The Ruin Part 19

"The Ice Queen is dead!"

Startled, bewildered, people stopped to peer around. The advance ground to a halt.

Unfortunately, the phantom voices also brought Zethrindor leaping up from the center of the host. Vast, leprous wings beating, the undead white soared above his warriors, many of whom crouched and cowered despite the months they'd had to grow accustomed to him. Plainly, he was seeking the source of the disturbance.

We could hide, Will thought. Or Jivex could cloak me in another illusion, and turn himself invisible. But he doubted such measures would serve, and in any case, his instincts told him that if he showed fear, his attempt to sway the folk of the glacier would come to nothing. He needed to stand his ground and brazen the situation out.

"Hey, stinky!" he yelled, waving his hand. "If you're looking for us, we're over here!"

Zethrindor wheeled. Luminous in the gray, failing light, his sunken, silvery eyes glared. Will took care not to look at them straight on, lest they paralyze him, but tried his best not to appear to flinch, also. To look brave and confident as the gigantic, festering horror, his pallid scales slimy with pockets of rot, plummeted down at him.

"Don't worry," Jivex said, "this puny thing's not even as big as the dracolich I killed in the Gray Forest."

Will surprised himself by laughing. Because he'd been holding his breath without realizing it, the sound came out in a stuttering, strangled sort of way. "Thank you for that piece of information. It's very rea.s.suring."

Folk babbled in alarm and scurried out from under Zethrindor's swelling shadow. One dwarf wasn't quick enough, and the white's hind foot pulverized him as he slammed down on the ground. The jolt made Will stagger a step.

"I thought I spotted you and your friends," Zethrindor growled, "fighting among the Sossrim."

"Your ice drake said you want to talk to us," said Will. Maybe it was the only reason the dracolich hadn't slaughtered Jivex and him on sight. "Right before we killed it. Well, here we are, and we'll be happy to chat, but I have some business to finish first. I thought your troops would enjoy hearing tidings from home."

He looked around. Dwarves, barbarians, and giants had all gathered round in a circle to witness the confrontation. In essence, he had the attention of the entire army.

"Iyraclea truly is dead!" he called. "I swear it by the Blessed One. She can't threaten you or your kin anymore."

Zethrindor sneered. "Is this ploy the best that doddering old druid could conceive?"

Trembling slightly, as though susceptible to the cold for the first time in his life, the youthful giant stepped forth from the crowd. "My lord," he said, his voice breaking, albeit, octaves lower than if a smaller creature were speaking.

Zethrindor's withered head jerked around to glower at him. "What?"

The giant swallowed. "Is Iyraclea dead? You have yet to deny it outright, and we've all noticed she doesn't appear to us anymore. Nor do her Icy Claws come bringing us her orders."

"Because," Will said, "the gelugons were her familiar spirits, and now that she's dead, they've gone home to whichever h.e.l.l she whistled them out of. Come on, Zethrindor, tell your faithful followers the truth! You know better than anyone that the Ice Queen's dead, because you killed her, when you absented yourself from your army some tendays back!"

Though Will found it difficult to conceive, it was possible that some of Iyraclea's va.s.sals-the frost giants, perhaps, whose fundamental natures partook of ice and cold-had served her out of honest devotion rather than fear. If so, he hoped this particular revelation would rouse a thirst for vengeance.

Zethrindor laughed, a nasty sound like stones grinding together. "All right, halfling, have it your way. I admit it. I killed her, for the crime of imagining she could dictate to a superior being, and that's why this witless little plan of yours will come to nothing. These folk understand that if I could destroy the Ice Queen, favored of Auril, the tyrant and supreme terror of the Great Glacier, then I can annihilate them just as easily. Any one of them, or all of them together. Their only hope of survival is to please me."

"If you were all that mighty," Jivex piped, "you wouldn't hang back and let them do all the fighting."

"It's proper," said Zethrindor, "for thralls to fight and die for their king, just as it's proper for those who insult him to suffer for their impertinence."

Swift as an arrow launched from a bow, he lunged.

17 Uktar, the Year of Rogue Dragons Will had plainly hit on some sort of scheme, probably a risky one, and Pavel was disinclined to let him and Jivex attempt it by themselves. He started after them, but at that moment, cold, swirling, milky fog billowed into existence around him, a magical effect surely intended to blind him and everyone else in the immediate vicinity. Hunter's instinct, or perhaps the Morninglord himself, warned him what was coming next.

"Get down!" he shouted, and flung himself to the ground. Some of the warriors around him did the same. Others failed to heed him, or moved too slowly.

A different sort of vapor blasted through what had formed previously. Lying on his belly, Pavel was underneath it, but its mere proximity chilled him. Those who were still upright and so suffered its touch screamed and staggered in pain, or toppled, frozen, hearts stilled by the shock of unbearable cold.

The air was still misty, though the jet of dragon breath had somewhat dispersed the fog. Pavel rose, then pivoted, squinting, trying to pinpoint the attacker's location. By the time he spotted it, it was charging.

"There!" he screamed, pointing with his crossbow. "It's coming."

He loosed a bolt and managed to pierce its mask. Warriors loosed their arrows. He swapped out the arbalest for his mace, then the dragon crashed into their ranks.

It struck, and a spearman tumbled in pieces from its jaws. A lash of its tail hurled a soldier through the air, and the slap of a wing smashed another to the ground. Other Sossrim stabbed and hammered at its flanks, but the strokes failed to penetrate the alabaster scales.

Pavel conjured a whine of concentrated sound, and the magic punched a b.l.o.o.d.y rent in its snout. He edged forward, waiting for the drake to pivot away, for a chance to spring in and strike with his mace.

Dorn planted himself in front of the reptile, and it swiped at him with its claws. He tried to dodge, failed, and caught the blow on the iron side of his body. The clanging impact hurled him back and dumped him on the ground.

The white flexed its legs to pounce after him, and other adversaries, Pavel, Stival, and Natali among them, rushed in to cut, thrust, and pound at it. Pavel's mace failed even to scratch the pale, gleaming beauty of its hide, and though he scarcely dared look away from the drake to make a proper a.s.sessment, it was his impression that none of his comrades was faring any better.

But perhaps the dragon disliked being surrounded, having too many men a.s.sailing it all at once, for it snarled and whirled. The maneuver wasn't even a deliberate attack, but the reptile's size and speed, its stamping feet and sweeping tail, made it a hazard even so. It left another warrior sprawled b.l.o.o.d.y, smashed, and lifeless in the snow.

The white bounded away, distancing itself from the Sossrim, no doubt to resume attacking at range. Perhaps its breath weapon had renewed itself. To all appearances, the sword strokes, axe cuts, and spear thrusts it had just endured had scarcely even bloodied it.

But at least it was no longer ripping its way into the formation. Pavel could return to the matter of Will and Jivex. Or so he imagined until a fallen warrior, a gangly, half-grown adolescent boy with acne spotting his brow, moaned and gestured feebly from the ground. Rime, the residue of the white's breath, encrusted much of his body, and patches of his exposed skin displayed the dead-white pallor of frostbite.

Pavel couldn't ignore his plea for succor. He stooped down, murmured a prayer, grasped his amulet with one hand and laid the other on the stricken boy's chest. Lathander's warmth flowered inside him and streamed into his patient, thawing frozen tissue, mending damage, restoring ruined arteries and veins and thus enabling fresh blood to pump to points it hadn't reached before.

The lad smiled and closed his eyes. Pavel squeezed his shoulder, then jumped up to hurry on his way.

By that time, though, Stival had discerned his intent, and came striding up to accost him. "Where are you going?" the stocky captain asked. "We need you!"

"I'm following Will and Jivex," Pavel said. "They've got some sort of idea, and it might be our only hope. I thought I'd try to help."

Stival's brow creased as he thought it over. Then he turned, spotted one of the seasoned veterans under his command, and called, "Gant! You're in charge!" He looked back at Pavel. "Let's go."

They hurried deeper into the formation, away from the roars of attacking wyrms, the booming, hissing blasts of their breath, the drone of arrows in flight, the shouts and screams. Natali and Dorn fell in behind them.

At first Pavel feared Will and Jivex had too much of a lead, that he and his companions wouldn't be able to find them amid the scurrying confusion of the embattled Sossrim host. Then, however, he observed that while people were still fighting desperately in the rear, where the drakes were attacking, it was strangely quiet in front. There, people were no longer shooting arrows or jabbing with lances, just staring down the hill. He hurried up to the ramparts to find out what everyone was looking at.

"They were all coming up the rise," said a warrior with the loose skin of someone who'd been fat before the privations of campaigning put him on short rations. He'd taken advantage of the lull in the hostilities to dig out a hunk of venison jerky, and gnawing and drooling, spoke through a mouthful of the leathery stuff. "Every stinking one of them. Then there was a funny kind of yelling-I couldn't make out the words-and they just stopped."

Not all of them, Pavel observed. Zethrindor was flying above his minions, and even at such a distance, the sight made the priest's muscles clench in revulsion. Ignoring the feeling as best he could, he peered intently, trying to locate his missing friends, but it was Natali, with her glaring inhuman eyes, who pointed and said, "There."

Natali having indicated the proper direction, he made out a hovering, glittering mote that might well be Jivex, and a spot on the ground that could be Will, toward the front of the enemy army. Somehow they'd made their way down there without getting shot full of arrows in transit, or cut to pieces immediately on arrival.

But it seemed Lady Luck had stopped smiling, for Zethrindor furled his ragged, decaying wings and plummeted at them. Pavel cried out in the anguished certainty that the reptile was about to kill them. But the huge white didn't smash down on top of them, instead alighting a short distance away. Resembling a swarm of ivory-colored ants, his army started to form a circle. To listen as he, Will, and Jivex palavered?

Pavel wheeled to face Dorn, Stival, and Natali. "I don't know what's happening," he said, "but it can't last. Whatever that idiot halfling has to say, Zethrindor won't tolerate his insolence for long. We need to get down there immediately."

"We'll never make it in time," Dorn growled, "not running, even if they don't start shooting as we charge down the slope. We need magic to shift us there."

Pavel cast about, and failed to see a druid or warlock anywhere nearby. Naturally. The invaders had left off a.s.saulting the front of the formation, and all such folk were in the rear, fighting dragons. He took a stride in that direction, and someone wheezed, "No. Gather round me."

He turned to find Madislak Pemsk leaning on a spear, and looking as though he'd topple should someone deprive him of the makeshift crutch. His skin was ashen, much of his ratty brown robe, dark and sodden with blood, and more of it bubbled on his lips.

"Master," Stival said, "you're badly hurt."

The old man closed his fierce gray eyes. "Why," he rasped, "is everyone stupid but me? Didn't you hear Lathander's priest say we're out of time? Gather close! Even wounded, I think I can manage the five of us."

They grouped in around him. Arm shaking with strain, he swept a bronze sickle through a mystic figure and whispered words of power.

Magic burned through Pavel's body. The wind howled, picked him and his companions up, and swept them down the hill. Or perhaps they had themselves become the wind, for their bodies had altered into something as light and translucent as mist.

Dorn felt as if it was sheer yammering hatred as much as Madislak's magic that was sweeping him along. With Kara slain, the chance to fight her killer was the only thing left to desire in all the world, and after tendays of frustration, it had come to him at last.

But his fury yielded to a pang of dread as the wind carried them over the rings of spectators, and Zethrindor sprang at Will and Jivex. Dorn was still flying yards above the ground, still a phantom made of vapor. His friends were about to die, and he couldn't do anything about it.

Then Madislak's will jerked the newcomers to earth so violently that Dorn felt his misty body stretch taller, like dough in a baker's hands, and retract back into shape. The sudden drop served to interpose the travelers between Zethrindor and his prey.

At the moment, they were still intangible. The dracolich could plunge right through them if he chose. But evidently the abrupt appearance of their ghostly forms made him wary, for, with an agility almost inconceivable in something so huge, so slimy, shriveled, and stinking with the ravages of death, he stopped short.

Dorn felt his form congeal into solidity. For an instant, his returning weight seemed too heavy to bear. Then his perceptions adjusted, and he was simply his normal self again.

He took a stride toward Zethrindor, looming like a whitewashed plague house in front of him, and Pavel grabbed him by his human arm. "Not yet!" the blond man snapped.

Dorn tried to pull free. Even on his right side, he was stronger than Pavel, but somehow his friend managed to hang on anyway.

"d.a.m.n it!" said the priest. "If I can bear to be this close without lashing out at the thing, so can you. Something's happening here. Don't muck it up!"

Dorn took a deep breath. "Get off me," he said. "I'm all right."

Pavel studied his face, then, somewhat gingerly, released his grip.

Meanwhile Zethrindor, his pale eyes gleaming, took stock of the new arrivals. "This," he said, "is an unexpected bounty. Everyone I ever sought in vain to capture, now standing at my feet." His head whipped around to peer directly at Madislak. "Though you, old man, don't look as if you'll be standing much longer. Humans are so fragile. One little poke with an arrow or knife, and you're done."

"Yes." Madislak coughed blood. "Here we are, and if you want a parley, you'll have to do it properly. Order the dragons up on the high ground to leave off attacking. Otherwise, I can whisk us all away from here as easily as I brought us."

Zethrindor sneered. "I doubt it. It takes time to melt flesh and bone into wind. Even if I can't cast that particular spell myself, I understand how it works. Still, I suppose I'm willing to indulge you. Your fools are behaving so strangely, you've piqued my curiosity."

He hissed and snarled words in the draconic tongue, and power seethed and shimmered in the air. Over the course of the next few moments, the commotion on top of the ridge-what Dorn could make out of it, anyway-quieted. Apparently the other wyrms had heard their chieftain's order and fallen back.

"Now, druid," said the dracolich, "what is it you want? To surrender? I might be willing to spare your lives. My fellow wyrms have already slaughtered enough of your men to fill their bellies for a while."

Will laughed. "Not likely. They came to vouch for what I already told your soldiers. The Ice Queen's dead. The glacier folk don't have to fight anymore."

Zethrindor spat, further chilling the air and deepening the ambient smell of carrion. "I told you, vermin, your revelation changes nothing, except that my slaves now realize they have the privilege of fighting to win a crown for me."

"I think they'd rather go home," said Will. "I also think you won't be able to stop them."

"Certainly not after your duel with Iyraclea," Pavel said. "You were lucky and defeated her in the end, but she hurt you first. She leeched a goodly portion of your strength right out of you. Since then, I daresay you're only a feeble shadow of what a dracolich is meant to be."

"Which is why he doesn't fight," Jivex cried. Wings shimmering, he wheeled to regard a troop of arctic dwarves. "It's like I told you."

A whispering ran through the ranks of Zethrindor's army. He roared, and the soldiers fell silent, everyone's eyes, even those of the giants, wide with dread.

"I am your G.o.d!" the dead creature bellowed. "Be thankful I don't slaughter each and every one of you for giving even the slightest credence to such lies."

"If they're lies," said Dorn, "prove it. Fight us. Just you against my friends and me. That's not too big a challenge for a dracolich, is it?" He hadn't know he was going to say such a thing until he did, then he remembered he had no authority to speak for anyone but himself.

But Madislak nodded as if they'd planned it all beforehand. "Yes, Zethrindor. Defeat us and my company will surrender. I swear it by the oak and the unicorn's horn. But if we kill you, your host goes home, and the war's over."

Zethrindor eyed them like a skeptical shopper in a marketplace, who deems a vendor's offer too generous to be true. "Your army is doomed anyway."

"Of course it is." Hand shaking, Madislak wiped at the blood on his lips and chin. "That's why I'm making the offer. But if you can kill us, it still works out to your benefit. Otherwise, my company will fight to the last man. You'll lose troops slaughtering them, strength you could otherwise use to conquer the rest of Sossal."

"Not only that," Will said, "but if you refuse the dare, you'll show your men you really are weak and afraid to fight. I'm not saying they'll all rise up against you-or saying they won't, either-but I guarantee they'll start deserting whenever they get the chance."

Zethrindor hesitated. Maybe he was wondering how a few taunts and unproven a.s.sertions had so tarnished his image of invincibility that, if he wished to maintain his absolute authority over his warriors, he needed to prove himself. But it seemed more likely he was simply marveling at the folly of the puny mites who imagined they had any hope at all of standing against him.

Either way, after a moment, he said, "You, old man, must advise your company of the bargain, so they'll know they are to lay down their arms after I kill you and these others."

Madislak waved his free hand, the one that wasn't clutching the spear for support. The scent of fresh greenery suffused the air, briefly masking the stench of Zethrindor's corruption. "Done. My fellow druids understand."

Zethrindor's head c.o.c.ked back, and his throat swelled. He was about to spit his breath weapon, and Dorn knew that single attack might well kill each and every one of them. He scrambled, hoping to at least dodge the central, coldest part of the fan-shaped blast of frost, and his comrades did the same.

All but Madislak, who, Dorn belatedly remembered, was likely incapable of such physical exertion with the arrow wound in his back. The stooped old man simply placed his hand on his sternum-possibly clutching a talisman concealed beneath his robes-and a barrier of yellow flame, long enough to shield him and his comrades too, and tall as any of the watching giants, leaped up from the ground. Zethrindor's frigid spew extinguished the flames, but exhausted itself in the doing. It failed to reach its actual targets.

The dracolich snarled and crouched to spring at Madislak. Hurtling through the air, Jivex conjured an illusory swarm of scorpions onto Zethrindor's head, but the phantoms melted away on contact. The faerie dragon then dived at the undead white, clawed, and streaked on by. Scattering so Zethrindor couldn't target them all at once, the fighters on the ground scurried to position themselves on their adversary's flanks. Dorn, Stival, and Natali loosed arrows, Will slung stones, and Pavel evoked a flare of hot golden light that charred and blackened a section of the colossal reptile's scales.

Zethrindor pivoted and half clawed, half stamped at Pavel. The lanky blond priest dodged, and the dragon's foot, when it slammed down, jolted the ground. The reptile surged forward, reaching for Pavel with his jaws.

Bellowing, Dorn dashed a few more strides, shot, and managed to drive an arrow into the undead's silvery eye. Screaming also, Will, Natali, and Stival a.s.sailed the dracolich with their own missiles. Wheeling above Zethrindor, flickering in and out of view as the use of other abilities interfered with his invisibility, Jivex created a whine loud and shrill enough to make any hearer wince. Dorn a.s.sumed he'd placed the source of the noise inside one of Zethrindor's ears. With luck, the dracolich would find the torment excruciating, or at least distracting.

Acting in concert, Dorn and the other attackers managed to divert Zethrindor, and he left off chasing Pavel. Unfortunately, he also flexed his legs and spread his ragged, rotting wings to take flight.

Dangerous as Zethrindor was on the ground, he'd pose an even greater threat in the air. An unbeatable one, most likely. Dorn loosed another shaft. It pierced Zethrindor's serpentine neck, but didn't stop the white from lifting his gigantic leathery pinions.

Then, however, instead of sweeping vigorously downward and lifting him into the air, Zethrindor's wings clenched and twitched in useless spasms. Dorn glanced around and saw Madislak still gripping the object under his clothing. Apparently it held a number of spells useful for fighting wyrms, which the druid had h.o.a.rded in antic.i.p.ation of the hour when he and Zethrindor would meet in battle.

Zethrindor started snarling a charm of his own. The words of power chilled the air and sent cracks snaking and forking through the ground. Dorn had no idea what the magic was meant to accomplish, but knew he didn't want to let the creature complete it.

Nor did he want to stand back and shoot arrows any longer. Reckless though it was, he yearned to tear and cut Kara's killer at close range. Infused with enchantment, his iron talons might do more damage anyway. He dropped his longbow, drew his sword, and charged.

He hoped to land at least one attack before Zethrindor sensed him, because he was rushing in on the side where his arrow had pierced the reptile's pale, sunken eye. But when the white's head twisted, orienting on him, he realized the optic could still see. Just as it would still see when the process of decay advanced, and the soft tissue inside the bony orbit eroded away entirely.

The luminous eye also still possessed its power to freeze a foe in his tracks. Dorn's muscles locked, and he lurched off balance. No, he insisted, no, I won't fall down at this foul thing's feet, and the crippling power lost its hold on him.