CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  “MOVE!” Bonner howled, and Declan felt Orsik respond to the mage’s command like it had been meant for the warg’s own ears. The male flung himself sideways, nearly tossing off both his riders, but his incaution paid off when he threw himself, Declan, and Ester clear just as the drey moved in a blur of white and yellow. It launched itself down on them with a screeching leap, slamming into the ground right where the five of them had been standing, Eyera having taken Bonner away in the other direction with similar reflex. The flashing swipe of its slimmer arms—angled with lines of ivory fur—caught the striated stone with a crunch and eruption that sent shattered rock flying. The force of the strike was so dauntingly violent, Declan felt the grip on his sword grow weak. His mind reeled, drowning itself in panic even as Ester shouted in alarm before him, shielding her face from the explosion of earth.

  What do we do?! his thoughts demanded of no one in particular, tumbling into confusion. What do we do?! What do we do?!

  Shlunk!

  The drey howled, a pained, agonized cry this time, shaking Declan from his moment of madness. He saw, with a surge of hope, the thin, brittle spike of solid black stone that had lanced out of the slick cavern floor to spear it through the shoulder. The beast writhed and keened, clawing at the shaft, trying to pull itself from its end. Black, acrid blood flowed over the rock and splattered the ground, hissing and smoking. Only when it dripped over the thing’s clawless, humanish hands and the amber scales of its great, dragon-like legs did it not sizzle. Beyond the creature, Declan saw Bonner tracing rapid runes in the air around him with both hands as Eyera kept moving, keeping well out of reach, and as he watched a second spine of rock cracked upward to take the drey in the gut.

  Abruptly, Declan recalled that he, too, was no longer as defenseless as he’d once been.

  Fight, the answer to his panicked question came to him, settling his terror.

  Almost in response to this gathered conviction, he felt the firestone in his left hand thrum with a budding warmth beneath his fingers.

  “Ester, can you get Orsik to take us behind it?!” he demanded, already pressing his will into the vessel. To her credit, the half-elf only gave him the barest look, the one cheek he could make out bloody from a shallow cut below her right eye.

  Then he felt her shift in place, pressing the warg’s sides with her knees as she reached back to draw another arrow from its quiver.

  Orsik was less inclined to respond accordingly than Declan might have liked, but he answered after only a brief hesitation. With a clack of claws he took off over the wet ground, refusing to get as close as might have been ideal while he circled around behind the struggling drey, but it did the trick. Ester’s shot thrummed, the arrow taking the beast in the flesh along the back of the neck, and Declan focused on his weave, struggling to call on and bind the powers. He still couldn’t summon up the sort of jetting flames Bonner had demonstrated before their trek north, but the practice he and the old man had put into manipulating his King’s Blood over the last few days came through in the spell he gathered then. The power felt rawer, more malleable, running through the firestone. He molded it into shape, feeling the weave come together.

  When the opportunity came, Declan whipped his casting hand with a shout of effort in a diagonal arc, willing the fire to take form.

  It responded with an intensity he had yet seen.

  The molten flames didn’t so much as spray this time as they did spout. Like heat made liquid, the weave congealed and splashed in a blade of burning, fluid orange and red across the back of the drey’s knees, clinging and catching alight to lick at the yellowish scales. The creature screamed, its ram’s head thrashing, fighting harder as it suffered this new, unexpected attack. With mirrored cracks, the two stone spikes that had been holding it in place finally broke.

  “Not the legs!” Ester shouted as Orsik fled the freed creature. She was bent almost all the way around to draw and send another arrow flying in the monster’s direction. “They’re dragon flesh!”

  Declan cursed his foolishness, looking back as well. Indeed, while the spell clung to the struggling drey’s golden hide, boiling and gnawing at the scales as it wrenched the shattered spines of rock from its shoulder and torso, the fires had done far less damage than he would have hoped. He didn’t let the disappointment shake his resolution.

  It just meant he’d have to be more careful next time.

  “The wings, boy!” Bonner called out when he and Eyera crossed them, sprinting by in the other direction to make full-tilt for the creature. “Go for the wings! Keep it from getting airborne!”

  Declan saw the sense in this idea immediately, taking the chance to cast about for Ryn and the other drey. The dragon was still fighting, he saw with some relief, he and his opponent flitting in and out of the range of Bonner’s lights over the waiting mouth of the chasm, slashing and tearing at each other with every pass, light up the black now and again with blasts of white fire. Ryn seemed to be holding his own, for the time being, but if this second beast managed to join the battle…

  No. They couldn’t allow it.

  Having survived one pass unscathed—and likely seeing his sibling charging in without so much as an ounce of apparent fear—Orsik was easier to coax around this time. They thundered directly at the drey not a few seconds behind Bonner and Eyera, Ester managing a brilliant shot that took the thing in the back of the throat when it opened its mouth to shriek at them. It had to reach up and rip the arrow from between its jaws, and that moment bought the five of them the time they needed to close the distance. Bonner’s shouted spell boomed with power, and more spines of stone lanced upward—four or five smaller ones, this time—to impale the thing’s left leg below the knee from as many angles, skewering it into place. The creature keened in pain again, swiping at the spears to shatter half of them with a blow, but by that point Orsik was on it as well, and this time Declan’s second summoning of the molten weave was much more particularly aimed.

  The fire splashed against the fragile-looking membrane of the drey’s left wing, splattering its length in waves of rolling, blue-orange flame.

  The shrieking reached a new level, the echoes of the beast’s agony as piercing as the distant sound of clawed and sheering flesh. It thrashed, whipping its wings about like it was trying to cast off the fire, but the spell clung to it with stubborn intent. Declan watched—relishing this small victory—as the weave tore into the black skin, eating holes into the taut membrane.

  The admiration of his own success nearly cost he, Ester, and Orsik their lives.

  “DECLAN!”

  The half-elf’s scream snapped his attention down again, just in time to see a dark, lashing blur coming at them. Instinct took over again, and with the firestone in hand, on this occasion the boiling shield of heat he summoned was denser, more focused.

  It still shattered when the drey’s sectioned tail smashed into it, driving through the spellwork with a crashing distortion of light and fire.

  The jointed appendage collided with Orsik’s side, crushing Declan and Ester’s legs against the warg’s ribs. He felt bone strain and something pop in his left knee, felt the woman falling away from him as they were thrown bodily sideways. Time seemed to distort, and he reached for her, thinking he might just grab hold of her, securing her to himself. He caught only air, feeling Ester’s fine hair slip through his fingers.

  Then they hit the ground, tumbling and rolling all until they slid to a final halt at the base of the slope leading up to the higher cavern.

  Everything was a scattered jumble. Every thought, every sense and feeling. Declan groaned, struggling to sit, and found himself having difficulty registering which way was up and which was down. When he managed it at last, it occurred to him that both his sword and the firestone were gone from his hands, a fact which might have frightened him more had he been able to think straight.

  Then the heavy, scraping footsteps of something large limping towards him swallowed all other considerations.

  His vision still spinning, Declan struggled to lift his gaze. The ram-headed drey, all fifteen feet of it, was moving towards him. Orsik, whimpering and struggling to get up, was between them, and when it reached the warg the beast kicked the four-hundred-pound animal aside with no more effort than it might have a stone in its path. Orsik went tumbling a second time, yelping and rolling, and appeared unable to do more than spasm and tremble when he finally came to a halt on his side.

  Declan could barely spare the poor creature a thought. He was too busy watching his own death looming down on him with uneven steps that covered six feet of the slick, slanted ground at a time, a smoking patch of acidic blood trailing every step of its injured leg.

  Had his mind been of a condition to register anything else, Declan might have made out other sounds in the ongoing battle. He might have heard Ryn scream in pain as his opponent caught him a savage slash to the face. He might have caught Bonner’s distant shouting, his incantation fueled by desperation, knowing he was too far away to make it in time. Declan might even have noticed Ester’s uneven breathing not a few feet to his right, might have thought to reach out and touch her, to take some last moment of comfort in her presence at his side.

  All there was, though, was the drey.

  It seemed to grow exponentially huge as it approached, white fur and the golden scales of its legs losing their detail when it’s extended wings—the left smoking and patched with holes—started to blot out the glowing orbs high above. Before long the monster was nothing more than a lumbering silhouette, pale eyes mere flecks of colorless flint in the shadowed outline of its horned head. Declan saw the hand lift—clawless fingers somehow more terrifying for their lack of talons—saw the muscles tense for the brutal blow which would crush both he and Ester as it swept them down the slope and over the edge of the chasm. Strangely enough, fear did not come, did not summon itself appropriately to heel in Declan’s ringing head. Instead, he felt only something like sadness, or perhaps regret. His eyes closed of their own volition, giving in to the loss. In the bright darkness he waited, hoping only that the end would be swift.

  The strike never came.

  After several seconds, Declan opened his eyes again.

  The drey had stilled, arm yet lifted overhead, half-turned to look behind it, deeper into the cave. At first Declan thought Bonner had somehow stolen its attention, winning he and Ester a few bare moments more of life, but he saw through the beast’s legs that the mage, too, had stopped short, Eyera sliding and slipping over the rock as she fought to scramble around. For a long moment more, Declan sat in confusion, not sure what was going on.

  And then a shape moved out of the darkness north of them and into the light, sliding from the black like the thing was stepping through some impenetrable smoke, and he felt his heart skip a beat, then another. Two had been enough, he knew. Two had seen them defeated.

  Sehranya, though, had sent three of her unholiest children.

  The third drey took to the battlefield slowly, eyes fixed and unmoving in its overlarge fox’s head. Black scales patterned its neck, chest, and torso like spilled water, and broad wings extended from behind its shoulders. It was smaller than either of the others—likely not more than eight or nine feet tall—and otherwise stood as no more than a towering, naked man save for slight claws at the tips of its hands and feet. The beast approached, covering a quarter of the distance towards them steadily, like it was taking the time to assess the situation. Declan could feel his heart hammering, watching it close on Bonner, pinning the mage between it and its larger kin.

  And then, with a rattling breath that could be heard echoing across the cavern, the drey collapsed facedown onto the stone, and didn’t move again.

  Only then, as Declan watched smoke begin to rise from about its body, did he realize that its scales had not been black at all. Indeed, they shone pale grey in spreading patterns over its shoulders and back.

  The darkness, rather, had been the stain of sheeting, spilling blood.

  That moment, as he registered this incredible fact, was when the shadows beyond the light spilled like silent death from the emptiness of the blackness.

  There was nothing to be done but watch as the figures made themselves known, dashing over the uneven ground without fear, as sure-footed on the wet, icy stone as one might have been on a dry, cobbled road. For a few seconds Declan was convinced his addled mind was playing tricks on him, but as the new arrivals closed the distance between them and the ram-headed drey—spinning around Bonner and Eyera without so much as a glance at the pair—he saw that they were indeed men and women of flesh and bone.

  Well… men and women of a sort, at least.

  The figures appeared, initially, to be clad from head to foot in all black, but as they dashed beneath the shifting spells of light, Declan caught the glint and glimmer of gold inlaid in what looked like smoke-darkened leather-and-metal armor. Long, inky plumes trailed from closed helms that covered all but the strangers’ mouths and eyes, and in their hands they wielded a collection of weaponry unlike anything Declan had ever known. Each had either a pair of swords or a spear to their name, but instead of steel, the blades looked almost to be made of polished, carved glass. The strange material was crystalline, opaque and black, and years of experience screamed that such armaments were folly to lift against opponents like the drey.

  Then, however, the first of the figures was on the monster that had been moments from crushing his life into nothingness, and Declan knew nothing more than awe.

  She—for it was a “she”, he judged by the slenderness of her armor—moved as Declan could only dream of, engaging the drey. The beast turned to meet this new threat, but the blur of its tail struck uselessly, the figure having sidestepped a half-second before the attack with a twirl that would have made the royal dancers of Mathaleus al’Dyor’s palace ballrooms green with envy. As she spun, the twin blades of that strange, glass-like metal cut through the air in paired, audible shrieks, and Declan knew the value of the weapons the moment they bit into the drey’s inner thigh, just above its knee. Blood splashed to the ground, hissing and burning, and the drey itself screamed when the joint half-gave beneath it, but the stranger had already ducked and slid as gracefully as water through the beast’s legs, skillfully avoiding the dangerous splattering.

  Her swords, Declan saw, dripped with acid ichor, but did not smoke themselves.

  It doesn’t hold, he realized in dawn understanding, gaping at the sheen of the blades from the depths of his muddled consciousness. The blood doesn’t hold.

  Before he could get a better look, however, the weapons’ owner was moving again, quick as thought itself, this time joined by the half-dozen other shadows who’d caught up with her in a blink.

  The fight was quick and brutal. Without the means to get airborne, the drey could only lash out with arms and tail. Unfortunately for it, despite its unfathomable speed its strikes were largely ineffective, every blow landing a fraction of a second too late, every thrust of its barbed appendage catching only the air where a moment before a figure had stood. Declan didn’t know if it was magic, or merely some superior consciousness of their enemy’s movements, but to a one the black-clad newcomers were as wraiths haunting much larger prey, cutting it down little by little. They darted in and out in the same breath, sometimes slipping through the drey’s legs as the figure in their lead had, other times simply dancing away with lissome steps that seemed always to find the clean rock among the growing spots of acid-eaten ground. The drey screamed and thrashed, turning this way and that, howling in fury as every attempt to catch one of its attackers left it open for slices from two or three more. As it steadily weakened it grew more desperate, and in its panicked rage luck did more than focus had managed. In the space of ten seconds, one of the figures was sent flying as the tail spasmed and caught them unexpectedly in the side, and a second body tumbled to hiss in the pooling blood when a thrashing hand caught and took hold of her helmeted head, crushing it into metallic, bloody pulp with an instinctive flexing of the drey’s fingers.

  Though horrible a death to witness, that was when the one who had led the charge, the female who’d dealt the first blow, saw her opening.

  There was nothing grand about the execution, but the simple ease of it took Declan’s breath away. In reaching for the kill, the drey overextended, bending low on legs already weakened by twenty gouging lacerations. Even as it crushed the life from one of her own, the swordswoman was moving, stepping into the shadows of the beast, twisting and sweeping upward in a twin flurry of blades. Dark, shining metal dug into the drey’s neck, cleaving through muscle and flesh, but as blood bloomed in a gush from the wound the killer was already gone, having twisted and rolled bodily over the drey’s bent knee, using the thing’s own scaled hide for cover. The beast tried to snarl, tried to scream, but only more blood came, spilling through its crooked fangs. It choked, breath bubbling from a severed windpipe, then staggered, clawless hands coming up to its neck while its pale eyes widened. There was a moment of realization in the monster’s expression, something almost like confusion tainted with fear.

  And then it, too, collapsed, spasming and drowning with gagging coughs while its lungs filled with its own blood.

  That, though, was the moment Ryn screamed.

  Despite the incomprehensible sight before him, despite the beauty and the terror and the disbelief of the moment, Declan looked around at the anguished sound of his friend’s shriek. To his horror he saw that the elk-headed drey had somehow latched itself to the dragon’s shoulder, one hand holding tight to a horn overhead, the other arm looped about Ryn’s throat.

  With the sound of ripping flesh, Declan watched the drey bite into the side of Ryn’s neck, tearing away a mouthful of sinew skin and muscle. He saw the dragon’s entire body spasm, his wings jerking and failing to beat on the shock of the pain.