Dragonbait exchanged positions with the halfling and sat on Mist’s head. He kept the party waiting in the clearing where Mist had landed for a quarter of an hour. The lizard could sense the distance between them and the evil god. When he gave the signal, Mist rose and, skimming low over the trees, circled away until she had reached the tree break Moander had left behind. Along this trail she made her attack run, moving in on the god’s rear.
“They’re going to have to call this ‘Moander’s Road,’ ” Olive shouted to the mage as she took in the devastation.
Akabar nodded wordlessly, awed by the destruction around them. Moander apparently no longer needed to absorb more bulk; it just plowed up the great trees, pushing them aside and leaving them to die on the forest floor, half buried by the great mounds of dirt it also overturned.
The dragon flew on unfazed by the rape of the Elven Wood. She kept her eyes forward, ignoring the great trench beneath her and the shattered trees at her flanks.
The mage closed his eyes, trying to shut out the sound of the heavy wings beating, the rush of air on his face, and the rise and fall of the dragon’s back as she flew. He concentrated on his magic.
Olive nudged him and pointed. Akabar opened his eyes. Mist was less than twenty yards from Moander. No duskwood bombards fired from the hill. The god was oblivious to the dragon’s proximity. Akabar allowed himself a brief smile when he spied the mass of duskwood trees and deadwood woven into the Abomination’s mass, the perfect materials for their plans. His spell was prepared; he awaited only Dragonbait’s signal.
The lizard waved, and Mist rose above the hill, spouting a long, heavy stream of fire as she did so. Like an assassin’s knife, flames ripped into the greenery where the creature’s spine would be if it had one. Moander screamed just as Akabar triggered his pyrotechnic spell. The red streams of the dragon’s breath exploded in a further cavalcade of twisting yellows, spiraling oranges, and lancing azure blues. In the process of transforming the dragon’s fiery breath to explosive fireworks, Akabar’s spell snuffed the upper flames issuing from her maw, but the fireworks pierced deeper into the heart of the hill.
New shoots cropped up immediately to cover the scarred area, but Mist was not through. As soon as she crested the top of the hill, she twisted and spun about, her passengers tied and braced. As she dropped along the back of the hill, she breathed again, sending more flames into the open wound she had carved.
Though his stomach had risen to his throat when he’d momentarily hung upside down, the mage did not lose his focus. Another pyrotechnic spell speared the god.
Moander burned. The hill, now composed more of harvested wood than refuse and slime, blazed. Even better, Ruskettle and Akabar could spot great flames shooting up through the coarse outer mesh of trees and brush, flames that originated nearer the heart of the monster.
In her plant prison, Alias felt the air grow stuffy. The walls began to weep thick, yellowish tears through the moss. She rose to her feet, but was knocked back to the ground by a sudden sideways jerk of her enclosure. It seemed as if Moander had decided to move her prison.
Moander halted and flattened out in an effort to draw more material into its mass, perhaps in an effort to smother the flames. But as the halfling had noted to Akabar the evening before, the forest was quite dry. Whatever the god drew into itself just fed the fires more. And the duskwoods were renowned for their fine burning resins.
Next the Abomination tried to contain the fire by creating a firebreak in its body, splitting itself in two and leaving half of its mass behind. The pyrotechnics had done their job, though. The fire was everywhere; there was no escape from it. Flames curled out of the heart of the moving half of the hill and, like a fire that’s just been stirred, the blaze leaped higher and burned hotter.
Mist had retreated, circling high overhead to evade any return attacks, but when none seemed forthcoming, she swooped back to administer the final blow. Akabar felt the dragon’s chest swell with a mighty intake of air.
Before Mist had a chance to exhale, though, the top of Moander popped off like a cork in a bottle. Startled, Mist pulled up sharply, wary of some new type of attack. A pod twice the size of the dragon, but less than a tenth the size of the god before they’d attacked it, shot out from the hill. Egg-shaped, the missile tumbled end over end as it rose into the air. At the zenith of its flight it righted itself and then swept southeastward in a blur of movement.
“Gold lions will get you good lunch that our woman is in that thing,” Olive shouted.
Akabar nodded. “Along with whatever passes for the consciousness of Moander.”
Dragonbait gave the dragon a sharp prod, and Mist took off after the pod.
Behind them on the ground below, the burning pile of trees that had once been the Abomination of Moander spewed out a black column of smoke high enough to be spotted in Shadowdale, Hillsfar, and Yulash.
Mist began to strain, flapping her wings faster to keep pace with the escape pod. Akabar concentrated, then barked the harsh syllables of another spell and pressed his hands against the back of the dragon. Summoned energies flowed from his hands into the great wyrm.
Mist lunged forward at twice the speed. Her wings beat the air as gracefully and as quickly as a bird’s. The ground blurred in their vision, and they began closing the distance between them and the pod.
“What did you do?” Olive gasped, her words torn from her mouth by the wind.
“Haste,” Akabar explained. “Dangerous for humans—ages them a year. Can’t hurt this creature, though. She sleeps longer than that after a meal.”
Moander spoke again to Alias, but now with just a bass voice, rumbling against a garbling background chatter that was almost unintelligible.
“Flying,” he said after a garble. “Life energies low. Must gate.” Another long garble, then the bass voice surfaced. “Prepare for transport. Damaged goods.”
The last phrase struck Alias as something that Akabar might say, and she fancied that some part of the mage’s mind must have entered into Moander’s being and not just the other way around. Perhaps it was the mage’s spirit warning her to keep herself safe. The further deterioration of Moander’s communication skills gave her a burst of hope. Things apparently weren’t going well for the god. Maybe an army had attacked it, or a horde of powerful adventurers.
The circular shell of her prison wall began to shrink. Mouths surfaced all over the walls. Alias feared that Moander had decided to eat her rather than see her rescued, but the walls began to spit out streams of thick, moist silken strands. She was being cocooned.
Instinctively, she tried to beat back the rising mass, afraid it would suffocate her. Would her “masters” find a way to make her breathe again, she wondered. She was soon overwhelmed by the fiber. Covered from head to toe, she could still breathe through the wrapping, but the air was stuffy, and she felt as though she’d been buried alive.
The egg-shaped pod flattened till it looked more like a giant pumpkin seed. It tore through the sky. Along its trailing edge, half a hundred eyes opened at once to watch the advancing dragon. Moander had husbanded its energies carefully. But either the god had miscalculated or dragons had become faster during its imprisonment. Moander weighed its options. Its last desperate bid for escape was to use magic—the most costly method of travel.
They were still far from the ruins of Myth Drannor, but Moander could sense the siren song of the old city’s dormant power, still humming away deep beneath toppled buildings and battle-scarred halls. With its godly abilities, Moander reached out and began syphoning off the magical energies of the dead elven kingdom.