burning embers snaked through a cloud of smoke, glowing runes of heat and agony traced in the air. The smoke leaked through the bars of a magical cage. Riven had nowhere to run.
“Forcecage,” Rivalen said, and spit a tooth and blood.
Cale felt for the darkness within the cage, found it, held his breath, and stepped to it. Lines of fire wrote letters of pain on his flesh. He gritted his teeth, endured, and followed Riven’s screams through the smoke. He found the assassin writhing on the ground, burning. Cale grabbed his cloak and rode the shadows out of the cage and onto the plains. He rolled Riven around on the the rain-swept grass as Cale’s regenerative flesh healed the burns on his own skin.
Riven grunted with pain through bared teeth, as much angry as pained. His face and hands were blistered, blackened like seared meat. Blades of grass clung to the charred flesh from where Cale had rolled him on the turf. His hair was melted.
Rivalen stepped from the shadows next to Cale.
“Be still,” Rivalen said, and held Riven still with his one hand. He chanted a healing prayer, the language not unlike that which Cale had used to heal Rivalen, and Riven’s skin regenerated before their eyes. His breathing eased, though his hair and beard remained blackened and curled.
“Good?” Cale asked him.
“No,” Riven said, and sat up. He drew a dagger to pair with his saber. He must have lost his other saber during the battle. He stood. “But that’s not new. We cannot beat him, Cale.”
Cale nodded. “I know.”
Not even Rivalen protested.
“But we see it through,” Cale said and looked across the plains to Kesson Rel. The First Chosen of Mask rose into the sky, energy in his hands. Kesson touched his hand to himself once, twice, presumably warding himself against attack.
Cale was about to speak when a blast of power soaked his mind, caused his nose to bleed, and sent him to his knees.
Sakkors, draped in shadows, floated over the battlefield.
I am come! Magadon projected.
Rivalen and Riven both covered their ears and groaned. Even Kesson grimaced.
And Cale realized what he must do. He rose to his feet.
“Spread out,” he said. “And wait for my say so.”
Blows rained down on Furlinastis’s body. His good wing hung in shreds. He’d lost two teeth on a giant’s breastplate. He could scarcely see and pinpointed his targets as much by sound and smell as sight. Roaring, he pinned a giant under one claw, pressed down, and felt the satisfying crunch of the giant’s rib-cage collapsing.
A pair of giants slashed at his throat, opened huge gashes in his scales. He whirled, caught one by the leg in his jaws, and shook him until the leg came free. He gulped it down as the giant bled out on the grass.
Three giants to his left nocked arrows, drew, and loosed. All three sank to the fletching in his side. He whipped his body around, caught two of them with a tail lash, and shattered their knees.
But he was failing. A group of two score giants charged him. He reared up, roaring.
And a roar from behind joined his own.
The companions of Abelar Corrinthal charged the giants, breaking around and past Furlinastis, their numbers ablaze in magical light.
Regg and his company flowed around the dragon, shouting battle cries. The shadowwalkers, cloaked in darkness even in the midst of Roen and his priests’ light spells, ran in the vanguard of the force.
The dragon roared as they passed, lumbered after. With the number of wounds the creature had suffered, Regg did not know how it even moved.
Trewe sounded a blast and the company hit the remaining giants like a maul. Regg sidestepped a giant’s stab and hacked into the creature’s knee. When it fell, roaring, he drove his blade through the back of its neck. A giant staggered into him, spouting blood from a throat wound, and knocked him down. Another loomed out of the battle, sword raised over his head for a killing blow.
The dragon’s head shot out of the chaos of combat on his long neck and the giant vanished in a flash of teeth and spray of blood. Regg climbed to his feet and hacked about him until he could no longer feel his arms.
Cale and Rivalen shadowstepped away from Riven. Together, the three men formed a triangle around Mask’s First Chosen, who flew in the air above them.
“You are not enough,” Kesson said, and Cale knew he was right. They were not enough. To