“Majesty!” Khouryn shouted. “I know what’s written in the Brotherhood’s contract! I know you’re not supposed to do this!” Even as he spoke the words, he knew they were useless.
And he was right. Tchazzar waved his hand, and the guards grabbed Khouryn to wrestle him around and drag him away. Halonya gave Jhesrhi a spiteful, triumphant smile.
* * * * *
Aoth liked the warm, summer sunlight, the feel of Cera nestled up behind him with her arms around his waist, and the forbidding but breathtaking vista that was eastern Akanûl. The landscape below was a jumble of cliffs, rocky outcroppings, and ravines. Off to the north, the so-called Glass Mesa—which was more likely quartz—gleamed like an enormous gem. There were plenty of earthmotes too, floating islands in the sky, some of substantial size and covered in vegetation.
It was fun being off on a journey with no one but his familiar, one other griffon rider, and the woman he supposed he’d come to love for company. It reminded him of his youth, when he’d served, often as a scout and courier, in the Griffon Legion, in the old Thay that Szass Tam and the Spellplague had destroyed. It had mostly been a pleasant, carefree life, and it had never even occurred to him to aspire to anything more.
But of course he wasn’t that young soldier anymore. He’d acquired far heavier responsibilities, and despite the distractions of the day, at odd moments, worry gnawed at him. Especially since, for the first time ever, he’d left the Brotherhood with none of its senior officers to oversee it.
He could have left Gaedynn. He probably should have. But he also needed trustworthy companions to help him accomplish his mission. If—
Enough! said Jet.
Aoth smiled. What?
You already made your decision, the griffon said, so why are you still fretting about it? I don’t know how humans ever accomplish anything, second-guessing yourselves the way you do.
Somebody has to do the thinking, said Aoth.
The thinking, yes, said Jet. The dithering, no.
Aoth was still trying to frame a suitable retort when he spotted the minotaur. The hulking creature with the bull-like head was climbing up a steep trail to the top of a ridge. A line of similar creatures followed it.
Aoth pointed with his spear.
“What is it?” Cera asked.
Evidently she couldn’t make out the minotaurs, even as antlike specks. He knew he shouldn’t be surprised. Even Jet might not have noticed them as yet, if not for the psychic bond they shared. But it was sometimes difficult to guess what ordinary people—folk without Blue Fire smoldering in their eyes—could see and what they couldn’t.
After he told her what he’d noticed, she asked, “Do we care?”
“No,” he said. “We won’t go any closer than we need to in order to tell what they’re doing.”
“Why do even that?” she replied.
“Because,” he said, “when you’re traveling through wild country, it’s always better to know what the savages and brigands are up to, even when you can whiz by high above their heads.”
Responding to his unspoken desire, Jet raised one wing, dipped the other, and wheeled left. Aoth glanced back to see if Gaedynn and Eider were following. They were. The archer’s elegant rust-and-scarlet clothes and coppery hair shined in the sunlight. So did the griffon’s bronze-colored plumage and tawny fur.
Another stroke of Jet’s wings carried him, Cera, and Aoth far enough to see what lay beyond the ridge. Aoth took in the view, then cursed.
An earthmote hung high above the ground with a waterfall overflowing its edge and hissing downward. Sustained by a link to the realm of Elemental Chaos, the endless spillover had created a small lake at the bottom, with tilled fields and pastureland around it.
Goats and sheep grazed on the grass with a brown-skinned earthsoul boy to tend them. But most of the genasi villagers had forsaken the livestock and crops to take care of or palaver with the red-coated warriors who’d paid them a visit.
The warriors slumped on the ground in the clear space at the center of the huts looking as if they barely had the energy to lift the food and drink the villagers had provided to their mouths. Some had bloody bandages. Presently contained in a pen the settlers had cleared for the purpose, their steeds, gray lizardlike drakes as big as horses, looked just as battered and exhausted.
Cleary the men-at-arms had recently fought a hard battle. Aoth wondered if it had been a battle with another contingent of the same foes who were sneaking up on them.
The warriors should have posted a sentry on the high ground overlooking the village but they hadn’t, and if the settlers were in the habit of keeping watch, the excitement had evidently lured their sentry down from his perch.
“If the minotaurs attack by surprise,” Cera said, “shooting bows from the high ground—”
“Don’t worry,” said Aoth. “We’re going to help.”
Discerning his intent, Jet wheeled, and Gaedynn and Eider followed suit. Despite the impediment of being in the saddle, the archer strung his bow with quick facility.
So, said Jet, Tchazzar’s willing to pay us to fight dragonborn, but we don’t want to. Nobody’s paying us to kill minotaurs, but we do want that.
It may help us convince the queen, Aoth replied, if we’ve done some of her subjects a good turn.
I think you’re just showing off for the sunlady. But it’s fine with me. A little skirmish should be fun.
“Should I call Alasklerbanbastos?” Cera asked. The dracolich was in a sense traveling with them, but at a distance and mostly after dark. That way they didn’t have to worry every moment about him suddenly lashing out in another attempt to reclaim the phylactery.
Aoth snorted. “For this? No. I doubt it’ll last more than a moment.”
He lifted his ram’s-horn bugle and blew a blast to attract the attention of the folk on the ground. Then, leaning out of the saddle, he used his spear to point to the top of the ridge.
Meanwhile, the first minotaur climbed onto the crest of the outcropping. Instantly Gaedynn drove an arrow into his chest and he toppled. Eider and Jet let out bloodcurdling screeches.
A second minotaur scrambled to the top of the rise. Aoth rattled off a short incantation and punctuated it with a jab of his spear. A viscid glob flew from the point to splash in the bull-man’s face. He fell down, thrashing and screaming, pawing at the smoking, corrosive paste.
And that, thought Aoth, was likely to be that. The horned barbarians had lost the advantage of surprise. Nor would the high ground do them much good when a hostile warmage and bowman were flying higher still. It would make sense to withdraw.
Instead, a minotaur with red-stained horns clambered onto the ridge. Gaedynn instantly shot at him, and the shaft flew true. But it burst into flame and burned to a puff of ash just short of the creature’s body.
Maybe one of the demonic emblems freshly cut into his arms and chest was responsible. Aoth cursed himself for not noticing them before. But even fire-kissed eyes couldn’t take in everything at once.
The shaman brandished his club and bellowed a word—perhaps the name of his patron demon—in an Abyssal tongue. The sound jabbed a twinge of headache between Aoth’s eyes.
Flowing into view from head to foot like a painter’s brush stroke, a hulking, gray-and-black figure appeared. Horns jutted over its yellow eyes, and jagged tusks lined its oversized mouth. Its wings and pointed ears were like a bat’s.
“That’s a nabassu!” Cera said.
“I know,” said Aoth. In other words, it was a particularly nasty kind of demon. He spoke a word of command and released one of the spells stored in his spear. A rainbow of varied and destructive forces blazed from the point.
Unfortunately the nabassu vanished before the magic reached it. Prompted by instinct, Aoth looked up just as the demon reappeared overhead. It spread its leathery wings, turning what would have been a plummet into a swooping glide.
Jet gave a choked little cry as a mystical attack struck him, and Aoth fe
lt a stab of pain and weakness across their psychic link. The steady beat of the griffon’s wings turned into a useless, spastic flailing. Then Jet was the one who fell, carrying his riders along with him. The nabassu dived at them all.
Cera rattled off the first words of a healing prayer, Aoth charged the point of the spear with power, thrust, and caught the demon in the belly. But the weapon didn’t go in deep enough to stick. The creature twisted and tumbled free, and Aoth knew that while he’d inflicted a wound that would have stopped any human, it wasn’t nearly enough to incapacitate a fiend from the netherworld.
Cera finished her prayer. Healing warmth poured from her hands into Jet’s body. He spread his wings and arrested his descent.
Let me take him! the griffon said.
When you can get above him, Aoth replied. Until then, let me wear him down with spells.
So the two flyers maneuvered, each seeking the high air. Meanwhile, the puncture in the nabassu’s stomach closed, and new hide and fur grew over it.
Swinging her golden mace over her head, Cera hurled flares of Amaunator’s light at the demon, and Aoth conjured blasts of flame and frost. The nabassu dodged more often than not, sometimes by translating itself through space and sometimes by becoming an insubstantial phantom for a moment.
It also snarled a word that, even though Aoth didn’t know the meaning, somehow carried a weight of stomach-churning foulness. Cera jerked and grunted then said, “I’m all right.” She started another prayer, and the demon shrouded itself in fog.
Aoth conjured a wind that tore the cloud apart, then immediately followed up with darts of crimson light. All five hit the nabassu squarely, and although they penetrated its head and torso without opening visible wounds, he suspected that he’d finally hurt it enough for it to matter.
Then pain ripped through his own skull and body. No, not his, Jet’s. When the darts had pierced their target, the magic had somehow wounded the familiar as well. The griffon flailed his wings, trying to keep flying and stay away from the demon despite the shock.
“What’s wrong?” Cera cried.
“The demon forged a link between the two of them,” said Aoth. “You have to break it.”
Cera began a spell, but she was only a word into it when the bat-winged creature flickered through space once again. It reappeared right beside Jet, snatched hold of his neck with the talons of one hand, and raked at Aoth with those on the other.
Unbalanced by his attacker, Jet floundered through the air. He strained to strike at the demon with his own talons and beak but couldn’t reach him.
Aoth could use neither the sharp end of his spear nor the lethal spells that were a warmage’s stock in trade for fear of killing Jet. Blocking claw strokes with his shield, the targe clanking, rasping, and jolting his arm, he reversed his weapon and used the butt to try to knock the nabassu away. He couldn’t. He conjured another howl of wind to blast it loose. That didn’t work either.
He struggled to think of a tactic to dislodge the demon and couldn’t. Then a sparkling, hissing curtain appeared before him. He just had time to realize that, despite the injuries and the clinging foe hindering his flight, Jet had managed to aim himself at the waterfall streaming down from the floating island into the lake below. Then they all plunged into it.
The frigid water hammered, smothered, deafened, and blinded Aoth, all in the first instant. He thrust with the butt of the staff anyway and thought he felt it connect, although with what result, it was impossible to tell.
It might not matter anyway. The waterfall would likely tumble them down to their deaths no matter what. He certainly couldn’t do anything about it. He couldn’t even tell which way was up anymore.
But then, half flying, half swimming, exerting every iota of his flagging strength, Jet carried his riders clear of the raging water and out into the open air on the other side.
His riders, but not the nabassu. The savage force of the torrent, possibly aided by that final jab from Aoth’s spear, had finally broken them apart.
Unfortunately, thought Aoth, coughing, the demon was likely to escape a watery death too. All it had to do was recover from its surprise, disappear, and rematerialize outside the waterfall.
But Cera called out to Amaunator. And for an instant, the entire waterfall blazed with golden light. Spotting the nabassu with his spellscarred eyes, Aoth saw its body crumble away to nothing in the center of the torrent.
“Nice work,” he panted. “Both of you.”
It certainly was, answered Jet, flinging spray with every sweep of his wings. And remind me: who was it that you said does all the thinking?
“Do you have power left?” said Aoth to Cera. “Can you heal Jet?”
She coughed. “I’ll try.” She started another prayer, and Aoth cast about to survey the rest of the battle.
At some point Gaedynn had evidently tired of trying to drive an arrow past the shaman’s mystical defenses because he and Eider had set down on the ridge. But that hadn’t worked either. A circle of minotaurs armed with spears and axes was keeping them busy while the shaman stood off to the side and worked on casting a spell. The magic was a shuffling dance as much or more than it was verbal. He repeatedly dipped his head as though he were goring and tossing a victim with his bloodstained horns.
Aoth assumed that he had, at most, a heartbeat or two to interrupt the spell short of completion. He pointed his spear, then cursed when he recognized that the fight with the nabassu had carried him, Jet, and Cera too far from the ridge for his own magic to span the distance.
At that same moment, Gaedynn, who’d evidently managed to defend himself and unbuckle the straps securing him to the saddle at the same time, hurled himself off Eider’s back. The reckless move caught the minotaurs by surprise, and he plunged through a gap in the circle. One barbarian pivoted and leveled his spear for a thrust. Eider lunged and nipped his head off, and that deterred any of the others from turning his back on her.
When Gaedynn charged, the shaman abandoned his conjuring. Smoke swirled around him as the power he’d raised dissipated prematurely. But when he swung the club, sweeping it in a horizontal arc, that attack was magical as well. Almost invisible in the sunlight, misty horns appeared above, below, and around the weapon and whirled along with it in a stabbing cloud that threatened to pierce Gaedynn from head to toe. His two swords couldn’t possibly parry every thrust.
But he didn’t try. He put on a final burst of speed and sprang inside the shaman’s reach an instant before the horns could gore him. He thrust one sword up under the minotaur’s chin and the other into his chest.
The club slipped from the minotaur’s grasp, and the disembodied, semitransparent horns disappeared. The creature staggered backward off the ridge and disappeared down the slope on the other side. Unfortunately he took the short sword that had pierced his throat and head with him. Evidently it was stuck, and Gaedynn had to let go of the hilt to avoid being dragged along.
Two more minotaurs clambered onto the top of the ridge, and he wheeled to face them with the single blade he had left. Then genasi warriors swarmed up the other side.
Riding bareback, some clung to the backs of the gray lizards that seemed to climb almost as well as their smallest cousins. Bald, green-skinned watersouls somehow dashed up the steep slope with equal ease. Silver-skinned windsouls simply flew.
However they reached the top of the ridge, the Akanûlans started killing minotaurs the instant they arrived. Spears stabbed and scimitars slashed. Little flames rippling along the pattern of lines crisscrossing his bronze-colored skin, a firesoul snapped his fingers and set a bull-man’s hide tunic ablaze. A burly earthsoul with skin the color of mud stood on the far side of the ridge and stamped his foot. Shocks ran through the slope below, presumably jolting any minotaurs who were still trying to climb up and join the fight. Aoth hoped that some reeled off the trail and fell, although, from his angle, he couldn’t actually tell.
But it didn’t really matter. Eider slashed with h
er talons and disemboweled the last living minotaur on the ridge, and she, Gaedynn, and the genasi all visibly relaxed. Obviously the surviving barbarians were fleeing.
* * * * *
Jhesrhi found Shala sitting at a desk heaped high with stacks of parchment. Quills in hand, half a dozen clerks scratched away at smaller desks while several adolescent boys whispered, fidgeted, or dozed in chairs along the wall. The latter were messengers, waiting to run a note or document to wherever it needed to go.
“My lady,” Shala said, frowning. “What can I do for you?”
“You can respond when I ask for something,” Jhesrhi said. “I sent you lists of the improvements required to make the wizards’ quarter livable and petitions detailing the reparations due arcanists wronged by the courts and the watch.”
“You only sent them yesterday,” Shala said. “And as you can see, with the army preparing to march on Tymanther, I have many matters to attend to.”
“I also sent you a letter that pertains to the coming campaign,” Jhesrhi said. “I explained how you should integrate mages into His Majesty’s forces and the ranks they ought to hold.”
“I’ll get to that too. If you let me go back to work, I’ll get to it that much faster.”
Jhesrhi took a firmer grip on her staff. “It appears,” she said, “that you don’t think the needs of Chessenta’s arcanists are important.”
Shala’s mouth tightened. “You’re a soldier of a sort. Surely you agree that they aren’t the most important concern on the eve of war.”
“I suppose it’s to be expected that you think that way, considering that the arcanists suffered persecution through all the years you held the throne.”
“Lady, I’ll justify the decisions I made to Tchazzar if he requires it, not to you.”
“Of course,” Jhesrhi said, “because you’re simply too busy to talk to me about anything, aren’t you? But perhaps I can lift the burden from your back.”
With a thought, she made the head of her staff burn like a torch, and the pseudo-mind inside it crowed. She lowered the flames over the tallest stack of papers, and one of the clerks yelped in dismay.
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