But after that, there was nothing more to fear. Hovering above him, she hurled down gout after gout of flame. While he staggered around and screamed, and his body broke and broke again.

By the Nine Dark Princes, it felt good! So good that when it was over, a part of her just wanted to keep raining fire on the shards of the corpse.

But she had a job to finish. So she struggled to control her ragged breathing and put her thoughts in order. Then she asked the wind to carry her to the prisoner.

Despite his shackles and extreme emaciation, he was still a colossal red dragon, and she floated down in front of him with a pang of trepidation. But all he did was study her with his smoldering golden eyes.

“Are you Tchazzar?” she asked.

“You see that I am,” he answered. His voice was more of a wheeze than either a rumble or a hiss, like it strained him just to talk.

“People say you were a great wizard.”

Despite his debility, his eyes burned brighter, and she found herself taking a step back. “I’m a god!” he said.

“I beg your pardon for misspeaking,” she said, holding her voice steady. “But my point is this. If I set you free and restore your strength, can you take my comrade and me back to the mortal world?”

“I’d do so gladly,” Tchazzar said, “if you could truly keep your end of the bargain.”

“I believe I can. You’ve seen I have an affinity for fire, and that’s the essence of life to you. I’m going to pour it into your blood and sinews.”

Tchazzar hesitated like she’d surprised him. “That might actually work, assuming you can channel a prodigious quantity without losing control. If you’re willing to try, you’d better get started.”

“Before the shadar-kai come back?”

“Before Sseelrigoth-the blight dragon-himself arrives. It’s our good fortune that he can’t actually live here, lest he drain the life from his subjects. But I’m sure that by now, he’s sensed all the commotion and is on his way.”

Pivoting constantly, alternately targeting the abishais at street level and those flying overhead, Aoth rattled off words of power and worked his way through his last remaining attack spells. He’d killed plenty of his foes and meant to kill more. But he suspected that when he finished casting his flares of fire and howls of bone-shattering vibration, there would still be enough left to swarm on him and tear him to pieces. He never did get that damn gate in the cellar to close.

Either way, it looked like he was going to die fighting for Chessenta. A place he decided he detested almost as much as it detested people like him.

Galloping hoof beats clattered behind him. He glanced over his shoulder.

Armored in a gilt helmet and breastplate, Cera charged in his direction. He realized she too must have been waiting for the assassin to make a move, and when Aoth had gone running through the temple, she’d tried to follow him. She couldn’t have kept on Jet’s track in any normal way, but maybe some trick of divine magic had made it possible. Or maybe all the thunderclaps and flashes had drawn her. Now that Aoth thought about it, it hadn’t been a particularly inconspicuous fight.

Her golden-colored mare balked well short of the action. The animal tried to turn around and run the other way, and Cera struggled to reassert control.

“Get out of here!” Aoth croaked. Then he heard the flap of leathery wings and whirled back around.

A green abishai leaped at him. Holding his breath and squinting against the stinging haze that surrounded it, he ducked a sweep of its tail, drove his spear into its midsection, pulled it free, and scrambled back out of the cloud.

When he glanced back again, Cera was picking herself up off the ground. She didn’t look hurt, but she didn’t even have a weapon. Her mace was still slung on the saddle of the mare now racing away as fast as she could go.

“Run!” said Aoth. “You can’t fight these things!”

“You don’t need a fighter!” Cera said. “You need an exorcist!” She started to chant.

Apparently recognizing the power in her words, the abishais charged or flew at her. Draining his power to the dregs, Aoth created walls of flame and hovering, spinning blades between the priestess and her assailants. Anything to hold them back.

Or at least he did so during the fleeting moments when one or more abishais weren’t trying to burn, blast, or stab him to death. The rest of the time he thrust the spear at what seemed an endless succession of snarling, clawing monstrosities. The weapon felt strangely heavy and dead in his hands, and not just because of his exhaustion. Because there was no magic left inside it anymore.

Then a glow flowered at his back and lit the street as bright as day. Some of the abishais charred away like dry leaves in a bonfire. The rest faltered, and when they came forward again, they appeared to struggle like swimmers fighting against a current. They seemed to grope and fumble too, as though they were half blind.

It helped. Aoth killed three more of them. But then he spotted a blue abishai that had gotten past him. Now it was soaring over Cera. Sparks jumped on its scaly hide as it prepared to hurl a lightningbolt.

Aoth rattled off words of power and hurled a ray of freezing cold from his outstretched hand. It was as powerful a ranged attack as he had left, and it wasn’t enough. The devil-kin jerked and wobbled in flight but survived. Its body lit up from the inside-

And then Jet swooped at it and drove his talons deep into its back. Its power discharged in a crackling flash that made Aoth wince, but when the griffon shook the lifeless body off its claws and flew onward, it was plain he’d survived the shock.

More griffons dived out of the night sky into Cera’s light. The sellswords on their backs loosed arrow after arrow, and the abishais fell. Aoth had fought so hard and for what had felt like such a long time that there was something dreamlike about how quickly the battle ended.

It wouldn’t have been as quick if there were still fresh abishais rushing out of the apartment house, but he now saw that at some point that had ended. Something-either the wyrmkeeper’s death, Cera’s exorcism, or simply the magic running out of power-had finally closed the opening to Tiamat’s domain.

Smelling of singed feathers, Jet set down in the street. “Surely,” he said, “there can’t be too many enemies left hiding in Soolabax. Even if worst comes to worst, you can cope with however many remain.”

Aoth snorted. “It sounded reasonable when I said it. You must have thought so too, the way you took your time getting back here.”

“That was because humans are idiots. I don’t know how many times I had to repeat myself to make the men understand you were well and needed-”

Cera’s incantation cut off abruptly.

Aoth and Jet whirled in her direction. There were no abishais anywhere near her, and no blood on her person. But she was collapsing, and as she did, darkness reclaimed the street.

Aoth ran toward her. Jet started a heartbeat later, but outdistanced his master with his first prodigious bound.

The embrace of fire was as glorious as the touch of a mortal lover had always been vile. It filled Jhesrhi with ecstasy and the yearning to open herself even more completely.

She didn’t know what would happen if she did. Maybe she’d simply burn to ash. Or perhaps her humanity would melt away like dross, leaving a being like an efreet, more truly a creature of flame than even a red dragon could ever be. Either possibility would be a blissful consummation.

But she was a wizard, with a wizard’s trained intellect and will, and she refused to surrender wholly to mere sensation, no matter how pleasurable. She maintained her awareness of the other aspects of her nature-of earth, air, water, and spirit, or identity, memory, and purpose-even as she drew the rarified essence of flame from the Elemental Chaos, gathered it in her staff, and then hurled it forth into Tchazzar’s body.