He crossed over and strafed with his acidic breath, drawing a line of devastation down the center of the city. A few of the arrows nipped at him. One spear lifted up high enough for Urshula to bite it out of the sky.
And he was gone, out over the city’s southern wall. A slight tilt of his wings angled the dragon to climb into the air once again.
The dragon knew they’d be better prepared for his second run, but there would be no second run. Urshula rose up even higher. He banked back to the north and flew over the city from on high, well out of reach of the puny arrows.
He glided down, swooping past the remains of the dwarf camp, then dipped and plowed into the lake, lifting a wall of water high into the air.
Wings tucked back as he descended, the dragon’s great body swayed to push him through the cold current of the underground river that brought water from the spring melt at the Great Glacier. Urshula would never run out of breath, though, for black dragons were perfectly adapted to such an environment. Some minutes later, the dragon turned into a side passage, a lava tube from an ancient volcano that gradually climbed so that, after a long while, he came free of the water.
He followed his subterranean network of trails unerringly, traversing corridors so wide that he could occasionally flex his wings, and so narrow that his scales scraped the worms and roots as he snaked his way through. In one of those narrow corridors, Urshula paused and sniffed. He nodded, knowing that he was parallel to his lair.
He turned his head into the soft ground and brought forth his acidic breath but sprayed it gradually, melting and loosening the dirt before him as he bored through.
He broke into the southern rim of the side room of his lair, crawled forth, and shook the peat and dirt from his interlocking scales. He stopped and snapped his long, thick tail against the wall of dirt, collapsing the tunnel behind him, and issued a growl that sounded almost like a cat’s purr. His lamplight gaze fell over his bed of coins and gems, suits of armor and weapons. He flung his newest sack of treasure atop the pile and slithered forth.
He collapsed in pleasant thoughts of devastation and considered again the taste of dwarf, raw and cooked. His tongue snaked between his great fangs, seeking morsels and sweet memories.
Then the dragon’s lamplight eyes closed, the lair fell into pitch blackness, and Kazmil-urshula-kelloakizilian, the Beast of the Bog, slept.
“Minor damage from a meager wyrm,” said Byphast the Frozen Death. She appeared in all ways an elf, except that her hair shone silver rather than the usual golden or black, and her skin was a bit too white. Her eyes, too, did not fit the overall image, for they showed a cool shade of yellow, with a line of black centering them, like the eyes of a hunting serpent. “Palishchuk shows the scars you predicted, several years old, but they are of little consequence.”
In the room was one other, seated at a small table before a trio of large bookcases, who slowly swiveled his head Byphast’s way. The fabric of his gray cloak was torn in strips to reveal the velvety blackness of the robe beneath. His voluminous sleeves hung below the edge of the table, but when the man turned, his fingers showed.
Fingers of bone. A living skeleton.
Beneath the great hood of the robe, there was only blackness, and Byphast was glad for that.
Her relief did not hold, though, as Zhengyi lifted one of his skeletal hands and drew the hood back. The gray and white skull came into view. The pieces of rotting flesh and the inhuman, unearthly eyes—points of red and yellow fire—forced Byphast to glance away. And the smell, the essence of death itself, nearly backed her out of the room.
Zhengyi pulled the hood back all the way to reveal the splotches of his white hair, clumped at all angles across his bony pate. If most people coifed themselves to appear more attractive, it seemed quite apparent that Zhengyi did the opposite.
For as most people, as most creatures, reveled in life, so did Zhengyi revel in death. He had passed beyond his human form into a state of undeath. Of the many variants among the walking dead on Toril, none was more abhorrent and revolting than a lich. A vampire might charm, might even be beautiful, but a lich was not a creature of subtlety. A lich didn’t enter a bargain with Death, as did a vampire. A lich wasn’t an unwilling participant in the state of undeath, as were the minor skeletons, zombies, and ghouls. A lich was a purposeful creature, a wizard who by powerful enchantments and sheer force of will had defeated Death itself, had refused to surrender consciousness and self-awareness or to give in to some otherworldly, godly being.
Even Byphast the Frozen Death, the greatest white dragon of the Great Glacier, shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot in the presence of Zhengyi. She wished the corridors of Castle Perilous were wider and higher so that she might face Zhengyi in her awe-inspiring dragon form.
Realistically, though, Byphast didn’t believe the lich would be impressed by even that. Certainly Zhengyi had shown no fear when he’d traversed the icy corridors of Byphast’s lair to confront her in her very treasure room. He had passed through the remorhaz pit, where several of the mighty polar worms, minions of the white dragon, stood guard. He had so dominated the ice trolls Byphast used as sentries that they hadn’t even warned their dragon deity of Zhengyi’s approach.
“Tell me, Byphast, what lingering damage might your own deadly breath have caused to the stone of Palishchuk?” the lich replied at last.
Byphast’s reptilian eyes narrowed. Her breath was frost, of course, powerful enough to freeze solid the flesh and blood of living enemies but largely ineffective against stone.
Or against a lich.
“A black dragon’s spittle is concentrated,” Byphast replied, her teeth gritted. She felt the twinges of anger ripple through her elf form, screaming at her to revert to her natural state. “Blacks can wreak devastation indeed, but in a smaller area. The breath of a white dragon fans wider and is deadly even at the fringes. And more effective. I can kill all within without destroying the city itself. The people die, the buildings remain. Which is the wiser choice, Witch-King?”
“You know I favor you,” Zhengyi replied, the meager flaps of dried skin at the corners of his mouth somehow turning up in a frozen smile.
Byphast hid her disgust. “And I am possessed of potent spells, beyond the abilities of Urshula the Black, I am sure.”
“You would not wish him as an ally?”
Byphast leaned back at that, her surprise showing.
“He came forth a few years ago,” Zhengyi went on, letting the question drop. “That is good. He is below that pond north of the city—of that, I am certain.”
“When Zhengyi wishes to find a dragon…” Byphast muttered.
“I will conquer Damara, my friend. The spoils will be grand, and my dragon allies will be well rewarded.”
Byphast’s eyes narrowed again, and with the gleam of eagerness glowing behind them.
“Do you not think Urshula worthy of our war?” asked the lich.
“Urshula is the father of all the black dragons in the Bloodstone Lands,” Byphast replied. “Enlist him and you are assured a flight of blacks at your service. They are most effective at weakening a castle’s walls before your ground fodder advances.”
“Oh, I will enlist him,” Zhengyi promised. “Remember, I have the greatest treasure of all.”
Byphast’s eyes flared and narrowed yet again.
He did indeed.
“Urshula is not possessed of a magical repertoire?” Zhengyi asked. He tapped a skeletal finger to the bone where his lip used to be and turned back to his small desk and the crystal ball that sat atop it.