A locathah dropped its crossbow, whirled, and started swimming away. Its captain put a quarrel in its spine then rounded on its gaping comrades. “Anybody else want to turn tail?” the leader demanded. If so, the others kept it to themselves.

  Now Tu’ala’keth could make out shapes… or at least the suggestion of them. Prodigious wings beat, hauling wyrms through the water almost as fast as they could fly through the sky. The flippers of the dragon turtles stroked, and the tails of the colossal eels lashed, accomplishing the same purpose. On Tu’ala’keth’s right, a shalarin started making a low, moaning sound, probably without realizing he was doing it.

  “This is it,” came Morgan’s cool, clipped voice, magically augmented so everyone in the company could hear. “Start the attacks.”

  He meant the order for those spellcasters who, either by dint of exceptional innate power or formidable magical weapons, had some hope of smiting the wyrms even at long range. Thanks to a scroll from Eshcaz’s hoard, now sealed in a yellowish transparent membrane to keep the sea from ruining it, Tu’ala’keth fell into the latter category.

  She read a trigger phrase and felt the magic pounce from the page, supposedly to rip at a cluster of the onrushing wyrms, though at such a distance, she couldn’t tell if it was cutting them up to any significant degree. It certainly didn’t kill any of them or even slow them down.

  Other spells began to strike in the dragons’ midst, swirls of darkness and blasts of jagged ice. Those didn’t balk them either.

  A jittery koalinth discharged its crossbow, and the dart lost momentum and sank only halfway to its targets. Tentacles writhing in agitation, the creature’s morkoth master screamed for it and its fellow slave warriors to “Wait, curse you, wait!”

  More magical attacks exploded into being among the dragons, close enough now that most of the spellcasters could assail them in one fashion or another. The barrage still didn’t slow the reptiles down. Indeed no matter how intently she peered, Tu’ala’keth could see only superficial cuts, punctures, and abrasions marring their scaly hides. It was almost as if the allied priests and mages were merely treating them to a harmless display of flickering light and dancing shadow.

  But perhaps they’d done a bit more harm, or at least caused a little more annoyance, than that. For now the wyrms retaliated in kind.

  Aquatic dragons commonly lacked the sorcerous talents of their kindred on land. As a rule, it was only the species that thrived in either environment who cast spells beneath the waves. Some such-blacks and at least one topaz-had joined the dragon flight, but Tu’ala’keth had hoped that by now, their madness might have rendered them incapable of using arcane talents.

  Alas, that was not the case. Water became acid, searing the flesh of the thrashing sea-elves caught amid the transformation, diffusing outward to blister the skin and sting the eyes of other warriors. Black tentacles writhed from a central point to batter and clutch at a dozen mermen. The morkoth who’d snagged

  Tu’ala’keth’s attention a moment before wailed, froze into position, and turned into a thing of translucent glass sinking downward toward the mountaintop. Its koalinth thralls exchanged wild-eyed looks as if silently asking one another what to do now.

  “Hold!” called Morgan’s disembodied voice. “Hold fast. Bowmen, the enemy’s in range. Start shooting!”

  “About time,” Anton muttered. Feet kicking lazily, he’d been floating with his crossbow already shouldered. Now he pulled the trigger, and though he hadn’t had much time to practice shooting under water either, the dart streaked forth to pierce the silvery scales of a dragon eel just above its black, deep-set eye. He instantly worked the lever to cock the weapon again.

  Countless quarrels hurtled at the oncoming dragons. For their part, the wizards and priests switched to a new set of spells. Tu’ala’keth read another trigger, and a colossal squid coalesced into being in front of the wyrms. Her comrades materialized enormous creatures akin to whales, sharks, octopuses, eels, and jellyfish, counterparts to mundane animals drawn from spirit realms or elementals like those she and Yzil had battled. The conjured servants surged forward to engage the reptiles. Meanwhile, other mages evoked sudden booms among the dragons to stun them and pain their sensitive ears, or sweeping their hands to and fro, wove hanging patterns of multicolored light to arrest a wyrm’s gaze and hold the creature stupefied.

  The allies hoped this magic, even if it ultimately did little damage, would slow the dragons’ advance, giving the crossbowmen time to shoot them repeatedly. It did, for a few heartbeats, and one by one, the reptiles started breaking through whatever barriers, living or inanimate, tangible, phantasmal, or psychic, the spellcasters had placed in their way. A sleek, glimmering, silver-blue water drake caught Tu’ala’keth’s squid in its fangs and snapped and raked it to shreds.

  A black with a withered, cadaverous countenance snarled a counterspell to thrust an elemental back to its native level of existence. Glittering like the jewel for which it was named, its eyes blank yellow flame as bright as Eshcaz’s, the topaz simply stared at a priest of Deep Sashelas who’d attempted to shackle its will. The sea-elf screamed, convulsed, and clutched at his head. Blood billowed from his nostrils.

  Abruptly, or so it seemed, on the far left flank of the company, a dragon turtle was much too close. It opened its beak and spewed its breath weapon. Water boiled to steam, and the mermen caught in the effect boiled with it. Furious with bloodlust, not hunger, the huge creature didn’t pause to gobble its victims. Rather, flippers lashing, it rushed forward to attack new ones.

  Coral-headed spear in hand, other sea-elf warriors swimming frantically to join him, Morgan set himself in the dragon turtle’s way. The imminent threat didn’t keep him from giving further orders in the same crisp fashion as before.

  “It’s time to fall back. Remember the route you’re supposed to take, and wait for a mage to enchant you before you retreat.”

  Tu’ala’keth belatedly realized the morkoth wizard had been the nearest conjuror to her and Anton, and it now lay on the slopes of Mount Halaath in the form of a glass statue. She cast about and spied a sea-elf warlock not too far away. She pointed, and Anton followed as she swam in that direction.

  Others were racing there as well, sometimes shoving their comrades aside in their haste. The company had held its position as well as anyone could have expected, but now, with the dragons nearly on top of it, many warriors were on the verge of panic.

  In fact, in their eagerness to converge on the magician, they threatened to crush him. A shrill edge of fear in his voice, he cried, “Give me some space! I can’t conjure if I can’t move my arms!”

  Tu’ala’keth gripped the drowned man’s hand and invoked a surge of Umberlee’s majesty. It granted her a moment of mastery over her fellow sea-dwellers, and when she shouted for them to calm themselves, they heeded her.

  “Thank you,” said the wizard, understanding she’d helped him even if he didn’t comprehend precisely how. He swept a scrap of vegetable matter through a mystic pattern and rattled off words of power.

  Tu’ala’keth’s muscles twitched and jerked. Other folk cried out as the magic jolted them. After the initial shock, she felt no different. But when she looked at those among her allies who were still awaiting enchantment, or at the dragons, they seemed to move sluggishly. In actuality, she knew, the reverse was true. The spell accelerated the reactions of those it touched.

  “That’s done,” Anton said, sliding another quarrel into the groove atop his crossbow. “Now let’s get out of here.”

  “Yes,” she said

  As if it were the signal for everyone clustered around the warlock, the spherical mass of bodies burst into a ragged, streaming mass. Everyone swam downward and southeast, toward Myth Nantar and the plateau on which it sat, as fast as their magically quickened limbs could speed them along.

  The spellcasters still had a responsibility to slow the pursuing drakes. Otherwise, the reptiles might overtake and slaughter everyone, the charm of acceleration notwithstanding.

  So Tu’ala’keth turned periodically to release another spell from her parchment, to summon a demon to assault the dragons, or plunge an area into darkness and hinder the reptiles about to pass through it.

  Whenever she did, she felt a surge of awe at the spectacle of the onrushing wyrms. They dwarfed the allies as sharks dwarfed minnows, loomed above and extended to either side of the company like a titanic wall of glaring eyes, bared fangs, and curved talons. They were as terrible and beautiful as her vision of the Blood Sea, and she realized that even if this venture cost her her life, it was worth it simply to behold them.

  Whenever she wheeled to work magic, Anton turned, shot another bolt from the crossbow, and cursed to see wyrms slaughtering folk who hadn’t fled quickly enough. Another burst of dragon-turtle breath-Tu’ala’keth wondered fleetingly if this was the same creature Morgan had engaged, if the councilor was now dead-boiled locathahs so that lumps and strands of flesh slid loose from their bones. A sea dragon spread its gigantic jaws and swallowed two shalarins at once.

  Then Anton shouted, “Watch out!”

  Tu’ala’keth cast about and couldn’t find the threat.

  “Below us!” Anton cried.

  She looked down. Somehow, a shimmering water drake had been able to swim fast enough to overtake the rearguard but hadn’t been content simply to tear into the folk at the very back. Instead, it had dived beneath the fleeing company then ascended in the obvious hope of taking someone entirely by surprise.

  It had nearly succeeded. Its jaws spread wide to seize Tu’ala’keth, and she doubted she even had time to evoke more magic from the scroll’s ever-dwindling supply. Instead she extended her trident at the creature’s head and asked Umberlee for a burst of spiritual force sufficient to cow any sea creature, even a drake.

  The power flared, but the wyrm simply failed to heed it. Its essence was too strong. It swiped a forefoot and knocked the trident out of line. She tried to twist out of the way of its jaws and, when it arched its body to compensate, realized that wouldn’t help her either.

  Anton dived at the drake, the point of Umberlee’s greatsword poised to pierce it like a spear. He’d considered trading it for one of the weapons specially designed for slaying wyrms, but in the end, had opted to stick with the blade that had served him well against Eshcaz. Behind the amber lenses, his eyes burned with the contagious fury of the sword. Or perhaps it was simply his own innate determination.

  The dark blade plunged deep into the reptile’s head. Flailing, it couldn’t follow through on its intention to bite, and Tu’ala’keth wrenched herself away from its teeth.

  She hoped the drake would die, for surely the greatsword had driven in deep enough to reach the brain. It didn’t, though. It roared and whipped around to threaten Anton. Its wing, slightly torn where someone had managed to hurt it a little, swatted her tumbling away.

  She refused to let the bruising impact stun her and oriented on the wyrm once more. The greatsword was still sticking out of its mask. Anton had lost his grip on it when the creature turned. Now unarmed except for the pitiful dagger in his hand and the unloaded crossbow dangling from his wrist, he dodged and retreated as the reptile clawed at him. If not for the spell of quickness, it likely would have torn him to shreds already. As it was, it was plain that, bereft of any weapon that could deter the drake from attacking with every iota of its demented aggression, he couldn’t survive much longer.

  She hastily peered at the scroll. Two spells left. She triggered the first.

  Water surged, churned, and spun around the drake. Caught by surprise, engulfed in a miniature maelstrom, even a creature of prodigious strength had difficultly swimming in the direction it intended to go, and as it floundered, Anton kicked and shot beyond its reach.

  The drake flailed, trying to break free of the bubble of turbulence. Tu’ala’keth unleashed the final spell. A ragged blot of shadow appeared before her then shattered into flat, flapping shapes like mantas. Untroubled by the violent, erratic currents, the apparitions whirled around the dragon. It was impossible to see how they attacked it, if, in fact, they made physical contact at all. But gashes ripped the reptile’s hide, and a hind leg, a foreleg, and half the tail sheared away completely. Head nearly severed, wings shredded, the drake drifted toward the bottom in a billowing cloud of blood.

  Anton dived after it, gripped the hilt of the greatsword, planted his feet on the wyrm’s head, and pulled the weapon free. By the time he managed that, most of their comrades had fled past, leaving him and Tu’ala’keth at the rear of the throng.

  Tail lashing, a dragon eel streaked at them. A vertical plane of azure force abruptly appeared in its way, and it slammed into the obstruction beak-first. Amid the chaos, Tu’ala’keth couldn’t tell who’d conjured the effect, but it stopped the creature for a critical moment.

  She and Anton raced onward with the great frantic horde of their fellows. People slowed abruptly as their charms of quickness exhausted their power. Time would tell which ones had seized enough of a lead to keep ahead of the wyrms.

  It would have been easy for anyone to break away. The officers were too busy trying to save their own lives to interfere with anybody who did, and with scores of potential victims to pursue, the wyrms might well not veer away to pick off a single stray.

  But as far as Tu’ala’keth could judge, most of the company were keeping to the plan. A plan, she realized, that now required her and Anton to bear left. She turned, and others began to do the same, their courses crisscrossing as each headed where he’d been ordered to go.

  The soft luminescence of Myth Nantar flowered before and below her. Muscles burning with strain, she put on a final burst of speed, passed among the first of the coral-girded spires, then dared to turn and look back.

  Most members of the advance force-or what was left of it-had already entered the city via one of several avenues, and diving lower than the rooftops, the wyrms were splitting up to chase them down the same thoroughfares. It was as the allies had hoped. In normal circumstances, dragons were cunning, but addled by the Rage, infuriated by the harassment they’d already suffered and the frustration of prey fleeing just beyond their reach, the reptiles either didn’t realize or didn’t care that their foes were luring them into a trap.

  Of course, it was possible they didn’t need to care. Their power might well prevail against every ruse and tactic Myth Nantar had prepared.

  But Tu’ala’keth refused to believe it. Not after she and Anton had come so far and achieved so much. The Bitch Queen had no mercy, nor concern for fairness as mortals understood it, but still the pattern would not complete itself in such a bitter fashion.

  She and the human swam onward, past dozens of their exhausted, frightened comrades rushing to get indoors, to the keep that was supposed to be their particular refuge. They hurried through an entry on the third story, an opening blessedly too small for even the least of the wyrms to negotiate, and the shalarin warriors waiting on the other side gaped at them.

  “What’s happening?” an officer asked.

  Somewhere outside a dragon roared.

  “That noise pretty much says it,” Anton gasped, slumping with exhaustion. “We drew the dragons into town. Now you go kill them.”

  ***

  Anton watched as the shalarins made their last-second preparations for combat. Most were soldiers of the Protectors Caste, with bony spines stiffening their dorsal fins rigid as the crest on a human knight’s steel helm. But they had spellcasters to support them.

  Across the city other squads drawn from all six allied races were no doubt doing exactly the same thing, and Anton silently wished them luck. It was their fight now. He and his comrades had done their job by luring the dragons down the proper streets in the proper heedless state of mind.

  But maybe he didn’t want to hold back while others finished the battle. It was strange, really. As a spy, he’d rarely been present when the Turmian fleet or army, acting on intelligence he’d provided, eliminated a threat to the republic, and he’d rarely cared. But this time, for whatever reason, he wanted in at the kill.

  The greatsword rejoiced at his witless impulse, at a new opportunity for bloodshed. Calm down, he told it sourly, meanwhile casting about for Tu’ala’keth.

  Clasping her skeletal pendant, the waveservant was murmuring a prayer. At the conclusion, she shivered, rolled her narrow shoulders as if working stiffness out, then took a firmer grip on her trident.

  He swam to her. “What did you just do?” he asked.

  “I suppressed my fatigue,” she said, “making myself fit to fight once more.”

  “Cast the same charm on me, will you? If you’ve got another.”

  She flashed him one of her rare smiles. “I do. I expected you would want it.”

  The spell stung like a hundred hornets, and he grunted at the blaze of pain. It lasted only an instant, though, and afterward, he felt as though hed rested for a day.

  Tu’ala’keth made her way to one of the warriors bearing a satchel. “I will take that,” she said, indicating the bag.

  The Protector eyed her uncertainly. “I volunteered,” he said.

  “Your bravery does you credit,” she said, “but unless you have experience fighting dragons, I am better suited to the task.”

  “All right. If you put it that way.” He handed her the bag just as a roar from the street outside agitated the water and shook the walls of the keep itself.

  Anton hurried to a window. Beyond was a dragon turtle, its spiky shell nearly broad enough to fill the canyonlike avenue. Its beaked head twisted from side to side, and its eyes glared as it sought the elusive prey who’d fled inside the buildings to either side.

  Quarrels flew from windows and doorways. Anton shouldered his own crossbow and started shooting. Many of the missiles glanced harmlessly off the reptile’s shell or scales, but some lodged in its hide. Meanwhile, the magicians threw darts of light and raked the beast with blasts of shadow. Blood tinged the water around its body.