"Does that mean that it's accidental?" asked Regdar.
"No," explained Sonja, "not necessarily accidental… maybe just crude. If you can't find a door and you really need to get across, you might just a tear a hole in the wall."
Regdar nodded.
"Unless I miss my guess…" Sonja led them around the rift, keeping a cautious distance from it until she reached the opposite side. From there, it couldn't be seen. Only a vague, blue emanation of magic remained.
"It's gone!" said Lidda.
"This is difficult to understand," Sonja explained. "As I said, I don't know that much about cosmology." She bent over and made a snowball and tossed it through the rift from behind. It landed with a plop on the far side, as if nothing whatsoever obstructed it. "It only faces one direction," the druid explained.
"Why is there no wind here?" asked Hennet. "I mean, we're right on top of it, so shouldn't the wind be stronger?"
Sonja made another snowball and flung it up into the air. It flew straight up about fifteen feet, but never came down. At that height it was caught and scattered by a ferocious wind blowing outward.
"This is a kind of safe area," Sonja said. "It was probably designed this way to allow the rift to be crossed easily. If this rift was meant for an army to march through, for instance, it wouldn't pay to have them blown away the instant they stepped through."
"You mean," asked Lidda, "that we could step into that… and step out in the Plane of Ice?" She was intrigued by the thought.
"If it's all the same, Lidda," said Sonja, "I'd rather dispel it instead. You'll have to satisfy your curiosity some other time, but I strongly advise against it."
If all went well, their mission would end here and now.
Sonja stepped forward, staring intensely at the rift between worlds. She raised her right hand, where she wore the silver ring of dispelling given her in Atupal and silently activated it. For what felt like an eternity she peered into the blue, shimmering oval, waging silent war on the rift, the force of her mind and magic against its unfeeling, guileless power.
Doubt wormed its way into her spirit. This rift fought back. She felt it powerfully at the center of the effect, and she still felt it, weaker but definite, at the edges when she shifted tacks and tried to fold the opening in on itself. Every time Sonja's magic pushed forward, the rift's magic pushed back.
Everyone's attention was focused so intently on Sonja and her efforts that no one noticed a white form scuttling down one of the towers, descending the smooth surface with ease. Partway down it launched itself off and cut its way through the snowy sky, gliding in a graceful arc toward the intruders despite the buffeting wind. The blue light emanating from the rift struck the dragon's pearly scales and dabbed them in deep shades of turquoise.
As it closed in, the dragon opened its elongated jaw and let out a shriek. Instantly Lidda, Hennet, and Regdar covered their ears. Sonja, however, was locked in concentration and barely heard the screech. Regdar grabbed her by the arm and yanked, shattering her carefully laid spell. She didn't make a sound or protest but merely collapsed where she stood. Regdar lifted her in his strong arms and ran across the terraced surface of the strange, frozen city.
The hole in the little dragon's wing was still visible, and sticky threads, remnants of Hennet's web spell, still dangled across its face. As if it recognized its tormentor, the dragon swooped directly at Hennet. The sorcerer was caught in an outstretched claw and lifted several feet off the ground before being tossed against the frosted side of a tower. Hennet slid to the ground, moaning and grasping his head, and the dragon managed a reptilian approximation of a laugh as it swooped away.
A crossbow quarrel struck the dragon's tail, penetrating its hide just deeply enough to draw blood. The creature reared about to find the source in time for another bolt to plunge directly into its gaping mouth. A flick of the pale, forked tongue dislodged the bolt, and the head swiveled to point toward a snowbank where Lidda crouched beneath the snow. She thought herself hidden and she might have been to human eyes, but one could not fool a white dragon by hiding under snow. The dragon turned in her direction while letting out a low growl that resonated off the frozen towers.
As the dragon wheeled above the towers, the duration of Sonja's spell ended. The blue aura indicating magic vanished, taking any sign of the rift along with it, but it was still there, still invisibly pumping more and more snow onto this plane. It was easy enough to recognize where it was even without magic; it was the spot above which all the winds originated and away from which all the snow streaked.
Regdar, meanwhile, dashed about trying to find a safe spot for Sonja, who was still unconscious in his arms. Part of him wanted to set her on the ground, draw his greatsword, and plunge into the fray, but he could not abandon the druid. He watched helplessly as the dragon swooped toward Lidda's position, until Hennet launched a magic missile that caught the dragon from behind. The beast swooped high up into the air this time, training its attentions on the scampering Hennet. Lidda fired another quarrel from her crossbow, but the dragon was too far above and the bolt, carried away by the crosswind, never reached it.
While other dragons breathed weapons of fire, lightning, or gas, a white dragon's breath was a sustained funnel of ice. It was said to be more cold than any natural chill. Hennet wondered how much colder anything could he than what hed already felt in the last days, but with the dragon hovering above him preparing to launch its breath weapon, he wasn't anxious to find out. Aching and bleeding, he pulled himself to his feet along the side of the tower and crawled along its circumference to the far side, facing what had been the forest. He hoped to keep the tower between the dragon and himself, but the creature caught onto his plan quickly. It alighted vertically on the side of the tower. With its wings folded in, it scurried sideways down the glazed walled with perfect grace, rushing toward Hennet, moving to bring him into the range of its breath.
At this moment Hennet wished he hadn't used up the only charge on the wand of fire. The dragon's ability to scale walls was probably limited to those covered with ice, so even if a fireball didn't kill it, a good blast of heat might still send it crashing to the ground. The wand was out, but the thought still gave Hennet an idea. He jogged away to put a bit of distance between the tower and himself, but did not flee. Instead, he fired a magic missile upward, not at the dragon itself but immediately in its path, against the white surface of the tower.
When the missile struck, it exposed a huge, black patch of the basalt surface in the dragon's path. This barely slowed the dragon as it heedlessly crawled its way past, but a split second later, the impact of the spell set off a chain reaction across the tower. Portions of the ice coating the tower slid free, including the portion beneath the dragon's claws. Unable to cling to cling to the sheer surface, the dragon tried to spring into the air but couldn't manage to get off the slick basalt surface. Its outstretched wings sought the air, but too late. Headfirst, it plunged toward the icy ground.
This time Hennet ran not as a lure but for his life. He slid around to the opposite side of the tower and ran back toward the center of the tower cluster, in the direction of Lidda and Regdar. He heard a thundering crash behind him but didn't turn back to look.
Lidda watched as the dragon thrashed on the ground, trying to untangle itself. Moments later, it swooped out of a cloud of snow and flew almost at ground level after Hennet. She readied her crossbow but then heard a strange noise from above her shoulder. It sounded much like a voice-a flinty, high-pitched, child's voice.