Tchazzar laughed. “Not at all! With the children’s prayers to bolster my power, the annihilation of Tymanther will be a trivial undertaking. I was referring to something else entirely.” He turned his wide, white grin on Daelric. “Do you want to tell them, or should I?”
Though plainly startled, Daelric controlled himself well. His eyes only widened a little, and his body barely twitched. “I’m sure you can explain it better,” he said.
Tchazzar nodded. “Possibly so. Here it is, then: I’ve spoken with my little brother Amaunator. I told him what a curse the darkness is to Chessenta. I explained that we have specters committing atrocities, even within my own palace and against my own person, and I urged him to do something about it. Well, it took some convincing. He’s a traditionalist and, to be blunt, a little lazy too.” He winked at Daelric. “No offense. Anyway, in the end, he agreed to my plan.” He paused, perhaps to draw a question from his audience.
If so, Halonya obliged him. “What is your plan, Majesty?”
“Why, to put an end to night,” Tchazzar said. “That’s why we should enjoy the few sunsets we have left. Soon Daelric will lead all the sunlords and ladies of the realm in a great ritual. After that, the sun will hang perpetually at zenith, and it will be noon in Chessenta forevermore.” He turned back to the stocky high priest in his yellow vestments. “Isn’t that right, my friend?”
Daelric swallowed. “Majesty, this is … the first I’ve heard of this scheme.”
Tchazzar’s smile bent into a frown. “Don’t you commune with your god every day? What kind of priest are you?”
“I do indeed open myself to receive whatever the Keeper chooses to share with me,” Daelric said. “But if he shared this, I … didn’t comprehend it.”
“Majesty,” Jhesrhi said.
Tchazzar turned. “What is it, dear one?”
“You’re speaking of matters that are certainly beyond my comprehension as well. But is it possible that Amaunator didn’t tell Sunlord Apathos about this because he thought better of it? Think about it. If the sun shines on Chessenta every moment, won’t that be too much heat? Won’t it bake the land into a desert?”
“I’m sure Amaunator can adjust the heat,” Tchazzar said. “It’s fine if the sun burns cooler, just as long as it provides the same illumination.”
Halonya smiled. “Just think how the crops will grow with so much sunlight!”
Tchazzar smiled, threw his arm around her, and hugged her to his side. “Exactly! I knew you’d understand!”
Daelric took a long breath and stood up very straight, “Majesty, I beg you to hear me.”
“I’m listening,” Tchazzar said.
“I’m not capable of raising enough power to perform the miracle you seek. Nor would I know how to turn it to this particular purpose even if I could.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself! You have strengths you’ve yet to discover, and Amaunator will guide and support you every step of the way.”
“With all respect, Majesty … with all reverence for the god incarnate who blesses me by allowing me to talk with him in the flesh … I don’t know how that can be so. Amaunator is a god of order. Of the orderly progression and marking of time. Night follows day, season follows season, and year follows year because he—”
Tchazzar whipped his hand from right to left. For an instant, as Daelric’s voice caught, it looked to Jhesrhi like the war hero’s fingertips had missed the priest’s neck by a hair. Then three redder lines appeared on Daelric’s ruddy skin.
“This is blasphemy!” Tchazzar snarled. “You’re defying me and your own patron deity too! Admit it!”
But Daelric was beyond admitting anything. He could only make little choking, gurgling sounds as he tottered and fumbled at his throat in a feeble attempt to keep the blood from pouring out and dying his golden robes crimson.
Tchazzar made a disgusted spitting sound. Then he struck again with a vertical sweep like an uppercut. His scaly hand was too large, as much a wyrm’s forefoot as a human extremity, and the talons drove into the underside of Daelric’s jaw and deep into his head. He then pivoted and flung the priest over the parapet as easily as a man could throw a ball.
Or rather, he flung most of him. Daelric’s head came apart and left the lower jaw stuck to his killer’s claws.
When Tchazzar noticed, he laughed. He shook the piece of gory flesh and bone loose and caught it before it could fall. Then he grabbed Hasos, pulled him close, held it right in front of the warrior’s own chin, and moved it up and down like a child making a puppet talk. “I’m Baron Hasos,” he said in a falsetto. “I’m Baron Hasos.”
Overcome with shock and revulsion, Hasos reflexively strained to pull free. Jhesrhi tensed, for that could have prompted the dragon to kill him too. But instead, Tchazzar simply let go. Hasos reeled backward with Daelric’s blood streaking his chin. He lost his balance and fell on his rump, and the war hero guffawed at his discomfiture.
Lord Luthen and some of the other more sycophantic courtiers joined in, but it sounded forced, and maybe Tchazzar noticed. Or maybe he noticed Nicos Corynian and the other folk who hadn’t managed a laugh.
In any case, he raked the whole assembly with his glare. “Daelric Apathos was a false priest and a traitor!” he shouted. “Who claims otherwise?”
No one did. Not even Jhesrhi, although it made her feel a flush of shame.
But the silence didn’t mollify Tchazzar. “Leave me!” he screamed. “If you’re here in ten heartbeats, you’ll burn!”
People gaped, then scrambled away. Some crammed themselves onto the nearest stairway. Others scurried toward the east side of the roof and the staircases there.
Jhesrhi was one of the latter, but unlike many of the courtiers, she wasn’t panicked. She was simply exercising prudence. And when she’d put some distance between the dragon and herself, she stopped and looked back.
His back to the sunset that had faded to a mere gleam of deep blue and crimson on the horizon, Tchazzar was sitting on a merlon. He was little more than a silhouette in the twilight, but Jhesrhi could tell he was slumped forward with his elbow on his knee and his hand covering his eyes.
It was a posture suggestive of weariness, regret, or even despair. It made her wonder if Lady Luck had given her one last chance to lead him away from cruelty and madness.
She knew she had every reason to doubt it. But she also remembered that he loved her, even if it was in a lustful, selfish way. He’d helped her and Gaedynn escape the Shadowfell. He’d made her a great noblewoman and freed the mages of Chessenta. And how had she repaid him? With lies and tricks. By dangling herself in front of him like a nasty child teasing a dog with a morsel that she had no intention of ever giving.
She took a deep breath then walked toward him. One of the bodyguards hovering at a safe distance from the monarch moved to block her way. She gave him a scowl. He hesitated, then shrugged, as though conveying that if she insisted on approaching Tchazzar in his present mood, she could take the consequences.
The butt of her staff clicked on the roof as she walked. Tchazzar lifted his face from his hand to glower at her.
“I said I’d kill anyone who didn’t leave me in peace,” he said.
“You said you’d burn them,” she answered. “I’m not too afraid of that.”
He snorted. “No. I suppose not. Well, if you want to be here, sit.”
She perched on the merlon next to his.
“Do you think I was too hard on Daelric?” he asked. “Everyone else did, even the ones who laughed. I could see it in their lying faces.”
“I think,” Jhesrhi said, “that he may have been telling the truth when he said he simply didn’t know how to obey your command.”
“Then it’s just like I said. He was no true priest of Amaunator and deserved to die for passing himself off as one. His successor will do better.”
“Possibly. If a human being can. If you aren’t asking him to accomplish something that only a god could conceiv
ably do.”
Tchazzar cocked his long, handsome head. “Is that what you believe?”
She shrugged. “I’m a wizard, not a cleric, so maybe my opinion is of little value. But it seems to me that arcane magic is about as powerful as the divine variety. And I certainly wouldn’t know how to go about making the sun stay in the same place forever like a torch burning in a sconce.”
Tchazzar grunted. “Then Amaunator misled me.”
Jhesrhi hesitated. “I don’t know, Majesty.”
“He must have. I may have to discipline him. I may have to discipline all the gods. They’re all jealous. All sorry I came back.”
“I … hope that isn’t so.”
“Sometimes they don’t even appear when I call them.” He lowered his voice. “That’s … upsetting. Once or twice, it even made me wonder if I really can summon them.”
“Majesty, at present, you’re walking the mortal world cloaked in something like mortal flesh and blood. Maybe that comes with certain inconveniences.”
Tchazzar sighed. “Maybe. It would be nice to believe the lesser deities don’t hate me. That I won’t have to cast them down just to be safe.”
Steeling herself, Jhesrhi reached out and took his hand. Her skin crawled. “Majesty,” she said, “you’re safe now. I know you don’t feel it, and considering that you endured a hundred years of torture in the Shadowfell, who can blame you? But you are. You don’t need to fight any more wars against gods or anyone. If you choose, you can simply enjoy being home.”
Tchazzar sat quietly for a few heartbeats. Then he said, “But the game.”
Apparently, distracted as he was, he’d once again forgotten that mere humans weren’t allowed to know about xorvintaal. Jhesrhi tried to think of a way to talk about it without revealing that she did.
She was still trying when something fluttered overhead.
Tchazzar jerked, gripped her hand painfully tightly, and yelped. Maybe it was because, like her, he’d just noticed that dusk had given way to night.
She spoke to the wind, and it whispered that the creature fluttering over the roof was only a bat. She opened her mouth to share the reassuring knowledge with Tchazzar.
But she was too late. He sprang to his feet and grew as tall as a gnoll. Seams in his garments ripped. He tilted his head back, opened protruding jaws, and spit a jet of yellow fire. The pseudo-mind in Jhesrhi’s staff exclaimed in excitement.
Tchazzar’s breath caught the bat, and the burning carcass dropped onto the roof. Panting, trembling, the war hero stared at it as if he suspected it might rise from the ashes like a phoenix. Guards came scurrying.
“It was just a bat,” Jhesrhi said.
“Or another vampire!” Tchazzar snapped. “I understand that you only wanted to comfort me. But you’ll serve me better with the truth. And the truth is I’m not safe. I can never be until I rule everything and everyone who wishes me ill is dead. And even then, there will always be the dark.” He flashed a fierce, mad grin. “Unless …”
Inwardly Jhesrhi winced. “Unless what, Majesty?”
“You gave me the germ of the idea. If Amaunator won’t or can’t drive back the night, we’ll use torches instead. Geysers of perpetual fire drawn from the Undying Pyre. And if Kossuth doesn’t like it, we’ll make him like it. Think what an adventure that will be! An army of gods and men descending into Chaos to kill a primordial!”
The staff all but vibrated at the prospect of entering a world made wholly of fire. For half a heartbeat, its excitement infected Jhesrhi, but she crushed out the alien emotion as though grinding an ember under her boot.
Unfortunately the reassertion of her own natural perspective just made her feel sick to her stomach. I was right the first time, she thought. Tchazzar’s sunk too deep into lunacy for me or anyone to reach him anymore.
That meant Shala had sacrificed herself for nothing.
T
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5–6 ELEINT, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE
Oraxes couldn’t see Luthcheq from the ground. But when he rode a griffon just a little way up, there it was. He could make out the great slab of sandstone that was the War College, the crazy tangle of streets behind it, an ongoing demolition that must be the first stage in the erection of Tchazzar’s temple, and the sprawl of the assembled forces of Chessenta, Threskel, and Akanûl.
It was over, then. He, Meralaine, Ramed, and the few others who shared the secret of Aoth’s absence had kept the Brotherhood marching as slowly as it plausibly could. But there was no way to stop it from reaching its destination by the next day.
Oraxes stroked his steed’s neck and sent it swooping back toward the ground. Meralaine followed him down. They gave the griffons into the custody of a groom and headed for Aoth’s pavilion.
Once inside, Oraxes let the warmage’s appearance dissolve. Meanwhile, the shadows around Meralaine deepened just a little. It reminded him of a cat rubbing against its owner’s ankles.
He pulled the cork from a jug of some clear, biting Threskelan spirit—he’d never gotten around to finding out what the vile stuff was called or made from—and filled two pewter cups. His hand trembled. He hoped she hadn’t noticed.
They each took a drink. Her face twisted, and he suspected his did too. Then he asked, “What do you think?”
“The masquerade’s worked so far,” she replied.
“Maybe on the sellswords. It didn’t fool Sphorrid Nyra, did it?”
“Well, it kind of did. At first.”
“We’re about to face Tchazzar, who’s already going to be suspicious because Sphorrid and the other wyrmkeepers never came home. And because he sent orders for Captain Fezim to fly to Luthcheq ahead of the rest of the company and he didn’t.”
“So which way do you want to run?” Meralaine asked.
Oraxes shook his head. “I don’t know. I figured we’d take the drakkensteeds. They actually belong to us, or at least more than any of the griffons do. But I don’t know how far they can travel over open water. That means …”
Meralaine frowned. “Why did you stop?”
“I guess because I don’t want to go.”
“You’d rather let Tchazzar kill you?”
He groped for the words to explain, for his own benefit as much as hers. “I said I’d do this. I’d rather take a risk—even a big risk—and follow through than not. I mean, it’s not that bad here.” He took a breath. “But you should probably leave. I’ll feel better if you do.”
She smiled a crooked smile. “You’re an idiot and a liar.”
He snorted. “Maybe.”
“If not for the idiot part, you’d know I don’t want to go either. Not away from the Brotherhood and especially not away from you.”
“True love,” said a voice from the direction of the tent flap. “A debilitating affliction but fortunately nearly everyone recovers.”
Oraxes spun around toward the sound. Just as he’d imagined, it was Gaedynn who’d spoke, and Aoth was entering right behind him.
Oraxes almost started babbling about how glad he was to see them, but that would have looked soft. So he simply smirked and said, “I was just about to give up on you and become Aoth Fezim permanently.”
The Thayan smiled. The dimness inside the pavilion made the glow of his eyes more noticeable. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he said.
Cera entered behind him, and after her came a young genasi, a stormsoul, apparently, although some of the lines in her purple skin were gold instead of silver. She wore a pentagonal badge that likely identified her as some sort of Akanûlan soldier or official.
“The camp already saw Captain Fezim enter this tent just a little while ago,” Meralaine said.
“So they shouldn’t see it again?” Aoth replied. “I doubt that anyone’s been keeping such close track of ‘my’ movements that it will rouse suspicion, and even if it does, I’m too tired to care.” He dropped into a camp chai
r. “Bring me that jug and report. You can talk in front of Son-liin. She knows pretty much everything.”
Resisting the temptation to embellish the account into a celebration of his own cunning and prowess—and Meralaine’s too, of course—Oraxes laid out recent events as clearly and succinctly as he could.
When he finished, Aoth grunted. “Could be better, could be worse.”
“But mostly better,” Gaedynn said.
* * * * *
As he and Aoth strode through the corridors of the War College with Nicos Corynian, the captain and the Brotherhood’s original sponsor murmuring urgently back and forth, Gaedynn’s nerves felt taut as bowstrings.
Partly it was because he and his companions were about to face Tchazzar, who was likely displeased with them anyway and whose mood would almost certainly sour further before the audience was over. But mainly, he realized, it was because he was about to see Jhesrhi.
He sneered at himself, reminding himself she was simply his friend. That was all she could ever be, and that was how he wanted it because friends were worth having, but frustrations and encumbrances were not.
Still, although making sure he wasn’t obvious about it, he peered around for her as soon as he and his companions entered the Hall of Blades. For after all, he had to make sure she was all right.
As the name suggested, the decor in the chamber celebrated swordplay. Sculpted bronze warriors brandished greatswords over their heads. Their counterparts in the tapestries assailed one another with broadswords and targes. The design in the floor tiles was made of stylized scimitars, and atop the high back of the throne on the dais, a fan-shaped arc of five blades projected to threaten the ceiling.
Along with Hasos, Halonya, Kassur Jedea, and some other dignitaries, Jhesrhi was standing near the dais in a robe of crimson damask. A ruby-studded tiara helped to hold her blonde tresses in the elaborate arrangement some hairdresser had created. But despite her finery, she looked drawn and tired, perhaps even haggard in a subtle kind of way. Gaedynn could see it in her golden eyes and the set of her mouth, and it made him dislike Tchazzar all the more.
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