The Rite

by Richard Lee Byers

  Chatulio hitched his wings in a shrug. “Maybe she’s afraid of Ishenalyr.”

  The red sprang to his feet. His throat swelled with the promise of fire, and sulphurous smoke streamed out of his nostrils and mouth when he roared, “Malazan fears nothing!”

  Chatulio was certain the red felt no affection for the ancient female, who treated all her troops with an arrogance that bordered on outright contempt. But apparently he’d rather give his loyalty to a leader of his own kind than to the rune-scarred green. Or simply to the dragon he regarded as the mightiest and most savage of them all.

  Chatulio inclined his head in a gesture of submission. “As you say. Malazan fears nothing. I spoke as a fool. But alas, I’m not the only fool among us. Someone should warn her that if she wants everyone to go on respecting her, she should squash the hidecarved like the impudent bug he is.”

  “I’d like to see that,” said the fire drake. “By all the princes of the Abyss, I would.”

  “Well,” said Chatulio, drawing himself to his feet, “you’ve had your suppers. I still need to catch mine, so I’ll bid you farewell.”

  He withdrew, but not to forage. That could wait until after his enchantment of persuasiveness wore off. Instead, he insinuated himself into another gathering of wyrms on the opposite face of the mountain, midway between the fortress and the glacier below. The ice glowed in the moonlight.

  Before long, he found the chance to say: “The reds and their cronies are grumbling again.”

  “Grumbling?” growled an earth drake, its massive body more like a rocky outcropping than the usual sinuous dragon form, its jade eyes gleaming.

  “They claim,” Chatulio said, “they bear the brunt of the fighting, while certain others engage the humans timidly, and turn tail at any little hurt.”

  “Which ‘certain others?’” demanded a fang dragon with an irritable snap of its stunted wings.

  “Those who look to Ishenalyr for leadership.”

  “Nonsense,” snarled a green, reeking of the corrosive poison that was its breath weapon. “If I take my cues from Ishenalyr, it’s because he’s crafty, and senses when the humans have set a snare. What’s the point of blundering recklessly into trouble, as Malazan routinely does?”

  “I agree,” Chatulio said.

  “If the fire wyrms say we don’t fight as hard as they do,” said the earth drake, “will they use that as an excuse to deny us our fair share of plunder at the end?”

  “No one had better try to deny me anything,” said the green.

  “We all feel that way,” Chatulio said, “but if Ishenalyr is gone by then, can the rest of us stand against Malazan and her supporters?”

  “Gone?” asked the fang wyrm, crimson eyes glaring from amid the rough, bony plates on its head.

  “Malazan knows Ishenalyr is more cunning than she is,” Chatulio said. “She knows we know it, too. Don’t you think she worries that we’ll renounce her and declare the hidecarved our chief instead? Well, it’s obvious enough how she can prevent it, and if she fears to face Ishenalyr in a fair fight, perhaps she can find a way to ensure he dies while attacking the monastery.”

  The green said, “Ishenalyr should strike first.”

  “Perhaps he will, if he realizes she’s plotting to destroy him. I hope he knows. I hope someone has warned him.”

  And so it went. The frustrated, suspicious dragons danced to Chatulio’s tune so readily it was all he could do to stifle his laughter.

  The rows of columns running down the sides of the corridor were just far enough apart for Taegan to spread his wings, and so he flew, with Jivex streaking along a yard or two ahead of him, and Phourkyn’s running footsteps pounding at his back.

  “There!” Jivex cried.

  “I see her,” Taegan replied.

  Evidently drawn by the same cries for help that had brought him, her usually impish face grim, petite Baerimel Dunnath stood before the entrance to a room, declaiming a rhyme and sweeping her dainty hands through cabalistic passes. Though not a priestess, the mage nonetheless wore a silvery gown, no doubt to honor the goddess to whom she’d pledged her service.

  Taegan landed beside her. Jivex hovered, his wings a blur.

  Beyond the arch was a music room, with risers along one wall where a choir might stand, concentric half-circles of chairs to seat an orchestra, and a miscellany of instruments—lyres, dulcimers, glaurs, yartings, and a towering silver-stringed harp—waiting for someone to play them.

  Perhaps Sinylla Zoranyian had entered the chamber to do precisely that, but another matter had taken precedence. Cloaked in a protective aura of light, blood staining her argent vestments, clutching at a chair to keep herself upright despite her gashed, burned legs, she conjured a barrier of floating, spinning blades into being. The chasme snarled a counterspell in its vile buzz of a voice, and Sinylla’s creation vanished. The demon followed up with a flash of flame that slammed her back against the wall.

  It seemed clear that, her powers notwithstanding, Sinylla was losing the fight. Baerimel plainly thought so too, and was frantic to aid her cousin. The problem was that something invisible to the eye but unyielding as granite to the touch sealed the doorway, and probably the chamber’s sole window as well. Apparently Baerimel could neither dissolve the barrier nor drive a spell through it.

  Taegan hoped that one of the charms he carried ready for the casting could succeed where she had failed. It was a pity he’d outdistanced Phourkyn, a more powerful magician, but he didn’t have time to wait for the one-eyed human to catch up.

  “Take hold of me,” he said, “both of you.”

  Baerimel gripped his forearm, and Jivex’s talons dug into his shoulder.

  He rattled off the incantation, and the world jumped. Abruptly he and his allies were inside the music room. At once, the heat of the chasme’s corona of flame pounded at him, and the drone of its wings was louder. The demon oriented on them, and Baerimel’s knees buckled. She fell heavily, knocking over a music stand and scattering the pages. Obviously, the chasme had afflicted her somehow.

  “Well,” said Jivex, “she was a lot of use.”

  Soaring up to the ceiling, he stared at the chasme, whereupon a crust of golden dust spread across the demon’s head, covering its round, bulging eyes.

  “Rouse her if you can,” Taegan said.

  He rushed the fly-thing, intent on attacking while it was blind. The avariel thrust his sword deep into the place where the tanar’ri’s head joined its torso. It was surely a grievous wound, but not enough to render the demon helpless. When he tried to pull the blade out of its body for a second attack, it gripped the sharp steel with its spindly fingers, and heedless of the cuts it thereby inflicted on itself, held the weapon in place. It snarled an incantation, and lightning flared down the sword into Taegan’s arm. He convulsed, time skipped, and he found himself lying on his back.

  Free of the blindfold of glittering dust, the chasme pounced at Taegan, fangs bared, hands poised to seize him. The avariel was still dazed from the hurt he’d taken, but a duelist’s trained reflexes flung him out of the way. He rolled to his feet, rattled off a rhyme, and lashed his hand through the proper passes. Several exact duplicates of himself, each mirroring his every move to perfection, sprang into existence around him.

  The chasme clawed at one of the images, which instantly burst into nothingness. The demon jabbed with its long, pointed snout and obliterated another. By that time, however, the real Taegan had maneuvered to within reach of the sword still jutting from the fly-creature’s neck. He grabbed the hilt, yanked it free, and went on the offensive once more.

  The chasme wasted another attack on one of his phantoms, and Taegan half severed one of its hind legs.

  Awake again, Baerimel conjured a wave of light that seemingly failed to affect it.

  Jivex breathed a plume of sparkling vapor over its blazing body. Taegan caught a stray whiff of the sweet-smelling stuff, and for an instant felt giddy, but the fly-thing merely gave a grati
ng snarl of annoyance.

  Still slumped by the wall, Sinylla started croaking an incantation. Unfortunately, no doubt due to her injuries, her voice faltered, and the cadence was ragged. It seemed unlikely that she’d succeed in creating whatever effect she intended.

  Attacking the chasme with wizardry was a chancy proposition anyway. The fly-thing possessed a measure of resistance. It couldn’t shrug off the bite of Taegan’s sword, though, and he lunged at it once more, while simultaneously weaving another defensive spell.

  He cut it twice while it raked, snapped, and gouged away the rest of his phantoms. Sinylla’s incantation simply stumbled to a halt, as if she’d fainted. Baerimel hurled silvery darts of force that blinked out of existence when they touched the chasme’s mantle of flame. Jivex swooped in and out of the cloud of fire to claw at the demon’s veined, membranous wings.

  Then Taegan plunged his sword into its chest. Its front legs crumpled, dumping its hideous, long-nosed parody of a human head on the floor. He raised his sword high for a decapitating stroke, and as soon he stood still and opened up his guard, the fly-demon sprang up at him. It had only pretended to be crippled, to lure its foe into a vulnerable stance.

  Its momentum hurled Taegan to the floor, with the tanar’ri on top of him. No doubt he would have perished instantly, if not for the enchantment he’d cast to ward himself. It had created an invisible shield to hover between himself and his foe, and it was actually that barrier the chasme was crouching on. The plane of force blocked the first of the demon’s ripping claw attacks, and kept Taegan from coming into full, lethal contact with its halo of fire.

  But the shield could only save him for a moment or two. His only real chance was to kill the tanar’ri before it killed him. Unable to use his sword properly in such close quarters, he took hold of it partway down the blade to wield it like a poniard. He stabbed and stabbed, and the chasme caught hold of his shoulder, its fiery talons plunging through his brigandine to pierce and burn the flesh beneath. Realizing it hadn’t achieved quite the hold it wanted, it released him to reach for his throat.

  He realized another second would tell the tale. After that, one of them would be dead.

  Then, however, Phourkyn shouted words of power, and green light pulsed through the air. The chasme jerked, screamed, and leaped off Taegan.

  The avariel gripped his sword by the hilt and scrambled to his feet, but not quite quickly enough. The whine of the chasme’s wings crescendoed into a deafening thunderclap that knocked Taegan, Phourkyn, and Baerimel staggering and tumbled Jivex through the air like a leaf in a gale. It bounced Sinylla where she lay inert on the floor.

  The chasme scrambled through the window and took flight. Taegan inferred that Phourkyn, panting, flushed, and sweaty-faced from sprinting through the temple, had used a counterspell to wipe away the magic blocking the door, and in so doing, had unsealed the window as well.

  Taegan took stock of his wounds and burns. They already smarted, and were likely to prove excruciating once the exhilaration of battle faded, but he’d functioned with worse.

  He pivoted toward Phourkyn and Baerimel and asked, “Can either of you fly?”

  “I don’t have the spell ready,” Phourkyn said.

  “Nor I,” said Baerimel. “Besides, my cousin—”

  “Of course. Help her.” Taegan looked to Jivex, whose scales were singed and seeping fluid. “Are you all right?”

  “We’re never going to catch the demon,” Jivex said, “if you stand around asking stupid questions.”

  He flew out the window, and Taegan followed.

  Winter having yielded its dominion to spring, the night air was pleasantly cool, not frigid. It felt good on Taegan’s blistered face. As he and Jivex pursued the chasme west over the rooftops, he brandished his sliver of licorice root, recited the proper incantation, and the jolt of the magic made his muscles jump.

  Jivex hissed at the momentary discomfort. “Don’t you know any other spells?”

  “None to make us fly faster. Do you want to catch the chasme or not?”

  “Yes, if it doesn’t disappear. Why do you think it hasn’t?”

  “Perhaps we wounded it severely enough that it lacks the strength to play that particular trick.”

  “Maybe,” the faerie dragon said. “I did tear it up pretty badly.”

  The chasme swooped down toward a large, slate-roofed building with a spire at each corner and a square open space at the center. It was the home and trading emporium of a pair of Zhentish merchants, disliked and mistrusted by many folk in Thentia, but tolerated for the coin their dealings in spice and perfume brought in. Did the chasme expect to find refuge inside?

  The demon dived down into the central cavity, and Taegan and Jivex plunged after him. The air around them smelled of the merchants’ aromatic wares, and of the night-blooming jasmine in the garden below. The white flowers, statuary, and gravel paths gleamed in the moonlight, and an artificial brook gurgled. Taegan reflected that he’d fought a good many duels in such pleasant, seemingly peaceful environs, and hoped he was about to fight another. He needed to rid Thentia’s mages of the chasme for good and all.

  But the demon wheeled, laughed, and vanished a bare instant before he could close to striking distance. He cursed.

  “We can break into the house,” Jivex said.

  “We don’t know that’s where the chasme actually went.”

  “It must have come here for some reason.”

  The drake was right, so what might be the explanation?

  Taegan realized that he and Jivex had followed the chasme down into what amounted to a box. It was a good place to lay a snare for enemies who flew. He gazed upward. Creatures with jutting reptilian jaws and barbed, serpentine tails scrambled from their hiding places in the corner towers, unfurling their rattling leathery wings and leaping into the air. From past experience, Taegan knew they were abishais, devils with draconic traits.

  “Look up,” the avariel said,

  Jivex hissed, “Well, at least I get to kill something.”

  May Lady Firehair make it so, Taegan thought. For in truth, there was a lot of abishais, and he’d already expended some of his most potent spells.

  A blue abishai hurtled down at him. He couldn’t see the color of its scales in the dark, but knew its scaly hide must be azure from the sparks sizzling and popping on the sting at the end of its tail. He waited until, fangs bared, talons poised to rend and tail to stab, it was nearly on top of him. Then he beat his wings and so jerked himself out of its path. As it streaked past, he cut at its head. An ordinary weapon wouldn’t hurt an abishai, but the sword Rilitar had given him was far from that, and it split the devil’s skull. The baatezu plummeted, slamming down in a flowerbed with a sickening thud.

  Taegan cast about, seeking his next foe. Its scales dark as pitch, reeking of the acid sweating from its sting, it was just above and behind him, its clawed, misshapen hand streaking at his wing. The avariel folded his pinions, dropping lower to dodge, and thrust backward over his shoulder. It was an awkward stroke with little strength behind it, but the best he could manage when he didn’t have time to spin around and face his adversary.

  The abishai’s talons ripped a shiny black feather or two from his wing, but failed to shred the muscle. His point drove an inch or so into its chest. It snapped its batlike wings, jerking itself up off the steel, and Jivex swooped down on its head, clawed away its eyes, and took flight once more. Shrieking, the baatezu flailed blindly about itself. Taegan left it to flounder while he sought a foe who still posed more of a danger.

  Sune knew, they weren’t hard to find. He killed a white abishai no taller than an avariel, though considerably thicker in the torso, then one of the gaunt, towering reds. The former had a sting covered in frost, the latter, one burning like a torch. As he fought, he doggedly labored to gain altitude, to take away the devils’ advantage in height and to climb above the surrounding walls, where he’d have more room to maneuver.

  Meanwhil
e, Jivex used his talons and fangs when he deemed it necessary, but mostly employed his magical abilities to fight at range. He repeatedly became invisible, then revealed himself once more in a new location, leading some of the abishais on a maddening chase that prevented them from swarming on Taegan. The faerie dragon also conjured a sheet of pearly fog to shroud several of the reptilian devils. After they flew out of the mist, they seemed slower, addled, more easily confused by the flashes of light and sudden blaring noises Jivex created to befuddle them. He even managed to bind the will of a green, which changed sides and defended him until other fiends ripped it apart.

  Still hard-pressed, the faerie dragon then summoned two gigantic owls. Each bird shimmered out of empty air, swooped, and drove its talons into an abishai.

  Taegan had learned that Jivex could only call such allies to his aid about once in every lunar cycle. Thus, it was a weapon to hold in reserve for moments of dire need. That moment surely was at hand.

  The owls only survived for a few heartbeats, but acquitted themselves well before the abishais killed them, and by taking some of the pressure off Taegan, enabled him to soar above the roof of the Zhents’ mansion.

  He caught an updraft that carried him higher, forcing the remaining devils to follow. Then, without warning, he dived, spitted a black abishai through the chest, yanked his blade free, and veered, dodging a red’s blazing stinger. He wheeled and hacked off one of the devil’s wings. It plummeted.

  He killed two more baatezu. Somehow Jivex sent one hurtling down as well, to impale itself on the pointed apex of one of the corner turrets, where it whimpered and writhed for a second before going limp. Taegan peered about, seeking the next foe, and realized he and the faerie dragon had accounted for them all.

  Then the vitality flowed out of Taegan all at once, and his wounds ached. Exhausted, he lit on the rooftop and sat there gasping. Jivex landed beside him.

  “Did you see how brilliantly I fought?” the faerie dragon asked.

  Taegan grinned and replied, “Like Torm the True himself. Still, we were lucky.”