The Captive Flame botg-1

by Richard Lee Byers

  But an instant later, Aoth heard banging and crashing at his back. He glanced around and saw the ruddy dancing glow of flame.

  Instead of attempting a frontal assault up the stairs, some of the red and blue abishais were smashing, burning, and blasting their way through the basement ceiling. If he stayed where he was, he’d be trapped with foes assailing him from the front and rear simultaneously.

  He hurled another rainbow at the opponents below him as he scrambled backward. He didn’t like doing it. Even a master war-mage didn’t command an inexhaustible supply of magic, and he was burning through his most powerful spells too quickly. But he had to hold back the creatures still in the cellar for at least another moment while he got clear of the stairs.

  He felt searing heat and pivoted toward it. Shrouded in flame, a red abishai reached for him with hooked talons and whipped its stinger at him. He blasted it with a booming flare of lightning.

  An instant later, a lightingbolt struck him, almost like his own magic had bounced back. Every muscle clenching and spasming, he shuddered in place for a moment, then dropped to his knees.

  The power would likely have killed him if not for the protective enchantments bound into his mail and tattoos. As it was, it left his head empty and ringing like a bell. A light crawled in the blue abishai’s eyes, sparks popped and sizzled on its scaly hide, and a part of him realized it was gathering its strength to throw more lightning. But at first he couldn’t make himself react.

  Even when his mind snapped back into functionality, his still-twitching muscles didn’t want to obey it. But somehow he pointed his spear and sent a blade of white light leaping from the point. The floating sword slashed, and the abishai toppled backward. Its lightningbolt shattered a section of the ceiling.

  Panting, heart pounding, Aoth rose and retreated through the empty rooms. The flying blade finished killing its first target. He called it back to hover close by and strike at whatever popped out at him.

  But the sword couldn’t keep all the abishais away. There were too many. There were ragged, smoldering holes gaping in the floor of every room, waiting to punish any misstep, and devil-kin lurking around every corner. When he was lucky enough to spot them while still a step beyond their reach, he blasted them with flame and frost. Otherwise he drove his spear into their vitals.

  Suddenly he smelled a scent like a gathering storm, and a stray spark fell in front of his face. He wrenched himself aside, and a dazzling lightningbolt roared down from above. One of the blue abishais had gone up to the second story, clawed a hole in the floor there, and waited for him to pass underneath. He sent the flying sword streaking at it to shear the fiend’s head from its shoulders.

  He realized he had no idea of his direction. He’d turned and dodged so often that, ridiculously, the handful of interconnecting rooms now felt like a maze. Clamping down on a surge of panic, he glanced around and spied a window.

  He blew the shutters to splinters with a blast of sound, then ran toward the opening. Shrouded in mist and bitter cold, a white abishai lunged at him. He stabbed it in the eye with his spear, jerked the weapon free, and leaped through the opening-into the street where Jet had set him down.

  No help was in sight, and he realized he shouldn’t have expected any. He’d only been inside for a little while, even if it had felt like all night to him.

  He took a breath and aimed his spear at the abishais springing and clambering out after him. Come on, then, he thought.

  *****

  Gaedynn loosed his last arrow, dropped his bow, pulled his scimitar out of the ground, and lunged from the thicket. He closed to striking distance before the shadar-kai he’d shot finished falling down.

  He cut the second one across the kidney. By then the remaining two had their chains whirling. He jumped back, and the ends of the weapons streaked past him. He instantly stepped in and sliced into the torso of yet another silent, scar-faced opponent.

  He looked for the last one and couldn’t find him. Pain smashed through his ankle, and then something yanked his leg out from under him. As he slammed down on his belly, he realized the last shadar-kai had shifted behind him and caught his leg with his chain.

  Gaedynn heaved himself over onto his back and slashed. The shadar-kai was diving down at him with a wavy-edged dagger in his hand, and the scimitar sheared through his throat. Blood gushing from the wound, he fell on top of Gaedynn, shuddered, and then lay still.

  Gasping, his ankle throbbing, soaked in gore, Gaedynn rolled the corpse away, rid himself of the chain, and crawled to the shadar-kai he’d shot. He relieved that body of a full quiver of the black arrows.

  It was actually rather ridiculous how glad he was to have them. He was still ill from the poisonous gaze of the faceless men. If anything, fatigue was making the sickness steadily worse. Most likely, thanks to the stroke of the chain, he’d be limping from now on.

  His flight had taken him to a patch of relatively low ground where flickers of shadow told him his pursuers were on the wooded slopes and ridges to every side. Despite his best efforts they’d somehow managed to surround him, and now they were going to converge on him.

  And there was still no sign of a rescue in the offing. Taken all together, it meant that unless Lady Luck truly loved him today, the arrows could only extend his life for a little longer and make the shadar-kai pay more dearly for the honor of snuffing it out.

  Still, that was better than nothing. It just might mean the mad gamble would pay off-for Jhesrhi anyway-and in any case, better to go down drawing a bow than swinging a blade. That way, Keen-Eye would know to welcome his spirit into his camp.

  Just to make sure the enemy stayed eager, he flicked the living flame out of his hand and into visible existence. “If you can fight,” he told her, “this would be a perfect time to show me.”

  He wasn’t certain, but he thought her glowing, fluid features smiled derisively.

  *****

  As Jhesrhi backed up, she told herself, I don’t have to cringe and run. I can kill this brute. My magic is stronger than any kenkuni’s ever was.

  Her staff too implored her to stand her ground. It promised that if she only unleashed its power, she could incinerate any foe.

  Still, she kept retreating. Leering, the giant came after her in a leisurely manner, evidently so unimpressed with her that he didn’t see any urgency about closing the distance.

  She realized he hadn’t even bothered to draw the enormous sword strapped across his back. Perhaps he didn’t even mean to kill her. Maybe he planned to keep her, put his collar on her neck, touch her in all the dread, unbearable ways.

  So fight! Don’t let him! But instead, she merely gasped and whimpered.

  He waved his massive, dirt-colored hand. A tremor ran through the ground and tossed her off her feet. Then suddenly he ran, and before she could even scramble up, he was looming over her. He bent down.

  I’m sorry, Gaedynn, she thought. I tried. She imagined the archer fleeing and fighting in the dark.

  And somehow that-or that combined with the urgings of the staff and all the things she’d already tried to tell herself-brought her to the tipping point.

  She’d tried? And that was how it ended? That was all she had to offer one of the only true friends she’d ever had? Rage and hatred welled up in her like lava, burning her panic away, excoriating the elemental mage and herself in equal measure.

  But the torrent of flame that leaped from the staff only targeted the giant. It caught him square in the face and hurled him backward.

  When he caught his balance, she saw that the attack hadn’t seared his body exactly as it would char human flesh. But it had plainly hurt him. Parts of him looked hard, discolored, and cracked, like badly made pottery.

  He bellowed and stamped his foot.

  She disregarded the staff’s yearning for fire and reestablished her connection to the earth. When the shock reached her, it simply lifted her and set her back down. It didn’t even stagger her, let alone snap her neck
or jolt her limbs out of their sockets.

  The giant snarled, and bits of his contorted features broke loose. She laughed at him.

  He pulled his sword from his scabbard and charged. She spoke to the wind, and it carried her upward, her magic in a race with his long legs and reach.

  A close race-he leaped as high as he could, swung the sword in an overhand cut, and it whistled by just a finger length under her feet.

  But after that, there was nothing more to fear. Hovering above him, she hurled down gout after gout of flame. While he staggered around and screamed, and his body broke and broke again.

  By the Nine Dark Princes, it felt good! So good that when it was over, a part of her just wanted to keep raining fire on the shards of the corpse.

  But she had a job to finish. So she struggled to control her ragged breathing and put her thoughts in order. Then she asked the wind to carry her to the prisoner.

  Despite his shackles and extreme emaciation, he was still a colossal red dragon, and she floated down in front of him with a pang of trepidation. But all he did was study her with his smoldering golden eyes.

  “Are you Tchazzar?” she asked.

  “You see that I am,” he answered. His voice was more of a wheeze than either a rumble or a hiss, like it strained him just to talk.

  “People say you were a great wizard.”

  Despite his debility, his eyes burned brighter, and she found herself taking a step back. “I’m a god!” he said.

  “I beg your pardon for misspeaking,” she said, holding her voice steady. “But my point is this. If I set you free and restore your strength, can you take my comrade and me back to the mortal world?”

  “I’d do so gladly,” Tchazzar said, “if you could truly keep your end of the bargain.”

  “I believe I can. You’ve seen I have an affinity for fire, and that’s the essence of life to you. I’m going to pour it into your blood and sinews.”

  Tchazzar hesitated like she’d surprised him. “That might actually work, assuming you can channel a prodigious quantity without losing control. If you’re willing to try, you’d better get started.”

  “Before the shadar-kai come back?”

  “Before Sseelrigoth-the blight dragon-himself arrives. It’s our good fortune that he can’t actually live here, lest he drain the life from his subjects. But I’m sure that by now, he’s sensed all the commotion and is on his way.”

  *****

  Pivoting constantly, alternately targeting the abishais at street level and those flying overhead, Aoth rattled off words of power and worked his way through his last remaining attack spells. He’d killed plenty of his foes and meant to kill more. But he suspected that when he finished casting his flares of fire and howls of bone-shattering vibration, there would still be enough left to swarm on him and tear him to pieces. He never did get that damn gate in the cellar to close.

  Either way, it looked like he was going to die fighting for Chessenta. A place he decided he detested almost as much as it detested people like him.

  Galloping hoof beats clattered behind him. He glanced over his shoulder.

  Armored in a gilt helmet and breastplate, Cera charged in his direction. He realized she too must have been waiting for the assassin to make a move, and when Aoth had gone running through the temple, she’d tried to follow him. She couldn’t have kept on Jet’s track in any normal way, but maybe some trick of divine magic had made it possible. Or maybe all the thunderclaps and flashes had drawn her. Now that Aoth thought about it, it hadn’t been a particularly inconspicuous fight.

  Her golden-colored mare balked well short of the action. The animal tried to turn around and run the other way, and Cera struggled to reassert control.

  “Get out of here!” Aoth croaked. Then he heard the flap of leathery wings and whirled back around.

  A green abishai leaped at him. Holding his breath and squinting against the stinging haze that surrounded it, he ducked a sweep of its tail, drove his spear into its midsection, pulled it free, and scrambled back out of the cloud.

  When he glanced back again, Cera was picking herself up off the ground. She didn’t look hurt, but she didn’t even have a weapon. Her mace was still slung on the saddle of the mare now racing away as fast as she could go.

  “Run!” said Aoth. “You can’t fight these things!”

  “You don’t need a fighter!” Cera said. “You need an exorcist!” She started to chant.

  Apparently recognizing the power in her words, the abishais charged or flew at her. Draining his power to the dregs, Aoth created walls of flame and hovering, spinning blades between the priestess and her assailants. Anything to hold them back.

  Or at least he did so during the fleeting moments when one or more abishais weren’t trying to burn, blast, or stab him to death. The rest of the time he thrust the spear at what seemed an endless succession of snarling, clawing monstrosities. The weapon felt strangely heavy and dead in his hands, and not just because of his exhaustion. Because there was no magic left inside it anymore.

  Then a glow flowered at his back and lit the street as bright as day. Some of the abishais charred away like dry leaves in a bonfire. The rest faltered, and when they came forward again, they appeared to struggle like swimmers fighting against a current. They seemed to grope and fumble too, as though they were half blind.

  It helped. Aoth killed three more of them. But then he spotted a blue abishai that had gotten past him. Now it was soaring over Cera. Sparks jumped on its scaly hide as it prepared to hurl a lightningbolt.

  Aoth rattled off words of power and hurled a ray of freezing cold from his outstretched hand. It was as powerful a ranged attack as he had left, and it wasn’t enough. The devil-kin jerked and wobbled in flight but survived. Its body lit up from the inside-

  And then Jet swooped at it and drove his talons deep into its back. Its power discharged in a crackling flash that made Aoth wince, but when the griffon shook the lifeless body off its claws and flew onward, it was plain he’d survived the shock.

  More griffons dived out of the night sky into Cera’s light. The sellswords on their backs loosed arrow after arrow, and the abishais fell. Aoth had fought so hard and for what had felt like such a long time that there was something dreamlike about how quickly the battle ended.

  It wouldn’t have been as quick if there were still fresh abishais rushing out of the apartment house, but he now saw that at some point that had ended. Something-either the wyrmkeeper’s death, Cera’s exorcism, or simply the magic running out of power-had finally closed the opening to Tiamat’s domain.

  Smelling of singed feathers, Jet set down in the street. “Surely,” he said, “there can’t be too many enemies left hiding in Soolabax. Even if worst comes to worst, you can cope with however many remain.”

  Aoth snorted. “It sounded reasonable when I said it. You must have thought so too, the way you took your time getting back here.”

  “That was because humans are idiots. I don’t know how many times I had to repeat myself to make the men understand you were well and needed-”

  Cera’s incantation cut off abruptly.

  Aoth and Jet whirled in her direction. There were no abishais anywhere near her, and no blood on her person. But she was collapsing, and as she did, darkness reclaimed the street.

  Aoth ran toward her. Jet started a heartbeat later, but outdistanced his master with his first prodigious bound.

  *****

  The embrace of fire was as glorious as the touch of a mortal lover had always been vile. It filled Jhesrhi with ecstasy and the yearning to open herself even more completely.

  She didn’t know what would happen if she did. Maybe she’d simply burn to ash. Or perhaps her humanity would melt away like dross, leaving a being like an efreet, more truly a creature of flame than even a red dragon could ever be. Either possibility would be a blissful consummation.

  But she was a wizard, with a wizard’s trained intellect and will, and she refused to surrender whol
ly to mere sensation, no matter how pleasurable. She maintained her awareness of the other aspects of her nature-of earth, air, water, and spirit, or identity, memory, and purpose-even as she drew the rarified essence of flame from the Elemental Chaos, gathered it in her staff, and then hurled it forth into Tchazzar’s body.

  Strangely, the result reminded her of the action of water, specifically of the explosion of life that came when rainfall ended a drought. Glowing like a hot coal but without heat-every bit of that was turning into muscle-the dragon’s form swelled, and new scales closed old sores. Head thrown back at the end of his long neck, he gasped and groaned. Perhaps his transformation hurt, but if so it was clearly a pain he welcomed.

  It looked to Jhesrhi like he was nearly restored. Then nausea and vertigo stabbed through her, and her control over her magic wavered. The fire from beyond clutched at her, trying to claim her, and her treacherous staff rejoiced.

  She couldn’t bend the element to her will again. She could only break the flow. The roaring, twisting jet of flame went out, and Tchazzar roared as it suddenly stopped playing over his body.

  His progress more like a manta ray swimming than a bat flying, shrouded in a cloud of dust, Sseelrigoth twisted and rippled down from the sky. Newly dead leaves whispered as they dropped from the trees adjacent to the hillside.

  “By the Lady of Loss,” said the blight dragon, “are all my slaves killed?” He sounded amused rather than upset. “We’ll have to find a way for you to pay for that, wizard. Right after I eat this wonderful meal you provided.”

  “I was weak when you bound me to the earth,” Tchazzar growled. “You kept me weak for all the years since. But I’m not weak anymore.” He heaved, and the staples securing his limbs tore out of the ground.

  Sseelrigoth’s black eyes widened in shock, but he reacted quickly. A flick of the writhing membranes on his flanks backed him farther away from the red dragon. He opened his jaws and spewed a jet of grit.