Whisper of Venom botg-2

by Richard Lee Byers

  Halonya turned white and swallowed. “I … I’ll try if you want me to, Your Majesty.”

  Tchazzar laughed loud and long. Jhesrhi couldn’t tell whether it was because he’d been joking about the whole idea of the immolations or simply because he found Halonya’s squeamishness amusing.

  Finally, blinking tears from his eyes, he said, “I do love you, daughter, and I was wise to call you to my side. Important as it is, my temple can wait. I need both my truest friends to bring my luck.”

  “I never want to be anywhere else,” Halonya said.

  After that, for a heartbeat, no one spoke. Then Tchazzar fixed his gaze on Jhesrhi. “And you?” he asked, a coolness lurking in his tone.

  Caught by surprise, Jhesrhi stammered, “Majesty?”

  “Surely you understand my plans for you,” Tchazzar replied. “I want you to stay in the land of your birth. You’ll look after your fellow wizards. Protect them and help them find their proper roles. And as you get that sorted out, you’ll assume additional offices and honors. In the days to come, you and Halonya will be the two greatest ladies in all the East. Surely that will please you.”

  Jhesrhi supposed it would. After all, it was vindication, a lofty purpose, luxury, and power all bundled up together.

  Whereas the Brotherhood was home. But Khouryn had already gone, and given the countless chances and perils attendant on the sellsword’s way of life, there was no guarantee he’d ever come back. And no matter how often she and Gaedynn resolved not to, they always went back to hurting each other. They’d been doing it ever since escaping the Shadowfell.

  Still …

  Suddenly she noticed the way Tchazzar was frowning at her hesitation, and the excitement gleaming in Halonya’s eyes. She didn’t want to believe the dragon was mad-at least not severely and permanently so-but sane or otherwise, he was certainly prideful enough to resent a refusal. And Halonya would do everything in her power to keep the wound rubbed raw.

  Was he petty and shortsighted enough to answer a rebuff by turning against the Brotherhood? Or stripping Chessenta’s mages of their newly granted legal protections? Jhesrhi didn’t want to believe that either. But she also didn’t want to assume better of him and be wrong.

  She swallowed away the dryness in her mouth. “Thank you, Majesty. Of course I’ll stay if you’ll have me.”

  Halonya scowled, then struggled to twist the expression into a smile before Tchazzar noticed. It gave Jhesrhi another moment of spiteful amusement.

  But no matter how exuberant the dragon seemed at her acquiescence, and no matter how she tried to respond in kind, that was the last bit of genuine enjoyment that came her way. Nor did she feel any gladder as, unable to sleep, she prowled through the camp later on.

  Could she truly acquit herself well as a courtier? She, who felt ill at ease around nearly everyone?

  Even if she could, did she have the right to abandon her comrades? Especially with Khouryn already absent?

  The more she weighed her choices, the more intolerable each of them seemed. But finally she saw a glimmer of hope. If she was staying, maybe the entire Brotherhood could too.

  She didn’t know whether Aoth would agree. But he might. Even if he didn’t, if she persuaded Tchazzar to ask, then neither the war-mage nor Gaedynn could say that she’d simply turned her back on them.

  It was late. Selune and her trail of glittering tears had nearly set in the west. But Jhesrhi was too energized to care. She strode through the moist night air with the snores of sleeping men snorting and buzzing around her and the butt of her staff thumping the ground.

  When she got close enough, she smiled, because spots of light still shined inside Tchazzar’s spacious tent. She wouldn’t even have to wake him. She started forward, and then a sentry stepped into her path. In her eagerness, she hadn’t noticed him before.

  He wore a scaly chasuble, part vestment and part armor, and carried a pick in his hands. One of the wyrmkeepers, then, who’d resumed wearing their customary regalia after Tchazzar proclaimed they could legitimately serve as clergy in his own church. Jhesrhi felt a twinge of distaste.

  “The god,” he said, “is not to be disturbed.”

  “He’ll see me,” Jhesrhi said.

  “Perhaps in the morning,” he replied.

  “I’m one of Aoth Fezim’s lieutenants, which means I’m a high-ranking officer in this army. I’m also the protector of all Chessenta’s wizards. His Majesty appointed me to that office earlier tonight.”

  “Be that as it may, the god is not to be disturbed.”

  Jhesrhi clenched herself against the urge to knock the fool out of her way with magic. Then she noticed details that made impatience give way to puzzlement.

  She might have expected to encounter a sentry within a few paces of his commander’s tent. Instead, the wyrmkeeper had stationed himself a stone’s throw away, as though to make absolutely certain that he himself couldn’t intrude on Tchazzar’s privacy. There were other guards too, shadows blocking every approach to the pavilion, each of them standing just as far away.

  But more interesting still was the roiling of mystical power that she suddenly discerned. She half felt it as a crawling on her skin, half saw it as sickly foxfire on the fabric of the tent. Tchazzar wanted privacy because he was conducting some sort of arcane ritual.

  She gave a brusque nod to the wyrmkeeper, then turned and stalked away. Stepping over pegs and rope, she stopped in the narrow, shadowy gap between two humbler tents and pondered what to do next.

  Earlier, Tchazzar’s offer had so flummoxed her that she’d forgotten that she had, in fact, agreed to spy on him if circumstances warranted. As they seemingly did now.

  But since she’d agreed to serve him as her true liege lord, would it be wicked to follow through? One thing was certain-it would be dangerous. A dragon might sense magic at play around him.

  Yet she found that her loyalty to Aoth, Gaedynn, and the rest of the Brotherhood outweighed all other concerns, ethical and practical alike. A day might come-indeed, seemed nearly at hand-when she’d have to tell them she was no longer one of them. But until then, she’d keep faith with them.

  She whispered to the air. A cooperative breeze could carry sounds if they originated only a short distance away. And she’d been making friends with the winds thereabouts since Aoth, Tchazzar, and the other captains had selected the land for their battleground.

  The cool breeze caressed her face and stirred strands of her hair, and then she heard Tchazzar like he was murmuring in her ear. He chanted sibilant, rhyming words in Draconic, meant to activate some enchanted object. The words were unfamiliar, but she recognized similarities to the charm that enabled her and Aoth to speak through a pair of fires despite whatever distance lay between them.

  The incantation ended with three staccato syllables like raps from a hammer. A moment of silence followed. Then a new voice said, “Tchazzar.” Jhesrhi suspected from its depth and sibilant snarl that it too belonged to a dragon, one in his natural form.

  “Skuthosiin,” Tchazzar answered. “Alasklerbanbastos has crawled out of his hole to attack me, and Jaxanaedegor is eager to betray him. This is our moment. Come north and help me make the kill.”

  “I can’t,” Skuthosiin said. “My agents in Djerad Thymar failed me. If I’m to rule the south, I’ll have to win my crown in open battle. In fact, I came to this talk hoping you’d help me.”

  “Forget the south for now!” Tchazzar said. “I’m offering you your chance at the Great Bone Wyrm!”

  “Even if I were willing to forgo Unther,” Skuthosiin said, “the dragonborn have to change or die. Otherwise, their enmity will get in the way of every move we make. Ask Gestaniius to help you.”

  “He’s on the other side of the Dragonsword Mountains. He wouldn’t arrive in time,” Tchazzar said. “Curse it, green, the three of us are allies. You owe me your help.”

  “What about the help I already gave?” Skuthosiin said. “If not for me, your sellswords would never
have come to Chessenta. Nor would they have searched for you in the Sky Riders.”

  “A search you waited one hundred years to initiate!” Tchazzar said.

  “A search for a false friend who killed and devoured me for my power,” Skuthosiin said.

  “It was the Dark Lady’s will that we three fight for supremacy,” Tchazzar said. “I knew she’d bring you back to life.”

  Skuthosiin laughed a rumbling laugh. “You neither knew nor cared, and I don’t blame you. I was trying to do the same thing to you and Gestaniius. But let’s not pretend there are any great bonds of fellowship between us. My proxies fetched you back because I hoped you’d prove useful.”

  “I’m far more than useful,” Tchazzar said, his voice grating. “I’m the Chosen of Tiamat, and a god in my own right!”

  “Then you shouldn’t need help to squash the occasional dracolich.”

  A long pause followed. Jhesrhi imagined Tchazzar glaring and trembling with the futile urge to strike out at a creature hundreds of miles beyond his reach.

  “I promise you,” the red dragon said at last, “you’ll have your new Unther, and the dragonborn will die. But first you have to help me.”

  “I already explained why that’s impossible.”

  “Then in accordance with the Sixty-Seventh Precept, I cut you off. You won’t have an inch of Alasklerbanbastos’s lands or one clipped copper from his hoard.”

  “You can’t do that. The One Hundred and Seventh Precept-”

  After a moment, Jhesrhi inferred that Tchazzar had ended the spell of communication, because there was nothing to hear but thumps and clacks. Evidently the war hero was kicking his camp furniture around.

  She tried to make sense of the conversation that had triggered his frustration. It was like the parley with Jaxanaedegor; much of the import was maddeningly opaque.

  But she understood that Skuthosiin and possibly other wyrms meant to exterminate the dragonborn, and it didn’t matter that Aoth and Cera had proved the Tymantherans innocent of crimes against Chessenta. Tchazzar wanted to kill them too.

  Tchazzar, to whom she’d pledged her absolute fidelity.

  TWELVE

  28 KYTHORN -5 FLAMERULE T HE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

  Summer had come, and, as Khouryn had observed on the march southwest, Tymanther was blooming. Trees were full of green leaves and singing birds; pastures of grass and the sheep, goats, and cattle grazing there; and fields of oats and barley. In contrast, Black Ash Plain had simply gotten nastier. The hot air was smokier, and some of the cinders adrift on it were stinging hot.

  I don’t blame the giants for wanting to steal somebody else’s country, he thought. I wouldn’t want to live here either.

  He wondered how they even managed to live in the midst of such desolation, then dismissed the question as irrelevant. His concern was to make sure that a goodly number of them didn’t live much longer. To that end, he took another look at the ash drifts and cracked, rocky soil to either side of the column.

  Towers of ash glided in the distance, somewhat like ships under sail except that they moved independently of the wind. Then suddenly a gray-black bump bobbed up and then back down out of sight behind one of the true cinder dunes, if that was the right term for them. They were drifts big as hills, and a fellow could climb them like hills until he set his foot wrong. Then the ash would swallow him like quicksand.

  Despite the haze in the air, and the smarting blur in his eyes, Khouryn knew he’d just seen a giant skirmisher. He drew breath to shout an alert, but one of the dragonborn marching under the banners of the Platinum Cadre did it first.

  So instead Khouryn shouted, “Form up! Protect yourselves!” He was sure there were only a few giants lurking on their flank, or somebody would have spotted one before then. Since they were too few to pose a serious threat, their purpose was to slow the advance, giving the bulk of Skuthosiin’s army more time to prepare. By halting and covering up with their shields, the Tymantherans were essentially giving them what they wanted. But they had to do something to keep the barbarians from picking them off one and two at a time.

  Five giants popped up, and their long arms whipped. They didn’t throw spears or any other sort of crafted weapon. They must have been hoarding those for the true battle to come. But they were an offshoot of the race called stone giants and, like others of their kind, could fling rocks with deadly force and accuracy.

  The impacts cracked and banged. One dragonborn fell down. But no stones streaked past shields to hammer the bodies behind them.

  The barbarians ducked back down. Several crossbows clacked, an instant too late to have any hope of hitting their targets.

  A female voice chanted words that sent a pang of chill stabbing through the hot air.

  Khouryn turned. Several paces to his left, Kanjentellequor Biri, the albino wizard who’d unraveled the deeper secrets of Nala’s papers, had somehow prevailed on two spearmen to open a gap in the shield wall. Where she stood, inviting another stone as she rattled off her incantation and flicked a rod of roughly hewn and polished quartz through small, repetitive downstrokes.

  Just as Khouryn reached her side, hailstones pounded down to batter the far slope of the dune. A giant howled.

  Khouryn gripped Biri’s wrist and hauled her back behind the warriors. “I didn’t tell you to do that,” he said.

  She grinned. “But it worked. They had cover, but not in relation to something that dropped straight down from overhead.”

  “You didn’t have any cover either. It’s only by the Luckmaiden’s grace that you didn’t end up with your brains splashed across the ground. As it is, you showed the giants where you are.”

  Tarhun had scattered the mages throughout the army, partly so the giants couldn’t target all of them at once. He’d also instructed them to refrain from casting spells till he said otherwise.

  Biri’s smile melted away. Despite his time among them, Khouryn wasn’t good at guessing how old a dragonborn was. But he got a feeling the wizard was younger than he’d first supposed. “I just wanted to help,” she said.

  “You already have,” Khouryn said, “and trust me, you will again. But for now, let the soldiers do the work. They can handle it.”

  As if to illustrate his point, a squadron of outriders charged the giants. Khouryn couldn’t see everything that happened next. His hulking spearmen with their overlapping shields were in the way, and so was the ash dune. But he made out Medrash’s heater, painted with the steel gauntlet of Torm, and Balasar’s targe, emblazoned with the six white circles of Clan Daardendrien. He also saw giants toppling with lances embedded in their guts, or blood streaming from sword cuts on their necks and chests.

  The infantry raised a cheer. Except that there was something wrong with it. Khouryn strained to make out the one voice that wasn’t jubilant, all but lost amid the clamor.

  “Turn around!” someone bellowed. “Turn around!”

  Khouryn did, and suffered a shock of amazement and dread. A brown dragon was heaving itself out of the ground. Huge as the burrowing creature was, it defied common sense that so few of the dragonborn had noticed its relatively blunt head with its mass of short, thick horns looming high above their own. But there hadn’t been anything there just a moment before, and almost everyone was watching the fight between the outriders and the giants.

  The dragon glanced around, then oriented on Khouryn. Or maybe on the wizard standing beside him.

  “Crouch down behind me!” he shouted. He wanted to tell her to close her eyes and turn her head too, but the brown didn’t give him time. Its neck whipped forward. Its jaws opened and spewed its breath weapon.

  Khouryn covered up with his shield and squinched his own eyes shut, which was possibly the only thing that saved them from the hot grit that rasped across his skin. When he opened them again, sand and ash hung so thick in the air as to make the smoky haze he’d despised before seem clear by comparison.

  Dragonborn cried out, because the brow
n’s breath had scraped them, or simply in fear and confusion. Khouryn could see some of the nearer ones, milling around or sprawled on the ground, but he couldn’t see the wyrm. A moment before, the sudden appearance of such a behemoth had seemed a nightmarish impossibility. Its vanishing felt like another, even though he assumed the cloud was actually responsible.

  He only knew when it charged because its strides jolted the ground, and because dragonborn yelled as it trampled them or brushed them out of the way. “Run!” he rasped, his mouth foul with sand, and then his huge foe pounced out of the murk. The scalloped, winglike frills that extended down the sides of its body were undulating. Maybe that was how it kept the air agitated and full of grit even when it wasn’t spitting the stuff out of its gullet.

  It struck at Khouryn, and he met its head with a thrust of his spear. The weapon drove straight into a nostril. The brown screeched and recoiled, jerking the spear out of his hand. It whipped its head back and forth until the foreign object tumbled out.

  That gave Khouryn just enough time to discard his shield and snatch the urgrosh off his back.

  The brown dragon clawed at him. He spun aside and chopped at its foot. The axe glanced off its scales.

  At almost the same instant, the head at the end of the long neck arced over him, too high for him to attack. The brown was reaching for Biri. But she conjured a blast of frost that spattered the wyrm’s jaws and eyes and made it falter.

  “You get away from it!” Khouryn bellowed. “Spears, follow my voice! It’s here!”

  The dragon lifted a forefoot high. He only just spotted the action in the brown, swirling gloom. It stamped down at him. He sidestepped, cut, and that time hacked a gash in its hide.

  Thunder boomed and light flared as Biri burned the wyrm with lightning. From a safer distance, Khouryn hoped. They were holding their own, but it couldn’t last-not unless they had help. Where were the damn spearmen?

  There! Shadows swarmed out of the murk on either side of the dragon. Spears jabbed.

  The brown struck left, then right, biting a dragonborn to pieces with each snap. Some spearmen cried out and retreated madly. But others were less frantic. They fell back just far enough to protect themselves, then attacked again as soon as the wyrm pivoted away.