Cera smiled. “And you can see that too.”

“I have to admit,” Gaedynn said, “the bastard’s clever. To those of us without truesight, there’s nothing to distinguish this bit of passage from the rest of the cave. No trap or guardian in the immediate vicinity. No widening out into a vault or anything like that. Even if a searcher knew something was in here somewhere, he’d likely walk right on by.”

“But we won’t.” Aoth stepped past Gaedynn, and then the head of his spear glowed blue as he charged it with force. He gripped the weapon in both hands and plunged it repeatedly into the floor. The resulting cracks and crunches echoed away down the tunnel.

Something scuttled into the light.

Big as a man, it looked like a scorpion carved from black rock and possessed of a pair of luminous crimson eyes. But it was charging faster than anything made of stone should have been able to move-and, intent on his digging, Aoth plainly didn’t see it rushing forward to seize him in its serrated pincers.

“Watch out!” Gaedynn said. He drew, released, nocked, drew, and released.

Both shafts pierced the creature’s body but failed to stop it or even slow it down. Nor was there time for a third shot. Gaedynn dropped his bow, snatched out his short swords, and lunged past Aoth, interposing himself between the war-mage and the beast.

When Gaedynn got close to the thing, he discovered its body was blistering hot-standing near it was like standing too close to a fire. It snatched for him, and he sidestepped and thrust. His primary sword chipped a dent in the scorpion’s claw, then popped out of the wound and skated along, leaving a scratch behind.

The scorpion reached for him with its other set of pincers. He stabbed again. The claws snapped shut on his blade and yanked it from his grasp.

At the same moment, the pincerlike parts on either side of its mouth spread apart. A glowing red drop of some viscous liquid oozed out, and Gaedynn’s instincts warned him the beast was about to spit. He poised himself to dodge.

Then, behind him, Aoth growled a word of command. A flare of silvery frost shot past Gaedynn and burst into steam when it splashed against his foe. Cera called out to Amaunator, and the light with which she’d surrounded them burned brighter.

The scorpion fell down thrashing. Its pincers clattered, and Gaedynn’s bent and twisted sword clanked on the floor. He lunged and drove his remaining blade into the creature’s left eye. It heaved in a final convulsion, then lay still.

It was still hot though. Stepping back from it, he panted, “Let me just point out that I said, ‘No guardian in the immediate vicinity.’ I never said there wasn’t one lurking around somewhere, listening for the sound of digging.”

Aoth grinned, lifted his spear, plunged it down, and broke away another chunk of floor. And that was sufficient to reveal what lay beneath.

It was a gem the size and shape of an egg. Or at least Gaedynn thought it was. At certain moments, it looked less like a solid object than a mere oval of shadow with tiny blue lightning bolts flickering inside it.

“Is that it?” he asked.

“That’s it,” Aoth answered. “Alasklerbanbastos’s spirit. His life.”

“I still say that if Tchazzar weren’t as crazy as a three-tailed dog, he would have destroyed the thing.”

Aoth shrugged, and his mail clinked. “Maybe he thought that would be letting his old enemy off easy. I mean, it would be hellish to be stuck inside a stone, alone and bodiless, for eternity, wouldn’t it? Or maybe he plans to haul out the Bone Wyrm by and by, and torture him for his amusement.”

“Except that we’re going to haul him out first,” Cera said. She drew a deep breath, opened the leather pouch on her belt, produced a gold box large enough to hold the phylactery, and dropped to one knee beside the hole. His pulse ticking in his neck, Gaedynn did his best to believe that the spellcasters knew what they were doing.

EPILOGUE

15 FLAMERULE THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

Blind and deaf, aware of nothing but the alternating mumble and yammer of his own thoughts, Alasklerbanbastos floated in the void. Deliverance came as a sudden feeling of soaring.

For an instant, the mere fact of sensation filled him with such ecstasy that he could think of nothing else. Then he remembered that Tchazzar, Jaxanaedegor, and the rest of the traitors had destroyed his body and sent his ghost into his phylactery. So it was almost certainly the red dragon calling him forth, and not because the lunatic had decided to show him any mercy.

Well, so be it. Tchazzar would no doubt thrust him into some weak and possibly crippled form, but Alasklerbanbastos still had his spells. And with magic, many things were possible.

For a heartbeat, he felt heavy as lead, and then merely corporeal once more. But that didn’t entirely relieve him of the feeling of burdensome weight. Someone had buried the body he now occupied, a frame of rotting flesh as well as bone.

Which was strange. Tchazzar couldn’t possibly expect a mere grave to hold him.

Puzzled, Alasklerbanbastos snarled an incantation and noticed how odd it felt to have an actual tongue curling and flapping in his mouth again. Then the earth above him rumbled and split, revealing a glimpse of the stars. He heaved himself up into the open air, and dirt streamed from his wings.

When he noticed the crooked talon on his right forefoot, he realized he’d entered the corpse of Calabastasingavor, a relatively young blue Tchazzar had killed at the start of his campaign. That explained all the charred, flaking patches on his hide, not that they or the provenance of his new body mattered at the moment.

What did was that much to his amazement, neither Tchazzar nor Jaxanaedegor was anywhere to be seen. Instead, it appeared that Aoth Fezim, Gaedynn Ulraes, and a woman with a mace and shield had taken it upon themselves to call Alasklerbanbastos back into the world.

The idiots apparently thought themselves safe because they had his phylactery. They had no idea how fast and to what lethal effect he could strike, even locked in a youthful dragon’s body. He drew breath to roar a word of power, and then conjured sunlight blazed around the woman.

Agony ripped through Alasklerbanbastos’s frame. Magic was suddenly impossible. So was moving, or even standing upright. His legs buckled beneath him, dumping him back down into the pit.

Fezim came to the edge and peered down at him. “I know liches aren’t as susceptible to sunlight as, say, vampires,” the Thayan said. “But none of you undead like it, do you?”

“How are you doing this?” Alasklerbanbastos growled.

“We tampered with your phylactery,” said Fezim. “You could say we poked a hole in it to let the light in. And my friend the sunlady can make a very bright light when it suits her. She’s going to hold on to the stone for now, to guarantee your cooperation.”

“What is it you want?”

“Answers. She and I were the disembodied souls who spied on you dragons palavering atop your mountain. What was the point of that council? Why are so many of your servants trying to turn everyone against Tymanther? When wyrms talk about Precepts, what does it mean?”

Alasklerbanbastos hesitated. “I can’t tell you.”

“No, I think you probably can.”

The light spilling over the edge of the grave blazed brighter. Alasklerbanbastos screamed, and parts of his hide burst into flame. He convulsed, and his thrashing brought earth pouring down, half burying him again.

Finally the light dimmed, and the searing flames went out. “Well?” said Fezim.

Alasklerbanbastos surprised himself by laughing a grinding laugh, and he found it gratifying when the impudent mites before him flinched. “All right, human. I’ll tell you what you want to know. But I warn you. You won’t like it very much.”