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 subterranean 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 Faerun’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 throne, 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.”
“Yet I’m sure you know how the storm damaged the supply cache.”
“Of course. But I don’t understand how that piece of bad luck connects to talk of treason.”
“Liar!” Halonya shrieked, reverting to form.
Flame rippled up Jhesrhi’s staff, and judging that it was better to look angry than scared, she let it burn as it would. “Majesty, I can’t tell you how sick I am of having this harpy fly at me with one false accusation after another.”
“I’m sure,” Tchazzar said. “I was tired of it myself because you convinced me she was mistaken. But you know how to command the spirits of the air, and it was a great wind that ruined the supplies.”
“Great winds have been known to blow of their own accord in the middle of great storms,” Jhesrhi said, doing her best to sound scornful. “Is that all there is to the charge against me? That, and Halonya’s spite?” If so, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
But the Red Dragon said, “No, milady. Actually, there is a little more. You see, much as I resisted them, I’d already begun to have doubts about you. You’d… disappointed me in certain respects. And when I shared those doubts, the wyrmlady convinced me to set a spirit to spy on you. If it reported you were behaving as you ought, as I profoundly hoped you were, that would ease my mind. And if it reported something else, well…” He shrugged.
Inwardly Jhesrhi cursed herself for not fleeing as soon as she killed the spined devil. “And what has your spy reported?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Tchazzar said. “It didn’t keep its rendezvous with the wyrmkeeper who called it out of the Hells.”
“Then we’re back where we started,” Jhesrhi said. “There’s not a particle of evidence against me, just a jealous snake dribbling venom in your ear.”
“The fiend was invisible,” Halonya said. “It would take someone with knowledge of the wicked arts to detect and kill it.”
“Not if it simply slipped its leash and went home,” Jhesrhi said. “Those of us ‘with knowledge of the wicked arts’ understand that happens from time to time. Majesty, I’ll point out again that there isn’t a trace of proof to support these slanders, and then I’ll entrust myself to your sense of justice.”
“Actually,” Tchazzar said, “there might be a smidge of evidence. Hold up the item for everyone to see.”
One of the wyrmkeepers in Halonya’s entourage stepped forward, shook out a piece of gray cloth, and raised it high. Jhesrhi felt a jolt of alarm as she recognized the cloak she’d worn the night she destroyed the spinagon. Someone had evidently searched her quarters and found the garment where she’d tucked it away in the bottom of a trunk.
“It is yours, isn’t it?” Tchazzar asked. “I believe I saw you wear it shortly after we met.”
Jhesrhi wouldn’t deny it, then, not in so many words. “It does look like mine, Majesty. But so what?”
“The creature sent to watch you was a spinagon. If it threw its quills at someone wearing this garment, they would have left holes with burned edges in the wool.” Tchazzar looked at the dragon priest. “Stick your fingers through so people can see where they are.”
Jhesrhi forced a smile. “If there’s one thing Your Majesty knows about me, it’s that I often conjure fire.”
“But I’ve never seen it burn your clothes.”
“I wasn’t always as good at my craft as I am now.”
“That makes some sense. It would make more if I’d noticed the holes before. Or if the cape hadn’t still been damp when Halonya’s man found it, like you’d recently worn it out in the rain.”
Jhesrhi’s heart was pounding so hard that she feared Tchazzar’s keen draconic ears would hear and that the sound would agitate him further. “Majesty, you’re shrewd enough to understand that the appearance of guilt can be manufactured.”
“That argument is starting to appear as threadbare as the cloak.”
“Majesty, I’m the one who-” She remembered that he didn’t want to be reminded, even obliquely, that he’d twice needed her to save him. “I mean… I know how I’ve ‘disappointed’ you. I’ve
disappointed myself too. You can’t imagine how much I wish we were… further along. But still, you know I’ve given you more than I could ever give to any other. You know that if you’ll just be patient, our time will come.”
“Slut!” Halonya shrilled. “When her lying tongue fails, she dangles her body in front of you!”
“Yes,” Tchazzar said, “I’m afraid that is what she’s doing.” Tears started from his slanted, golden eyes and cut channels in the gore on his face. To Jhesrhi, the sudden display of unabashed misery was even more frightening than his naked anger or the smug way in which he’d toyed with her and watched her squirm.
“And how can you deceive and torture me,” Tchazzar continued, “when you know I love you? When I gave you everything! When you were one of the only two people I trusted! I should kill you!” He twisted to glare at Hasos. “And the false knight who vouched for you!” His gaze jumped to Nicos Corynian. “And the treacherous counselor who brought you to Chessenta in the first place.”
Tchazzar sprang up from the throne. “I should clean out this whole corrupt, ungrateful court and start fresh!” he shouted. “Finish the liberation of Chessenta by wiping out the cruel, greedy dastards who oppress it from within! The people will sing me hymns of praise! They’ll laugh and pelt you with stones and dung as you crawl naked and bleeding to the gallows! They’ll-”
“Oh, for the love of all the gods,” Shala said.
Tchazzar gaped at her, for the moment at least, seemingly less furious than dumbfounded that anyone had dared to interrupt.
“And lest there be any doubt,” the former war hero continued, “I was referring to the real gods. I’m willing to stick up for them even if these cowards won’t.” She indicated the high priests with a contemptuous flick of her hand.
“You’ve gone mad,” Tchazzar said.
Shala sneered. “Coming from you, that’s comical. No, Majesty, I’m not insane. I’m just bored with your tantrums. Will it bring this one to an early end if I confess that I killed the spina-whatever-it-was?”
“You couldn’t have!” Halonya said.
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