The darkness that passed over me then was complete, black as night, and it did not flash by. Instead I heard the distant sound of beating wings, rapidly approaching. The dragon was coming for me. I felt my shoulders and neck tense, felt my whole body go rigid, but there was nothing I could do. It was coming for me.
Then Archus raised a hand, and a moment later he produced a wrist-thick beam of energy like the one I'd seen stabbing up from the forest floor before. It lanced past my right shoulder and I heard a sound above me, a snort, a
huff
like that of an angry bull. I saw surprise and frustration on Archus's face, and then felt a great buffeting wind slam against me, and the dragon rolled right past me. If my arms had been free, I could have reached out and touched it.
The thing was unimaginably huge. Its head alone was three paces long, from the tip of its snout to the base of its curving horns. The neck was even longer, sinuous and scaled, and behind it came broad shoulders supporting massive membranous wings. The thing's rib cage was probably larger than my room at the Academy, its hind legs taller at the joint than I would've been standing. Its long tail swayed behind it, drifting left and right with an immense, lazy power.
Rocking in the wind of its passing, I watched it swing out wide to my right, and then it curled back and flew like an arrow straight at Archus. I saw its jaw fall open, heard a cry from Archus beneath me, and then the beast unleashed a gout of flame that washed like a wave off the sea, three paces wide where it hit the ground beneath me. The fire rolled forward, consuming the discarded corpses and flowing over Archus as the great beast thrummed past directly beneath me.
The monster's momentum carried it by, sweeping out over the trees, and it left behind a fitful dance of dying flames on the hard, bare stone.
And Archus, barely visible through a thin layer of ash and soot that hung several feet distant from his body.
He gestured as though brushing a bit of lint from his shoulder, and whatever magical shield he had woven dissipated, leaving the black cake to drift like snow to the charred rocks below. The dragon curled lazily around, and when it spotted Archus it roared in defiance and frustration and came rushing back. Terror made my muscles weak and watery, but Archus faced the dragon's charge with a deep, perfect calm and began to chant the words of a spell. My eyes flew from him to the dragon and back, and hanging helpless as I was, I hoped with all my heart that he would win.
The dragon did not waste its flame again. It swooped in low, legs flashing to a gallop as it reached the ground, and moved straight from flight into a full sprint across the rocky clearing and straight at Archus. The wizard's apprentice didn't flinch, didn't budge. He continued his low chant. And when the dragon was ten paces distant, Archus cried out in a voice of certain power and light flashed all around him.
It was a single flare of light, bright as a sun, and the flash of it blinded my eyes. It must have done the same for the dragon because the beast roared and faltered in its rush. It stumbled, tail lashing violently as it tried to hold its balance, but it tripped and skidded past Archus on its right side. If I had been free I would have dashed in to open the thing's belly with the Green Eagle's sword, then and there, but Archus merely turned in place, tracking its motion, and I saw a confident smile on his lips.
Then he spoke again, and a dozen little silver flames began to dance over his palms. The dragon climbed to its feet some short distance away. It seemed hesitant now—not afraid, but patient. It turned its head and looked down on Archus, almost mesmerized by the young man's spell. I recognized the glowing globes of force that danced in the air before Archus—the spell had been one of Themm's favorite tricks—but the number and size and intricacy of the power Archus juggled astounded me. The dragon tilted its head like a bird and watched, waiting.
Suddenly Archus shouted a command crisp and clear, and the silver flames flashed through the air. Still the bolts of power danced, weaving together and flowing apart as they flew toward the beast. It never moved, and the silver lights struck the beast full in the face. Themmichus had once knocked me down with a bolt a tenth as strong as Archus's, but now a dozen globes of focused power smashed into the dragon's flesh...and melted. The monster blinked down at Archus and I imagined I could see cruel laughter in its eyes. Archus must have seen that, too, but he held his ground. He was smart enough to change tactics, though.
He shifted his stance and lifted his arms into the wild, sweeping patterns of the more primal weather magic. I'd attended a handful of Leotus's theory lectures on them, but I'd never seen the magic worked. But hanging there, watching Archus fold his motions into the massive clash of wind and water, fire and earth, I could feel the air around me answer. The air sparked with energy, and unseen pressure pushed painfully against my eyes.
Below me as he flowed through the motions his satisfied smile fell into a fierce grimace. His graceful composure became a frantic dance as he fought forces he had merely caressed before.
Though Archus was lost in the magic, the beast was not, and it looked down at him through the eyes of an angry beast, not those of a wizard. So it watched (as I watched) and saw (as I saw) not a terrible wizard casting deadly spells but an enemy arrogantly offering an unprotected heart. I saw the danger and screamed to warn him, but in that instant a bolt of lightning flashed, a pure pillar of heavenly fire slamming down just beyond my reach. My voice was drowned by the twin roar of the thunder and the injured dragon as the bolt struck home.
I blinked furiously, frantic to know what came next. When finally I could see again, I beheld the dragon fallen on its side. A great wound gaped in the shoulder of its left foreleg and bled wet and black all along its ribs. The beast flopped once, then the neck and tail both swayed together and with an enormous strength the animal heaved itself back to its feet.
It fell back on its hind legs and raised up to a terrifying height. The long neck snaked left and right, the beast's eyes fixed on Archus, and I felt sure the thing could simply snap its long neck down and swallow him at a gulp.
But below me Archus kept his eyes fixed on the dragon's head, and perhaps he anticipated the same thing because he moved, shifting left and right, forward and back, almost like a duelist positioning, preparing himself to leap, to dodge the deadly strike.
But at the same time he was already caught again in the dance that would summon another lightning strike. Anger flooded through me—at Archus's arrogance and my own inability to act. I shouted at him, "Watch him, Archus! He has more dangers than his teeth!"
I saw a flicker of irritation cross Archus's face, but he paid me no more attention than that. I struggled against my bonds, but they had no give. "Wind and rain, Archus, let me go! I can help you!" Or I could run. Either way, I needed to be free.
But this time he didn't even frown. He focused all his attention on the storm above, and threw his arms high above his head. A second bolt flashed, searing across my vision, but I heard what I could not see as the dragon's spike-tipped tail lashed forward and drove clear through Archus's body. By the dragon's scream I knew that this bolt too struck true. But the soft, wet sound of the apprentice's body falling against the stone told me the fight was over. And then my bonds were gone, and I was falling.
I twisted in the air and hit the ground hard on my right shoulder. I pulled myself into a roll as I landed, tumbled several paces, and threw myself up off the ground. Still blind from the lightning strike I lurched into a sprint across the rocky ledge.
Fear clawed at my spine, at the back of my mind, and it settled cold and empty into my muscles. I tripped, stumbled three steps and barely kept my feet. My breath burned hot in the back of my throat, short and sharp, and I could feel death all around me. Distraction turned my ankle and sent me sprawling on the stones of the hillside, bloodying my face and my left hand, and I scrambled and slipped three times before I got to my feet.
And then I thought not of Archus, facing down a dragon, but of an old friend and enemy named Cooper. I remembered with a perfect clarity sneering at him and telling him he would die the first time he fought a true enemy. He would panic, and he would die. Some desperate shred of pride deep inside me refused to do the same.
I took one long breath and forced it evenly out. Discipline returned to me slowly. It was not one of the exercises Antinus had taught me, but one I'd learned myself from a battered old fencing text. I drew the fine, expensive sword from its sheath upon my hip and the cold weight of it in my hand did more than all the clever exercises to ground me in reality. In the space of three heartbeats I was on my feet again. By the fourth, I was moving at a sprint.
More of my training served me, then. Still half-blind, as much from fear as from the aftereffects of the lightning, I drew up my memory of the environment around me. I'd seen enough of it, hanging helpless in the air, and I skipped past a spill of loose stones and bounded over a fallen limb even as I heard the dragon suddenly stirring behind me.
Archus's second bolt must have done more damage than the first, and the dragon's own injuries had slowed it more than my frenzied shock had slowed me. It moved behind me now with the rustle of its great wings spreading and settling and the grinding clatter of its tail sweeping slowly across the broad rocky ledge.
I could not escape it in a rush down the hill, not as fast as that thing flew, and I had no hope of climbing higher. Instead I sprinted straight at the cliff face, trusting to a fragile memory and a desperate hope. Off to the left, near the end of the ledge, creeping vines grew up onto the cliff face and pooled against the ground, but in one spot, low against the ground, a shadow stood behind them.
I dove, even as I heard the dragon begin to pace behind me, and I prayed. My right shoulder and hip slammed against the ground, parallel to the cliff, and I twisted as I slid, stabbing my legs toward the cliff face. I braced myself against a jarring impact, but my feet tangled in the climbing vines and tore them free and then stabbed on down into the cliff.
There was a cave, almost a tunnel, little more than a pace tall and half that wide at its mouth. It was a chimney that might have reached deep into the dark heart of the mountain, but it narrowed quickly and I slammed to a stop, hips and shoulders scraping against the rough walls, ten or fifteen feet down into the tunnel.
For a moment I lay on my back in the darkness, staring up at a stone ceiling I could touch without sitting up. I gulped desperate breaths, from fear more than exertion, and I forced myself back through calming exercises until I could reason. My right arm stretched out behind me, above me, dragging the fine sword against the earth. I tried to roll that way, but a stabbing pain in my shoulder and arm told me it was useless.
I clenched my teeth against a nauseating wave of pain, took three slow breaths, then rolled the other way. I pushed myself up with my left hand, then reached out and took the sword up in that one. I pressed forward two short steps, back toward the dim light at the mouth of the cave. I settled into an awkward crouch, inched forward more, still ten feet back, and tried to see what waited for me without.
There was some small sunset light still, and it began to filter through as the sky cleared—the storm energies Archus had harnessed falling back into their natural patterns. But as I crept closer to the cave mouth, something moved across it and total darkness washed over me. Then I heard a snuffling sound, and a cruel red light appeared straight before me.
Firelight danced above and behind a long, forked tongue as slick and black as bitter blood. Around the tongue shone a double-row of teeth, razor sharp and stained with smoke and soot. Then it shifted and the beast withdrew half a pace, firelight still spilling dimly into the tunnel but far enough back that it could cast its gaze down in. The dragon stared at me. I saw myself reflected in its cauldron eye, saw it measuring, weighing, remembering its fight with Archus before.
And then the eye blinked closed. It took a little breath, and a puff of cold air washed up out of the mountain around me, sucked into the dragon's maw, and the flame went out.
Darkness fell.
I could still sense the dragon in the space above me. I could feel its massive presence, hear the clatter sounds of the great body's small motions against the graveled ground. I could not see it, though. I could not guess what it had in mind. It did not simply blast me with its flame, perhaps suspecting I could shield myself as Archus had done. I was too far back for it to reach with claws or teeth, but I thought of the spike-tipped tail that had ended Archus's life. Perhaps it would be awkward, but if the animal could position itself to sling that thing at me, I would have nowhere to go.
I raised the sword before me, steady in my fingers, and I did my best to imitate a dueling stance within the low and narrow cave. I made myself a tiny target, sideways to the dragon's position, and held the blade protecting me from hip to eye. It was remarkable how much of a swordsman's body could be protected with that narrow blade if he knew how to hold it.
But that required knowledge of his enemy's stance as well, and I was blind. I squeezed my eyes tight shut in the darkness, fighting to hold my self-control, and took deep breaths to steady anxious nerves. The darkness pressed in on me, a physical weight, and I wanted to scream my frustration.
I didn't. Instead I bit my lip and reached into my swordsman's calm to grasp at the exercises a wizard had taught me. I forced my mind to relax as my muscles were relaxed, forced my thoughts into discipline as I had trained my body. And halfway through the patterns Antinus had taught me I felt myself fall into a state of quiet self-awareness that I had never quite achieved before. I sensed a bitter weight pressing down on me, immobilizing me, and recognized it as my own fear. I reached out with my will toward that weight, cracked it, and it fell away. The thing that broke and fell was an imaginary thing, no more than a mental construct...but then, so was my real fear.