Leathe groaned deeply, and she looked up, pointing to the sky where red dragons sailed, spilling fire out of their maws. Dragonfear, like cold claws, gripped the elves on the ground, twisting their guts with terror.

"Time to go!" shouted a Wildrunner, Reaire Fletch.

Tellin's heart hammered against his ribs. He looked wildly around at the exhausted mages trying to stumble to their feet, at the Wildrunners grabbing onto white-sleeved arms and dragging up those who could not rise.

Someone slapped him hard on the shoulder and shouted, "My lord cleric! Time to go!"

Time to go, time to go. Dragonfear leaking down from the sky, creeping like a fog of poison into his heart, Tellin grabbed Leathe's hand and dragged her to her feet. His legs threatened to give way. All he wanted was to fall to the ground and curl up tight against the terror of the dragons. Who would not be afraid? Who would not?

None, but he dared not give in to terror now. Though it withered his heart and turned his knees to water, though his legs threatened to fail him and spill him onto the hard ground to grovel in terror-he dared not. He clenched the mage's hand in his. Another's life depended on him now, on his heart and on his courage. If he fell screaming, if he gave up his charge to terror, Leathe would die. Still holding on tight, Tellin ran, dragging Leathe with him back into the forest, into the aspenwood where the trees arched golden over the dark paths. All the while he ran, he heard the others stumbling and crashing through the brush, finding paths or forging their own. With Wildrunners behind, the warriors were ready to turn and fight at need. Tellin remained the guide for the mages if none survived but he.

Screaming, Reaire fell. Tellin stumbled and, staggering, flung a look over his shoulder. Reaire lay sprawled upon the ground, neck twisted and hands clenched into fists of pain. In one instant of clear-seeing, the arrow's cock-feather glared brightly, the color of dragonfire. Another Wildrunner leaped the corpse, but she got only a long stride past before she, too, fell, pinned to the ground by a quivering lance. Tellin's blood ran cold in his veins. The dragonarmy was breaking through the ranks of the Wildrunners! Or they were flowing around them like relentless water pouring past stone.

"Leathe, run!" he shouted, glancing over his shoulder in the very moment the mage fell, a bright blossom of blood staining her white, white robes. Her hand fell away from his, her grip broken by death.

High above, the gray sky vanished as the tops of the tall aspens burst into flame, the voice of the sudden fire like the roaring of dragons. By the lurid light Tellin saw that there were no Wildrunners protecting their backs now. All of them were dead. In a short time, there were no mages left alive. Exhausted, some fell with hearts burst and bleeding. Others died of flame-fletched arrows.

None but he lived now, only he, running and gasping, falling and sobbing.

All the others were dead. Dead or changed into ogres and dragonmen, for these were all he saw behind him, fists filled with swords, eyes mad with rage, and running down into the Silvanesti Forest.

Doom dropped low over the burning treetops, lower than he would have if he'd been given his choice. He had no choice. He was driven by an urgency that goaded like bitter spurs in his mind, the commands of the mage whose body lay in ruin upon a bed of silks and satin in distant lands. So powerful was that mage's mind that Doom would not have needed the intercession of the avatar clinging to his back in order to hear and be obliged to obey Tramd's commands.

In rage-filled joy, he sent a burst of flame ahead, glorying in the fire, in the terrified screams of the white-robed elves scrambling and scattering on the ground.

Enough! the mage cried in his mind even as the hard-handed avatar pulled back on the thick leather reins, obliging him to rise above the trees and the fire. Burn it all later! Now we must find the mages!

For barely an instant the dragon thought he would roll and turn and send the avatar tumbling to the ground, just to let him know what he thought of this puny creature's imperiousness. The mage felt that thought. In Doom's mind, Tramd showed himself to be stronger, more ruthless, easily capable of destructions and killings far worse than any a red dragon could contemplate.

And if I die, little wyrm, you will die with me. It will be my last act, and so loudly will you scream that Takhisis, all the way in her deepest, most lightless dungeon in the Abyss, will know we're coming.

The dragon didn't doubt it. He shot up to the sky, leaving the burning below and heading south again, ahead of the fire. Tramd knew what he hunted. The smell of it teased his nostrils the way a hound scents a stag in the thicket. Doom felt the knowledge passing along the mental connection between them-what the prey looked like, how it sounded, how it smelled. They hunted elves, white-robes.

Doom sailed over the forest, the stench of burning in his nostrils. He flew in joy, with a speed unrivaled by any of the reds in Phair Caron's wing, for he was older, stronger, and leaner than any of them. Upon his back the avatar sat the saddle with the skill of a long-time dragonrider, moving as the dragon moved, anticipating his rising and dropping by the feel of muscles. So powerful were those muscles that even the thickest leather could not shield the rider from the bunching and loosing. In Doom's mind, deep as his most powerful urges, Tramd's will moved, demanding that what he sought be found.

Tellin ran, each beat of his heart like a fist trying to punch out the cage of his ribs. Each breath burned in his lungs, and the sweat pouring down his face stung his eyes to near blindness. He ran, stumbling and righting himself. He ran gasping for the glen, and his thoughts made themselves into curses or prayers as though by their own will.

They did not know! They did not know!

He must warn them, illusion-crafters and the Wildrunners who protected them. He must find them and tell them that the dragonarmy had broken the ranks of the Wildrunners and would soon be raging through the forest.

He ran to warn, and he ran trying to leave behind the blood and the killing. How many of the weary mages and the valiant Wildrunners had died? All died. All, all, and into that dark well of a word no number was admitted, for none seemed great enough to encompass the horror of those deaths, the rending pain he felt when he recalled the screams and the terrible, sudden silences.

He ran, and he had a sword in his hand. How had he come by it? He couldn't recall. They had not all been elves who'd died in that slaughter he left behind, and this sword, covered in blood, bore the garnet-eyed head of a dark dragon engraved on the hilt. Shuddering, he tightened his grip on the sword, the weight of the steel heavy and awkward in his hand. He had never lifted a weapon like this, none of any kind. No matter. He had it, and he didn't know what in the name of all gods he would do with it, but he knew it as well as he knew his own name: He would never let the sword go.

Tellin staggered, then stopped, struggling for breath, trying to listen both ahead and behind. He heard the din of battle behind, the roaring of dragons, the screams of the dying, the exultant cries of those who killed and turned to kill again, elf and foeman. He heard nothing ahead. Would there be Wildrunners on the lip of the glen to greet him-or to see him pounding down the forest paths, deem him an enemy, and kill him? It hardly mattered if they gathered him in or filled him full of arrows. It only mattered that he reach the glen and scream his warning, or give it with his last breath, dying.