"Your daughter?" Bats settled thickly on the shoulders of Arkle Huldaerus, their eyes glaring in unison at Ithim, as their master said derisively, "She holds two Dwaer-Stones in her hands. Whatever you were hoping to do, don't bother! She needs aid from no one-and there's nothing all three of us and everything in this tower can do against what she wields." He turned back to the flickering globes. 'Just watch."
The Dragon soared above the palace, vast and scaled and terrible. Whirling in the air on wings of bright flame, it clawed at the glittering stars and roared in delight.
This was power! Gods, this was… beyond belief.
Tshamarra Talasorn basked in the screams from Flowfoam beneath her, the puny Serpent-spells crackling up at her to stab too short, and fall away. She lashed her tail, exulting in her sheer might as she banked and soared and slid in rolling curves through the air…
Gods, if Craer could see her now! He-
Craer.
In a trice she turned and roared down out of the sky, claws spread, jaws opening. These fools below were endangering her beloved, menacing her friends, threatening Aglirta…
She struck savagely, smashing through bodies until she came to a ragged stop in the gardens. There she bit and tore, slashed with her tail, and spat flame until none were left but the burning, broken dead, and men who screamed as they fled. Then the Dragon bounded into the air, turned, and plunged down again, slashing out with a claw as she raced low over a garden meadow, transforming frantically running men into torn, tumbling meat.
Again she swooped, diving over a turret to pounce on shouting Serpent-priests, snapping with her jaws and bouncing once on her belly, grinding men beneath her. Bones snapped like twigs, screams fell silent, and she bounded aloft again.
More Aglirtans were hastening from the other end of the isle, howling and hacking mindlessly at each other as they came, running before the whips of Serpent-priests. Tshamarra crashed down into them, pouncing ruthlessly, and savaged everyone she could reach with claws and flame. Strange burning sensations slid down her throat-the plague, she realized dimly, twisting and fading under her own powers… and then she was alone with the dead again, and her bloodlust was fading.
Gods, what power! Yet she'd been slaying helpless commoners. The Dragon shook herself, licked her talons clean, and then peered about, seeking Serpent-priests.
There-robed men, weaving spells against her through a palace window! She thrust talons through the casements, clawing away the stone pillars between windows when some of the men ducked back out of reach, and tore open the outer wall of the room. One slash of her scaled arm crushed the rest of the screaming Serpent-priests against the walls, and they fell and lay still.
Horns of the Lady, she could slay snake-mages almost by looking at them!
Tshamarra went in search of more, prowling around the palace like a great scaled cat, peering and thrusting aside greenery. Dozens of men bolted from such cowering cover when she exposed them. Most she let run, but those who wore Serpent-robes she bit or cooked with the fire she could spew.
When no Snake-worshippers remained alive on the docks and terraces, and in the wooded gardens, the Dragon turned again to the palace, looking in every window. Many times she spat fire into its inner rooms, and heard men shriek and sizzle as they died.
As her slaying went on and the dawn sky brightened upriver, a jangling began to sing and echo in Tshamarra's head-strange high discord that she heard in her mind, its echoes rolling as if across vast distances, but not in her ears. With every death she dealt it grew louder, its tones more frantic. It sounded like a knife sawing through taut harpstrings of metal-a sound she'd heard once when a drunken bard had taken out his fury on a rival's prized instrument-and it grew wilder as her blood-toll mounted.
Then there came a time when the flash of a spell rocked a tower of the palace-and the Dragon peered in at its windows and found five Serpent-priests striding through the smoking bodies of the guards they'd slain, and studying the door of a small, secure chamber. Tshamarra Talasorn recognized that door. Behind it lay a room where some of Embra's enchanted gowns hung, girt about with small magics that kept off the dust.
She snarled fire in at the men-and at the same time thrust one claw in through another window, not caring if she shattered the wall around it, only that her scales blocked the door they'd come in by.
The Priests of the Serpent cursed and wailed and shaped spells in a desperate frenzy-and the Dragon breathed fire in at them until there was nothing left outside that charred wardrobe door but ashes.
And as they died, the jangling sound rose to a sudden shriek-and something snapped. With a wailing of many despairing voices, it all rushed away into nothingness…
And the Thrael was no more.
All over the Vale, Priests of the Serpent stiffened, screamed, and their heads burst into flame. Most froze where they stood, and burned like torches.
Fangbrother Maurivan was one of them, crumpling to his knees on a hill above Stornbridge with the throat of a vainly struggling Mistress of the Pantry Klaedra clutched in one clawlike hand-while he wrenched at her string of coins with the other. Blazing, he toppled over onto her, and they both burned.
Up and down the Silverflow folk of Aglirta cried out, fell to their knees in soaking sweats, and starting sobbing and trembling as the Blood Plague left them forever, leaving behind only the memories of what the Serpent-priests had done to them… and the revulsion.
In the sky above Flowfoam the jangling, singing sound burst forth, audible to all, and bringing with it a great gash in the air-a rift of dark fire and a bright shimmering flash rising out of it… a flood of short-lived radiance that vomited forth the whirling body of a man.
That spreadeagled form spun wildly, trailing black flames, and grew with horrible speed, welling up into something serpentine and monstrous, with a great flat many-fanged head… and the Great Serpent reared up, hissing, behind the Dragon as it glided around a tower of the palace-and pounced.
Long, dark fangs struck deep into a golden-scaled tail. Tshamarra whirled around in startled pain, and with a hiss of triumph, the dark, looming snake threw coils of its great body around her wings.
26
Doom, Death, and Dragons
Many boats were on the Silverflow that unfolding morning, crowded with tersepts, their gleaming-armored guards, and with frightened but determined Aglirtans clutching whatever weapons they'd been able to find. All were rowing hard for Flowfoam.
From boat to boat men eyed each other uneasily, but no one dared to break into battle until they knew what lay ahead on the Isle of the King.
The royal island was close now, rising from the broad, rushing river in its usual lush green, girt about with the weathered walls of what for years had been Castle Silvertree.
As the Dragon whirled briefly into view above those gray turrets, there were shouts and curses on the boats, and a brief faltering of oars. Tersepts snapped orders, horns blared, and as swiftly as it had paused, the hurrying journey resumed, boats cleaving the water with men peering warily at the sky ahead and making sure their weapons were at hand.
Then the sky spat forth something that the rowers watched become the Serpent. There were more shouts, and a general lifting of oars to drift, as nigh everyone afloat stared up into the brightening sky.
The Serpent reared up, dark and huge and terrible-and then struck, its sinuous length arrowing savagely down.
The men on the boats barely had time to gasp or cry out before the Dragon was struggling in the heart of coils-clawing its way aloft, still trapped in tightening grip of the gigantic snake, to hang almost overhead as the Serpent bit and bit again.
Men looked up from the water at the nightmare splitting the sky, and moaned or cursed or screamed in terror. Many raised shouts of "Go back! Turn back! We must get gone!"