Azure Bonds

24 Battle over Westgate

This is like riding up into a maelstrom, Olive thought as they plunged into the purplish fog that had swallowed Moander, though she could not honestly say she had ever done so. The purple fog became a long, gray tube—the oozing wake of the god’s passage from the forest north of Myth Drannor to wherever it was heading.

Floating castles and statues danced along the edges of the tube. Ruskettle noticed that Alias’s finder’s stone, which Dragonbait now held high over his head, shone a beam before them that stretched all the way down the tube to illuminate the retreating rear of the mad god.

Moander disappeared in another purple fog. They plunged after it, were buffeted by a second stomach-churning whirlwind, and suddenly burst into bright sunshine in a clear blue sky.

Below them to the left was a bustling, walled city of some size—a sea port. The green-blue water told Olive that she was looking at the Inner Sea. The shape of the harbor and the seven peculiar hills outside of the city walls identified their destination as Westgate.

Giogioni Wyvernspur let out a deep sigh of relief as he topped the last rise on the road from Reddansyr and surveyed the city of Westgate and the land surrounding it. Since his narrow escape in Teziir from the sorceress who so resembled the sell-sword Alias, Giogi had been moving overland, first by carriage, then on horseback.

From his vantage point, the Cormyrian noble took in the plain, which ran along the sea coast. Covered with the same rich, slick grass as the hills bordering it, the greenery of the plain ran right to the stock and caravan yards scattered around the city wall. A ring of seven mounds lay south of the city just east of the road on which he traveled. All seven hillocks were crowned with old ruins—stone circles of druids and temples of more sinister cults.

“Now this,” he informed the horse he now rode, Daisyeye II, “has been a much more pleasant experience than my last trip on horseback. That ended, you see, with the death of your namesake, the first Daisyeye, followed by a singularly unpleasant interview with a dragon—an incident that will stick in my mind as long as, if not longer than, the nasty affair of losing Aunt Dorath’s pet land urchin.”

Giogi sighed again. He had been expecting to be waylaid by any of the hundred thousand brigands, bandits, dark powers, and orc bands that were said to lie in wait just beyond the borders of the civilized world. Yet, despite all the expected awfulness, his trip overland had been relatively peaceful.

About time I had some good luck, he thought, pulling off his wide-brimmed hat and letting the wind rustle through his hair.

At that moment the crash of a powerful lightning strike echoed all around him. Daisyeye II reared on her hindquarters. Directly overhead a great rend appeared in the sky. Through this a huge rock jettisoned into the world.

Giogi reigned Daisyeye in tightly to avoid being spilled onto the road. He might have been better off patting the beast and whispering soothing words, but his eyes were glued on the rocketing projectile. It looked like a rotting basket, with masses of greenery hanging from all sides. Along its trailing edge it spurt out jets of blue flame.

With a piercing howl the gash in the sky began to close. Then a red dragon burst through the hole overhead, pursuing the “basket.” The dragon’s appearance was Giogioni’s first indication of just how big the lump of decay really was.

The head of the dragon chasing the basket shone with a yellow light. Giogi squinted. The yellow light seemed to be coming from a figure riding between the dragon’s ears. Then the Cormyrian noble noticed the dragon’s color.

“No. It can’t be,” he whispered to himself. But his heart sank with the certainty that it was indeed Mist.

If Giogi had remained on the hilltop observing the dragon, he might have noticed the other figures on her back; he might even have heard the eerie chant that rose from one of the mounds just south of him, but Daisyeye II decided she’d had enough. She plunged uncontrollably down the hill into the high grass, taking the young Wyvernspur with her.

Akabar kept his eyes glued to Moander. Blue flames spurted from the god, but the mage recognized that the flames did not originate from the damaging fires they had set within the monster. They were some means of propulsion. Somehow the monster’s temporary occupation of his mind had left the mage with more than just the memory of the words he’d been forced to say to Alias or the evil deeds he’d been maneuvered into performing. He understood the means of the Abomination’s flight, and while he admired its cleverness, he shivered with horror at the reminder of what the god had done to him.

Moander’s vast godly knowledge, however, was not going to aid in its escape. The dragon, under the effects of Akabar’s spell of haste, was still gaining. The god arced downward toward the seven mounds outside the city walls. Then it halted, hovering over one of the hills. Great red stone plinths shaped like fangs curved inward about the crown of the hill. In their center burned a bonfire. Olive spotted tiny figures moving about the hilltop. From this distance the figures looked no bigger than ants.

Moander let a drop of slime fall away from its body. The slime oozed like a water drop slipping along a strand of spider silk, then it hung ten or so feet before splattering on the ground. The ant-sized figures were on it in a second.

“It’s delivered Alias to its followers,” Akabar shouted.

The halfling nodded. “We have to land and rescue her.”

The mage shook his head in disagreement. “We have to finish our battle with the god first,” he said.

“Are you crazy? We could be killed. I want off this ride, now,” Olive insisted.

Akabar’s eyes glittered with vengeance, and the halfling realized she wasn’t going to get anywhere trying to convince him to help her down. Fortunately for her, it wasn’t up to him. “Dragonbait!” she hollered. “Alias is down there! We have to land and help her!”

But Olive was not to discover whether the lizard paladin was more concerned with the warrior woman or destroying Moander. Moander took the decision out of his hands. Once it had unloaded its passenger, the god launched itself toward them.

Mist banked sharply, and the mass of fungus, slime, and forest rocketed past them. The sudden movement caused the halfling to lose her grip on the safety rope. She would have fallen to her death if Akabar had not seized the hem of her skirt and pulled her back. Olive suddenly was not feeling hungry—the human equivalent of feeling frightened out of her mind. Mist completed her banking maneuver by turning about to face Moander’s return charge.

This time, however, dodging the god was not so easy. As it streaked toward them Moander increased in size. In its approaching side a great maw opened, lined with duskwood tree trunks sharpened to fanglike points.

The Jawed God it was sometimes called, Akabar remembered. But how did it grow without absorbing more mass? he puzzled. It was now four times Mist’s size, and the open cavity could swallow the dragon whole.

Mist struggled to gain altitude. She managed to rise above the gaping mouth, but a tree-weighted vine shot out at her, entangling her neck and her wings. The dragon beat her wings furiously, but she was held fast. More red vines, pulsing like blood veins, snaked up the snarevine.

Cursing, Olive drew her dagger, preparing to cut any plants that came her way. She turned, thinking to offer Akabar her sword, but to her surprise he began chanting another spell. She thought he had exhausted the last of his magic on the enchantment to haste the dragon. Apparently he was getting better at the game. He looks worn, though, Olive thought, noticing the lines in his face, deeper and more plentiful than when they’d first met in Cormyr. He was beginning to look like a real wizard, she decided.

With furrowed brows, the Turmish mage completed the last sharp syllables and tossed a handful of iron powder over the dragon’s scales. The metal filings sparkled in the air, causing Mist’s whole body to glow.

The struggling dragon’s scales shifted beneath them. The halfling grabbed at the safety ropes, but they snapped away, as did the majority of the vines tethering Mist to Moander’s form. Olive gripped at a scale, but it was difficult to grasp as it grew in size. Akabar, she realized, had enlarged the dragon with his magic.

“Should even the odds,” the Turmishman said.

Mist, using her back claws, slashed open Moander’s side. A foul vapor burst from the god’s wound, and it screamed. The air smelled like a swamp.

Mist jerked her head up, breaking the last cord holding her near the god. The suddenness of her movement sent Dragonbait bouncing high into the air. With a gasp Olive tugged on Akabar’s kilt and pointed at the lizard.

Akabar was already aware of the saurial’s plight. He stood up nimbly on Mist’s shifting back and stretched out his arms. In each hand he held a single feather. He incanted fast and furious and then fell from the dragon’s back. Reflexively Olive grabbed at the mage’s ankles. She’d forgotten she was no longer anchored. The pair of them, mage and bard, plummeted toward the ground.

As Akabar pulled out of his dive and began to fly upward, he became aware of the halfling’s weight. Would he be able to carry her and Dragonbait? he wondered.

The saurial had begun arcing downward. He’d lost his grip on the finder’s stone, but still clutched at his sword. Akabar flew upward to intercept him.

Drat the halfling, the mage thought as he struggled to reach the saurial. He would not be able to cross the horizontal distance between himself and Dragonbait before the lizard fell past him. If Olive had not tagged a ride, he could have done so with ease. As it was, he was forced to angle down, arms forward like a diver.

Dragonbait fell with his arms spread open, presenting the most resistance to the air. Akabar did not think the saurial was the least panicked, but he was willing to bet the air around Dragonbait smelled of woodsmoke.

Behind the mage, Olive swore loudly and profusely. She had no idea how to present the smallest profile when flying, so she slowed the mage’s movements even further with the resistance of her body in the wind. Akabar offered his own prayer that he would reach the saurial in time.

The flying mage’s path intersected the free-falling lizard’s about thirty yards from the ground. By then Dragonbait was plummeting like a comet, and Akabar’s tackle hit him with so much force that something gave in the mage’s shoulder and the saurial’s ribs. The trio of wizard, halfling, and lizard was too heavy to remain in flight long. From their mid-air impact, they lofted in a very low arc, before they began to sink earthward.

They landed in a dell between hills. The ground was soft, but littered with boulders. The threesome rolled and slid, lost their grip on one another, and fell apart. Akabar kept flying after he lost the added weight. He pulled up and landed smoothly on a large rock. He touched his shoulder gingerly; the flesh dimpled inward and his wrist and arm buzzed with a thousand tiny needle-pricks. A dislocated shoulder, he realized, almost intrigued with the injury.

The halfling, with the luck endemic to her race, had skidded to a stop in a particularly soft, boggy area. She rose to her feet completely uninjured but quite slimy, smeared with mud and grass stains. Dragonbait needed to lean on his sword to rise to his feet.

Akabar turned his attention to the battle between the now-gigantic Mist and the monstrously swelled Moander. The Jawed God had increased its size once again and regained its hold on the red dragon. The two behemoths tumbled in midair, though why they did not crash was yet another mystery puzzling Akabar. Mist’s wings were too entangled to fly, and the blue flames that had propelled the god through the sky were no longer apparent.

The air shimmered around them like heat rising from the desert sands. Beneath the tattered shards of the god’s body, which Mist had ripped away with her claws, lay only great vacuities. The smell of fetid swamp Akabar had noticed aboard the dragon reached his nose even on the ground. Along Moander’s side, a second huge, duskwood-fanged mouth split open. So wide did the jaws part that the god resembled a giant clam.

Confronted with this new set of jaws, Mist began thrashing like a wild beast. She was a great wyrm, one of the most powerful of her race, and much enhanced by the Turmish mage’s magic, yet, while her opponent seemed to be made of nothing but that great maw, she was still flesh and blood. Then she remembered she was also fire.

Mist breathed a long stream of flame from her bloody mouth and nostrils. The fire plunged deep into the god’s mouth. With a sudden horrifying insight, Akabar understood the significance of the swampy smell, Moander’s great but empty size, and its ability to hover. The mage squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away from the battle.

A small star exploded in the sky over Westgate. The shell that was Moander the Darkbringer and the curved figure of the dragon were black pieces of ash against the blaze that consumed them. Mist’s fire-resistant scales ignited, her flesh became translucent, and her skeleton visible to any eyes unfortunate enough to witness her demise.

A booming sound rolled across the plains. The three adventurers were knocked from their feet by the force of the blast. Ruskettle lay toppled in the mud with her fingers pressed into her ears. The mage fell from his rock.

When Akabar looked up again, the star had faded, leaving behind the falling, burning shards of the god Moander. The long, blackened body that had once been Mistinarperadnacles Hai Draco spiraled to the earth. From the small valley, the mage could not see where the dead beast landed, but he felt the ground shake from the impact.

Akabar felt very tired. He prayed he had been right in his assumption that the package Moander had dropped off on the hilltop had been Alias. A further fear crept over him and tightened his gut. If Moander were indeed a god, they had destroyed only its earthly incarnation—somewhere beyond the borders of reality, it still lived. Should the Darkbringer find a way to return to the Realms, the mage knew that he would be at the top of the god’s list of enemies.

“So be it,” the Turmishman muttered. The beast had invaded his mind and made him a puppet. Now it was no more, destroyed by his hand, for without his spells Mist would not have lasted ten minutes against the Jawed God.

A feeling of intense satisfaction washed over Akabar. The feeling blended with the knowledge that he had rescued Dragonbait and Olive from death by flying them to safety. For the first time he was sure that he was more than a greengrocer merchant who dabbled in spell-casting. He was truly a mage of the first water.

Smoke rose in the sky from the direction of Westgate, and Akabar realized that the dragon must have hit the city. He felt a twinge of sadness for the beast. Evil though Mist had been, her evil had been no worse than that of a selfish, monomaniacal old woman. Like a villain in a street pantomime, she was all sneers and threats—her wickedness paled before the reality of the Darkbringer. She died honoring her agreement with the saurial paladin—battling and destroying a greater evil than herself.

Ruskettle should write a song, making Mist a hero, Akabar thought with a grin. The old wyrm would’ve hated that.

“You waiting for the moon to come up, Akash?” Olive snapped. “We have a swordswoman to rescue, in case you’d forgotten.”

Akabar shook his head, clearing it of his self-congratulations and melancholy meanderings. Dragonbait, his hip bloody from their rough landing, and clutching his ribs where Akabar had intercepted him, stood beside him. The lizard was reaching for the mage’s shoulder to heal it first. Akabar moved away from him, cradling his bad arm with his good. He clenched his teeth against the pain.

“No!” the Turmishman insisted. “I can walk at least. You should take care of yourself first.”

Dragonbait paused in protest, but he was not about to argue with the mage’s new determination. He used the last of his healing power on his injured side, then the three of them set out to find Alias.