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Ferroc was unabashedly backing away now. Whatever was happening on this strange mountain, it was beyond him.

Then the titanic head broke free of the mountainside and rose on a muscular neck. The neck looked as if it would stretch from one end of the Black Citadel to the other. It was rooted in powerful shoulders of stone, and wing nubs, and actual wings. With an earthquake, the gigantic wings cracked free of the encasing ground and rose ponderously into the air. Those wings stretched to the unseeable distance on either side of the mountain.

They blocked out the sun.

Across the ridge, spikes of stone flexed slowly.

Rocks sloughed from scaly ribs.

Talons cracked out of bedrock.

The dragon rose from the mountain.

It was the biggest living thing Ferroc had ever seen. It was the mountain—a thousand feet high with a wingspan that shadowed the world.

The dragon inhaled its first breath in millennia and then released it in a titanic shriek.

The sound crossed all registers, pounding Ferroc’s chest and hurling him back. He hit the ground, his ears bleeding. He tried to scream, but no air was left in him.

The sky had no room for another scream.

Then it all went silent.

Ferroc staggered to his feet and looked up.

The dragon was spreading its crystalline wings. They became the sky. Sinews flexed, and bones folded, and miles of wing gathered the air. A sandstorm roared out. It struck Ferroc and hurled him across the wastelands. He crashed to the ground—how strange not to hear the sound of it!—and felt his bones break.

He was going to die.

An Elder Dragon—a creature of legend that Ferroc had never thought to see with his own eyes—was rising above him.

Another gale.

The thing must have lifted into the air. A thousand tons of dragon was hurling down a million tons of air.

Ferroc Torchtail crawled across the ground. His broken limbs ached, but he struggled to find cover.

Then the dragon’s breath flooded over him.

He was transfixed.

Transformed.

Hackles melted to spines, hair to scales.

Legs crystallized.

Ferroc was becoming something new. The dragon’s kiln-hot breath was hardening fear into fury and turning him into a giant.

Then the golden gale moved on, pouring on new ground and baking it and transforming it. The dragon scudded away like a thunderhead.

Ferroc stood in the burned and branded wake of the beast, and with his last conscious thought, he hungered to serve Kralkatorrik.

Chief Kronon and his ogre warriors and their hyenas had penetrated deep into southwest Ascalon, only half a day’s march from Ebonhawke. They had destroyed three human scouting parties already and planned to kill plenty more before storming the fortress. Charr had already laid siege there, but Kronon and his tribal allies would charge across their backs and take the walls of Ebonhawke.

The life of Chiefling Ygor was worth a hundred charr and a thousand humans.

What was this, though? A black cloud rolled across the sky, spitting lightning. What kind of storm was this, with eyes that glowed like coals?

A golden thunderstroke broke across Chief Kronon and his warriors.

It bathed them. It broiled them. It turned their muscles to crystals and their bones to stone.

He felt that he was dying.

He felt that he was solidifying—a pupa becoming a wasp.

He grew twice his height before his hide hardened. Then his bones warped to basalt. His hair elongated into stony spikes.

When the thunderstroke ceased, it left Chief Kronon and his army rocklike and massive, more powerful than ever. It left their hyenas like lions carved of stone, except that they moved.

The beam passed on, but the dragon’s mind remained. It suffused Chief Kronon’s thoughts—gritty like sand. Itchy. It made him forget vengeance for the dead chiefling. It made him only want to follow.

Chief Kronon watched the beam go. It was heading south, toward Ebonhawke.

That was where the master was going.

Chief Kronon flexed crackling arms. “Follow!” he shouted. Even his voice rang