Jarlaxle couldn't help but smirk as he regarded that distant exchange, how Calihye gently placed her hand on Entreri's forearm as she spoke.
Ah, the manipulation of human women, Jarlaxle thought.
"Jarlaxle has been my friend for years, as well," Entreri replied. "We have business in Heliogabalus."
"Jarlaxle is not capable of handling your affairs alone?"
Entreri gave a chuckle. "You would have me trust him?"
Jarlaxle nodded his approval at that.
"I thought you were friends," Calihye said.
Entreri merely shrugged and looked back to his drink, set on the table before him.
Jarlaxle noted Calihye's expression, a bit of a frown showing around the edges of her mouth. As Entreri turned back to her, that frown disappeared in the blink of a drow's eye, upturning into a calming, assured smile.
"Interesting," the drow muttered under his breath.
"What is?" came a question before him, one that had him nearly jumping out of his boots. Before him stood a group of young men, boys actually, all of them staring at him, sizing him up from head to toe.
All of those stares reminded Jarlaxle keenly that he was out of his element, that he was among a suspicious throng of lesser creatures. He was a novelty, and though that was a position he had long coveted among the drow, among the surface races, it was both a blessing and a curse, an opportunity and a shackle.
"A good evening to you," he said to them, tipping his outrageous hat.
"They're saying ye killed a dragon," the same boy who had spoken before offered.
"Many," Jarlaxle replied with a wink.
"Tell us!" another of the group exclaimed.
"Ah, so many stories…" the drow began, and he started off for a nearby table, herding the boys before him.
He glanced back at Entreri and Calihye as he went, to see his friend with both hands wrapped around his mug, his head down. At his side, Calihye held his arm and stared at him, and try as he might, Jarlaxle could not read her expression.
* * * * *
Arrayan was thoroughly enjoying herself. All guilt had washed from her, finally. Even the defeat of the «living» castle had not allowed the woman to truly relax, for several people had died in battling that construct—a creation of her unwitting actions.
That was all behind her, though, for one night at least. The music, the drink, the cheers… had it all, just possibly, been worth it?
Sitting beside her, face down on the table—and that after clawing his way up from the floor—Olgerkhan snored contentedly. Dear Olgerkhan. He had been her truest friend when they had entered the castle, and had become her lover since they had left it. Soon they were to be married, and it was a day that could not come quickly enough for Arrayan. She had known the brutish half-orc for all of her life, but not until the crisis within the construct, when she had watched Olgerkhan sacrifice so much for her benefit, had she come to understand the truth of his feelings for her—and hers for him.
She reached over and tousled his hair, but he was too drunk to even respond. She had never seen Olgerkhan drunk before, for neither of them often partook of potent liquor. For herself, Arrayan had begun sipping her drinks more carefully hours before. She wasn't much of a drinker, and it hadn't taken a lot to set her head spinning. She was only just coming back to clarity, somewhat.
She was glad of that indeed when she noted the handsome and heroic bard striding her way, a huge smile on his face. Behind him, she caught a glimpse of her uncle Wingham, but the concern clearly stamped on his old face did not register with the tipsy woman.
"Milady Arrayan," Riordan Parnell said as he moved near to her. He dipped a graceful, arm-sweeping bow. "I feel that the warmth of the night has almost overcome me. I wish to take a short walk in the cool air outside, and would be honored if you would join me."
A flash of concern crossed Arrayan's face, and she was hardly aware of the movement as she looked to Olgerkhan.
"Ah, milady, I assure you that my intentions are nothing but honorable," Riordan said. "Your love for Olgerkhan is well known, and so appropriate, given the status that you two have rightly earned. You will be the most celebrated couple in Palishchuk, perhaps in all of Vaasa."
"Help me to rouse him, then," Arrayan replied, and she blushed as she realized that she slurred her words a bit. She reached over to grab Olgerkhan, but Riordan took her by the wrist.
"Just we two," he bade her. He glanced back over his shoulder, leading her gaze to Wingham.
The old half-orc still wore that grave look, but he nodded in response to Arrayan's questioning expression.
* * * * *
With a fair amount of potent liquor clouding Arrayan's thoughts, it was not hard for the powerful Riordan to weave a magical enchantment over her as they walked out of the tavern. By the time they'd moved only a block from the place, Arrayan had come to fully trust the handsome man from Damara.
In such a situation, it didn't take Riordan long to learn what he needed. He had heard of Mariabronne's demise already—that the ranger had been killed not by the dracolich, but by shadowy demons beforehand when he had been out scouting. Yet, strangely, Mariabronne's corpse had been found at the scene of the dracolich battle, bitten in half.
Riordan got the complete picture, including when three of the already dead companions—Mariabronne, Canthan, and Ellery—had walked past Arrayan to join in the fight. They had been animated by someone or something. Canthan had thrown spells in the dracolich fight, and the animated warrior and ranger had battled fiercely.
The magic that had brought their physical bodies to animation had been powerful, Riordan understood.
He listened intently as Arrayan lowered her voice and admitted the truth of Canthan's demise: that the man and the dwarf had turned on her and Olgerkhan, and had been stopped by Entreri and Jarlaxle. She lowered her voice even more as she recounted the last moments of Canthan's life, when Entreri's horrible, vampiric dagger had drawn forth his remaining life-force and transferred it to Olgerkhan.
Riordan's head spun. There was so much more to the whole business than anyone had understood. And what had happened to Ellery, Gareth's niece, a Commander of the Bloodstone Army? Even Arrayan didn't know, for the woman had remained behind the group with Jarlaxle, studying the tome, and had not returned with the mysterious drow to the room where Entreri had finished off Canthan.
And so Riordan's interrogation, for all the answers it provided, had only led him to so many more, and more intriguing, questions.
They were questions to which he would find no answers from either Arrayan or Olgerkhan, or anyone else in Palishchuk.
With so much to report, he escorted the woman back to the tavern and didn't even stay the night, collecting his mount from the stable and riding out into the darkness, galloping hard to the south.
At the same time, not far to the west, Emelyn the Gray, in the form of a night bird, sped the other way. The grumpy wizard had no intention of going into Palishchuk, so he skirted around the town to the west and veered back to the northeast. He found the castle easily enough and flew over the outer wall, reverting to his human form as he settled before the doors of the main keep. He took a moment to consider the broken chain on the doors.
"Hmm," he said, a sound he would repeat many times that night and the next morning, as he made his way through the Zhengyian construct.
CHAPTER 4
HOME, BITTER HOME
You should put the dragon statuette back," Jarlaxle remarked as he and Entreri arrived at the door to their apartment in Heliogabalus, a modest affair set on the second story of an unremarkable wooden building. Modest from outward appearances, at least, for inside lay the spoils of the pair's successful ventures before their trip north to Vaasa. Entreri and Jarlaxle were very good at gathering coin, and Jarlaxle in particular was very good at spending it.
"I left it in the castle," Entreri replied, an obvious lie that brought a grin to the drow. Never would Entreri leave behind such a
powerful tool as the statuette, which had proven instrumental in defeating the dracolich. That tiny, silvery item could be set as a trap, bringing forth the various breath forms of the deadly chromatic dragons.
"Perhaps I can persuade Tazmikella and Ilnezhara to provide us with another one," Jarlaxle said.
"And what else might you coerce from the dragon sisters?"
Jarlaxle feigned a wounded look.
"Now that you have proffered a bargaining chip, I mean," Entreri clarified.
Jarlaxle's expression shifted to one of confusion—again, obviously feigned.
"Immortality was the prize Zhengyi offered to the dragons," Entreri said. "The gem you took from the book—the second one, not the one from Herminicle's tower—would prove intriguing for our dragon friends, would it not?"
"Perhaps," the drow agreed. "Or perhaps they will find it revolting. Perhaps they will kill me if I even mention it, or if I reveal it but do not turn it over to them."
"Jarlaxle is nothing if not daring."
The drow shrugged and grinned. "Our dragon friends sent us to Vaasa to find just such a tome, and just such a phylactery. I am duty-bound to report to them in full."
"And to turn over the spoils?"
"The phylactery?" The drow scoffed. "I made no such agreement."
"They are dragons."
"And one is a fine lover. That changes nothing."
Entreri shuddered at the thought, which of course only made Jarlaxle smile all the wider.
"We were not sent to retrieve anything more than information, and so information I shall offer," said Jarlaxle. "Nothing less."
"And if they demand the phylactery?"
"It belongs to Urshula. I am simply holding it for him."
"And if they demand the phylactery?" Entreri asked again.
"They need not know—"
"They already know! They are dragons. They have lived in this region for centuries. They remember well the time of Zhengyi—perhaps they even fought beside him, or against him."
"Presumptions."
"They are dragons," Entreri said yet again. "Why do you not seem to understand that? You live through manipulation—never have I seen anyone better at playing the emotions of those around him. But these are dragons. They are not serving wenches or even human kings or queens. You play with a force you do not understand."
"I have played with greater, and won."
Entreri shook his head, certain then that they were doomed.
"Ever the worrier," said Jarlaxle. He had just hung his cloak on a hook, but took it back. "I will settle this, and calm your churning gut. Tazmikella and Ilnezhara are dragons—yes, my friend, I understand this—but they are copper dragons. Formidable in battle, of course, but not so much in the realm of the mind."
"You forget how they enlisted us in the first place," said Entreri.
Indeed, the dragon sisters had created an elaborate ruse to entwine the pair and to determine their intentions. Tazmikella had hired them, secretly and from afar, and when they had discovered the riddle of the woman—not that she was a dragon, but merely that she was the one who had hired them to acquire a certain candlestick—she had created a second ruse, claiming that Ilnezhara was her bitter and hated rival and that the woman was in possession of something that rightfully belonged to Tazmikella: Idalia's flute, the same magical instrument that had later been given to Entreri.
But the deception hadn't ended there, with a simple theft, for during that attempted robbery, Entreri and Jarlaxle had been shown the awful truth of Ilnezhara, revealed to them in her dragon form. Then she had wound a third level of intrigue, and yet another secret test, offering them their lives only on condition that they return to their former employer, Tazmikella, and kill her.
By any measure, even that of Entreri and Jarlaxle, the dragon sisters had played them for fools, and repeatedly.
Jarlaxle shrugged at the painful reminder and admitted, "A decent enough game they played, but one, no doubt, they had spent years perfecting. In Menzoberranzan, a ruse within a ruse within a ruse is an everyday affair, and usually spontaneously generated."
"And yet you were tripped up by theirs."
"Only because I did not expect—"
"You underestimated them."
"Because I believed them to be humans, of course, and it would be hard to underestimate a human."
"I am truly glad you feel that way."
Jarlaxle laughed. "I know they are dragons now."
"This woman you take as a lover," Entreri added dryly.
That gave Jarlaxle pause. "Because I love you as a brother, I pray that you will one day fathom the truth of it all, my friend."
"They're dragons," Entreri muttered. "And I know how drow love their brothers."
Jarlaxle sighed at his friend's unrelenting ignorance, then offered a salute embedded in a resigned sigh and slung his cloak over his shoulders. "I will return after sunset. Perhaps you would do well to run back to Vaasa and the castle and retrieve the statuette. And if you do, pray use the powers of white or blue. The fiery breath of a red dragon would not be wisely placed over our door—too much wood, of course."
* * * * *
The drow found his «employers» at Ilnezhara's tower. They always met there, rather than at the modest abode of Tazmikella. Perhaps that was an indication of Ilnezhara's haughtiness, her refusal to lower herself and venture to the hovel. Jarlaxle, of course, saw it a bit differently. Tazmikella's willingness to go to Ilnezhara's fabulous abode betrayed her true feelings, he believed. She pretended to care little for the niceties, but as with so many others who did likewise, it was a deception—a self-deception. So many people derided the materialistic tendencies of dragons, drow, humans, and dwarves… claiming that their own hearts were purer, their own designs more lofty and important, when in truth, they were merely deriding that which they believed they could not attain. Or if they could attain such things, they still used their «lofty» aspirations in the same manner the wealthy merchant used his gilded coach: to elevate themselves above other people.
That personal elevation was the true occupation of rational beings, even long-living creatures such as dragons.
"It was as we expected," Ilnezhara remarked after the initial greetings.
That it was she who had initiated the conversation and not the more typically forthcoming Tazmikella revealed the anxiety felt by both of the sisters.
"Your predictions that Zhengyi's library had been unearthed seem validated, yes," he answered. "You said there would be more constructs, and alas, that is what we found."
"One to dwarf Herminicle's tower," said Tazmikella, and the drow nodded.
"As a dragon might dwarf a human, in size and in strength," Ilnezhara added.
Jarlaxle didn't miss her point. The sisters knew that Zhengyi had enslaved dragons like Urshula the Black. They understood the magic that had created Herminicle's tower, and they had expected similar magic to reach to greater heights when fueled by a dragon.
So it was.
"The book was destroyed," Ilnezhara added.
"Unfortunately," said the drow.
"By Jarlaxle," the tall copper-haired creature said, and that put Jarlaxle back a step. "Or one like him," she quickly equivocated, "fast with the blade and with the spell."
Jarlaxle started to protest, but Tazmikella cut him short. "I went there," she said. "I ventured into the castle and found the podium in the main keep. I found the remnants of the book of creation, torn and burned."
Jarlaxle started to argue, then to deny, but he smiled instead, dipped a bow of congratulations to the deductive dragon, and said, "It had to be destroyed, of course."
"And the phylactery contained within?" asked Ilnezhara.
Jarlaxle's eyes shifted to take in the delicate creature, his lover, and his hand casually slipped near to the belt pouch on his right hip, wherein he kept a small orb that could blink him away from any threatening situation. Crushing that ceramic orb would throw him through the multivers
e—to where, to which plane of existence even, he could not predict.
In that moment, he figured that there were few places in the multiverse more adverse than in the den of a pair of angry dragons.
"Zhengyi created many such phylacteries," Tazmikella explained. "He tempted every dragon in the Bloodstone Lands with his promises, we two included. Our guess is that the castle north of Palishchuk contained the phylactery of the dracolich Urshula the Black."
Jarlaxle shrugged. "The acidic breath of the creature we battled was consistent with that."
"And the dracolich was destroyed?"
"With help from the statuette you wisely gave to me."
"And the phylactery was removed," Ilnezhara said.
Jarlaxle held his free hand out to the side as if he did not understand.
"The phylactery that was embedded in the tome of creation, which was shredded by Jarlaxle, was, therefore, removed," the dragon clarified.
"By you," her sister added.
The drow stepped back and brought his hand away from his pouch and up to his chin. "And if what you say is true?" he asked.
"Then you possess something you do not understand," Ilnezhara replied. "You have made your way by playing your wits against those you encounter. Now you are playing with dragons—with dead dragons. That seems not a healthy course."
"Your concern is touching."
"This is no game, Jarlaxle," Tazmikella said. "Zhengyi wove a complicated web. His temptations were…" She looked to her sister.
"Potent," Ilnezhara finished for her. "Who would not wish immortality?"
"There are phylacteries for Tazmikella and Ilnezhara?" Jarlaxle asked, catching on to their anxiety, finally.
"We did not ally with Zhengyi," Ilnezhara stated.
"Not by the time of his demise," the drow replied. "I would guess that many of your kind refused the Witch-King, until…"
He let that hang in the air.
"Until?" Tazmikella's tone showed that she was in no mood for cryptic games.
"Until the moment of truth," Jarlaxle explained. "Until the moment when the choice between oblivion and lichdom was laid bare."
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