Sphorrid kept on pursuing Oraxes. He thrust out his hand, and a glowing, transparent red dragon head appeared around it to spew flame. Acting in advance of Oraxes’s tardy prompt—and thank the Queen of Air for it!—his mount just managed to swoop beneath the blast. He replied with a bright, booming thunderbolt, and Sphorrid dodged with a veer to the left. The wretch made it look easy too.
They traded attack after attack, neither quite managing to score. Meanwhile, the other wyrmkeeper maneuvered to get both above and behind Meralaine, who was evidently still struggling to direct her own steed. Oraxes was frantic to go to her aid but knew Sphorrid would kill him if he tried.
Meralaine’s adversary had nearly reached the perfect position from which to attack when, suddenly flying more smoothly, the drakkensteed on which she was sitting wheeled to face it. The priest in the saddle sat up straighter. Oraxes realized Meralaine had reanimated the dead man so he could control their mount.
Their foe still had the advantage of the high air. But Meralaine shouted a word that made him cringe instead of doing anything useful, and at the same instant, the newly made zombie commanded their drakkensteed to use its breath weapon. The plume of poison mist reached just high enough to wash over the head of the living wyrmkeeper’s mount. It flailed and plummeted, and the man on its back screamed as it carried him down.
Perceiving that he had no allies left, Sphorrid turned his steed and fled. It was the wrong move. It kept him from dodging the thunderbolt that Oraxes threw after him. Charred and mangled, the wyrmlord and his mount also fell and broke into pieces when they smashed against the ground.
Oraxes and Meralaine followed them down and made absolutely certain both priests were dead. He took a deep breath and said, “Well. That was interesting.”
Meralaine swiped strands of hair out of her pale, sweaty face. “What’s the plan now?” she asked.
Oraxes tried to think. “We bury the bodies, and act oh so surprised if someone else comes from Luthcheq to ask what happened to the first band of busybodies. We watched them leave for home and have no idea why they never arrived.”
“That might work.” She waved her hand at the two surviving drakkensteeds. “What about these brutes?”
He strained to figure out if they could afford to keep them or set them free or if they needed to kill and hide them too, even though the animals had just helped to save their lives. He couldn’t sort it out.
“By the seven cold and broken stars,” he said, half laughing and half annoyed, “give me a moment, will you? Just a moment to catch my breath.”
S
E
V
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23–24 ELEASIS, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE
Praxasalandos oozed through a seam in the rock. It was a perfect way to stalk his prey. He could pace the Imaskari and dragonborn almost step for step, and they never even suspected he was near.
He found a spot where a crack connected his secret path to the open cavern. It wasn’t much of an opening, but it provided enough room for him to form an eye out of the liquid metal that was his body.
The intruders were still resting—in many cases, sleeping—and showed no signs of moving on in the immediate future. It made sense that they were tired. They’d marched a long way, sometimes taking the wrong tunnel and needing to double back despite the dwarf’s skill as a pathfinder. They’d also fought a pack of cave drakes that Praxasalandos had sent to hinder them.
The difference between the scene from before and what Praxasalandos looked at was that the dragonborn called Medrash was up and prowling around. Somewhat to his dismay, Praxasalandos had discovered that the explorers had a fair assortment of formidable individuals among them, but nonetheless, Medrash, his kinsman Balasar, and Khouryn, the dwarf, stood out from the rest. They were natural leaders in a way that transcended rank, although they possessed that too. Eliminate even one of them, and it would weaken the expedition significantly.
So that was what Praxasalandos intended to do.
He dissolved the eye before anyone noticed it then, guided by a kind of tactile instinct as reliable as sight, streamed back the way he’d come. He seeped out of the granite in a tunnel that connected to the area he’d just surveyed but beyond a dogleg, where none of his prey could see him.
There he compressed his mass as he solidified it and simultaneously sculpted it into an unaccustomed shape. The process was more difficult than assuming his natural form, but not much, not for a dragon possessed of his breed’s singular gifts.
When he was done, he peeked around the bend. There was an Imaskari sentry stationed there, but the human with his pale, mottled skin couldn’t see him hiding in the dark.
Praxasalandos kept peering out at intervals until finally Medrash was in view. Then he undertook the final and most difficult detail of his masquerade: putting a glowing lantern in his hand. Because obviously the real Balasar wouldn’t have wandered away from his comrades without a source of light.
It took a couple of heartbeats, long enough for Praxasalandos to feel a pang of doubt.
What was he doing? Why was he setting snares for folk who’d never done him any harm, especially when, judging from their standards and insignia, some of them worshiped Bahamut? Why was he serving Gestanius, a despicable creature that, by rights, any self-respecting metallic should oppose?
But of course, the answer was obvious: the game.
At certain moments, Praxasalandos regretted that he’d ever accepted the invitation to visit Brimstone on Dracowyr. But like most quicksilver dragons, he was curious; how could he pass up an opportunity to meet a creature who, though an undead horror, was also one of the saviors of their entire race?
And from the moment the vampire explained xorvintaal in all its intricate glory, there was no turning back. Praxasalandos had no interest in building a new Draconic Age, the alleged ultimate purpose for the contest. But the play itself was fascinating in its complexity, uniquely suited to divert a dragon’s deep and subtle mind not just for a month or a year, but down the long centuries of his near immortality. A wyrm could no more withstand its allure than he could resist the desire to amass precious objects into a hoard.
And once Praxasalandos opted in, he had to address the fact that, although powerful by ordinary standards, he lacked the resources to play in the same style as the most notorious wyrms of the East. If he wanted to fare well in the opening stages, his best chance was to ally himself with one of them. And Gestanius, who laired in the same mountains as he did, seemed a sensible albeit unsavory choice.
Medrash’s voice sounded down the tunnel. “Is there light shining around the corner?”
Praxasalandos decided that the lantern with its spot of phosphorescence had fully defined itself. He stepped around the turn, beckoned urgently for Medrash to come forward, then retreated out of sight.
“Balasar?” Medrash called.
Praxasalandos didn’t answer. He held his breath as he waited to see if the dragonborn would take the bait.
It was by no means a certainty. If Medrash doubted what his eyes had told him, he might retrace his own steps far enough to see that the real Balasar was still asleep. Or his voice might wake the real one, who would then presumably answer.
But when Praxasalandos heard the scuff of approaching footsteps and caught a whiff of Medrash’s scent, he knew the trick had worked.
He melted and poured himself back inside the rock. Then he flowed to the arch that linked the passage with the chamber the dragonborn and Imaskari currently occupied. There, by the pressure of thought alone, he started activating the runes that Gestanius had long ago concealed inside the granite.
* * * * *
Khouryn woke to a shiver in the stone beneath him. Or at least, he thought he had. No one else had woken up, and no one who’d already been awake looked alarmed. His surroundings were steady.
Steady but wrong. A dwarf could feel it in his bones, even if the Imaskari with their claims to knowledge of the sub
terranean world couldn’t.
He looked around again. There were three corridors leading out of the cavern, and the sentry stationed at one of them was looking down it intently, apparently because there was something to see.
Khouryn considered pulling on the mail the Daardendriens’ armorer had made for him and decided not to take the time. He grabbed his new axe and headed for the Imaskari warrior.
By the time he reached the soldier, he knew he’d been right to hurry. The granite beyond the arch looked solid. It wasn’t shaking in any visible or audible way. But if felt precarious, like a child’s blocks piled in such an unstable fashion that the arrangement fairly screamed of imminent collapse. A couple of minute particles of rock dust drifted down from the ceiling.
That, however, was clearly not why the human was peering into the shadows and at the white light gleaming from around the bend. If he understood what was actually happening, he’d likely be yelling his head off, not that that was a good idea under the circumstances.
“What are you looking at?” Khouryn snapped. “What is that light?”
“I saw Balasar,” the human said haltingly. Mistrusted by most of their neighbors, the Imaskari were perforce a somewhat insular folk, and apparently the sentry wasn’t entirely fluent in the Common tongue that enabled Faerûn’s many races and cultures to communicate one with the next.
Impatience ratcheted Khouryn’s nerves a notch tighter. “Balasar’s down there?” Could that be right? Hadn’t Khouryn just passed his friend on the way over?
“Medrash … followed,” the soldier said. “Light is from lantern and sword.”
“Herd everyone away from this passage,” Khouryn said, “quickly. But don’t shout. Understand me?”
The sentry’s eyes opened wide. “Yes!”
Khouryn trotted down the passage, and a perceptible tremor ran through the rock beneath his feet. More grit fell. With a tiny crunching sound, a hairline crack snaked through the wall on his left.
He rounded the bend. Peering about in seeming perplexity, Medrash was a few paces farther along. As the sentry had indicated, he’d set the blade of his broadsword aglow with silvery light to serve as a lamp.
“Get back here!” Khouryn said. “Now!”
Startled, Medrash jerked around. “Balasar—”
“Was never here,” Khouryn said. “This is a trap. Come on!”
Medrash ran toward him. Khouryn wheeled and sprinted but stopped when he turned the corner again.
The tunnel in front of him was vibrating. Enough grit was drifting down that not even a human could miss it. The granite rumbled softly but continuously.
Medrash rounded the dogleg and bumped into him from behind. “Keep going!” the dragonborn said.
“No,” Khouryn said. “We won’t make it. Back the other way!”
Medrash looked as if he wanted to argue, to protest that their comrades were just a few strides and a few moments away, but then he scowled and did as he’d been told.
The ceiling fell with a deafening crash and raised a blinding, choking cloud of dust. The jolt threw Khouryn off his feet. Coughing, eyes stinging, he looked around and could just make out the smudge of glow surrounding Medrash’s blade.
He drew himself to his feet and headed in that direction. Medrash met him halfway.
“Are you all right?” the dragonborn asked.
“Fine.” Noticing that the dust was settling, Khouryn turned, wiped his teary eyes, and inspected the mass of broken stone clogging the passage. For all their frantic haste, he and Medrash had just barely outdistanced the collapse, which meant the passage was blocked for twenty paces at least. “Well, we’re not going back that way.” A spasm of irritation twisted his guts. “Curse it, you’re not a dwarf. I don’t care what you think you see. Never walk down one of these tunnels by yourself.”
“I apologize,” Medrash said.
Khouryn sighed. “Forget it. Anyone can fall victim to a trick, especially a magical one.”
“And it seems that is what happened.” Medrash took another look at the rock fall. “Which reminds me that Biri and several of the Imaskari have magic of their own. If they work together, perhaps they can reach us.”
“Don’t count on it,” Khouryn said.
“Because the blockage is too big?”
“Partly. Also, remember that we don’t know how far the collapse extended, so we don’t actually even know that our comrades are all right. As they don’t know that we are.”
Medrash smiled grimly. “You’re saying we should plan on saving ourselves.”
“Pretty much.”
“Can we?”
“If this tunnel goes somewhere. I’m hoping it hooks back around and links up with the route our company is taking. It looks like it could, but there’s only one way to find out.”
“Then lead on,” Medrash said.
Khouryn did, meanwhile peering for signs of danger ahead. But he nearly missed, or at least disregarded, the line of silvery glimmer in the granite right beside him. Then, however, he realized what it was: the quicksilver dragon lurking behind another crack.
“Watch out!” Khouryn shouted. He stepped back and readied his axe. Two warriors against a dragon was rotten odds. But if he and Medrash both struck in the instant when the quicksilver wyrm became solid but before it could make an attack, they might have some kind of chance.
“I see it,” Medrash said. He raised his sword, cried the name of his god, and the glow of the blade burned so brightly that Khouryn flinched away. Then the paladin thrust at the fissure. It was a fast, hard action, but even though the crack was so narrow that Khouryn wasn’t sure the blade would even fit, it stabbed in cleanly, with nary a scrape of steel on stone.
Quicksilver churned and separated into separate droplets around the burning sword. Then it streamed away from the weapon and out of sight.
Medrash slid the sword back out much more slowly than he’d driven it in. Without the god’s power augmenting his skills, he was leery of dulling the blade. “I didn’t kill it,” he said.
“I figured,” Khouryn said. “But you ran it off, and I really didn’t want to fight it this very instant. So, well done.”
Medrash kept peering at the crack. “Up this close, I thought I sensed something.”
“What?”
“I’m not sure. A vileness.”
Khouryn snorted. “I didn’t have to be a paladin to pick up on that.”
* * * * *
As she entered the Green Hall, Jhesrhi looked around at the assembly and decided that a fair number of people had come to dread being summoned into the royal presence just about as much as she had.
Of course, not every face betrayed such feelings. Halonya was smirking like the half-demented thing she was. Lord Luthen and other peers who had thus far received only friendship and preferential treatment from the Red Dragon looked smug and self-satisfied. Zan-akar Zeraez kept his purple, silver-etched features composed into a mask of wise and sober courtesy.
Still, some courtiers, men who’d been stripped of property or offices merely on Tchazzar’s whim or been commanded to send their wives or daughters to his chambers, glowered and sulked. Daelric and some of the other high priests stood in a huddle, muttering together.
But only Shala kept scowling when the Red Dragon actually strode into the room, although some others couldn’t resist the impulse to wince or gasp.
That was because Tchazzar had blood spattered all over the front of him, from his long, handsome face all the way down to his pointed shoes, soaking his vermilion-and-black silk and velvet garments and dulling the glitter of his diamond buttons. Jhesrhi suspected that he’d been taking a personal hand in punishing supposed miscreants in the dungeons, although that was by no means a certainty. He’d proved himself capable of committing mayhem anywhere and anytime something angered him.
Everyone bowed or curtsied as, seemingly oblivious to his bizarre and disquieting dishevelment, Tchazzar mounted the dais and flopped down on the th
rone, immediately fouling the gold and sea green cushions with smears of blood. “Rise,” he said, and Jhesrhi noticed that he had significantly more gore on his mouth than the rest of his face. It even stained his teeth.
“Well,” Tchazzar continued, surveying them all, “here we are again, facing the same annoying paradox. With a god to rule it, Chessenta is blessed beyond all other realms. Yet no monarch could find himself more beset by malcontents. Why is that?”
After a moment, Jhesrhi decided it wasn’t just a rhetorical question. He was actually waiting for an answer. But no one knew what to say, or else those who did feared to draw the dragon’s attention to themselves.
Finally, looking like an overfed canary in his yellow vestments, Daelric cleared his throat and said, “Majesty, the brightest light casts the deepest shadows. When one studies the Keeper’s sacred texts—”
“Fire and blood!” Tchazzar screamed. “Did you think I was asking for platitudes? Not one word more! Or you can try studying the sacred texts without eyes and prattling about what you find there without a tongue!”
Daelric’s round, ruddy face turned a shade paler. He bowed and stepped back among his fellow clerics, who in some cases edged away from him as though Tchazzar’s displeasure were contagious.
Jhesrhi supposed that if anyone could calm the dragon, or at least encourage him to get to the point, it would be either Halonya or herself. And for once, the prophetess didn’t appear on the quivering verge of blurting something out. Although she did appear to be trying to maintain a grave expression to mask an underlying eagerness.
So Jhesrhi guessed it was up to her. “Majesty,” she said, “I ask you to remember that others don’t see as far or clearly as you.” As usual, she felt awkward and a little dirty concocting the kind of fulsome, roundabout speech such moments required. “But if you tell us what’s angered you, maybe we can help to find a remedy.”
Tchazzar shocked her by baring his pinkish teeth in a sneer. “Do you truly not know, my lady?”
Jhesrhi took a breath. She wanted to be sure her voice remained steady. “No, Majesty, I don’t.”
The Spectral Blaze Page 20
