Richard Lee Byers - The Ruin: The Year of Rogue Dragons, Book 3

It was delightful. It was vengeance, if only vicariously, and to this day, I regret that, dwelling alone in the barrens, I missed the beginning of it. Soon enough, though, I sensed a change in the world, and started investigating. I discovered dragons everywhere running amok, laying waste to their own dominions, slaughtering their chattels and protectors, and in their wanton, reckless bloodlust, leaving themselves vulnerable to their foes. I picked off several myself, when I had the chance.

I suspected the elves had unleashed some manner of curse, for of all the slave races, they possessed the most powerful magic. But if they were responsible, theyd covered their tracks well. Those I put to the question had no knowledge of it, and I couldnt approach the enchanters, diviners, and lords who might.

THE YEAR OF
ROGUE DRAGONS

Richard Lee Byers

Book I
The Rage

Book II
The Rite

Book III
The Ruin

Realms of the Dragons
Edited by Philip Athans

Realms of the Dragons II
Edited by Philip Athans

Other F ORGOTTEN R EALMS Titles by Richard Lee Byers

For Mark

Thanks to Phil Athans, my editor;
to Eric Boyd for pointing me to useful references; and to
Ed Greenwood, for all his help and inspiration.

A frigid wind, too cold for summers end, whistled out of the west, making Stival Chergoba shiver inside his bearskin cloak. Pale, shifting lights danced across the night sky, resembling the green and purple radiance that sometimes shined in the north. Those western lights, however, were white and blue. The colors of ice.

The stocky gray-eyed ranger was on watch, so it was his duty to report the supernatural phenomena. He tramped to the clearing at the center of the sacred grove, only to discover that, as usual, he neednt have bothered. The thirteen druids had already sensed the coming attack and commenced preparations to counter it. Madislak Pemsk, the leader of the coven, a stooped old man with a blotchy bald crown, a beak of a nose, and a ratty brown robe, spoke a word of power and stuck the end of his staff into a pile of wood, whereupon the fuel burst into flame. A younger priest, blond and fair-skinned like Stival himselfand most everyone else in Sossalput his lips close to the trunk of an oak and whispered. Eyes closed, movements slow and sinuous, a pretty female mystic in a brief, sleeveless tunic danced, saluting the cardinal points with a bronze sickle.

Its all right for them, Stival reflected. This is their kind of fight, and they all have something meaningful to do.

He didnt. He possessed his own mystical abilities, charms passed down from previous generations of scouts and hunters, but none that could influence the outcome of a struggle such as the one they faced.

What he could do, as his ivory-colored scale armor attested, was kill dragons, and that was what he should have been doing. White wyrms had done harm to Sossal for as long as anyone could remember, but never more than this year, when theyd all run mad at once. His homeland needed warriors to combat them.

But it also needed circles of druids to fend off the constant threat from the west, and the barons believed the spellcasters in turn required men-at-arms to guard them. So Stival had reluctantly gone where his masters bade him, while other warriors won renownand the gold, land, and admiration of beautiful women that often accompanied itconfronting the dragon flights.

In years past, Stival had enjoyed such rewards himself, but squandered them all through various indiscretions. Accordingly, he needed more, but it seemed unlikely he would achieve them anytime soon.

Well, no point brooding about it. Not when he still had tedious, pointless tasks to perform. He stalked back to the edge of the wood, where he had a clear view of the terrain beyond, and the glowing sky above.

In time, a ghostly giantess coalesced from the rippling sheets of blue and silver phosphorescence. Since his arrival at Ironspring Grove, Stival had seen the apparition half a dozen times. But even so, he caught his breath, for the spectacle was one element of his current existence that hadnt come to bore him. Pale and slender, clad in a billowing gown with a plunging neckline, the phantom was perfect, beautiful even though her expression conveyed nothing of softness, humor, or affectionnothing, in fact, but cold determination and avidity. The druids insisted she wasnt a goddess, merely the image of a spellcaster like themselves painted large against the sky, but Stival still found it difficult to credit.

Her mouth moved, and her hands swept through mystic figures. In the center of the grove, the druids chanted counterspells. The wind gusted, continually reversing direction, cold one second and warmer the next. Branches rattled, and leaves tore free.

In an hour or two, the apparition would fade away, the winds would quiet, and everything would be as it had been before. It had happened that way without fail ever since the magical confrontations began, a decade before. Thus, though he remained alert, Stival swarmed up into the crotch of a blueleaf tree and settled himself to watch the phantom without trepidation or alarm.

Then she looked down at him.

Or peered downward, anyway. She couldnt really be looking at him, because that wasnt actually her looming over the earth, just a sort of shadow. Even if it had been, she would hardly have noticed him any more than an ordinary person would spy an ant creeping in the dark a mile away.

Yet it was strange. Shed never stared downward before, and irrational as it seemed, he couldnt shake the feeling she was gazing straight at him. His guts believed it, even if his head rejected the possibility.

Then the phantom spoke to him.

Her soprano voice, dulcet and low, seasoned with a trace of the accent of some distant land, emerged from the howl of the freezing wind. Perhaps it had always been hidden there, and he just hadnt heard it until then.

No need for concern