The Rite

by Richard Lee Byers

  It seemed a good notion. Until the shadows closed in.

  The only light in all the crypts shined from Pavel’s enchanted torch, which Will had set down to fight Sammaster’s abominations. With every stride, the glowing stick receded farther behind him. By the time he reached the trap, the corridor would be so dark that he wouldn’t be able to distinguish the safe tiles from the others.

  He felt a surge of despair, and strained to stifle it. He still had a chance. He’d studied the trap already. The layout was in his memory. If he was as cunning a thief as he’d always reckoned himself to be, he should be able to set his feet properly whether he could see the marks on the tiles or not.

  Just enough faint illumination remained to indicate where the black-and-white pattern began. He sprinted out onto the tiles without hesitation, springing from one spot to the next.

  Rapidly narrowing his lead, the ogres followed.

  A thrown knife whizzed past Will’s head. Then the corridor shook and groaned as counterweights dropped behind the walls, and hidden mechanisms lurched into operation. He ran on, and sensed more than saw something leaping to seal the space ahead of him. He didn’t think he’d stepped on a trigger. He hadn’t felt a tile hitch down beneath his weight. But one of the ogres had, and evidently, when anybody hit one, the whole enormous trap served up all the death it had to offer, all at once.

  Somehow Will managed to run even faster. Metal clashed behind him. When he was certain he’d passed beyond the array of tiles, he risked a glance back.

  It was so dark that it was hard to tell exactly what had happened at his back. But it seemed as if enormous blades had sprung from the hidden notches in the wall, to stab or slice through anything in their path. Ogres hung impaled, or lay maimed and dismembered beneath the sharp metal. The smell of their blood filled the air. Those who still clung to life whimpered and shrieked.

  But one voice roared and cursed in rage instead of pain. Yagoth was apparently unharmed. Fortune had placed him at the rear of the pursuit, where he was able to stop short when the mantrap began the slaughter.

  Will regretted the shaman’s survival, but at least the blades still blocked the corridor. That would give him the chance to complete his escape.

  If he could stay upright a while longer. Unfortunately, he felt as if the strength was draining out of him.

  He had a vial of healing elixir. He would have drunk it before, except that the giant-kin hadn’t allowed him the opportunity. He fumbled the little pewter bottle out of his belt pouch and poured the lukewarm, tasteless liquid down his throat.

  It helped a little; steadied him and made him more alert. It didn’t close the wound in his shoulder, though. In fact, with his mind clearer, the gaping, ragged puncture throbbed more painfully than before.

  He crept onward, through absolute darkness. At least he’d deactivated all the other mantraps. He didn’t have to worry about setting them off, though getting lost was a different matter. If he blundered down the wrong hall….

  No, he told himself firmly, he wouldn’t. He was a burglar, proficient at navigating in the dark and holding the floor plan of any building he explored fixed in his memory forever after. He’d find his way.

  Footsteps shuffled, and deep, harsh voices growled from ahead of him. Apparently some of the ogres Yagoth had left aboveground had heard their chieftain shouting, and were coming to investigate.

  Will was adept at hiding, but he wouldn’t be able to use his skill if, blind as he was, he couldn’t locate any cover. As the giant-kin drew nearer, he groped along the wall, and finally found a shallow niche with some sort of many-armed statue in it.

  He squeezed in beside the sculpture, and the ogres tramped by seconds later, close enough for him to smell the sour stink of them, though he still couldn’t make them out in the gloom.

  Not that he cared. What mattered was that they strode past without noticing him.

  Will skulked on, and spotted light shortly thereafter, though, if he hadn’t spent the past few minutes in utter blackness, he might not have recognized it as such. The feeble gleam spilled through a broad rectangular doorway and down the flight of stairs connecting the vaults and the temple above. A pair of ogres slouched silhouetted in the space, where Yagoth had evidently instructed them to stand watch.

  Will placed one of his last remaining skiprocks in his warsling. He couldn’t use the weapon as adroitly with his off hand but he was going to have to try. He spun it and let the enchanted stone fly.

  The missile cracked against the head of the hulking guard on the left, and the ogre fell backward. The skiprock should also have rebounded to strike the other giant-kin, but it missed. The creature oriented on Will, hefted its axe, and charged down the stairs.

  Will yelled and ran up toward his foe, stopped abruptly for just an instant, then raced on. The brief pause was supposed to throw off the ogre’s aim and timing, and maybe it did, because the creature’s weapon whizzed past Will’s head. He threw himself against the ogre’s shins.

  With only a halfling’s height and weight, he could never have knocked such a huge foe off balance if it weren’t in motion. But the ogre was, and its own momentum enabled him to trip it. It flipped over him and tumbled to the bottom of the stairs.

  Unfortunately, the impact also blasted pain through his crippled shoulder. For a moment, black spots swam through his vision, and he felt consciousness slipping away. He fought to hold on, and succeeded somehow.

  Below him, the ogre bellowed. He supposed that was better than if it was climbing up after him, but if the clamor summoned other members of the troupe, it might still be enough to put an end to him. He scurried on to the top of the stairs.

  The temple proper was an enormous hall filled with grotesque demonic statues and altars equipped with fetters placed to hold a human-sized sacrifice. Except for the hulk the skiprock had felled, no other ogres were in view. They were still in awe of the place, and none had entered but those Yagoth had ordered inside.

  But that was sure to change in a matter of seconds. Will could still hear bellowing from the bottom of the stairs, which meant the creatures outside could, too.

  The expedition had camped to the west, on the grand avenue leading up to the primary entrance. Will scurried toward a lesser doorway opening to the north.

  As he rushed through, he heard ogres scrambling into the shrine. Had they spotted him in that final instant before he disappeared? Apparently not, for they didn’t come chasing after him.

  He climbed a hillside, trying to remember that it was still vital to stay hidden. It was hard. His mind was dim, like a candle guttering out. His limbs felt like lead. It was all he could do just to set one foot in front of the other.

  Soon the moment arrived when he couldn’t even do that anymore. He fell on his face, struggled, failed to rise, and finally crawled under a bush. He resolved to rest with his dagger in hand, but discovered he’d dropped it somewhere along the way. Seconds later, he passed out.

  4 Kythorn, the Year of Rogue Dragons

  This is boring,” Jivex whispered.

  “Hush,” Taegan replied.

  “You need to think of a better plan,” the faerie dragon said. “We should be doing something.”

  “We are,” Taegan said, though he wasn’t at all certain it was so.

  Jivex snorted, sprang up off the stool Selûne’s clerics had provided for him, and flitted about the conjuring chamber snapping moths from the air. The marble shrine was currently open to the night sky—the roof slid back in a cunning way that even the most accomplished builders in Lyrabar would have admired—and the lamps, silver crescents and circles glowing with a soft white magical light, lured a fair number of insects. Evidently annoyed by his darting to and fro, Phourkyn One-eye regarded the drake sourly. Sureene Aumratha, a tall, handsome, middle-aged woman with moon-blond hair almost the exact color of Kara’s—though in the human’s case, the hue came out of a bottle—smiled briefly before resuming her interrogation of the mage.

&n
bsp; Sureene was the high priestess of the House of the Moon, and considered a formidable mistress of divine magic. In theory, she could weave enchantments that made it impossible for anyone to lie, particularly when her goddess was watching. Yet even so, Taegan suspected Phourkyn had been right to maintain that he and a number of his fellow wizards knew how to cheat the spell. The avariel had chosen to observe the interviews in the hope that he might sense it when someone dissembled, whether Selûne’s power revealed it or not.

  Probably it was a forlorn hope, but the truth was, he’d run out of other ideas. He and Jivex had spied and snooped to the extent they were able, and patrolled Thentia from the air, watching for the chasme with its halo of flame. Taegan had encouraged the magicians to report any suspicions they harbored of one another—and what a catalogue of petty grudges and grievances that had produced—and maintained constant vigilance while waiting for the tanar’ri to attack him. All of it had been to no avail.

  Taegan tried to draw a little comfort from the reflection that the demon hadn’t tried to kill anyone else, either. Rilitar had optimistically posited that Taegan had thrown a scare into the traitor, and so the dastard feared to act. But the winged elf couldn’t believe it. Over the course of the past few months, he’d crossed swords with more than his fair share of Sammaster’s agents, and in most cases, they’d proved to be as tenacious as they were malevolent. His current foe was either weighing his options or biding his time, like a fencer who makes a show of relaxing in the hope of prompting his opponent to drop his guard, then attacks the instant an opening appears.

  “Are we done?” Phourkyn demanded.

  “Yes,” said Sureene.

  “Am I the traitor?”

  “No.”

  “What a relief.”

  Sureene’s generous mouth with its coating of shiny white cosmetic tightened at the sarcasm, but she chose not to make an issue of it.

  The lamplight gleaming on his pomaded raven hair, Phourkyn rose and turned to Taegan. “Unless you have further business here, Maestro, perhaps you’d care to walk out with me.” His single dark eye shifted to Jivex. “And your companion, too, of course.”

  In fact, Taegan would seize any opportunity to try to take the measure of one of the eccentric—and in some cases, virulently antisocial—mages.

  “You honor me, Master Wizard, and it’s a splendid evening for a stroll. Come along, Jivex.”

  “I’m almost ready.” The small dragon with his iridescent scales swooped, and snapped another moth from the air.

  “I daresay you’ll find a plenitude of bugs outside,” said Taegan. “Enough to sate even your gluttony.”

  “You can’t catch your prey,” Jivex sulked, “so you don’t want anybody else to catch anything, either. But all right.”

  They bade farewell to Sureene, Phourkyn with his customary brusqueness, Jivex cheerfully, and Taegan with all the subtly flirtatious courtliness Impiltur had taught him. Then they withdrew.

  Lyrabar was a city of magnificent temples. Thentia had only the House of the Moon, but as he and his companions traversed its spacious galleries and chapels, their footsteps echoing, Taegan conceded that at least it was a worthy one. Everywhere, the glow of the enchanted lamps gleamed on silver vessels and alabaster carvings, or illuminated the paintings of the night sky adorning the high ceilings. The air smelled of frankincense, the incense competing with the pungent apple smell of the unguent in Phourkyn’s hair. Yet for all its grandeur, the temple had an empty, shadowy feel to it. Taegan supposed that when Selûne walked the heavens, most of the clerics repaired to the gardens to worship her.

  “So,” said Phourkyn after a time, “you can’t catch your prey?”

  Taegan grinned and said, “Jivex and I merely like to banter. I assure you, I’m well on my way to laying hands on Sammaster’s agent.”

  “In that case,” the human said, “your behavior puzzles me.”

  Up ahead, Jivex landed on a statue of the Lady of Silver bearing a mace in one hand and a sextant in the other. He crawled around on her for a moment, nosing at a sculpted fold in her robe, then, butterfly wings shimmering, sprang back into the air.

  “How so?” Taegan asked.

  “If you have your own infallible means of identifying the cultist,” Phourkyn said, “why watch while Sureene interrogates us? Indeed, why put her to the trouble at all?”

  “My method of ferreting out the traitor requires time. It’s possible Sureene can identify him more quickly.”

  “I’d like to know what your method is.”

  “Yet you yourself are averse to sharing your secrets, so perhaps you’ll be tolerant when others display the same inclination.”

  “I know the limits of the magical system you claim to practice, Maestro. But if you can truly probe the minds of accomplished wizards, you’re far more than a bladesinger.”

  “Back home in Lyrabar I’m celebrated for my modesty, and I simply can’t find it in my meek and humble heart to claim to be anything grander. Though I will confess that Jivex and I slew a dracolich, so take that for whatever you feel it’s worth.”

  Phourkyn grunted, then after a pause said, “You don’t like me very much, do you, avariel?”

  “I scarcely know you well enough to like or loathe you. I appreciate the fact that you recognize the need to aid Kara.”

  “Throughout my life,” Phourkyn said, a brooding note entering his voice, “I’ve rarely cared what anyone thought of me. Most people are dull-witted vermin, either cowering mice or vicious rats. Certainly nothing that ought to concern an archmage as he strives to expand the limits of his Art.”

  “That may be a sound philosophy, but I’d be leery of propounding it to the rodent who cooks your food, unless you want her seasoning it with spittle.”

  Phourkyn scowled and said, “My point is this: I don’t want you to misread me. While I care nothing for the average dolt I encounter in the street, I am concerned about the future of the world. I won’t stand idly by while flights of wyrms in frenzy hammer Faerûn’s cities into rubble, or hordes of dracoliches rise up to enslave mankind. In other words, you can depend on me.”

  Taegan was still trying to decide how to respond when the first cry for help shrilled from an arched doorway on their right.

  As he walked among his wicked kindred, Chatulio reflected that most spellcasters who considered themselves skilled illusionists had barely acquired the basics of the discipline. Perhaps they too could have cloaked themselves in the appearance of a black-scaled skull wyrm, right down to the flaking, decaying hide on the cheeks. They might even have managed the acidic smell. But could they have cast the far subtler enchantment that blinded the evil drakes to the fact that this particular black hadn’t been a part of their host from the start? Chatulio thought not, and the fact that he’d accomplished the trick with the Rage gnawing at his faculties made the achievement even more impressive.

  It was the Rage that had prompted him to flee the monastery, back through the caves. His every instinct had warned that if he didn’t, he’d soon turn on the small folk. It had pained him to depart without explaining the reason to Kara, Raryn, and Dorn, but he’d suspected it might be even more painful to say good-bye.

  Once he’d escaped the mouthwatering scent of human flesh, his beleaguered mind cleared a little, and it occurred to him that, chromatic dragons being the vain and quarrelsome creatures that they were, he might still be able to help the defenders of the Monastery of the Yellow Rose, even from outside the walls. It would be dangerous. The attacking wyrms were almost certain to see through his disguise eventually, and tear him apart. But that would be a good thing. He needed to die before frenzy took him and he started slaughtering the innocent, though the Rage wasn’t bothering him much at the moment. It had faded to an irritating but tiny whine at the back of his mind. He supposed his current escapade was responsible. Some pranks were so funny, they could even stave off madness for a while.

  Chatulio cast a charm to make his every pronouncement seem
wiser and more important. He then advanced toward a trio of wyrms, a young red, a yellow-eyed fire drake glowing like iron fresh from the forge, and a magma drake with crimson optics, black claws, and hide like cooling lava. All three were creatures of fire, and crouching together, they threw off heat like a furnace, driving back the chill of a mountain night. They were eating some shaggy, curly-horned sheep they’d killed, and hissed and showed their fangs to warn Chatulio away from their repast. He shook his head to convey that he had no intention of trying to claim a portion, and they suffered him to approach. He hunkered down among them, then waited for them to finish gobbling meat, crunching bone, and slurping marrow.

  When they did, a conversation started, and inevitably it turned to the siege. Baffled and enraged by how long it was taking just to root out a nest of feeble humans, the dragons could talk of little else. They had to pick at the wound to their pride.

  Speaking of wounds, Chatulio noted that the fire drake still bore scabby gashes and punctures on its flank.

  “I hear,” the disguised copper said, “that we may attack again, as soon as the moon sinks behind the peaks.”

  As he’d hoped it would, the fire drake snarled, “I’m still hurt!” It rose and turned to display its injuries.

  The red said, “The half-iron warrior mauled you, didn’t he, with those spikes on his hand. He hurt me the same way. Before this is over, I’m going to roast him slowly.”

  “Some say,” Chatulio said, “the healers among us have secretly pledged their loyalty to Ishenalyr. So, if you’re willing to grovel to the hidecarved as well, they’ll attend to you first, and if they run out of spells before they get around to the rest of us … well, that’s just our hard luck.”

  “By flame and shadow,” rumbled the magma drake, “that isn’t fair! Those who fight the hardest should receive healing first, and that’s not Ishenalyr and his ilk. They hang back. I’ve seen it. Why would Malazan stand for this?”