But he need scarcely have bothered, because the one cell was just a few paces farther on, conveniently close to the torments. Her hands and ankles bound with coarse rope woven of multicolored fibers, a woman with golden hair lay on her side on the stone floor behind the iron bars.
“Cera!” said Aoth, keeping his voice low. “Cera!”
She opened her eyes and peered back at him. “Aoth?” she croaked. She seemed more dazed than joyful, like her captors had given her drugs or tortured the sense right out of her.
“Yes. Hang on.” He tried the door. It was locked, and the key was nowhere in sight.
He drew his short sword. Among other things, it had raw force sealed inside it to enable the wielder to thrust or cut with prodigious strength. He slipped the blade between the door and its frame, right above the lock, pried, and released a portion of the power. The grille snapped open.
He hurried into the cage and kneeled down beside her. Up close she stank of blood, sweat, and other filth. “How badly are you hurt?” he asked.
She shook her head. “The rope … I can’t think.…”
He set down the sword, drew a dagger, and sawed at the bonds that held her hands behind her back. They were tough and tried to squirm away from the edge of the blade like snakes. But he kept at it. Eventually one parted, and then the next.
“I …” she said. “I saw … there’s a beast down here! A drake! A priest walks it by every so often. It stares at me like it wants to eat me.” The action of the knife tugged on her arms, and she gasped.
“Did they rack you?” asked Aoth.
“I think … pulling on me. Yes.”
He felt his jaw clench.
The last loop of rope confining her wrists parted. He shifted around to work on her ankles. “Once you’re free, can you heal yourself? Enough to walk, and run if you need to?”
“I think so.”
The final loop parted, and he pulled the writhing pieces of cord away from her feet. She closed her eyes, drew a long breath, and murmured a prayer. A warm golden glow supplanted the chill and shadowy dimness of the cellar.
And, down the hallway, something snarled.
Maybe the drake was close enough to see the magical sunlight, or maybe it had caught Aoth’s scent. It didn’t much matter which. Either way, it and its master were coming.
Hasos walked the battlements, spoke a word of encouragement to an archer or crossbowman from time to time, and surveyed the battle below. Pools of light periodically bloomed or guttered to darkness as wizards tried to illuminate their enemies and keep their allies hidden. Their supply of arrows depleted, griffon riders swooped down at the enemy like owls attacking mice. Masses of infantry shoved and ground together. Horsemen circled wide, maneuvering to attack some group of foemen from the flank or rear. Animated by sorcery, a trebuchet took laborious little steps. The throwing arm whipped like a scorpion’s tail to hammer orcs and kobolds on the ground.
Hasos turned to the aide trailing along behind him. “What do you think?”
The man shook his head. “I don’t know, milord. It looks like it could go either way.”
Useless! Hasos thought, even though he knew it wasn’t fair. A subordinate wasn’t supposed to have keener judgment than his commander, and Hasos couldn’t make up his mind either.
But precisely because he was the commander, he had to.
He could think of solid reasons to hold back. The war hero had put Aoth Fezim in charge, not Gaedynn Ulraes. The archer arguably had no authority to order Hasos to do anything.
And if the effort to break the siege failed, as it surely must without his wholehearted support, the Brotherhood of the Griffon would suffer heavy casualties. Afterward Tchazzar would strip Aoth of his authority, because the war-mage had abandoned his command at a crucial moment. Besides, no one would allow the captain of only a defeated, shattered company to lead the defense of an entire realm under any circumstances.
Which ought to benefit Soolabax, for how could it be wise to entrust the town’s defense to a devil-worshiping Thayan arcanist? By the Yellow Sun, with the griffon riders gone, at least the food would last longer. The beasts ate prodigious quantities of meat.
But unfortunately, it wasn’t just wretched outlander mercenaries trading spear thrusts and sword strokes with the kobolds and orcs. Aoth had mustered good Chessentan troops from elsewhere along the border, and they too would die without Hasos’s support.
How could he call himself a true Chessentan noble if he let that happen? How could he ever again sit in the seat of judgment that he still privately thought of as his father’s chair without a withering sense of shame?
He scowled. “Come on. Let’s get to the gate.”
He arrived in the nick of time. Faces twisted with anger, more of the sellswords stood facing ranks of Hasos’s men, who had positioned themselves to protect the windlass that raised the portcullis.
“It’s all right!” Hasos shouted. “We’re going now! Save your anger for the enemy!”
A groom brought his destrier, and he swung himself into the saddle. Men and riders jockeyed about, returning to the positions they’d abandoned when the quarrel broke out.
Hasos nodded to the pair of men charged with turning the windlass. They did their work, and the grille rattled upward on its chains. Other fellows scurried to slide the enormous bar, then swung the gates open.
Heart thumping, mouth dry, Hasos brandished the sword of his ancestors, spurred his steed, and rode forth to attack the besieging army from one side while Gaedynn’s troops harried it from the other. Pounding along behind him, his men howled like some titanic beast.
Aoth looked at Cera. Some of her bruises had faded. “Can you run?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
“Keep working on it.” As she began another prayer, he rose and rushed back out into the hallway.
The drake looked like a wingless red wyrm charging on all fours. It nearly filled the passage, making it difficult to discern the dragon priest behind it.
Scarcely slowing, the drake spewed slime. Aoth wrenched himself out of the way. The muck spattered the floor, where it sizzled and gave off vile-smelling smoke.
Unfortunately, the evasion deprived Aoth of the time necessary to cast a spell. Nor was there any ranged magic stored in his sword potent enough to neutralize the drake and its master too. Regretting the absence of his spear, he poised himself to receive the reptile’s attack.
The spitting drake sprang in an attempt to carry him to the floor. Somehow, though there was barely room for it, he sidestepped, released more of the power inside his blade to augment his strength, and stabbed downward.
He missed the drake’s neck but pierced its shoulder. The sword drove in deep, then tore free in a shower of gore as the beast plunged onward. A pulse of Cera’s yellow light gilding its crimson scales, the beast reared onto its hind legs to spin around in the narrow hall. When it lunged again it was on three legs, the maimed one curled against its chest, but that didn’t slow it down.
Aoth freed the last of the raw might stored in the sword, then heard the wyrmkeeper chanting at his back. A howl of frigid wind slammed into his back, knocking him forward. Off balance and chilled to the bone, he still tried to stab the onrushing drake. But it snapped, caught his sword arm in its teeth, and whipped its head.
Only the truesilver mail shirt he wore beneath his outer garments kept the shearing action of the fangs and the whipping action from severing his hand. As it was, the drake threw him to the floor, and the pressure of its bite was as unrelenting as it was excruciating. The armor wouldn’t protect him for long.
The drake lashed him back and forth. He tried to transfer his sword to his free hand but couldn’t reach it. He called darts of blue light from the blade to stab into the reptile’s body. It snarled with pain, but that was all.
Her voice a little stronger, Cera chanted. A shaft of dazzling light blazed out of her cell onto the side of the drake’s head and neck, burning
red scales black and melting a slit-pupiled yellow eye.
Finally, recoiling, the reptile let go of Aoth. Then it glared in Cera’s direction, and he sensed it meant to spit more vitriol. He heaved himself to his feet, flung himself at the reptile, and stabbed. Sadly, the weapon no longer had extra force to lend, but, bellowing, he put every iota of his own strength and weight behind the stroke.
The sword punched in one side of the drake’s neck and out the other. The beast thrashed, and a flailing leg or tail clipped Aoth and knocked him staggering. As he recovered his equilibrium, the drake collapsed to lie twitching and bleeding on the floor.
He spun toward the wyrmkeeper. The priest was running and had already reached a branching corridor. He vanished around the corner before Aoth could even cast more shining darts from the sword, let alone recite an incantation. He growled an obscenity.
Which failed to improve the situation. So he turned back to Cera just as she came limping out of the cell. “If the whoreson didn’t recognize me—” he began.
Cera smiled wryly and ran a finger along his bare, sweaty temple. Which demonstrated that at some point during his struggles, his cowl had fallen back, giving the dragon priest a clear look at his head—shaved scalp, tattoos, glowing eyes, and all.
He grunted. “Right. He did recognize me. So, now can you run?”
“I think I can at least hobble quickly enough to reach the stairs before our friend assembles every wyrmkeeper on the premises at the top.”
“Satisfying as it might be to kill our way through the whole pack of them, we’re not going out that way. Or at least I hope not.”
“How, then?”
“Often if a rich man thinks he needs a secret area in his home, he thinks he needs a secret way in and out of the house as well. If there’s one down here, I shouldn’t have much trouble spotting it. Let’s look.”
When he saw how much trouble she was having keeping up, he put his arm around her and half carried her along. Then echoing voices called back and forth. The wyrmkeepers were coming after them.
They seemed to be proceeding cautiously, but it was still just a matter of moments before one of them caught sight of their quarry. Aoth had just about decided it was time to turn around and make a stand when he and Cera came to the largest room they’d seen so far.
The wyrmkeepers had turned it into the holiest part of their secret temple, complete with a sizable lacquered statue of their dragon goddess—batlike wings half unfurled, wedge-shaped heads glaring in all directions—that they’d somehow smuggled in. But what instantly snagged Aoth’s attention were the tiny cracks defining a rectangle on the back wall.
In his haste he all but dragged Cera across the room, and she gasped in pain. “Sorry,” he said, examining the hidden door more closely.
He found the catch and pressed it, and the panel clicked open. It was actually wood, with a stone veneer to make it look like the rest of the wall. On the other side was a tunnel. He and Cera scurried inside, and he shut the door.
“You realize,” she whispered, “I can’t see a thing.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ll guide you.”
He only had to do it for a short distance. Then they reached the end and a ladder leading upward. When he cautiously cracked open the door at the top, he found himself peeking out into a cobbler’s shop where the air was redolent of leather. The place was dark at that hour, the proprietor likely asleep upstairs.
He led Cera inside. A little light seeped through the oiled paper windows, enough for ordinary eyes to discern the essential nature of the place, and so she breathed, “We made it.”
He snorted. “Not yet. My guess is that the wyrmkeepers will run to Halonya, and she’ll run to Tchazzar. But maybe we can get to him first.”
FIVE
5 KYTHORN, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
Some of the horsemen and griffon riders still had work to do. They had to chase the enemy warriors who’d fled the battlefield. Oraxes couldn’t imagine how they’d find the energy. He felt utterly exhausted, and while his own contribution to the victory had required intense concentration, at least he hadn’t had armor weighing him down or needed to swing a mundane weapon over and over again.
He’d ridden out of Soolabax behind Gaedynn on griffonback. Since the archer was busy elsewhere, he had to find the stamina to trudge back into the town. He made it through the gate, then flopped down on the ground with his back against a wall. A steady stream of soldiers passed before him, their strange mix of satisfaction and weariness a match for his own. The scene stuttered as he repeatedly dozed, then jerked awake.
“The sellswords who looked after me said I should stay and loot the bodies with them,” said a soprano voice.
Startled, Oraxes snapped his head around. Meralaine was standing in front of him.
“But I was too tired,” she continued.
He dredged up a sneer. “Besides, it’s wrong to rob your friends.”
She stared at him for a moment. Then she said, “No zombie ever cheated me or threw stones at me just because I had green marks on my hands. There are worse friends than the dead.”
“And I guess that if you can’t find any living ones, that’s good.”
She sighed. “I thought that fighting the immolith together might help us be friends. But maybe not. Is it because you think I want to be the leader of the mages?”
He frowned. “Don’t you? You were certainly kissing Gaedynn’s boots.”
“I was not!” She hesitated. “But if I seemed like it, it was probably just because he and the other Brothers act like they don’t hate arcanists. Why would I care about being in charge of just three other people? Especially knowing how contrary the rest of you are. Especially since this Jhesrhi person will take over the job as soon as she comes back.”
He surprised himself by chuckling. “When you put it like that, it does seem kind of stupid. I just …”
“Was never put in charge of anything or anybody before?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
She sat down beside him. “You should learn necromancy. Then you’d always have dead things to order around.”
Tchazzar kissed his way down Lady Imestra’s body. Like so many Chessentans, she had a taut, athletic frame, and her milky skin was smooth as silk. She was also the wife of one of the city’s principal lords, and that made her even more desirable. It had always been thus, and evidently a century in exile hadn’t changed his proclivities.
At first she squirmed and arched her back in delight. He didn’t notice precisely when that changed. Eventually though, he realized she’d started screaming and struggling, tangling her fingers in his hair and straining in a vain attempt to pull his head up.
When he raised it, he saw reddened, blistered skin. A trace of a red dragon’s fire must have warmed his lips and tongue.
In wyrm form, mating with one of his own kind, he would have deliberately caressed his lover with his flame. He wondered if, addled by passion, he’d made an embarrassing mistake.
But that possibility only troubled him for an instant, and then he perceived the truth. He was a god, and so his divine nature protected him. Imestra couldn’t bear his touch because she was disloyal.
“Traitor,” he said. “Traitorous bitch.” He jumped up, grabbed her arm, and jerked her off the broad canopy bed onto the gleaming marble floor.
“Majesty!” she wailed.
“I know how to deal with traitors.” He dragged her across the floor to the chair where he’d tossed his clothing and the dagger he’d worn along with it.
Then someone knocked on the chamber door. “Majesty!” called the sentry posted outside. “Is everything all right?”
“In a way!” Tchazzar snarled. “My guards are evidently too stupid to keep traitors away from me. But fortunately a deity can protect himself!”
The sentry hesitated, then said, “A lot of people are here waiting to see you, Majesty. Even though it’s late, and we told them you gave orders n
ot to be disturbed. There’s Lady Halonya, Lords Daelric and Nicos, the sellsword captain—”
“You mean Fezim?”
“Yes.”
Even with the insight of a divine being, Tchazzar couldn’t imagine what was going on. But it seemed clear he needed to find out. He started to call the guard in, then hesitated.
He’d proved Imestra’s guilt. But would mere mortals understand that? It might make life simpler if he provided more conventional evidence.
He left her sprawled and sobbing, picked up the dagger, unsheathed it, and tossed it to clank down beside her. Then he told the sentry to come in.
“Arrest her,” Tchazzar said. “Watch out for the knife she smuggled in.”
“Yes, Majesty,” said the guard.
“Arrest her pimp of a husband too. Where did you put all these folk whose problem can’t wait until morning?”
“In the Green Hall.”
“That will do.” Tchazzar momentarily considered dressing properly, then decided that given the hour and the impromptu nature of the assembly, a robe was good enough. He pulled on one sewn of crimson mocado and headed for the door. Behind him, Imestra blubbered.
An escort formed around him as he exited the royal apartments, and they all marched into the Green Hall together. Tapestries depicting Chessentan naval victories adorned the walls. The seas in the woven pictures were the color one would expect. So were the tiles on the floor, and the upholstery on the high-backed, ornately carved chair atop the dais.
As Tchazzar seated himself, he surveyed all the frowning folk awaiting his pleasure. They stood in three clumps.
On his right were Halonya—he really would have to tell the poor child to stop second-guessing her dressmakers, jewelers, and hairdressers—a couple of her subordinate priests, and plump Luthen with his balding head and goatee.
Whisper of Venom: Brotherhood of the Griffon, Book II Page 11