Closing his eyes, he pulled the strings. Behind and beneath the soarwagon's tail, a torrent of terrible flame seared the air and flowed in waves of heat across the ice field, which seemed to explode in great clouds of steam and soot.

The soarwagon went nearly straight up, a pale sliver flung by its own dynamics and given added speed by uprushing air currents ahead of the rising clouds of steam. Bobbin opened his eyes and looked around. Behind him was a tiny, distant landscape, where finger ridges of mountains lay like furrows in a field. And barely visible, far below, was the red dragon, just coming out of its dive and beginning to circle to the east.

"How did you do that?" The dragon voice in his ears seemed genuinely impressed.

"I bounced off the ground effect," the gnome explained. "It's nothing especially new. I've been bouncing off it for weeks."

"Ground effect?" The voice seemed fainter now.

"That's what I call it. The air near the ground is denser than the air higher up. It's why I can't land."

"You can't land? You mean you can't get down?"

"No, blast it! I can get near the ground, but I can't quite reach it.

Uh… are you coming after me again? I'd rather you didn't. I have enough troubles without you." The diminishing voice in Bobbin's ear seemed to chuckle. "I've heard of gnomes being standoffish, but you're the first one

I've found who was actually stuck up!

But I have no more time for you, so I suppose this is your lucky day.

Goodbye, Bobbin." Again there was a fading chuckle, then the voice was gone.

The gnome had managed to level out his climb, and he looked over the wicker rail. In the distance below, the red dragon was winging for the mountains east of Waykeep. Bobbin circled and watched until the mythical beast cleared the peaks there and descended into the smoky mists beyond.

Then he sighed and tugged on his descent strings. He was cold and hungry, and ready to go down. Apparently the soarwagon was, too. At the slightest pressure on its vanes, it dropped its nose and plummeted straight down, its wings rippling and whining.

"Stress and derailment!" the gnome swore, and began another adjustment on his controls.

When dragonfire rolled over the frozen battlefield, the effects were instantaneous. Ice splintered and fell away, becoming great spreading clouds of steam mixed with ancient smoke. Gray mist roiled outward, obscuring the goblins and the defenders beyond, then drifted upward on heated drafts. A wide, thick cloud shadowed a foreshortened land where everything seemed to writhe and rumble. Goblins retreated, wide-eyed, then turned and retreated again when the blades of the handful of human and dwarf refugees drew blood.

The evil minions fell back, turned again, and stopped in confusion. From the rolling clouds came dwarves, hundreds of dwarves. Dwarves armed and armored. Mountain dwarves and hill dwarves with dead eyes in frozen faces that had not known change in more than two centuries – faces that grimaced and twisted in the exact ways they had when they fought against one another in a burning forest at the instant the spell of ice had been cast by an archmage.

But they were not fighting among themselves now. Mountain dwarves and hill dwarves stood shoulder to shoulder, spread out beneath the dark plume of choking steam. They were silent and relentless, and fell on the panicked goblins without a hesitation or a sound. The hobgoblin leader screamed, turned to run, and fell, his helm pierced by Fleece Ironhill's spiked hammer. Two jibbering goblins following him died under the sword of

Camber Meld. The cooling cloud of dark steam above was descending now, settling as a dense fog streaked with ash, slanting before a wind that came across the old battlefield, carrying the dry scent of ages. For long minutes there was only silence and the blinding mist. Then, slowly, the cloud thinned. Five humans and six hill dwarves, the last of the combined fighting force led by Camber Meld and Fleece Ironhill, stood alone at the edge of a great, blackened plain littered with bodies, dropped arms and ancient burned stumps. Most of the strewn bodies were goblins, many of them still pierced by the weapons that had killed them. And everywhere, among and around them, were little heaps of clothing and armor – all that remained of the dwarves of Waykeep, fighters released from an ancient spell for one last cut, one last thrust, at an enemy.

The refugees looked around in awe. Nothing moved except the wind… the wind, and a sliver of white far to the east, something that flew like a bird with still wings, riding on the air. Something going away.

On a forest-shrouded knoll in the Vale of Respite, some distance south of the encampments of the goblins, a red dragon burrowed into leaf-mold and slept the sleep of exhaustion. Even the most powerful of creatures had its limits, and this one had been in flight for nearly thirty hours and more than five hundred miles. It had flown from a lair deep in the

Khalkist Mountains to a secret place near Sanction, then had spanned the entire width of Newsea, past Pax Tharkas, and now lay in the wilderness ranges between Qualinost and Thorbardin, in the Kharolis Mountains of western Ansalon.

It had chosen the knoll, sent a mind-call northward, then burrowed in and slept. Through the remainder of that day it rested, and through the night and most of the next day. The sleep restored its strength, and the dragon dreamed the comfortable dreams of one who by birthright can be absolute lord over anyone or anything that it cares to dominate… except others like itself, and one beyond, the one the dragon called the Dark

Queen. The dragon slept for twenty-eight hours, then awoke briefly to be aware of its surroundings.

The one it had called was there, waiting. The dragon went back to sleep and dozed for another three hours. Finally, when it was rested, the red dragon stirred, shook away the forest leaves, and lifted its huge head.

Its long, sinuous body moved, and the beast stretched its wings deliciously. The dragon felt renewed, restored. Nearby, a small fire burned, and the person beside it came to her feet. "Have you slept enough?" she asked sourly.

"I always sleep enough," the dragon said. "It is you who should worry about sleep. The Highlord would be displeased if you should fail in your mission."

"I have not failed," the woman said. "All of the lands between Pax

Tharkas and Thorbardin are in my control…or will be by the coming of spring. My goblins are in place, and all that remains is the gathering of slaves to build some decent fortifications."

The dragon's gaze was mocking. "If that is all that remains, why are you aligning your troops to cross over into the Plains of Dergoth beyond the mountains?"

"A minor matter," she snapped. "It would not interest the Highlord."

"It might," the dragon purred. "Or would you rather I just report that you didn't care to discuss it?"

"It's nothing! There is a dwarf who has learned of the invasion gate to

Thorbardin and thinks he can block it. I simply intend to eliminate him."

"Interesting," the dragon said. "As I recall, you told the Highlord that no one except you and your… ah, coinhabitant… knew of the lost gate.

You assured the Highlord that Thorbardin will stand open to him when he comes, and that he can make it his base of operations."

"So I did, and so it will be. Do you doubt me?"

"So many of the best-laid plans," the dragon chuckled.

"Especially those of humans…"

"I will not fail!"

"I wouldn't, if I were you," the dragon whispered. "Is there anything you would like reported to the Highlord?"