Azure Bonds

by Kate Novak

  “I’m not a child,” Alias snapped.

  “But, of course you are. It was the first day of Mirtul when my followers summoned my life energy and you began breathing. Only a month and a few days. So you see, you are but a child. Yet even so, you are my greatest servant, my liberator, an honor many before you have died for.

  “At first, when the lizard arrived, I nearly perished with despair. (Well, not really, just a figure of speech.) When I saw his markings and sensed his determination to pass through the wall, I thought he was you. I sucked his life energy nearly dry trying to pull him through the wall. But I suppose being hatched counted as being born to the cursed elves who imprisoned me. He could not pass through the wall, and hence he could not help me pass through it. I thought all my plans had failed utterly.”

  Akabar tilted his head, an action Alias suspected was Moander’s way of sifting through the mage’s mind. The gray swirls in his eyes thickened and circled more quickly.

  “Of course. That’s what the saurial was doing there. Omniscient gods, indeed. Your magical friend has figured it out for me. He really is so amazingly useful. The last step in your manufacture was never completed. It required the blood sacrifice of a pure soul to secure the shackles on your spirit. Those bumblers down in Westgate chose the saurial, got careless and let it escape, and it took you with it. You’ve been wandering around ever since, a great spell primed to explode, requiring only the last enabling component—the death of the saurial. Those incompetent idiots! I can tell mankind needs me desperately.”

  “Saurial?” Alias asked. She was not certain who Moander meant, but she had an uncomfortable suspicion.

  “The lizard your mage friend thinks of as Dragonbait. The creature was marked, just like you were. That explains what it was doing trying to pass through the elven wall that imprisoned my body. The saurial was following your patterns. And you’ve been able to draw on its independence, because the two of you are linked until its death. But don’t worry, we’ll take care of that shortly.”

  Another wave of anger swept over Alias, anger now mixed with anguish. Then I’ll be damned for sure. Something created by the evil sacrifice of my friend. Of my friends, she amended, realizing that not only Dragonbait’s life was forfeit. Akabar was almost as good as dead. I’m not even human, she thought. I had no right to their aid and friendship, and now I’ve doomed them.

  “Oh, Akabar,” she whispered to his body, hoping some part of his mind was aware of what she said. “I’m so sorry. I should never have let you get into this mess.”

  But if the mage could hear her, he gave no indication. Moander’s control over him was complete, and at the moment Moander wasn’t even paying attention to her. The god was using Akabar’s form to stare at the line of trees that they were fast approaching. Already the mound of refuse, now quite dusty and grass covered from its passage through the plains, was pitching and weaving from running over small trees and bushes near the edge of the prairie. As it engulfed and absorbed this green matter, the Abomination grew into a small hill, already as high as the trees on the fringes of the Elven Wood.

  Apparently satisfied that the Abomination could control the forest, Moander used Akabar to return his attention to his prisoner. “The most amazing thing is that, despite your premature debut into society, most of your patterns still held. You attacked a man who sounded like the king of Cormyr, no doubt a goal of the Fire Knives. And then you came all the way north, just to free me.” Akabar’s finger stroked her cheek. “When you are returned and fully tamed, you will be my perfect servant.”

  Alias kicked and struggled futilely in her bindings. She knew she could not escape, but like a bird beating against the bars of a cage, instinct made her frantic. What Moander suggested was worse than slavery. The god and its followers and allies would turn her into an unthinking mechanism, with only the illusion of life and the sketchy memories of some woman. Where had they gotten the history she thought had been hers? Fairy tales? Or was there an original Alias who lived her life before, then died to become her?

  Alias stared at the vine-draped form of Akabar, and oddly enough, the crudeness of the god’s method of control soothed her anguish and helped her regain her composure. Moander could never have created me, she thought. Neither could the blundering Fire Knives, not even with the help of the mages who created the kalmari and the crystal elemental. They’re all quite powerful, but despite all their claims, none of them could have made my mind or my spirit or my personality. She shoved back the horrible weight of evidence. The Abomination is lying, she decided. After all, isn’t that what abominations do best?

  When she had ceased struggling again, Moander continued. “Telling you all this has been most amusing. The news makes you unhappy, doesn’t it? Of course, the others will want to purge your memory of everything I’ve said. After all, the best assassin is one who does not know she is a weapon, since she, or you, could then withstand all manner of telepathic prying. You do not register as a constructed creature, and after the sacrifice of the saurial, the runes on your limb will be hidden from view so that no one, not even you, will ever suspect your … eh? What’s that?”

  They reached the tree line, and Moander’s now fungous form began uprooting the nearest trees, plowing them under and adding their mass to its own. But what drew the attention of the god was the huge shadow that blocked the high-noon sun. Akabar’s head jerked upward just as a bolt of fire shot from the heart of the darkness. The flame tore a huge gouge in the mound’s side, instantly igniting the fresh timber Moander had recently accumulated.

  Akabar screamed and pitched forward into muck next to Alias. His cry was joined by a chorus of hundreds of fanged mouths which suddenly opened in the mucky hillside, all piping the same horrendous scream. Alias gagged on the smell of the smoke from burning offal.

  The shadow dove below the tree line for a moment and then circled back. Now able to watch it without the sun in her eyes, Alias could tell that the shadow was a dragon—one of the great red wyrms reputed to haunt the north country. As it closed in for its second attack, the swordswoman spotted two riders mounted atop the beast, one on its head, the other a greenish lump between its wings.

  It can’t be. Can it? Alias wondered, not daring to believe her eyes. But they saw true. Her friends rode atop the red dragon, and the red dragon looked strangely familiar.

  “Here comes the rescue party!” shouted the high, childlike voice of Olive Ruskettle, as Mist dropped down to strafe the Abomination yet again.

  Akabar stood up again and focused on the dragon. His eyes glowed a burning coal white, though his face wore a calm, deadened expression. From the mage’s mouth came a low-pitched muttering interspersed with the sharp gutturals and clicks of magic words summoning power to the speaker. Alias tried to kick at Akabar’s form, hoping to knock him from the mound or at least spoil his spell, but the Abomination had not been so wounded that it loosened its tight hold on her. Her struggles were useless.

  The mage’s body wheeled about, keeping the dragon in view just as she began making her second pass. A blinding flash of energy sprang from Akabar’s fingertip and caught the wyrm in the belly. The dragon jerked her head back and bellowed, almost knocking Ruskettle from her head.

  At the same time, great vines shot up from the surface of the Abomination, with great force as if fired from concealed ballistae. At the ends of the vines rode the decaying forms of the Red Plume mercenaries whom Moander had consumed. Some still wielded their weapons, while others tried to grapple the dragon’s with their bare hands.

  Most of the arching vines fell short of their mark, and the sickening thuds of dead flesh hitting hard ground sounded through the forest. Two vines succeeded in entangling the dragon, one in the middle of the neck, the other near the base of the right wing.

  Akabar muttered another spell, and a trio of magic missiles sizzled through the sky with unerring precision, striking the purplish plates over the beast’s heart.

  The former Red Plumes closed
on the dragon’s passengers as the tendrils they had ridden upward spun about the beast like spider’s silk entrapping a fly. Dragonbait skewered the man approaching him.

  The god-possessed corpse thrust itself farther onto the lizard’s sword and grabbed at Dragonbait’s shoulders, attempting to knock him off balance. Dragonbait lashed out with a powerful kick, removing his sword, and sending the corpse spiraling down to the ground. The lizard chopped loose the vine entangling the dragon’s wing.

  The dead man that had arrived on the vine about Mist’s neck crawled toward the halfling. The vine began dragging the dragon closer to the mound of refuse.

  Mist bucked, almost dislodging her passengers, but did not succeed at tearing the binding about her throat. With her wings she began sweeping the air before her in great gusts. The loose matter atop Moander spun away in a whirlwind of stinking rot, and the puppet Akabar was driven to his knees, the spell in his throat spoiled by the assault.

  More tendrils trailed up the single, thick root that bound the dragon like a hangman’s noose.

  Moander turned Akabar’s body around to face Alias. “Say good-bye to this puppet, servant,” Akabar’s voice instructed. “I can afford to lose this tool, but not you.”

  The mossy ground began to rise around Alias, as the supporting roots beneath her withdrew. She struggled as she sank into the heart of Moander. She screamed when the leaves and rotting fungus began covering her, but another porous, spongy mat of moss covered her mouth. She gasped for air and pungently scented vapors flowed into her lungs. Within moments she was asleep.

  Dragonbait, alerted by the warrior woman’s shout, and seeing that she would soon be beyond reach, leaped from the dragon’s back.

  Fifty feet separated the dragon from the oozing god, and a number of fanged mouths at the end of tendrils had finished their snaking climb up the tether about the great wyrm’s neck. Olive was trying to fend off these horrid little maws and dodge past the rotting soldier’s corpse that blocked her attempts to cut the tether.

  A fall from fifty feet to hard ground would have snapped even Dragonbait’s legs, but where he landed on Moander, over the spot where Alias had disappeared, all was soft muck. Akabar turned to face him, but hesitated for a moment. Tendrils were already beginning to twist upward to ensnare the lizard-creature.

  Akabar spat out the guttural words of another spell. Unaccountably the spell dissolved, but Moander did not waste energy registering its confusion on Akabar’s face. The tendrils wrapping around the lizard hesitated, unsure about attacking the creature with the same markings as their valued prisoner. Without Moander’s command, they were unable to come to any conclusion, and Moander’s attention was elsewhere.

  Meanwhile, the bard was losing her battle at the dragon’s head. The mouths had succeeded in taking several little bites out of her, she could not get past the corpse of the Red Plume mercenary, and Moander continued drawing in the great flying wyrm with a slow, inexhaustible force. Already the distance between dragon and god had been halved, and white flecks of spittle dotted the dragon’s lower whiskers.

  Olive was reminded of halfling children fishing for bats with light, durable twine and live moths as bait. For some fool reason, this halfling is on the bat’s side, she thought, even though the bat is losing.

  Mist twisted her head so that her chin rested along the thickening vine. Opportunistic tendrils immediately laced themselves into the dragon’s whiskers, then began trying to crawl into the wyrm’s mouth to suffocate her.

  Dragonbait faced the possessed Akabar. A sea of tendrils ebbed and flowed around the lizard, still waiting for Moander to direct them, but Moander’s mind was fully occupied with controlling Akabar and dealing with the dragon.

  Rivulets of sweat poured from the mage’s face, and his robes were drenched and rotting from his contact with Moander’s innards. His head tilted to the right as Moander sorted through his thoughts for a way the mage might deal with the lizard. But there was only one weapon left in Akabar’s repertoire.

  The mage’s hand drew out his curved dagger. “Kill me, or die yourself,” Moander challenged with Akabar’s voice, now a gasping death-rattle. “You lose in either case, don’t you, pure one?”

  Dragonbait crouched, then leaped, using his overlong sword as a vaulting pole. As he sailed over the mage’s head, Akabar’s dagger caught in the side of his leg and remained there, twisting out of its wielder’s hand.

  Wounded, the lizard made a sloppy landing. The scaly flesh around his eyes crinkled in pain, but he spun his oddly shaped, toothed sword over his head and sliced at Akabar from behind.

  The outer diamond tip of his sword struck at the back of the mage’s neck right where the sucker-tendrils clustered in a main bundle before they trailed back in a thick vine to Moander’s heart. Most of the cluster was severed neatly without a scratch on the mage’s scalp. Dragonbait put his foot against Akabar’s back to keep him in place and yanked the remaining vine-bundle from Akabar’s head.

  Just then, Mist breathed a mighty exhalation of flame and brimstone that caused her belly to flex deeply inward. The fire traveled down the side of the tether about her neck and turned the side of the god into a jungle inferno. The wet vegetable flesh alighted again, and the outer layers of the snare vine were reduced to ash.

  Akabar’s and Moander’s mouths screamed, but their voices were no longer in hellish synchrony. They were separate entities. Akabar fell to his knees, gasping, his hands clutching the wounds made from the sucker that had been ripped away. The tendrils surrounding him and Dragonbait wavered and then closed in.

  The lizard grabbed the mage by the arm and yanked him to his feet. He lopped off a few more tendrils on the living mound, tugged the mage with him, and jumped.

  Warrior and Turmishman tumbled down the slope, resisting the impulse to stop their fall by grabbing hold of the overhanging vines and tree stumps that stood out from Moander’s lower flanks. They fell in a heap at the base of the monster.

  Moander burned and crackled. Plumes of acrid smoke billowed up from his body. Moander tired of this battle—it was dangerously exhausting his life energies. The Abomination desired a retreat, but if he loosed the dragon, the beast might yet find the strength to breathe again and destroy the god’s earthly form. The tendril snaring the dragon was almost burned through. Moander had to damage the wyrm first, and damage her badly.

  The god played out an additional length of the tether vine. Mist felt the line slacken and, believing in her exhaustion that the line had finally broken, pulled back with a frantic beat of her wings. She succeeded in snapping the line even more taut. Moander gave one last great pull, and the weakened vine snapped apart.

  Mist, with the halfling clutching for dear life to her ears, pitched over backward and crashed among the trees.

  The huge god-hill, burning and mostly blind, shifted one way then another before plunging deeper into the forest. Smaller trees were plowed underneath, but now Moander flowed between the larger trees, unable to snap them.

  Dragonbait pulled Akabar from the Abomination’s path. The mage oozed blood in scarlet ponds from half-a-dozen shallow head wounds. He moaned softly and began to cry.

  Dragonbait pulled the mage’s curved dagger from his scaly calf and examined the gash. His hands glowed softly in the dim woods, and the cut grew less deep but did not close completely. His healing ability exhausted, Dragonbait tore his ragged new shirt in two to use as bandages.

  Akabar sat in a shocked silence as the lizard bound his head wounds. He did not respond to the warrior’s touch or his tug on his robes or his prodding. He would not move. Dragonbait slung his sword over his shoulders, hefted the Turmishman in both his arms as if he were a child, and began moving in the direction of the dragon’s crash. The time had come to regroup his forces, such as they were.

  Akabar’s Recovery, Moander’s Offer, and the Second Rescue Attempt

  When Akabar awoke it was dark, and the light of a nearby fire played across the ground. The fireligh
t glittered on the scales of an immense dragon. The bulk of the beast lay in shadow, but Akabar could see Dragonbait napping, curled up on the great beast’s snout. The rune-marked lizard had a green bandage tied about one of his legs. Between the mage and the fire loomed a huge shadow. The towering form knelt before him, holding out a huge silver flask.

  “Drink this,” Olive said, pushing the flask to his lips.

  The draught tasted horrible, but Akabar let it slide down his throat. His mouth felt like he had been eating dirt, and his flesh crawled with a cold, clammy feeling, as if he had been immersed in water too long. He looked down and saw he was naked, save for a couple of halfling cloaks knotted around him for warmth.

  “My … clothes?” the mage puzzled. His voice was reedy, as though he’d been singing or shouting for hours.

  Olive motioned to the fire. “I’m afraid what was left wasn’t worth keeping. Dragonbait thought you were dead, so we didn’t bring any of your spare clothing.” Her eyes brightened. “I emptied your pockets, though, and I brought your spell books.” She pointed to a backpack near his feet.

  “What happened—oh, gods,” the mage moaned as his memory came rushing back. There’d been a fight in Yulash, then something hulking and oppressive had sat in his mind like a spider in a web. He wondered if this was how Alias felt after being forced to try to kill a priest and then the Wyvernspur noble.

  “Take it easy,” Olive said sharply. She was an impatient ministering angel. She put both her hands on his shoulders to hold him down, though the mage had made no effort to rise. “The short version is, after your little adventure in Yulash, Dragonbait came back to camp to get my help. When you three had gone, I was left alone to deal with Mist, who chose that moment to drop in. You remember Mist from Cormyr? Right. Anyway, I subdued her by the old codes, and the three of us went after you and Its Ooziness.”

  Olive paused for breath and to let what she had said sink into the Turmish mage’s fevered brain. Then she started again, “Unfortunately, Its Ooziness mopped up the floor with us. Misty got slammed around pretty bad, but with me at the helm the old girl managed to damage the Abomination. It ran away from us, not the other way around. Though we did get knocked out of the sky. However, the luck of the halflings was with me, and I managed to land on a Red Plume mercenary’s corpse. You sliced up Dragonbait a little before he could rescue you.” She paused and then concluded reluctantly, “We didn’t get Alias.”