The Spectral Blaze botg-3

by Richard Lee Byers

  Standing on a neighboring peak, long armed, round shouldered, and barrel chested, a lone hill giant watched the griffon riders pass overhead. Aoth considered making contact to ask the hulking savage about the region but then decided not to bother. The giant would probably start throwing stones the instant a human came within range and might not speak any language but his own.

  Then the column stopped. Cera brandished her mace. As before, Aoth left Gaedynn in the air while he swooped down to find out what was going on. “What is it?” he asked as, wings snapping, Jet settled on a tongue of granite protruding from the base of the eastern cliff.

  “She doesn’t know,” said Mardiz-sul. He was trying not to sound impatient but not quite succeeding.

  Aoth smiled at Cera. “I imagine you know something,” he said.

  “Not really,” she replied. “But… you understand that Amaunator is the great timekeeper. Night follows day and spring passes into summer because he makes it so.”

  “Right,” said Aoth. He had some firsthand experience with her god’s connection to time. But he had no idea why she was bringing it up at that moment.

  “As his priestess,” Cera said, “I sometimes feel it as the wheels turn. As some natural cycle is reaching its culmination.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Mardiz-sul. For an instant blue light rippled through the water flowing around his drake’s four-toed feet.

  “In this situation?” she replied. “I don’t know.”

  But suddenly Aoth thought he might. “I once traveled all the way to the Lake of Steam,” he said, speaking quickly. “Heard of it?”

  Mardiz-sul shrugged. “Vaguely.”

  “They have hot springs there… and geysers. Boiling water that shoots up out of the ground. And with a few of them, it happens at very regular intervals.” Aoth turned back to Cera. “Could you sense something like that?”

  She frowned. “I’ve never seen a ‘geyser,’ but perhaps.”

  “I don’t see the relevance,” said Mardiz-sul, waving his lance at their surroundings. “This creek is cold.”

  “True,” said Aoth, “but there’s still spellplague festering in the ground. Mostly it’s too weak to cause any trouble. But over time, the power builds up until there’s too much. And then some of it sprays out like a geyser. I think that’s about to happen now.”

  “How could you possibly know that?” asked Mardiz-sul.

  “You’re a brother to fire,” Aoth said. “And I’ve got a little spellplague burning inside of me.” He pointed to his eyes.

  “What will happen?” asked Son-liin.

  Aoth shook his head. “There’s no way to predict.”

  “Then what we do? Run?”

  “No. It’s too late to get clear. We just have to be ready for anything.” Aoth raised his voice: “Everyone, ready your weapons! If you know any protective charms, cast them!”

  Cera started praying and swinging her mace over her head. The sunlight grew warmer. After a moment’s hesitation, some of the genasi muttered their own incantations. Ruddy hands flicked up and down in a manner that suggested leaping flame and sketched trails of fire in the air. Breezes gusted and the stream gurgled louder than before.

  Then everybody waited while blue light flickered through the creek and the granite walls, the pulses coming faster and faster. The sight of them made Aoth’s mouth go dry and his guts queasy. He’d been caught in a storm of blue fire on the day the Spellplague began and watched his fellow legionnaires die by the score. And though he’d faced a thousand foes in the century since, he’d always avoided a second encounter with that particular danger. Until now.

  “Well?” asked Mardiz-sul, still blind to the power flaring all around him. “Is anything happening?”

  Aoth opened his mouth to say yes, then saw he wouldn’t have to. Blue mist swirled into existence all along the canyon, or at least for as far as he could see. The genasi cried out and the drakes shrieked at its dank and somehow filthy touch. Aoth felt Jet’s spasm of revulsion and the way he had to clench himself not to take flight immediately and climb above the nasty stuff.

  The touch of chaos made some of the stones in the creek bed catch fire. Others rattled together with a sound like chattering teeth. Water heaved itself high and crashed down like waves rolling in from a stormy sea.

  Cera continued to pray. The air grew warmer again. The blue fog thinned as if the sun overhead were burning it away.

  When the vapor was nearly gone, Mardiz-sul sighed and slumped forward. “Thank Kossuth. And Amaunator too.”

  But as the last of the vapor dissipated, a kind of glare shot through it, and blue light flared in the eyes of the drakes. For an instant, Aoth had the crazy feeling that he was looking at his own deformed face in a cracked mirror, as though some mage had disfigured him with a curse and he hadn’t even known.

  Some reptiles screeched, reared, or tried to bolt. Two others fell, convulsing. One of the riders, a windsoul, floated up out of the saddle, but the other, a watersoul, couldn’t slip his feet out of the stirrups and jump clear in time. As his thrashing steed rolled back and forth, it ground him beneath its bulk.

  Meanwhile, Mardiz-sul’s drake bucked and flipped him into the stream. Then it reared onto its hind legs and grew until cinches snapped, and its saddle, halter, and reins fell away. Its forelegs appeared to wither, although perhaps they simply weren’t expanding like the rest of it. It held them tucked against its chest while a second head and neck wriggled up out of its shoulders like a worm squirming out of an apple.

  Another reptile lost its earthsoul master when it, too, grew, and its back bulged upward like a hill. Triangular plates sprouted down the length of its spine and tore its saddle to pieces, dumping the firestormer on the ground. A spike grew from the beast’s snout, and long horns jutted from over the eyes. A bony ruff or collar swelled into being behind the head, and spikes erupted from the tip of the tail.

  The two transformed saurians roared and snarled, seemingly communicating with one another. Then they attacked the creatures around them. The reptile standing on two legs leaped at Aoth and Jet like a cat. Its comrade’s charge was a ponderous waddle by comparison. But the spiked tail lashed back and forth in a frenzied blur and actually drew first blood, smashing the head of Son-liin’s mount to gory scraps and spatters.

  Aoth leveled his spear and hurled a blaze of force from the point. It stabbed into the onrushing saurian’s torso but didn’t stop it. At the same time, Jet leaped upward and lashed his wings. It seemed impossible that the griffon could rise high enough quickly enough. The reptile was just too tall and too close. But then they were soaring over the creature’s upturned heads, just beyond the reach of the snapping fangs.

  Don’t wet yourself, said Jet, speaking mind to mind. One of us knows what he’s doing.

  And who gave you that strength? Aoth replied. Stay low and close. I want to keep the beast’s attention on us.

  That takes away every advantage we have, said Jet. Nice tactics! Still, he wheeled as quickly as he could.

  Then they danced with the saurian, teasing it with their proximity, dodging when it struck, and blasting it with flares of lightning and frost. It wasn’t easy. Since Jet had never fought such a creature before, he didn’t know how fast it could lunge and pivot or how high it could leap, and he was having to guess in adverse circumstances, with the narrow gorge limiting his mobility. A single misjudgment would either land him in the reptile’s jaws or slam him into a cliff.

  But as Aoth had intended, the dance kept the two-headed drake from attacking anyone on the ground, and a few firestormers took advantage of its distraction by shooting it with their arbalests or jabbing it with their lances, albeit to little apparent effect. But most of them were too busy trying to contend with the beast that was attacking them, the massive thing with the horned head and flailing tail.

  Intent on his own half of the battle, Aoth registered only an occasional glimpse of that other struggle. Gaedynn flew above the reptile, lo
osing one shaft after another. Eider screeched repeatedly, maybe in an effort to distract the creature as Aoth and Jet were diverting its fellow. Son-liin circled the beast until she could aim a bowshot at its ribs. His sword, hand, and forearm wreathed in flame, Mardiz-sul slashed at the reptile’s snout then blocked with his shield when the brute tried to spear him with one of its horns. Cera swung her mace in a horizontal arc, and brightness leaped from the head. It burned a black streak across the creature’s belly.

  Aoth’s comrades were fighting well. But so far the horned saurian wasn’t slowing down either.

  Curse it! He had to end the battle while he still had a company to command. He stuck his spear in the sheath attached to his saddle, tore open the pouch on his belt, and grabbed the noxious-looking green berries he’d picked on the way through the foothills of the mountains. Get me close, he said.

  What do you think I’ve been doing? Jet replied. Discerning his master’s intent, he swooped straight at their foe’s two heads. Which both opened their jaws wide to catch him.

  Aoth rattled off an incantation. Power tingled in the palm of his hand as it suffused the berries. He swung his arm back and threw them.

  At least some flew into the jaws of the head on the right. So furious it likely didn’t even notice them bouncing and rolling down its tongue, the saurian struck with both heads.

  Jet lashed one wing, wrenched his body, and flung himself to the side. The reptile’s fangs missed him-barely-but the maneuver sent him tumbling like a stone flung from a catapult. Only Aoth’s harness held him in the saddle when the motion spun him upside down, and the canyon wall loomed just ahead.

  Wings beating, floundering, the griffon couldn’t overcome his momentum in time to avoid a collision. But he did manage to twist far enough that it was his feet that slammed against the rock, not his head, wings, or the man on his back. He and Aoth grunted together at the resulting jolt. Still, it was only that. Jet’s sturdy frame withstood the shock without injury, and he sprang away from the side of the cliff at once.

  Meanwhile, their foe turned. Its hind legs flexed as it prepared to pounce. Then the head on the right came apart in a blast of flame as, with a muffled boom, the berries in its mouth and gullet exploded. The detonation hurled broken teeth and scraps of charred flesh and bone in all directions.

  The reptile screamed and staggered. Then, possibly mad with pain, it twisted the head that was burned on one side but still otherwise intact to bite the ruined lump that was the other. Bone cracked and blood spurted until nothing remained but a stump.

  Then the reptile tottered, and its forelimbs pawed at the air. Certain it was about to drop, Aoth turned to survey the other side of the fight, and his satisfaction curdled into dismay.

  The rest of the company wasn’t faring as well as he and Jet had. Many of the firestormers were shrinking back from the horned reptile. They had the look of warriors who were about to break. And when they did, the saurian would almost certainly slaughter those who hadn’t lost their nerve.

  Aoth wasn’t sure that magic could turn the situation around in the moment he had left. But maybe something else could.

  Perceiving what he wanted, Jet hurtled at the reptile that the two of them had been fighting. The familiar’s talons stabled into the top of the creature’s remaining head, but that wasn’t the point. Aoth wanted their momentum to topple the beast.

  For a moment, he didn’t think it would, but a final beat of Jet’s wings carried the saurian past the tipping point. It fell and the griffon sprang clear.

  The dying saurian smashed down on top of the horned creature, which let out a bellow. Aoth had hoped the great mass dropping from above would injure it badly. Since it kept moving, that didn’t appear to be the case. But it moved slowly, barely able to support the added weight. It shifted this way and that, trying to shake it off, but it couldn’t. The pointed plates on its spine had likely stabbed deep into the other beast’s body.

  “Now!” shouted Mardiz-sul. “Kill it now!”

  Heartened, the firestormers attacked the reptile from all sides. It defended as best it could, but its best was inadequate when it could hardly stand. It tried to whip its tail up and over its hindquarters, and the spikes caught in the other saurian’s body and stuck there. Thus deprived of its most formidable weapon, it fell a moment later, when Yemere charged and drove his lance into its eye.

  *****

  Khouryn stood at the rail and gawked at the scene before him. The docks with their fishing nets drying in the sun were nothing remarkable, nor were the boxy, unassuming buildings immediately behind them. But the sheds and shacks huddled in the shadow of a colossal granite tower, with countless windows, balconies, and secondary spires branching from the central mass, making it look a little like a tree.

  “You see,” said Nellis Saradexma, “the dragonborn aren’t the only folk who can build a tower city.” Both his tone and the smile on his narrow face with its high forehead, receding hairline, and gray-black marbling made it clear how proud he was of the metropolis called Skyclave and how happy it made him to return, even if only briefly. As a wanderer who sometimes went years without seeing his own home, Khouryn empathized with the ambassador’s feelings.

  “Impressive,” Balasar said, “but please tell me that the empress doesn’t hold court at the very top of the pile.”

  Nellis chuckled. “Actually, she pretty much does. But don’t worry. You won’t have to climb thousands of stairs to reach her.”

  Khouryn found out why not after the ship docked and he, Nellis, Balasar, and Medrash hiked through the port to the gigantic structure beyond. An insect with scarlet fore- and hindwings and a spindly abdomen that made up more than half its length crouched at the base of the tower. For an instant it looked relatively small, as anything might look small in contrast to the looming mass of stone behind it. Then Khouryn spotted the elderly Imaskari man sitting on a chair in front of the beast. He was a mite in contrast with the dragonfly, which meant that in actuality the creature was as huge as Skuthosin.

  Despite himself, the dwarf stopped short. So did the dragonborn. Nellis laughed. “It’s all right. Redwings look menacing, but they’re completely docile, and none more than old Drummer there. She and Qari have been carrying me up and down since I was a little boy.”

  And in fact, the giant dragonfly did behave herself. As the travelers approached, she turned her head to regard them with her globular eyes and shook out her wings with a series of percussive snaps that, Khouryn suspected, might be responsible for her name, but that was all. Meanwhile, Qari rose stiffly from his chair to greet Nellis with the deference befitting a commoner greeting a grandee, but with genuine fondness as well.

  “My companions and I need to see the empress,” Nellis said.

  “Of course,” the old man said. “If you’ll all please step into the gondola.” He waved his hand at what amounted to an open wooden box. Ropes ran from the four corners to holes drilled in the chitin on Drummer’s belly.

  When everyone was inside, Qari called, “Up! North side.” Wings a droning blur, Drummer rose into the air. The lines went taut, and, with a jerk, the gondola rose with her.

  Khouryn took a long, steadying breath. Whether he was riding a griffon or a bat, he had no fear of flying because he was in control. But he wasn’t with this giant insect, and the knowledge gnawed at his nerves. He distracted himself by taking in the view.

  With its countless ornately carved terraces, friezes, and windows, Skyclave certainly merited closer inspection, and so did the lands beyond. It was there that any resemblance to Djerad Thymar and the area around it broke down. The dragonborn’s bastion-city rose from a fertile plain. Skyclave, too, had a ring of farmland surrounding it, but east of that, crags stabbed upward, gorges split the ground, and earthmotes dotted the sky. The Imaskari likely needed flying beasts of burden to move travelers and goods across such difficult terrain.

  Drummer set the gondola down on a projecting platform where a pair of sentries stood
to either side of an entryway. The sentries recognized Nellis and saluted. He nodded in acknowledgment and sent one of them into the tower to announce his return and request an audience with his sovereign.

  She didn’t keep him waiting long. He scarcely had time to give a silver coin to Qari before the guard reappeared to usher him and his companions inside.

  The interior of the tower-or that part of it, anyway-turned out to consist of cool, spacious, high-ceilinged chambers lit with floating orbs of silvery magical glow. Those lamps were dimmer and less numerous than Khouryn might have expected. A moment earlier, he’d been standing high above the ground in bright, hot sunlight. But inside, for all that he was dwarf enough to tell the difference in a dozen different ways, he almost felt as if he’d somehow been whisked underground.

  The illusion persisted when he entered the empress’s throne room. With its vaulted ceiling and surprisingly austere lines, it was an echoing, shadowy cavern of a hall. The courtiers who occupied it wore garments that, with their high collars, layers of shoulder cape, dangling sleeves, and trailing skirts, were flamboyant in cut but funereal in hue, which added to the general impression of gloom.

  But Empress Ususi’s manner was warmer than the superficial appearance of her court. Stooped and wizened enough to make Qari seem young by comparison, so frail looking that one almost wondered how her wattled neck could support the weight of her golden circlet, she gave Nellis a smile. Then, however, her wrinkled face turned serious, if not positively bleak with care. “My friend. It’s an unexpected joy to see you. Although, since I didn’t recall you, I suspect that your return means more bad news.”

  Nellis smiled. “Majesty, it’s my great joy to explain that appearances are deceiving. Tarhun didn’t expel me from his court or anything like that. Rather, I come with some of his most trusted lieutenants. Allow me to present Daardendrien Medrash and Daardendrien Balasar, officers of the Lance Defenders, Kanjentellequor Biri, a wizard attached to the same company, and Khouryn Skulldark, a sellsword who’s distinguished himself in the service of Tymanther.”