Tellin ran, each beat of his heart like a fist trying to punch out the cage of his ribs. Each breath burned in his lungs, and the sweat pouring down his face stung his eyes to near blindness. He ran, stumbling and righting himself. He ran gasping for the glen, and his thoughts made themselves into curses or prayers as though by their own will.
They did not know! They did not know!
He must warn them, illusion-crafters and the Wildrunners who protected them. He must find them and tell them that the dragonarmy had broken the ranks of the Wildrunners and would soon be raging through the forest.
He ran to warn, and he ran trying to leave behind the blood and the killing. How many of the weary mages and the valiant Wildrunners had died? All died. All, all, and into that dark well of a word no number was admitted, for none seemed great enough to encompass the horror of those deaths, the rending pain he felt when he recalled the screams and the terrible, sudden silences.
He ran, and he had a sword in his hand. How had he come by it? He couldn't recall. They had not all been elves who'd died in that slaughter he left behind, and this sword, covered in blood, bore the garnet-eyed head of a dark dragon engraved on the hilt. Shuddering, he tightened his grip on the sword, the weight of the steel heavy and awkward in his hand. He had never lifted a weapon like this, none of any kind. No matter. He had it, and he didn't know what in the name of all gods he would do with it, but he knew it as well as he knew his own name: He would never let the sword go.
Tellin staggered, then stopped, struggling for breath, trying to listen both ahead and behind. He heard the din of battle behind, the roaring of dragons, the screams of the dying, the exultant cries of those who killed and turned to kill again, elf and foeman. He heard nothing ahead. Would there be Wildrunners on the lip of the glen to greet him-or to see him pounding down the forest paths, deem him an enemy, and kill him? It hardly mattered if they gathered him in or filled him full of arrows. It only mattered that he reach the glen and scream his warning, or give it with his last breath, dying.
Branches whipped his face, and he left his blood on the leaves. Roots reached to trip him, felling him as though he were an axed tree. The third time he fell, the breath blasted out of his lungs, leaving him lying face in the dirt, gasping. He clawed at the ground, shuddering, and when at last he could breathe again, he climbed to his feet.
Behind him the forest was on fire.
Tellin saw no flames. He heard no crackling or even the hushed roar of trees being consumed. He smelled the smoke, that's how he knew.
"Dear gods," he groaned, his voice a harsh croaking. "O E'li who has so long watched over us, shield us now!"
And then, sorry for the breath wasted, Tellin stumbled on.
The ground dropped down now, and the paths looked familiar, recognizable as the ones he'd take from the glen. Then they'd been rising. Now they fell, and he regretted that, for a lowering path is harder to run than a climbing one. No matter. He must run.
He didn't see the dragon, the red scar against the sky like a smear of blood on an iron shield, until he came within sight of the first Wildrunners standing guard at the head of the trail. The four must have heard him running, for they stood with strung bows, waiting. Tellin flung up his arms, and he saw the sword in his fist too late to remember to drop it.
Four arrows knocked to bowstrings. Four Wildrunners pulled back to let loose the shafts. Breathless, he could not cry out his name or even shout Friend!
No need. No arrow flew. No Wildrunner challenged him. A voice shouted from far down in the glen. "Dragon! Dragon!"
The beast dropped down from the sky, darting like a lance in the clear sky-path over the glen. As one, the four Wildrunners loosed their shafts, sending their arrows buzzing into the sky. The steely points bounced harmlessly from the dragon's scaled hide. Upon the beast's back, a red-armored warrior, helmed and bearing a sword in his gloved fist, howled such a scream that the dragon itself must echo.
Chapter 8
The dragon came roaring fire over the treetops, turned, and rose higher. On the turn it dropped again, shooting down the length of the glen like a spear loosed by a furious god. Upon its back the red-armored rider howled, a sentence of death in the ears of each mage, Wildrunner, and in the heart of one cleric. Yet, even as smoke rolled down from the north, great roiling billows black against the sky, upon the edge of the glen the Wildrunners stood their ground, never looking north, never fretting the fire as they swiftly nocked a second flight of arrows and loosed them against the dragon. Bolt after bolt, they bounded from the dragon's hide, and only one came close to the mark, the dragon's only vulnerable place-the eye.
On the floor of the glen Dalamar watched, the dregs of magic like a poison of lethargy in his blood, his muscles trembling with exhaustion, and tried to track the flight of each arrow, knowing that each shaft would fail its target. All around him the voices of mages swirled, weary voices, ragged with strain, shredding under the weight of panic and exhaustion. They sounded like children, querulous and frightened, helpless to affect what must happen, the slaughter sure to come.
And at the top of the glen, there beside the tree where he'd earlier sat to meditate, Lord Tellin Windglimmer stood, a long sword clasped in his two hands.
In the name of all gods, Dalamar thought, where did he come from-and what is he going to do with that sword?
Dalamar could not guess, and yet the sight of the cleric, long sword in hand, jolted him from his lethargy. The dragon came nearer. Dalamar grabbed one mage by the arm, then another, shoving them ahead of him, south along the floor of the ravine.
"Get up into the forest!" he shouted, yanking a woman up from the ground where she'd fallen after the unweaving of the magic. "Get up to the high ground and into the forest!"
She went, scrambling on hands and knees, panting, sobbing, and maybe praying. She left little prints of blood behind, the marks of her hands where the stone scraped them raw. Others followed, the stronger helping those who had not yet recovered their strength. One after another, they found the path and dared the way up. The wind of the dragon's passing buffeted them, rocking Dalamar back on his heels. The beast turned again, and the tip of its wing swept two mages from the perilous path, sending them screaming to the floor of the glen.
Tellin's voice came echoing from above, suddenly sharp and loud as that of any commander on the battle ground. He swung his sword once over his head to get the attention of the mages still on the path, then pointed the blade into the forest.
"Get to the trees! The dragon can't follow there! Hurry!"
They ran. They scrambled and fell and crawled to their feet again, one by one clawing their way up the path to the woods. The dragon made another pass, another long roaring shot through the narrow glen. The red-armored rider leaned out and low, cutting the legs out from another mage, roaring with laughter as the elf fell, bleeding, screaming, and rolling into the glen. Unstoppable, the dragon soared high again, climbing.
Tellin shouted, "Dalamar! Come on! Up here!"
But Dalamar didn't move. He stood in the glen with the two mages who had died in the magic, Ylle Savath with her thick white hair spilled all around her and Benen Summergrace whose face had once reflected such wild joy as to make her look like a woman in grip of passion. Deep in Dalamar a fire burned, and it was a fire of rage.
"Dalamar!" Tellin stood inches from the edge of the drop into the glen. Behind him a Wildrunner whipped another arrow from her quiver. She fit it swiftly to the string. "Come out of there!"