Sisay struggled to keep the beast to the fore. "Well, Karn, spill."

"When all five Primevals banded together, they had absolute control over the dragon nations. With Rhammidarigaaz's sacrifice, the other four are weakened. If we send this black dragon back to sleep, they will be further weakened."

"Back to sleep? Where does a black dragon sleep?"

"A tar pit on the other side of the main volcano. We must drive him down into it. The ancient magic will take hold. It won't be easy. The other Primevals know the weakness. They'll do everything to stop-"

"Here they come!" shouted Sisay.

Three Primevals-green, white, and blue-surged in an angry V toward Weatherlight. The black Primeval swooped up behind its comrades and joined their shrieking attack.

Sisay's first impulse was to head skyward, but that would slow the ship and open her belly to attack. There was no room below the dragons. They would drive Weatherlight down into the cypress forests. Only one route remained.

"Full frontal a.s.sault!" Sisay called. "Bring all guns to bear. Pave a highway through the sky."

From Weatherlight's remaining cannons, fire erupted across the sky. It struggled to outpace the hurtling ship. Beams blazed her trail. A crimson wall of flame broke over the Primevals. Fire blasted eyes and rolled down throats. It curled scales and sent smoke whuffing from mantles. Wings singed. Tails sparked.

The four dragon G.o.ds soared from the holocaust. Flames limned them as they came. With impossible speed, they fell on Weatherlight.

Sisay spun the helm to starboard. Karn stoked engines. Still, the ship could not escape.

The green dragon clapped talons on Tahngarth's gun. Like an eagle ripping a fish from the water, it tore the cannon from its mounts. Tahngarth shoved the traces between his teeth and bit through. He hurled himself back on the forecastle deck as his gun drew away.

The white dragon strafed low over that deck. Its throat poured out a blinding radiance that ignited everything in its path. Tahngarth's fur burst into flame. He rolled on the deck, but it too burned. Magnigoth planks blackened. The dragon poured light through the shattered windscreen of the bridge. Sisay released the helm, skipping back behind a bulkhead. She saved herself but only just. Everything else on the bridge-maps and desks and even the helm- flamed.

The black dragon shot past next. His mouth spilled the ancient word for death. Tahngarth was spared the killing sound, which was drowned out by his own bellows. Others on deck heard the word. They dropped down dead. Their bodies slid across the planks.

The blue dragon's attack was the worst, though. Azure power rolled out from the thing's mouth-a disruption cloud. It twisted wood and metal, sapped power, shut down engines. Weatherlight plummeted from the sky.

Sisay flung her captain's cowl over the helm, suffocating the fire. She grabbed hold, but the stick was dead in her hands. "Let's have some power, Karn!"

In answer, a pair of deep booms came from below. Greenish-black smoke poured from the exhausts. Still, the power would not engage.

"How about stopping these fires, Multani?" Sisay shouted. Beads of sap welled up and spread across the blackened wood. Where the liquid went, fires guttered and ceased.

Even before they were gone, Orim scrambled across the deck to Tahngarth. The minotaur had suffered serious burns.

"Power, Karn!" Sisay yelled. The volcano below surged up to smash the ship. Lava extrusions reached their gnarled fingers toward the hull. "Power!"

The engines suddenly bellowed. Flame burned black smoke from the exhausts. Weatherlight surged. Her keel cracked against a ridge of stone. She bounded free and roared out over tumbled swamps. Four dragons flew directly behind her, their teeth gnashing at her stern.

Sisay yanked the helm toward her. Weatherlight hurtled skyward. She was fast but not fast enough. More white light splashed around her, more jittering clouds in blue.

"Out of the frying pan and into the fire," she muttered to herself. Through the speaking tube, she called, "It's no good! We can't defeat four of them!"

Multani replied in a voice agonized by burns. "Take us low. Take us among the forests. We have allies there."

Sisay shoved the helm to fore. "We could use some allies. Feels like we're the only ones left fighting."

Weatherlight skimmed down the slope. Momentarily, she shook the divine pursuers. Ahead, strangled forests reached bone-white boughs toward the ship. Some of the trees ignited with spill-over beams from the white dragon.

"Tahngarth?" Sisay called, "I hate to ask this-"

"Already there," the minotaur responded from the stern speaking tube. He punctuated the comment with a barrage of blasts from Squee's ray cannon. Even as he fired, Orim tended his red and blistered skin.

Sisay nodded grimly. "Where are these allies of yours, Multani?"

"Right here," Multani replied from the helm, which he twisted hard to port. As Weatherlight banked, the shattered windscreen swept around to show a huge mountain to the fore-not a mountain, but a mountainous tree.

The lead magnigoth strode with lashing roots across the swamps. A company of grim-faced treefolk followed it.

A bright smile broke across Sisay's face. "Oh, yeah."

Tahngarth's cannon fire was joined by blasts of flame from the engine's exhausts. Weatherlight rushed out above the deadwood swamp. Her wake tore the waters below. Dragon G.o.ds soared behind her.

"Take us close to the first one," Multani instructed.

The ship sliced across the marshes and flanked the first magnigoth. She turned tightly to port and circled around the ma.s.sive bole. Ridges of bark flashed past the rail. Sisay dragged on the helm. Weatherlight entered a corkscrew climb. She dragged the Primevals in her wake. They slowly gained on the ship.

Clenching her jaw, Sisay said, "Full throttle, Karn."

The engines thundered, hurling the ship higher. It pa.s.sed a gaping mouth in the side of the tree.

"Stay close. Buzz the upper limbs!" Multani said.

"Right! Right!" Sisay shot back. "You just keep the wheel from falling apart in my hands!" She cranked it hard to port.

The ship creaked and groaned, wrung by the hands of momentum. "And keep the ship from falling apart too."

An enormous bough swept out before Weatherlight. The ship dived just beneath the swiping arm. Dead ahead, a second branch tried to haul her from the sky. Sisay arced above it. Hands sweating on the charred wheel, she wove her way among the boughs. "These are allies?" Sisay asked. Multani responded, "Trust me,"

From the stern castle cannon, Tahngarth shouted into the tubes, "I can't shoot through branches!" "You won't have to," Multani a.s.sured. The largest bough yet swung toward Weatherlight. The ship bounded up, her keel barely clearing the thick bark. The limb pa.s.sed just beneath her, its branches closing.

Muscular grains clamped down around the green Primeval. It writhed in the magnigoth's grip like a frog caught by a schoolboy. The bough bent. It drew the dragon G.o.d down to the gaping mouth below. With a casual motion, it tossed the Primeval within and closed its mouth. A profound swallowing sound told the fate of the G.o.d.

"It crossed the world to win back its captive," Multani explained. "The three other Primevals are breaking off!" Tahngarth reported.

Sisay brought the ship hard about. Weatherlight shot from the tangle of branches. "We're going after them. We going to put another one of these beasts to sleep."

Weatherlight broke into clear air above the retreating Primevals. She dropped like a hammer from the sky. The Gaea figurehead loomed mercilessly above the beasts. Wind gushed up on either side of her, seeming almost to move her thick-carved hair. Her eyes gleamed fiercely.

Prow spikes rammed into the back of the black dragon. They punched deep, through scale and muscle and bone. Mere spikes could not kill a G.o.d, of course, but they did pin him in place as Weatherlight drove him toward the tar pit below.

The dragon's tail lashed against the keel. It shouted out the word of death, but the sound could no longer slay. That weapon had been undone. The black Primeval thrashed impotently. It shrieked, only to fill its throat with tar. Muck sprayed up around it.

Weatherlight skimmed along, a scant fathom above the tar pit. Gaea watched with impa.s.sive certainty as the dragon drowned in tar. At a precise moment, the spikes that had impaled it shrank and withdrew, letting the beast sink away into oblivion. Death was swallowed up in death.

Sisay drew the ship up from the slough. "Even burned and twisted and spattered in tar, we still own the skies!"

"Not yet, we don't," called Orim from the stern castle. She had just finished her healing ministrations on Tahngarth's b.u.ms when she noticed dragon shadows swarming the deck. "Look up!"

Sisay leaned forward to peer out the shattered windscreen. Directly above the ship, circling about the sun, were the dragon nations. There were hundreds of serpents. They formed a cyclone of flesh that reached into the sky.

Sisay groaned. Perhaps Weatherlight could prevail against two Primevals, diminished as they were, but she could never triumph over hundreds of dragons. Even as Sisay watched, the creatures peeled away from their circle and plunged down in pursuit.

"Will every last hero be destroyed?" Sisay wondered in dread. "Will all the world be lost?"

Dragons swooped down all around Weatherlight. Their clawed wings sc.r.a.ped her burned gunwales. Their scaly tails lashed her airfoils. Not one, though, turned fiery breath upon her. Instead, every last beast flew onward, ahead of the beleaguered ship. They shot out after the final two Primevals.

The dragons nearest them spouted fire across the sky. They fought their own G.o.ds. At last, the tyranny of their minds had been broken.

Sisay breathed in deep grat.i.tude. She clutched the charred helm and gazed out over the swamplands of Urborg.

"Finally-hope."

The engine chose that moment to fail. Its throaty howl grew silent. Only the wind spoke, sliding across the ship's airfoils.

The stick again went dead in Sisay's hand. "How about some power, Karn?" She watched the last shred of swampland sweep away below, leaving only rock-hard slopes of volcanic scree. "We're going to need some power, Karn."

Karn's response echoed hopelessly through the speaking tube. "Yes."

Weatherlight lost lift. She burrowed down through spilling air. The mountainside came up below her.

"If not power, how about landing spines?" Sisay asked. "Can you give us landing spines?"

No response came this time.

Sisay wrenched the wheel, but the rudder was dead.

With a heart-rending shriek, Weatherlight's keel sawed across a shoulder of basalt. The impact hurled Sisay against the helm. The ship bounded again skyward. Complaint sounded from every plank and fitting. She soared in air a moment longer before coming down to stay. Scree sc.r.a.ped across the mirror hull of her port side. The ship listed toward the mountain. She slid on her gunwale. Her decks were pitched at a steep slope. Chattering, shuddering, thudding, Weatherlight at last hung up on a gnarl of stone. She came to rest leaning against the edge of the volcano.

Sisay breathed a deep sigh. Her fingers were black from the ruined helm, and her knuckles were white. Blinking at the tilted world beyond, she said simply, "d.a.m.n."

It took her some moments to extricate herself from the charred bridge and its wreckage. By the time she reached the amidships deck, it was crowded.

Tahngarth stood there, his arms crossed over burns on his chest. He stared in amazement at the ruined ship. Orim worked nearby, tending to scores of other wounded crew members. Multani formed a body for himself out of charred wood and frayed hemp. Even he looked defeated.

The shattered hatchway poured thick white steam into the air. The engines had overloaded. They flooded the lower companionways with broiling air. Weatherlight bled her life into the sky.

With angry, sober eyes, Sisay greeted her crew. "Well, I guess that's it."

Tahngarth considered her face. "That's what?"

She spread her hands bitterly. "That's it. That's all we can do. We've lost half of our crew, including Gerrard and Squee. We've lost our ship. We've lost our commanders. We've fought all we can fight. That's it."

Her words could not have seemed truer. That moment, a vast army appeared on the lip of the volcano. They stared down at the ruined ship, and the first platoons began to march toward them.

"Crovax is in his Stronghold," Sisay said, "and all is wrong with the world."

The ruined hatch emitted a new flood of steam. A curling white head of mist rose through the s.p.a.ce. It glowed from below. A silver skull appeared, bathed in light. Karn rose up the steps. He bore something in his grasp. It was a book, an open book- The Thran Tome. He emerged from the mists, his figure dotted with condensation.

Karn strode toward his friends and looked up. His eyes glowed brighter than even the tome. He spoke in a voice like a distant avalanche.

"I know what we need to do. I know how we can save the world."