She urged Mina to make haste. Kill these wretches, she commanded, if they will not get out of your way.
Mina grabbed a sword and raised it in the air. She no longer saw people. She saw open mouths, felt clutching hands. The living surrounded her, plucking at her, shrieking and gibbering, pressing their lips against her skin.
“Mina, Mina!” they cried, and their cries changed to screams and the hands fell away. The street emptied, and it was only when she heard Galdar’s horrified roar and saw the blood on her sword and on her hands and the bleeding bodies lying in the street that she realized what she had done.
“She commands me to hurry,” Mina said, “and they wouldn’t get out of my way.”
“They are out of your way now,” Galdar said.
Mina looked down at the bodies. Some she knew. Here was a soldier who had been with her since the siege of Sanction. He lay in a pool of blood. Her sword had run him through. She had some dim memory of him pleading with her to spare him.
Stepping over the dead, she continued on. She kept hold of the sword, though she had no skill in the use of such a weapon and she grasped it awkwardly, her hand gummed with blood.
“Walk ahead of me, Galdar,” she ordered. “Clear the way.”
“I don’t know where we’re going, Mina. The temple ruins lie outside the wall on the other side of the moat of fire. How do you get there from here?”
Mina pointed with the sword. “Stay on this street, follow the curtain wall. Directly across from the Temple of Duerghast is a tower. Inside the tower, a tunnel leads beneath the wall and underneath the moat to the temple.”
They proceeded on, moving at a dead run.
“Make haste,” Takhisis commanded.
Mina obeyed.
The first enemy dragons came into view, flying high over the mountains. The first waves of dragonfear began to affect Sanction’s defenders. Sunlight glittered on gold and silver scales, glinted off the armor of the dragonriders. Only in the great wars of the past had this many dragons of light come together to aid humans and elves in their cause. The dragons flew in long lines—the swift-flying Silvers in the lead, the more ponderous Golds in the rear. A strange sort of mist began to flow up over the walls, seep into the streets and alleyways. Galdar thought it odd that fog should arise suddenly on a sunny day, and then he saw suddenly that the mist had eyes and mouths and hands. The souls of the dead had been summoned to do battle. Galdar looked up through the chill mist, looked up into the blue sky. Sunlight flashed off the belly of a silver dragon, argent light so bright that it burned through the mists like sunshine on a hot summer day.
The souls fled the light, sought the shadows, slunk down alleyways or sought shelter in the shade cast by the towering walls.
Dragons do not fear the souls of dead humans, dead goblins, dead elves.
Galdar envisioned the blasts of fire breathed by the gold dragons incinerating all those who manned the walls, melting armor, fusing it to the living flesh as the men inside screamed out their lives in agony. The image was vivid and filled his mind, so that he could almost smell the stench of burning flesh and hear the death cries. His hands began to shake, his mouth grew dry.
“Dragonfear,” he told himself over and over. “Dragonfear. It will pass. Let it pass.” He looked back at Mina to see how she was faring. She was pale, but composed. The empty amber eyes stared straight ahead, did not look up to the skies or to the walls from which men were starting to jump out of sheer panic.
The Silvers flew overhead, flying rapidly, flying low. These were the first wave and they did not attack. They were spreading fear, evoking panic, doing reconnaissance. The shadows of the gleaming wings sliced through the streets, sending people running mad with terror. Here and there, some mastered their fear, overcame it. A lone ballista fired. A couple of archers sent arrows arcing upward in a vain attempt at a lucky shot. For the most part, men huddled in the shadows of the walls and drew in shivering breaths and waited for it all to go away, just please go away.
The fear that descended on the population worked in Mina’s favor. Those who had been clogging the streets ran terrified into their homes or shops, seeking shelter where no shelter existed, for the fire of the Golds could melt stone. But at least they left the streets. Mina and Galdar made swift progress.
Arriving at one of the guard towers that stood along Sanction’s curtain wall, Mina yanked open a door at the tower’s base.
The tower was sparsely inhabited, most of its defenders had fled. Those who were left, hearing the door bang open, peered fearfully down the spiral stairs. One called out in a cracked voice, “Who goes there?”
Mina did not deign to answer, and the soldiers did not dare come down to find out. Galdar heard their footsteps retreat farther down the battlements.
He grabbed a torch, fumbled to light it from a slowmatch burning in a tub. Mina took the torch from him and led the way down a series of dank stone stairs to what appeared to be a blank wall, through which she walked without hesitation. Either the wall was illusion, or the Dark Queen had caused the solid stone to dissolve. Galdar didn’t know, and he had no intention of asking. He gritted his teeth and barged in after her, fully expecting to dash his brains out against the rock. He entered a dark tunnel that smelled strongly of brimstone. The walls were warm to the touch. Mina had ranged far ahead of him, and he had to hurry to catch up. The tunnel was built for humans, not minotaurs. He was forced to run with his shoulders hunched and his horns lowered. The heat increased. He guessed that they were passing directly under the moat of fire. The tunnel looked to be ancient. He wondered who had built it and why, more questions he was never going to have answered.
The tunnel ended at yet another wall. Galdar was relieved to see that Mina did not walk through this wall. She entered a small door. He squeezed in after her, a tight fit, to find himself in a prison cell.
Rats screeched and chittered at the light, scrambled to escape. The floor was alive with some sort of crawling insects that swarmed into the nooks and crevices of the crumbing stone walls. The cell door hung on a single rusted hinge.
Mina left the cell, that opened up into a corridor. Galdar caught a glimpse of other rooms extending off the main hall and he knew where he was—the Temple of Duerghast. Thinking back to what he had heard about this temple, he guessed that these were the torture chambers where once the prisoners of the dragonarmy were “questioned.” The light of his torch did not penetrate far into the shadows, for which he was grateful.
He hated this place, wished himself away from it, wished himself anywhere but here, even in the city above, though that city might be crawling with gold dragons. The screams of the dying echoed in these dark corridors, the walls were wet with tears and blood.
Mina looked neither to the right nor the left. The light of her torch illuminated a flight of stairs, leading upward. Climbing those stairs, Galdar had the feeling he was clawing his way back from death. They reached ground level, the main part of the temple.
Cracks had opened in the walls, and Galdar was able to catch a whiff of fresh air. Though it smelled strongly of sulfur from the moat of fire, the smell up here was better than what he’d smelled below. He drew in a deep breath.
Rays of dust-clouded sunlight filtered through the cracks. Galdar started to douse the torch, but Mina stopped him.