I felt the null. It hit me hard, so unaccustomed to it was I. The Lady staggered too. A mewl of fear fled her lips. She did not want to be disarmed. Not now. But it was the only way.

The ground shuddered once, gently, then geysered upward. I retreated a step. Shivering, I watched the fountain of muck disperse… and was amazed to see not a man but the dragon…

The damned dragon! I hadn't thought about that.

It reared fifty feet high, flames boiling around its head. It roared. What now? In the null the Lady could not shield us.

The Dominator fled my mind entirely.

I drew a shaft to its head, aimed for the beast's open mouth.

A shout restrained me. I turned. Bomanz pranced and shrieked, calling insults in KurreTelle. The dragon eyeballed him. And recalled that they had unfinished business.

It struck like a snake. Flames surged ahead of it.

Fire masked Bomanz but did not harm him. He had taken his stand beyond the null.

The Lady moved a few steps to her right, to look past the dragon, whose forelegs were now free and scrabbling to drag the rest of its immense body loose. I could see nothing of our quarry. But the flying Taken were into their attack runs. Heavy fire-carrying spears were in flight already. They roared down, burst.

A thunderous voice announced, "Headed for the river." The Lady hurried forward. Darling resumed moving, carrying the null toward the water. Ghosts cursed and pranced around me. I was too distracted to respond.

Mantas dropped in swift, dark pairs, dancing between bolts of lightning loosed by windwhales. The air went crackly, smelled dry and strange.

Suddenly Tracker was with us, muttering about having to save the tree.

I heard a rising bray of horns. I dodged a flailing dragon leg, ducked a hammering wing, looked back.

Scores of ill-clad human skeletons poured from the forest in the wake of a limping Toadkiller Dog. "I knew we hadn't seen the last of that bastard." I tried to get the Lady's attention. "The forest tribes. They're attacking the Guard." The Dominator had had at least one ace in the hole.

The Lady paid me no heed.

What the tribesmen and Guard did were of no consequence to us at the moment. We had prey on the run and dared concern ourselves with nothing else.

"In the water!" that voice thundered from above. Darling moved some more. The Lady and I scrambled over earth still rippling with the dragon's efforts to break free. It ignored us. Bomanz had its entire attention.

A windwhale dropped. Its tentacles probed the river. It caught something, dropped ballast water.

A human figure writhed in the whale's grasp, screaming. My spirits rose. We had done it…

The whale lifted too high. For a moment it raised the Dominator out of the null.

Deadly mistake.

Thunder. Lightning. Terror on hot hooves. Half the town and a swath to the edge of the null shattered, scattered, burned, and blackened.