The Gossamer Plain eo-1

by Thomas M. Reid

  The chamber was quiet for some moments longer. Vhok again resisted the urge to grimace, though for a different reason. Dreadlord Holt Burukhan was a fanatic, but the half-fiend grudgingly acknowledged that he was not a complete fool. All the risk lay in the Banites' lap, and the priests knew it.

  No matter, Vhok thought. Once I have the power of the Lifespring, convincing them of the plan's worth will be the simplest of things. They will feel foolish for ever doubting me. I will have this city. And Bane be damned.

  The meeting was over. The gathered assemblage rose to their feet and began to slip out one by one, each by magical means of one sort or another. Vhok watched the priests as they vanished, leaving behind nothing more than a sparkle of magic or a zephyr of breeze to mark their passing. In moments, only he and Zasian remained behind.

  "He is a fool," Vhok said at last, sighing loudly. "A fool's fool."

  The remark drew a raised eyebrow from Zasian. "Perhaps, but such comments are dangerous. He or his spies might be listening to us at this very moment."

  "It's all right," Vhok said. "I warded the room before we began tonight."

  Zasian nodded. "Wise," he replied. "As did I. Burukhan rarely gives proper consideration to such precautions, I fear."

  "Exactly," the cambion said. "A fool. And don't think I don't know you feel the same way about him, Zasian. I see the wisdom in your eyes-wisdom that flinches whenever that bag of winds speaks. For all his dedication and charisma, Dreadlord Holt Burukhan is not best suited to lead your church, Banite. You are far more able than he to command the hordes who worship your Black Hand." Vhok knew he spoke that last bit with more sarcasm than was probably wise, but he couldn't refrain from letting his true feelings trickle out.

  Zasian seemed to ignore the jibe. "It is not so uncommon for a man to serve as the power behind a throne," he said. "Sometimes the masses need a face-a 'bag of winds' who can work them into a fervor on his behalf-more than they need a wizened contemplator. I accomplish far more behind the scenes, away from the scrutiny he receives. Burukhan can be the king. I prefer the role of kingmaker."

  Vhok smirked. "If you say so. I could not be so content in such a role." Then his eyes narrowed. "When we have the city, is it your intention to continue to work behind the scenes?" he asked.

  Zasian smiled, a charming grin that gave the ladies unsteady knees. "Almost assuredly," he purred. "Though I'm sure that when Kaanyr Vhok sits in the Master's Hall of Sundabar, High Priest Zasian Menz of the Temple of Bane will be busy with his own pursuits. I'm sure we'll reach some sort of agreement of coexistence. You do not have any interest in spiritual matters, and I have little interest in the day-to-day affairs of secular rulership. What's good for you and your city will undoubtedly be good for me and my temple."

  "Indeed," Vhok said. Silently, he added, Though I might prefer the incompetent blowhard at the head of the temple. Less dangerous most of the time.

  The cambion dismissed future confrontations from his mind and changed the subject. "Are you prepared to leave tonight?" he asked Menz, though he knew the answer already. Both had been planning their impending journey for a long time.

  "Yes," Zasian answered. "And what of your preparations? Will we have access to the portal by this evening?"

  "Yes," Vhok replied. "Lysalis and the others are working now. It shouldn't be much longer."

  Zasian nodded and said, "I will meet you at the forges then, when it is time."

  "And our guide will be waiting on the other side?" Vhok asked.

  "I have made the offerings and sent the messages. The price has been paid, and the guide should be waiting for us on the far side of the portal."

  "Then I will see you tonight," Vhok said. He watched as Zasian nodded curtly once, summoned a magical doorway of reddish light, stepped through, and vanished.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Everfire filled the massive chamber with an orange glow. The channel of simmering, molten rock illuminated every surface, its light even shining faintly upon the ceiling. From his vantage point high atop one of the great ruined Forge Towers, Vhok could survey the entirety of the massive room. He could feel waves of heat radiating upward, even several hundred feet away. The oppressive warmth did not bother the cambion, and the smell of scorched stone reminded him of familiar places in the Abyss.

  The tower upon which the Sceptered One and his bevy of fey'ri sorcerers had gathered stood opposite its twin. The upper reaches of the counterpart had long ago shattered in some cataclysm, and the great stone bridge that once connected them simply hung in space, a jagged protrusion going nowhere. Together, the identical towers might have appeared as dual sentries, watching over the dwarves as they worked their forges in the sweltering heat.

  Kaanyr Vhok had failed to conquer Sundabar because it was actually two cities, one on the surface and one below. The dwarves occupied the lower levels, far down in the depths. They had arrived many centuries before the humans and had learned to harness the potency of the Everfire for their forge work.

  During the heyday of their activity, the dwarves had constructed side channels intersecting the natural lava course-great troughs that ran perpendicular to the large crevasse. At those smaller fiery canals, the dwarves performed most of their labors, heating and tempering the steel they forged into weapons and armor and the precious metals they crafted into beautiful things.

  To protect themselves from the searing heat of the Everfire, the dwarves placed powerful dweomers upon the magma channels. They trapped most of the heat within protective barriers of invisible force. Using arcane tricks they allowed only small amounts of the liquid fire to flow into the side channels, and magical irrigation gates controlled the flow. In that way, they harnessed the power of what otherwise would have been a most destructive force.

  Vhok knew that even after so many years, the protective magic remained in place, cordoning off the flow, keeping it from overrunning the forging chamber. Though the dwarves performed only a fraction of their work within the Everfire's tempering heat, they still came occasionally to create their most beautiful-and most magical-works.

  And, because they still valued the primordial lava flow, the dwarves fiercely protected it from enemies. The Vigilant, a small but elite force of dwarves, sworn defenders of the Everfire, stood always ready to drive back subterranean invaders.

  The Vigilant posed a serious problem to the cambion. They could rush at a moment's notice to aid the citizens above should an attack occur. Their combined might had proven sufficient to hold back the tide of the Scourged Legion's tanarukks on more than one occasion. Even with the cambion's subtle plan taking shape, the Vigilant might prove a thorn in his side. Vhok hated them and wanted to crush them-indeed, all the dwarves of Sundabar's labyrinthine underlevels-once and for all. But the dwarves were a hardy folk and not easily destroyed. So Vhok intended to use one of the oldest tricks of warfare. He would turn the dwarves' own strength against them. When the time was right, he would scorch them to oblivion with their own Everfire.

  But for the moment, the cambion merely needed to distract them, get them away from the molten rock.

  "You are certain you can bring down those barriers?" Vhok asked the fey'ri sorceress standing beside him.

  The other creature nodded. A lithe female, Lysalis had the delicate but angular features of an elf, and the blazing red eyes and prominent fangs of a fiend. She dressed in gaudy splendor, an affectation she had adapted in the heady days immediately following their escape from the utter destruction of Hellgate Keep. Though the cambion found Lysalis's choice of clothing a bit too flashy for his tastes, he otherwise thought her charming and sultry. He had bedded her a time or two, though it was never anything more than a moment's diversion, much in the same way he knew Aliisza pursued other dalliances on occasion. Lysalis would never be anything more than a useful minion to him.

  A perfectly capable minion, though, he thought.

  "It will take all of our talents melded together," Lysalis was saying, "and it will
not be quick, but I believe we can channel sufficient power into the dweomers to disrupt them and stir the Everfire to life."

  Vhok was pleased. He looked past Lysalis's shoulder to the handful of other fey'ri gathered there. They were the most competent, the most powerful among all who served in Vhok's Scourged Legion. He would need every last scrap of their talents.

  "Excellent," he said. "Have them begin. We shall return in a while to see how they fare."

  Lysalis nodded and turned to the fey'ri. She gathered the handful of them together and issued instructions. Soon, the sorcerers were deeply involved in their preparations. None paid the slightest heed to Vhok.

  The cambion peered over the edge of the tower once again. Far below, glowing ruddy in the light of the eternal furnace of the Everfire, he could see a handful of dwarves moving around. Whether they were patrols of Vigilant or craftsmen immersed in their work, he could not tell. It did not matter. Soon, he imagined, they would all be scrambling to escape the expanding inferno. The image made him smile.

  Once Lysalis was satisfied that her compatriots had preparations well in hand, she and Kaanyr Vhok took their leave and began to make their way down a wide spiral staircase leading deep into the tower. When they were well out of both earshot and view, the half-fiend stopped.

  "We must pay Nahaunglaroth another visit," he said. "It is time to offer more enticement."

  Lysalis smirked, her elf's eyebrows arching in bemusement, but she said nothing. She passed her hands before herself and muttered an incantation. Instantly, the pair was whisked far from the dwarven stronghold.

  Vhok took a steadying breath as he found himself standing upon a stone balcony exposed to the crisp night air of the mountains. He had expected the change, but it still unsettled him. Lysalis stood right beside him, and her own gasp confirmed to the cambion that the sudden shift in location and temperature startled her, too.

  Behind the pair, the glow of torches cast orange light in a corona around them, throwing their shadows upon the balustrade of the balcony. Beyond that railing, the blackness of night cloaked the world like a velvet cape. The gibbous moon was low on the horizon, and filmy clouds crossed it like gauzy ribbons.

  A hoarse growl chorused with a clank of metal, and Vhok turned in time to spy a pair of unusual creatures snarling and pointing. They were of a similar height as he, though more muscular and stocky, and their features were brutish and ferocious, with exposed canines and thick, prominent noses. Vhok would have considered them hobgoblins but for a few bizarre features. They both sported wide, leathery wings that fanned out to either side as they advanced. Their skin was pale blue, rather than the usual tan or yellowish of hobgoblins. Vhok knew of them, the Blood of Morueme, sired in the mating of a blue dragon and a hobgoblin slave.

  The two draconic guards, dressed in heavy chain shirts and brandishing blackened battle-axes, loped forward, twirling their razorlike weapons overhead.

  "You trespass!" one of them snarled.

  Vhok fought the urge to yank Burnblood, his ancient elven long sword, free of its scabbard on his hip. Beside him, he noted that Lysalis clenched her fists, as though she, too, were resisting the urge to blast the two oafs with fell magic. Taking a calming breath, Vhok kept his hands out, showing that he remained unarmed, and said, "We have come to see Master Nahaunglaroth, and we bear him gifts of gold and jewels."

  At the mention of their lord-and quite possibly their father-the two half-dragons slowed their advance. The one who had spoken cocked his head to one side and asked, "Where is this treasure? I see no chests or sacks of coins and gems. I think you're lying."

  Vhok rolled his eyes ever so slightly but smiled and replied, "There is too much to carry-it would be too heavy. We bring it magically and will present it once we have an audience with Master Nahaunglaroth."

  The draconic hobgoblin considered the cambion's words for a moment, perhaps trying to puzzle out how much he should trust the half-fiend.

  After a lengthy pause, the guard nodded and said, "You wait here. I will find out if the masters will see you." The half-dragon spun on his heel and marched through a doorway into the interior of the building, leaving the other guard to watch the two interlopers. The second draconic hobgoblin stood mutely, eyeing the pair with undisguised suspicion.

  Vhok gave the brutish creature a deprecating smile and turned to stroll toward the edge of the balcony, intent on enjoying the view while he was forced to wait.

  Lysalis had brought the two of them to Doomspire, a great castle perched on the side of Dragondoom Mountain, in the far eastern end of the Nether range. It was not the first time the cambion and his sorceress had visited the mountain fortress. Vhok had begun negotiating with the dragon lords some time before, hoping to forge better relations with the Morueme clan. It had been a slow process. The history between the wyrms of Dragondoom and the fiends of Hellgate Keep had been unpleasant.

  "You leave all your weapons out here, and you can come inside," the guard said upon returning.

  The routine was familiar to Vhok and Lysalis, who had been made to disarm each time they had come to visit. The cambion thought that Nahaunglaroth was being paranoid, considering all the wondrous gifts he had brought the great dragon in the past, but he wasn't about to strain the fragile peace he had managed to establish with the clan over something as trivial as a sword.

  After leaving their blades and other gear in a pile on the balcony, the two half-fiends followed their escort into the interior of the castle, leaving the other guard to stand watch over their belongings. The route through the passages of the castle was long and circuitous, descending several flights of stone stairs and winding down through numerous corridors into the deeper levels. Vhok paid little attention to their journey. The fortress was a crude thing in his estimation, built by the earliest hobgoblin thralls serving the great dragons of Clan Morueme. Despite the considerable magic and dragon ingenuity that had subsequently been spent to improve the castle's defenses, it still bore the unmistakable coarseness of its original makers.

  Vhok noted that the stones forming the walls were rough and uneven, and in many cases, walls leaned or slanted at inexact angles. Doorways were not of consistent heights, and hallways often ended with no destination. The whole place had a foul odor, something akin to a mixture of bad meat and an overabundance of stable dung. Vhok often wondered just how close to collapse the place might be were it not for the dragons' will.

  As they walked, the trio passed numerous other half-dragon, half-hobgoblin denizens. They also spied a handful of pure-blood hobgoblins, all of them female and appearing sullen and craven in the extreme. Some hurried to one unseen destination or another, but a few simply lurked in doorways or large open halls. Some loitered with young draconic offspring at their feet. The entire place reminded Vhok of a rundown festhall in a city slum.

  At last, the decor shifted to something more opulent. The path their escort followed widened into a broad hallway that angled downward and changed from worked block walls to natural stone, shaped smooth and carved with imagery of great winged wyrms inciting terror across the land.

  Vhok leaned close to Lysalis and whispered, "Next time we come for a visit, bring us directly here. That festhall overhead is anything but festive."

  "So long as you can convince all of them not to behead us on sight," the sorceress replied, nodding toward the ranks of guards who flanked the hall every ten paces or so. "I rather value mine."

  Vhok smirked but did not reply, for their guard had led them to a great chamber filled with a vast assortment of gleaming artwork. The half-dragon guard gestured into the room, then spun on his heel and vanished the way he had arrived.

  Though he had visited the room before, the cambion was still taken aback by the sheer beauty-and volume-of treasures on display. It was on par with some of the greatest private museums or vaults in all of Faerun, he supposed. Tapestries woven of the finest silks hung on every wall, stands displaying magnificent weapons, shields, and suits of armor line
d the perimeter, and glass cases revealed ancient coins, fragments of fine dishes and service sets, crowns, tiaras, jewelry, and much more.

  "I see that you still marvel at my collection of fine antiques," boomed a voice from overhead.

  Vhok and Lysalis simultaneously jerked their gazes up to peer at its source. A massive serpentine body reclined upon a large gallery that circled the chamber. His brilliant blue scales glittered in the light of the various lanterns placed throughout the room. A large, horned head rested upon a thick neck, with reptilian eyes studying the two visitors intently.

  Vhok bowed in deference and said, "You are looking fit as always, Nahaunglaroth."

  "And you are as wretched a flatterer as ever, cambion," the dragon replied, uncoiling himself and slithering over the side of the gallery's edge. As his body descended to the floor where Vhok and Lysalis stood, the sorceress took an involuntary step back. Vhok did not flinch, though he felt a moment of dread wash through him. Nahaunglaroth was a dragon, after all.

  The scaled body began to shift then, shrinking and melding until it was no longer serpentine. When the transformation was complete, no evidence remained that a dragon had ever been in the room. Only a man, dressed lavishly in navy breeches and silk shirt, with a lighter blue silken doublet, stood in the company of the visitors. His eyes, however, still possessed that intense, reptilian gaze.

  "So, you've come to bring me more trinkets?" the man said, striding forward. "Whatever other unworthy qualities you may have, fiend, you at least know the way to a wyrm's heart. What have you to show me?"

  Vhok had to smother a chuckle. Nahaunglaroth was, like all of his draconic kin, too greedy for his own good. Even with all of his finery on display, the creature wanted more, always more. For that, the cambion was thankful.

  "Lysalis-if you please?" Vhok said, and the sorceress obliged him by beginning an incantation. Nahaunglaroth tensed for a moment, but when the fey'ri produced a tiny chest in the palm of her hand, set it down, and stepped back, the dragon could not resist the urge to peer down at it eagerly.