The Captive Flame botg-1

by Richard Lee Byers

  “It’s nothing,” snarled the griffon. “Why does everyone think I’m so delicate?”

  Aoth pointed with his spear. “There are two Green Hand killers, and they fled that way.”

  Jhesrhi squinted. “I can’t see them.”

  “Luckily, I still can. Just. We need to get after them.”

  Jhesrhi lifted her staff in both hands and rattled off words of command. The wind howled and lifted Aoth in its embrace, and he and his lieutenant soared together.

  It didn’t take him long to realize he didn’t like it. He loved flying on griffonback, but then he was in control and had something solid under his arse. Here, the unreasoning, instinctual part of his mind kept insisting he was going to fall. Of course even if he had, the magic bound in one of his tattoos would have enabled him to float down to a soft landing, but remembering that only helped a little.

  Fortunately, he was too intent on the quarry for anxiety to claim much of a hold on him. He had to redirect Jhesrhi as the murderers veered this way and that. Meanwhile, she had to maintain the pursuit and also pick up their comrades hiding in the shadows of chimneys or in doorways and stairwells at street level.

  Even for a mistress of elemental magic, it had to be taxing. But one by one, Khouryn, Balasar, Medrash, and Gaedynn bobbed or whirled up into the sky. Aoth found a bit of amusement in the fact that the dwarf and the smaller dragonborn looked even more uncomfortable than he was. The paladin, though, appeared so intent on righteous vengeance as to barely even notice he was flying, while the auburn-haired archer smirked as usual.

  Gradually, they narrowed the killers’ lead. Gaedynn tried a couple of shots, but even he couldn’t hit a moving target in such difficult circumstances. Jhesrhi’s conjured wind was just too strong, as well as unpredictable from one moment to the next.

  The murderers leaped onto the roof of a fair-sized but dilapidated box of a house at the edge of the city. They threw open a trapdoor, scurried through, and closed it behind them.

  “Half through the top and half through the bottom!” yelled Khouryn.

  “I agree!” Aoth replied.

  Jhesrhi spoke to the wind. Aoth recognized one of the languages of Chaos, although he wasn’t fluent enough to understand all the words. Fortunately, the wind did. Khouryn and the two dragonborn hurtled toward the ground. Aoth, Jhesrhi, and Gaedynn flew onto the roof, and then the air stopped supporting them or fluttering their clothes.

  Jhesrhi panted and swiped back her hair with a shaky hand.

  “Are you all right?” asked Aoth.

  “Fine,” she said.

  “There are only two Green Hands,” said Gaedynn, nocking an arrow, “and six of us. If-”

  “I said I’m fine,” she said, gritting her teeth.

  “Then let’s get to it,” said Aoth. In theory, with them coming in from the roof and Khouryn and the Tymantherans entering on the ground floor, they had the killers trapped between them. Still, he didn’t want to give the bastards time to do anything clever.

  He tried to pull open the trapdoor. The Green Hands had barred it behind them. He jabbed the point of his spear into the wood, spoke a word of command, and released a bit of the power stored in the weapon. The trapdoor exploded into scraps and splinters.

  Below the hole was a ladder. Aoth didn’t bother with it. He simply jumped and thumped down on a dusty floor. He pivoted, spear and targe poised for defense.

  He was alone in a lightless attic festooned with spiderwebs. It smelled of age and abandonment. A steep staircase descended to the story beneath.

  Aoth stepped aside, and Gaedynn jumped down after him. The air moaned and surged, and Jhesrhi floated down, as though to allay her comrades’ concerns that she was too tired to use more magic. She brightened the glow of the runes on her staff to serve for a lantern.

  Gaedynn sniffed. “I smell smoke.”

  Aoth realized he did too. But they needed to stay focused on catching the murderers. “Keep moving.”

  Peering for some sign of the Green Hands, he led his lieutenants down the rickety stairs. The smell of burning grew stronger. From what he could see so far, the building looked like any derelict house. It had probably belonged to some prosperous burgher, with servants and apprentices consigned to the stark little rooms on this floor and the family sleeping in nicer ones below.

  The darkness burned white, and something crackled. Aoth shuddered, his muscles locking, and the staircase shattered beneath him. As he and his comrades slammed down amid the wreckage, he realized that someone standing behind the steps, where even spellscarred eyes couldn’t see, had struck them all with a blaze of conjured lightning.

  Fortunately, it hadn’t killed him. The protective charms bound into his tattoos and gear, his own innate hardiness, or Tymora’s favor had preserved him, and he prayed the same was true of his friends. Starting to feel the hot pain of his burns, he floundered around to face his attacker.

  Then, at the very periphery of his vision, he glimpsed a robed, hooded figure stepping out of a doorway. Liquid sprayed him and his companions, searing them once again.

  Aoth’s eyes burned and filled with tears. Something hit his chest-not, he thought, penetrating his mail but slamming the breath out of him. He was too blind to have any idea what it was.

  *****

  For a long moment it felt to Medrash like he, Balasar, and the dwarf were simply falling. But at what was surely the last possible moment, the wind gusted upward to slow their descent. They still bumped down hard, but without injury.

  Balasar drew his sword. “Appearances to the contrary,” he said, “maybe your wizard friend does have a sense of humor.”

  Khouryn spun his axe through a casual practice swing. “No, she just set us down the easiest way, without caring whether it would make us think we were about to meet our ancestors.” He strode to the door of the derelict house and broke it open with a kick. The door banged against the interior wall, and the impact echoed throughout the building.

  “Subtle,” Balasar said.

  “They already know we’re chasing them,” Medrash said. “I doubt it matters.”

  It was even darker once they entered the house. Medrash murmured a prayer and infused the blade of his sword with pearly light.

  The glow revealed a ground floor that had, in its time, served the purposes of commerce, with empty shelves and counters near the door and worktables farther back. He couldn’t tell what the long-departed shopkeeper had manufactured and sold.

  Nor did he care. All that mattered was bringing the Green Hand-or rather Hands-to justice and completing the task the Loyal Fury had entrusted to him. Ridding Luthcheq of a loathsome evil, further cementing the bonds of friendship between Chessenta and Tymanther, and bringing honor to Clan Daardendrien in the process.

  A rat scuttled into a hole at the base of a wall. But except for vermin, the ground floor seemed deserted. “Let’s find the stairs,” he said.

  Balasar pointed with his sword. “There.”

  They started up, the spongy steps bowing under Medrash’s weight. Ruddy light flickered at the top. He wondered if something was on fire, and then two figures, mere shapeless silhouettes against the glow, abruptly stepped into view. Dark vapor streamed down at him.

  Medrash’s nose and mouth burned. He doubled over coughing and could tell from the sounds behind him that his companions were similarly afflicted.

  They had to exit the poison cloud and come to grips with their attackers. Despite his inability to catch his breath, and the fiery pain crawling down his throat into his lungs, he started running up the last few risers.

  Then he faltered and found that he simply couldn’t continue. His attackers were exerting some sort of psychic compulsion to prevent it.

  That meant he and his comrades had to escape out the other side of the fumes. “Back!” he croaked.

  They turned and staggered downward. Until Khouryn, who was now in the lead, froze. An instant later, the dragonborn did too. Medrash could just distinguish othe
r figures at the foot of the stairs. He had no idea where they’d been hiding when he’d first entered the shop. But somewhere, obviously, and now here they were, exerting the same influence as their accomplices on the floor above. Caging the intruders inside the toxic vapor.

  Still coughing uncontrollably, Balasar collapsed.

  *****

  The lightning, the fall, and the spray of vitriol, all coming within the span of a heartbeat or two, had stunned Gaedynn into a dazed passivity. But a part of him knew it and screamed for him to move.

  He glimpsed motion in the direction from which the lightning had come. The possibility of a second such attack broke the impasse inside him. The part that wanted to act became the whole.

  He rolled to one knee. Thanks be to old Keen-Eye, his enchanted bow was still intact despite the abuse it had just sustained. In fact, it seemed to have come through better than he had, considering the ugly chars and blisters on his skin.

  But he didn’t yet feel the pain, not really, and praise the Great Archer for that too. He couldn’t afford to feel it.

  His teary eyes could just make out a robed figure. He drew back an arrow and let it fly. The shaft buried itself in the robed man’s torso, and he toppled backward.

  But at the same instant, Gaedynn heard rushing footsteps. He jerked around. All he could discern were vague flickers of motion, and this time, his smarting, watery eyes weren’t the problem. The oncoming foes were invisible, at least most of the time.

  And they were already too close for any more archery. He leaped to his feet, crossed his arms, and snatched out the two short swords he’d brought along for backup weapons.

  Unable to see his foes except for a moment now and then, hoping sheer ferocity would daunt them, he slashed madly. Once, he felt his left-hand blade slice something solid. Another time, he parried a stroke by pure instinct. Twice, an attack thumped him but failed to penetrate his brigandine.

  He knew his luck couldn’t hold, but he was less afraid than outraged by the sheer unfairness of his situation. He and his companions had ventured forth to catch one murderer. Then they’d learned to Jet’s cost that the one was really two. Now it appeared two had multiplied into a whole houseful, and they could throw lightning and acid around and turn invisible.

  The invisibility at least should have posed no problem for Aoth, and the war-mage had in fact regained his feet. But, eyes compressed to streaming slits in his blistered, mottled face, the man who could famously see everything didn’t seem to be doing any more damage with his jabbing spear than Gaedynn was with his swords. Apparently the acid spray had had an even more deleterious effect on his sight.

  He and Gaedynn fought side by side, in the hallway where the staircase had come down, to prevent any of their unseen foes from slipping around behind them. Aoth growled a word of power, and frost leaped from the head of his spear. It painted the entire space before them white, and the hooded men as well.

  Since he didn’t instantly follow up, it seemed that he still couldn’t see their foes, or at least not clearly. But Gaedynn could. He sprang, beat a short blade like his own out of line, and drove the point of his right-hand sword into an opponent’s guts.

  He jerked the weapon free, and the Green Hands disappeared. “Again!” he shouted to Aoth.

  But no more frost came. Gaedynn glanced around and saw that Aoth’s helmet was dented and askew, and, though he kept the spear shifting and thrusting in one of the basic defensive patterns, he looked unsteady on his feet.

  And because of Gaedynn’s aggression, the two of them weren’t even in line anymore. Cutting and stabbing, he tried to retreat.

  Then, behind him, Jhesrhi croaked words of command. Water splashed down over his head and everything else in the hallway like hundreds of buckets had overturned at once.

  It washed the stinging acidic residue from his skin. It evidently washed it out of Aoth’s eyes too, and roused him from the daze induced by the knock he’d taken on the head. His eyes snapped open wide enough to reveal their blue fire. He stepped, stabbed, and the power in his spear blasted to pieces the man he’d just impaled.

  Aoth then turned and hurled darts of green light in Gaedynn’s direction. They stopped short of him, vanishing as they pierced the two invisible foes between the sellswords. Who became visible as they crumpled to the floor.

  Aoth pivoted again and hurled three lightningbolts down the hall in quick succession. The flashes dazzled Gaedynn, and the booms hurt his ears.

  Afterward, Aoth lowered his spear and turned away from the steaming, twisted corpses he’d just created and the several small fires he’d started. Evidently this particular fight was over.

  Gaedynn wiped the blades of his swords, returned them to their scabbards, and retrieved his bow. “That was quite… enthusiastic, there at the end.”

  Aoth grunted. “After the Spellplague touched me, I was blind for a while. I suppose it’s the kind of experience that leaves a mark. Is everyone all right?”

  “Not too bad,” Jhesrhi said. “I have an elixir to numb the pain and keep us on our feet.” She took a little pewter vial from her belt pouch, unscrewed the stopper, and took the first swallow herself. Gaedynn knew why. She would have found it difficult to drink from the container after someone else put his mouth on it.

  As she handed the vial to Gaedynn, Aoth stooped over one of the Green Hands, then cursed. Gaedynn peered at the corpse and felt like doing the same.

  Aoth possessed inhumanly keen sight, but even so, this was the first clear, close, unhurried look that he or his comrades had had at one of the killers. And now the unexpected shape of the hood was apparent. Or rather, the shape of the head inside it.

  Aoth ripped the cowl away.

  “We have to get to Khouryn,” Jhesrhi said.

  *****

  Medrash’s helpless coughing made it impossible to recite any of his prayers. The pain burning throughout his respiratory system, and the knowledge that he could easily die breathing the poisonous vapor, further impaired his ability to focus his will.

  But he would focus it. He had to help his comrades-and besides, the body and its distress were not the ultimate reality. Torm and his glory were.

  He reached out to the god, and power like frigid spring water poured into him. He infused it with righteous fury, shaping it into a weapon, then brandished his sword. Flares of white light leaped from the blade to stab at the figures at the bottom of the stairs.

  The attack rocked the Green Hands backward. Nearly tripping, Medrash staggered over the fallen Balasar, tried to slip past Khouryn, and again discovered he couldn’t advance any farther. He’d hurt the Green Hands, but not enough to make them lose control of the psychic wall they’d created.

  He channeled more power, though it was even harder this time. He fixed his gaze on one of the killers and willed him to climb the stairs and come within reach of his sword.

  The Green Hand took one lurching step. Another. Then, however, he gave a harsh, wordless cry, stopped, and retreated to his original position.

  Blackness swam at the edges of Medrash’s vision. His legs started to give way, and he had to drop his sword and clutch the banister to keep from falling.

  Torm’s glory was limitless, but a mortal’s capacity to draw from it was not. Medrash judged that at best, he could channel power one more time before he collapsed. He groped beyond himself, beyond the physical world into a brighter, purer realm, and the god granted a final gift of strength.

  But how to use it, when his previous expenditures of power had accomplished nothing? He gripped Khouryn’s massive shoulder, which jumped repeatedly as the dwarf coughed, and employed the energy to bless him. To strengthen his body and mind alike.

  Khouryn stumbled down one riser, almost losing his balance in the process. Then he hefted his axe and charged.

  Unfortunately, his lungs were still full of poison, and his continued coughing slowed him and made him clumsy. Though caught by surprise, the Green Hands managed to recoil from his first st
rikes and ready their short swords.

  But they evidently couldn’t do that and maintain the psychic pressure too. For when Medrash, still gripping the handrail, tried to head down the steps, he found that now he could.

  He reeled toward one of the Green Hands to keep them both from attacking Khouryn. The murderer turned and lunged. The move was all-out aggression. Because after all, why worry about defense when his target was unarmed and all but spastic with pain and weakness? When the coughing would prevent him from even using his breath weapon?

  But at least Medrash wasn’t breathing poison anymore, and he’d spent his whole life training for combat-first with the masters of arms of Clan Daardendrien, then with his paladin mentors. Feeble and awkward though he was, he found the right instant to slip the swordsman’s initial thrust, step beside him, and claw away the side of his throat. Blood sprayed from the severed arteries.

  Medrash turned just in time to see Khouryn chop the remaining Green Hand’s leg out from under him, then cleave his ribs before he hit the floor. Clearly he too could hold his own even in adverse circumstances.

  The dwarf nodded to Medrash, and he returned the gesture. Then a clatter of hurrying feet on the staircase reminded them the fight wasn’t over. Their other enemies were coming down. Evidently the lingering vapor wasn’t toxic to them.

  Worse, after stepping over Balasar, they stopped partway down the steps. Medrash realized that however they’d created the smoke before, they meant to make some more. And he had no idea how he and Khouryn could contend with another dose.

  But Balasar, who’d appeared unconscious-or as good as-raised the sword in his shaking hand and sliced the back of a killer’s leg. The murderer dropped, and his companion turned to look at him in surprise. Balasar thrust the sword up at him. The Green Hand flinched back from it, but in so doing lost his balance and tumbled down the steps.