A pledge she exacted without consulting me, Aoth thought bitterly.
Not that he didn’t agree with it in principle. How could he not, considering that he was a war-mage himself? But the Brotherhood hadn’t come to Chessenta to spread justice and enlightenment. After two brutal campaigns that had diminished their ranks, produced little profit, and tarnished their name, they’d come to fill their coffers and rebuild their reputation fighting the country’s wars. And it wouldn’t help to have the people at large blame them for an unpopular edict.
“And now, if you’ll excuse me …” Tchazzar said. He was already turning and smiling at Luthen, Nicos’s chief political rival.
Gaedynn was the son of minor nobility and knew how to behave like a gentleman when it suited him. In some parts of Faerun that meant gorging on whatever viands the host provided, to show appreciation for his largess. In Chessenta, with its mania for physical fitness, a fellow made a good impression by merely picking at the refreshments or ignoring them entirely.
But that night, he didn’t care. He and Jhesrhi had spent a hard, hungry time of it trapped in the Shadowfell. He’d be in the field soon, where the timing and quality of meals were always uncertain. Accordingly he meant to eat as lustily as Khouryn would in his place. And if his voracity repulsed any ladies worth charming, then he’d just have to try a little harder.
He had the lackeys behind the serving tables heap his plate with suckling pig, chicken breast with blueberry glaze, peas, buttered dark rolls, and slices of candied peach. His mouth watering, he turned away from the buffet, then froze.
Jhesrhi had come up behind him, but not a Jhesrhi he’d ever seen before. Some maid-or more likely a whole squad of them-had arranged her golden hair in an intricate coiffure and dressed her in a scarlet brocade gown. Rubies glittered on her earlobes and around her neck. Her attendants had even managed to pry the staff out of her hand.
“Good evening, milady,” he said. “You bear an uncanny resemblance to a wizard of my acquaintance. But she shuns occasions such as this.”
Jhesrhi scowled. “I couldn’t shun this one. The war hero told me to come and gave me this … outfit to wear. He wanted me to have myself announced too, but that was too much. I came in one of the side doors.”
Gaedynn grinned. “Well, you arrived before the dragon, so he’ll never know about your breach of protocol.”
Jhesrhi hesitated. “I’ve never worn anything like this. Does it look all right?”
She looked ravishing, but he realized he didn’t want to say so. Maybe it was because they’d already gone down the road of compliments and fond blandishments and found out that for them, it led nowhere at all.
“The important thing,” he said, “is that after tonight, you’ll be able to sell it all for a tidy sum.”
Something moved behind her amber eyes, and he wished he could take his answer back. Then the trumpeters blew a brassy fanfare, and, attired in crimson velvet and cloth of gold, Tchazzar came through the high arched doorway at the end of the room. The open leaves framing the entrance sported carvings of high points from the dragon’s previous reigns.
The men bowed and the women curtsied. Tchazzar beamed and gestured, signaling everyone to straighten up. Then he turned and nodded to the musicians, who struck up the first dance, a galliard.
Standing near the buffet, Gaedynn and Jhesrhi were already removed from the dance floor. But she took a reflexive step backward anyway.
Then Tchazzar shouted, “Stop!” His voice shouldn’t have cut through the galliard. But it did easily, as though he still carried a dragon’s roar within his seemingly human throat to use when necessary. The orchestra stumbled to a halt. The couples who were waiting for the war hero to choose a partner and start dancing so they could do the same peered at him in surprise.
“When last I walked these halls,” said the dragon to the conductor, “the dance in fashion was the longing. Or as some called it, the tease. Do you know it?”
The orchestra leader was a stooped little man with a pinched face. Gaedynn might have thought he looked more like a miserly shopkeeper than an artist, except for the zest that lived in his bright gray eyes. “No one has asked for that one in a long while, Majesty. But yes, we do know it. Or at least the older players do, and the rest can join in as they catch the sense of it.”
“Then let’s have it,” Tchazzar said, “and I’ll teach the steps to those who care to learn.”
The conductor smiled and switched the index finger of his offhand back and forth, telling his associates how quick he intended the beat to be. Then he raised his baton and swept it down. As promised, about half the musicians immediately began a lively tune in three-quarter time. The harper joined in a couple of measures later.
Meanwhile, Tchazzar walked straight toward Jhesrhi. When she saw him coming, she blanched.
“My lady,” he said. “Will you do me the honor?”
“I’m sorry, Majesty,” Jhesrhi said. “I can’t. I never have. Never in my life.”
“Neither has anyone else,” the dragon said. “Not this dance. You’re all starting even. What’s more, it’s a dance where the lady and gentleman don’t touch. Not even a brush of their fingertips, not even once. So please, won’t you give it a try?”
And to Gaedynn’s astonishment, she did. After a while she even smiled.
Something was weighing in his hand. He looked down at his heavily laden plate and realized he didn’t want it anymore.
Balasar woke suddenly from a sound sleep to the darkness of his bedchamber. At first he had no idea why. Then he heard, or perhaps merely sensed, a voice calling his name. It was less like speech than the whisper of a breeze, but somehow he understood it anyway.
It was undoubtedly the summons that Nala had promised would come. Plainly magical, it likely had something to do with the fuming, sour potion she’d given him to drink.
He threw off his blankets, dressed quickly, strapped on his broadsword, and slipped a dagger into his boot. He was supposedly going to the Platinum Cadre as a supplicant. But he’d feel like a jackass if they figured out he was actually a spy and managed to kill him because he hadn’t hidden a weapon on his person.
The common areas of Clan Daardendrien’s suite were deserted. Even the doorman was snoring. Balasar slipped out without waking him. The phantom voice whispered again, urging him toward the stairs that led downward.
As it turned out, he had to tramp all the way down to the floor of the City-Bastion’s central atrium, where fountains gurgled and shrubs and verdure grew in planters and flowerbeds. Striped and studded with balconies, the walls soared to the loft that served as the barracks of the Lance Defenders and the roost for their giant bats. The ambient magical glow was almost nonexistent at that hour, as conducive to sleep as the natural darkness outside.
The voice led Balasar down again, out into the cold night air. Onto the Market Floor, the pillared open space between the half pyramid above and the granite block below. Points of yellow light shined in the gloom, and somewhere to the north a longhorn whined. Clearly some of the taverns were still open, and for a moment Balasar dared to hope that Nala had summoned him to a meeting in such convivial surroundings.
Alas, no. The whisper-he still couldn’t judge if it existed only in his head-led him to another staircase, one descending into the bowels of the stone cube that formed the foundation of Djerad Thymar. Into the Catacombs.
The warren of tunnels and chambers contained storerooms, foundries, and other well-traveled areas with mundane and legitimate functions. They also held burial crypts and, according to rumor, desolate sections where outlaws conducted illicit business, fugitives went to ground, and specters walked.
Balasar sighed because he suspected he knew in which sort of precinct the priestess of the dragon god had set up shop. Sure enough, the voice called him into a narrow, snaking side passage and then down a steep and treacherous ramp. Most of the globular magical sconces had gone out, either because of time and neglect or because s
omeone had taken the trouble to extinguish them.
Eventually he came to a point where the darkness was all but absolute. There might be a faint glimmer somewhere up ahead, but it could just as easily be a trick his light-starved eyes were playing on him.
Running the claws of his right hand along the wall, he pushed on. After what seemed a long time, he traversed an oblique bend in the passage, and then the light finally brightened. It led him into a bare pentagonal chamber where four dragonborn waited. Hoods of silvery cloth concealed their heads.
But not quite well enough. A big male with red scales had three chains dangling visibly from the underside of his jaw. They were the piercings of Clan Shestendeliath-and enabled Balasar to identify Patrin.
He almost grinned. The clandestine meeting with masked, silent cultists was clearly supposed to seem ominous, and it did. But he found it difficult to believe that the paladin of Bahamut intended any treachery or harm. Though misguided, Patrin was honorable, and he and Balasar had battled the ash giants side by side.
Still, his voice was steel and ice as he asked, “Who comes?”
Balasar gave the ritual response Nala had taught him. “A seeker of truth.” Just not the truth you think.
“What will you give to learn it?”
“All that I have and am.”
“Then strip him,” Patrin said. The other worshipers moved forward.
Balasar had to force himself to stand still and submit to the subsequent rough handling. No one had warned him about that part of it.
For a time Aoth savored the glow of contentment, the feeling of utter, spent relaxation. Then, without him willing it, his mind resumed gnawing at all the matters that troubled him.
Her sweaty body snuggled up against his own, Cera seized his nose between thumb and forefinger and gave it a twist.
“Ouch!” he said, though it hadn’t really hurt. “What was that for?”
“It’s all right if you fall sleep after,” Cera said. “A woman learns to expect that sort of swinish male behavior. But if you’re going to stay awake, I want your attention.”
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just …” He gestured with the arm that wasn’t wrapped around her.
“Tchazzar’s not what you expected.”
Aoth snorted. “Starting out, I didn’t expect anything. What were the odds that Jhesrhi and Gaedynn would even find a trace of him, let alone fetch him home? But yes. What do you think of him? I remember the first conversation we ever had. You made it clear you don’t believe he’s a god.”
She hesitated and brushed one of her curls away from her snub-nosed pretty face. He liked it that his spellscarred eyes could see the bright yellow color of her hair, and everything else about her, as clearly in the dark bedchamber as under the sun she worshiped.
“People use the term ‘god’ in more than one way,” she said at length. “I think Daelric and the other patriarchs won’t make an issue of it, as long as he keeps his pretensions within bounds. And obviously I, dutiful daughter of the faith that I am, will follow my wise superior’s lead.”
Aoth grinned. “In other words, in your opinion he’s just a big, strong dragon. But Chessenta needs him, so it makes sense to humor him.”
“Pretty much. At this point, I’m actually more vexed by the same thing that irked you. Why didn’t he tell everyone about the abishais? At first he seemed so interested, and now it’s like he doesn’t care at all.”
“I can’t explain it,” he said. “He gave me a couple of reasons, but none that made a lot of sense.”
“Do you think he’ll investigate? We still don’t understand the reason for it all.”
He shrugged. It made her breast bounce ever so slightly where it rested against his chest. “He said yes, but I wouldn’t count on it.”
Cera glowered. “That’s … unacceptable! Somebody has to find out what’s really going on!”
“If there’s one thing I learned growing up in Thay, and during my time as a sellsword, it’s that someone always has some sort of secret agenda or scheme. You could go mad trying to unravel it all.”
“But Amaunator wants it unraveled. Or else he wouldn’t have showed us the assembly of dragons.”
“With all respect, my sweet sunlady, you don’t know that’s why your ritual went awry, or that the gathering had anything to do with the abishais.”
“I don’t understand. One moment you’re upset that Tchazzar isn’t going to do anything. The next it’s like you agree with him that what we discovered isn’t even important.”
“It’s not that exactly. But I have a war to fight. It won’t matter who wanted to blacken the name of the dragonborn, or why, if the Great Bone Wyrm and his troops slaughter us all.”
Frowning, she studied him for a time. Then she said, “I think you’re perverse. Your truesight gave you at least one vision to warn you that something mysterious and dangerous is happening.”
“I don’t know that that’s what it meant,” he interjected.
She continued on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Then the Keeper gave us both a sign indicating the same thing. That would make many another man more eager to search for the truth. But I have the feeling it made you more reluctant. Why?”
He sighed. “You mean above and beyond the intelligent, practical reasons I’ve already given you?”
“Yes. So tell me.”
He hesitated, as he supposed most men would hesitate to admit any sort of fear or weakness to a woman. But his instincts told him it wouldn’t make her think any less of him. Mustering his thoughts, he ran his palm over the top of his head. His calluses scratched his hairless scalp.
“I told you where my visions led me before,” he said. “To that mountaintop in Szass Tam’s artificial world. Where, until my comrades showed up, it was just me against Malark Springhill and all the undead horrors under his control.”
“Where you saved thousands of lives,” she said. “Perhaps even all the lives there are.”
“Yes! That’s exactly the point! I didn’t really feel the weight of the responsibility at the time. You can’t allow yourself to feel things like that in the midst of battle or they’ll slow you down. But I’ve felt it over and over in the months since. I feel it in my nightmares.”
“I don’t understand. By your own choice, you’ve always carried a lot of responsibility. You’re responsible for the welfare of your company. For the fate of the lords and realms that hire you to fight.”
“That’s different. Battle sorcery and leading the Brotherhood suit me. I understand them. I’m big enough to handle them. But what happened on the mountaintop …” He shook his head. “It was too strange, and too much.”
“Throughout the centuries,” she said, “Amaunator, either as himself or in the guise of Lathander, called many champions to serve the cause of righteousness. Some of them protested that the burden was too heavy for them to bear. Yet they acquitted themselves nobly in the end.”
“That’s one reason I like worshiping Kossuth. He doesn’t have stories like that.”
She scowled. “You’re impossible.”
“Just let me work on driving Alasklerbanbastos back into his hole. I promise we’ll all be better off.”
“All right. If that’s what you think is best.”
They lay in silence for a while.
Then, when he’d begun to wonder if she’d drifted off to sleep, and if she’d start snoring the gurgling little snore he liked, she said, “I can’t go back to Soolabax with you tomorrow.”
“No?”
“No. Daelric wants me to report what I know about the raids out of and into Threskel, Tchazzar’s return, and all the rest of it. I’ll come home as soon as I can.”
Aoth scrutinized her. But if there was more she wasn’t telling him, his fire-kissed eyes failed even to hint at what it might be.
To Balasar’s relief, no one remarked on the knife hidden in his boot. Many warriors carried an extra weapon in a similar fashion, particularly if, like him, they ma
de a habit of patronizing Djerad Thymar’s seamier taverns and entertainments.
When he was naked, Patrin picked up a steel helmet. For a moment, Balasar couldn’t see what distinguished it from an ordinary one. Then he noticed the lack of eyeholes, and the U-shaped piece intended to fit under the wearer’s snout.
Patrin put it over his head and so deprived him of sight. The locking mechanism clicked shut. The chin piece was snug enough to dig uncomfortably into the spot where a dragonborn’s lower jaw joined his neck, but not quite tight enough to choke him.
“Now,” Patrin said, “your pilgrimage begins.” A hand, perhaps the paladin’s, perhaps another initiate’s, shoved Balasar stumbling forward.
He groped to keep from running into whatever was in front of him. He found an empty space that was presumably the mouth of another passage leading away from the pentagonal room. He headed down it, once again running his hand along the wall to steady and orient himself.
The voice whispered. Eerie though it was, he supposed he ought to be glad. It should keep him creeping in the right direction.
He tried to slow his breathing and so quell the fear nibbling at his mind. He’d heard of secret societies initiating their recruits via nerve-racking ordeals. His current state of extreme vulnerability didn’t mean anything was going to happen to him. To the contrary. The members of the Platinum Cadre wouldn’t bother with this game if they realized he was here to spy.
Somewhere in the blackness, the voice breathed his name.
Then somehow he lost contact with the cool, granite surface he’d been touching, and instinct told him he’d entered a much broader space. Still, he judged that the most sensible way to traverse it was to work his way along the wall. But when he groped, first to the sides and then behind him, he couldn’t find anything solid.
All he could do was walk toward the whisper.
It grew colder with every step. Something crunched beneath his naked feet, chilling them. He realized it was snow. A frigid wind rose and, howling, tried to shove him back the way he’d come. He leaned into it.
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