Free Shadowstorm by Kemp Paul S Page B

movements. The illusions would distract the dragon and, with luck, draw some of its attacks. Riven prayed to Mask under his breath and shadows from the air coiled around his blades.
    “Where, Mags?” Riven asked. The assassin stood in a crouch, his breathing steady.
    Magadon shook his head and looked into the darkness. “Nowhere. Everywhere. We will never see him.”
    Cale knew Magadon was right. Even with his shadow sight, Cale saw nothing but dark water and coils of fog. The shadow dragon was as much one with the darkness as Cale.
    But they could hear him, and Cale’s darkness-sharpened hearing caught a sound: a rhythmic rush of air, the beat of huge wings from somewhere above them.
    “In the air,” he said.
    He scanned the sky but saw nothing. He felt the dragon’s approach the same way he felt an approaching storm. He felt exposed. They had no cover.
    “Link us, Mags,” Cale said.
    The mindmage could connect their minds so they could communicate silently at the speed of thought. Magadon shook his head. “No.” Cale looked at him sharply.
    Magadon said, in a softer tone, “I cannot, Cale. I am not… I cannot.”
    Cale stared at the mindmage, unarmored, damaged in his soul, worn as thin as old leather. He had not even drawn his dagger.
    “He’s got nothing but a dagger, Cale,” Riven said, his eyes on the sky, his thoughts apparently mirroring Cale’s.
    Cale made his decision. “We are leaving. This is not our fight.”
    A roar from above drenched them in sound. The dragon broke from the darkness of the sky, backlit by a vermillion flash, a mountainous form of black scales, muscle, and shadow. He dove directly at them. Another roar sent waves through the waters of the swamp.
    The creature bore down on the trio. His teeth were the length of daggers. His wings stretched two bowshots across from wingtip to wingtip. His massive form trailed a cloud of shadows the way a shooting star trails flames. Cale saw faces in the shadows, old faces, familiar faces. The dragon opened his mouth wide to breathe. The faces in the clouds opened their mouths, too, and Cale read their lips, or perhaps heard their whispers.
    Free us!
    “Cover!” Riven shouted, though there was nowhere to run.
    The moment before Furlinastis spat a cloud of viscous black vapor from his mouth, Cale caught a glimpse of Magadon, staring up at the dragon, arms limp at his sides, face impassive. Cale had no time to process the implications before the dragon’s life-draining breath saturated the area in ink. The swirling cloud of shadowstuff wormed into Cale’s body through his nose, ears, and eyes, pulled at his soul, drank his life force. He staggered in the muck, fell. He heard Riven groan and curse.
    Furlinastis hit the swamp with the force of a thunderbolt. His body displaced so much water that a waist-high wave of foul liquid washed over Cale. The dragon’s respiration sounded like a forge bellows.
    Despite the life-draining effect of the dragon’s breath, Cale recovered himself enough to draw the shadows to him. He reached out his consciousness for Magadon and Riven as the shadow magic took hold.
    “You were warned never to return,” the dragon’s sibilant voice said from out of the darkness. “For that—”
    Cale heard no more. He thought of one of the only places on the Plane of Shadow fixed firmly in his memory, a place from which they could begin their pursuit of Kesson Rel—the city of Elgrin Fau the lost, once the City of Silver, but now the City of Wraiths.
    The shadows engulfed them and swept them there.
    ŚŠŚŚŠ•ŚŠ•ŚŠ• ŚŠŚ
    Furlinastis knew the First and Second of Mask were either dead or had escaped, for he could no longer hear their hearts. The cloud of darkness dissipated and he saw only the lifeless husks of dozens of frogs, fish, snakes, and other small creatures native to the swamp floating on the surface of the water, their lives extinguished by his breath. But there was no sign of the humans. They had