It was Mardiz-sul who answered. “Son-liin thinks we should turn off onto another path.”
Like Zan-akar Zeraez and Arathane, Son-liin was essentially a stormsoul. Unlike them, she had some affinity with the elemental force of earth as well as lightning. Some of the lines that ran through her purple skin were gold instead of silver, and so were the translucent crystalline spikes that took the place of hair.
That likely meant she knew an extra trick or two. But at the moment, it was her knowledge of the Akanapeaks that interested Aoth. Though still an adolescent and small—in her brigandine, with a lance in her hand and a quiver on her back, she looked like a little girl playing warrior—she was one of the few firestormers in the band who’d grown up in the mountains and, with her father, a trapper and prospector, wandered them extensively. It had been a stroke of good fortune that led her to Airspur at just the right moment to join the expedition.
She smiled as though attention embarrassed her. Meanwhile, her drake, a breed with black- and green-pebbled skin, twisted its head, tracking a dragonfly as long as Aoth’s hand. The reptile’s long, pink tongue shot out, slapped the insect, stuck to it, and snatched it into its mouth. The drake slobbered as it crunched the morsel up, and Aoth felt Jet’s flicker of amusement.
“Up ahead,” Son-liin said, “there’s a trail that leads down into a valley. If we take it, we can reach the Old Man’s Head a day or two sooner.”
The Old Man’s Head was the mountain where Vairshekellabex probably laired. If not, his refuge was at least in the vicinity. Or so Alasklerbanbastos had maintained.
“Why didn’t you mention this route before?” asked Aoth.
“Because I didn’t know what the weather would be like,” Son-liin said. “It’s not a path you want to be on if it storms. A flashflood can sweep you away. But now we’re here, and it’s not going to rain.”
Aoth suspected she knew because she was a stormsoul. He wasn’t, but like any commander worth his pay, he’d learned to read the weather, and he agreed with her assessment. The clear blue sky showed no signs of clouding up anytime soon.
“I’m against this,” said Yemere. “We made a plan. We should stick to it.”
“Moving over these peaks and ridges,” said Mardiz-sul, “we can be seen from a long way off.”
“But if we’re going through a valley,” replied Yemere, “an enemy could easily get above us.”
“Don’t worry about that,” rasped Jet, startling a fresh round of hisses out of the drakes. “Those of us in the air will spot any threat before it can come within a mile.”
“Still,” said Yemere.
Mardiz-sul turned to Aoth. “What do you think?”
Aoth thought that it would be nice to consult Alasklerbanbastos about the best way to approach the Old Man’s Head, but it wasn’t feasible. He hadn’t even told the genasi about the dracolich yet, and they needed a decision.
“We’ll take Son-liin’s path,” he said. Why not? She was the one who knew the Akanapeaks, and Jet was right that the griffon riders should still be able to spot any potential problem from a long way off.
Yemere scowled as though the folly of his companions verged on the unbelievable.
“Let’s get them moving again,” said Mardiz-sul. He urged his drake into motion and rode down the column to give direction to the warriors who, when their leaders halted to palaver, had climbed down off their mounts to stretch their legs.
Aoth smiled at Cera. “Want to fly for a while? Someone can lead your drake.”
“No, thanks. I’m enjoying myself down here, and I suspect Jet is enjoying not having to carry double.”
The familiar grunted. “As his females go, you’re more tolerable than some.”
Cera grinned. “High praise indeed.”
It took only a little longer to reach a narrow, branching trail that switchbacked down a mountainside into shadow. Aoth watched with a certain amount of trepidation as the drake riders headed down one at a time. But the reptiles were more surefooted than horses, and they reached the shallow, brown creek at the bottom of the gorge without so much as a stumble.
Then they trekked on southward, plodding over sand and smooth, round stones, splashing through the rippling current, and bounding over the occasional tangle of driftwood or whole fallen tree deposited by one flood or another. Sometimes Aoth and Jet flew high enough to survey the tops of the cliffs that towered to either side of the brook. Sometimes they swooped to see what was lurking on the ledges and in the crannies lower down. Gaedynn and Eider did the same and surprised a goat. The skirmisher put an arrow in it, landed on the outcropping where it lay, and quickly dressed the carcass before returning to his proper task.
Aoth would have done the same, had he been the one to come across some game, because so far the way seemed safe enough.
But after another half mile of twisting canyon, that changed when, for a heartbeat or two, a smear of blue glimmer flowed across a barren scarp like a luminous fish swimming beneath a sheet of ice. Aoth raised two fingers to his mouth, used them to whistle, and pointed with his spear. Gaedynn looked, then turned to Aoth and shook his head to indicate that he couldn’t see anything unusual.
Aoth pointed to the top of the cliff to the east. Jet furled his wings and swooped in that direction, and Eider followed him down. Once they landed, their riders could talk without shouting over the distance that flying steeds needed to maintain between themselves.
Gaedynn swung himself out of the saddle and started slicing pieces of raw, bloody goat meat off the carcass he’d tied behind it. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“For a moment I saw blue fire inside the mountainside,” Aoth replied.
Gaedynn tossed a piece of goat to Eider, and the griffon snapped it out of the air. “How in the name of the Black Bow did I miss that?”
“You needed spellscarred eyes to see it,” Aoth replied, stretching. His spine popped. “Maybe it was more like the memory of blue fire.”
Gaedynn tossed the other piece of meat to Jet. Perhaps thinking it beneath his dignity to catch it in his beak, the griffon reared and snatched it with his talons. “And what does that mean exactly?” the bowman asked.
“There was a time when this whole kingdom existed in another place. Then the Spellplague picked it up and dumped it in Faerûn. If the … disruptions were that strong here, it makes sense that there are traces of them left.”
“I suppose,” Gaedynn said, “but are we marching into genuine plagueland or not?”
Aoth peered as far down the canyon as he could, looking for any hint of blue mist or earth and rock oozing like candle wax. Everything appeared all right. “It doesn’t look like it,” he said. “I’d guess the area’s no worse than the Umber Marshes.”
Gaedynn grinned. “Now that’s encouraging.”
Aoth smiled back. “Isn’t it? But Son-liin says that as long as it doesn’t rain, the gorge is safe. And the only alternative to moving ahead is miles of backtracking and a hard climb back up onto the ridge.”
The archer shrugged. “Son-liin strikes me as a reliable sort.”
“Forward it is, then.”
They strapped themselves back in their saddles, and the griffons sprang into the air. In time, Aoth spotted another fleeting blue gleam in another cliff face, as if the brown, striated stone were a mirror reflecting a flash of azure light. But nothing else happened as a result.
Standing on a neighboring peak, long armed, round shouldered, and barrel chested, a lone hill giant watched the griffon riders pass overhead. Aoth considered making contact to ask the hulking savage about the region but then decided not to bother. The giant would probably start throwing stones the instant a human came within range and might not speak any language but his own.
Then the column stopped. Cera brandished her mace. As before, Aoth left Gaedynn in the air while he swooped down to find out what was going on. “What is it?” he asked as, wings snapping, Jet settled on a tongue of granite protruding from the base of t
he eastern cliff.
“She doesn’t know,” said Mardiz-sul. He was trying not to sound impatient but not quite succeeding.
Aoth smiled at Cera. “I imagine you know something,” he said.
“Not really,” she replied. “But … you understand that Amaunator is the great timekeeper. Night follows day and spring passes into summer because he makes it so.”
“Right,” said Aoth. He had some firsthand experience with her god’s connection to time. But he had no idea why she was bringing it up at that moment.
“As his priestess,” Cera said, “I sometimes feel it as the wheels turn. As some natural cycle is reaching its culmination.”
“What does that mean?” asked Mardiz-sul. For an instant blue light rippled through the water flowing around his drake’s four-toed feet.
“In this situation?” she replied. “I don’t know.”
But suddenly Aoth thought he might. “I once traveled all the way to the Lake of Steam,” he said, speaking quickly. “Heard of it?”
Mardiz-sul shrugged. “Vaguely.”
“They have hot springs there … and geysers. Boiling water that shoots up out of the ground. And with a few of them, it happens at very regular intervals.” Aoth turned back to Cera. “Could you sense something like that?”
She frowned. “I’ve never seen a ‘geyser,’ but perhaps.”
“I don’t see the relevance,” said Mardiz-sul, waving his lance at their surroundings. “This creek is cold.”
“True,” said Aoth, “but there’s still spellplague festering in the ground. Mostly it’s too weak to cause any trouble. But over time, the power builds up until there’s too much. And then some of it sprays out like a geyser. I think that’s about to happen now.”
“How could you possibly know that?” asked Mardiz-sul.
“You’re a brother to fire,” Aoth said. “And I’ve got a little spellplague burning inside of me.” He pointed to his eyes.
“What will happen?” asked Son-liin.
Aoth shook his head. “There’s no way to predict.”
“Then what we do? Run?”
“No. It’s too late to get clear. We just have to be ready for anything.” Aoth raised his voice: “Everyone, ready your weapons! If you know any protective charms, cast them!”
Cera started praying and swinging her mace over her head. The sunlight grew warmer. After a moment’s hesitation, some of the genasi muttered their own incantations. Ruddy hands flicked up and down in a manner that suggested leaping flame and sketched trails of fire in the air. Breezes gusted and the stream gurgled louder than before.
Then everybody waited while blue light flickered through the creek and the granite walls, the pulses coming faster and faster. The sight of them made Aoth’s mouth go dry and his guts queasy. He’d been caught in a storm of blue fire on the day the Spellplague began and watched his fellow legionnaires die by the score. And though he’d faced a thousand foes in the century since, he’d always avoided a second encounter with that particular danger. Until now.
“Well?” asked Mardiz-sul, still blind to the power flaring all around him. “Is anything happening?”
Aoth opened his mouth to say yes, then saw he wouldn’t have to. Blue mist swirled into existence all along the canyon, or at least for as far as he could see. The genasi cried out and the drakes shrieked at its dank and somehow filthy touch. Aoth felt Jet’s spasm of revulsion and the way he had to clench himself not to take flight immediately and climb above the nasty stuff.
The touch of chaos made some of the stones in the creek bed catch fire. Others rattled together with a sound like chattering teeth. Water heaved itself high and crashed down like waves rolling in from a stormy sea.
Cera continued to pray. The air grew warmer again. The blue fog thinned as if the sun overhead were burning it away.
When the vapor was nearly gone, Mardiz-sul sighed and slumped forward. “Thank Kossuth. And Amaunator too.”
But as the last of the vapor dissipated, a kind of glare shot through it, and blue light flared in the eyes of the drakes. For an instant, Aoth had the crazy feeling that he was looking at his own deformed face in a cracked mirror, as though some mage had disfigured him with a curse and he hadn’t even known.
Some reptiles screeched, reared, or tried to bolt. Two others fell, convulsing. One of the riders, a windsoul, floated up out of the saddle, but the other, a watersoul, couldn’t slip his feet out of the stirrups and jump clear in time. As his thrashing steed rolled back and forth, it ground him beneath its bulk.
Meanwhile, Mardiz-sul’s drake bucked and flipped him into the stream. Then it reared onto its hind legs and grew until cinches snapped, and its saddle, halter, and reins fell away. Its forelegs appeared to wither, although perhaps they simply weren’t expanding like the rest of it. It held them tucked against its chest while a second head and neck wriggled up out of its shoulders like a worm squirming out of an apple.
Another reptile lost its earthsoul master when it, too, grew, and its back bulged upward like a hill. Triangular plates sprouted down the length of its spine and tore its saddle to pieces, dumping the firestormer on the ground. A spike grew from the beast’s snout, and long horns jutted from over the eyes. A bony ruff or collar swelled into being behind the head, and spikes erupted from the tip of the tail.
The two transformed saurians roared and snarled, seemingly communicating with one another. Then they attacked the creatures around them. The reptile standing on two legs leaped at Aoth and Jet like a cat. Its comrade’s charge was a ponderous waddle by comparison. But the spiked tail lashed back and forth in a frenzied blur and actually drew first blood, smashing the head of Son-liin’s mount to gory scraps and spatters.
Aoth leveled his spear and hurled a blaze of force from the point. It stabbed into the onrushing saurian’s torso but didn’t stop it. At the same time, Jet leaped upward and lashed his wings. It seemed impossible that the griffon could rise high enough quickly enough. The reptile was just too tall and too close. But then they were soaring over the creature’s upturned heads, just beyond the reach of the snapping fangs.
Don’t wet yourself, said Jet, speaking mind to mind. One of us knows what he’s doing.
And who gave you that strength? Aoth replied. Stay low and close. I want to keep the beast’s attention on us.
That takes away every advantage we have, said Jet. Nice tactics! Still, he wheeled as quickly as he could.
Then they danced with the saurian, teasing it with their proximity, dodging when it struck, and blasting it with flares of lightning and frost. It wasn’t easy. Since Jet had never fought such a creature before, he didn’t know how fast it could lunge and pivot or how high it could leap, and he was having to guess in adverse circumstances, with the narrow gorge limiting his mobility. A single misjudgment would either land him in the reptile’s jaws or slam him into a cliff.
But as Aoth had intended, the dance kept the two-headed drake from attacking anyone on the ground, and a few firestormers took advantage of its distraction by shooting it with their arbalests or jabbing it with their lances, albeit to little apparent effect. But most of them were too busy trying to contend with the beast that was attacking them, the massive thing with the horned head and flailing tail.
Intent on his own half of the battle, Aoth registered only an occasional glimpse of that other struggle. Gaedynn flew above the reptile, loosing one shaft after another. Eider screeched repeatedly, maybe in an effort to distract the creature as Aoth and Jet were diverting its fellow. Son-liin circled the beast until she could aim a bowshot at its ribs. His sword, hand, and forearm wreathed in flame, Mardiz-sul slashed at the reptile’s snout then blocked with his shield when the brute tried to spear him with one of its horns. Cera swung her mace in a horizontal arc, and brightness leaped from the head. It burned a black streak across the creature’s belly.
Aoth’s comrades were fighting well. But so far the horned saurian wasn’t slowing down either.
Curse i
t! He had to end the battle while he still had a company to command. He stuck his spear in the sheath attached to his saddle, tore open the pouch on his belt, and grabbed the noxious-looking green berries he’d picked on the way through the foothills of the mountains. Get me close, he said.
What do you think I’ve been doing? Jet replied. Discerning his master’s intent, he swooped straight at their foe’s two heads. Which both opened their jaws wide to catch him.
Aoth rattled off an incantation. Power tingled in the palm of his hand as it suffused the berries. He swung his arm back and threw them.
At least some flew into the jaws of the head on the right. So furious it likely didn’t even notice them bouncing and rolling down its tongue, the saurian struck with both heads.
Jet lashed one wing, wrenched his body, and flung himself to the side. The reptile’s fangs missed him—barely—but the maneuver sent him tumbling like a stone flung from a catapult. Only Aoth’s harness held him in the saddle when the motion spun him upside down, and the canyon wall loomed just ahead.
Wings beating, floundering, the griffon couldn’t overcome his momentum in time to avoid a collision. But he did manage to twist far enough that it was his feet that slammed against the rock, not his head, wings, or the man on his back. He and Aoth grunted together at the resulting jolt. Still, it was only that. Jet’s sturdy frame withstood the shock without injury, and he sprang away from the side of the cliff at once.
Meanwhile, their foe turned. Its hind legs flexed as it prepared to pounce. Then the head on the right came apart in a blast of flame as, with a muffled boom, the berries in its mouth and gullet exploded. The detonation hurled broken teeth and scraps of charred flesh and bone in all directions.
The reptile screamed and staggered. Then, possibly mad with pain, it twisted the head that was burned on one side but still otherwise intact to bite the ruined lump that was the other. Bone cracked and blood spurted until nothing remained but a stump.
Then the reptile tottered, and its forelimbs pawed at the air. Certain it was about to drop, Aoth turned to survey the other side of the fight, and his satisfaction curdled into dismay.
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