Aoth, however, was less diffident. “Majesty,” he said. “Others are right behind me, rushing to defend you. Maybe you should go back to camp and show them you’re all right. Jhesrhi and I can clean up here.”
“Yes,” the dragon said. “And I’ll confer with my lieutenants at dawn.” His tail sweeping through patches of flame, he turned and stalked away.
Aoth waited a while to speak, and even then, he kept his voice low. Wyrms had sharp ears. “The dead were more… enthusiastic than we expected.”
“Yes,” she said.
“And Gaedynn hasn’t come back. I’ll go check on him and the others. Cover for me if you have to.”
With the uneven gait of a creature whose front and hind legs were formed quite differently, Jet trotted to a spot where no branches would block his assent. Then he ran, sprang, lashed his wings, and soared upward.
Jhesrhi turned her attention to the fires that she and Tchazzar had kindled. Like any sellsword, she had little compunction about destroying other people’s property to achieve an objective. Still, there was no reason the village should lose every tree once the mock attack-except that it hadn’t turned out to be mock, had it?-was over.
She puffed on her staff as she’d blow out a candle. Its corona of flame and her mantle of fire blinked out together. Then, her voice like a lullaby, she crooned to the fires consuming trees and fallen branches, calming them and coaxing them to dwindle. The staff helped but grumbled without words.
*****
Aoth’s stomach rumbled and Tchazzar shot him a glare.
“I’m sorry, Majesty,” said Aoth. “I haven’t eaten since supper. I’ve been busy strengthening the camp’s defenses.”
It wasn’t entirely a lie. On his flight into the Sky Riders, he’d met Gaedynn coming back and so hadn’t needed to travel all the way to the spot where Meralaine and Alasklerbanbastos-curse him!-had summoned the dead.
“I’m glad someone is,” Tchazzar said. “However belatedly.” He shifted his glare to Shala.
Seated at the foot of the trestle table, the ridged scar on her square jaw just visible in the wan dawn light that penetrated the silk wall of the pavilion, Shala took a moment to answer. Maybe because she had to suppress the retort that first sprang to mind.
“With all respect, Majesty,” Shala said, “may I point out that the camp itself was not attacked, and its defenses did not prove inadequate? It was you, wandering beyond the perimeter with only a single wizard to guard you, who drew an attack.”
“Are you scolding me?” Tchazzar asked.
“Of course not, Majesty,” she replied. But her voice was cold, and Tchazzar didn’t look placated.
Aoth had come to respect Shala even if she did in some measure share the general Chessentan prejudice against mages, Jhesrhi and himself included. So he decided to intervene before the exchange grew any more acrimonious.
“Your Majesty,” he said, “clearly nobody is or should be blaming anyone else for anything because none of us expected trouble last night. Why would we? The war’s over. Chessenta and Threskel are truly one kingdom at last. Our focus now should be figuring out who attacked you.”
“I agree,” Jhesrhi said. Tchazzar had seated her at his right hand, in the place that properly belonged to Shala.
“So do I,” said Hasos. A tall, muscular man with a long-nosed, aristocratic face, he looked like the very personification of the Chessentan martial ideal and had in fact proved to be a competent commander within his limits. “And I say we start our search right here in this tent.” He turned a cold eye on Kassur Jedea.
The scrawny, grizzled wizard-king took a breath. “Majesty,” he said, “you will recall that I was never absolute master of Threskel, with no overlord set above me, and so I took no harm from your victory. To the contrary. I was overjoyed to escape the rule of an undead thing and pledge my fealty to a god incarnate.”
“Or perhaps,” Tchazzar said, “you merely feigned happiness to convince me to lower my guard. Then you struck at me in the hope of becoming the supreme lord of this miserable kingdom at last.”
“No,” said Aoth. “I’ve had people keeping an eye on him throughout the procession, yesterday and last night included. He was never out of view long enough to conjure up dozens of spirits.”
“And how would they have moved unnoticed from his tent to the orchard if he had?” Jhesrhi said. “I think, Majesty, that if we’re going to look for enemies who might plausibly attack you inside Threskel, and use the undead as their agents, we should begin with the obvious.”
Tchazzar frowned. “Alasklerbanbastos is gone, and I made sure he can never return.”
“I know,” said Aoth, “but Jaxanaedegor is still with us. I understand that you and he made common cause to destroy the dracolich. But now that you’ve succeeded, it’s hard to see why the truce would hold. After all, the creature is what he is.”
Which was to say, everything that Tchazzar had come to loathe and fear, as well as an opponent in the Great Game.
Still, the Red Dragon looked skeptical. “He seemed content with my promise to let him rule Mount Thulbane and its environs without interference.”
“But lacking any trace of honor himself, would such a treacherous creature trust anyone else to keep such a pledge?” Aoth replied. “Especially when you gave it under what amounted to duress, and Mount Thulbane, like the rest of Threskel, is indisputably yours by right.”
“Possibly not,” Tchazzar said. “Yet as best we could judge, the undead didn’t come from the north. They came from the direction of the Sky Riders.”
“And you and I know there are terrible things hiding in those hills,” Jhesrhi said. “But they don’t generally come out to trouble the lands beyond. I think it would take a powerful creature at one with darkness and undeath, a being like a vampire dragon, to call them forth.”
“Perhaps,” said Tchazzar, “perhaps.”
“If Jaxanaedegor has turned against you,” said Aoth, “then we need to consider the implications. The other dragons who betrayed Alasklerbanbastos were following his lead, not yours. The raiders out of Murghom left off harrying Chessenta because he arranged it, not any of us. It’s possible that we’re going to have to contend with all those foes again as well.”
Tchazzar fingered the round medallion-gold set with the red gems called Tempus’s tears-he wore around his neck. “What, then, do my advisers recommend?”
Hasos, who, bless him, always preferred defending to attacking, spoke up at once. “Majesty, we can’t turn our backs on Threskel if the kingdom isn’t truly pacified. I fear the invasion of Tymanther will have to wait.”
“That’s out of the question!” Tchazzar snapped.
Inwardly Aoth cursed.
You knew he wouldn’t like it, said Jet. He’d been eavesdropping on the palaver through his psychic bond with his master, and he was using it to speak mind to mind. Whoever humbles Medrash’s people, or wipes them out altogether, will score a lot of points in the dragons’ game.
But everyone says Tchazzar was a great commander in his day, Aoth replied. Like it or not, he should still see the sense in it.
“Majesty,” he said aloud, “as you’ve probably noticed, Lord Hasos and I almost never agree. We do now. It would be unwise to march south while a threat remains within your own borders.”
Tchazzar scowled at him. “Back in Luthcheq, you were friends with the dragonborn from the embassy. You advocated for them from the day you arrived.”
Careful! said Jet. But Aoth had never allowed himself to flinch in the face of Tchazzar’s displeasure, and he figured that if he backed down, it would only lend weight to the dragon’s suspicions.
“It’s true,” he said, “I liked Sir Medrash and Sir Balasar. Why not? They’re brave warriors. But it didn’t influence the way I did my job, then or now. That job being to give you good intelligence and good advice, and then to go kill whomever you tell me to.”
“Then you’ll go kill dragonborn!” Tchazzar said.
The war hero looked at her in surprise. Aoth felt a pang of pity because he knew what that seemingly innocuous gesture cost her.
But she didn’t let it show in her face or her voice either. “Isn’t there a middle way?” she asked. “With Threskel now loyal, and Akanul sending troops to help you, you now command a larger host than before. Can’t some of your warriors stay in the north?”
“I volunteer the Brotherhood,” said Aoth.
Tchazzar sneered. “Because you have no stomach for fighting Tymanther?”
“Because you need someone here with the knack for unmasking hidden foes, and I’m the man who caught the Green Hand killers. Also, to be honest, because the Brotherhood was in the forefront of every fight with Alasklerbanbastos. We could use some time to recover. So for the moment, hunting leftover rebels and watching out for pirates will suit us better than undertaking a long march and an entirely new campaign.”
“It makes sense,” Jhesrhi said to Tchazzar. “And you can always summon them later if you need them.”
“Fine!” The dragon sprang to his feet. “Let’s get the procession moving! Away from these wretched hills!”
*****
“She’s not coming,” Gaedynn said. “Tchazzar wants her company.”
Then a tall, slender figure stepped out of the darkness. The light of the campfire gleamed on her long, blonde hair and the gold rings on her staff.
“Although I could be wrong.”
“He did want me for quite a while,” Jhesrhi said. She gave a nod to the others sitting around the fire. “But I kept yawning, and he finally let me go.”
If only, Gaedynn thought.
It had taken three days to arrange the gathering. First, Oraxes, Meralaine, and Cera had to slip back into camp without revealing that they’d ever been away. Then Aoth had to decide how to proceed and pass the word around.
He’d decided that an assembly outdoors, around a fire, ought to appear less suspicious than a palaver in a tent. He and his fellow plotters would just look like insomniacs keeping one another company, and if they kept their voices down, no one would hear what they had to say. Most of the camp was asleep, and Oraxes had cast subtle charms to deflect the attention of anyone who happened to be awake. He was good at spells of concealment and misdirection, as many a shopkeeper back in Luthcheq had discovered to his cost.
“Join us,” said Aoth. He made room for Jhesrhi to sit down and handed her a wineskin. It was a fresh one, not the one they’d been passing around, so she wouldn’t have to put her mouth where someone else’s had already been.
Right, Gaedynn thought, human beings aren’t allowed to touch her even at one remove, but a mad wyrm-
He closed his eyes, took a breath, and tried to push the unfair, useless thoughts out of his head.
“Well, let’s get on with it,” said Aoth. “As you all know, our trick failed to convince Tchazzar that he shouldn’t invade Tymanther.”
“I think it may have made him even more eager to get away from Threskel and the Sky Riders and back to someplace he feels ‘lucky.’ ” Jhesrhi’s habitual frown deepened. It made her look haggard. “I should have known.”
“Well, you are supposed to be the expert,” Gaedynn said.
Cera shot him a reproachful look.
“Tchazzar’s crazy,” said Aoth. He accepted the communal wineskin, took a swig, and passed it on. “We could only guess which way he’d jump. And we did accomplish something. After the procession splits up tomorrow, we-well, all of us except for you, Jhes-will be away from him. That will leave us free to act.”
“And do what?” asked Meralaine. She looked subtly different than everyone else in the circle. The light of the smoking, crackling fire didn’t illuminate her quite as well as it did everyone else. But that hint of eeriness evidently didn’t bother Oraxes, who was holding her hand.
Aoth smiled a crooked smile. “That’s the question, isn’t it? How to spoil the dragons’ game, or at least slow it down. Well, they’ve been pushing the realms hereabouts toward war by applying certain pressures. And if we relieve one of the pressures, then maybe everybody won’t be so eager to fight.”
“So what’s the plan, specifically?” Gaedynn asked. The wine made its way back to him, and he took a pull. The sour red stuff hadn’t gotten any tastier. A poor province of scrubland and little, hardscrabble farms, Threskel wasn’t noted for its viticulture.
“According to Alasklerbanbastos,” said Aoth, “it was a gray dragon named Vairshekellabex who made the Akanulans believe the dragonborn were committing atrocities in their kingdom. His wyrmkeepers disguised abishais as dragonborn, just like the wyrmkeepers here in Chessenta and in Murghom. If some of us go west and prove it, maybe the genasi will decide not to help Tchazzar invade Tymanther.”
Gaedynn arched an eyebrow. “That’s your strategy? Because I see two problems with it.”
“If you only see two,” said Aoth, “then I’ve got you beat. But go ahead.”
“The genasi hate the dragonborn,” said Gaedynn. “So maybe they’re like Tchazzar. Maybe they’re happy for any excuse to go attack them, legitimate or not.”
“Maybe,” said Aoth, blue eyes glowing, “but they do have other enemies and other problems. Notably the aboleths. So they might change their minds.”
“Assuming they do,” said Gaedynn, “that still leaves Tchazzar to change his mind. And he could easily decide to go ahead even without Akanul’s support. After all, if the ghost attack didn’t dissuade him
…” He turned up his hands.
“If you have a better idea-and by better, I mean one that doesn’t involve trying to assassinate the powerful dragon king we supposedly serve, and then, assuming we survive, fighting our way out of Chessenta through all the folk who will take exception to our treachery-I’m eager to hear it.”
Gaedynn sighed. “So who’s going?”
“You, me, Alasklerbanbastos, and Cera, to control him.”
“Because nothing says ‘I’m trustworthy’ like arriving with a dracolich in tow?”
“Because he claims to know the approximate location of Vairshekellabex’s lair. And because I don’t trust him out of my sight.”
Oraxes smirked. “He’s out of your sight now.”
“In a literal sense, yes,” Cera said. “But I can always pull him in with this.” She tapped the nondescript leather satchel in her lap. It was the bag in which she kept the shadow stone.
“What’s it like,” asked Meralaine, “to look into his mind? His soul?”
A hint of distress came into Cera’s plump, pretty face. “I realize you’re a necromancer. But still, trust me, you don’t really want to know.”
Aoth gave her shoulder a squeeze.
“Shouldn’t we all go to Akanul?” Oraxes asked.
“I don’t want to leave the Brotherhood bereft of magic,” Aoth replied. “For all we know, Jaxanaedegor actually might make a move. He really is every bit as treacherous as I made him out to be. Even if he doesn’t, if there’s somebody here who can cast spells, it might help to hide the fact that I’ve gone away.”
“So some fly west, some stay here, and I go south alone,” Jhesrhi said. She held out her hand, and a bit of the fire jumped into it. She sent the flame dancing from one fingertip to the next like an ordinary person might play with a worry stone.
“I’m sorry about that,” Aoth said.
Her mouth twisted. “Don’t be. One way or another, it was probably inevitable. Tchazzar wants me cut off from my old life to encourage me to embrace my new one.”
Gaedynn forced a grin. “And won’t he be disappointed when, in the end, you fly away over the horizon with the rest of us.”
Jhesrhi glared. “I don’t like deceiving him. None of us mages do.”
“Well, I don’t mind,” said Oraxes, “but then, he mistreated Mera.”
“He still freed you, her, and every arcanist in Chessenta,” Jhesrhi said. “And as for the rest,
he was tortured! He isn’t always responsible for what he does.”
“Is he responsible for wanting to play xorvintaal?” asked Aoth. “For thinking it’s all right to exterminate the dragonborn on a pretext because only wyrms truly matter and the rest of us are just pieces on a lanceboard?”
“I know,” she said.
“Do you really?” Aoth asked. “Because there’s no in between. You’re either with us or you’re not.”
“I said, I know!” Jhesrhi snapped. Responding to her anger, the campfire roared and leaped higher. “I’ve been spying for you and pushing him in the right direction all along, haven’t I? I’ll just be glad when it’s over; that’s all. Gladder than you can imagine.”
“Fair enough,” said Aoth. “And it’s good you’re still with us because there’s work for you too. I need you to keep Tchazzar in Luthcheq as long as possible, so Cera, Gaedynn, and I have time to convince the Akanulans to pull out of the alliance.”
Jhesrhi flicked her bit of flame back into the campfire. “I can try stalling him with false auguries. But that’s a dangerous game when I haven’t really mastered such arts, and he has mystical abilities himself.”
“Just do what you can,” said Aoth, “and don’t overlook the fact that three armies-Chessenta’s, Threskel’s, and Akanul’s-are going to be trying to combine into one. It’ll be chaos. Such musters always are. Maybe you’ll have a chance to heighten the confusion.”
“I’d have a better chance,” she said, “if I were in camp instead of the War College. If Tchazzar still thought of me as primarily a soldier. As opposed to his minister of magic, or whatever it is I’m supposed to be.”
Concubine in training, Gaedynn thought, but for once managed to keep the gibe to himself.
Instead, he said, “Shala’s just about had her fill of Tchazzar.”
Cera nodded. “And Daelric and the other high priests are sick to death of Halonya. Still, if Jhesrhi asks someone for help and that person, for whatever reason, turns around and informs on her-”
“That will be it for me,” said Jhesrhi. “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”
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