The Rite

by Richard Lee Byers

  “Wait here,” said the doorman, “and I’ll announce you.” He strode away.

  “This is stupid,” Jivex said. “We could announce ourselves.”

  “It’s a custom,” Taegan said. “People of a certain stature have servants to—”

  The brass roared, the bellow deafening in the enclosed space, and cocked its head back. Fighting the Cult of the Dragon in the Gray Forest, Taegan had faced enough hostile wyrms to understand what was happening. The brass was about to discharge its breath weapon.

  The air was warm, and even in the foothills of the harsh Galenas, patches of new green softened the stark contours of the slopes, while a first sprinkling of tiny white and purple wildflowers adorned the winding, ascending trail. Kara’s throbbing soprano voice made the landscape even more beguiling. Wearing her willowy human form, partly to shield herself from the Rage, mounted on a white mare, her flowing silver-blond hair shining in the sun, the dragon bard sang a poignant song of love lost and ultimately regained.

  As was often the case, to Dorn, the pleasures inherent in the moment felt like mockery, and why not? The simple truth was that things had turned to dung as usual. He, Kara, Raryn, and Chatulio wanted to reach their destination quickly, yet the need to avoid a flight of frenzied dragons had forced them north, off their chosen route and away from their goal. Moreover, he suspected that they were lost, despite Raryn’s uncanny sense of direction and Kara’s assurances that she knew the Galenas well.

  So glum was his humor that he almost told Kara to hold her tongue. Not long ago, he would have, particularly since she was really a dragon. He had, after all, spent decades hating wyrms, and indeed, despised them still. But since meeting Kara there were times when the loathing softened, moments when it even felt mean and wrong. It disturbed him to imagine that he might one day lose it entirely. It was who he was.

  Then Chatulio hissed, “Enough!”

  Though no shapeshifter like Kara, the copper dragon was a master of illusion, and he wore the semblance of Dorn’s huge—and comically ugly—swaybacked, cross-eyed, scrofulous piebald stallion. No actual horse, even the strongest, could have carried the weight of the half-golem’s massive frame and enchanted iron arm and leg up and down the steep trails for very long.

  Everyone else regarded the copper in surprise. Dorn belatedly realized that, wallowing in his own foul mood, he hadn’t noticed that Chatulio hadn’t cracked a joke or played a prank in several hours. That, coupled with the display of ill temper, was cause for concern.

  “Rage eating at you?” asked Raryn, seated on his shaggy brown pony. As always, it was difficult to tell where the squat arctic dwarf’s long white hair and goatee left off and his polar bear fur tunic began. His exposed skin was a flaking, sunburned red that would have been excruciating for a human, but caused his folk no distress whatsoever.

  “What do you think?” Chatulio snarled. “Of course it is, and that constant shrillness scraping at my brain …” He drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. “I’m sorry, bluebird. I didn’t mean it. You know I love your singing.”

  “It’s all right,” Kara said. “Too much of anything, even music, can wear on the nerves. I just went on and on because it helps me quell the frenzy in myself. Why don’t we play the riddle game instead?”

  Chatulio snorted. “We’d better play teams, and each partner up with one of the small folk. Otherwise, they won’t stand a—”

  “Hush!” said Raryn, holding up one broad, stubby-fingered hand. The dragons possessed inhumanly acute senses, but the dwarf ranger, relaxed as he often looked, was ever vigilant, and evidently he’d detected some sign of possible danger even before his reptilian comrades.

  After another moment, Dorn heard the same thing: clopping hooves, the creak of leather, and the clink of metal—riders coming down the trail.

  He cast about for a place to hide, but didn’t see one.

  Discerning the tenor of his thoughts, Kara said, “Chatulio or I can cast a magical concealment.”

  “And what then?” asked Dorn. “They’ll just bump into us, unless we turn and flee before them, back the way we came—or unless you sprout your wings and we all fly away, leaving the mounts behind. I say, let’s not bother. It’s people approaching, not crazed wyrms. We have no reason to think they mean us ill, and if they do, I reckon we can handle it.”

  “Sounds all right to me,” said Raryn.

  They headed cautiously on up the trail, rounded a bend, and came face to face with eight mounted warriors.

  By the look of their mismatched weapons and armor, kits plainly assembled from whatever gear they could get, the men-at-arms likely constituted the retinue of the petty lord of some tiny fiefdom thereabouts. The rider in the lead, a stout, graying man with a hawk-and-lily device painted on his kite shield, was evidently the nobleman himself, considering that a youth who strongly resembled him was carrying a banner embroidered with the same arms.

  Their spears and swords ready to hand, the men-at-arms eyed Dorn and his companions askance. The half-golem was used to it. His grotesque appearance, the talons and knuckle-spikes on his oversized iron fist and the gray metal half-mask encasing his left profile, often made strangers shy away from him. But even after all those years, it still brought a twinge of resentment jabbing through his guts.

  “It’s all right,” said Kara, holding up her empty hands to convey peaceful intentions. “We’re simply travelers, the same as you.” Maybe she was using magic to allay the warriors’ misgivings, but if so, the charm was subtle enough that Dorn couldn’t tell.

  The nobleman studied her face for another moment, then waved his hand. His entourage relaxed.

  “Well met,” he said. “My name is Josef Darag, master of Springhill. The lad is my son, Avel.”

  Kara made the introductions on her side.

  “What can you tell us,” Josef asked, “of the road that lies ahead?”

  “There was a dragon flight to the south,” Raryn said, “but as long as you stay on this trail, you may be all right.”

  Josef smiled a mirthless smile and said, “I suppose that in these times, that’s as much reassurance as anyone can expect.”

  “What waits ahead of us?” asked Dorn.

  “Trouble,” Josef said. “The Bandit Army has overrun a village.”

  Dorn frowned. “The which?”

  “Just brigands, basically,” Josef said, “for all their pretensions, who operate out of a hidden stronghold to the north. The king’s men have wiped out scores of them, but never seem to catch them all. By now, the ones up ahead are taking their pleasure with the captive women, and torturing folk to find out the location of any hidden wealth.

  “We almost rode right into the middle of the trouble,” the noble continued, “but at the last second, Avel made out what was going on, and we turned around before the raiders saw us. Luckily, we knew of another path that let us swing wide of the village. You can use it, too. When you come to the fork, go left.”

  “Thank you for the advice,” Kara said, then hesitated. “But I don’t understand. Surely you and your followers are some of ‘the king’s men,’ too. How can you turn your backs and leave the villagers to their fate?”

  Josef glared. “Are you presuming to instruct me on my duty?”

  “You have the air of a valiant knight,” Kara replied. “I’m sure you require no such instruction from me or anyone.”

  “Well, you’re right!” Josef took a breath, then continued in a softer tone, one that perhaps betrayed a hint of shame. “When we left Springhill, we were riding out to help our neighbors, to help all Damara, despite the risk involved in leaving our own home all but unguarded. We meant to join one of the companies the king was assembling to fight the dragons.”

  “What changed?” Raryn asked.

  “We heard that the Witch-King has risen, taken the Gates, and led his orcs into Damara once more. And Dragonsbane is dead. His officers deny it, but the word’s gotten out.”

  Raryn scratched the
chin concealed within his short ivory beard and said, “Seems to me that gave you even more reason to go ahead and enlist in your band of warriors.”

  “You’re an outlander,” Josef said, “so you don’t understand. The king was the only champion who could defeat Zhengyi, just as he was the only leader who could make the dukes forget their squabbles and stand together to serve the common weal. Without him, Damara will fall apart. By all accounts, it’s happening already. That means every lord must concentrate on protecting his own vassals, and I’m working on getting home to look after mine. So perhaps you could let us by.”

  “As you wish,” Kara said. She guided her mare to the edge of the trail, and Raryn followed suit with his pony. Chatulio naturally needed no prompting, though it must have taken some effort for him to make sure none of Josef’s company brushed against an unseen folded wing, scaly flank, or serpentine tail.

  Once the warriors disappeared around the bend, Dorn growled, “Wonderful. It sounds like nobody can travel anywhere in Damara without wading through goblins, bandits, necromancers, and the Beastlord only knows what else. And according to Pavel, we seekers have plenty of sites to visit hereabouts.”

  “It can’t be much worse than contending with dragon cultists and Zhents,” Raryn said. “We’ll solve the problems as they come, the way we always do. The one we’re facing now is that village.”

  “If a Damaran knight thinks it’s none of his business,” Dorn said, “then it’s certainly not ours, either. Our job is stopping the Rage, and if we let every farmer’s hard luck distract us …” He spat. “Ah, to the Abyss with it. It’s just a few bandits. It’ll probably take less time to smash through them than it would to go the long way around.”

  Kara gave him a smile of approval and amusement, too, as if his initial display of reluctance had been a kind of private joke between the two of them. It made him uncomfortable, and his impulse was to turn away, but he surprised himself by responding with a fleeting twitch of a grin instead.

  Pavel paced back and forth and turned in circles, his gold-plated, garnet-studded sun amulet, symbol of Lathander, god of the dawn, clasped in one leather-gloved hand. Using the sensitivities his prayers had given him, the priest probed at the eroded stubs of what had once been standing stones, the patch of barren ground supporting them, and even the scummy, malodorous green surface of the lake that bordered it. By rights, his magically enhanced perceptions should reveal any hidden opening or lingering aura of enchantment in the area.

  “Well?” Will demanded. Clad in his brigandine, warsling dangling from his belt and his seemingly oversized curved, broad-bladed hunting sword hanging at his hip, the halfling with his black lovelocks stood holding his dappled pony and Pavel’s roan gelding while keeping an eye out for trouble. The two hunters had already discovered that in the so-called “Great Gray Land” of Thar, a hilly, windswept desolation inhabited primarily by orcs and ogres, danger was always close at hand.

  “Nothing,” Pavel admitted.

  “Charlatan,” Will sneered, but without the usual gusto. He was evidently discouraged, too, so much so that even their perpetual mock feud was losing its power to amuse.

  “We can keep trying tomorrow,” Pavel said. “After I pray for more divinatory spells at dawn.”

  “We’ve already been around the whole lake,” said Will.

  “I know.”

  Pavel walked to his horse, lifted a canteen from the saddle, and took a drink. The water, which he’d conjured into existence after they’d failed to find a wholesome-looking natural source, had grown lukewarm, but eased his dusty throat nonetheless.

  “Maybe we should give up on this site,” the halfling said. “You said yourself, Sammaster probably explored some places where there was nothing to find, or where the information was the same as what he’d already picked up elsewhere.”

  “True,” Pavel said, “but he wrote fifteen pages about this site, wherever it is. We can’t afford to ignore it.”

  “We can’t afford to spend years looking, either. So for once in your worthless life, you’d better come up with an idea.”

  Pavel only prayed he could, for his present failure had cured him of the cockiness from which he’d suffered ever since figuring out how to use Sammaster’s indecipherable notes. That success had made the priest of the Morninglord feel very clever indeed, until he and Will had come to Thar only to find nothing at all where, Pavel had been certain, an important site supposedly awaited them.

  His horse abruptly raised its head high. Its nostrils flared, and trying to back up, the animal pulled on its reins, dragging Will off balance. Pavel grabbed hold of the horse’s halter.

  “Something’s coming,” he said, keeping his voice low.

  “It’s nice you can figure something out,” Will said. “If it’s obvious enough.” He pointed. “See that hump of ground with the thorn bushes on top? We can hide behind it.”

  They urged their mounts to the cover. Pavel, who didn’t trust the skittish animals to keep quiet, murmured a prayer and swept his pendant through a mystic pass, scribing a symbol on the air. Points of light burned inside the garnets, and the moan of the wind and every other noise abruptly fell silent. While the spell lasted, no sound could exist in the space where the hunters crouched, which meant none could exit it to betray their presence, either.

  Pavel peered out at the ground along the shore, just in time to see a troupe of ogres tramp into view. Half again as tall as a tall man, long-armed, short-legged, covered in moles and warts, ogres were marauding, barbaric worshipers of the powers of darkness and a perennial scourge to humanity.

  But the band didn’t look as if it would bother anybody anytime soon. Apparently survivors of an encounter with one or more Rage-maddened wyrms, many limped, or bore ghastly wounds, huge, suppurating burns or long, bloody gashes. Perhaps the ogres had forsaken their usual territory to march to what they hoped would be a place of greater safety.

  In any event, only one of the brutes still carried itself with the air of belligerent arrogance Pavel would have expected. The largest, a male, swaggered at the head of the procession, its oversized head with its bristling mane thrust forward, the fangs of its protruding lower jaw jutting over its upper lip. Like many of its fellows, it too bore a fearsome wound, but not a recent one. At some point, something had torn the right side of the ogre’s face open. As a result, too much of the eyeball showed, especially at the bottom, and the entire orb was a bloody red. The giant-kin wore only a bearskin wrapped around its waist, the better, Pavel assumed, to display the sigils of Vaprak and other malevolent spirits branded into its flesh—it must be the clan shaman.

  Pavel waited for the ogres to trudge out of sight, then gestured to convey the idea that he and Will needed to shadow them. Unable to ask verbal questions or argue inside the pocket of silence, the halfling settled for giving his human partner a dubious look, then shrugged and patted the pouch on his belt, reflexively making sure he still had a good supply of skiprocks for his sling.

  The mages of Thentia might be powerful, but they could be surprised like anyone else. Startled by the brass dragon’s sudden aggressive display, they froze.

  Taegan drew his cut-and-thrust sword and leaped. Wings pounding, he hurtled forward over the worktables and chalked pentacles on the floor. Jivex streaked along beside him. They reached the brass an instant before it would otherwise have spewed its fire. The avariel drove his point into its haunch, and Jivex bathed a patch of its scales in his own sparkling—and if they were very lucky, euphoria-inducing—breath.

  Its sweeping tail smashing furniture and knocking mages off their feet, the brass rounded on its attackers without bothering to spit flame at its original targets. As Taegan had feared, the immense yellow wyrm looked anything but giddy. Jivex’s breath was potent against hobgoblins and such, but less efficacious against drakes a hundred times larger than himself.

  “Watch out!” Taegan shouted, springing to one side.

  The plume of flame erupted from t
he brass an instant later, and missed him by inches. Squinting against the brilliance of the flare, he couldn’t see Jivex, and didn’t know whether the faerie dragon had successfully dodged.

  Taegan kept on scrambling, trying to stay ahead of the wheeling brass’s jaws and foreclaws, and jabbered an incantation. He didn’t have any enchantments in place to enhance his prowess—he hadn’t expected to require them—but he needed to conjure some quickly, before his adversary overwhelmed him.

  Power whined through the air, and the brass struck at him like an adder. He saw that it was going to miss, though, no doubt because of his first trick. At the moment, it was seeing him slightly offset from his actual location. Its prodigious fangs clashed shut on empty air, and before it could whip its head away, he cut at its throat. Unfortunately, the sword glanced off its scales.

  At the same instant, Jivex, seemingly unharmed, soared up behind the brass and hovered, staring at it intently. Probably he was trying to use one of his magical abilities against the larger wyrm, but to no apparent effect. The brass flicked a wing, and Jivex had to break off the effort to dodge the huge vaned membrane with the tarnished-looking green edge that would otherwise have swatted him like a fly.

  Taegan spread his pinions and flew. He had to keep moving, too, didn’t dare let the brass maneuver into a position where it could use its fangs, claws, flame, and other attacks to best effect. His subtle defensive illusion wouldn’t save him from that. As he climbed almost to the ceiling, then dived nearly to the floor, trying to confuse his adversary, he recited another incantation, and caught a glimpse of some of the mages.