The Rite

by Richard Lee Byers

  “I don’t see,” Phourkyn said, “that this posturing oaf can ‘force’ us to do anything. We mages are the real power in Thentia. Apparently, because we don’t abuse our strength, some folk underestimate it, but I can remedy that.”

  He gestured, and a pair of glass vials appeared in his hand. Blue smoke curled around his fingers.

  Sinylla Zoranyian, the lass who’d healed Taegan’s blisters, and who sat across the room from Phourkyn with two other petite priestesses to whom she bore a familial resemblance, sprang to her feet.

  “No!” she cried.

  Rilitar leaped up, too, and snatched out the topaz-tipped oak wand he wore sheathed like a dagger on his belt.

  Phourkyn gave them both a sneer. “I would have changed him back,” he said, “but have it your way.”

  The vials vanished from his grasp.

  “If you’d actually cursed me,” grated Gelduth to Phourkyn, “I guarantee you, the entire city would have taken it as an act of treason, and none of you, even the most powerful, could survive for long with every hand against you.”

  “Phourkyn’s ill-considered jest has angered you,” Firefingers said, “and I don’t blame you. But surely we’ve no need to bandy threats about.”

  “I’m speaking bluntly,” the Watchlord said, “because apparently it’s the only way to stab through your conceit and make you hear. The rest of Thentia puts up with a good deal from you lot and your lunatic experiments. We tolerate foul stenches, flying rats, milk that spurts from the udder already sour, and shoes that clomp around all night by themselves. But we won’t suffer slaughter and destruction that a bit of simple prudence might have prevented.”

  “Lord Blackturret,” said Taegan, “I realize you don’t know me, but I implore you to reconsider. I was present when the brass dragon lapsed into frenzy. Firefingers and his circle killed it easily, before it could harm anyone or escape the building. Surely that demonstrates their ability to manage any potential hazard.”

  “What if the wyrm had gone mad before it reached the tower,” Gelduth said, “or immediately after it departed?”

  Taegan smiled. “Well, having observed a fair number of dragons lost to frenzy, I can assure you, the creature wouldn’t have been subtle about it. The whole town would have heard it roaring and smashing about. Whereupon the wizards, many of whom can transport themselves instantly from one location to another, would have rushed to the scene to eliminate the threat.”

  “Maybe it is certain they could overcome a drake,” Gelduth said, “but you can’t tell me it might not kill some people first.”

  “True,” the avariel said, “but I ask you to balance the danger against the potential benefit. This Rage is more terrible than any in memory, and your part of the North is crawling with wyrms. Surely you’ve heard about the devastating attacks on Teshwave and Melvaunt. It’s only a matter of time before an entire flight of dragons hurls itself at Thentia. Unless, that is, your mages can quell the frenzy first.”

  “Maestro Nightwind’s right,” Rilitar said. “We enchanters are your best hope, as we’ve always been Thentia’s bulwark against the Zhents and all the other folk who wish it ill. By Corellon’s silver sword, we understand that our fellow citizens are frightened. Rest assured, we are, too. But we beg you to trust us. We haven’t let you down yet, have we?”

  The Watchlord glowered for a time. Finally he said, “I’ll think more on this, and let you know my decision.”

  He stalked out of the chamber, followed once again by his attendants.

  “That,” said Sinylla, a hint of laughter in her voice, “is how a dignitary lets you know he’s changed his mind. It would wound his pride to admit it outright.”

  “He’s changed it for now,” Phourkyn said. “If another of our wyrms goes mad, he’ll change it back again, and pleading won’t sway him. You should have let me teach him some respect.”

  “I’m sorry,” Firefingers said, “that’s not how things are done in my home.”

  “Has it occurred to anyone,” asked Scattercloak, “that Gelduth Blackturret may have a point?”

  Firefingers’s faded blue eyes narrowed beneath their scraggly white brows. “How do you mean?”

  “To dissuade the Watchlord,” Scattercloak said, “Maestro Nightwind made us out to be invincible dragon slayers. But the truth is, the brass might have killed us all if he and his companion hadn’t intervened.”

  Jivex preened at this acknowledgment of his valor.

  “I was right,” Phourkyn said, “you are a coward.”

  “Only idiots,” the shrouded wizard said, “have no fear of dragons.”

  Some of his fellows muttered in agreement.

  “It was a fluke,” said Rilitar, “that Samdralyrion snapped precisely when he did.”

  “Perhaps we can look forward to more such flukes,” said a small, plump wizard clad all in white with azure trim, “considering that the Rage keeps waxing stronger. What if we do welcome a dragon into town, it goes mad and kills an innocent, and everyone holds us responsible? I fled here after deserting the Cloaks, with half of Mulmaster on my tail. Thentia is my sanctuary. I don’t want the nobles to cast me out.”

  From the murmur of sympathy, Taegan gathered that a good many of the wizards were, for all their arcane might, fugitives and refugees of one sort or another.

  “You presumably don’t want scores of dragons to destroy Thentia, either,” Rilitar said.

  “That might never happen,” said one of the silver-robed priestesses.

  “Or it may,” Taegan said, “unless you prevent it.”

  “But can we?” Scattercloak replied. “So far, we’ve made little progress.”

  “As Kara and the other seekers recover more information,” the bladesinger said, “that will change.”

  “We don’t know that,” said the magician in white. “All we do know is that one of us has already died investigating this matter, and that many more could have perished yesterday.”

  Phourkyn made a spitting sound. “True wizards are willing to risk their lives to discover new lore.”

  Taegan turned to Rilitar and whispered, “Who died, and how?”

  “Her name was Lissa Uvarrk,” Rilitar said, “a gnome, quite adept at transmutation. She was working alone at home when, as best we can judge, she called up a spirit that slipped the leash. It ripped her apart and burned her, too.” Then one of Scattercloak’s remarks snagged his attention, and he leaned forward, eager to refute it.

  The argument rambled on for a couple more minutes, growing steadily more contentious, until the warlocks were shouting all at once. Finally Firefingers rose from his ornately carved high-backed chair and snapped the fingers of both hands. A spherical blast of flame exploded above his head. The flash was blinding, the boom, deafening. Startled, everyone else fell silent.

  “We made a promise,” the old man said, “to aid Karasendrieth, and I intend to honor it. A great deal—perhaps even the fate of the world—depends on it. If you’re the wizards I think you are, you’ll do the same. If not, then all you need do to keep yourselves safe—until a dragon flight targets Thentia, anyway—is refuse to help any further. No one can force you. But if anyone does intend to turn his back on this enterprise, do it now. Leave my house, and don’t come back. You won’t be welcome in the future.”

  Taegan could see that Firefingers had timed his ultimatum well. Despite all the complaints and misgivings, nobody had yet mustered the resolve to walk out, and so everyone stayed put. For the moment. Firefingers gave them all a grandfatherly smile.

  “Splendid. I knew I could count on you. Hurry and eat, your meal is getting cold.” The wrinkled, white-bearded mage turned to Taegan and Jivex and said, “When we finish here, we can go to my study and decide on an errand for you. Since you can fl—”

  Taegan interrupted the old man by lurching forward and coughing into his napkin, and kept on hacking until Firefingers and Rilitar were peering at him with concern.

  “Are you all right?” Fir
efingers asked.

  “Yes,” Taegan wheezed, dabbing at his eyes. “Well, no, not entirely. When Jivex and I fought green dragons in Impiltur, I inhaled a bit of their poison. My lungs haven’t been the same since, and I fear the smoke and cinders I breathed in yesterday damaged them still further. In all candor, I doubt I’m fit enough to continue my travels at present. May I please avail myself of your hospitality for a few more days?”

  25 Mirtul, the Year of Rogue Dragons

  Lying on his belly, Will peered down at the ogres shambling along the bottom of the ravine. Some of them glanced up from time to time, but didn’t see him. The gorge was too deep, and he was too adept at hiding.

  Still, shadowing giant-kin through unfamiliar territory was demanding, nerve-wracking work, and particularly unpleasant when one couldn’t see a point to it. As Will mounted his pony and rode back to the spot where Pavel waited, he could feel his patience fraying thin.

  “Did you get lost?” Pavel asked in a nasty tone. The lanky cleric stood holding his roan horse in a stand of gnarled, stunted trees. His days in Thar had given a haggard edge to his keen, handsome features. The hem of his cloak and stray strands of his hair stirred in the chilly, fitful breeze.

  “Nice,” said Will. “You loaf up here while I do the work, but naturally, it doesn’t stop you griping.”

  “I wasn’t complaining that you took your time,” said the priest. “I was honestly worried about you. The feebleminded can come to grief when they go off by themselves.”

  “You’d know, I suppose,” Will replied. “Your ogres are headed down a gully. We can parallel their track by keeping to the high ground. If you, in your idiocy, still think it’s worth doing.”

  “That rat pellet you call a brain hasn’t squeezed out any better ideas.” As if he’d suddenly glimpsed something from the corner of his eye, Pavel pivoted and peered upward. “Get under cover!”

  Will leaped off the pony, and he and the priest dragged their mounts into the center of the twisted trees. It was difficult. The low-hanging branches swiped and jabbed at the animals, who tried to balk.

  It was only when he’d concealed himself and the pony as well as possible that Will took the time to look for whatever Pavel had spotted. After a second, he saw it too, a serpentine, bat-winged shape wheeling against the leaden, overcast sky.

  The wyrm was azure. Blues were desert-dwellers, and Will had never encountered one before. He wondered if, maddened by the Rage, the reptile had wandered all the way from far Anauroch in search of prey.

  Wherever it had come from, he wished it hadn’t.

  “These trees are miserable cover,” he whispered. The branches above them had begun to put forth new leaves, but not in any great profusion. “Can you do something?”

  “I could try,” Pavel said, “but a patch of fog suddenly billowing into existence might catch the creature’s attention all by itself. We’re better off just crouching low and keeping still. I will wrap us in silence, to keep the animals quiet.”

  He gripped his sun amulet, murmured a prayer, and the world hushed, though Will could still feel his heart pounding in his chest.

  Finally, inevitably, the moment he dreaded arrived. The blue swooped lower … but not at them. It had spotted the ogres instead, and was making a pass over the ravine. Will heaved a sigh of relief.

  Somewhat to the halfling’s surprise, the blue didn’t attack at once. Rather, it climbed high into the sky again, then circled. The gray clouds started changing, massing into looming shapes like anvils. Light flickered in their bellies. The wind blew harder, flinging grit into the air.

  Pavel tied his horse to a branch, then beckoned for Will to follow him. Keeping low, the halfling obeyed, but only until they’d skulked to the edge of the trees, where he heard the wind howling, and the ogres clamoring down in their gorge. The blue hadn’t yet attacked them with fang, talon, or breath weapon, but it had done something on its initial pass. Will just hadn’t been able to tell. In any case, the important thing was that he and Pavel could talk.

  “Hold it!” he said. “What do you think you’re doing, breaking cover?”

  “If we’re lucky,” said Pavel, “the blue won’t notice us. It’s busy changing the weather.”

  “But why risk it?”

  “To help the ogres,” Pavel replied as he crept forward.

  “I’ve never hated you,” observed Will, following, “as much as I do right now.”

  As they stalked toward the ravine, Will felt as exposed and vulnerable as ever in his life. Even an expert housebreaker generally required cover to go undetected, and the barren moor had little to offer. He silently prayed to Brandobaris, Master of Stealth, to hide him and his demented friend, too.

  And perhaps the god heard, for the blue didn’t dive at them. Not yet.

  As they reached the ravine, thunder boomed. Will peered cautiously over the edge, then narrowed his eyes in surprise. Because to all appearances, the terrain at the bottom had changed, from hard, pebbly ground to muck, patches of which steamed, bubbled, and looked as if they’d burn the foot of anyone who trod in them. Stranger still, the lower portions of the gully walls had disappeared to reveal further expanses of the same hellish mud flats. Most of the ogres regarded the altered landscape with alarm and confusion. The shaman with the blood-red eye chanted and lashed his flint-tipped spear through a mystic pass, but whatever magic he was attempting, it didn’t seem to be working.

  “The blue cast an illusion.” said Pavel.

  “Obviously,” said Will, “but why?”

  Raindrops started falling.

  “For that,” said the priest.

  He brandished his pendant, recited a prayer, and grew taller, more impressive, the very definition of strength and wisdom. It was a glamour he used to make it easier to influence others. He stood up straight, revealing himself to the ogres. From the way the long-armed brutes with their warty hides gawked, it was obvious they could see him, though Will suspected that from their vantage point, Pavel appeared to be floating in midair.

  “What you’re seeing isn’t real,” Pavel called. Lightning flared, thunder roared, and the rain started hammering down in earnest. “You’re still in the ravine. Grope around, find the walls, and climb out, or at least, partway up.”

  His magically augmented force of personality wasn’t enough to deflect the ogres’ reflexive hatred of humans. Several heaved their long, heavy spears. He had to leap backward to avoid being spitted.

  Will was still hunkered down behind a bump in the ground. He popped up just long enough to spin his warsling and let fly. The skiprock cracked into one ogre’s skull, then rebounded to strike another in the ear. The brutes lurched off balance, their heads bloodied.

  “I’ll kill the next fool who raises a weapon,” he shouted.

  Pavel stepped back to the brink of the gully. “You’re caught in an illusion.”

  The ogre with the crimson eye snarled like a beast. “I know that, sun priest, but I can break us free. My god is stronger than yours.” He gripped his spear in both oversized knotted fists and raised it over his head in what was plainly the start of an invocation.

  “I didn’t cause this,” Pavel said, “a dragon did.” That made the shaman hesitate, and his followers babble. “The point was to disorient you and stop you from moving, and to hold you in place for the next attack. It’s coming now. Listen, and you’ll hear it.”

  Will strained, and after a moment caught the sound despite the intermittent bang of thunder and the constant drumming of the rain. It was a steady roaring, hurtling down the channel below him.

  The shaman heard it, too. “Feel around!” he shouted. “Grab on to something and climb, if you can!”

  The ogres had perhaps three seconds to obey his commands. Then the wall of water raced into view.

  Will knew that even the torrential rain couldn’t have produced a flash flood so quickly. The blue must have employed still more magic to amplify the force and volume of the surging water. It slamme
d into the ogres like a battering ram and swept over them like an avalanche, so that all but the few who’d managed to clamber highest on the invisible walls were lost from sight. The halfling was certain the rest were as good as dead.

  But when the water level dropped, he saw he was mistaken. Some ogres lay broken or had simply disappeared, but the majority, reeling, coughing, and sputtering, remained. They wouldn’t for long, though, unless they pulled themselves together.

  “Get ready to fight!” he shouted. “The dragon’s coming right behind the flood. It’s almost on top of you!”

  He couldn’t see the blue yet. The sheets of rain hid it. But it would follow up fast.

  Still knee-deep in streaming water, the ogres lifted their spears, stone axes, and war clubs.

  “Spread out!” Pavel shouted, and some of them waded apart.

  A moment later, a vertical thunderbolt blazed down the gully and through the midst of them. Those whom it struck were charred black and killed. The ogres on the periphery of the dazzling, sizzling flare, or who received some of its force through the water on the ground, jerked in agony.

  The blue lunged into view. Perhaps because the ravine was too narrow for it to comfortably spread its wings, it had opted to fight on the ground. It raked, and tore one still-paralyzed ogre apart; struck, and bit another in two.

  The giant-kin plainly needed someone to buy them time to rally. Will had no idea it was going to be him until he leaped over the edge of the ravine.

  Will was an accomplished climber and acrobat. Still, as he half rolled, half scrambled down the nearly vertical slope, he was pushing his skills to the limit. The rocky outcroppings were slick with rain, and once he dropped low enough to enter the heart of the illusion, he couldn’t even see them anymore. He had to rely on pure instinct to snatch for handholds in what appeared to be empty air.

  Somehow he found the first of them, then realized he couldn’t just tumble on down to the gully floor and attack the dragon’s belly as he’d initially intended. The water was deep enough to submerge him completely, and would likely sweep him away. He certainly wouldn’t be able to fight.