Jivex sprang into the air. Taegan clambered to his feet and took stock of himself, angling his wing forward to inspect the burn. He was still tired, hungry, stiff, and sore, but the excruciating pain that had flared every time he shifted the pinion was gone. The wound looked as if it had been healing for tendays and doing so cleanly. He spread both wings, beat them experimentally, and found them strong enough to carry him aloft. Probably he couldn’t yet fly as fast, far, or nimbly as before, but at least he was no longer earthbound.

  Grinning, Jivex spiraled around him.

  “I told you they’d help,” the reptile said.

  “Indeed you did, and I thank all of you.”

  You’re welcome, said the trees. Even awake, Taegan could still hear them, though their silent communal voice seemed much fainter, like a mild breeze sighing through leaves. Did you likewise profit from your tour of our city?

  Landing, Taegan said, “It was very interesting.”

  The spirits contemplated him for a time then replied, So be it. Everyone must decide for himself what to prize and what to cast away. We merely hoped to plant a seed.

  “When I have the leisure, I’ll certainly reflect on what fair Amra showed me. Meanwhile, I have a military disaster to reverse. You and Jivex have already saved my life. It’s presumptuous of me to expect any further aid. Yet if you won’t tender it, the necromancers will continue polluting your forest.”

  What do you want us to do? Jivex asked the trees.

  It was a good question, one that brought home to Taegan the difference between a teacher of individual combat and a war captain. He struggled to assess the current dismal situation as Rangrim would have.

  “As I can’t do anything alone,” he said, “I have to assume a reasonable number of the Warswords yet survive. If I could reassemble them into an army, perhaps we could still strike a telling blow. The problem being that they’re scattered through miles of woodland hiding from pursuit, and no doubt intent on fleeing east as expeditiously as possible.”

  “The other faerie dragons and I could try to find them,” Jivex said, grinning, “and shield them with our illusions as we herd them together.”

  “How many of you are there?” Taegan asked.

  The small reptile hesitated before saying, “Some.”

  The avariel arched an eyebrow and asked, “Could you be more specific?”

  “No,” the little dragon replied. “I can’t count that high. I’m just as smart as you, but my mind works differently.”

  “I understand.”

  “If you’re so great, let’s see you make some illusions.”

  “I said, I understand and I assure you, I regard you as an altogether sagacious and wondrous creature.” Taegan turned to one of the gray trees, selecting it at random. It was difficult to know where to look when the former elves were all around him. “Can you offer further help as well?”

  A little, the spirits replied. Several circles ofelven trees stand in the wood. Each can shelter some of your comrades until you’re ready to march against the foe. Perhaps we can even call to them to lead them to safety, if they’ll heed our whispers.

  “That could be a problem,” Taegan said, “getting them to trust you or the faerie dragons, for that matter, but we’ll simply have to do our best. Perhaps if you invoke my name, it will allay their misgivings.”

  “Or,” said Jivex, leering, “we’ll just trick them into heading where we want them to go.” He exuberantly flew through a vertical loop, as if he thought the desperate venture they contemplated would prove a merry lark. “Is that the plan, then?”

  “Evidently,” Taegan replied, and the absurdity of the statement hit home. “What am I saying? That can’t be all. Because otherwise, even if we succeed in reassembling the expedition, with the casualties we endured, and the bronzes slain or lost to frenzy, we don’t have a prayer of defeating the cult.”

  Perhaps, said the spirits, we can help a bit more. Long before any of us was even born, another chose to remain in the forest when by rights she should have departed, to protect the Teu-tel-quessir who were her friends. Alas, as the centuries passed, her slumber deepened, and it became increasingly difficult to rouse her. In the end, when the city fell, she didn’t hear our pleas. But she’s enjoyed a long rest since, and maybe if another elf calls her, she’ll wake one final time.

  TWENTY

  15 Tarsakh, the Year of Rogue Dragons

  Jivex and another of his kind-it had turned out the Gray Forest was home to six faerie dragons, each with its own extensive territory-led Taegan and a dozen of the queen’s men skulking through the wood. Finally the reptiles wheeled and flew back to their bipedal companions.

  “Here we are,” Jivex said.

  Taegan surveyed the patch of ground ahead of him. If it had ever been a carefully shaped and tended burial mound, that time had long since passed. It had no discrete edges or discernible form and had seemingly fallen in on itself until it was scarcely higher than the surrounding earth. It even had old maple trees growing out of it.

  “Are you sure?” the maestro asked.

  Jivex snorted and said, “Who lives hereabouts, you or I? Of course I’m sure.”

  Sir Corlas moved up beside Taegan. The cavalier’s surcoat was torn and grimy, his plate and shield battered, his destrier slain, but he still had his lady’s crimson scarf knotted to his helmet.

  “I’ll post sentries,” he said, “while you begin the ceremony.”

  Though by no means servile, Corlas’s manner was respectful. It had been disconcerting to discover that, with Rangrim and his senior lieutenants either dead or at best still missing, the Warswords regarded the duelist responsible for their reunification as a de facto officer. Accordingly, Taegan tried to behave as if he merited their confidence, and to ignore the inner voice whispering that a war-leader of his meager qualifications was bound to fall well short of expectations.

  “It isn’t a ceremony as such,” he replied. “Apparently I simply talk to her, but I have no idea how long it will take, so pickets are a sound idea.”

  With Jivex flitting along beside him, Taegan advanced until he was standing at the foot of the dilapidated mound. He drew his sword and saluted the entity who theoretically lay sleeping before him.

  “Vorasaegha,” he said. “My name is Taegan Nightwind. Your friends the moon elves sent me to ask you to come forth.”

  Nothing answered except for a jay chattering in the meshed branches overhead. Well, he hadn’t expected it to be that easy.

  “The city is gone now,” he continued, “and the elves themselves, much changed. But they still revere your memory and pray you’ll help them as you did before, to cleanse the forest of corruption. Since your time, a new evil has come into the world. An insane wizard named Sammaster invented a way of infusing dragons with the most virulent kind of undeath…”

  He pressed on, spinning the tale of the Cult of the Dragon and of his own protracted duel with it, looking for any subtle sign that something under the moist earth with its coating of slippery rotten leaves could hear him. He couldn’t discern one.

  He concluded by once again imploring Vorasaegha to reveal herself. Still, nothing happened. He felt a crushing disappointment.

  “Louder,” Jivex said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “She has dirt in her ears, and more of it piled between you and her. Maybe you need to yell.”

  Taegan smiled wryly and said, “An interesting conjecture, but I doubt that’s truly the problem.”

  He turned. Corlas was standing with Uthred, the wizard who’d protected the archers’ retreat when the Warswords routed. Like the knight, the latter was a relatively young man, but affected long, wheat-colored, grandfatherly whiskers that he probably felt made him look more the learned and formidable battle mage. It was plain from their glum expressions that both humans understood what had just occurred. Or failed to. Still, Taegan supposed he ought to say it anyway, for form’s sake.

  “I’m sorry. The creature has apparently slipped too far from this world and its cares for us to summon her back. The gray trees warned it might be so.”

  Corlas unconsciously squared his shoulders, bucking himself up.

  “Well,” said the knight, “at least we’re one army again. Maybe we can retreat in good order, muster reinforcements in Lyrabar, and march back.”

  “If everyone else isn’t already off fighting to the east,” Uthred said somberly. “Still, you’re right, it’s the only way. Jivex, will you and your folk continue helping us conceal ourselves from the enemy?”

  “That’s it?” the faerie dragon shrilled. “You’re just giving up? My kin and I have been wasting our time on you.”

  “We truly will return if we can,” Taegan said.

  “And maybe we’ll have a dozen dracoliches running around by then. Won’t that be fun?”

  Taegan looked at his human companions and said, “Sune knows, I wouldn’t choose to flee, not if I could see any hope of avenging our fallen comrades and smashing the cult now.”

  “In our present circumstances,” Corlas said, “every minute we can use to distance ourselves from the enemy is precious. But I suppose we can spare a few more.”

  Uthred made a sour face, but said, “Why not?”

  Taegan faced the mound, then on impulse went down on his knees and set his sword on the ground as he might lay it at the feet of the queen. Who knew, it might help. He recited the same string of pleas and explanations he’d offered before. By the end, his mouth was dry, and to all unaltered appearances, that was the only thing he’d accomplished.

  “That’s it, then,” Uthred said.

  Jivex flitted up to the wizard, hovered at the right height to glower at him eye to eye, and said, “You humans are a bunch of quitters.”

  “I cast some divinations,” Uthred said. “Once something powerful lay in this ground, but now, only faint traces of its magic remain.” He looked at Taegan. “Maestro? Are you ready to go?”

  “Yes,” Taegan said. “No. I concede it makes little sense, but give me one last chance.”

  “I realize,” Corlas said, “that Jivex saved your life. We all owe him and the other faerie dragons a huge debt. But we can’t repay it by persisting in an effort that’s manifestly futile.”

  “I know,” Taegan said. “I won’t deliver my entire oration a third time. I just need another minute.”

  The knight shrugged. “Do what you must.” Which was what, exactly? At first, Taegan had no idea what to try that he hadn’t attempted twice already. Then intuition, or perhaps mere desperation, prompted him.

  “I myself am an elf,” he said, and it felt strange to proclaim it with such fervor. “I, who summon you. This is my elf blood. Feel it. Smell it. Taste it. Recognize it, damn you.”

  Taegan drew his dagger, sliced the heel of his palm, and squeezed red droplets onto the ground.

  They simply made a stain, without glowing, catching fire, or doing anything else overtly supernatural. They didn’t even soak into the soil with unusual quickness. Nothing stirred.

  “We’ll see you out of the wood safely,” the faerie dragon said, an unaccustomed dullness in his voice.

  “Thank you,” Taegan replied. He rose and inspected the gash in his hand. He’d sliced it fairly deeply. “We brought along a priest or paladin, didn’t we? If he has any healing left after tending the wounded, perhaps he could look at this.”

  “Mystra’s stars!” Uthred swore, his eyes widening.

  “What is it?” Taegan asked.

  “Come away,” the wizard said. Taegan realized that the divinatory spells Uthred had mentioned must still have been altering his perceptions, revealing phenomena other people couldn’t see. “Come away from the mound.”

  Taegan beat his wings and leaped clear. Jivex whizzed after him. The slight hump in the ground began to shake as if experiencing its own private little earthquake. The maples lashed back and forth.

  In time, the trees toppled, crashing against each other. An archer had to scramble to keep one from falling on him. Fissures snaked through the mound, splitting it into pieces. The fallen maples jolted upward and tumbled aside as the entity beneath them heaved herself into the light of day.

  It occurred to Taegan that the process was a bit like a hatchling struggling forth from an egg, but everything else about Vorasaegha bespoke might and majesty. She was at least as huge as any of the other drakes he’d encountered. Her gleaming bronze scales, from which the dust slid as if it had no power to sully her, were blue-black along the edges, while her eyes shone like luminous green pearls, without visible pupils. Such details were marks of the extreme age that only made a dragon stronger.

  Still, the awe she inspired in every trembling observer lay in more than her physical appearance. While plainly as solid as metal, Vorasaegha nonetheless had an elusive but unmistakable uncanniness about her. Though her existence predated theirs by centuries, she might almost have recreated herself specifically to battle dracoliches, for she was their counterpart, a wyrm who’d cheated death for benevolent reasons instead of selfish ones.

  She turned her gigantic serpentine head toward Taegan. Her radiant gaze was terrifying even though nothing about it conveyed hostility.

  “You called me,” she rumbled.

  “Yes, Milady.”

  “I didn’t believe I’d ever walk this world again. These are surely the final hours.”

  Taegan took a deep breath to steady himself and said, “Then we’d better make them count.”

  “Come here.”

  Taegan walked to her. She lowered her head, and her forked tongue, longer and thicker than his arm, flicked forth to swipe across his hand. Its touch was rough and wet, and afterward, his cut was gone.

  “Now,” said the dragon, “tell me what you need of me.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  16 Tarsakh, the Year of Rogue Dragons

  It made Dorn edgy simply to float at anchor with the sail lowered. He glowered out across the purplish expanse of the Moonsea and saw the same nothing as before.

  “To Baator with this,” he growled.

  “He promised he’d join us,” Kara said with a sigh. “Please, give him a little longer.”

  “Just because we’ve fooled the Zhentarim up to now, that doesn’t mean they won’t eventually figure out we stole one of their patrol boats. Besides, we’re wasting daylight, and we’d have to be even stupider than we evidently are to do this after dark.”

  “On the other hand” said Raryn, “if we’re going, we might as well go as strong as possible.”

  His long hair and goatee shining particularly white in the sunlight, the arctic dwarf sat on a coil of rope sharpening the point of his new harpoon with a hone.

  Upon reaching Thentia, the hunters had discovered that, wonder of wonders, their partners among the city’s motley collection of wizards had been doing their jobs for a change. Instead of squandering all their time on bizarre experiments, they’d actually enchanted some items to replace the gear the travelers tended to lose or damage in the course of fulfilling their commissions. The mages had, for example, produced a new bastard sword and quiver of arrows for Dorn, and a new curved hornblade and pouch of skiprocks for Will.

  Most of those weapons and pieces of armor were packed away. They wouldn’t help the hunters where they were headed. Fortunately, by rummaging through the wizards’ storerooms and scouring the marketplace, they’d managed to lay hands on a few implements that would.

  “I’m tired of waiting, too,” said Will from the top of the mast. “We could at least toss Pavel overboard and see what happens. Then the rest of us will know what to expect.”

  “I had a similar thought,” the priest replied, wrapped in a garment that, out of the water, appeared to be nothing more than a leather cloak. “The gods know, you’ve never been good for anything else, but perhaps you could finally play a useful role as chum.”

  The patrol boat jolted as if it had run aground on a reef or sandbar, though that was plainly impossible. Dorn and his companions staggered, fighting for balance.

  All around the sailboat, beautiful mermaids leaped into view and somehow pirouetted along the surface of the lake, with only the tips of their green, piscine tails touching the waves. Then their comely faces warped into grotesque ugliness. They puffed out their cheeks and spat prodigious jets of water. Though Dorn tried to dodge, the frigid spray soaked him anyway.

  Or at least it seemed to, but the next instant, he was dry, and the mermaids vanished like popping soap bubbles. Kara sighed like a mother enduring the antics of a mischievous child and peered over the side.

  “We know it’s you, Chatulio,” she said. “Show yourself.”

  A dragon with scales the metallic orange of newly minted coppers swam out from under the boat, and treading water with his feet and wings, lifted his head to peer over the side. His blue eyes shining, he gave the bard a gap-toothed leer.

  “I just thought I’d show the small folk what I can do.”

  Kara replied, “Thus wasting magic we may soon need to save our lives.”

  “If you can’t have a laugh, what’s the use of living anyway? Introduce me to your friends.”

  That took a few moments then, with Chatulio looking on curiously, it was time to make the final preparations. Essentially it was a matter of casting spells and drinking potions. Pavel prayed for Lathander’s blessing, bolstering the party’s vigor, courage, and luck. Kara sang a charm that would enable her to breathe underwater. Dorn gulped a lukewarm, sour-tasting elixir that was supposed to confer the same benefit, and a sweeter one generally employed to give a person the power to float up into the air. Under water, it would keep the weight of his iron limbs from dragging him helplessly to the bottom.

  Still, when he picked up his long spear and joined his companions at the side, he felt a pang of trepidation. As a child, he’d loved to swim, but that was long ago. Evidently sensing his anxiety, Kara touched him on the arm. He didn’t know how that made him feel or how to respond.