Promise of the Witch-King
Page 37
Tazmikella was possessed of no such modesty. She stood naked in that unnatural form, basking in the feel of the night breezes. The change came subtly, for she had long ago perfected the art of transformation. Her wings and tail began to grow first, for they were the least painful—additions were always easier than transformations, which included cracking and reshaping bone structure.
The trees around her seemed to shrink. Her perspective shifted as she grew to enormous proportions. For Tazmikella was no human. She had crawled from her egg centuries before beside her sister and sole sibling in the great deserts of Calimshan, far to the southwest.
Tazmikella, the copper dragon, lifted into the night air. She gained altitude quickly, flying away from the human city. The leaders of the land knew who she was, and accepted her, but the commonfolk would never comprehend, of course. If she revealed herself to them, King Gareth and his friends would be left with no choice but to evict her from the Bloodstone Lands. And she really didn’t want a fight with that company.
She moved directly north, across the least populated expanse of Morov and into the even less densely populated Duchy of Soravia. She flew between the Goliad and the Galena Snake, the two parallel rivers running south from the Galena Mountains. And she continued to climb, for the thin air and the cold did not bother Tazmikella at all. A person on the ground might catch a fleeting glimpse of her, but would that person know her to be a dragon flying high, or think her a nightbird, or a bat, flying low?
She was not concerned. She was naked in the night air, above such concerns. She was free.
She crossed the mountains easily, weaving in and out of the towering peaks, enjoying the play of the multidirectional air flows and the stark contrast between the dark stones and moonlit snow. She entered Vaasa just to the west of Palishchuk, and turned east as she came out of the mountains. Within moments, she noted the lights of the half-orc city.
Tazmikella stayed way up high as she overflew the city, for she knew that the half-orcs, living amidst the Vaasan wilds for so many years, knew how to protect themselves from any threat. If they saw the form of a dragon overflying their city at night, they wouldn’t pause to consider the color of the wyrm—nor would they be able to determine that in any case, under the light of the half-moon and stars alone.
Tazmikella used her extraordinary eyesight to scrutinize the city as she passed. It was late, but many torches burned and the town’s main tavern was bright and noisy. They still celebrated the victory over the castle, she realized.
She banked right, to the north, and began her descent, confident that none of Palishchuk’s citizens would be out and about. Almost immediately, she saw the dark and dead structure, an immense fortress, a replica of Castle Perilous, only a few miles to the north of the city.
She came down in a straight line, too intrigued to pause and take a survey of the area. As she alighted, she changed back into a human form, thinking that anyone who subsequently spied her wouldn’t feel threatened by the sight of a naked, middle-aged woman. Of course, if any lurking onlookers had watched her more closely, that image would have created more confusion than comfort, for she strode up to the huge portcullis that barred the front of the structure without pause. She considered the patchwork grate that had been chained over the break in the gate, where Jarlaxle and his companions had apparently entered. She could have removed that patch easily enough, but that would have meant stooping to crawl under.
Instead, the woman slipped her arms between two of the thick portcullis spikes, then pushed outward with both, easily bending the metal so that she could simply step through.
Unconcerned, Tazmikella strode right through the gatehouses and across the courtyard of torn, broken ground, littered with the shattered forms of many, many skeletons.
She found the great doors of the main keep repaired and secured by a heavy chain—one that she grabbed with one hand and easily snapped.
She found what she was looking for in the main room just beyond the doors. A pedestal stood intact, though blackened by fire near its top. The remnants of a large book, pages torn and burned, lay scattered about. Her expression growing more sour, Tazmikella went up to the ruined tome and lifted the black binding. Most of it was destroyed, but she saw enough of the cover to recognize the images of dragons stamped there.
She knew the nature of the book, a tome of creation, and of enslavement.
“Damn you, Zhengyi,” the dragon whispered.
The clues of Jarlaxle and Entreri’s progress through the place were easy enough to follow, and Tazmikella soon entered a huge chamber far below the structure, where lay the bones of a long-past battle, and the debris of a more recent struggle. One look at the dracolich confirmed everything Tazmikella and her sister Ilnezhara had feared.
October 2006