The meal planned for that night held no such potential for intrigue, of course. The guests were the friends of Gareth, honest and true companions who had fought beside him in the desperate struggle against the Witch-King. Riordan Parnell wouldn't be there, as he was off to Palishchuk, which complicated things for Christine a bit. Had he been in attendance, Riordan, an extraordinary bard, would have provided much of the entertainment. And entertainment was paramount on Gareth's mind.
"This is a meal for solidarity of purpose and agreement of how we should proceed," he told Christine not long after Emelyn had magically flown out to Soravia. "But most of all it is for Olwen. He has lost a child, in effect."
"And we have both lost a niece," Christine reminded.
Gareth nodded, but neither of them were truly devastated by the death of Commander Ellery. She had been a relative, but a distant one, and one that neither Gareth nor Christine had known very well. Gareth had seen her only a few times and had spoken to her only once, on the occasion of her appointment to the Army of Bloodstone.
"This night is for Olwen," Christine agreed, and took her leave.
Soon after, though, they found out that they were both incorrect. Emelyn the Gray returned from Soravia, appearing in Gareth's audience chamber amidst a cloud of smoke. Coughing and waving his hands, more with annoyance than with any expectation that he would clear the cloud, Emelyn stood alone, shaking his head.
"Olwen is not in his castle," the old wizard explained. "Nor is he anywhere in the city, or in Kinnery or Steppenhall. He went out soon after the news of Mariabronne's fall reached Kinbrace, along with several of his rangerly ilk. Who knows what silliness they are up to."
" 'Rangerly'?" Gareth asked.
"Druidic, then?" Emelyn offered. "How am I to properly describe men who dance about the trees and offer prayers of gratitude to beautiful and benevolent creatures right before and right after they kill them?"
" 'Rangerly' will suffice," the king conceded, and Emelyn wagged his wrinkled old head.
"Do you have any notion of where they went?" Gareth asked.
"Somewhere in the northeast—some grove they have deemed sacred, no doubt."
"A funeral?"
Emelyn shrugged.
"And there was no way to find him?" Gareth asked.
Emelyn's look became less accommodating, his expression telling Gareth in no uncertain terms that if he could have found the man, Olwen would be standing beside him.
"Olwen has been an adventurer for most of his life," Emelyn reminded. "He has known loss as often as victory and has buried many friends."
"As have we all."
"He will overcome his grief," said the wizard. "Better, perhaps, that he is not here in the morning when you celebrate those who survived the trip to this Zhengyian construct. Olwen would have strong questions for them, do not doubt, particularly for the drow."
"We all have questions, my friend," Gareth said.
Emelyn eyed him with open suspicion, and Gareth couldn't hold back his smile from his ever-perceptive old companion.
"How could we not?" the king asked. "We had an unusual party travel north on our behalf, unbeknownst to us, and we are now left an unusual band of victorious survivors. We have a construct of unknown origin—"
Emelyn held up his hand to stop his friend. "I detest Palishchuk," he remarked.
Gareth's grin widened. "I could trust no other with this most important investigation. Riordan is already there, doing that which Riordan does best— interrogating people without them even realizing it—but he has no practical understanding of such creation magic as this."
"I am not fond of Riordan, either," grumped Emelyn, and Gareth couldn't contain a chuckle. "But he is a bard, is he not? Are bards not especially skilled at determining the origins and history of places and dweomers?"
"Emelyn…." Gareth said.
The old wizard huffed. "Palishchuk. Oh joy of joys. To be surrounded by half-orcs and their unparalleled wit and wisdom."
"One of the heroes who defeated the castle's guardians was a half-orc wizard," said Gareth, and that seemed to pique Emelyn's curiosity for a moment.
A brief moment. "And I know a dwarf who dances gracefully," came the sarcastic reply. "For a dwarf. Which means that the area clerics need only repair a few broken toes among the spectators after each performance. Could a half-orc wizard be any more promising?"
"When the survivors returned to the Vaasan Gate, they reported that Wingham was in Palishchuk."
That did interest Emelyn, obviously so.
"Enough, my king," he surrendered. "You wish me to go, and so I go, but it will not be as brief a journey as my trip to Soravia, a land that I know well and can thus teleport to and from quickly. Expect me to be gone a tenday, and that only if the riddles presented by the Zhengyian construct are not too tightly wound. Am I to leave at once, or might I partake of the feast you promised in order to lure me here in the first place?"
"Eat, and eat well," said Gareth, smiling, then he paused and took on a more serious visage. "I trust that your magic is powerful enough to lift you and transport you when your belly is full?"
"If you were not the king, I'd offer a demonstration."
"Ah, but if I were not the king, then Zhengyi would not likely allow it."
Emelyn just shook his head and walked off to the guest rooms where he could clean up and prepare for Christine's table.
* * * * *
It was a night of toasts to old friends and old times. The five adventuring companions lifted their glasses to Olwen, most of all, and to Mariabronne, who had held such promise. They reiterated their goal of unifying the Bloodstone Lands, Damara and Vaasa, into a singular kingdom, and of defeating any and all remnants of the tyrant Zhengyi.
They talked of the next morning's ceremony, sharing what little they knew of the man who would be granted knighthood and of his strange, ebon-skinned companion. Celedon Kierney promised that they would know much more of the pair soon enough, a vow he made with a nod of approval from Kane. There was no disagreement at that table among the friends who had struggled hand-in-hand for more than a decade. They saw the challenges before them, the potential trouble, and the mystery of the newcomers, and they methodically set out their plans.
In the morning, after Friar Dugald offered a blessing for them all, Emelyn departed for Palishchuk and Celedon set out for Heliogabalus. Celedon asked Kane to accompany him, or to fly him part of the way on the magical carpet, but Kane declined. He wanted to witness the day's events.
And so as King Gareth and Queen Christine prepared for their ceremony, they knew that they were well flanked by powerful friends.
CHAPTER 3
INTERESTED DRAGONS
She exited the front door of her modest mercantile, a shop specializing in trinkets, around sunset, as she did every evening, handing the keys over to her trusted assistant. The sign over her head as she walked from her porch read Tazmikella's Bag of Silver, and true to the moniker, most of the items within, candlesticks and paperweights, decorative orbs and pieces of jewelry, were crafted of that precious metal.
Tazmikella herself had earned quite a handsome reputation among the merchant class of the circular road called Wall's Around in Heliogabalus, a cul-de-sac off the more major route, Wall Way, so named because of its proximity to the city's high defensive encirclement. The woman was rather ordinary looking and dressed simply. Her hair showed some of its former strawberry blond luster, but was mostly soft gray, and her shoulders appeared just a bit too wide in support of her smallish head. But she always had a kind word for her fellow merchants, and always a disarming smile, and if she had ever fleeced a customer, none had ever complained.
Unassuming and simple, with few needs and plain tastes, Tazmikella did not have a fancy coach awaiting her departure. She walked, every night, the same route out of the city and to an unremarkable cabin set on the side of a hillock.
The woman coming out of Ilnezhara's Gold Coins across the street from her
could not have appeared more contrary. She stood straight, tall, and thin, with a shock of thick, copper-colored hair and huge blue eyes. She was dressed in the finest of threads, and a handsome coach driven by a team of shining horses awaited her.
"Can I offer you a ride, poor dear?" Ilnezhara asked her counterpart, as she did every evening—much to the amusement of the other merchants, who often whispered and chortled about the pair and their rivalry.
"I was given legs for a purpose," Tazmikella responded on cue.
"To the city gates, at least?" Ilnezhara continued, to which Tazmikella merely waved her hand and walked on by, as she did every night.
Any witnesses watching more closely that night might have seen something a bit out of the ordinary, though, for as Tazmikella passed by Ilnezhara's coach, she turned her head slightly and offered the tall woman the slightest of nods, and received one in return.
Tazmikella was out of the city in short order, moving far from the torchlit wall toward the lonely hill where she kept her modest home. At the base of that hill, in nearly complete darkness, she surveyed all the land around her, ensuring that she was alone. She moved to a wide clearing beyond a shielding line of thick pines. In the middle, she closed her eyes and slipped out of her clothes. Tazmikella hated wearing clothes, and could never understand the need of humans to hide their natural forms. She always thought that level of shame and modesty to be reflective of a race that could not elevate itself above its apparent limitations, a race that insisted on subjugating itself to more powerful beings instead of standing as their own gods in proud self-determination.
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 night bird, or a bat, flying low?
She was not concerned. She was naked in the night air, above such concerns. She was free.
Tazmikella 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.
The dragon stayed 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 largest tavern was bright and noisy. They still celebrated the victory over the Zhengyian 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.
* * * * *
The dragon arrived back on the hillside outside of Heliogabalus shortly before the dawn. She dressed and rubbed her weary eyes, but she did not return to her home. Rather, she moved south to a singular tower, the home of her sister. She didn't bother knocking, for she was expected.
"It was that easily discerned that you did not even need a full day at the site?" the taller, copper-haired Ilnezhara said as soon as Tazmikella entered.
"It was exactly as we feared."
"A Zhengyian tome, animated by the captured soul of a dead dragon?"
"Urshula, I think."
"The black?"
"The same."
"And the book?"
"Destroyed. Torn and burned. The work of Jarlaxle, I would expect. That one is too clever to allow such a treasure to escape his greedy hands. He saw the truth of Zhengyian tomes when he destroyed Herminicle's tower."
"And we offered him too many clues," Ilnezhara added.
They both paused and considered the scenario unfolding before them. Ilnezhara and Tazmikella had been approached by Zhengyi those years before with a tempting offer. If they served beside his conquering armies, he would reward them each with an enchanted phylactery, waiting to rescue their spirits when they died. Zhengyi had offered the sisters immortality in the form of lichdom.
But the price was too high, they had agreed, and while the prospect of surviving as a dracolich might be better than death, it was anything but appealing.
"Jarlaxle understood exactly what was buried within the pages of Zhengyi's book, so we can only assume that he has Urshula now, safely tucked away in a pocket," Tazm
ikella said after a long while.
"This drow plays dangerous games," said Ilnezhara. "If he knows the power of the phylactery, does he also understand the magic behind it? Will Jarlaxle begin tempting dragons to his side, as did Zhengyi?"
"If he walks into Heliogabalus and offers us a dark pact toward lichdom, I will bite him in half," Tazmikella promised.
Ilnezhara put on a pouting expression. "Could you not just chain him and hand him to me, that I might use him as I please for a few centuries?"
"Sister…." Tazmikella warned.
Ilnezhara simply laughed in response, but it was a chuckle edged with nervous tension. For both of them were beginning to understand that Jarlaxle, a creature they considered a minion, was not to be taken lightly.
"Jarlaxle and Entreri defeated a dracolich," Tazmikella stated, and there was no further laughter. "And Urshula the Black was no minor wyrm in life or death."
"And now he is in Jarlaxle's pocket, figuratively and literally."
"We should talk to those two."
Ilnezhara nodded her agreement.
* * * * *
Every so often in his life, the fiercely independent Artemis Entreri found himself in a time and place not of his choosing, and from which he could not immediately escape. It had been so for months in Menzoberranzan, when Jarlaxle had rescued him from a disastrous fight with Drizzt Do'Urden outside of Mithral Hall and had taken him back with the dark elves on their retreat from the dwarf lands.
It had been so quite often in his younger days, serving the dangerous Basadoni Guild in Calimport. In those early phases of his career, Artemis Entreri had done what he was told, when he was told. On those occasions when his assignment was not to his liking, the younger Entreri had just shrugged and accepted it—what else was he to do?
As he got older, more experienced and with a reputation that made even the Pashas nervous, Entreri accepted the assignments of his choosing, and no one else's. Still, every so often, he found himself in a place where he did not wish to be, as it was that morning in Bloodstone Village.
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