“So when do we do it?” asked Valkin, tugging impatiently on the hippogriff’s reins.
“Patience, skymage,” said Ardeth, a cool night breeze tousling her hair. “When you have the luxury of choosing when to strike, always strike when the opponent is weakest.”
“Did Geildarr teach you that?” asked Valkin.
Ardeth ignored him. “Barbarians are strongest when they rage. We wait till that subsides—after all their foes are killed.”
“You mean,” said Valkin, “we wait until they think they’re triumphant, then hand them an awful defeat? A delicious idea.”
“Why, Valkin,” Ardeth replied. “Where did you acquire so cruel a mind as that?”
“Spending some time with you, my dear,” Valkin said. “It rubs off.”
He felt the squeeze of Ardeth’s arms around his waist as she giggled away, so adorably, so madly.
Like waves against rocks, wolf after wolf charged the Thunderbeast lines. Some were skewered by archers, but many broke through. Barbarians were torn apart by vicious claws or snapped in two by massive jaws, and blood, of both wolves and men, ran in streams across the camp. A few torches had been knocked from their staves and several tents had caught fire. Some of the braver children ventured forward to try to extinguish them.
Vell choked back his anger and summoned every fragment of his will to contain the beast inside him. He knew some would call him a coward—Keirkrad would certainly scold him for abandoning his tribe in its time of need—but he did not trust his other self. Vell still feared that if the beast within him were released again, he would not be able to tell friend from foe.
In the chaos and cacophony that consumed Sungar’s Camp, and despite his distorted senses, he could hear Kellin’s voice pleading with him.
“Trust yourself,” she begged. But how could he?
“There’s a power in you,” she said quickly. “I don’t understand it. Not even Keirkrad understands it. But I know what it’s like to have something within you that seems on the verge of controlling you. You have to learn to control it instead.”
Vell looked at Kellin through his lizardlike eyes, wondering what she was talking about, and he saw that the concern on her face was genuine. He looked back at his hands and realized that they were his again. The scales had receded. He stood uncomfortably and looked her in the eye. He wondered how to thank her, but when he opened his mouth his words were not his own.
“What are you?” he asked.
A strange silence settled over the camp all at once. The clinking of armor and weapons ceased, and the howls ended. The enemy was defeated, and the camp was safe again.
“Victory!” Sungar shouted, thrusting a fist high into the air. All eyes turned to him.
In that moment, something appeared in the darkness above. A tiny point of light fell from the sky over the camp, looking no more dangerous than a shooting star in the distant heavens. But Kellin knew better.
“Turn away!” she shouted as loudly as she could, spinning away from it and slapping her hands over her eyes. But Vell’s instincts misled him and he turned to look instead, just in time to stare into the heart of the burst.
The speck exploded into a brilliant wave of light that washed over the camp, a thousand times brighter than the midday sun, before it dissolved back into the dark of night. In that horrid instant Vell saw the night vanish, and watched as many of the Uthgardt closest to the impact collapsed unconscious. Most of the barbarians were too late to protect their eyes and now screamed, unable to see. Behind him, Vell could hear the cries of children. Torches fell to the ground and burned the grass, leaping and raging toward some of the tents.
But Vell’s eyes had looked into the flash and withstood it.
Kellin uncovered her eyes and turned to join him, just in time to see a winged beast swoop down from above. The warriors stumbled and groped, blind or dazed, and did not notice as the creature closed its talons around the unconscious form of Sungar and lifted him into the air. The hippogriff bore two riders—a honey-haired young woman and an older man. It lifted off with Sungar firmly in its grip.
Kellin extended one hand. A bolt of silver-blue energy burst forth, rocketing across the camp and striking the woman just as the hippogriff rose. It blew her from her place and she fell to the ground, landing amid a group of semiconscious barbarians. The woman dazedly propped herself up and shot Kellin a dirty look. Then she drew her sword and sank it into a defenseless Uthgardt’s heart, twisting his body to place it between herself and Kellin.
The revelation that Kellin was a spellcaster was lost on Vell as he watched the hippogriff rise into the night, Sungar in its talons. In perfect fury, Vell called upon all that he had previously held back and fought against. He bid the scales to come, and with them, whatever powers that so terrified him. Like a dammed river bursting free, they came in a torrent.
This was supposed to be easy, thought Valkin as he tugged on the reins. He turned his mount to circle back to the camp that he would be so happy to leave behind.
It hadn’t taken much for Geildarr to talk Valkin into this scheme. Everybody who’d visited Llorkh in the past two years had heard about Ardeth. She was Geildarr’s protégée and some said something more—an uncomfortable thought. At the very least, Valkin thought that a few days alone with her would be good for much discussion over ales at the Wet Wizard.
He could hardly leave her to be murdered by barbarians.
But when the hippogriff came about, Valkin found himself staring into the black, slitted eyes of a great lizard. Indistinct in the dim light, it seemed to him that a new hill had grown up beneath him, its serpentine neck reaching up so high it was almost at his level.
“What in all the Hells!” shouted Valkin. His hippogriff shrieked and stared, closing its claws more tightly around Sungar. Valkin did nothing to discourage the hippogriff as it wheeled about and flew. He looked back, and the behemoth was running after him, the sound of each step rolling off the Crags and crashing like a waterfall. It was gaining on him.
Valkin yanked the reins, taking his mount higher and higher to escape the colossal beast’s reach. When he looked back, the barbarian camp was visible only from the fires burning in the distance. He led the hippogriff into a dive to the left, and as he passed alongside the rampaging behemoth, he lit up the night with a lightning bolt that danced between his fingers before streaking to the behemoth’s bulky middle.
Letting out a dull but deafening moan of pain, the lizard’s legs collapsed beneath it. It fell to the ground with force that rumbled the entire vale. But it was not dead—far from it—and Valkin could already see the creature straining to rise again. He had, however, slowed the monster, and that gave him his chance.
“I must be mad,” he muttered as he tugged the reins, directing his hippogriff back to the camp.
Distant rumbles roiled in the distance. Like a thunderstorm crashing all around them, the ground rolled and shook in the Thunderbeast camp. A great mountain of scales rose among the barbarians and was gone and away in a flash, some of the dazed and fallen crushed under its huge feet. Kellin and Ardeth ignored the distraction as they illuminated the night with colorful spells—red and gold shimmers and bursts of magic flying from their fingertips and coursing through the chaotic camp. Kellin did not know what was happening out in the darkness, but she feared for Vell as a lightning blast crackled through the sky in the periphery of her vision.
The dazed barbarians were beginning to recover around Ardeth, and she tried to finish them with a quick flash of her sword or by sinking her foot into their exposed necks, crushing windpipes. But there were too many, and as her human shield rocked under each new magical assault, the corpse weakened and collapsed into pulp. Cursing, Ardeth pushed free of the barbarian hands that grasped at her slender legs and arms. She made quick leaps in Kellin’s direction, her sword at her side. Through the darkness she bounded and wove past the barbarians with strange grace, reaching Kellin too quickly for her opponent to react. Kellin
tried to dodge her, but cried out as Ardeth’s sword caught her shoulder.
Kellin stumbled backward, blood spilling down her sword arm. She drew her father’s blade from its sheath but could not hold onto it, and it fell to the ground. In the flickering light of the fire, she could see her opponent’s pale oval face twisting into a wicked smile, her sword held at the ready, but before Ardeth could finish off her opponent, a strong hand gripped Ardeth’s forearm and twisted her around.
The distant rumbles became closer again, somewhere off in the night.
Keirkrad’s blue eyes bore through Ardeth, staring at her from beneath a layer of scales, the sour stink of his breath washing over her. Silently, he released her forearm and instead clamped onto her shoulders with both hands, squeezing with all the magical strength of his altered shape. But Ardeth twisted and slithered within his embrace, freeing her hands just enough to drive her sword into the shaman’s magical hide. It sliced deep and embedded. Keirkrad gulped back the pain, but he did not release her. His fingers dug down to her bones, and she let out a high-pitched yelp.
So intense was Keirkrad’s blood fury that he did not feel the breeze of wings beating just above him. He was unprepared for the bolt of magic that struck him from above, battering him into unconsciousness in an instant. Keirkrad’s form remained stiff as he collapsed, Ardeth still locked within his embrace.
As Kellin prepared a spell, Valkin shot a purplish bolt in her direction that exploded as she dived frantically. The blast hurled her backward by more than half a dozen sword lengths. As a number of Uthgardt warriors charged, Ardeth wriggled free of Keirkrad’s unconscious grip and grasped Valkin’s outstretched hand above her.
In a single motion he pulled the woman up. She settled behind him on the hippogriff, and it lifted into the night sky just as Uthgardt arrows and hammers sailed in their direction. But with Sungar still in the creature’s talons, the warriors dared not strike the hippogriff. The battered tribe could do nothing to stop the beast from flying away, their chief caught in its grip.
“Do you know anything about this?” Valkin demanded of Ardeth. The ground rumbled again, but he couldn’t see the creature that had attacked him as he peered through the darkness. “There’s something out there. It’s huge, and it almost knocked me out of the sky. What is it?”
“I think it’s what some call a dinosaur,” said Ardeth. “Or what that tribe calls a thunderbeast.”
“What’s it doing here?” Valkin asked. “We’re a long way from Chult.”
“I don’t know,” said Ardeth, peering over the side of the hippogriff into the darkness beneath them. “Perhaps our captive knows. The whip will tell.”
As the thunder of heavy steps approached behind them, Valkin tugged on the reins. The hippogriff, tired and overburdened, angled upward but gained elevation only gradually.
“We need to get back to Llorkh alive first,” the skymage said.
“Perhaps we need a distraction,” Ardeth suggested. She reached out and stroked his ear gently, a lover’s gesture.
“What kind of distraction?” asked Valkin, curious.
As an answer, Ardeth delivered a blow to the side of his head with a clenched fist, precisely where she had stroked. It took Valkin’s breath, and as he tried to turn, she pummeled him again, knocking him from his place on the hippogriff. The last thing he saw of her was her smiling face as he tumbled down into the darkness.
Cursing, Valkin mouthed a single command that slowed his fall to a safe speed. But the thunderous steps were getting closer, and just as he landed on the grass, something fast-moving and massive emerged from the darkness. Valkin died wondering which spell could save him from being trampled under a behemoth’s massive foot.
CHAPTER 5
Greildarr strolled through the halls of his private floor of the Lord’s Keep with a stack of books in his arms, headed for his study. As always, he surveyed the artifacts displayed on the walls and his table. He stopped short as he realized that one was missing. A chuckle came from behind him, and he was not surprised to turn around and see red-clad Moritz standing in the hallway. In his hand he clutched a small stone cougar that he was inspecting with little interest.
“I’ll never understand your interest in these things, Geildarr,” Moritz said. “I can understand the magical artifacts. They have real power. But cutlery from Athalantar? Coins from Ostoria? Dwarven house decorations from Ammarindar? Mundane, useless relics of failed civilizations—what is the point of those?”
Geildarr reached out his free hand and snatched the statue away, placing it back on the pedestal.
“I thought you were in hiding,” he said. “Not deeply enough for my taste.”
“You have no idea,” said Moritz. “But honestly. Wherein lies the appeal?”
“I don’t have to explain my interests to you.”
“I suppose not,” Moritz said, cocking his head, “but you just might need to explain yourself to the inaptly-named Manshoon Prime. You sent one of his precious skymages on a mission that he won’t be returning from. That may delay the new caravans across Anauroch considerably.”
“You mean Valkin Balducius is dead?” asked Geildarr. “How?”
“A lizard stepped on him.” Moritz smiled widely at Geildarr’s reaction. “Ardeth will explain when she returns. Let me say this—I wouldn’t turn my back on that minx for anything. She’ll kill someone just to show herself she can.”
“So you were spying on her,” Geildarr said. “Why?”
“You might say I’m acting as an interested spectator in this whole new endeavor of yours. My attention is being rewarded. It’s just taken an interesting turn. There’s some real power at work here. Magical power. The kind the Zhentarim would like to have their hands on.”
“And the kind Sememmon would like to have too,” said Geildarr. “Or at least to keep such a thing away from Zhentil Keep. So why not go find it yourself?”
“It’s not really what I do,” said Moritz. “It’s more what you do. Why should I do it when I can get you to do it instead?”
Geildarr slammed down the stack of books on the nearest table with as much force as he could muster and turned on the illusionist, waving an accusatory finger.
“I don’t work for Sememmon! He’s nothing now—a pathetic rat hiding in a dark hole somewhere with his elf whore. If you were smart, you’d give him up and look for a different master.”
Moritz’s face flushed with rage. “Do you think you can afford to be so arrogant?” The gnome’s nose turned as red as his clothes. “You think yourself secure as mayor of Llorkh—so did Phintarn Redblade before you slit his throat. Traitors surround you. The Dulgenhar Conspiracy could have taken this city from you. It took a little girl to save your rulership. You’ve managed to offend the Zhent leadership at exactly the wrong time. You worship the wrong god. And I haven’t mentioned the Shadovar, who probably aren’t too fond of Llorkh either. I trust you’ve heard what happened to Tilverton. When the axe—the proverbial axe, not the one sitting in your study—comes down, just who do you expect to save your skin if not Sememmon?”
Geildarr broke himself away and paced the hallway, cursing loudly as he wondered if there was anything Moritz said that he could refute. “What if …” he muttered. “What if …”
“You won’t be able to sit on the fence much longer, Geildarr,” Moritz said. “It’s your choice, of course.”
“What if that hobgoblin had never brought that axe to Llorkh?” asked Geildarr, mostly to himself. “What if I hid those clues, forgot all about everything?”
“Then how will you explain getting a skymage killed while abducting a barbarian chief?” asked Moritz. “You’re past burying it now.”
“True, but what if …”
Moritz tapped his cane twice against the floor. “It says something about you that when faced with a difficult choice, you start thinking of ways to avoid making it. Let me say this—you may be on the verge of finding an artifact that makes all of the items your Ant
iquarians have pulled from old ruins look like the toys they are. I’ll be watching closely to see just what you do with it.”
“And let me guess,” said Geildarr. “If I give it to you, you’ll reward me richly. Or some other equally vague offer.”
“I couldn’t have termed it better myself,” Moritz answered. “And while you’re speculating, what do you think will happen to you if you should give it to my enemies instead of me?”
Geildarr stared at him wordlessly. A bead of sweat trickled down his temple.
“A silent threat is always the most potent. If I learned anything hanging around with Zhentarim all these years, that would have to be it!” Moritz vanished, but his laughter still echoed off the stone walls.
When the sun rose over Sungar’s Camp, it shone down on a shattered people. A quiet haze of disbelief had settled over the camp, now littered with bodies of Uthgardt and wolves, damaged by fire and force, and leaderless. Its bravest blood had been taken away, but why, by whom, and to what place they did not know. The healers attended the many wounded, but much more would be needed to heal the Thunderbeast soul.
Battle was a way of life for the Uthgardt. It was their primary drive and purpose for being. But usually the enemy was known—an orc horde, a rival tribe—something they could understand. They had no way of knowing who their new enemy was. A bead of light had dropped from the sky and blinded most of them, knocking some into unconsciousness. They couldn’t fight such dishonorable tactics.
Their chief was gone—not dead, but taken. Leadership of the tribe fell to his son-in-law, but Thluna was so inexperienced and so young—perhaps even subject to the temptations of the outside world. Already there were whispers that an older Thunderbeast—possibly even Keirkrad, still unconscious from the magical attack—would be a more appropriate choice.
Kellin awoke with rain drizzling onto her face. Barbarian women tended to the wounded all around her. No one would speak to her or accept her offers of help. She walked the camp as an observer, searching for a friendly face but finding none. She bound her own shoulder wound where that foul girl had slashed her, hoping that one of the healers might tend to it properly later on. She asked nearly everyone about Vell, but eventually put pieces together from overheard conversations. No one had seen him, and the thunderous steps had not been heard in the valley since dawn.
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