Drizzt, this time dipping lower as she flew out to the left. The swirl of the black clouds above told them that a wyrm was there, barely inside, and Drizzt put up his bow as Tazmikella circled directly underneath.
The drow saw the white scales, and so Taulmaril hummed, silver arrows shooting up to slam at the underbelly of the great white wyrm. They did little damage, but even that was enough to mitigate the mounting frustration Drizzt felt with his inability to get a clean shot at Tiago.
And Drizzt noted something, and he nodded, planning his next shot. That would have to wait, however, as back into the Darkening flew Tazmikella.