Half-way up the slope he heard distant laughter. Raest stiffened just as the day darkened suddenly around him. On the sward before him he saw five enormous shadows sweeping up the slope, then beyond the hill's summit. The sunlight returned. The Jaghut Tyrant looked into the sky above him.
Five dragons banked in perfect formation, their heads dipping to watch him as they glided back in his direction. “Estideein eleint,” he whispered, in his Jaghut tongue. Four were black, barbed in silver along the wings and flying two to either side of the fifth dragon, this one red and twice at large as the others. “Silanah red-wings,” Raest muttered, eyes V&Tv~swin%. “Elder-born and true-blooded Tiarn, you lead Soletaken,4kintblood is alien to this world. I feel you all!” He raised fists to the sky. “Colder than the ice born of Jaghut hands, as dark as blindness-I feel you!”
He lowered his arms. “Harass me not, eleint. I cannot enslave you, but I will destroy you. Know that. I will drive you to the ground, each and all, and with my own hands I shall tear your hearts from your chests.”
His eyes narrowed on the four black dragons. “Soletaken. You would challenge me at the command of another. You would battle with me for no reason of your own. Ah, but if I were to command you I would not throw your lives away so carelessly. I would cherish you, Soletaken, I would give you causes worth believing in, show you the true rewards of power.” Raest scowled, as their derision swept through his mind. “So be it.” The dragons passed low overhead in silence, banking once again and disappearing behind the hills to the south. Raest spread his arms wide and unleashed his Warren. His flesh split as power flowed into him. His arms shed skin like ash. He both felt and heard hills crack all around him, the snapping of stone, the sundering of crags. To all sides the horizons blurred as dust curtained skyward. He faced south. “This is my power! Come to me!” A long minute passed. He frowned at the hills before him, then cried out and whirled to his right just as Silanah and the four black dragons, all less than ten feet above the ground, plunged over the summit of the hill he'd been climbing.
Raest screamed at the whirlwind of power battering him, his shrunken eyes locked on Silanah's blank, empty, deadly gaze-eyes as large as the Jaghut's head-as it bore down upon him with the speed of a springing viper. The red dragon's jaws opened wide and Raest found himself staring down the beast's throat.
He screamed a second time and released his power all at once.
The air detonated as the Warrens collided. Jagged shards of rock ripped in all directions. Starvald Demelain and Kurald Galain warred with Omtose Phellack in a savage maelstrom of will. Grasses, earth and rock withered to fine ash on all sides, and within the vortex stood Raest, his power roaring from him. Lashes of sorcery from the dragons lanced into his body, boring through his withered flesh.
The Jaghut Tyrant flayed his power like a scythe. Blood spattered the ground, sprayed in gouts. The dragons shrieked.
A wave of incandescent fire struck Raest from the right, solid as a battering fist. Howling, he was thrown through the air, landing in a bank of powdery ash. Silanah's fire raced over him, blackening what was left of his flesh. The Tyrant clambered upright, his body jerking uncontrollably as sorcery gouted from his right hand.
The ground shook as Raest's power hammered Silanah down, driving the dragon skidding and tumbling across the slope. The Tyrant's exultant roar was cut short as talons the length of a forearm crunched into him from behind. A second clawed foot joined the first, snapping through the bones of Raest's chest as if they were twigs. More talons flexed around him as a second dragon sought grip.
The Tyrant twisted helplessly as the claws lifted him into the air and started ripping his body apart. He dislocated his own shoulder in reaching round to dig his fingers into a sleek scaled shin. At the contact, Omtose Phellack surged into the dragon's leg, shattering bone, boiling blood. Raest laughed as the claws spasmed loose and he was flung away.
More bones snapped as he struck the ground, but it did not matter. His power was absolute, the vessel that carried it had little relevance. If need be, the Tyrant would find other bodies, bodies in the thousands.
He climbed once more to his feet. “Now,” he whispered, “I deliver death.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The flowering of light from darkness brought into my sight there on the field a host of dragons caught like a crest of wind before the eternal flame.
I saw the ages in their eyes a worldly map inscribed in each whirled scale on their hides.
Their sorcery bled from them like the breathing of stars and I knew then that dragons had come among us:
