"What is it?" the guide asked Cale.
The beat of huge pinions, like the wind that presaged a thunderstorm, drowned out anything Cale might have said in answer. The force of the wings rattled the trees under which they hid, and threw up a blinding mist of swamp water and clots of mud. A huge, sinuous form, still streaming the remnants of the shadows that previously had cloaked it, alit in the water forty paces from the copse and filled Cale's field of vision. Its body displaced so much water that the copse was flooded up to their knees.
Terror went before it.
Cale held his breath, heart racing. So too did his comrades. All of them stood perfectly still, both awed and terrified.
Jak finally managed a whisper: "Trickster's hairy toes."
Cale knew that his comrades probably could barely see the creature through the darkness and the trees. For his part, Cale caught only glimpses of it through the curtain of limbs, but....
Dark and empty, its size!
Its wingspan could have shaded the whole of the Uskevren manse. Lustrous black scales as large as great shields covered its muscled form. When it moved, shadows played along its hide. The edges of its form appeared to merge with the darkness, melding with the shadows of the plane and making it difficult to determine where the actual body of the creature began and ended. In those shadows, Cale thought he saw the dark, shifting images of struggling bodies, of faces contorted in screams, of eyes agog with terror. His skin went gooseflesh. Somewhere in the back of his brain, he heard moans and wails. He pushed them back and focused on the creature. Cale caught a flash of ebon horns, of teeth longer than Jak was tall, and of merciless eyes that reflected no light.
Dragon, his mind registered. A dragon of shadows.
The creature beat its wings once, spraying water in all directions, and sniffed the air. Cale knew that if it caught their scent, they could never outrun it. They could only fight; fight and die.
It lowered its great horned head to the level of the water and moved it from side to side, sniffing, searching. Its respiration sounded louder than a forge bellows. The shadows around it formed writhing bodies and contorted shapes before melding to sheathe the creature in gloom once again.
Cale expected the dragon to roar loud enough to deafen them all, but instead of a roar it spoke, and its sinister voice was the threatening whisper of a drawn sword.
"Lightbringers in my swamp," it said, still sniffing. Its eyes narrowed. "I smell your sweat. Human sweat."
Magadon's mental voice suddenly sounded in Cale's head, giving him a start.
We're linked, the guide projected.
Cale nodded. The link was a good idea, but it caused him to feel the fear pulsing along the telepathic channels that joined him to his friends. He tried to keep his own anxiety under control. Panic would not serve them.
It knows we're nearby, Riven projected softly, crouching silently to peer through the foliage. I can barely see it.
What is in the shadows around it? Jak asked.
Cale did not bother to answer. The dragon itself was terrifying enough.
Jak asked, If it comes, then what?
The halfling held his holy symbol in both hands. He hadn't bothered to bare his short sword. It was too paltry a weapon against a creature the size of the dragon.
Then we fight, Cale answered, with as much steel in his mental voice as he could muster. There's nowhere to run.
His comrades said nothing, but each of them shifted slightly. Magadon drew his arrow back another few fingers' breadth and took aim through the boughs.
The dragon continued to chuff after their scent, peering suspiciously at this or that copse of trees or stand of reeds.
Ready yourselves, Cale projected, though he did not know what any of them could do.
As quiet as a wraith, Riven drew his magical sabers. Cale closed his fist over his sword hilt. Jak edged closer to Cale.
The dragon, incredibly graceful for a creature so enormous, slid through the swamp toward them, sniffing, searching, its swinging tail and powerful forelegs propelling it through the muck. It reared back its long neck and looked in the direction of their copse. The pupils of its deep, violet eyes visibly dilated.
"I can hear your hearts beating," it said.
The dragon opened its mouth wide. Its inhalation sucked the air from the vicinity of the copse.
Cover! Cale mentally shouted.
But before any of them could move, the dragon expelled from its jaws a cloud of viscous shadows that washed over the copse, and soaked them for a moment in impenetrable darkness. Cale felt its effect immediately-the chill of the void, the pull of negative energy on his soul. Strangely, it seemed to have little effect on him. Jak and Magadon groaned as the dragon's breath stole some of their essence.
The cloud began to dissipate into greasy streamers, and Cale saw that Riven too seemed largely unaffected. Jak and Magadon, though ashen, remained on their feet and seemed still to have their wits. A rain of shriveled leaves and dry twigs fell from the trees around them.
Magadon's bow sang.
Jak's weakened voice rang out with the words of a spellcasting.
Riven lurched from the copse toward the dragon, wading through the water, blades bare and whirling.
The guide's psionically enhanced arrow hit the dragon in the throat below the hole of its mouth, but shattered harmlessly on its scales. A beam of white light streaked from Jak's outstretched palm, but the shadows surrounding the creature swallowed whatever effect the beam otherwise would have had.
Surrendering to the inevitable, Cale at last drew his blade and followed after Riven. He almost laughed, so absurd must they have looked, like fleas charging a dog.
From behind him, he heard Jak and Magadon following hard after, splashing through the mud and water. Jak began again to cast.
As Riven plowed through the muck, mud, and vegetation, he began to shout in the foul tongue he sometimes uttered in his sleep. Somehow his voice seemed more powerful, deeper, darker, as though amplified by the shadows. Cale could not fight down the nausea caused by the vile words. He coughed his midday meal into the waters of the swamp. Behind him, Jak and Magadon cried out in pain.
The shadows sheathing the dragon swirled into recognizable human forms, all of them covering their ears, though the dragon itself seemed unaffected by the utterance. As fast as a lightning strike, it lunged forward and clutched Riven in its foreclaw before the assassin could bring his blades to bear. Pinning the human's arms to his sides, the dragon picked Riven up out of the water and began to squeeze. Forms lurched forward from the shadows around the creature, arms outstretched, as though to embrace the assassin.
Cale could imagine the cracking ribs, the crushed organs. A bloody froth exploded from Riven's mouth but he continued to struggle to free his blades, all the while shouting in the vile tongue.
"You mouth the Black Speech, child," the dragon hissed, "but little understand the words. Hear this."
The creature held the dying Riven before its mouth and hissed into the assassin's face words so terrible, so awful to hear, that they made Cale dizzy. He staggered and kept his feet only by sheer force of will.
Behind him, Jak and Magadon fell to their knees, clutching their ears. Blood leaked from between their fingers, from their noses, from their eyes. The water around them reddened. They were dying.
Defiant even to the last, Riven answered the dragon with still more of the Black Speech. Somehow, the assassin's voice remained strong through the blood and pain. His eye still blazed.
Jak and Magadon, nearly senseless, collapsed into the mud.
Stop! Cale projected to Riven. You're killing them!
But the assassin could not hear, might not have understood, or did not care.
With his friends dying all around him, Cale made the only decision he could. He chose a spot on the dragon's spine at about the point where the roots of its wings sprouted from its back, took a step forward, and willed himself there.