The Rite

by Richard Lee Byers

  “Lie down,” Lareth said.

  Tamarand peered at him and asked, “What?”

  “You heard me. I’m going to put you back to sleep. You think I’m displaying signs of instability, but in fact, you are. You don’t recognize it because that’s the insidious nature of the affliction.”

  “Was I irrational when I stopped you from attacking Azhaq without cause?”

  “No, but you are now.”

  “When you roused me, you said it was because you yourself needed rest.”

  “I was suffering dark fancies, the same kind that plague us all. It’s nothing I can’t endure for a while longer.”

  “But you don’t have to! If you don’t trust me, wake Nexus, or one of the others.”

  Lareth hesitated. “Well, I admit, that makes sense. As soon as you’re asleep, I will.”

  Then Tamarand hesitated. “Your Resplendence …”

  “Lie down, old friend. I know your mind is in turmoil, but trust me, as we have always trusted one another down the centuries. Or are you turning rogue on me as well?”

  Tamarand stood silent for a moment or two, then said, “Of course, I trust and obey you, my liege, as I have always done.”

  Lareth cast the enchantment of slumber on Tamarand then returned to the outcropping where he liked to perch. He experienced a twinge of guilt at lying to his lieutenant, but realized he simply didn’t feel inclined to sleep quite yet. Besides, it truly did make sense for the strongest to stand guard as much as possible and so shield lesser drakes from the ravages of frenzy.

  It occurred to Lareth that he ought to resume his gnome disguise. Wearing the shape of one of the small folk enhanced a dragon’s ability to resist the Rage. But he didn’t feel like doing that, either. He was too tense, too frustrated by Karasendrieth’s continued defiance, and vexed by Tamarand’s questioning of his competence. At the moment, forsaking his draconic body would make him feel weak and vulnerable, and he very much wanted to feel strong.

  Sammaster stood on a ledge in the morning light and watched the orcs stream like ants through Bloodstone Pass. With their access to the lands beyond secured, some of the goblin kin were attacking the various settlements inside the valley. From on high, the battles looked like black twitching knots on the ground. Pillars of gray smoke from burning villages and isolated crofts billowed up to foul the sky.

  At first, Sammaster felt satisfied. He didn’t know if the brutish inhabitants of Vaasa would actually succeed in conquering Damara, but he didn’t care. His only purpose had been to plunge the region into a bloody chaos that would inhibit any effort to find the source of the secret power he’d mastered and halt the process he’d set in motion. Until such time as it didn’t matter anymore. Until he and the Cult of the Dragon had created enough dracoliches to subjugate the world and grind humans, dwarves, orcs, giants, and all other races into subservience.

  Gradually, though, as was often the case when, to all appearances, everything was going well, the dead man felt contentment eroding into doubt. So many times before, he’d imagined himself on the brink of triumph, only to have one or another of his countless enemies, all the folk who feared and envied his incomparable intellect and magical prowess, thwart and humiliate him, sundering him from the mortal plane for decades, or plunging him into self-loathing and despair.

  This time, he reassured himself, he’d planned so well and acquired a tool so powerful that he couldn’t possibly fail, yet even so, he wondered. He knew that somewhere there existed an unknown adversary who’d stolen the notes he’d cached in Lyrabar. For a variety of reasons, no one could decipher those pages, and even if somebody managed, it was inconceivable that he could put the information to use in the relatively brief time remaining. But still, if anyone did….!

  Sammaster had already decided he couldn’t spare the time to hunt down the thief. Though his cultists were useful in their fashion, there were too many tasks across the length and breadth of Faerûn that only the lich himself could perform if his schemes were to come to fruition. As he brooded, it occurred to him that he could take one additional measure to guarantee no one else would discover his secret, if only to buttress his peace of mind.

  He swept his skeletal hands through an intricate pass and said, “Come to me, Malazan.”

  The red dragon would heed the call wherever she was, and sense in which direction she ought to travel. Since no compulsion was involved, Sammaster could only hope she would choose to heed him. Under normal circumstances, the reptile probably would, but if she happened to be berserk in the midst of combat, her scales sweating blood and her already awesome strength and ferocity amplified to preternatural levels, that would be a different matter.

  Soon a crimson dot rose up from one of the watchtowers along the Damaran Gate, circled, and soared in Sammaster’s direction. The lich’s eyes were shriveled, decaying things, but their vision was keener than in life, and he soon discerned a superficial cut on Malazan’s shoulder, and a trivial tear in one membranous wing. As he’d expected, she had done more fighting since he’d seen her last, but if she’d chosen to invoke the demonic fury that was her particular gift, the fit had already passed.

  Wings snapping and pounding, disturbing the air and making Sammaster’s regal purple cloak billow and flap, Malazan settled on the ledge, which was only just broad enough to contain her immensity. As had become his habit, Sammaster scrutinized her features and posture, looking for warning signs that she was about to go mad.

  He’d armored her mind, and the minds of all the Sacred Ones with whom he’d come in recent contact, against the Rage, but the protection wouldn’t hold forever. The curse cast by the ancient elves, the mythal he’d adapted to his own purposes, was too strong, and growing stronger by the hour. His wizardry notwithstanding, he would prefer not to be caught off guard if a dragon should lapse into frenzy.

  Malazan looked all right, though.

  “Good morning, Milady,” the lich said.

  “Your orcs now control almost the entire length of the Damaran Gate,” she said. “Only the larger castle remains in human hands, and I trust we can take it within a few days.”

  “You needn’t concern yourself with that. Even if the occupants manage to hold out indefinitely, it will do nothing to hinder our plans.”

  “‘Our plans,’” Malazan echoed. “Your plans, you mean. I still don’t understand why you want goblins scurrying all over Damara.”

  “As I explained, war serves our purposes. It will distract the likes of the Chosen and the Paladins of the Golden Cup from seeking out and destroying our hidden sanctuaries, thus denying you and your kin the opportunity to become undead and so escape eternal madness.”

  “I suppose,” Malazan said. “In any case, now that I’ve accomplished the task you set me, it’s time for me to repair to one of the havens myself.”

  It gratified Sammaster to glimpse how eager the red was to commence the process of transformation, how profoundly she feared the Rage. That was the point of all his work, to make her and the other chromatics feel that way.

  They couldn’t all become dracoliches right away, however. The process was too lengthy, difficult, and expensive, and the cult’s resources, too limited. Sammaster reckoned that while wyrms like Malazan waited their turns, he might as well make use of them.

  “I have one more task for you first,” he said.

  Malazan’s lambent eyes glared. A drop of blood oozed from her scaly brow.

  “Something else needs destroying,” the lich went on. “It shouldn’t take long. I’m not sending you alone.”

  “I’m tired of you presuming to send me at all. You’re the servant of dragonkind, not our master.”

  “I acknowledge it proudly. It is, however, equally true that I’m your friend and savior, and as such, have earned your respect. Now, you have three choices: You can simply renounce me and my followers, and in time succumb to the Rage. Or, if you want to punish me for what you see as my impertinence, we can fight. I warn you, though, th
at I’ve slain many wyrms before you—bronzes, silvers, and even golds—and that even if you manage to destroy me, once again, the end result will be that you fall into frenzy. Or, you can cooperate, perform one more piddling chore to our mutual benefit, and claim your immortality.”

  Malazan spat a tongue of yellow flame, but not at Sammaster.

  “What do you want me to do?” the dragon growled.

  19 Mirtul, the Year of Rogue Dragons

  The sailors cried out at the sight of the dot sweeping through the blue sky above the northern shore. Taegan Nightwind, whose avariel eyes were sharper than a human’s, made haste to reassure his companions: “It’s a metallic dragon. Brass, I think.”

  “What’s the difference?” said Phylas, he of the shaggy hair and surly disposition, and Taegan had to admit he had a point. In such a grim time as the Rage, any wyrm, even a member of a species generally considered benign, could pose a danger.

  The weather-beaten, almost toothless captain of the fishing vessel, however, chose to take the crewman to task.

  “Swallow your tongue,” he said, which was evidently a Moonsea way of rebuking someone for speaking out of turn. “Not all dragons have turned wicked. Think of Kara.”

  Despite his general distemper, Phylas had the grace to look abashed.

  From what Taegan had gathered, Kara, Dorn Graybrook, Will Turnstone, Pavel Shemov, and Raryn Snowstealer had done Elmwood a considerable service by ridding it of a force of occupying Zhents. Accordingly, when the winged elf arrived in the village and explained that he was a friend of those very heroes, trying to catch up with them, the townsfolk had insisted on helping him cross the great freshwater lake called the Moonsea free of charge.

  The brass dragon swooped down among the towers of Thentia and disappeared, without breathing fire or casting an attack spell, and without anyone ringing an alarm bell or shooting arrows at it. Presumably it was one of Kara’s rogues, carrying some new bit of information to the town’s community of wizards, those eccentric, fiercely independent arcanists who, by Pavel’s reckoning, constituted the best hope of unraveling the mysteries of the Rage before it was too late. The locals had likely grown accustomed to the wyrms coming and going.

  His iridescent scales rippling with rainbows, silvery butterfly wings beating, Jivex flew across the deck. He too was a drake, a faerie dragon, though the members of his particular forest-dwelling species were tiny compared to their colossal kindred. From the tip of his snout to the end of his constantly flicking tail, Jivex was only as long as Taegan’s arm.

  “You see,” Jivex said, jerking his head in the direction of the since-vanished brass dragon, “that’s how creatures with wings are supposed to get around. We ought to try it sometime.”

  The reptile had suffered a bout of seasickness during the first few hours of the voyage, and in consequence had evidently resolved to despise all boats forever after.

  “I humbly beg your problem,” Taegan replied, “for selecting this mode of transport. Silly me, I thought it might be imprudent to fly out over a large body of open water with no clear idea how far it was to the other shore, and nowhere to set down if our strength flagged.”

  Jivex snorted. “Well, can we get off the boat now?”

  Taegan realized that was a good idea. Why creep slowly on into port when their wings could carry them there in a fraction of the time?

  He turned to the captain and said, “With your kind permission, I believe we will take our leave now.”

  “It’s all right with us,” the sailor said. “The sooner we get back to netting fish, the better off we’ll be.”

  “Well, then, Sune bless you all.”

  Taegan leaped up from the deck, pounded his black-feathered wings to gain altitude, caught an updraft, and flew on over the purple-blue water. The sun warmed his outstretched pinions. Maybe spring truly had arrived, even in the chilly northern lands.

  His wings a platinum blur, Jivex took up a position beside Taegan, close enough for the two to converse.

  “What will Thentia be like?” asked the drake.

  “I’ve never been there. All I know about the place is that it’s famous for its wizards.” Taegan’s fancy warmed to the idea. “So probably, the dogs and cats can talk, every woman saunters about cloaked in glamours to make her look as delectable as Lady Firehair herself, and the alchemists amuse themselves by turning all base metals into gold. Naturally, no one has to do any work. The mages have conjured demon slaves to perform every task, from chopping wood to swamping out the privies.”

  “Do you really think the wizards can stop the Rage?”

  Taegan realized from the unaccustomed plaintive note in his companion’s voice that Jivex was looking for reassurance. He must have suffered nightmares again the past night.

  “I’m sure they can,” the avariel lied. “What one wizard can do, even if the mage in question is Sammaster, a whole coven of them can surely undo.”

  They soared on over the docks and on into the center of Thentia. Peering down at the narrow, muddy streets and steeply pitched shingled rooftops, Taegan saw no wonders to betray the fact that the place was home to a plenitude of powerful mages. Thentia seemed a typical Moonsea town, a raw, rugged place that, for the most part, looked as if it had been knocked down and rebuilt so many times that the inhabitants had learned not to invest any time in creating ornate architecture or other civic amenities.

  It did have a couple notable structures, though. One was a white marble temple whose stained glass windows bore the eyes-and-stars symbol of Selûne, goddess of the moon. Another was a tower painted in the most garish manner imaginable, with vertical streaks of red, yellow, and orange. The brass dragon had landed in the spire’s courtyard and crouched with its head and neck stuck through the principal entry. As Taegan and Jivex swooped lower, the wyrm flattened its wings against its back and crawled completely inside, passing through the high, wide double doors with scarcely an inch to spare.

  Taegan landed and started to follow, with Jivex flitting along beside him. A burly doorman with battered ears and a broken nose, clad in livery of the same bright hues disfiguring the tower, started to block the way, then goggled as he took a better look at the newcomers.

  “The avariel,” he said.

  Taegan didn’t actually like being called an avariel. Years before, he’d thrown in his lot with the human race, which, in his view, had built a splendid civilization while his own timid, primitive folk hid from the rest of the world. But he supposed that in this situation, the important thing was that the servant had heard about the winged elf who’d acquired Sammaster’s folio.

  “That’s correct,” he said, “I’m Maestro Taegan Nightwind.” Maestro of nothing, some might say, since the Cult of the Dragon burned his fencing academy to the ground, but entitled to the honorific of a master-of-arms nonetheless.

  “And I’m Jivex,” the faerie dragon declared, “Lord of the Gray Forest. Well, part of it. Sort of.”

  “Kara said you might come,” the doorman said, “when you finished your work in Impiltur.”

  “When we parted, I had no idea I’d do any such thing, so I can only marvel at her perspicacity,” Taegan said with a grin. “Is she here? Or Dorn, or Pavel?”

  The big man shook his head. “No, none of them. They’ve all traveled to one godsforsaken place or another, looking for the information the wizards need.”

  “Well, I suppose it doesn’t really matter. I actually came to join the search for knowledge. I simply need the wizards to assign me a task.”

  “I’m sure Firefingers—Flammuldinath Thuldoum, my master—will be glad to oblige.”

  Dorn had mentioned “Firefingers,” and Taegan suddenly understood the colors of the tower, and of the doorman’s livery. “Your employer painted his home to resemble a flame,” he said.

  “Well, obviously,” said Jivex in a superior tone. “I saw that right away.”

  The doorman tried to smother a smile. “I’ll show you in.”

  At it
s base, the tower swelled into a ground floor the size of a villa. Once he entered, Taegan observed that much of the space constituted a single room, one Firefingers had evidently dedicated to the effort to end the Rage. The leaves from Sammaster’s folio lay scattered across several long tabletops, mingled with books, scrolls, scribbled notes, quills, and inkwells. Charcoal rubbings of inscriptions from ruins and tombs hung along the high plaster walls, among jottings and diagrams scrawled in multicolored chalk. The mages had likewise drawn intricate pentacles and conjuror’s circles in the open space in the middle of the floor.

  Taegan was reasonably certain he could spend tendays poring over the scholars’ work and emerge little wiser than before. He actually enjoyed considerable mastery of the specialized swordsman’s magic called bladesong, but that scarcely provided the breadth or depth of esoteric knowledge that a genuine wizard possessed. He could only hope that Dorn’s “partners,” who had for some years created the enchanted weapons the half-golem and his comrades used as beast hunters for hire, knew what they were doing.

  What they were doing at the moment, of course, was conferring with the brass dragon. Hunkered in the center of the room, its smooth, massive head plates nearly bumping the ceiling even so, the wyrm gleamed yellow in the white light of the floating orbs that provided illumination. Sharp blades grew from the underside of its lower jaw like extra fangs.

  A dozen mages clustered around the brass, too many for Taegan to take in all at once, but a few stood out from the crowd. Robed in scarlet, gold, and orange, the stooped, wrinkled codger with the white beard must be Firefingers. He looked like some fortunate child’s doting grandfather. In contrast, the colleague at his side, a beefy, middle-aged man with a square, florid face, slicked-back raven hair, and a patch covering his left eye, carried himself with an air of prickly self-importance. An elf with an alabaster complexion, a slender frame, and pointed ears like Taegan’s own listened to the conversation with his head cocked and a frown of concentration. A small, impish-looking lass in the silvery robes of a priestess of the Moonmaiden—she must be clever, if, young as she was, she’d mastered arcane and divine magic both—took notes on a slate, the chalk scritch-scritching away. While in a corner, apart from the rest, head bowed, stood a figure so thoroughly shrouded in a cloak and cowl that Taegan couldn’t tell if it was male or female, human, elf, or orc.