Then she and Tchazzar walked out into the night.
In theory, the procession was spending the night in a village. But the royal company so outnumbered the locals that it had essentially engulfed the huddle of wattle huts, and as a result, their camp didn’t look much different than if they’d stopped on the trail. Tents stood in rows. The coals of cook fires glowed red and scented the air with their smoke. A griffon gave a rasping cry, and soldiers and functionaries strode around on various errands.
“Did supper disagree with you?” he asked. “I can have the cook flogged.”
“Everything was fine,” she said. “It’s just … it bothers me to be around Aoth. I wonder if he thinks I’m betraying him.”
“Has he said so?”
“No. Not at all.”
Tchazzar took hold of her arm to stop her walking. It startled her, but she managed not to flinch. He gently turned her and looked her in the eye.
“Then do you think you’re betraying him?” he asked.
“He saved me from slavery and torment,” she said.
“And you repaid him in full with years of valiant, faithful service. Now you have another calling. We repealed the laws that oppressed Chessenta’s arcanists, but that was only the first step. They still need someone to look after them and help them reach their full potential, and I intend that shepherd to be you. It will make you one of my chief advisers and one of the greatest ladies in the realm.”
The bitter thing was he really did mean what he was saying. And hearing it still twisted her up inside.
But she’d come to understand that he was mad and ultimately cared for no one but himself. That he meant to conquer an empire, no matter how many innocents suffered as a result. That she had to help stop him if she could, even if it made her hate herself.
“I know,” she said, “and I want that. I want … everything we’ve talked about. I guess I’m just in a mood tonight. Can we stroll a little farther? I have some ideas on how to get inside Djerad Thymar.”
They walked and talked, and she tried to steer him in the right direction without his realizing. It worked. Gradually they made their way to the southern edge of camp.
Beyond lay the range of rugged hills called the Sky Riders. She couldn’t see them in the dark. But after her experiences there, she almost felt she could sense them, as a weight of malice and malignancy, because they contained at least one gateway into the nightmare world called the Shadowfell.
She wasn’t surprised when Tchazzar balked. He’d spent a hundred years as a tortured prisoner in the Shadowfell, and it had left him with a wariness of several things, darkness, wraiths, and the Sky Riders themselves included. That, she suspected, was why he’d left this leg of the procession for last.
He looked out at the blackness, swallowed, then turned back toward the wavering light of the fires. “How about a little more wine?” he said.
“I’d rather have an apple,” Jhesrhi said. “The village has a grove right over there.” She pointed with the staff. Some of the runes shone with their own inner light.
“I can send someone to pick a basket.”
Jhesrhi took a deep breath. “I also … you know that when we try, it’s easier when there aren’t other people around.”
He smiled. “It’s private in the pavilion.”
“But people would see us go in alone. I’d hear them moving around outside. They might hear us too.”
He stood and thought for a moment. Then he said, “Whatever my lady wishes,” and they walked out among the trees.
She risked one quick but hard look in the direction of the hills, peering not just with her eyes but also with her wizard’s intuition. She couldn’t sense anything coming. That wasn’t surprising. There hadn’t been any way to arrange the trick on anything approximating a precise schedule.
So she allowed Tchazzar to take her hand in his. Then he used a fingertip to caress it. She assumed that was supposed to be erotic, although it simply made her skin crawl.
“Is that all right?” he asked.
“It’s nice,” she said, straining to keep revulsion out of her voice.
She understood why he was so intent on bringing her to his bed. Partly it was because it had been she and Gaedynn who’d freed him from Sseelrigoth the blight wyrm. But he also saw her as a challenge. Abuses she’d suffered as a child had left her with a horror of being touched. To increase her sway over him, she’d led him to believe that out of all the males in the wide world, he alone could cure her affliction and teach her the joys of physical intimacy. Now she was paying the price for that deception.
After a while he left off fondling her hand and started caressing her face instead. His fingertip brushed her cheeks, her lips, her eyelids, the side of her neck and the whorls and lobe of her ear.
That was worse. It was like a centipede crawling on her. But she endured it and hoped that he mistook her twitches and shudders for signs of excitement.
Then he snapped around and looked to the south. Jhesrhi did too. She still couldn’t sense anything, but she suspected he had. Even in human guise, he often seemed to possess a dragon’s sharp senses and, always, a dragon’s instincts.
“Perhaps we should go back,” he said.
She took a breath to steady her voice. “Why, Majesty? Did you hear something?”
He hesitated. “I … no, apparently not. But people will wonder what’s become of me.”
She sighed. “That’s a shame. I was enjoying this. Truly.”
He smiled. “So was I.”
“But I was enjoying it so much that I thought that perhaps this was the moment for the next step.”
He studied her. Then, moving slowly, still entirely gentle, he put his forefinger under her chin and tilted her face up. Then he pressed his lips to hers. Bile burned in the back of her throat.
She imagined he was Gaedynn, but that didn’t help. She’d never been able to bear the archer’s touch either. All she could do was command herself not to throw up.
* * * * *
Once Gaedynn had delivered word that the procession had arrived within reach of Alasklerbanbastos and Meralaine’s sorcery, he had no reason to linger, nor any desire to. Back in camp, Jhesrhi was trying to make a fool of Tchazzar, and her friends should be close in case the attempt went wrong.
He glanced down at the harness that secured him to the saddle, making sure the buckles were still fastened, and drew breath to give Eider the command to fly. Then, evidently sensing his intent, Oraxes said, “Wait.”
“What’s wrong?” Gaedynn asked.
“Can you stay until we’re certain the magic is working as it should?” Oraxes asked.
Gaedynn raised an eyebrow. “Do you have some reason to think it won’t?”
The adolescent shrugged. “Not exactly.”
“And you understand that I’m no sorcerer. I wouldn’t know how to fix a spell if it did go awry.”
“I’d still appreciate it. I … have a feeling.”
Gaedynn sighed. He still wanted to return to camp, but he also liked Oraxes. Maybe it was because neither of them knew when to hold his insolent tongue. And more importantly, he’d come to trust the boy. There was more to him than the slouching street tough he’d initially appeared to be.
“I’ll stay a few more moments.” He started unbuckling the straps. There was no reason to make Eider bear his weight while they were on the ground, even though it wouldn’t actually trouble the sturdy beast.
As he swung himself out of the saddle, Alasklerbanbastos took up a position at the far end of a flat stair step of a space partway up a wooded hillside. According to Meralaine, somebody had massacred somebody else on that very spot a long time ago. Even when he’d visited the place in the daylight, Gaedynn hadn’t noticed any sign of it, but he assumed the necromancer knew what she was talking about.
Alasklerbanbastos growled rhythmic words of power. Gaedynn couldn’t understand them, but each was like a prod that made him want to flinch. Eider screeched and started to unfurl her
wings. He stroked her head and told her everything was all right.
Cera watched the dracolich with her golden mace dangling from the leather loop around her forearm and the phylactery cradled in her hands. Keeping an eye on Alasklerbanbastos was all that she could contribute. She had her own magic, and it was powerful stuff. But the cleansing light of the Keeper of the Yellow Sun was antithetical to the tainted power of necromancy.
Meralaine drifted aimlessly, or so it seemed, across the level ground. She was a tiny, snub-nosed pixie of a girl, and even knowing her arcane specialty, Gaedynn rarely thought of her as sinister. But her expression, somehow intent and empty at the same time, made the small hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. And even though he could barely hear it, her murmuring made him feel bereft, like everyone he’d ever cared about had died.
He grinned and shoved the irrational emotions out of his head. His friends were very much alive, and even if it had been otherwise, he’d learned early on to value those worth valuing but never to need anybody but himself.
Meralaine extended her arms and twirled back and forth as she moved, commencing a languorous dance in time to her and Alasklerbanbastos’s interwoven incantations. Shadows shifted on the ground then boiled up into the air to glide with her for a moment, their murky fingers brushing hers. Some phantoms were simply near-formless silhouettes. Others showed a gleam of phosphorescent eyes or a glimmer of bare ribs or a naked skull.
Gradually the shapes became more persistent, floating, seething, and flickering in the night air, even after Meralaine abandoned them for her next partner, until finally there were … dozens? It was hard to tell in the dark or to keep track of them all from one moment to the next.
Her eyes all black pupil, wide and unblinking, her face a white mask, Meralaine danced a last measure, reciting the remaining words of her spell in time with the final steps. But the deep, steady drumbeat of Alasklerbanbastos’s incantation continued. Evidently it was his task to give the conjured spirits their marching orders.
Suddenly Meralaine gave her head a shake, and animation and dismay flooded into her face. “That wasn’t the plan!” she said just as the phantoms raced away down the hill.
Gaedynn didn’t understand all that was happening, but it was plain that Oraxes’s premonition hadn’t misled him. Things were going wrong. He reached for an arrow; then fingers so cold they burned grabbed him by the wrist.
* * * * *
Jhesrhi recognized that Tchazzar was only pressing his lips lightly to her own. And, of course, nothing was covering her nostrils. Still, her heart pounding, her stomach churning, she felt as if she were choking.
In another heartbeat or two, she’d absolutely have to push him away and pray he couldn’t tell how sick and fouled she felt. She would pray, too, that she could somehow hold him there a little longer, even though it would be obvious the kissing and fondling were over for the time being.
Then she felt something cold and hungry gliding through the little orchard. Apples rotted and dropped as the dead passed underneath. With a crack that sounded strangely faint and dull, one tree split lengthwise, and the smaller part toppled to the ground.
Jhesrhi was an adept and had fought Szass Tam’s legions. Still, she knew that under other circumstances, she would have felt a pang of dread at the advent of the phantoms. Now, however, she was grateful.
Tchazzar let her go, pivoted, gasped, and froze. Thank Lady Luck for that. Jhesrhi had lured him away from his guards and into the dark to make it more likely that he’d succumb to panic, but she still hadn’t been certain it would happen. His terrors were a sometime thing, erratic and unpredictable as the rest of him.
With a thought, she set the head of her staff ablaze, raised it high, and took a step toward the oncoming apparitions. She shouted three words in one of the languages of Elemental Chaos and swept her weapon down parallel to the ground.
A blast of yellow flame leaped out at the phantoms. Or more accurately, in their general direction. They were no actual threat, and if she appeared to defeat them too easily, Tchazzar might not come away as alarmed as she and the other plotters wanted him to be.
So the blast simply set a tree trunk on fire and made the dead recoil, moan, and howl. The chorus was almost inaudibly faint, yet somehow loud and chilling as it echoed inside her head.
Then the phantoms charged, and startled, she was the one who froze.
* * * * *
Gaedynn twisted and found himself gazing into a leering face that was mold and decay one moment and just a blur of shadow the next. The spirit’s hold on his wrist leeched strength from his body. The entity cocked its other hand back to plunge it into his chest.
Gaedynn dropped his bow, snatched out one of his two short swords, and struck first. His gods, old Keen-Eye and the other powers the elf bow masters had taught him to venerate, favored him. It was sometimes difficult for even an enchanted blade to cut the immaterial body of a wraith, but his attacker convulsed and frayed to nothing.
Another apparition darted in on his flank. Screeching, Eider sprang to meet it, reared high on her leonine hind paws, and raked with a double sweep of her aquiline talons. The shadowy thing shredded and melted into something resembling cobweb, and the griffon clawed in the carpet of old, fallen leaves to clean the stickiness off her feet.
Jabbering, but with the precise cadence and intonation wizardry required, Oraxes recited a spell. Gaedynn made sure nothing else was about to strike at him, then swung around in the direction of the sound.
Backing away from more of the undead, the young magus had evidently tripped over a tree root. He’d fallen on his rump, and the leather helmet he’d taken to wearing over his oily black hair had tumbled off his head. Two phantoms were rushing him, white eyes shining, long-fingered hands posed to snatch and clutch.
But they were an instant too slow. As they reached for him, the boy snarled the final word of the incantation. His hands glowed green, and he plunged them into the torsos of his two intangible assailants. Emerald light pulsed outward and washed the phantoms from existence.
Gaedynn sheathed his sword, retrieved his bow, and hauled Oraxes to his feet. “Meralaine!” the wizard gasped.
The necromancer stood at the center of a whirl of shadows. Perhaps because he wasn’t frantic with young love, or maybe simply because he was by far the more experienced combatant, Gaedynn immediately perceived what Oraxes apparently couldn’t. The innermost phantoms were fighting to protect her from their fellows.
One murky form pounced through her circle of defenders. But, barking a cruel laugh quite unlike her usual girlish chortle, Meralaine simply tore the apparition in two like a piece of flimsy cloth. She wrapped what remained around her knuckles like a pugilist preparing for a bout.
“She’s fine!” Gaedynn snapped. “Look past her!”
Oraxes did then spit an obscenity.
Like Meralaine, Cera was under attack, and also like the necromancer, she had her defenses. Her body glowed with a golden radiance that seemed to sting and dazzle the undead. And whenever she flicked her gilded mace, miming a sharp tap, a flying mace, seemingly made of the same yellow light, flashed into solidity and struck at one of her foes.
Amaunator’s sunlight was hurting Alasklerbanbastos as well. He was facing Cera, and bits of the remaining flesh on his head melted and dripped like candle wax. But unfazed by the punishment, he was snarling an incantation, and the priestess was apparently unable to use her magic to fend off the spirits and stab into the phylactery at the same time.
Oraxes swept his clenched fist over his head, lashed it down, and screamed another, even viler epithet. Apparently at that moment, infused with all his force of will, it served as a word of power because a big, translucent fist made of blue shimmer appeared above Alasklerbanbastos and slammed down on his spine.
Meanwhile, Gaedynn plucked a stone arrow from his quiver. In an effort to win the loyalty of the Threskelans, Tchazzar had forbidden his troops to loot the possessions of their defea
ted foes. But Gaedynn had located a few enchanted shafts in the royal arsenal in Mordulkin and appropriated them when everyone’s back was turned. He’d known he was likely to need them, and Jhesrhi was too busy attending the war hero to make any more.
He drew and released, and the arrow punched into Alasklerbanbastos’s face just below the eye. The dracolich stiffened, and waves of grayness rippled through charred, torn hide and exposed bone as the magic in the weapon sought to turn him to stone.
It didn’t. But the combined harassment of the hammering disembodied fist and the arrow’s power made him stumble over his chanting. Blackness pulsed in the air around him like flowers blooming and withering in an instant as the mystical power he’d been gathering discharged itself prematurely.
He spun around, knocked the arrow out of his face with a swipe of his foreclaws, and glared at his attackers. His neck cocked back, his jaws opened, and white light shone inside his mouth.
Gaedynn lunged at Oraxes, caught hold of him, and shoved him to the side and down to the ground. Thunder boomed and glare erased the world. But the dragon’s breath missed.
Instantly, though, the ground shook. Blinking, Gaedynn looked up to see Alasklerbanbastos bounding toward him and Oraxes. As he scrambled to his feet and grabbed another arrow, he judged that at most, he had time for one more shot. And just one more was unlikely to be enough.
Eider plunged down, caught hold of one of Alasklerbanbastos’s wings, and clung and slashed until the dracolich shook her off. The phantoms under Meralaine’s control swarmed around him, and he took another moment to roar a word that popped them like inky bubbles.
Then bright yellow flame erupted down the length of his body. He bellowed, roared, and thrashed.
As he laid an arrow on his bow and backed away from Alasklerbanbastos’s convulsions, Gaedynn took a look around. As far as he could tell, there were no phantoms left on the hillside. He and his companions had accounted for them all.
Giving the dracolich plenty of room, Oraxes circled around toward Meralaine. “Burn him up!” he called to Cera.
The Spectral Blaze: A Forgotten Realms Novel Page 3
