He turned. Flaring into existence when he hadn’t been ready, the various lights had robbed him of some of his night vision. But he could still see a wyrmkeeper folding up around the shaft Son-liin had driven into his guts. Plainly Aoth and Alasklerbanbastos hadn’t disposed of all the wretches before the plan started falling apart.

Two more figures rushed out of the murk, one human, the other not. When Gaedynn saw its leathery wings and lashing tail, he cursed. Aoth had scouted the earthmote from afar but hadn’t noticed any abishais. Either the devil hadn’t been out in the open then, or one of the dragon priests had just conjured it out of Tiamat’s infernal domain.

Gaedynn shot an arrow into its chest. The attack would have dropped any man, but the creature kept coming. The tail lifted, ready to sting, and the abishai spit a misty spray that was all but invisible in the dark.

Gaedynn sprang to the side. At the same moment, red light flared at the edge of his vision, and white shone and crackled in answer. He surmised that the wyrmkeeper had struck at Son-liin with a spell, and she’d retaliated with her stormsoul abilities. But he couldn’t tell to what effect and didn’t dare look away from his own opponent to find out.

The spray spattered down beside him, sizzling on stone and earth. Though it had missed, the fumes that suffused the air stung his exposed skin and, more seriously, his eyes. Tears welled up and blurred his vision.

Then he realized he didn’t see the abishai anymore. Either he’d simply lost it in the haze and the dark or it was using a supernatural ability to befuddle him. He thought of the stinger reared to stab into his body and pump it full of vitriol.

Nocking another arrow, he backed up and looked for the creature. For a moment, he still couldn’t find the abishai. Then something, a footfall so soft or a scent so faint he wasn’t even conscious of it, or maybe just pure instinct told him his foe was still in front of him and somewhat to the right.

He pivoted, drew, and seemed to be aiming straight at Son-liin. If the abishai wasn’t really between them, or if he simply missed the creature, he stood an excellent chance of killing the genasi girl instead.

He told himself he neither jumped at shadows nor did he miss. He shot, the arrow thumped home, and the abishai became visible in mid-pounce. It convulsed and Gaedynn had little difficulty sidestepping it and avoiding the scrabbling claws and whipping sting. For after all, they were no longer targeting him. The abishai was fighting the one truly invincible foe. Its spasms subsided and it lay motionless.

Gaedynn spun toward the other fight. Except it wasn’t a fight anymore. The dragon priest was down. With a grunt of effort, one foot planted on the body, Son-liin pulled her long hunter’s knife from between the wyrmkeeper’s ribs.

“I was going to say,” the genasi panted, “that I’m not under an enchantment this time. I can help you with Vairshekellabex.”

Gaedynn grinned. “Not that I’m admitting I need help, but pick up your bow and hurry if you’re coming.”

They trotted onward, slowing down and skulking when they neared the cave. No one and nothing else accosted them, so maybe Aoth and Alasklerbanbastos had killed most of the wyrmkeepers. But they didn’t encounter any other genasi either.

Are the other firestormers still coming, Gaedynn wondered, or did the lights and sounds on the earthmote spook them? By the Hells, just getting on a griffon’s back was a daunting prospect all by itself if you’d never done it before. But if the firestormers were balking, maybe Jet could bully them into following through.

The black mouth of the cave yawned in the eastern face of a big, granite knob. Peering around a smaller outcropping, Gaedynn barely had time to look at it before a deafening roar echoed from within. Then the same deep, sibilant voice chanted rhyming couplets in what he assumed to be the draconic tongue. Blue sparks fell from the air. For a moment the darkness was something he felt rather than saw, like cool silk sliding on his skin, and the cries and other muddled sounds of combat coming from behind him were a metallic taste in his tongue.

“Oh, good,” he said as the synesthesia faded. “Vairshekellabex is a sorcerer.”

A huge head at the end of a serpentine neck came twisting out of the cave to peer about. Its jaws seemed disproportionately large in relation to the rest of the skull, and yet the rows of crooked, protruding fangs likewise appeared grotesquely oversized in relation to the mouth. Spiky growths dangled under the lower jaw to make a kind of beard.

“He’s big too,” Son-liin whispered. Despite her attempt at bravado, she wasn’t quite able to keep a tremor out of her voice, and Gaedynn didn’t blame her. Judging from the head, Vairshekellabex was twice as big as Yemere had been and likely twice as old and powerful too.

Gaedynn’s first impulse was to try to sink an arrow into Vairshekellabex’s eye. But that one attack probably wouldn’t kill him. No single wound ever seemed to stop a wyrm. Yet his first effort, whatever it was, would give away his location.

He drew one of the two remaining enchanted arrows from his quiver and laid it on his bow. Then he stepped into the open, drew, and loosed.

As he intended, the shaft flew over Vairshekellabex’s head, then vanished in a flash and a howl. A section of the cavern ceiling cracked apart, and banging and rumbling, the pieces rained down on top of the wyrm.

In fact, they drove his head and neck-which were still the only parts Gaedynn could see-to the floor and buried them. But the granite shards began to shift immediately. Plainly Vairshekellabex was still conscious and trying to drag himself free.

Gaedynn cursed and shot the last of the magic arrows. It, too, exploded into light and noise, and it brought more chunks of granite raining down to add to the pile. But afterward the mound continued to shift. Pieces spilled off the top and clattered down the sides.

Son-liin drew an arrow of her own. “Grumbar,” she said, “please help me.” She kissed the broad-head point of the shaft, and a glimmer flowed through the golden lines in her skin.

Then she shot the arrow into the pile, and golden light rippled through it as well. Grinding and crunching, the chunks of stone bunched more tightly together. Some hissed as one fused to another.

“Nice work,” Gaedynn said.

“It still won’t hold him for long,” Son-liin replied. “I’m much more of a stormsoul than an earthsoul. I did what I could, but…”

Her eyes rolled up in her head, and she pitched forward. Gaedynn caught her and laid her on the ground.

Up ahead, with Alasklerbanbastos rapidly closing on her, Cera jammed the shadow stone back into the purse on her belt. Her hand twitched toward the gilded mace hanging on her other hip, but then didn’t grab it. She evidently realized there wasn’t time. Instead, she simply raised her arm high and swept it in an arc from east to west. “Keeper!” she cried.

Golden light blazed around her, and finally Alasklerbanbastos balked and recoiled from the sun god’s holy power. So did a thing like an empty, flopping sack sewn in the shape of a dragon.

Aoth had been so intent on the dracolich that, his fire-kissed eyes notwithstanding, he hadn’t noticed the other threat until that moment. It reminded him of the skin kites he’d fought in Thay and was certainly a product of necromancy, specifically of Alasklerbanbastos’s necromancy. The undead creature had apparently flayed his own rotting hide to make himself a servant.

Aoth ran around Alasklerbanbastos and put himself between the dracolich and Cera. The sheer drop at the edge of the earthmote was just a stone’s throw behind him, limiting his ability to maneuver.