"She always does. Now, go!"
Phair Caron completed the task of saddling the dragon herself, and no one in her army had the temerity to offer to help. She had long ago learned that in battle she must harness herself and harness her dragon. No one else could do that so well as she. No one else could be counted on. The dragon lowered a wing for her to climb, lifting her when she was steady and letting her clamber into the saddle.
Her heart found a rhythm unlike any other she knew, thundering on the brink of battle. She looked around at the other dragons spiraling down from the tors, her captains saddling their steeds, her army spreading around her, finding the shape of their battle formations. Her blood ran in her, racing through her veins, slamming through the chambers of her heart, sounding like the drums of war. Somewhere Lord Garan of the Silvanesti waited, his army in place, his Windriders ready to take the griffins into battle.
"It's strange we don't smell the griffins," she said. "I usually smell those things no matter if they are upwind or down."
Blood Gem turned his head, his long neck snaking back so that he and his rider were eye to eye. He opened his mighty jaws wide and the dull light of the gray morning slid lazily along fangs that were as long as Phair Caron's forearm. Never worry, lady. I have a taste for griffin today. We'll flush them out no matter how deeply they hide.
She looked back over her shoulder to the dark shadows of the tors. The wind came from the east, and she imagined that she could smell the sea so far away. She looked at her five commanders. Each sat ready upon his own crimson steed with five wily warriors ranged behind, ready to support the legions on the ground. Beside her, Tramd rode upon Doom. The mage's handsome face shone lively with anticipation, cheeks flushed, blue eyes glinting. Seeing him like that, it wasn't easy to remember that here was simply unliving flesh made animate by the will of a mage who resided in a place that he'd not chosen to reveal to Phair Caron.
"All right," she said, her right hand gripping the hold on the saddle, her left filled up with her ruby-gripped sword. "Let's do what we do best, my friend."
With a wild cry, Blood Gem lifted from the ground, and in the moment his roaring began, the sky filled up with a concerted shout like war-horns winding as the rest of the red dragons leaped into the sky. Wide wings outspread, they sailed from the tors, each with a helmed and armored rider, the Highlord and her mage and four of her strongest, most canny commanders.
Screaming his joy, Blood Gem thrust downward with powerful wings, surging ahead of all. Upon his back Phair Caron matched his battle cry, her voice the rough song of all her rage. She pumped her fist in the air, saluting her dragon riders. One after another, the mage and her commanders returned the salute.
Below, her army had found its shape, five legions of ogres and humans and the dark-spawn of Takhisis's heart- the fierce dragonmen who were neither human or dragonkind, but a hideous combination of each. They went like an arrow, the dragonmen at the fore to make the arrow's point, the other companies spreading out behind so that, from this cold height, they looked like the arrow's shaft.
This glorious arrow she would loose right into the heart of the Silvanesti nation.
The speed of her flight took her out past the foothills, out where her raids had blackened the forest with burning. Nothing grew there now, nothing lived. All the game was dead or had fled, and the vegetation was burned to the root.
Phair Caron laughed, and her laughter echoed in the roaring of her dragons.
"They will starve in winter, those elves, and they will sell their souls to me for food if ever they want to eat again!"
Blood Gem banked and turned, taking her back over the army, the roaring mass of warriors who now longed to loose every horror of war as though setting a feast table for their Dark Queen. Phair Caron lifted the visor of her dragon helm. Sword high, she flung back her head and loosed her wild war cry again. The cold wind of the heights stung tears from her eyes and tried to snatch the breath from her lungs. That no wind could do, for it seemed to Phair Caron of Tarsis that from the day she'd scrabbled in the gutters of the city for a copper tossed by an elf complaining of his supper, she had been aimed like a weapon in the hand of the Dark Goddess herself, right at this killing moment.
"For Takhisis!" she shouted. And on the ground, the dark tide of her army echoed her roaring charge.
In the very moment the cries reached her, as her heart was rising, her blood running hot with the lust for killing, Phair Caron turned and saw what had become of the griffins.
They were behind her.
Chapter 7
Dalamar stood in the glen, far down in the stony bed where the last shadows of night still clung. All around him the damp air hung with the heady scent of magic. He stood hand in hand with those mages chosen by Ylle Savath to surround the circle of nine spell-crafters who now joined their minds and hearts in order to weave a grand tapestry of illusion. One by one, Dalamar felt the joining, the forging of invisible threads in the building of a web of magic. Strong as steel mesh that web, but Dalamar knew-they all knew-that in only a little time the web would weaken as the makers did, steel changing to gossamer. As if by magic.
Sandalwood oil and mimosa and wisteria oils mingled with burned bloodroot and the bitterness of wormwood, even the scent of dried rose petals. At the surface of consciousness, Dalamar was aware of these sensory messages. Another level down, he heard the chants of mages like himself who worked to support the strength of the illusion-crafters, the dreamweavers.
Earth and bone, bone and earth, my strength your own, there is no dearth. Earth and bone, bone and earth, my strength your own, there is no dearth. Earth and bone, bone and earth… Earth and bone…
In the deepest part of him, there was only magic, power running like a river spinning in spate, and he, in every part, every cell, every fiber of his heart, felt that power as the sky feels lightning. It belonged in him! It was part of him, the part he was born knowing and feeling and longing to nurture. He embraced the lightning, the power he took into himself and let run out from himself and gathered back in again.
Ah, gods-!
On the lip of the glen, Wildrunners stood, looking outward, arrows nocked to bowstrings, keen eyes moving restlessly. Dalamar felt their presence, their wild hearts, their eagerness for battle. They are killers, he thought, eager for their work.
That thought echoed along the chain of mages, rolling like thunder in the hearts of his fellows. The young woman on his left and the middle-aged man on his right, each clasped his hand tighter, then loosed a little.
Be still, they said in silent gesture. Don't think.
Swiftly he banished all thought and gave himself again to the work of reaching out to the small knot of dream-crafters, standing in the heart of the larger circle.
Earth and bone, bone and earth, my strength your own, there is no dearth. Earth and bone, bone and earth…
Strength flowed out from them, and Dalamar, with the eyes of magic, saw that strength, that power, as bright bursts of light that faded the farther it ran from them. This light all the mages in the larger circle called to themselves, embracing and tending and pouring it back out, not to the dreamweavers but into the stony earth itself. From there it would return to the ones who needed it, as ground-lightning leaps up to the sky. It was, not a little, like making love, the giving and the taking and the fiery magic made from each. The young woman on his left pressed his hand again, but not to hush, for that thought of love-making had been hers. She lifted her head, eyes alight, chestnut hair flowing all around her in the winds of magic.