Even if Ramed hadn’t come to find him, he would have known something was different even before they reached the Brotherhood’s camp on the outskirts of town. Griffons were screeching when they should have been asleep, and when he came within sight of Aoth’s pavilion he saw the reason. Leathery wings folded, saddles cinched to their torsos, four drakkensteeds crouched on the ground near the entrance. Created from the blood of wyrms, or so Oraxes understood, the reptiles looked like scrawny, runt dragons with unusually long necks and probably smelled like them as well. So it was no wonder their proximity agitated beasts that had just helped their masters fight a war against dragons.
It agitated Oraxes for a different reason. “You said there was one wyrmkeeper!”
“One main one,” Ramed said, “and three underlings. Convince the leader, and you’ll be fine.”
“Each of them surely has some skill with his own kind of magic,” Oraxes said. “Any one of them could see through-” He heard the whine in his voice and made himself stop. “Forget it. You’re right. Let’s do this.”
One of the drakkensteeds growled as they approached. The sellsword sentry in front of the tent came to attention and saluted. Responding as he’d seen Aoth acknowledge such shows of respect, Oraxes gave the warrior a clap on the shoulder as he passed by.
The wyrmkeepers inside the tent had made themselves free with Aoth’s possessions. They were working on their second bottle of wine and, by the looks of it, rummaging through bundles of dispatches and the like. All four were unmistakably priests of Tiamat, their garments and jewelry marked with the draconic imagery and pentad motifs emblematic of their faith. But the big man seated in Aoth’s favorite camp chair had carried things further. He had a scaly pattern tattooed on his hands and neck, and when he smiled, he revealed teeth filed to points.
“Captain Fezim,” he said, rising. “Good evening. I’m the wyrmlord Sphorrid Nyra.”
“And this is Meralaine,” Oraxes replied. “She’s one of the wizards the war hero assigned to help the Brotherhood accomplish its tasks.”
Sphorrid’s eyes flicked to Meralaine then back again. “I hope you don’t mind that my acolytes and I made ourselves comfortable. From what this fellow was able to tell us”-he indicated Ramed with a vague gesture-“I was afraid you might not return for a tenday.”
“No one can predict exactly how long it will take to fly over half a province,” Oraxes said.
“I imagine that’s especially true when you wander off by yourself,” Sphorrid said. “Do the masters of sellsword armies typically behave that way?”
The question ratcheted Oraxes’s nerves a little tighter. But he told himself that Sphorrid hadn’t really seen through his disguise, nor did he know anything about Aoth’s plans. Otherwise, the whoreson wouldn’t bother with this particular line of conversation. He might be suspicious, but he was just fishing.
“When I was a young legionnaire,” Oraxes said, “I was often sent on scouting missions. I guess old habits die hard. And sometimes one man can catch foes who’d spot a whole company coming over the horizon and scurry for cover. You may have heard that I was searching alone when I found the cellar where Sunlady Eurthos was being held and tortured.”
Sphorrid’s eyes narrowed at the implication of hostility. But so be it. Oraxes was fairly sure that Aoth wouldn’t have tied himself in knots trying to be cordial. So he supposed he shouldn’t either.
“I understood,” said the priest, “that that incident had been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.”
“Yes,” Oraxes said, “but you’ll also understand if the sunlady doesn’t feel inclined to partake of the pleasure of your company.”
“No matter,” said Sphorrid. “Our business is with you.” He proffered a roll of parchment, no doubt the same one he’d waved in front of Ramed.
Oraxes looked it over without haste, as he imagined Aoth would have done. At the top, the listing of Tchazzar’s titles went on for line after line, but once he waded through those, the sense of the rest was clear enough. He rolled it back up and tossed it on the trestle table beside the wine bottles.
“If His Majesty wants to know what I’m doing,” he said, “he could have just asked for a written report. I was planning to send one anyway.”
“He thought I might be able to provide additional insight,” Sphorrid said. “Why don’t you start by telling me about the reconnaissance you just concluded? What did the lone man see that an entire company would have missed?”
Oraxes swallowed. “It will be easiest to show you on a map,” he said, then realized he didn’t remember where Aoth kept them. He looked around and felt a twinge of alarm when he failed to spot them. But, like a dutiful subordinate, Ramed hurried across the tent, opened a chest, lifted out a roll of lambskin, and spread it on the tabletop.
That left Oraxes to concoct a tale of flying and searching from place to place and to stuff it with enough detail to make it convincing. Sphorrid put up with the tedious story for a while, but finally said. “Excuse me, Captain, but let’s stab to the heart of the matter. Did you find some trace of rebel holdouts and traitor necromancers or not?”
Oraxes took a breath and pointed at a place on the map that was a little farther along his imaginary route. “Right here, on a hill overlooking the crossroads, there was a campsite where someone burned a carving of a red dragon in the fire. The scraps of wood that survived had symbols of hatred and murder cut into them.”
Sphorrid gave him a skeptical look. “I thought you were searching for cunning, dangerous wizards, not folk so dim they’d try to curse a red wyrm with a ritual involving flame.”
Inwardly Oraxes winced. If he weren’t so nervous, he wouldn’t have slipped up like that! “The intent is the important thing.”
“With respect, Captain, the important thing is whether you’re making any real progress. If not, Chessenta could use your sellswords in the campaign against the dragonborn. The Church can pursue the work of ferreting out rebels and blasphemers closer to home.”
Meralaine laughed. Both Oraxes and Sphorrid turned to her in surprise.
“I’m sorry, my lords,” she said. “Truly. But it’s comical to see you scowl and bluster when there’s nothing to quarrel about.”
The wyrmkeeper cocked his head. “Explain.”
“Captain Fezim has a methodical mind,” she said. “It’s probably what makes him a good commander. But it also makes him a dull storyteller, and tonight is a case in point. His inclination is to describe every step of his journey instead of skipping to the discovery in the end. But I’ve already suffered through the tale once, so I can tell you the trail eventually led him to a place where His Majesty’s enemies meet to scheme and work their sorcery. The site of an ancient battle in the Sky Riders.”
Oraxes assumed she meant the place where she and Alasklerbanbastos had summoned the dead to frighten Tchazzar. “Yes,” he said, touching his finger to the map again, “right here.”
Sphorrid smiled a wry, less arrogant smile that almost made him likable for a moment. “The wizard’s right, Captain. We could have had a less contentious discussion if you’d told me this at the start. But never mind. Just tell me what you intend to do about it.”
What indeed? “According to my information,” Oraxes said, “the coven will gather tomorrow night. We’ll attack them when they do. If we sneak up on them with a small force, maybe we can take them alive and interrogate them. Then we can find out if they’re agents of Jaxanaedegor, diehards loyal to the memory of Alasklerbanbastos, or maybe even in the pay of the dragonborn.”
Sphorrid narrowed his eyes and considered. Then he said, “That does sound like a sensible way to proceed. My acolytes and I will accompany you, of course.”
“Fine,” Oraxes said. “But for now, I’ve had a long journey, and this is my tent. Ramed will find you suitable quarters and provide for your mounts as well.”
After the wyrmkeepers left, he flopped down in a chair. Meralaine grinned at him. “You were wonderful,
” she said. She picked up the half-empty wine bottle, took a swig, then brought it to him.
“Did I say what you wanted me to say?” he asked. “When you started talking about a coven and the place in the hills, I had to guess.”
“You read my mind exactly. It was clear that the only way to satisfy the bastards is to actually show them some rebels. So we will.”
“Are there any ghosts left haunting that patch of ground? You and Alasklerbanbastos raised a bunch of them, and then those were all destroyed.”
“I’ll call some new ones somehow.”
He smiled. “And then we use them to put on another pantomime. Why not? If the trick fooled Tchazzar, it ought to fool his servants too.”
*****
Her silver-skewer piercings gleaming in the glow of the floating orbs of light, Biri walked toward Balasar, and he felt the usual contradictory pulls, the inclination to enjoy the undeniable pleasure of her company pitting itself against the urge to draw away. But at the moment, there was really no question of how he would behave. A warrior of Clan Daardendrien didn’t spurn a comrade in a strange and dangerous place.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered. “After Nellis Saradexma vouched for us, the empress accepted our offer. She even loaned us the big red dragonflies so we could get to the mountains faster. But these men act like they don’t want our help.”
She was referring to the Imaskari soldiers and war wizards who’d accompanied the dragonborn into the caverns. Uniformed in somber colors, their pale skins mottled with dark streaks and spots in a way that, so far as Balasar was aware, made them unique among humans, they were courteous enough. But when they thought no outlander was looking, their expressions betrayed varying degrees of skepticism, amusement, and impatience.
“I think it’s a matter of professional pride,” Balasar murmured back. “They already explored these particular tunnels. They couldn’t find a path that leads all the way under the Dragonswords to the desert beyond. So it will make them look inept if somebody else does.”
“But Khouryn is a dwarf.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing to them that it does to us. Not if they believe they’re just as at home underground as his people are.”
Biri gave him a puzzled look. “Is that what they believe?”
“I don’t know and don’t intend to ask. If it’s not already common knowledge, they may not want outsiders to know. But have you ever wondered where they spent all those centuries between the fall of their old empire and the founding of the new one? Or why the new one is called High Imaskar?”
She smiled at him. “You think like a wizard.”
He normally took compliments as his due, but for some reason, hers always disconcerted him, although he trusted it didn’t show. “I doubt that. My poor tutors had to thrash me on a regular basis just to inspire me to learn my letters and numbers.”
She chuckled then her face turned serious again. “Do you think the Imaskari could be right that there’s nothing to find?”
He shrugged. “Alasklerbanbastos didn’t show Jhesrhi where to search. He just told her. Then she passed the information along to Khouryn when they were mainly worried about sneaking him out of the War College. So it could have gotten muddled along the way. But I doubt it. Jhesrhi and Khouryn are both sharp, and Gestanius’s creatures have to be slithering under the mountains somewhere. Why don’t we go inquire how things are going?”
They headed for the front of the column. Warriors of the Platinum Cadre greeted them or nodded as they passed. Like any sensible dragonborn, Balasar had no use for religion, and a wyrm-worshiping religion least of all. But he was still glad the cultists had forgiven him for infiltrating their fellowship to spy.
Peering in all directions, Khouryn was prowling around at the point where the pale, steady shine of the floating orbs faded out. He’d explained that was intentional. There were things a dwarf could see in the dark but not in the light and vice versa. Operating at the leading edge of the illumination made it easy to switch back and forth between the two modes of sight.
“Anything?” Balasar asked.
“Not yet,” Khouryn said. He turned toward Biri. “I noticed you and a couple of the Imaskari wizards casting a spell a while back.”
She shrugged. “More divination. It didn’t reveal anything. But that could be because Gestanius has countermeasures in place.”
“I imagine it is,” Balasar said. “But saying so won’t keep our new friends from getting restless. They’re going to want to turn back pretty soon.”
“We have lanterns,” Biri replied, and Balasar liked the matter-of-fact way in which she said it.
“That we do,” he said. “Still-”
“Look at that,” Khouryn said.
Balasar turned. The dwarf was using his new battle-axe, a cherished heirloom and gift from the Daardendriens, to point at a spot where the high wall met the vaulted ceiling.
Balasar squinted then said, “I don’t see anything.”
Khouryn grinned, a flash of white teeth inside his bushy beard. “Good.” He waved for Medrash, Nellis, and Jemleh Bluerhine to come forward.
Predictably Medrash looked keen as a newly honed dagger to learn what was afoot. Clad in a black greatcoat with four layers of shoulder cape, the crystal globe that served as his arcane focus cradled against his chest, Nellis appeared almost as eager. The diplomat had been startled when Tarhun ordered him to join the expedition, but at some point on the sea voyage, his attitude had shifted, and he was enjoying himself.
It was Jemleh who advanced in a more leisurely fashion. Tall for a human, the Imaskari commander wore the same sort of ink black greatcoat as Nellis. But his had an oval onyx clasp to hold the high collar shut, and he carried a cane with a crook carved from the same stone to help him cast his spells.
“What do you need?” he asked.
Khouryn pointed as he had before. “It looks to me like there’s a rift at the very top of the wall, right before it bends out and turns into ceiling. It’s hard to see because it’s almost beyond the reach of the lights, and because of the way the stone humps out to either side. That makes it look like just an indentation, not the start of another tunnel.”
Jemleh squinted at it for a couple of heartbeats. “I think it is just an indentation.”
Biri smiled. “We don’t have to speculate.” She murmured a rhyme and pressed her hands together as though making a snowball. Between them appeared an orb of light like the ones the Imaskari had conjured except that the glow was golden, not silvery. She tossed it and it floated upward.
Its radiance spilled into a gap broad enough to allow the passage of even the biggest creatures assailing High Imaskar. It would be tight for the largest ones, but they could squirm through. Balasar felt a pang of excitement.
“You have good eyes,” Jemleh told Khouryn. “I admit we never noticed that. But you don’t know that it goes anywhere. There could be a back wall just beyond reach of the light.”
Balasar grinned. “It’s like the lady said. We don’t have to speculate.”
“Right,” said Medrash. “We don’t.” He turned and beckoned for a couple of warriors of the Cadre to come forward. Jemleh achieved a similar result by pointing to a pair of Imaskari soldiers with his cane.
Nellis conjured another ball of light and floated it halfway up the wall. Gripping a first handhold, Medrash started to climb. Other men-at-arms followed. Meanwhile, the two Imaskari mages muttered incantations that Balasar realized were the same, perhaps a charm to enhance their strength or agility. Biri didn’t, though. Smiling, she simply awaited her turn to begin the ascent.
Balasar stuck close to her as they pulled themselves up. But there were plenty of places to grip or plant one’s toes, and she didn’t need any help. Above them, one of the Cadre warriors hauled himself up onto the floor of the gap and swore softly.
When Balasar reached the top, he saw what the excitement was about. Though it was impossible to know how far it
extended, he and his companions had entered a cave every bit as spacious as the one below. He found it vaguely disquieting that such a prominent feature had gone undetected. It made him imagine a whole world riddled with lightless, secret spaces whose existence no dragonborn ever suspected, even when they were right above his head, beneath his feet, or within arm’s reach.
Mainly, though, it made him eager to press on. He looked around for Medrash and Khouryn; then everything went black.
He realized some countermagic had put out Biri’s light. He snatched out his broadsword; he and Medrash had left their greatswords behind in Skyclave, the Imaskari capital. The larger weapons were fine for showing what important fellows they’d become, but they preferred the blades with which they’d practiced all their lives when it was actually time to fight.
Khouryn bellowed, “Troglodytes!” Then came a thunk that was likely his axe cleaving flesh. An Imaskari yelled something in his own language. Perhaps trying to make a new light, Biri rattled off a spell in dactylic trimeter.
Balasar smelled a putrid odor. Instinct prompted him to pivot to the right and cut. His blade sliced something that gave a hissing screech. At the same time, he felt something sweep past his head as his foe’s attack, whatever it had been, just missed him.
Then amber radiance flared through the cave, revealing that their foes did indeed appear to be troglodytes, cave-dwelling reptilian savages like stunted parodies of dragonborn. But they had long necks like the creatures that had attacked Balasar and his companions beside the Methmere, skins that gleamed like quicksilver, and a quicksilver fluidity to their movements.
The cave started flickering from light to dark as Biri’s magic fought the power that sought to snuff her conjured glow. It made everything appear to move in a series of sickening, disorienting jerks.
Balasar had gashed his particular foe across the snout. It was hardly a mortal wound, and he followed up with a lunge. But the creature melted into shapelessness as if it really were made of liquid metal, flowed and splashed out of reach of the attack, and reformed itself. Its jaws opened.
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