Those athletes were boys, none of whom looked older than eight or nine. Dressed in breechclouts, they were kneeling in front of their sovereign. So were their teacher and the various mothers and servants who’d brought them to the lesson.
“Rise!” Tchazzar boomed. He spun around and gave Jhesrhi and her companions a wide, white-toothed grin. “There you are! It’s about time! Here’s our weapon! Here’s the power that will burn Tymanther like a dry leaf in a bonfire!”
“Majesty, I don’t understand,” Jhesrhi said. She figured she had to. Everyone else looked too wary or bewildered.
“I’ve explained,” Tchazzar said, “that I draw power from the faith of my people. You must remember.”
Jhesrhi remembered his claiming he drew power from blood sacrifice. It had been his justification for the slaughter of the prisoners at Soolabax. But she knew better than to point out the discrepancy.
“Yes, Majesty.”
“Well, watch this.” He spun back around, grabbed a child by the forearms, and hoisted him into the air. The little boy gasped. His pulse beat visibly in the side of his neck.
“Who am I?” Tchazzar asked.
The child just goggled at him.
“Who am I?” the dragon repeated, his tone harsher. A wisp of smoke fumed from his mouth. A hint of crimson scales rippled across the last joints of his fingers.
A god, Jhesrhi thought. Tell him he’s a god.
And perhaps one of true gods whispered that answer in the child’s ear. For, stammering almost inaudibly, his voice rising at the end, that was what he said.
“Good!” Tchazzar cried. He dropped the child and gave him a slap on the back that knocked him to his hands and knees. He turned back to Jhesrhi and the assembled lords, clerics, warriors, and envoys. “You see? The pure, perfect faith of an innocent. The greatest power in all the world. Chessenta’s children will march with us and stand in the vanguard. With their god on the field to inspire them, they’ll do deeds to put the paladins of myth to shame. And with them to bolster me, I’ll finally be myself as I was before I went away. Invincible! Beyond the reach of anything that lurks and creeps in the dark!” He stared at Halonya. “Isn’t that right?”
Please, Jhesrhi thought, this one time, don’t feed his madness.
Halonya hesitated. Then she said, “Yes, Majesty, it is. You’ve found the answer.”
Magnol shot Zan-akar Zeraez an inquiring glance. The diplomat responded with a tiny shake of his head, advising the Steward of Fire to say nothing. Maybe it was because the children of the genasi were safe in Akanul.
It occurred to Jhesrhi that conscripting the children might actually aid Aoth’s strategy because it would inevitably slow the march south, thus buying more time for her friends to accomplish their missions. But it didn’t matter. She couldn’t allow any possibility that children would end up on a battlefield facing dragonborn warriors, not if she could possibly avert it.
“Majesty,” she said.
Tchazzar turned his grin on her. “What?”
“I don’t pretend to understand the mysteries of faith,” she said, “but if you say the children will give you strength, then I know it must be so. Still, surely it’s their prayers that will do it, not a struggle to spill blood with their own hands. And can’t they pray just as well in Luthcheq? I would think, better.”
Halonya glowered at her. “His Majesty has explained how it’s going to be.”
Jhesrhi lowered her head. “Of course, sister. Forgive me if I spoke foolishly. I already confessed that I don’t understand sacred matters. So let me just say how much I admire your courage, and then I’ll hold my tongue.”
“Yes, that would be-” Halonya blinked. “My courage?”
“Surely,” Jhesrhi answered. “If the point is to channel the power of the children’s belief, then I assume His Majesty will want his high priestess standing right there among them in the front lines.” She turned to Tchazzar. “Am I right?”
The Red Dragon nodded. “Yes. That does make sense.”
Halonya hesitated and her eyes shifted from side to side. If she was looking for help, it was to no avail. Even enthusiastic supporters such as Lord Luthen opted to keep quiet.
So she swayed, staggered, and whirled around, arms outstretched, vestments flapping and jewelry swinging and clanking. Most of the young athletes goggled at her, although one tried to hide a smirk and whispered to his neighbor.
“Spirits have spoken to me!” Halonya declared. “The dragon exarchs who love Your Majesty!”
Jhesrhi had never heard of the “dragon exarchs,” but Tchazzar simply asked, “What did they tell you?”
The priestess hesitated for a heartbeat. Jhesrhi assumed that she was working out exactly how to put what she had to say.
“That Your Majesty is completely right!” Halonya said. “Or would be! Ordinarily! But perhaps he’s overlooked his new temple. That would be natural since it’s not even built yet. The work has barely begun. But already the ground is the holiest in all Faerun. And if I lead the children in prayer there, we’ll work bigger miracles than we could anywhere else!”
Jhesrhi inclined her head again. “Sister, as always, I feel humble before your wisdom.”
But Tchazzar was frowning. “My servants, mortal and supernatural, are wise. But not as wise as me. And my own divine judgment tells me to take these youngsters and all the others like them to Tymanther.”
Jhesrhi took a breath. “Majesty, from all that I’ve heard you say today, I’m guessing you feel that way because Djerad Thymar is supposed to be impregnable. But I can guarantee you it isn’t. The Brotherhood of the Griffon took one of Szass Tam’s Dread Rings, and we-excuse me, they-can help you take the dragonborn citadel too.”
Tchazzar snorted. “That might be helpful if Captain Fezim and his men weren’t busy chasing traitors and ghosts in Threskel.”
“I believe they must have finished that work or nearly so,” Jhesrhi said. “After all, we haven’t had any more attempts on Your Majesty’s life or any more undead sneaking into the War College. We haven’t had any recent reports of unrest.”
“We haven’t had any news,” Tchazzar said, “even from the wyrmkeepers Halonya sent to find out what the sellswords have accomplished.”
Jhesrhi felt a pang of alarm. That was the first she’d heard of that particular pack of spies. But apparently the folk charged with concealing Aoth’s absence had handled the situation somehow.
And while Halonya would ordinarily have pounced on the opportunity to interpret the priests’ silence to the Brotherhood’s detriment, her priority now was to avoid the possibility of a dragon born’s spear in her guts. “I believe,” she said, “that we can take the quiet as a good sign. After all, I sent four men. If something were badly wrong, surely at least one would have rushed back to warn us.”
“Hmm.” Tchazzar studied the only two humans he truly trusted, united for once in their opinion. “All right, have it your way. The children will stay here, and the Brotherhood of the Griffon will march south with us.” He pivoted toward Hasos. “Send for them immediately, and tell them to come as fast as they can. Tell Aoth Fezim to fly on ahead and get to Luthcheq as fast as he can.”
“Yes, Majesty,” Hasos said.
And now I’ve done it, Jhesrhi thought. If we’ve been running a race, this is the final leg. She wished she knew how far Gaedynn, Aoth, and Khouryn had traveled along the course.
*****
“It’s been a long time,” Balasar whispered.
Khouryn scowled. They were supposed to be lying in wait in silence. But in fairness to his friend, Balasar was keeping his voice low, and using a dwarf’s understanding of how sound carried and echoed underground, Khouryn had chosen their current hiding place partly because any noise they made wouldn’t travel far. So he decided not to make an issue of the dragonborn’s indiscretion.
“It seems like it,” he whispered back, “but then, it always does when you’re waiting.”
Lying on his
belly on the ledge, Balasar rolled his shoulders until they popped. “Especially when you’re waiting on a dragon. Specifically the same dragon who’s already tried to kill the lot of us.”
A few spaces farther down the line, Vishva frowned to hear Praxasalandos so disparaged. Medrash simply said, “Prax is a different creature now. We just have to hope Gestanius didn’t sense that.”
“Or else she’ll have killed him,” Khouryn said, “and won’t come within a mile of our ambush.”
“Quicksilver wyrms are supposed to be tricky,” Biri said. She was lying beside Balasar-not, Khouryn assumed, by accident-and she smiled in the Daardendrien’s direction. “If you give him a chance, you may find out you’ve got a lot in common.”
Balasar snorted. “I may be friends with a gaggle of dragon worshipers, but forgive me if I stick at the dragons themselves.”
Across the cavern and near the mouth of the tunnel, an Imaskari in a nook in the wall waved both hands above his head. According to Jemleh, the fellow had the sharpest ears of any soldier in his command, sharp enough that his captain trusted him to hear Praxasalandos’s wings rustle and snap when the dragon shook them out to signal his approach.
Only Khouryn and those wizards who’d chosen to enhance their eyesight could see the waving. Everyone else lay prone or crouched, blind in the darkness. Khouryn whispered that everyone should shut up and be ready. The message traveled up and down the line in the form of a series of fumbling grips.
Then Praxasalandos strode into the chamber. Gestanius prowled right behind him. Khouryn winced.
It wasn’t because of the enormous size and manifest strength of the ancient blue, although they were daunting enough. It was the indefinable but gut-wrenching ugliness she shared with her ally Skuthosin. Like the green, she’d been a Chosen of Tiamat in her time, before Tchazzar killed and ate them to add his power her own. Then the Dark Lady had given them back their lives, and all that commerce with one of the supreme powers of evil had left a taint.
But so what? thought Khouryn. We killed Skuthosin and we’re going to kill you too.
Bringing the scent of a coming storm with her, her movements quick and flowing despite her hugeness, Gestanius stalked several paces into the cavern. Then she stopped abruptly, as if she’d sensed something or wondered if she had.
“How much farther?” she asked. Buzzing sparks and tiny lightning bolts crawled and arced on the double-pointed horn on her snout and the hornlets on her brow ridges. For those who could see nothing else, beholding the flickering must be somewhat like looking at a dragon-shaped constellation in the night sky.
“We’re nearly there,” Praxasalandos replied. He’d told Gestanius that he’d killed intruders in the tunnels as he was supposed to but that one of them had turned out to be a gold dragon shapeshifted into Imaskari form. The blue was coming to see if she could see identify the body. “In fact, we are there.”
“What do you mean?” Gestanius asked, looking around in vain for torn and mangled corpses.
Biri whispered words of power and flicked her wand back and forth as though leading a band of musicians. Medrash gripped his steel-gauntlet medallion and breathed a prayer to Torm. Elsewhere in the chamber, Khouryn knew, other spellcasters were raising and shaping power in their own fashions.
And maybe Gestanius heard the whispering or simply felt magic smoldering in the air because she suddenly craned her neck and twisted her head one way then the other. “Something-” she began.
Prax whirled and blasted her with a silvery plume of his breath. The vapor washed across her eyes, and she roared in shock and pain.
At the same time, a golden shimmer abruptly filled the opening through which the dragons had entered, and crackling flames leaped up to fill the exit on the opposite wall. Floating orbs of glowing power popped into existence to provide additional light.
Warriors howled battle cries. Crossbows clacked and quarrels thrummed through the air. Some glanced off Gestanius’s scales but others stuck. Khouryn discharged his own arbalest then grabbed his axe, leaped to his feet, and charged down the steep slope that descended from the shelf to the cavern floor.
It was a reckless, sliding scramble, but Medrash, Balasar, and others rushed along right beside him. For the moment Gestanius was slow with amazement and dazzled and sick from the poisonous kiss of Prax’s breath. Her enemies needed to press the advantage while they had it.
An Imaskari wizard splashed yellow fire across the tops of Gestanius’s wings. A stray wisp of Praxasalandos’s breath weapon stung Khouryn’s nose and filled his mouth with a nasty, metallic taste. He twisted his head and spat without breaking stride.
Then the stone beneath him started shaking, knocking him off balance and making him stumble. For a moment he assumed that one of his wizard allies had cast a spell that was causing the quaking. Then he recognized the distinctive rhythm of the vibration.
He sucked in a breath to yell a warning. But before he could get it out, a purple worm burst up out of the floor, its emergence flinging bits of rock through the air.
It was hard to be sure with the back end of it still in the burrow, but the creature looked as huge as Gestanius herself. Rearing like a serpent, it swiveled its head this way and that. That head, though bigger than a dwarf or man, was small in proportion to its possessor’s thick, leechlike body, and it was all jaws, with protruding tusks above and below. But Khouryn knew the lack of eyes wouldn’t keep the beast from orienting on its prey.
He had time to wonder if, mistrusting Praxasalandos, Gestanius had commanded the purple worm to shadow them or if it was just exceptionally rotten luck that had placed the creature within easy reach of its mistress’s psychic call. He wondered too if the magical barriers emplaced to hold the blue in the killing box might now ensure the slaughter of every last dragonborn, Imaskari, and stray dwarf instead. Then the worm decided on its target and, jaws gaping wide, plunged down at him like a mudslide.
*****
Alasklerbanbastos stalked through the tunnels and lava tubes under Dragonback Mountain, and his anger intensified with every stride.
Zombies and other guardians lay charred and ripped where Tchazzar had destroyed them on his way to the deepest vaults. Here and there, coins and even a gem or two lay amid the carnage, dropped when the red or his servants were hauling treasure out.
The latter warned Alasklerbanbastos what to expect at the heart of the mountain, so he considered not going there at all. But he wanted to see the empty chamber where, century after century, he’d amassed his hoard. He knew the sight would feed his hatred.
And so it did. In fact, it maddened him. Crackling, the flashes painting the walls, arcs of lightning danced across his flayed, decaying flesh. He raised his head and gave a roar that echoed away through the plundered lair.
He likewise felt compelled to look at the smaller chamber that had held his phylactery, even though there was no practical reason for that either. Perhaps he hoped to find some indication of how Tchazzar had found and opened it despite the layered illusions and wards. But there was nothing to see except black stains of soot on the walls.
Well, the violation at least didn’t matter. Alasklerbanbastos walked the earth and owned his own soul again despite the worst his enemies could do. True, he was a feeble thing compared to what he once had been, but he was about to remedy that because Tchazzar and any other scavengers who’d looted the vaults hadn’t stolen everything.
He stalked back to one of the larger chambers and fixed his eyes on the wall. Hissing an incantation, he used a talon to scratch runes on the floor. Sparks danced and sizzled on each of the runes as they did on his body.
Drawn by the accumulating power, petty spirits whispered to one another. White fungus grew across a section of the ceiling, and rudimentary faces took shape in the furry mass. The wall on which Alasklerbanbastos had focused his will grew soft as wax, and enormous bones slid out and dropped, clattering, to the floor.
The lair contained dozens of dragon bodies
laid up against the day when he might need another. But before him was the best of them. Before Alasklerbanbastos engineered his demise, Faarinnjaallafon had been a blue as ancient and huge as himself, the terror of a land so distant that few folk in Faerun had ever even heard its name.
When the last bone had crawled forth, they all lay in a big mound on the floor. Alasklerbanbastos chanted different rhymes, and the sections of skeleton floated into the air one and two at a time. The truesilver and dark-iron hinges attached to the ends clinked and rang as they secured one bone to the next like the pieces of an enormous puzzle.
As the last bone locked itself to its neighbors, Alasklerbanbastos refocused his will. Up until then, the working had been easy enough for a necromancer of his caliber. The last part would be harder.
Moving with ceremonial slowness and exactitude, he set the shadow stone on the floor between the skeleton and himself. Then he resumed his chanting. He wasn’t trying to speak any louder than before, but the charge of dark magic in the words made them boom like thunder all by itself. The rock around him shook and cracked.
As the final word echoed, he spit his breath weapon.
But it wasn’t just lightning. He spewed forth himself: mind, magic, and the pure, raging essence of a storm all mingled together. Calabastasingavor’s husk collapsed behind him, and he hung, blazing and crackling, in the air.
Untethered from coarse matter, he felt the void tugging at him. A door had opened in the unseen architecture of the world, and Nature wanted him to pass through in the common fashion of the dead.
But Nature was weak compared to his will and his wizardry. He thrust himself forward and hurtled into the core of the shadow gem like an arrow driving into a bull’s-eye.
Once there, he was no longer conscious of having a ghostly, burning form or any form at all. He was simply consciousness suspended in emptiness. But that was all right. He was safe there and no longer felt death’s pull. He was free to catch his breath-metaphorically speaking-and prepare for the final stage of his transformation.
The Spectral Blaze botg-3 Page 27
