The god channeled this energy directly into its spell. At the forward point of the pumpkin seed a blur of purple appeared, then stretched about the seed like a thin mist.
Mist, the dragon, was close enough for her passengers to make out the crawling glow that began to envelop the pod carrying Alias. Akabar was trying to figure out what it could be. A protection device, perhaps? Or—
He never finished his thought, for once the glow completely covered the pod, it began to shrink. Like a street magician’s trick, there was nothing left in the purple cloak Moander had wrapped itself in, nothing to keep the cloak from collapsing in on itself.
A Turmish curse escaped Akabar’s lips before he explained, “That’s a gate between worlds.”
Olive looked around in a wild-eyed panic.
“We’ve got to pull up,” the mage insisted. “If we pass through that cloud, we could end up anywhere.”
Both halfling and mage began to thump the sides of the dragon, trying to get her attention. When she turned back to look at them, they mimed pulling back on imaginary reins to symbolize their need to halt.
Mist turned her head forward again. Dragonbait kept his head turned to watch Akabar and Olive signaling him to stop the dragon. Dragonbait shook his reptilian head. He leaned over Mist’s forehead and made some motion Akabar and Olive could not see. When he sat back again, Dragonbait held the finder’s stone over his head.
Mist sped toward the purple cloud that dotted the sky low over the Elven Wood and dove in. Like the god preceding them, they were obscured from view. The shouts of the mage and the bard died away. The cloud dissipated slowly, as though reluctant to give up its form.
24
Battle over Westgate
This is like riding up into a maelstrom, Olive thought as they plunged into the purplish fog that had swallowed Moander, though she could not honestly say she had ever done so. The purple fog became a long, gray tube—the oozing wake of the god’s passage from the forest north of Myth Drannor to wherever it was heading.
Floating castles and statues danced along the edges of the tube. Ruskettle noticed that Alias’s finder’s stone, which Dragonbait now held high over his head, shone a beam before them that stretched all the way down the tube to illuminate the retreating rear of the mad god.
Moander disappeared in another purple fog. They plunged after it, were buffeted by a second stomach-churning whirlwind, and suddenly burst into bright sunshine in a clear blue sky.
Below them to the left was a bustling, walled city of some size—a sea port. The green-blue water told Olive that she was looking at the Inner Sea. The shape of the harbor and the seven peculiar hills outside of the city walls identified their destination as Westgate.
Giogioni Wyvernspur let out a deep sigh of relief as he topped the last rise on the road from Reddansyr and surveyed the city of Westgate and the land surrounding it. Since his narrow escape in Teziir from the sorceress who so resembled the sell-sword Alias, Giogi had been moving overland, first by carriage, then on horseback.
From his vantage point, the Cormyrian noble took in the plain, which ran along the sea coast. Covered with the same rich, slick grass as the hills bordering it, the greenery of the plain ran right to the stock and caravan yards scattered around the city wall. A ring of seven mounds lay south of the city just east of the road on which he traveled. All seven hillocks were crowned with old ruins—stone circles of druids and temples of more sinister cults.
“Now this,” he informed the horse he now rode, Daisyeye II, “has been a much more pleasant experience than my last trip on horseback. That ended, you see, with the death of your namesake, the first Daisyeye, followed by a singularly unpleasant interview with a dragon—an incident that will stick in my mind as long as, if not longer than, the nasty affair of losing Aunt Dorath’s pet land urchin.”
Giogi sighed again. He had been expecting to be waylaid by any of the hundred thousand brigands, bandits, dark powers, and orc bands that were said to lie in wait just beyond the borders of the civilized world. Yet, despite all the expected awfulness, his trip overland had been relatively peaceful.
About time I had some good luck, he thought, pulling off his wide-brimmed hat and letting the wind rustle through his hair.
At that moment the crash of a powerful lightning strike echoed all around him. Daisyeye II reared on her hindquarters. Directly overhead a great rend appeared in the sky. Through this a huge rock jettisoned into the world.
Giogi reigned Daisyeye in tightly to avoid being spilled onto the road. He might have been better off patting the beast and whispering soothing words, but his eyes were glued on the rocketing projectile. It looked like a rotting basket, with masses of greenery hanging from all sides. Along its trailing edge it spurt out jets of blue flame.
With a piercing howl the gash in the sky began to close. Then a red dragon burst through the hole overhead, pursuing the “basket.” The dragon’s appearance was Giogioni’s first indication of just how big the lump of decay really was.
The head of the dragon chasing the basket shone with a yellow light. Giogi squinted. The yellow light seemed to be coming from a figure riding between the dragon’s ears. Then the Cormyrian noble noticed the dragon’s color.
“No. It can’t be,” he whispered to himself. But his heart sank with the certainty that it was indeed Mist.
If Giogi had remained on the hilltop observing the dragon, he might have noticed the other figures on her back; he might even have heard the eerie chant that rose from one of the mounds just south of him, but Daisyeye II decided she’d had enough. She plunged uncontrollably down the hill into the high grass, taking the young Wyvernspur with her.
Akabar kept his eyes glued to Moander. Blue flames spurted from the god, but the mage recognized that the flames did not originate from the damaging fires they had set within the monster. They were some means of propulsion. Somehow the monster’s temporary occupation of his mind had left the mage with more than just the memory of the words he’d been forced to say to Alias or the evil deeds he’d been maneuvered into performing. He understood the means of the Abomination’s flight, and while he admired its cleverness, he shivered with horror at the reminder of what the god had done to him.
Moander’s vast godly knowledge, however, was not going to aid in its escape. The dragon, under the effects of Akabar’s spell of haste, was still gaining. The god arced downward toward the seven mounds outside the city walls. Then it halted, hovering over one of the hills. Great red stone plinths shaped like fangs curved inward about the crown of the hill. In their center burned a bonfire. Olive spotted tiny figures moving about the hilltop. From this distance the figures looked no bigger than ants.
Moander let a drop of slime fall away from its body. The slime oozed like a water drop slipping along a strand of spider silk, then it hung ten or so feet before splattering on the ground. The ant-sized figures were on it in a second.
“It’s delivered Alias to its followers,” Akabar shouted.
The halfling nodded. “We have to land and rescue her.”
The mage shook his head in disagreement. “We have to finish our battle with the god first,” he said.
“Are you crazy? We could be killed. I want off this ride, now,” Olive insisted.
Akabar’s eyes glittered with vengeance, and the halfling realized she wasn’t going to get anywhere trying to convince him to help her down. Fortunately for her, it wasn’t up to him. “Dragonbait!” she hollered. “Alias is down there! We have to land and help her!”