And then, if there was something Aoth wasn’t meant to see, his guide would steer him away from it. “No need. I can find my way around a fortress. I just wanted your permission.”
“Very well. You have it.”
Aoth left Hasos’s study and proceeded to explore the smallish castle from battlements to cellars. He took inventory of its strengths and weaknesses, just as he’d said he would. But he also looked for signs of secret passages and hidden chambers.
Which evidently didn’t exist.
He finished in the wine cellar. Exasperated by his failure, he found a dusty old bottle and picked at the cork with his dagger. He got some of it out and pushed the rest down the neck into the red liquid inside. Hoping he was pilfering something expensive, he took a swig.
Not bad, in a sour sort of way.
When he’d drunk his fill, he left the bottle on the floor, departed the keep, and walked to the temple of Amaunator. He had to wait while Cera completed a ceremony, but then she received him in a study considerably brighter and cheerier than the one where Hasos conducted business. The costly glass windows and skylights let in the warm afternoon sunlight.
Cera lifted off a round golden mask and set it on a table. “You look awful.” She sounded slightly hoarse from her praying and chanting.
Aoth snorted. “Thanks so much. Lack of sleep will do that to a person. The war is starting. I have to spend most of my time in the field. Then when I do make it back to town, instead of resting I walk the streets or fly over them, looking for some sign of the dragonborn.”
“From your manner, I take it you still haven’t found one.”
“No.”
She removed the topaz-studded cloth-of-gold stole hanging around her neck. “I guess ‘true sight’ doesn’t live up to its reputation.”
“It doesn’t make me omniscient, if that’s what you mean. You jeer at me. Have you had any better luck?”
She poured water from a pitcher into a goblet and took a sip. “Not yet. There’s a ritual that enables me to tell if another person’s speaking the truth. When I have the chance, I perform it before I talk to someone we decided was a likely suspect.” She smirked. “By the way, you’re reimbursing the temple for the incense I have to burn.”
“Even though you’re telling me I won’t be getting much for my coin.”
“I’m afraid not. Even if a person is guilty, the trick is steering the conversation in such a way that he needs to lie. I can’t just say, by the way, are you hiding dragonborn in your house? Or, how’s the plan to murder that ugly little sellsword commander going? What’s that all about, anyway?”
“And who’s to say you’re even talking to the right people? Or that anyone is sheltering the reptiles? Maybe they’ve taken refuge in an empty building.”
“Now that I doubt. To say the least, Soolabax is no metropolis, but it’s grown since Hasos’s ancestors built the walls. It’s crowded now, especially since we locals had to find space for you sellswords. There just aren’t that many vacant houses.”
“I suppose not.” He felt a yawn coming on and smothered it. He considered using a tattoo to stave off fatigue and decided not to bother. “It sounds like I just have to keep looking over my shoulder.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Oh?”
“I assume that even a devil-worshiping Thayan is aware that among his other attributes, Amaunator is a god of time.”
“You mean Bane. It’s Bane my countrymen all worship since Szass Tam drove the other zulkirs out. But yes, I know that.”
“Then it may not astonish you that under certain circumstances, the Keeper gives his clerics a measure of power over time. Not enough to visit the past in the flesh-there are excellent reasons why no one can ever be allowed to do that-but to travel there in spirit and watch what unfolds.”
He frowned. “You’re saying our souls could lurk outside your garden and see where the dragonborn came from. Get a direction, anyway.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. It sounds like a form of divination, and I told you what happened when the wizards tried that in Luthcheq.”
“It’s not divination in a technical sense. It is a unique way of directing divine power, one that most people outside my order have never even heard of. That gives us reason to hope that we could do it without triggering the assassins’ mystical defenses.”
“All right, let’s try.”
“Don’t make up your mind quite yet.” She took another sip. “The sacred texts warn that the ritual is dangerous and should only be attempted to achieve something of extreme importance.”
Aoth smiled a crooked smile. “More important than saving the hide of one devil-worshiping Thayan, you mean.”
“Yes. But if your survival or learning the truth about the dragonborn is necessary to keep Chessenta from falling to the armies of an undead dragon, then perhaps I would be justified. I’ve prayed and meditated, and I don’t feel Amaunator telling me no.”
“How reassuring.”
“If it’s not good enough for you, you may also want to consider that I’ve never tried this before, or even watched anyone else do it.”
He shrugged. “You understand Amaunatori mysteries better than I ever could. If your instincts say go forward, then I’m game.”
She smiled, and it struck him again just how much he liked her round, impish face. “Then shall we do it now, before we come to our senses?”
“Right now?”
“The sun is bright and high in the sky. I just came from worship. I’m about as powerful as I’m going to get.” She picked up an old book bound in crumbling yellow leather, then waved her hand at a wooden chest. “You carry that.”
It turned out to be heavier than he expected, enough that it was awkward to manage it and his spear too. He had a feeling she was waiting for him to grunt and stagger, and he did his best to hide the fact that he was straining.
Cera led him through the temple to the door that opened on the garden. She instructed an acolyte to stand watch and make sure no one disturbed them, and then they stepped out amid the winding paths, green grass, and fresh red and yellow blossoms.
Aoth set the chest on the bench he and Cera had used on the night of the attack. She opened the box, and when she unpacked the four items inside and removed their velvet wrappings, he saw what had made it so heavy. About as tall as his forearm was long, each of the objects was a golden statue of Amaunator standing with an hourglass, a calendar stone, or some other device emblematic of time. The sculptor had fashioned the figures in an elongated style that made the god look skinny.
“I trust you can find the cardinal points,” Cera said.
“My men and I would have spent a lot of time wandering around lost if I couldn’t.”
“Then set the icons out on the ground to define a circle. It doesn’t matter how big, as long as we can both fit inside comfortably.”
He did as she’d directed. “Now what?”
“Now I stand at the center of the circle, you stand toward the edge, and you don’t speak or move till I say you can.”
They took their places.
Cera stood up straight and took a breath. Up until then, despite the fact that she and Aoth were engaged in serious business, there’d been an edge to her that might have signified playful teasing, lingering anger, or a mixture of the two. Now, even though she’d stopped talking, he somehow felt that quality fall away. Suddenly she almost seemed like a holy image herself, her whole being focused on drawing down the power of her god.
She opened the old yellow book and started to read aloud. At first Aoth only heard the words. Then, though a kind of synesthesia, he also perceived them as pulses of warmth and light.
Even he shouldn’t have been able to see the latter in a garden already awash in spring sunlight. Nor should he have seen the arcs of radiance that flared into existence to delineate the sacred circle, and the lines that stabbed outward through the grass. But, as if they were more real than anyt
hing around them, the magical phenomena possessed a transcendent vividness that would have made them visible in any circumstances whatsoever.
The icon to the east shimmered and faded away. Then the ones to the north and south disappeared, and lastly the figure in the west. The ritual had consumed them like fire ate wood.
Suddenly, Aoth felt light as air and sensed his essence trying to rise. For a moment something held him like sticky strands of spiderweb, but then the adhesion broke and he floated clear of his body. Which stood like a statue beneath him-except with the heart and lungs still working, he assumed.
Cera flowed up out of her body. Her spirit wore a semblance of her vestments and carried an analogue to the yellow book just as he still appeared to possess his mail and spear. “Do you feel disoriented?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I’ve experienced astral travel before.” At the Dread Ring in Lapendrar-he hoped this venture would prove less dangerous and more productive than that one had.
“Then let’s get outside the walls.” She soared over the one on the east and disappeared behind it.
He willed himself after her, and simple intent was enough to launch him like an arrow from a bow. The sensation of effortless, weightless flight was as exhilarating as he remembered, for the instant before he touched down in the street.
Several boys were playing catch in the center of the thoroughfare while a black dog scampered around their feet. A man-a potter, judging from the clay stains on his hands and clothing-scowled, apparently at the momentary inconvenience of having to detour around the game.
Nobody reacted to Cera and Aoth’s arrival. Because no one had the magic or spellscarred eyes that would have allowed him to perceive disembodied spirits.
“What now?” asked Aoth.
“If I performed the ritual properly,” Cera replied, “it should work more or less on its own from here.”
The leather ball halted in midair, then flew back into the hand that had thrown it. Putting his feet exactly where he had before, the potter backed up.
At first, even though everything was regressing, it didn’t move any faster than it normally would. Aoth wondered if he and Cera would have to wait for what would feel like actual days before they reached the dragonborn attack.
But then the world sped up until all he could see was flickers and blurs in the street. Occasionally he felt a cool tingle as something streaked through his insubstantial body.
The sun dropped toward the eastern horizon, and dawn gave way to night. The darkness only lasted a few moments, and when the sun rose in the west it was racing even faster. Daylight and star-dappled blackness alternated as quickly as the beat of clapping hands.
Until he felt the rapid regression come to a sudden halt. It left them in the dark, which was a good sign. Still, he asked, “Are we where-or rather when-we need to be?”
Cera smiled. “Listen.”
He did. He could just make out the rippling music of the harpist she’d hired to play at the feast.
“When the dragonborn appear,” she continued, “I think I can back up time a little more, at its normal speed. Then we can follow the assassins back to their lair.”
“This is… impressive.”
“I certainly am. I’ll bet you’re sorry you trampled on my maidenly feelings now, aren’t you?”
He was still trying to figure out how to respond to that when his eyes throbbed. He grunted and raised a hand to them.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not in pain. But I have a strange sensation.”
“Let me see.” She came closer and peered up into his face.
“It doesn’t hurt. It’s not interfering with my vision either. It’s just-”
The sky resumed flickering from night to day and back again. Then Cera and Aoth hurtled upward like leaves in a tornado. He instinctively tried to resist, but the force that gripped them was far stronger than his ability to move or stay by force of will.
In fact, he was afraid it would rip Cera and him apart. She plainly had the same concern, for she reached out at the same instant he did. He grabbed her hand, pulled her close, and wrapped his arm around her. Caught between them, the sacred book pressed into his chest.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“In that case, maybe I’m not as impressed as I thought.”
He had a sense they were streaking along fast as lightning, and that combined with the flashing madness that was the sky made it impossible for him to judge where they were headed or how much farther in the past their destination lay. But the journey only took a moment or two, and then they were at rest again. It seemed like a relief until he took in their surroundings.
They stood on a ledge midway up one side of a sort of bowl in the ground. Crags rose all around the low place like the points of a crown. They looked natural, but not entirely so. Someone had dug and carved to make sure that the balconies were spacious and plentiful enough for all the enormous creatures that perched here under the stars, and that the openings in the rock were sufficiently high and broad to admit them to what must be a warren of tunnels within the spires.
Everything was silent. An animal odor hung in the chilly air.
“That smell,” Cera said. “Is something here?”
“Dragons,” said Aoth.
She stiffened. “What?”
“Dozens of them, perched all around. They must have some spell of concealment in place. That’s why you can’t see them.”
“What are they doing?”
“Not much. Talking, I think.”
“About what?”
“The enchantment that hides them makes them quiet too. And the Blue Fire changed my eyes, not my ears.”
“I don’t understand any of this!”
“I don’t either. But since we’re here, let me watch for a while.”
“If I call on Amaunator, maybe I can see them too.”
“Or maybe they’ll sense the use of power. I’m sure it’s frustrating, but leave the spying to me.”
For all the good it was likely to do when he couldn’t hear anything. He noted a preponderance of blues, greens, reds, and the other dragons collectively called chromatics, fewer gem wyrms, and only a couple metallics. Then all the behemoths in front of him raised their crested, wedge-shaped heads, and he turned to look where they were peering.
When he did, he felt a stab of fear, as well as incredulity that he’d only now noticed what perched on a balcony to his right. The entity was at least as huge as any of the other dragons, but made of nothing but bare bones, the sparks that danced on them, and the spectral blue light in its eye sockets. A horn jutted from its snout and bobbed a little as its jaws worked. Aoth could feel its malice and cruelty as plainly as he could see its scythelike talons, or the naked armature of its wings.
“By the Flame,” he whispered, “it’s Alasklerbanbastos.”
Up until then, he’d imagined he and Cera had a good chance of going undetected. But suddenly it seemed all too likely that an undead wyrm would notice the presence of discarnate spirits, and probably sooner rather than later.
It made Aoth glad that like every other ledge, the one he and Cera occupied had an opening to the tunnels. “We’re retreating into the caves,” he said. “And as soon as all the dragons are out of sight, you’re going to pray us back where we belong.”
She nodded. “If I can.”
They backed up. Given their status as living ghosts, they shouldn’t have needed to tiptoe or creep slowly, but they did anyway. With dragons and a dracolich only a stone’s throw away, Aoth found it impossible to do otherwise.
But even if his attempt at stealth made sense, it wasn’t good enough. On the other side of the bowl, on a shelf near the jagged top of the rim, a dragon sat up abruptly. A dull, mottled red with a black ridge on its spine-Aoth wondered exactly what sort of wyrm it was-peered at them with eyes like burning coals. Then it exhaled a cloud of va
por and cinders with a care that reminded him of a pipe smoker blowing a smoke ring.
The exhalation writhed and billowed, forming legs, batlike wings, and a serpentine head, neck, and tail. Becoming a vague, semitransparent parody of its creator. Then the smokelike image hurtled straight at Aoth and Cera. Startled, puzzled, other dragons and even the Great Bone Wyrm himself twisted to follow its flight.
Aoth had no doubt that the wyrm with the rust-colored scales realized the intruders were spirits, give or take, and had unleashed a magic capable of harming them. Kossuth grant that meant a living phantom could hurt it in return. “Run!” he rapped. He leveled his spear and spoke a word of power.
Wind howled out across the bowl. It didn’t disturb so much as a particle of dust existing solely in the material world, but it hurled the smoke-thing backward, frayed its limbs, and stretched them out of shape.
Still, the blast of air didn’t tear it apart as Aoth had hoped it would. The creature, if that was the right word for it, pulled itself more or less back into shape and kept coming.
As it set down on the ledge, he threw a pearly blast of frost at it. Seemingly unaffected, it sprang forward and lifted a forefoot to claw at him.
Then warm golden light shone from behind him. To him it felt pleasant, bracing, but the smoke-wyrm flinched.
“Its maker is undead,” Cera said, “so sunlight burns it as well.”
“I don’t care!” snapped Aoth. “I’ll hold it off. You concentrate on getting us back where we belong.”
The breath-entity plunged forward. Aoth sidestepped a silent snap of its hazy jaws, charged the point of his spear with destructive force, and thrust it into his adversary’s neck.
But had the attack actually hurt it? He couldn’t tell.
The smoke-thing clawed at him. He thought he jumped back far enough to avoid the raking stroke-although with the limits of the entity’s body so poorly defined, it was hard to be sure about that either. In any case, a chill stabbed through his body, weakening and numbing him. Tiny red droplets burst from his pores to drift up and merge with the swirl of sparks and vapor.
He drew strength from a tattoo to stave off feebleness, shouted words of evocation, and hurled a bright, twisting bolt of lightning into his foe. It faltered and shuddered, but only for an instant. Then it snapped at him again.
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