“Well, that answers one of my questions. Daelric sent you a message conveying his opinion of me.”
“It’s one of my great blessings that my superior writes me often, with an abundance of observations and instructions.”
“Well, he was wrong about me. I couldn’t care less about the Church of Tchazzar. I didn’t let him roast the fools in that parade because I feared it would start a riot.” He smiled crookedly. “Of course, before we were through, Luthcheq had a riot anyway. But at least I tried.”
Down below them, sellswords started chivvying the plundered goats and sheep into the butchers’ pens. The carts rolled on toward the bakers.
“That’s good to know,” Cera said. “In dangerous times, people need to put their faith in the true gods, and the lords the gods appoint to watch over them.”
“You’re sure Tchazzar’s not a real god?” asked Aoth, simply to see her reaction. “Plainly, you know far more about such matters than I do. But as I understand it, it wouldn’t make him the first creature to start out mortal and ascend to divinity.”
“If he’d truly been a god, he wouldn’t simply have disappeared.”
“Didn’t Amaunator? For many centuries? When I was young, he was just a distant memory without a worshiper or altar to his name.”
She smiled. “When you were young, indeed! You don’t look all that withered and decrepit to me. But as for the Keeper of the Yellow Sun, we now know he was with us all along, in the guise of Lathander the Morninglord.”
“Then couldn’t Tchazzar put on his own disguise? The stories say he was always a shapeshifter, sometimes a man and sometimes a wyrm.”
“Are you sure you’re not a cultist?”
“I promise. When I pray, it’s to Kossuth.”
She cocked her head. “Not to Tempus, or some other war god?”
“During the War of the Zulkirs, when my comrades and I fought necromancers and the undead they sent against us, the fire priests were our staunch allies. I’ve never forgotten that.”
He supposed that even after all this time, he’d never quite forgotten Chathi, the Firelord’s priestess, either. For a moment, sadness cast its shadow over him.
Cera’s blue eyes narrowed. Apparently she’d noticed that fleeting change in his mood. But instead of asking about it, she said, “That’s understandable, and Kossuth is a legitimate object of veneration. So I won’t bore you with another theological argument explaining that technically, he’s not a god either.”
“The sunlady is as merciful as she is wise.”
Cera chuckled. “Thank you. And you don’t seem nearly as savage and depraved as a Thayan mage and sellsword ought to be.”
“I tried to learn to bite the heads off kittens and puppies, but I have bad teeth.”
“Perhaps I’ll give a banquet so that others can see what I see. It might make it easier for you to conduct your business here.”
“If they’re willing to eat at the same table with an arcanist, that sounds good.”
“Oh, they’ll come if I invite them. Especially since we’re all afraid of the Great Bone Wyrm, and you’re here to protect us. Now, shall we head back? I’m due at the temple soon, and it looks bad if the high priestess of the supreme timekeeper turns up late.”
As they strolled back the way they’d come, she chatted about the people he could expect to meet at the forthcoming feast. Humorous, gossipy, and occasionally salacious, the discourse lasted long enough to see them back to the top of the gate.
Hasos and his companions were gone. Aoth escorted Cera to the top of the stairs that would take them to the ground.
Though Soolabax was scarcely one of the great fortress cities of the East, the gate itself was a massive piece of stonework. The wooden stairs spiraled down an enclosed shaft with only a few windows narrow as arrow loops to light the way.
The dimness was no inconvenience to Aoth with his fire-kissed eyes. The cramped quarters, however, required that he and Cera stop walking arm in arm. She courteously waved for him to go first.
They were about a third of the way down when he saw something that brought him to a sudden stop. Cera bumped against his back, and he was glad she hadn’t done it harder. Because he wouldn’t have wanted her to knock him farther down the steps.
Just as he could see in the dark, and see even farther than a griffon, so too did he see the world in minute and exquisite detail. And thus, just as he was about to trust his weight to the next step, he’d spotted the webs of tiny cracks running through the half dozen risers immediately below him.
“Is something wrong?” Cera asked.
He reached with the point of his spear and touched the first stair below him. Most of it crumbled. He tapped the next. It disintegrated too. The fragments pattered on the undamaged steps one twist beneath them.
“They were fine when we climbed up,” Cera said.
“Yes.” Some spell or alchemical solution had weakened them in the brief period between Hasos’s descent and now.
And if not for his inhumanly keen vision, an edge Aoth liked to conceal from the world at large, the trap might have caught him. True, he had a tattoo to provide a soft landing if he fell, but it took an instant to activate the magic. Caught by surprise and dropping a relatively short distance, he could have cracked his head or broken his leg before he managed it.
Rushing footsteps thumped risers farther down the stairwell. Someone had been lying in wait to finish Aoth off if the plunge didn’t kill him. Now that it was plain that his target wasn’t going to fall, the assassin was trying to get away.
Aoth wished he could see the bastard. But even spellscarred eyes couldn’t peer through the plank stairs blocking the view.
He could give chase, though. He activated the tattoo, jumped through the hole created by the missing steps to the intact ones below, and charged onward.
He bounded all the way to the bottom and out into the street that ran parallel to the wall. Where people of various sorts were going about their business-they gasped and shied as he lunged into their midst with his spear at the ready.
“Did someone run out this doorway ahead of me?” he asked.
For what seemed an interminable moment, they all just gawked at him. Then a woman with the feet of a dead chicken sticking out of her wicker basket shook her head.
“Wonderful,” sighed Aoth. The would-be killer had evidently either exited the gate while invisible or used a spell or talisman to shift himself through space. Either way, he’d made a successful escape.
Aoth tramped back up the stairs, and warm yellow light gleamed down at him. Cera still stood where he’d left her, but now she was glowing. She’d raised her power in case she needed to defend herself, and her resolute expression made a marked contrast to her lighthearted manner from before.
“It’s all right,” Aoth said. “Well, not really. I wanted to find out who the whoreson was. But anyway, he’s gone.”
*****
“See the dragon?” Jhesrhi asked.
“What?” said Gaedynn, wrenching himself back and forth in the saddle. “Where?”
It was one of those rare moments when he seemed genuinely flummoxed. Despite the potentially dangerous circumstances and her sour mood, it gave her a moment of malicious amusement to see the master scout discomfited at having missed something as big and threatening as a wyrm.
Although if she were inclined to be fair, she’d admit that it was surprisingly easy to miss a blue dragon flying against a blue sky. Fortunately, the wind in these farmlands was now her ally, and as a result she hadn’t needed her own eyes to learn of the creature’s approach.
“Just keep riding,” Gaedynn said. “In Threskel, a dragon’s one of the nobility, not a beast of prey. It likely won’t bother us unless we do something suspicious.”
The remark implied that he thought she might be on the verge of panic. In light of her behavior back at the kobold outpost, he had every right to, but it irked her anyway.
“I know what to do,” sh
e snapped. She proved it by kicking the paint into motion and trotting on up the muddy road to Mourktar.
From a distance, with a number of towers jutting high above the buildings huddled around them, Mourktar looked like a fairly impressive city. Jhesrhi supposed that viewed from the seaward side, it would seem even more so. Because the town was Threskel’s one deepwater port on the Alamber Sea, and by all accounts, the bustling heart of the place was the docks and the warehouses adjacent to them.
Although Jhesrhi had no reason to care about that. Not unless she gave in to the temptation to board an outbound ship and flee. She and Gaedynn were there because prospectors, trappers, and others who sought their fortunes in the hills and mountains called the Sky Riders often passed through Mourktar on their way in and out.
The blue dragon flew on toward the city, and then a second such creature soared up from among the buildings. Surprised, Jhesrhi reined in her mount. Gaedynn caught up and halted beside her.
The blues circled each other. After a while, Jhesrhi said, “I can’t hear them at this distance, but I suppose they’re talking.”
“I’m sure they are,” Gaedynn replied. “By all accounts, dragons are garrulous creatures. But they’re doing more than that. I saw something like this once before and never forgot it. Each wyrm is trying to climb higher than the other. Given your affinity for the air, if you just look for the currents and updrafts, you’ll see it more clearly than I can.”
She reached out with her perceptions. It was only partly a matter of seeing, partly a matter of feeling at a distance. “Yes. You’re right.”
“And notice the smell in the air, like a storm is brewing. Notice the flicker inside their mouths. You can see it blink like a twinkling star, even this far away. I doubt there’s much point to it. It’s difficult to hurt a dragon with the same element it breathes itself. But it’s their instinct to ready the weapon, no matter what.”
“So they really are going to duel. I wonder why.”
“I have no idea. But I do know I’d rather not be in the town underneath them while they do it. Let’s watch from here.”
And that was what they did, for what seemed a long while. Then the dragons swooped toward the buildings below. One disappeared into the streets on the north side of Mourktar, and the other into the southern part of town.
Gaedynn shrugged. “Well, whatever it was that divided them, apparently they worked it out.”
“Apparently,” Jhesrhi said. She felt a little disappointed. How often did a person have the chance to watch dragons fight each other?
“Then shall we?” Gaedynn waved his hand at the road ahead. Jhesrhi gave a nod, and they rode onward.
By the time they reached the outskirts of the city, the clear sky was giving way to gray clouds blowing in from the sea. The streets teemed with a mixture of races. Humans. Kobolds. Goblins no taller than Khouryn with big pointed ears and ruddy skin, and orcs with swinish tusks and, occasionally, one eye gouged out in honor of their patron deity Gruumsh.
Whatever his kind, if a person was well armed and carried himself like a warrior, he often wore the wand-and-scepter badge. Mourktar was full of soldiers, some likely sellswords arrived by sea. It was additional evidence that Threskel really did intend to mount an invasion.
In a sensible world, Jhesrhi thought, she and Gaedynn would scurry back to the Brotherhood with this valuable piece of intelligence. But in this one, they had to proceed with their pointless errand, searching for a creature who’d surely perished in the cataclysm that had killed even mightier beings and altered the face of Faerun itself.
With the streets so crowded, it was slow going, and she worried they wouldn’t find anywhere to stable the horses or to stay themselves. Gaedynn managed it, though. A silver coin and the promise of more persuaded an innkeeper that he could somehow provide care for two more nags and that it would be all right for a pair of weary travelers to sleep in the hayloft.
By that time, the sun had set. They ate a supper of fish stew, rye bread, and ale in the inn’s common room, then headed back out into the streets. Jhesrhi braced herself for the press of bodies. It had been unpleasant enough on horseback, when people could only brush and jostle her legs. It would be worse when she was fully submerged in the crowd.
But she tolerated it because she had to. She caught Gaedynn glancing at her repeatedly, checking on her, and shot him back a scowl.
Which perhaps he didn’t deserve, for he wasted no time leading her to a narrow, doglegged street where the taverns had names like The Five Nuggets and The Hill Man’s Bliss and the merchants sold shovels, pans, sluice boxes, traps, bows, and boar spears. Since he’d never visited Mourktar before either, she had no idea how he found the right part of it so quickly. It didn’t seem fair that a man raised in the woods should seem so completely at home in cities as well. Especially since she seldom felt fully at ease anywhere at all.
As they wandered from one smoky, boisterous taproom to another, he presented himself as the woodsman and hunter he was, and the hill men took him for one of their own. She looked on quietly as he bought rounds of drinks, swapped preposterous boasts and filthy jokes, and in time turned the conversation to strange tales and rumors from the wild.
It was probably because she remained aloof from the conversation that she was the one who noticed someone watching them.
A small man sat alone in the shadowy corner nearest the door. He wore the same stained, patched, rugged garb as most of the people in the room, but to judge from the pallor of his face and hands, he hadn’t really spent much time in the sun and the rain. He wasn’t quite staring at Gaedynn, Jhesrhi, and the hill men at their table, but his dark, pouched eyes kept returning to them.
She wondered how best to find out who he was and what he wanted. She was still pondering when he abruptly rose and headed out into the night.
She took hold of her staff, still shrouded in a layer of cloth to hide the rare, valuable blackwood and inlaid golden runes. The wrapping attenuated her mystical link to the rod, but not so much as to render it useless. She waited another moment, then rose and started for the door. Gaedynn gave her a questioning look. She raised her hand, signaling him to keep his seat.
Though she was only a few heartbeats behind the watcher, by the time she stepped out the door, he was nowhere to be seen. She whispered to the breeze that carried both the stink of the city’s garbage and the saltwater smell of the sea. Unfortunately, it hadn’t taken any notice of the pale man.
“What’s going on?” Gaedynn asked.
Startled, Jhesrhi jerked around to find him standing right behind her. “I told you to stay put,” she said. But he hadn’t, because he didn’t trust her nerve and judgment anymore.
“We’re done here anyway,” he said. “What pulled you out of your chair?”
“Someone was watching our table. I wanted to find out why, but somehow he outdistanced me.”
Gaedynn looked around. “Well, he could have ducked in any of these doors, and it’s not that far to the bend in the street. Who do you think it was?”
She shrugged. “Someone trying to pass for a hill man, but not. Beyond that I can’t say. I hope he wasn’t a spy looking for his opposite numbers from south of the border.”
“Even if he was, we weren’t doing anything overtly nefarious. I think it’s more likely he’s a spotter for the local thieves’ guild. I was spreading a little coin around. And even though you have that hood shadowing your face and a cloak obscuring your shape, a perceptive fellow could still tell you’d make a lot of coin for any of the local festhalls.”
She scowled at him.
He grinned back. “Facts are facts, buttercup. The point is, if we keep our guard up, we can surely handle a few toughs.” He hesitated. “Can’t we?”
“Yes,” she said, gritting her teeth. “In your estimation, have we learned anything?”
“I assume you heard most of it. Plenty of people have stories to share about a dragon roaring in the night. The problem is, the tal
es are vague as to what hillside or mountaintop it’s roaring on. But just now I got the name of a fellow who collects information about the Sky Riders, then sells it to trappers looking for particularly luxuriant pelts or prospectors looking for streams that run yellow with gold.”
“In other words, a swindler.”
Gaedynn smiled. “I’d bet my life on it. Or at least somebody’s life. But I’d also wager he gathers real information to make his lies more convincing. And that he’s not averse to peddling that as well, when there’s a market for it. Shall we go find out?”
Jhesrhi kept watch for the pale man, and for any lurking ruffians, as Gaedynn led her into a shabby dead-end street. She didn’t see anyone suspicious. Nor, when she consulted it, did the wind. Maybe the watcher had taken their measure and decided to seek easier prey.
She noticed the structures in the immediate vicinity were smaller than average, with windows placed lower to the ground. Some builder had thrown up a dozen apartment houses for people shorter than humans.
Gaedynn rapped on one of the street-level doors, then waited. After a time it squeaked open a crack, and a halfling peered out from the darkness within.
“Good evening,” Gaedynn said. “My companion and I are headed into the Sky Riders. We need information to ensure a successful journey.”
“I need silver to open this door,” the halfling answered. Because of their size, his kind tended to have voices higher than humans, and old age seemed to have pitched the scratchy one Jhesrhi was hearing higher still. Yet she was reasonably sure the speaker was male.
Gaedynn produced a coin and presented it with a flourish. It disappeared into the crack, and then the door opened. Despite a soldier’s familiarity with wounds and scars, Jhesrhi had to suppress an impulse to stare or wince at what stood revealed on the other side.
The halfling was missing the eye, the ear, and some of the white hair from the right side of his head. In their places were deep, livid, horizontal grooves. His right hand and some of the forearm were gone too, while the right leg, though present, was twisted shorter than the left, hitching his body off center.
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