Then, at long last, the shaking stopped, and the fires flared out, and the cloud of debris lifted. It revealed a deep crater torn through the desert floor, a black and smoldering scar. At its farthest point thrashed an Elder Dragon. It was on its back, giant wings pounding the tortured ground, but it could not right itself, could not rise.

"Kralkatorrik is down!" shouted Eir. "Kralkatorrik is within reach!"

"I've got to go!" Rytlock said, lifting the crystalline lance.

"Then go!" Caithe replied. "The dragon has thinned the ranks for me."

Hundreds of dragon minions had been turned to stone, but dozens more clambered across the desert toward the south gate.

"You can't guard the gate alone!" Rytlock said.

Caithe's eyes blazed. "I have to! Go!"

The charr nodded and ran. In his claws, he carried the crystalline lance.

Before him, the gla.s.sy ground sloped away into a great black crater, wide and deep. Rytlock bounded into it and ran down the ragged rift. Crystals cracked beneath his claws as he went. Ahead, at the terminus of the great scar in the ground, lay the mountainous monster.

Kralkatorrik was upside down, thras.h.i.+ng with his breast bared.

Rytlock ran on, lifting the crystalline lance. The rift seemed impossibly long. He only hoped he could reach the dragon before the dragon's minions reached Caithe.

Caithe stood alone in the south gate as dozens of beasts came her way.

First was a crystalline coyote, enormous and whooping. Its rocklike teeth snapped at Caithe.

She feinted back and grasped one stony whisker and flung herself onto the coyote's back. She plunged her white-bladed stiletto into the creature's neck and twisted, ripping through its spine. The coyote's whoop devolved into a ragged gasp of pain, and it collapsed.

Caithe leaped free, only to see more of the dragon's minions pour past her. Horned lizards and giant rats and geckos and tarantulas and jackals and snakes all thundered by, heading for Big Snaff in the center of the sanctum.

Caithe rushed after the bounding horde. She jumped from beast to beast, ripping out their throats and pounding their skulls into the ground as she leaped away, squealing, but still the others ran on.

They converged on Big Snaff.

Snaff lay embedded in the deepest layers of the dragon's mind, choking off breath and pulse. The dragon could not find him here, could not root him out. It could not even right itself.

But its minions found Snaff elsewhere.

There came a crash-stone shattering-and the rumble of claws.

Claws dug, and jaws gibbered.

Snaff opened his eyes.

Big Snaff had toppled and shattered, and the monsters were on him.

Fangs snapped.

Muzzles bled.

Hungry. Angry. Insatiable.

Teeth clamped on Snaff. They bit through him. There was blunt pain and the sudden certainty that he was dying.

More teeth seized him.

Bones broke.

Breath burst through his wounds.

Blood foamed out.

Fangs met in his stomach.

Rytlock was galloping toward the downed dragon when it suddenly rolled over and righted itself. Its holocaustal eyes glared down the length of the crater at the running charr, a stone lance in his claws. Then Kralkatorrik spread ma.s.sive wings and beat them against the air and rose from what should have been its grave.

"No!" roared Rytlock. roared Rytlock.

The dragon lifted easily away and climbed into the sky.

"No!" Rytlock bellowed, hurling the spear. Rytlock bellowed, hurling the spear.

It arced up, cracked off the shoulder of the beast, bounding away. The lance fell, useless, in the crater.

Already, Kralkatorrik was out of reach. Its mile-long wings thrummed the air, blasting flat every creature on the desert below.

Rytlock Brimstone fell to his knees.

Winds buffeted.

The dragon retreated, unhearing, uncaring. Its wings boiled the clouds as it climbed. It ripped through them and rose, leaving only a troubled wake across the heavens.

SUNDERING.

Logan's hammer shattered the knee of an ogre. It toppled like a tree and smashed into one of its comrades, which crashed on top of a charr. A second charr vaulted onto the fallen ogre and ripped out its throat-only to be cleaved by a great axe.

It was a bloodbath in the courtyard of Ebonhawke. Seraph and Vanguard, Blood Legion and Iron Legion, ogre and hyena, fought and fell. The battle roared like a ravenous monster that would not rest until it had eaten them all. At the heart of that maelstrom, Logan Thackeray held the line by sheer force of will and rallied the defenders for one last, desperate surge.

Then, above the fortress city, a greater monster arrived. Its wings blackened the sky, and the beat of those wings pounded down on the warriors below. Ogres and hyenas looked up and wailed in glee. Humans and charr groaned in dread.

Kralkatorrik had returned.

It shrieked, a sound bigger than the sky.

Every mortal creature dropped to its knees.

Kralkatorrik's eyes lit, and twin beams of ravening power raked down upon the warriors. Charr hackles hardened to spikes. Human muscles clenched to stone.

The ogres grinned to see their enemies transformed. It turned them to rock but left them puny-punishment for their resistance. The beams blazed through the courtyard, catching every last human and charr.

The battle of Ebonhawke was done.

Kralkatorrik had declared the victors.

The last outpost of humans in Ascalon would now be a dragon fortress.

The Elder Dragon screamed, and its ogre minions bellowed in joyful reply.

Then the dragon's wings pulsed, and it pivoted ma.s.sively above the fortress. Another stroke of those wings, and Kralkatorrik banked away, heading south.

The ogres and hyenas watched in grief as their master left them. Their faces fell, and they stared at the pathetic dragon minions all around. With looks of disgust, the ogres turned away and loped toward the shattered southern wall. They clambered through, their hyenas leaping at their heels.

The once-humans and once-charr did not move from their spots, as if rooted in place.

Still, the ogres followed their master. Let these puny minions hold Ebonhawke. The ogres would serve their lord directly.

Through the wall they went, and down upon the rocky lands beyond-southward, ever southward into the Crystal Desert. With bellows and cackles, they followed their ancient lord.

Kralkatorrik already was impossibly distant, and it flew at terrific speed. Soon, it would be lost to sight, but the ogres would follow until they were in the presence of their master.

Logan stood unmoving in the courtyard of Ebonhawke. He had been transfigured like all the rest-not transformed, but transfigured. transfigured. When the dragon's eyes stared down upon him, his outer semblance became something new-stony and strange. It was as if every muscle seized up, and he had become a living statue. When the dragon's eyes stared down upon him, his outer semblance became something new-stony and strange. It was as if every muscle seized up, and he had become a living statue.

But his mind still turned, still told him that his friends had failed. They had failed because he had abandoned them. And now, Kralkatorrik held him.

As the last of the ogres climbed through the wall and lumbered away across the rocky hills, the glamour that gripped Logan and the others faded away.

Logan panted, only then realizing he had forgotten to breathe.

A Vanguard warrior nearby staggered and clutched his knees.

A charr legionnaire whipped his head back and forth, eyes blazing. "What sort of sorcery was that?"

"My type of sorcery," came a voice high above, "mesmerism."

Logan and the others looked up to see, on the highest balcony of the keep, Queen Jennah. From that lofty spot, she had cast the illusion of the dragon in the sky. She had poured down golden light to lave the warriors below, had made them seem creatures of stone. Her spell had been so powerful, they had not known they could still breathe.

"I've deceived them, the minions of Kralkatorrik," Queen Jennah called. "I have saved you, human and charr alike. We have been enemies these many centuries, but now there is a new enemy for us both.

"This is a dark day, the first of many. This is a day of dragons. We must stand together against them, or we will all fall beneath. And so I am releasing these charr prisoners." She gestured down at the group of charr standing beside the fortress's portcullis. "They have fought beside us, and they are free."

Logan strode toward the line of charr. "Did you hear that? You're free."

One of the warriors said, "We fought beside humans. We will be outcasts."

"No," Logan said. "I've spent the last year fighting beside a charr. Am I an outcast?"

The charr looked him in the eye. "I will tell them I fought beside Logan Thackeray."

"Yes. Tell them that."

Zojja ripped away the straps that bound her into the c.o.c.kpit and pounded the b.u.t.ton that made the blast s.h.i.+eld slide down. Vaulting from her golem, she landed achingly on the floor of the sanctum and ran to Big Snaff.

It lay where it had fallen, shattered stone and smoking servos.

Zojja stared hopelessly into the gutted belly of the golem. There, amid torqued stanchions, lay a limp figure, pierced in many places and bloodless.

He was dead.

Snaff was dead.

"No!" Zojja screamed.

Running feet approached-Eir arriving to grip the fuselage of the golem and stare within. "You can't die!"

"He's dead already!"

Eir reached into the c.o.c.kpit, hands fumbling. "You can't die." Eir pulled Snaff's broken body from the wreckage and cradled him.

"Put him down!" Zojja yelled. "You have no right! Your plan failed. You killed him killed him!"

Eir's green eyes opened wide. "I killed him?" killed him?"

"Put him back!"

Eir stood for a long while, holding the asura genius. Then slowly, reverently, she lowered his body back into the ruined golem.

"Now, get out of here!" Zojja snapped. "I have to cremate him."

Numbly, Eir turned and wandered away through the shattered sanctum.

Zojja waited until the norn was gone. Then, with tears streaming down her face, she said, "Good-bye, Master." She lowered her hands into the shattered c.o.c.kpit of Big Snaff and called forth cremating fire.

"Pointless," Rytlock muttered as he stared out at the battlefield.

Before him, the sands had fused to green gla.s.s, entrapping a thousand stone creatures. To his right lay Glint, destroyed in combat against her master. To his left lay her ruined sanctuary-once a haven in the Crystal Desert and now a ragged memorial.

"Pointless."

Especially because they had been so close. Just a few moments more and the lance would have pierced the dragon's heart, and Kralkatorrik would have died, and Snaff would have lived.

A few moments that Logan could have given them.

"Logan!" Rytlock roared, ripping Sohothin from its sheath and ramming it into the ground. "It's your fault!"

The shout rang false. It wasn't Logan's fault. It was Rytlock's, for trusting a human. For letting a human's softness make him . . . weak.