The dragon came screaming out of the morning sky like storm falling, wide leathery wings blotting out the sun. Standing at the first bend of the road, Dalamar felt the shadow of the wyrm cold as winter wind. Looking up, he saw the beast's eyes glaring hatred. Dust eddied on the road, small whirlwinds of the dragon's passing. He pointed east and Regene took his meaning at once. Face white as her robe, she positioned herself so that the dragon, coming in fast, was between two mages. Dalamar gestured, a swift dance of the hands that made the first movement in a spell she would know. She did the same.
Dalamar turned his attention inward. The dragon roared, but he ignored it, reaching deep into himself where his magic lay, that sparkling well from which all wonders can be lifted. He gathered his strength as the dragon circled high above them, each pass bringing it lower.
"Use yourself carefully!" he called to Regene. "There's a mage waiting for us, and I doubt he's lying helpless in his bed!"
She laughed, the sound wild and harsh as the voice of the sea. "Oh, a fine plan! Fight and kill a dragon, then go on to the mage! What's the difference between madness and courage, Dalamar Nightson?"
Dalamar flung back his head, laughing up to the sky. "Not much!"
"For Solinari, then!" she shouted, her dark hair whipping back, her sapphire eyes burning.
As she shouted, so did Dalamar's heart lift in prayer to the Dark Son, to Nuitari who was his trusted god. "Your wish is my will, O Dark Son! An it please you, I strike for the sake of the magic you so love!"
In silence, gods speak, and Dalamar knew the will of his god as he felt himself fill with strength, secure in the knowledge that whatever else he was, Nuitari was an honest god who made no promises and so failed no promises. Joy ran in him like fiery wine, burning and delighting all at once.
"Come down!" he shouted. "Come down, dragon! Try us!"
Lightning poured from between the dragon's jaws. With swift, powerful wing thrusts, Blade tore across the sky, so low over the heads of the mages that the wind of his passing rocked them backward. Sunlight flashed on fangs and talons, glinting off steely blue scales. The carrion stench of the beast's breath sickened him.
Dalamar plunged deeply down to the place within himself where his magic lay, and he thrust both fists up to the sky. Lightning leaped from each hand, and one bolt struck the beast full in the chest, pushing him hard, staggering his flight. Another struck from behind, Regene's flashing spear of light. The tang of ozone stung his nostrils. No scent of burned flesh filled the sky-the dragon's hide was tougher than that-but the roar of pain deafened Dalamar. Blade bellowed, raging as he shot away over the beach. As two dancers in perfect synchronous motion, Dalamar and Regene turned to track his flight.
Like a comet streaking across the dawn, the dragon arced down, and now it had a target. Regene knew she was the prey in the instant before Dalamar did.
"Hold!" he shouted. "Fight! Don't run-!" • But she ran, heedless of his advice, unable to hear or simply compelled by instinct. No speed saved her. None could have.
Shrieking, Blade yanked her from the ground and banked, turning sharply, heading once more toward Dalamar. Regene's white robe blossomed in blood along the right sleeve. She was alive, that much Dalamar knew, for he saw her face, her sapphire eyes, even the prayer moving on her lips. Solinari, reach out your hand!
"What then?" Dalamar shouted. "Will you fling a corpse at me, dragon? Or will you hold her up to protect you? She's not much of a shield."
Blade laughed, the sound like the blast of fire in Dalamar's mind. He passed once over the mage and then again, his prey limp now in his grasp. Small, warm drops of blood splashed on Dalamar's upturned face, tasting like the sea's salt on his lips. Regene's own lips still moved to shape a prayer whose words the wind tore away.
Blade unclenched his talons and Regene fell, tumbling from the heights of the sky.
Was she worth the expenditure of strength to save? Between the space of one heartbeat and another, Dalamar decided. Deciding, he reacted on the instant, sending all his strength up through his shoulders and along his arms, pushing up against the sky, in magic thrusting against the pull of gravity. Regene's fall slowed, but only a little. She hit the stony ground hard, the breath blasting out of her lungs. Dalamar staggered, feeling the fall itself through the circuit of his magic, his own bones rattled by the impact. He shook himself and looked around.
Regene groaned warning, choking only a word, a name. "Dalamar!"
Dalamar turned in time to see Blade sweep down from the sky, screaming in baleful glee. Wide black wings blotted out the sun, casting cold shadow on the winding road and the two mages. Spurred by rage, Dalamar gathered the lightning one more time and sent it lancing up to the sky. One bolt after another he flung. Weakened as he was, his aim was not so true as he'd have wished. Four of the hissing lightning lances missed the dragon, and only one hit. That one, though, that was enough. It struck the blue dragon between the eyes, burning the thin scales there and the shattering the dragon's skull to splinters.
Blade fell lifeless from the sky, the impetus of his last wing thrust taking him down into the sea.
The dragon's death-scream echoed against the cliffs, bounding from peak to peak and all around the towers of the Citadel of Night. Tramd watched the beast fall with the eyes of his avatar. In the avatar's ears, in his own, that scream resounded. The death of the noble beast who had flown in the battles over the Plains of Solamnia, fought for and taken Dargaard Keep, and led an army in the bitter fight for the High Clerist's Tower had fallen, unmarked by any in the Blue Lady's army but him.
"Return to your Queen," whispered the dwarf to the dragon, once part of the proud wing best beloved of Takhisis. "One last time let your soul fly to hers."
He turned from the window and stood in perfect silence, listening to the voices in the corridor outside his bedchamber. Servants ran, shouting one to another. A clash of metal. The ring of mail and the stamp of boots. His guard, a troop of dwarves out of the darkest warrens of Thorbardin-the worst of the clans, the ruined sons, the benighted whom the thanes of their dans cast out from the society of their kin-came to ward his door. They were his and the Blue Lady's. On the bed, his body lay, faintly twitching, always dying. This dying hulk his guard would defend to the last breath, theirs or his.
He had no fear of the two mages on the road. It had been a long, long time since Tramd knew fear. He was, though, curious. They would come here, these two, searching not for the avatar but for the body of the mage, and he would like to know-from one or the other of them-who had sent them. Where in the Tower of High Sorcery lay his enemy? Who was this foe who thought a chance at the death of Tramd worth the life of these two mages? It would be useful to know. He would not again slip an avatar into the Tower; most of his work was finished there. But he would like to know who in that Tower he would drag out from there, who-after the Blue Lady launched her war-he would rip from the ruined halls of magic that he might practice the long slow arts of killing upon his enemy's quivering body.
"Come, then," he said to the two mages out upon the road. "And be, more or less, welcome."
So saying, he left the bedchamber, the ruin of himself on the bed, and went out into the corridor to receive the salutes of his guard. He went along the winding ways and down the stone stairs where, at each landing, more guards stood, and finally into his study to await his guests.