The prisoner raised its head and tried to spit fire at the newcomer, but the attack was too feeble even to reach its target. The brief, wavering glow revealed that the scales of both dragons were dull red.
The newcomer snarled. Jhesrhi thought she heard a kind of laughter in the noise. Then the wyrm snatched with a forefoot, caught the prisoner’s serpentine neck just behind the skull, slammed its head to the ground, and held it there.
The master wyrm stared down at the other. The prisoner withered a little more. Meanwhile, branches on the trees adjacent to the bare earth dropped their sickly leaves like it was autumn instead of spring. Blades of grass turned brown and dry.
And Jhesrhi felt a sudden weakness and gut-twisting sickness. She gripped the staff and recited a charm of protection to shield Gaedynn and herself, and the sensation passed.
“Thanks,” he gasped. “When we got out of Thay, I hoped we were done with vampires. Now I can’t empty my bladder without hitting some kind of vampire dragon.”
She wished he’d shut up. The terrible thing below them might hear even a whisper. Although it didn’t appear to; maybe it was too intent on its meal.
It seemed to go on feeding for a long time, while its victim shuddered and shriveled, and newly dead branches cracked under their own weight. At last it turned away. That would have been a good time for the prisoner to attempt another attack, but it was evidently too drained.
The life-drinker trotted a few steps, lashed its peculiar wings, and sprang into the air. In flight, it wobbled in a way that made it look unsteady, like it might plummet at any moment. But it gained altitude almost as quickly as a griffon.
Jhesrhi waited for it to disappear, and for one hundred heartbeats afterward. Then she turned to Gaedynn. “Now?”
“Now,” he said. “Let me lead, and stay under the trees as much as you can.”
Where it’s darkest, she thought, but he was right. The shadows’ impotent yearning for mayhem was a paltry threat compared to what was soaring on the night wind.
She and Gaedynn started down the hill. And ran straight into what was climbing up the other way.
The people, if that was what they were, had scarred, tattooed gray skin, dark braided hair, and eyes a featureless black like the dragon that had just flown away. Their garments were black as a crow as well, and the gloom seemed thicker in their vicinity than elsewhere, even though there was nothing hanging over them to cast a shadow. They weren’t walking like they were trying to be especially quiet, but they were anyway, and Jhesrhi sensed that silence came as naturally to them as to a cat.
“Easy, friends,” Gaedynn said. “We’re just peaceful travelers.”
The gray people appeared to laugh, although Jhesrhi couldn’t actually hear it. The darkness around them thickened, and the two men in front pulled off the chains wrapped around their waists. The links didn’t rattle. The warriors vanished and instantly reappeared almost within striking distance of Jhesrhi and Gaedynn. Preparing to attack, they spun their weapons.
Then arrows pierced their chests and they stumbled backward. As Gaedynn spoke his placatory words, he’d also gotten ready to shoot, and neither the chainfighters’ sudden shift through space nor their shroud of gloom had thrown off his aim.
The rest of the gray people-Jhesrhi still couldn’t make out exactly how many that was, but she thought at least half a dozen-howled in fury. She heard them at last, although the sound was faint and thin, like it was coming from miles away. They glided and flickered forward, while also spreading out to flank their foes.
Gaedynn and Jhesrhi gave ground. His hands were a blur as he loosed arrow after arrow. She shifted her staff into a central guard, and a rhyme to conjure fire leaped into her mind.
That was the influence of the staff. Though it was neither alive nor sentient, in its own way it yearned for the element to which it was most attuned.
But it would have to go unsatisfied at the moment. Flame in the dark could catch the eye of the wyrm that had flown away, or of something else she didn’t want to meet. She rattled off a different incantation and made a stabbing motion with the staff, and a dozen small knives appeared in the air around two of the chainfighters. They too stabbed. One gray warrior fell. The other scrambled clear of the effect, but with blood staining part of his shirt a different shade of black.
Jhesrhi hesitated, trying to decided whether to finish off the wounded man or attack someone else. In that instant, she sensed motion on her left, something different from the fast but steady rhythm of Gaedynn’s shooting.
She turned. A gray man with a dagger in either hand was lunging in on Gaedynn’s flank. And she couldn’t hit the enemy combatant with her magic, not in time to stop him from attacking, because the archer was in her way. All she could do was yell, “Watch out!”
Gaedynn pivoted. The gray man slashed, first with one blade, then the other. The archer tried to dodge. Standing behind him, Jhesrhi couldn’t tell if he succeeded either time.
But bands of darkness wrapped around him like a constricting serpent, crushing his arms and bow against his torso and binding his legs together. Off balance, he toppled to the ground.
That at least got him out of Jhesrhi’s way. Terrified that the gray warrior would bend down and finish him off, she jabbed the staff at the attacker and snarled a word of command. Raw force smashed in the dark man’s face and blew out the back of his skull.
At her feet, Gaedynn squirmed and strained. Good, he was still alive and able to struggle, but she couldn’t take the time to help him free himself. Despite the losses they’d already sustained, more of the gray people were advancing in their flitting, deliberate fashion. It was like they didn’t fear death at all.
She softened the earth beneath a chainfighter, and he plunged in up to his waist. Then suddenly, everything got even darker. She assumed it meant one of the enemy had crept in close to her.
Jhesrhi turned, looking for the threat. For a moment she saw a vague figure. Its dark eyes stared into hers, and then it was gone.
Hands grabbed her throat from behind. The iron grip cut off her air and seared her flesh as well.
She could no longer afford to care whether she showed a light in the darkness. Suddenly bereft of speech, she had to use the only magic she could still access quickly. She clutched the staff and, in her thoughts, recited words of command.
Flame erupted over her body like she’d soaked herself in oil. It didn’t hurt her, but it presumably burned her attacker, because the hands let go of her neck.
She pivoted to face the strangler, then felt a twinge of surprise because it was a gray woman. Not that that mattered. She threw the dark figure backward with a bolt of force.
But the strangler only flew a couple of paces. Then she slammed into one of the chainfighters who, plainly undaunted by Jhesrhi’s mantle of flame, were rapidly closing in on her.
She hated their single-minded bloodlust, their sheer uncanniness, and the prospect of them pressing in from all sides. She wanted the fight to be over, and the conjured fire responded to her desire. It lashed out all around her like the spokes of a wheel to blast and burn gray flesh. Her assailants reeled and dropped.
She took a deep breath, willed her own fiery halo and the patches of flame still dancing on the corpses to go out, and turned to see how Gaedynn was faring. A gray man crawling on the ground leered up at her and thrust a dagger at her belly.
Gaedynn heaved himself free of the loops of congealed darkness, scrambled, and grabbed the enemy warrior’s arm just before the blade could plunge home. The two combatants thrashed and rolled while Jhesrhi looked for a chance to smite the scarred man without hurting Gaedynn. Then the archer landed a short jab to his opponent’s throat. The gray man stopped struggling; suddenly all he could do was shake and choke. Using the heel of his palm Gaedynn hit him again, this time smashing his nose, and he stopped moving altogether.