And she was, locked in a bare cell not much farther along. Her captors simply hadn’t seen fit to give her a source of light, which meant Hasos couldn’t estimate the full extent of her injuries until he hauled her semiconscious form out into the passage.
There, he felt a mix of anger and relief. Shala’s face was bruised and swollen, and her back, crisscrossed with whip marks, but her condition could have been far worse than it was. Glad that he’d taken to carrying one around with him during the campaign against Threskel, he extracted a pewter vial of healing elixir from the pouch on his belt and held it to her lips. “Drink,” he said.
She did, although some of the clear liquid ran down her chin. Full awareness came back into her eyes, and her scarred face set in its customary scowl. She pushed Hasos’s hands away, clambered to her feet, and arranged her filthy, ragged garments as best she could.
Hasos stood up and saluted. “Hail, Shala Karanok, war hero of Chessenta,” he said. His companions did the same.
Shala grunted. “I didn’t resent giving up that title, no matter what Tchazzar thought. I figured it was his by right. And I prayed his mind would heal, and then he’d be the leader the stories tell about. But I assume that if you’re here, things are getting worse instead of better.”
“Much worse,” Hasos said. He explained as best he could.
“Then I won’t mind taking the title back either,” Shala said, “assuming we can get it.”
“The reason we came after you,” Hasos said, “is that the army still respects you. I believe there are plenty of Chessentan soldiers who will follow you into battle against the dragons, and at least a few who will follow me. We just have to get out of the War College and rally them.”
“And get word of our plans to Captain Fezim and Lord Magnol,” Shala said.
“Do you really think the genasi will stand with us?” Hasos asked.
Shala snorted. “They will if Tchazzar actually is crazy enough to strike at them too. Let’s hope he is.”
Kassur Jedea cleared his throat.
Shala turned to him. “Yes, Majesty?”
The king smiled a crooked smile. “Contrary to popular opinion, I was never entirely a figurehead. There are portions of the Threskelan army that will follow me into rebellion the same way Chessentans will follow you.”
“I’d be grateful,” said Shala. “But don’t misunderstand. I’m not going to relinquish Chessenta’s claim to Threskel. They should always have been one kingdom, and that’s how they’re going to stay.”
“All I ask,” Kassur said, “is to retain my crown as your vassal, and that you impose no taxes or duties on my lands unless they apply everywhere in the realm.”
“Done,” Shala said. “And so it appears we have a plan.” She peered at Hasos. “What is it?”
“What’s what?” Hasos answered.
“You’re grinning.”
“Am I?” Hasos shrugged. “I guess I like recklessness more than I expected.”
*****
Jet soared on the night wind, and although Aoth could feel the griffon’s soreness and fatigue through their psychic link, no one else should have been able to tell it from the occasional smooth, powerful beat of his wings. But apparently, somehow, Cera could, or else she was just sensible enough to guess. Riding behind Aoth, she murmured a prayer that set her fingers aglow with golden light, then stroked the familiar’s fur. Warmth tingled through the contact and washed the aches away.
Meanwhile, Aoth watched the Brotherhood prepare for battle. They were doing as well as could be expected. The western edge of Luthcheq wasn’t the same demented tangle of streets one found farther in, and thank the Firelord for that. But it was still harder to set up a proper formation in the city than it would have been in open country, and as he so often had of late, he missed Khouryn’s expertise.
Responding to his unspoken will, Jet flew in a spiral, carrying him farther out, and even for a veteran soldier with fire-kissed eyes, the situation on the ground became harder to read. Some Chessentan, Threskelan, and sellsword companies were moving from their campsites to join forces with Aoth’s men. Others were shifting farther away to form what would become the opposing army. Some bands were still debating what to do, sometimes with words, but sometimes with fists or even blades.
That was to say, it was chaos, or at least most of it was. In the midst of all the scrambling and squabbling, the Akanulans stood like a rock in a surging tide, ready to fight but visibly removed from the Brotherhood and their allies. They were making it plain they wouldn’t fight if Tchazzar left them alone.
If Tchazzar himself attacked now, said Jet, while everyone’s still dithering and scurrying around, he could win.
Maybe, Aoth answered, but he won’t. Not at night. Since he’s got help coming, he’ll wait for it.
“I can’t make out anything,” Cera said.
“I warned you,” Aoth replied.
“Well,” she said, “to be honest, taking a look wasn’t the only reason I wanted to come aloft.”
Partly amused and partly apprehensive, he snorted. “What were you thinking?”
“That you and Jet can get me to the Keeper’s house faster and more safely than if I tried to make my way through the streets.”
It was easy to guess what she had in mind. “Do you really think you can convince the other sun priests to fight?”
“As I understand it, Tchazzar butchered our high priest for no reason at all.” Cera hadn’t particularly liked Daelric Apathos, but even so, outrage put steel in her voice. “They should fight. It may just take someone giving the call to arms.”
Aoth remembered Chathi burning and dying in an instant. “I can’t stay with you.”
She knows that, said Jet, and we need all the help we can get. He raised one wing, dipped the other, and turned in the direction of Amaunator’s temple.
*****
Khouryn and his companions were doing most of their traveling by night. The bats liked it better, Praxasalandos didn’t care one way or the other, and the darkness kept Chessentans from loosing arrows and quarrels at the supposed enemies flying overhead.
For his part, Khouryn was happy to escape baking in the late-summer sun and to enjoy the stately, glittering pageant of the moon and stars. It could be his last chance if Tchazzar reacted poorly when they reached Luthcheq.
He contemplated the constellation dwarves knew as the Serpent, with its bright eye, long fangs, and twisting tail. Then someone blew a brassy, long note and a short one on a horn. It was the signal to descend, probably so they could all confer since that was all but impossible in the air. Winged steeds needed too much space between them.
Khouryn sent Iron fluttering down toward an open field. The bat gave a squeal of annoyance. He somehow sensed that his rider meant to set down, and he didn’t like crawling awkwardly around with his head higher than his feet. But he still obeyed.
They touched down with a final flutter of leathery wings, then waited for everyone else to do the same. Prax was the next to land, with Medrash and Biri on his back.
Khouryn didn’t know why the paladin had chosen to ride the quicksilver dragon. Maybe he still feared treachery and wanted to be ideally placed to retaliate. The white-scaled wizard was perched behind him because she wasn’t an experienced flyer. No doubt she would have preferred to ride behind Balasar, but it would exhaust a bat to carry two riders over long distances.
When everyone was on the ground, Perra looked to Medrash. “You gave the signal,” she said.
“Yes,” Medrash replied. “I sensed something up ahead. By which I mean, Torm enabled me to sense it.”
“Here we go,” Balasar groaned.
To Khouryn’s surprise, Medrash smiled. “I could almost share your irritation because I used to hope for signs and portents, but they never turn out to be good news, do they?” His face and tone turned serious again. “Something bad is going to happen in Luthcheq very soon. If our goal is to avert a calamity, we need to get there as fast a
s possible.”
“Our goal is to avert the invasion of Tymanther,” Perra said, “and a disaster in Luthcheq might accomplish that. Still, I take your point.”
“We nearly are to Luthcheq,” Khouryn said. He’d paid attention when he and the dragonborn had marched in the opposite direction.
“I know a spell or two to help us travel faster,” Biri said.
“As do I,” said Prax. He shifted his wings, and they gleamed in the moonlight. “But I can’t cast mine on the entire company, and I imagine yours are the same.”
Perra scowled for a moment, pondering. Then she said, “Sir Medrash, you’ll go on ahead. It’s your premonition, after all. Lady Biri and Sir Praxasalandos will accompany you to speed you on your way. And if the magic can manage so many, Khouryn and Balasar will ride with you as well. The rest of us will catch up as soon as we can.”
Balasar gave Khouryn a look of mock disgust. “I knew we wouldn’t dodge this either,” he said.
*****
Cera kissed Aoth, then stepped far enough away from Jet to give him room to unfurl his wings. The griffon trotted with the uneven gait of his kind and then leaped upward. He and his master vanished into the night sky.
Cera took a long breath and turned toward the Keeper’s temple with its enormous sundial and colonnaded facade. Banners emblazoned with stylized sunsets hung from the cornices. She took that for a promising sign. Her order had chosen to observe the passing of its high priest whether Tchazzar liked it or not.
Then she stepped through the doorway and hands reached out to grab her from either side.
The assailant on her right had her arm gripped tightly, immobilizing her mace. But the one on her left didn’t achieve quite as firm a hold. She screamed, tore free, spun, and hit the man on the right in the teeth with her buckler, putting all her weight behind the blow.
The steel shield clanged. The man let go and reeled backward, and she saw he wore a badge in the shape of a wheel with five S-shaped spokes. A wyrmkeeper, then, or a warrior in their service.
His partner threw his arms around her from behind. She sensed she wouldn’t be able to break free again. But she did manage to shift sideways and jab the butt of the mace backward at groin level.
The man gasped and went rigid. She jabbed him again, and his arms jerked, loosening their hold. She yanked free, whirled, and smashed his nose with the mace. He fell back.
She glanced around, making sure neither man was about to come at her again, then looked to the interior of the temple. A fair number of men, women, and beasts were looking back at her.
It appeared that Tchazzar, Halonya, or someone else still loyal to the Red Dragon had also thought the sunlords might come out and fight. But unlike Cera, that person had moved to prevent it by dispatching wyrmkeepers, ruffians, and a pair of mastiff-sized drakes to round up Amaunator’s clergy and hold them prisoner in their own house of worship. It had likely been easy enough. The intruders had probably had surprise on their side, and while the sunlords all knew magic, including battle prayers, some had little experience in actual combat.
A wyrmkeeper snarled a sibilant word in what was almost certainly Draconic. The golden light of the lamps rippling across their olive green scales, the two drakes charged across the marble floor.
Cera called out to the Keeper, swept her mace over her head, and pointed it at the reptiles. A hedge of bright, whirling blades sprang into existence right in front of them. They were charging too rapidly to stop, and their own momentum flung them in. They tumbled out the other side, shredded and flopping in their death throes.
The blades of light blinked out of existence, and Cera advanced on the rest of her foes. “Surrender or die,” she said.
It was a bluff, of course, and a ridiculous one at that. She’d been lucky, but alone, she had no chance against so many. But if she could rivet all their attention on her, then maybe she wouldn’t be alone for long. If she distracted their captors, her brothers and sisters might seize the opportunity to act.
“Kill her!” a wyrmkeeper spit. Judging from the rings of five colors he wore on each hand, his filed, pointed teeth, and the tattooed scales that covered every inch of exposed skin, he was far advanced in the mysteries of his own order.
Warriors spread out to flank Cera. The wyrmkeeper leader started chanting. She called out to Amaunator and cloaked herself in glare. The defensive measure didn’t dazzle or hurt her own eyes, but if she was lucky, it ought to hinder every one of her foes.
The wyrmkeeper whipped his arm with a motion like a snake or dragon biting. Crackling flame leaped from his long, pointed nails. But Cera jumped sideways, and it missed her by a hair.
Two warriors rushed her. The one on the right yelled, “Tiamat!” She lunged toward them. Maybe they weren’t expecting that because she bulled her way between them without either of them stabbing or slashing her, although one short sword skated along the reinforced leather protecting her side.
She whirled and clubbed madly at their heads while they still had their backs to her. First one then the other fell. She spun back around, and her limbs locked into rigidity.
She recognized the spell and knew it would paralyze her for only a few heartbeats. But that was long enough for one of her remaining foes to drive a pick or a blade into her.
Except just then bright light flared from among the prisoners. Hands clapped to his smoking face, a wyrmkeeper fell down, screaming. Warriors made of golden shimmer appeared between captives and captors. The wyrmkeeper with the filed teeth started another prayer, and two sunlords jumped him and bore him to the ground. Their fists hammered him.
Another ruffian came at Cera, but the commotion had distracted him, and he didn’t quite make it into striking distance before her paralysis fell away. She called the Keeper’s name as she swung her mace, and the god’s power lent force to the blow. It caved in her attacker’s chest.
After that, it was easy enough. In a few more heartbeats, all the wyrmkeepers and their servants were either dead or incapacitated.
“Is everyone all right?” Cera panted.
“Pretty much,” a sunlord replied. His knuckles were raw, possibly from swinging at flesh and hitting armor instead. “I think they were working up to killing us, but they hadn’t started yet. Why is this happening?”
“Haven’t you heard?” said a priestess with black, plaited hair. “Chessenta doesn’t need any gods except the Red Dragon.”
“That’s part of it,” Cera said. She explained what was going on as concisely as she could. “I was going to try to convince you to fight Tchazzar. After what’s happened here, I hope I don’t have to.”
The other clerics exchanged glances. Then the one with the skinned, bloody fists said, “We’ll fight. Apparently we have to, to serve the Keeper, protect the people, and save our own lives. How do we begin?”
“Arm yourselves,” Cera said. “Then we’ll visit the temples of all the other true gods. If the wyrmkeepers are holding any other clerics prisoner, we’ll free them. Either way, we’ll ask our colleagues to fight alongside us. And then… well, we’ll figure it out as we go along.”
*****
Light flickered and thunder cracked in the northern sky. Tchazzar knew it wasn’t a storm or at least not a natural one. Alasklerbanbastos was signaling his arrival.
Tchazzar hesitated and thought that no one could blame him for it. Alasklerbanbastos was his greatest enemy and the very embodiment of everything foul and unnatural. Under any other circumstances, only an idiot would go to meet him in the dark and lonely sky, especially knowing that he’d brought allies along.
But Tchazzar believed that, abominable as he was, the dracolich wanted to preserve the sanctity of Tiamat’s game as much as every other player. And he might actually need the blue’s help to preserve what was his and to punish those who sought to take it from him.
Especially Jhesrhi. He thought of the love and trust he’d given her and how she’d repaid him with treachery and lies, and he roared out hi
s anguish and his rage. The absolute need for revenge pushed all other considerations aside.
He leaped from the roof of the War College, lashed his wings, soared upward, and flew toward the spot where the lightning had flared. Alasklerbanbastos and his allies were still there, gliding on the night wind and awaiting his coming. The lesser dragons were a black, an emerald, two sapphires, and a gold.
“I expected more chromatics,” Tchazzar said.
“I certainly wasn’t going to share this victory with Jaxanaedegor,” Alasklerbanbastos replied, sparks crawling and popping on his naked bones and pale light flickering inside the openings in his skull, “or anyone else who betrayed me. These particular wyrms happened to dwell within easy reach of Dracowyr, so I recruited them instead. Don’t worry. They’ll follow our lead.”
“They’d better,” Tchazzar said. “My human soldiers will attack when we do.”
“You do understand,” said the lich, “the way the armies will jam and tangle together, the homes of noncombatants cluttering the battleground… this is going to be messy.”
Tchazzar spit a streak of flame. “I’m not as fond of humans as I used to be. Slaughter every one in the city if that’s what it takes to carry the day.”
FOURTEEN
7 E LEINT, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE
If Jhesrhi survived the night, she’d choose a new griffon and teach it to know and obey her. For the time being, though, she’d coaxed a wind into the form of a giant eagle to bear her aloft.
That was where she needed to be, along with every other member of the Brotherhood who could get into the air. If Lady Luck smiled, their earthbound comrades could fend off Tchazzar’s human servants, but it would take flying cavalry to contend with dragons on the wing.
Having sharpened her eyes with a charm that enabled them to pierce the darkness, she looked around and found Aoth and Gaedynn soaring on their own steeds. For a moment at least, that sight lifted her heart.
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