The Ruin: The Year of Rogue Dragons by Richard Lee Byers

Author:Richard Lee Byers
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Epic, Fantasy, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780786956982
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2010-04-21T11:11:39+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

13-16 Uktar, the Year of Rogue

Dragons

In Sossal, corpses weren't hard to find. The slain lay where they'd fallen, buried only by the premature snows. But even so, Zethrindor's instincts led him to seek out an old cemetery, where sunken graves crumbled in on themselves, and weathered markers listed, a place given over by ritual and custom to the dominion of death.

He waited for the moon to set, then, hissing and murmuring incantations, used a talon to inscribe pentacles and sigils, some in the frozen earth, others on granite headstones and the facades of mausoleums. Several of the monuments, hallowed in the name of one beneficent power or another, couldn't bear the desecration without cracking or crumbling.

Gradually the night grew even colder, though, paradoxically, the graves began to smell more strongly of decay. Neither manifestation bothered him.

He snarled a final invocation, and something-the underlying structure of the world, perhaps, on which seas, plains, and mountains lay like paint on a canvas-moaned in protest. The patch of ground before him spun and churned like a whirlpool. A hollow formed at the center, and a horror oozed and clambered out of it into the open air. Essentially, it was shapeless, though Zethrindor could make out forms within the squirming central mass: a femur, skulls, a tarnished brass coffin handle, worms, and a length of stained and filthy winding sheet.

The thing peered back at him with several rudimentary eyes made of earth, mold, and scraps of rotten wood. "I wondered," it said, in a slow, slurred voice, "when you would next summon me."

"I name you G'holoq," Zethrindor said, "and I bind you by the staff, the crown, and the hexagon."

G'holoq laughed a muddy laugh, intensifying the ambient stench of rot, and a marker sculpted in the shape of the Earthmother, crowned with roses and holding a sheaf of grain, flowed and deformed like a melting candle. "Such caution between old friends! When did I ever attempt to deny you?"

"Never," Zethrindor said, "because I always constrained you properly."

"Ah, but then you were a mere wyrm. Now you're an omnipotent dracolich, predestined lord of a goodly portion of Faerыn. How, then, would a humble spirit like me dare to defy you, whether you performed the ceremony properly or not?"

Zethrindor bared his fangs. "Continue to mock me and I'll show you how powerful I've become."

"No need. I watched your final spat. with Iyraclea. Very impressive. Have you wondered, though, what the Frostmaiden thinks of you, now that you've killed her special servant?"

"I don't care. The time of the gods is over."

"Is it, indeed? I can't image why you bother fishing oracles out of graveyards when you're already privy to such extraordinary secrets."

"With the staff," Zethrindor said, "I strike you."

G'holoq's amorphous body burst into blue flame. The demon writhed and howled until the dragon willed the blaze to go out.

"I warned you," Zethrindor said. "I'm not in the mood for your japes."

"So I see," G'holoq croaked. "Ask your three questions, then, and we'll be free of the annoyance of one another's company.

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