Whisper of Venom: Brotherhood of the Griffon, Book II

by Richard Lee Byers

  But not enough to stop it. Its lashing tail knocked men flying through the air. One archer plunged down on a spike of bone and, impaled through the midsection, writhed there screaming. The siegewyrm struck and bit another man to pieces. It stared, and three more mercenaries crumpled in agony just like Scar and Jhesrhi had.

  Gaedynn and the others had saved them. She had to return the favor, or the siegewyrm might kill them all.

  Weak and shaky with pain as she was, she might in other circumstances have found it impossible even to make the attempt. But fortunately she had a cure for her debility, since her comrades had bought her the chance to use it.

  She fumbled with the buckle securing the pouch on her belt. Something flickered at the edge of her vision. She turned her head.

  Another length of bone was leaping up from the ground, at an angle. She jerked herself sideways. The spur stopped growing when the jagged point was a finger joint short of her face.

  She sat frozen for an instant, then finished extracting the pewter vial from the bag. The potion inside was tasteless but warm, and the glow spread out from her stomach to melt away her pain.

  She drank half, then dismounted. She showed the bottle to Scar, and the griffon raised his head and opened his beak. She poured the remaining liquid in, and his feathered throat worked as he swallowed.

  The elixir worked as quickly on him as it had on her. He gave a rasping cry, then whirled around to face the siegewyrm.

  “Yes,” she said. “Let’s kill the wretched thing.” She swung herself back into the saddle and, begrudging the time it would have taken to refasten the safety harness, urged Scar into motion. He trotted, leaped, beat his wings, and carried her skyward.

  Where she could see that while her allies had inflicted a degree of damage on the automaton, it showed no signs of breaking down anytime soon. Meanwhile, with nearly every bite and sweep of its tail, it was doing grievous harm to the men scrambling around it.

  Jhesrhi didn’t have the natural affinity with lightning that she did with earth, fire, wind, and water. But she hurled a bright, roaring thunderbolt anyway, in the hope that the siegewyrm would prove more susceptible to it than it had to flame.

  It didn’t.

  How should she attack it, then? It must have some weakness. She peered down, searching for a clue to what that might be.

  Another mage—Oraxes or Meralaine, she assumed—assailed it with a conjured burst of flame. The flash produced a metallic glint at certain of its joints, particularly the points where bones from different dragons fit together.

  Evidently artificers had cobbled the construct together with wires and hinges. Smiling, Jhesrhi whispered sibilant words to the powers of rust and corrosion.

  Tendrils of vapor swirled around the siegewyrm, and the metal in its joints sizzled like bacon in a frying pan. It lurched as its left hind leg started to separate from the rest of it.

  Oraxes and Meralaine chanted, using their magic to heighten the effect of Jhesrhi’s spell. The fumes thickened, and the sizzling noise grew louder. The hind leg finished falling off, and the right wing broke into several pieces. Slumping, the entire construct looked on the verge of collapsing into a heap.

  But it wasn’t finished yet. Somehow it managed a final lunge that sent sellswords reeling and put it in striking distance of the two adolescent mages from Luthcheq. Oraxes jumped in front of Meralaine.

  Then Eider slammed down on top of the siegewyrm’s skull, which broke away from the neck bones behind it. At last, the entire automaton disintegrated into clattering pieces. Eider flapped her wings and returned to the air before the skull finished its tumble to the ground.

  The sellswords raised a cheer. Oraxes and Meralaine hugged. Gaedynn flashed Jhesrhi a grin, as he had on many other occasions when they’d accomplished some notable feat or desperate endeavor together.

  But then something, joy or authenticity, went out of the smile like he’d remembered something unpleasant. She realized he somehow knew she’d promised to stay in Chessenta.

  She wanted to tell him it had been a difficult choice. That she’d made it partly to help the Brotherhood, and that she still wasn’t sure it was the right one.

  But even if there were time for it, and even if they were close enough to converse without shouting, what difference would it make? The two of them had never been like those children embracing below, and they never could be.

  Feeling old and bleak inside, she pointed to signal her intention to join up with Aoth and his squad of griffon riders. Gaedynn gave her a casual wave of acknowledgment and sent Eider swooping toward the ground.

  THIRTEEN

  5 FLAMERULE, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

  Medrash assumed it would be immediately apparent when Skuthosiin joined the fight. The fact that the dragon had yet to do so meant that he was still trying to finish his ritual.

  Accordingly, Medrash, Balasar, and others who rode with them pushed toward the heart of Ashhold. Unfortunately, with almost every step of the way contested, their progress seemed excruciatingly slow. Medrash fought the urge to spend his Power freely and clear the path as expeditiously as possible. He was certain he was going to need it later.

  One of the hound-sized shadow dragons swooped down out of the black, smoky sky. Had he been forced to rely on his eyes alone, he might not have seen it until its fangs were already in his throat. But he felt it too, as a sickening, plunging locus of vileness. That gave him time to swing his sword. His lance had shattered early on, on a giant’s crudely fashioned granite shield.

  His blade split the murky creature’s skull, and it dissolved into black, rotten-smelling smoke. At the same instant, Balasar grabbed one of the crossbows hanging from his saddle and shot it one-handed. The quarrel hit the giant, who’d been about to heave a boulder, right between the eyes. The missile slipped from the barbarian’s hands to tumble banging down the side of the basalt eminence on which he stood. He toppled after it a heartbeat later.

  The riders pushed on to yet another point where the way diverged. Pulling on the reins, Balasar swung his chestnut steed to the right.

  “No,” Medrash said. “It’s the other way.”

  “Are you sure?” Gritting his teeth, Balasar worked the pull lever of the weapon he’d just discharged. “It’s a maze in here.”

  “I’m sure,” Medrash replied. Now that they were close, he could feel the unnatural power of the ceremony—or perhaps of Skuthosiin himself—just as he had the foulness of the shadow thing.

  He led his fellow riders, and the foot soldiers trailing along behind, around two more turns and through two more bands of giants trying to bar the way. Then he gasped.

  Because while simply feeling the vileness had been unpleasant, seeing it was worse. He’d already noted that Skuthosiin seemed hideous, even if he couldn’t say why. Now that he was closer, that ugliness seemed to stab into his eyes.

  And, repulsive as the dragon was, the fire leaping out of the fissure was worse. When Medrash had seen it before, it had simply burned yellow like most flames. Now it changed color from one moment to the next. It was red, then blue, then green, then bone white, then shadow black.

  Medrash could just discern that something was inside the fire—or, to be more accurate, coming through it. Using it as a passage from somewhere else. Whatever it was, its several parts swayed in a way that reminded him of Nala, and, even barely glimpsed, it radiated a terrifying feeling of might, malice, and contempt.

  He realized he absolutely had to stop it from emerging into the mortal world. And do it now, before the mere threat of such a disaster panicked his companions. Which meant there was no time to look for the vanquisher’s wizards and ask them to help.

  He reached out to Torm. Cold and bracing as a mountain spring, Power surged through him and collected in his hand.

  He didn’t know a specific prayer to disrupt such a ceremony. But, guided by instinct, he focused his thoughts on the idea of forbiddance, tucked his sword under his shield arm, lift
ed his empty hand high, and swung it down at the ground.

  Made of steely shimmer, a huge, ghostly gauntlet appeared in midair, swept down, and covered the source of the fire with its palm. Startled, the giant adepts cried out and recoiled.

  Pain seared Medrash’s actual hand, as if it were bare and he were really using it to smother a fire. He had a muddled impression that his flesh didn’t burn constantly. Perhaps it charred one instant, froze the next, and suffered some other sort of injury the moment after that.

  But he couldn’t really sort out the differences in sensation. It took all the will and focus he could muster to hold his hand in place despite the agony, and to keep the Loyal Fury’s Power pouring into it.

  Until—after what was likely only a matter of heartbeats, even though it seemed like forever—the phantasmal gauntlet vanished, and Medrash saw that the fire beneath was gone.

  That was the only way he could tell. His hand was still ablaze with pain. Yet even so, he felt a surge of satisfaction, and when Skuthosiin’s head whipped around to goggle at him, that only made the moment sweeter.

  “Sorry,” Balasar called. “Were you using that fire?”

  Skuthosiin’s eyes flicked to the giant shamans. “Kill them,” he snapped.

  The adepts produced some of Nala’s globes, held them at eye level, then gasped and staggered.

  “Oops,” Balasar said.

  Medrash drew a bit more of Torm’s Power to quell the throbbing in his hand. It didn’t end it altogether, but it muted it. When he tried to grip the wire-wrapped hilt of his sword, he found that he could.

  “You see how it is,” he said. “We know how to counter all your tricks. Surrender, and perhaps Tarhun will show you mercy.”

  “Surrender?” Skuthosiin repeated. “Are you insane? Do you think I really need tricks, or any sort of help, to slaughter mites like you? This is the end of you and all your people.” He sprang forward.

  Medrash rode to meet him. Balasar and the other riders pounded after him.

  The fight was going to be terrible. In all probability, many dragonborn would die. But Medrash was satisfied because his comrades hadn’t quailed, and, in his furious eagerness to engage, Skuthosiin had opted to stay on the ground where lance and sword could reach him. And as more and more Tymantherans, including the mages, arrived in the heart of Ashhold—

  Something seared Medrash’s back. His steed pitched forward and fell. On either side of him other horses dropped as well, and yellow flame glinted on the riders’ armor.

  He hit his head hard, and something cracked. Suddenly everything seemed dim and far away. Unimportant. Some instinct insisted that he try to get up anyway, but he discovered he couldn’t move.

  Her mouth still warm and tingling, Nala rejoiced to see that Medrash wasn’t standing up, or stirring at all.

  Despite her best efforts, the paladin and the other riders had gotten ahead of her and interrupted the ritual before she could reach the center of the giants’ refuge. But even though that disruption was sacrilege, from a practical standpoint it might actually have been for the best. Because her miracles would play a greater role in Skuthosiin’s victory and show him how valuable she truly was.

  She’d drawn down Tiamat’s glory to augment the power of her breath weapon, then spat it at the horsemen. The burst of fire dropped half a dozen riders. Her only regret was that Medrash and Balasar weren’t close enough together for her to burn both of them. But the paladin was the more important target, and if the Dark Lady smiled on her, she still might be the one to kill his clan brother.

  She glimpsed a glint from the corner of her eye and turned toward the spear points swinging in her direction. For of course the foot soldiers among whom she’d advanced had seen her blast their mounted comrades. They’d stood stupefied for a heartbeat, but they meant to strike her down for her treachery.

  She had no time for another prayer, whispered or otherwise, but her own innate vitality was sufficient for a second blaze of fiery breath. She spat it, and the two warriors who were threatening her reeled backward.

  She darted out of the massed infantrymen, racing closer to Skuthosiin and the riders assailing him. Some of the foot soldiers hesitated to follow, but others scrambled after her.

  She judged she had just enough time and distance for an incantation. She hissed Draconic words of power, touched the end of her thumb to the tip of her middle finger to make her hand resemble a saurian head, then, quick as a striking serpent, jabbed it at four different spots on the ground.

  Each as big as a dragonborn, four rearing, snarling wyrms appeared where she’d pointed. Her pursuers quailed until they realized the apparitions were incapable of doing actual harm. By then she was close enough to Skuthosiin for the green to lash out at anyone who dared to keep following, and no one did.

  Clouds shrouded Selûne and the stars. To Aoth, the air smelled like a storm was coming.

  It is, said Jet, and its name is Alasklerbanbastos.

  I know, answered Aoth. Because the deepening darkness seemed blacker and felt somehow dirtier than just the clouds could explain, while the breeze carried a hint of old rot as well as the imminence of lightning. It was like the worst of his experiences in Thay, with something unimaginably strong and vile rising to poison all the natural world. I just wish he’d get on with it.

  Back on the ground for the moment, Tchazzar incinerated a formation of kobolds with a blast of flame. Either he was trying hard to convince the Great Bone Wyrm that he was squandering his power—or else, in his excitement, he really was.

  Whether he was thinking, the result was the same. At the northern edge of the battlefield, pieces of darkness seemed to thicken and arrange themselves into a structure, like ghostly hands were building it. And even wyrmkeepers and vampires instinctively shrank away.

  In a moment, a murky skull with a spiked snout sat atop the stacked vertebrae of the neck, and fleshless wings arched to either side. Then, inside the core of the thing’s body, lightning flared repeatedly from rib to rib, and its eye sockets lit with a spectral glow. The structure changed from dark to leprous white as lengths and curves of shadow turned into bone.

  Alasklerbanbastos strode forward. Chessentans who were nowhere near him screamed. So did some of the Threskelans.

  Go ahead, said Jet, if it will make you feel better.

  Aoth snorted. If he’d ever done any screaming, it had been a long, long time ago. But even to a man who’d survived the nastiest parts of the War of the Zulkirs, the Great Bone Wyrm was an appalling spectacle. Now that the two of them were in the same place, he could tell that the dracolich was even bigger than Tchazzar. And as they advanced on each other, and warriors left off struggling to scurry out of the way, it was difficult to resist the idea that here were the only combatants and the only fight that really mattered.

  Aoth spat away that notion as well. Whatever their pretensions, neither wyrm could stand up to a proper army all by himself. That was why they bothered to command armies. Besides, what was about to happen would be very little like the duel of titans his imagination was suggesting.

  Or so he hoped. Jaxanaedegor and his followers were taking their time about striking at their master. Aoth hoped they were simply making sure they’d take the dracolich completely by surprise when he’d have nowhere to run.

  The battlefield was strangely quiet as the undead colossus and the self-proclaimed deity approached each other. That was because a good many warriors were simply standing and watching, and it enabled Aoth to make out the words when the wyrms spoke in the same esoteric form of Draconic that Jaxanaedegor had used when he first appeared to Tchazzar. Or maybe it was their innate magic, roused by their utter mutual hatred, that made their words audible even high in the sky.

  “I invoke the Five Hundred and Fifty-Fifth Precept,” Alasklerbanbastos said. “To the death, and winner take all.”

  “That’s exactly how it will be,” Tchazzar replied. “For I promise I’ll find your phylactery.”

  “
Take it if you can.” Without cocking his neck back or doing anything else that might have warned of a live dragon’s intent, Alasklerbanbastos simply opened his fleshless jaws and spat lightning.

  The flare dazzled Aoth, and the thunderclap spiked pain into his ears. The attack pierced Tchazzar and made him thrash.

  But as soon as it ended, the red dragon spewed a blast of flame. It cracked some of Alasklerbanbastos’s naked bones, sent chips of them flying, and jolted the dracolich backward.

  Tchazzar instantly sprang high and lashed his wings. He plainly meant to pounce on top of his foe before the Great Bone Wyrm recovered.

  Unfortunately, Alasklerbanbastos was more resilient than expected. He lifted his head, stared at Tchazzar, and the glow in his eye sockets flared.

  Aoth remembered how the dracolich’s gaze had paralyzed him. Tchazzar merely seemed to twitch in midleap. But perhaps that was enough to impair his agility, for Alasklerbanbastos dodged out from under his adversary’s claws. And when the war hero came down, the dracolich met him with a clattering sweep of his bony tail.

  The blow caught Tchazzar across the side of the head and bashed him stumbling to the side. Alasklerbanbastos backed away, opening up the distance, and hissed words of power.

  A web of shadows seethed into being. It covered Tchazzar like a net, and wherever it touched him, scales sloughed away and the flesh beneath them withered.

  With all his might, he should have been able to break free. But as he gathered himself to try, Alasklerbanbastos snarled another spell.

  Tchazzar roared, then thrashed wildly, as a beast would struggle against a net without truly comprehending what it was. Without intellect to guide it, raw strength wasn’t enough to snap the strands, and they rotted their way deeper into his body.

  Like the paralysis, the red dragon’s frenzied confusion only lasted a heartbeat. Then he stopped his useless flailing. But at the same moment, Alasklerbanbastos spat another bolt of lightning.