The Captive Flame botg-1

by Richard Lee Byers

  “I believe that’s what they’re called. Now that I’ve had time to think, I seem to recall reading about them in a bestiary, in the school where Aoth enrolled me to finish my training. Whatever it is, it somehow took Tchazzar prisoner and has been feeding off him ever since. I suspect the process degrades reality and helps keep the breach between the worlds from healing.”

  “Very interesting, and I’d love to hear more about it. But preferably after you whisk us home.”

  Jhesrhi shook her head, and a lock of her tangled hair flopped down over her forehead. “I can’t.”

  “Nonsense. Don’t expect to hear this often, but you can do damn near anything. I’ve seen it.”

  “You’ve seen me do impressive things with elemental magic. I don’t know how to shift us between worlds.”

  “Didn’t you do it at the Dread Ring? Twice?”

  “Wizards who truly understood the magic essentially just carried me along like baggage. And we only traveled in spirit. Our physical forms stayed put.”

  “Still, I know you. You were paying attention, and you must have learned something.”

  She hesitated. “Not enough. Besides, such rituals generally involve special articles, other spellcasters lending support-or, ideally, both.”

  “So improvise. Our poor horses are wondering what’s become of us.”

  She frowned. “I suppose I can try. It will be dangerous, but maybe no more dangerous than trying to survive in the Shadowfell for a whole month. Or longer. We don’t know that the planes mesh every new moon without fail, or that we’d succeed in finding our way from one to the other when they do.”

  “What can I do to help?”

  “Just stand watch-the Foehammer only knows what the magic could attract-and be ready to hurry to me when I call you.”

  He looked around for a suitable sentry post and decided a little elevation might help him spot a potential threat before it noticed him. He ran to a twisted tree that resembled a white elm, jumped, clutched for handholds, and tried to haul himself upward. Bark tore and crumbled beneath his fingers, and he almost fell, but not quite. He balanced in the lowest fork and laid one of his few remaining arrows on his bow.

  Jhesrhi prowled around below him. He suspected she was looking for a bare, level piece of ground. When she found it, she started chanting under her breath and drawing lines in the dirt with the metal cap on the butt of her staff. Like the rings that encircled the wood at intervals, the ferrule was mostly golden now, with only a couple of flecks and streaks of red.

  The soil shifted a little even after her staff moved on. It looked like it was trying to fill in the ruts she’d just inscribed. She recited her words of power a trifle louder and the subtle crawling stopped.

  It only took a relatively short time to complete the pentagram, which was noticeably less elaborate than others Gaedynn had watched Jhesrhi draw. He wondered if that was because she didn’t know what she was doing. Since she was uncertain what figure was truly appropriate, she’d settled for a basic emblem of power and protection.

  She stood in the center of the star and circle, took a deep breath, then started a new incantation. She spoke in a language Gaedynn didn’t know, so he had no idea what she was saying. But some of the words created a sort of itch inside his head.

  She spoke for a long while before reaching the end. He sensed she was waiting. When nothing happened, she took a breath, shifted her stance, and-speaking a little louder-started over again. She punctuated certain phrases by lifting her staff over her head, then jamming the ferrule back into the dirt.

  After several repetitions, each performed in a somewhat different fashion, Gaedynn noticed that the air felt thick and it seemed an effort just to draw a breath. But it wasn’t only the air that was different. He had a sense that the whole world, or at least the part of it within view, was heavy and sore like a boil that needed to burst.

  She’s doing it, he thought, and waited eagerly for her to call him to her side. He was still waiting when a gray-black bat hurtled down from the sky.

  Its head and body were the size of a dwarf’s, although its leathery wings made it look bigger than a man. As it streaked at Jhesrhi, its long tail stopped whipping and curled into stiffness. The animal was readying a blow like the strike of a whip.

  The bat’s dark coloration made it hard to see in the shadowy world. Despite his vigilance, Gaedynn hadn’t spotted it until it had nearly closed the distance to its target. He only had time for a single shot.

  He drew and released. The arrow plunged into the bat’s torso. Spasmodic, it veered, tumbled, and slammed to the ground several strides to the right of the pentagram. Where it flopped and flopped, but appeared capable of nothing more.

  Gaedynn looked back at the sky and spotted another bat. It was diving at Jhesrhi too, and he dealt with it as he had the first, only better. The shot was a clean kill, and the beast plummeted like a stone.

  He looked for a third bat. He didn’t find one, but abruptly heard a fierce baying that clawed at his nerves. He took a breath and willed fear away, and then the big black hounds surged over a rise.

  Like the shadar-kai the previous night, they flickered ahead through space as they charged, gaining ground faster than should have been possible. It made them difficult to aim at too. Gaedynn invested a precious moment studying the unnatural motion so he could guess where they’d reappear.

  He dropped one and then another. It wasn’t good enough. There were still too many and they were still advancing too fast. Jhesrhi needed to turn her magic on them.

  But she just kept chanting. Either she was in a trance, like the wizards mired in their own ritual back in Luthcheq, or she didn’t dare interrupt the spell for fear of what the forces she’d raised would do if she relinquished control.

  Damn you, woman, he thought. He sprang down out of the elm and shouted, “Over here, you filthy beasts! I’m the one killing you! Attack me!” He loosed at another hound. The shaft punched deep into its neck.

  His ploy worked, if one wanted to think of it that way. The hounds turned and charged him.

  He shot two more, and then had to drop his bow and snatch out his scimitar. The remaining four or five-everything was happening too fast for an accurate count-encircled him. They lunged and snapped, snarling, gray foam flying from their jaws.

  He turned, slashed, and dodged-and somehow kept himself from being bitten and dragged down for the first couple of heartbeats. He even split the skull of one of the beasts.

  It gave him a surge of satisfaction but not of hope. Khouryn could probably have cut his way clear of the nightmare, but he was the best hand-to-hand combatant Gaedynn had ever seen. He himself was merely good, and he suspected that wasn’t going to be enough.

  He hoped he was buying Jhesrhi enough time to get home.

  Then something whistled. And, mad with rage as they’d appeared, the hounds drew away from him. Panting, he turned in the direction of the sound.

  A little way up the slope, a shadar-kai sat on a black horse. By the light of day-or what passed for it there-Gaedynn saw that the rider’s raised facial scars formed geometric patterns and must have been cut deliberately. He held a lance and wore a chain coiled on his hip.

  Gray-skinned, black-haired, and clad in dark garments like the horseman-but hunched, stunted, and coarse-featured-small figures stood to the sides of his steed. One held the wooden syrinx that had evidently called back the hounds.

  Gaedynn realized the shadar-kai was a hunter. And the halfling-sized creatures were servants charged with the management of his coursing beasts.

  The rider lowered his lance and spurred his horse. Either he was worried that his intended prey would hurt more of his animals, or he’d decided it would be more fun to kill Gaedynn with his own hands. Either way, he must have been confident of his prowess.

  The black horse accelerated to a gallop. Gaedynn forced himself to stand still while the shadar-kai and the point of his lance raced closer. Dodge too soon, and his foe would
compensate.

  The dark horse and rider vanished and reappeared immediately, just an arm’s length short of striking distance.

  Gaedynn hurled himself to the side. He avoided the lance, but not quite the horse. The animal’s shoulder clipped him with bruising force and knocked him staggering. As he fought to regain his balance, something brushed his head, and he realized the shadar-kai was trying to catch him by the hair. He managed to twist away from that too, and the steed and rider pounded past.

  As he regained his footing, Gaedynn felt angry with himself for not guessing that the horse might be able to shift through space like half the other creatures in the vile place. But that particular anger could only hinder him, so he took a breath and tried to exhale it away. I know now, he told himself. That’s what’s important.

  Even so, the same trick nearly served to surprise him again. As the shadar-kai wheeled his mount, a subtle flicker lined it up with Gaedynn an instant sooner than mere conventional movement would have allowed. It started forward, disappeared, and reappeared.

  Right where Gaedynn had estimated it would. He stepped diagonally, past the head of the lance and to the side of the horse, and sliced its foreleg just above the knee.

  The beast pitched forward onto the ground, and the shadar-kai tumbled out of the saddle. He landed on the wrong side of his thrashing horse, and Gaedynn moved to scramble around it.

  From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed something small rushing in on his flank. He wrenched himself around and parried a low thrust from a jagged-edged dagger that would have crippled him as he’d crippled the horse. His assailant was one of the stunted servants-who could apparently blink through space too, or maybe he was just sneaky. Gaedynn slashed his neck and his body dissolved in a puff of cold, black vapor.

  The stuff got in Gaedynn’s eyes, and for one terrifying instant he was blind. Then he blinked his vision clear.

  Just in time to see the fallen rider vanish and reappear, still sprawled on the ground, among his servants. His face contorted; he spoke. Gaedynn couldn’t hear his voice, but he saw his lips move.

  He did hear it when the little hunchback with the pipes blew a different note. And when the remaining hounds bayed and ran at him again.

  He wondered if he had time to kill the horse and put it at his back, but decided the dogs wouldn’t have much trouble climbing over the carcass even if he did. Then a red spark flew into the midst of the onrushing beasts and exploded into a ragged burst of flame. The detonation tore the hounds apart.

  The shadar-kai and his servants turned toward Jhesrhi. Too late. She snapped a word of command and jabbed the head of her staff at them. The hunter burst into flame. Then fire leaped from his body to the servant with the syrinx, and from him to another stunted creature, in a manner that reminded Gaedynn of water cascading down a series of ledges. In a moment, all the dark figures were burning. And flailing.

  When they stopped doing the latter because there was little left of them but smoldering black husks, Gaedynn turned to Jhesrhi. “It wouldn’t have hurt my pride,” he said, “if you’d done that a little sooner.”

  She shook her head, perhaps to convey that she hadn’t been able to-or simply that as usual, she didn’t appreciate his sense of humor. “Are you all right?”

  “Somewhat miraculously, yes.” He looked around and retrieved his bow. He checked his quiver and found he had two arrows left.

  “Do you think this shadar-kai was hunting us specifically? Because of what happened last night?”

  “I don’t know and don’t particularly care. I just want you to get back to work before someone or something else shows up to bother us.”

  “It’s no use.”

  “What are you talking about? I felt something happening.”

  “That was all you were going to feel. I just don’t know how to break through.”

  He tried not to let the depth of his disappointment show in his face or his tone. “Ah, well. I’m sure we can last a month here if we have to.” And maybe afterward they could take a pleasure cruise on the River Styx.

  Cheeks puffing, Jhesrhi exhaled sharply like she was blowing out a candle. For an instant, wind gusted and howled and all the little fires left by her two attacks died. “I have thought of one other thing that might get us home sooner.”

  “Then tell me, please.”

  She did, and when she finished, he felt a mix of dismay and admiration.

  “Bravo,” he said. “That’s as crazy a scheme as I’ve ever heard. Easily crazier than invading Thay with nothing but the strength of the Wizards’ Reach behind us.”

  She scowled. “Then you don’t want to try it?”

  He grinned. “Actually, I do. But right now we need to clear out of here. Then we should find a place where we can go to ground, at least temporarily. We’ll proceed with your idea come nightfall.”

  Waiting until night wouldn’t ensure they went undetected, not in a world populated by creatures that saw well in the dark. But he hoped that like the orcs and goblin-kin with which he was familiar, they couldn’t see as far in the dark as a man could in the light.

  Once the Shadowfell was black as a coinlender’s heart, with just a few faint stars gleaming in the sky and a feeling of sheer poisonous wrongness suffusing the air like a stench, he and Jhesrhi crept back to the hill where Tchazzar lay imprisoned. They kept watch long enough for him to start feeling hopeful that the dragon truly was alone, with nothing but his weakness and the staples to prevent his escape.

  Then suddenly, one of the shadar-kai’s small servants appeared on the hillside. Then another. Gaedynn peered closer and discerned that the dark little men were emerging from a hole in the ground like a line of ants.

  Once he and Jhesrhi spotted the mouth of that tunnel, they soon noticed others, and the traffic that came and went, shadar-kai and other things that looked stranger and more dangerous still. Evidently, most of the time the hill was full of them, although they cleared out when the blight wyrm came to feed.

  “Curse it,” Jhesrhi whispered. “It won’t work.”

  “Yes it will,” Gaedynn replied. “It’s just that you only came up with half a workable plan. Fortunately I, clever fellow that I am, have now devised the rest.”

  “Which is?”

  “Do you remember wondering if the shadar-kai huntsman was hunting us specifically?”

  She scowled. “Of course.”

  “Well, if they weren’t before, we’re going to make them start.”

  NINE

  9-10 MIRTUL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

  Aoth and Jet floated on a northerly wind and studied the fortress. Other griffon riders glided to either side but surely couldn’t see the outpost, not at such a distance in the feeble predawn light.

  To the untrained eye, the stronghold with its palisade walls might not have looked impressive. But it had a warren of tunnels underneath it, and a garrison large and varied enough to fill up both the above ground and subterranean barracks.

  “You don’t like this, do you?” asked Jet.

  “I don’t dislike it,” Aoth replied, “but it’s about the limit of what we ought to tackle by ourselves, especially with Gaedynn, Jhesrhi, and Khouryn absent.”

  “Then why do it?”

  “The Threskelans have a lot of supplies stored there. On top of that, it’s supposed to be a mustering point for troops bound for Chessenta. So let them arrive and find the place burned, its provisions stolen, and its garrison slaughtered. It might give them second thoughts, particularly the sellswords.”

  “Let’s get on with it, then.”

  Aoth peered down at the rolling scrubland and the foot soldiers and horsemen making their way across it. In theory, a ridge higher than the surrounding terrain shielded them from the view of the sentries in the fortress. “We’ll give our comrades on the ground a little more time to maneuver into position.”

  As he waited, his thoughts drifted back to the events of the day before the previous one. He’d elimin
ated Cera as a possible traitor-to say the least-but otherwise he was no closer to flushing out the dragonborn assassins or figuring out why they wanted to kill him.

  In fact, the jaunt into the past had left him with new questions. Why had all those dragons been palavering? Were they all Alasklerbanbastos’s allies? Was every single one of them going to attack Chessenta at the dracolich’s behest? If so, then how could the war hero’s forces possibly withstand them?

  He scowled and tried to set such puzzles aside. He needed to focus on winning this battle. Everything else could wait.

  He looked at the pale gleam on the eastern horizon and decided he’d delayed long enough. He willed power into the head of his spear to make it glow yellow, then swept it forward to point at the fortress. All around him, wings snapped and flapped as riders urged their griffons toward the objective.

  Men laid arrows on their bows. Aoth pondered whether to start with fire or lightning and decided on the latter. Griffons furled their wings and swooped lower.

  Then a horn blatted in the watchtower at one of the corners of the palisade. Aoth had hoped sentries who’d watched through the night would be tired and inattentive at the end of it, but evidently one was still alert.

  Annoyed, Aoth rewarded the fellow’s vigilance by hurling a bright, booming lightningbolt at the tower. It blew apart the clapboard roof and, he hoped, fried whoever was underneath.

  Meanwhile, arrows whistled down at the wall walks, stabbing into other sentries as they tried to ready their own bows. Orcs and kobolds toppled from their perches to smash down in the courtyards below.

  But what came next wouldn’t be as easy. Warriors scrambled from the buildings below. They scurried for their various stations and started shooting back at the attackers in the sky. A crossbow bolt whizzed past Jet’s beak, and he screeched in irritation.

  Then an expanding glimmer of force leaped upward. Jet lashed his wings, flung himself to the side, and avoided all but the edge of the flare. Still, cold bit into Aoth’s body. Hit squarely and encrusted with frost, another mount and rider plunged toward the ground.