Whisper of Venom: Brotherhood of the Griffon, Book II

by Richard Lee Byers

  Tchazzar went rigid, then slumped when the flare blinked out of existence. He kept on fighting the web, but seemed dazed and too weakened to have any hope of escaping.

  Alasklerbanbastos started another spell.

  Aoth looked around. Jaxanaedegor and his minions were nowhere near the Great Bone Wyrm. Maybe they hadn’t expected the dracolich to gain the upper hand so quickly and completely. Aoth hadn’t expected it either, even though every soldier knew combat was often like that. A duel between even the greatest warriors could start and end with a single cut.

  Anyway, one thing was clear. If Jaxanaedegor hadn’t already started maneuvering to attack, he certainly wasn’t going to do it now.

  Aoth supposed he should order the Brotherhood to retreat. Try to get them off the battlefield and out of Chessenta without taking any more casualties.

  But then they’d have lost again and further tarnished their reputation. He might never see Cera again. And he could guess what fate awaited a priestess of the sun in a land newly conquered by an undead monstrosity.

  To the Abyss with it. It was as reckless as anything Aoth had ever done in Thay, madder than anything he’d ever wanted to do again. But he aimed his spear and sent Jet swooping at the dracolich.

  Skuthosiin spewed vapor. Balasar held his breath and squinched his eyes shut. His exposed skin stung even so, but his precautions—or the protective amulet Biri, the pretty young white-scaled mage, had for some reason given him—kept the vapor from rotting his lungs or blinding him.

  His poor horse wasn’t as lucky. He felt the animal toppling beneath him. He opened his eyes, dropped his lance, dived out of the saddle, and rolled to his feet. At once he had to jump to keep his mount’s spasmodic legs from kicking him. To either side, other horses lay or rolled convulsing. As did some of their riders. Other dragonborn coughed and retched or swiped tears from their streaming eyes.

  Balasar realized he needed to keep Skuthosiin’s attention fixed on him until his fellow survivors recovered the capacity to defend themselves. “I’m still here!” he called to the hideous creature. “You just can’t do anything right, can you?”

  Skuthosiin snarled and clawed. Balasar dodged left and then, as the dragon’s foot smashed down and jolted the earth, glimpsed motion at the edge of his vision. He pivoted to find Skuthosiin’s tail whipping at him. By avoiding what amounted to a feint, he’d stepped right into the true attack.

  He leaped and folded his legs underneath him. He felt the breeze as the tail whipped by. The blow slammed into his still-thrashing horse, smashing it into shapelessness and smearing parts of it across the ground.

  As the tail completed its arc, Khouryn was there to intercept it. Bellowing, he jammed his spear straight down through the tip, nailing it to the ground.

  Skuthosiin jerked his extremity free, snapping the point off the weapon in the process. The shaft remained in the wound and wobbled as the tail swirled around.

  Many wearing the badges and colors of the Platinum Cadre, other spearmen scrambled after the dwarf. They formed up to attack and fall back as he and the Beast had taught them.

  Balasar felt a surge of pride. Skuthosiin was deadly, slaughtering an opponent with almost every moment that passed, but his comrades kept attacking anyway. They came from a race of dragon-killers and were proving themselves worthy descendants of their forebears.

  Unfortunately, valor alone didn’t guarantee a victory. Their chances would have been better if Medrash were still in the fight, but something—Balasar hadn’t seen what—had struck his clan brother down an instant after they charged.

  Hoping Medrash was still alive, Balasar drew his sword, lifted his battered targe into a high guard, and advanced on Skuthosiin.

  Aoth rattled off words of power. A shaft of sunlight that would have done Cera proud shot from the head of his spear. It slashed across Alasklerbanbastos’s skull and stabbed into his eye sockets.

  It was powerful magic. Yet the dracolich didn’t even look up, any more than Aoth would have reacted to a buzzing fly when intent on fighting a foe. Still staring at Tchazzar, the Great Bone Wyrm kept on hissing and growling his own incantation.

  Aoth’s neck muscles tightened in anger. He cursed, then unlocked the most powerful spell currently stored inside the spear, poured extra force into it, and sent the results streaking from the point in a stream of sparks.

  The sparks detonated in rapid succession as they hit the Bone Wyrm’s wings and spine. Each booming, fiery blast jolted him downward like a gigantic boot stamping on his back. A couple of small bones and pieces of bone fell away from his body. He stumbled over the words of his incantation, and Aoth felt the accumulating power dissipate in a useless sizzle.

  Let’s see you ignore that, he thought. Then Alasklerbanbastos raised his head and spread his jaws.

  Jet lashed his wings, and then the world turned into glare and a pounding bang. It took Aoth an instant to understand that in fact the thunderbolt hadn’t hit them. The griffon had dodged it.

  Alasklerbanbastos spread his own wings, gave them a clattering flap, and climbed into the air.

  Keep away from him! said Aoth.

  Obviously! Jet snapped. He veered, and darts of blue-white light crackled past them.

  As they dodged back and forth across the sky, Aoth hurled fire, acid, and every other force that seemed like it might be capable of hurting an undead blue dragon. More often than not, the attacks hit their target. But none of them made Alasklerbanbastos falter for even a heartbeat.

  Whereas he only has to hit me once, said Jet.

  I know. Aoth looked for Jaxanaedegor and found him hovering far from the action. He peered down at Tchazzar. The red dragon was still writhing under the web of shadows.

  A boom jolted him and tumbled Jet end over end, like the griffon was somersaulting. Only his buckled harness held Aoth in the saddle. For a moment, the mind meshed with his own was dull and oblivious, and then, with a screech, the familiar snapped back to full wakefulness. He beat his wings and somehow regained control of his trajectory.

  But by the time Jet pulled out of his fall, Alasklerbanbastos was plunging down at him, enormous claws poised to catch and rend.

  Jet swooped one way and another, trying to get out from under the dracolich. Alasklerbanbastos matched him move for move. Aoth hurled flame from his spear. It splashed across the Bone Wyrm’s legs and ribs and must have been doing some harm. But the undead blue kept closing in.

  Until an arrow plunged into his right eye socket.

  Aoth suspected that the shaft hadn’t actually injured Alasklerbanbastos. But judging from the way he jerked, it must have at least startled him. And perhaps it was a maddening distraction to have it bouncing around inside his hollow skull. Because the next time Jet veered, the dracolich failed to compensate. The familiar streaked into the clear, and Alasklerbanbastos plunged on by.

  Aoth glanced around and wasn’t surprised to spot Gaedynn grinning at him from Eider’s back. Though he’d been leading griffon riders for almost a hundred years, he’d met few archers who could have made that shot.

  He was surprised at how many other griffon riders were coming on behind the redheaded scout, ready to aid their captain in his suicidal folly.

  Their shafts fell on Alasklerbanbastos like rain and seemed to do as little harm. The dracolich shook his head, opened his jaws, and spat out Gaedynn’s arrow. Then he lashed his wings and climbed. The light in his eye sockets glowed brighter. Lightning crawled on him and leaped from one bone to another.

  Aoth pointed his spear and rattled off words of command. A blade of emerald light leaped from the point of the weapon and streaked at the ascending dracolich. Guiding it with little shifts of his hand, trying to match Gaedynn’s accuracy, he made it hack repeatedly at the spot where Alasklerbanbastos’s left wing connected to the shoulder bone.

  Alasklerbanbastos twisted his head to regard the sword of light. No doubt to get rid of it before it accomplished its purpose. But then Meralaine recited an in
cantation. Her voice was a girl’s voice, high and breathy, yet the charge of dark magic it carried made it seem somehow cold and leaden, as well as enabling a fellow mage to catch the sound even across the sky. Though Aoth didn’t take his eyes off Alasklerbanbastos to look for her, he surmised that the necromancer had persuaded some griffon rider to carry her aloft.

  Her spell made the dracolich hesitate. Only for a heartbeat, but in that instant, the flying blade accomplished its task. The wing broke away from the body. The Bone Wyrm started to fall—

  —and then stopped.

  Because, Aoth realized, while wings helped Alasklerbanbastos maneuver across the sky, it was ultimately magic that held him up. As it was still supporting him, while the wing also stopped tumbling and floated upward again.

  But the wretched creature had to fall! In desperation, Aoth shouted an incantation intended to shred enchantments to nothing. He didn’t know if it had any chance of working, but it was the only idea he had. Meralaine joined in on the first refrain, reinforcing his power with her own.

  Alasklerbanbastos plummeted again, and this time fell all the way down to the ground.

  Aoth prayed to Kossuth that the dracolich would smash apart, but the Lord of Flame apparently didn’t hear. Although Alasklerbanbastos hit hard enough to snap some bones and jolt others loose from their couplings, the damage looked relatively superficial. Worse, either because of some innate capacity or because he used enchantment, he instantly started to mend. Pieces of bone, the severed wing included, flew through the air to reunite with his body.

  Curse it! thought Aoth. The thing seemed as unstoppable as Szass Tam himself.

  Alasklerbanbastos flexed his legs and spread his wings. Then his head whipped around as a flash snagged his attention.

  Jhesrhi was on the ground near Tchazzar, casting flame from her staff to burn away the web of darkness. Maybe to restore his strength as well, as she had in the Shadowfell.

  Alasklerbanbastos took a first stride in her direction. Jet furled his wings and dived at the dracolich. Aoth hurled darts of scarlet light that stabbed into the undead dragon’s spine but failed to divert him from his purpose.

  Springing from the ground, Scar flung himself at Alasklerbanbastos. Who snapped him out of the air and gnashed him into pieces.

  Eider plunged down on top of the dracolich and began to tear with her talons. Alasklerbanbastos shook himself like a wet dog and sent the griffon and her rider tumbling.

  Oraxes hurled his own darts of light. Lances leveled, Shala and Hasos galloped at the undead blue. Soldiers rushed in, swinging axes and jabbing with spears.

  Still intent on Tchazzar and Jhesrhi, Alasklerbanbastos didn’t so much fight the other opponents seeking to bar the way as simply wade through them. Unfortunately, he seemed to do it almost as easily as Aoth could have walked through a puddle. Meanwhile, Jhesrhi stood her ground and threw fire from the staff. She plainly meant to free Tchazzar or die trying.

  Put me on top of him, said Aoth. Right where Eider landed.

  All right, said Jet, but I don’t promise that I’ll be able to hold on either.

  You don’t have to. Just set me there. Aoth willed the straps that held him in the saddle to unbuckle, and they did. He released the magic bound in every protective tattoo on his body.

  Then Jet thumped down. Aoth swung himself off the familiar’s back, grabbed a knob of bone, and shouted, “Go!” With a reluctance that throbbed across their psychic link, the familiar lashed his wings and took off again. Aoth charged his spear with raw force and stabbed at sections of rib that—he hoped—Gaedynn’s mount had already weakened.

  Pieces of two adjacent ribs snapped loose and fell away. Aoth jammed himself feet first into the breach he’d created. It was a tight squeeze, and a jagged tip of broken bone scratched his cheek. But then, releasing the charm bound in another tattoo to soften the fall, he dropped inside.

  Where he found it all but impossible to stand. The dracolich’s motion bounced him around, and the bottom of the rib cage was like a floor with planks missing. Small lightning bolts crackled across the space he occupied, stinging and jolting him. They’d do worse than that once they wore away his protective enchantments.

  He grabbed a rib to find and keep his balance, released the remaining energy in the spear, and jabbed at the curves of bone around him. If Tymora smiled, maybe Alasklerbanbastos would find the assault from the inside as difficult to ignore as Gaedynn’s arrow rattling around in his head.

  For two or three heartbeats, that didn’t appear to be the case. But then the dracolich whirled around like a hound chasing its tail. Head bent backward at the end of his long neck, he glared at the pest infesting his core.

  “Not this time,” said Aoth. He made sure he didn’t meet the Bone Wyrm’s gaze. And wished the creature didn’t have a hundred other ways of attacking him.

  Alasklerbanbastos’s fleshless jaws opened. Aoth shouted a word of defense, and the world blazed white.

  Medrash’s vision had cleared, and to a degree so had his thoughts. He could see and understand what was happening before him, and that was hellish. Because his friends and comrades needed him.

  Chopping with his urgrosh, or jabbing with the spike on the butt, Khouryn was fighting as brilliantly as any warrior Medrash had ever seen. Grinning, shouting taunts, waiting until the last possible instant to dance out of the way of an attack in order to land a counterstroke, Balasar was equally superb. And they had help. Dragonborn kept streaming into the heart of Ashhold. Bat riders wheeled and swooped overhead, hurling javelins or thrusting with lances and polearms. Some of the mages had arrived as well. Cloaked in a protective blur, Biri hurled bursts of frost from her rose quartz wand.

  Yet Medrash’s instincts told him it wasn’t going to be enough. Skuthosiin had gashes and punctures all over his prodigious body, but they weren’t slowing him down. He seemed to fell an adversary with every snap of his fangs, snatch of his talons, or swing of his tail, and when he managed another burst of poison breath, he was apt to kill several at once. To make the situation even more dire, a couple of the ash giant shamans had shaken off their debility, some of the hulking barbarian warriors had retreated into the heart of Ashhold, and they were all making a stand with their dragon chieftain.

  Medrash reached out to Torm. As on his previous attempts, he failed to make contact. Even though he felt like his thoughts had cleared, his injury seemed to hinder his spiritual gifts just as it had paralyzed his body.

  It occurred to him that he was likely dying. In other circumstances, that might not have dismayed him. But now it felt like failure. Like he’d be abandoning Balasar and the others.

  He groped uselessly in the void. Then a familiar figure crouched over him. “Patrin?” he croaked.

  The newcomer’s eyes widened in surprise, and Medrash realized he’d been mistaken. The fellow was younger and thinner than Bahamut’s knight had been, and his hide was brown-freckled ochre, not crimson. Medrash decided that it was the youth’s purple and platinum tunic, and the dark, that had confused him.

  “I’m … I’m not him,” the newcomer said.

  “I see that now,” said Medrash. “Go. Fight. Don’t worry about me.”

  “I’m not him,” the youth repeated, “but the wind whispered to me. It said that now the god needs me to be his champion in this place. It told me to heal you. But I don’t know how!”

  Even with his body broken and useless, Medrash felt a twinge of repugnance at the thought of accepting any boon from a dragon god. But he was far too desperate to pay it any heed.

  “Put your hands on my shoulders,” he said. “Now reach out to Bahamut with your mind. You just have to concentrate and believe the Power will come. And be ready when it does. Sometimes—”

  The newly anointed paladin cried out. A cold, stinging Power burst out of his hands and surged through Medrash, sharpening his thoughts and washing the deadness out of his limbs. Which brought a certain amount of pain, because the magic didn’t entirel
y heal his burns and bruises. But he so rejoiced in the return of sensation that even discomfort was a kind of joy.

  The dragon-worshiper’s eyes rolled up into his head. He toppled sideways.

  Medrash sat up and caught the unconscious youth, then laid him gently on the ground. He wished he could put him somewhere safer, but with Skuthosiin slaughtering dragonborn every moment, there wasn’t time. Besides, nowhere in Ashhold was truly safe, nor would be until the fight was won.

  He stood up and found his fallen sword, then tried to assess how much mystical Power remained to him. To his surprise, he had plenty. Bahamut had left him some blisters and scrapes, but had evidently refreshed his paladin gifts.

  A Daardendrien warrior with a broken leg lay in front of Skuthosiin. Jaws open wide, the green dragon’s head arced down at him.

  Medrash shouted, “Torm!” The world blurred for an instant as he switched places with his injured kinsman.

  Sidestepping, he slashed at the side of the dragon’s head as it plunged by. He missed the slit-pupiled yellow eye, but his blade split the scaly hide beneath.

  Skuthosiin whipped his head up high, almost snatching the sword from Medrash’s grip. But he held on tight, and, slinging drops of gore, the blade pulled out of the wound instead.

  Skuthosiin glared down at him, and the spiritual deformity that made him profoundly if indefinably hideous seemed to concentrate in his gaze. Perhaps it was supposed to make Medrash avert his eyes, or to churn his guts with nausea, but it did neither. It only made him even more determined to destroy the threat to his people once and for all.

  “I don’t care how many little gods you have propping you up!” the dragon snarled. “My lady is the only one that matters!”

  “Prove it,” Medrash said. He raised his sword, and white light blazed from the blade. Skuthosiin recoiled. Medrash dashed forward to strike while the wyrm was still dazzled. Other warriors did the same.