The Spectral Blaze

by Richard Lee Byers

  He bellowed the last word of his spell, and a cloud of acidic vapor seethed into existence around him. It stung him, but it was worth it because it annihilated the shadowravens. Sizzling, they fell like stones and corroded away to nothing before they reached the ground.

  A beat of his wings carried Alasklerbanbastos clear of the burning mist, and he looked around for the deathlord. He was reasonably sure the creature had followed him aloft, but at first glance, he couldn’t spot him.

  A weight thumped down on top of Alasklerbanbastos’s head. Certain that he had only an instant before the deathlord’s scythe would slash at one of his eyes, he lashed his neck as though he were cracking a whip. The sorrowsworn tumbled from his perch.

  Alasklerbanbastos twisted his head and tried to snap him out of the air. His teeth clashed shut on nothing. The deathlord had shifted through space to dodge the attack. Another psychic attack beat at Alasklerbanbastos’s consciousness. He snarled in annoyance as he tried to locate his opponent once again.

  There! Even blurrier than before, probably turned intangible, the deathlord was swooping toward the ground to rejoin his underlings. Alasklerbanbastos’s snarl turned into a laugh because abandoning the high air was the wrong play.

  He furled his wings, plunged downward, and rattled off three words that drew all the lightning that continually danced in a blue dragon’s body down into his foreclaws. Crackling, they glowed white and should annihilate an insubstantial foe as readily as any other.

  Just before Alasklerbanbastos plummeted into striking distance, the deathlord sensed the danger. He wrenched himself around, congealed into solidity, and swung the scythe. It gashed Alasklerbanbastos’s leg, but that was all.

  Then the dragon’s claws stabbed into the sorrowsworn’s body, piercing it, all but splitting and tearing it to pieces. It was a killing stroke even without the lightning that discharged itself with a thunderous bang an instant later.

  Alasklerbanbastos flicked the charred scraps that were all that remained of the deathlord off his talons and spread his wings for a softer descent.

  The remaining sorrowsworn were brave, stupid, or compelled by some enchantment. Even with their chieftain and the shadowravens destroyed, they kept fighting, and pretty well at that. Still, it took Alasklerbanbastos only a few more moments to rip them apart.

  He looked around and made sure he’d gotten them all. Then he stalked on to the dead god’s temple.

  Since the building was lying on its side, the entry was halfway up the wall. At some point, the doors had come loose from the hinges, leaving just a hole. He stuck his head inside.

  Somehow, the outer shell of the temple had survived its slide or tumble into the crevasse partially intact. But the disaster had shattered interior walls and shaken everything loose from its proper place. Broken pews, icons, and skeletons lay heaped and jumbled altogether.

  Alasklerbanbastos felt a little disappointed. Whatever the sorrowsworn had believed was growing inside the ruinous womb, he couldn’t detect any sign of it. But he could still feel the throbbing, malignant power of the place, and that was what was important.

  He crawled through the doorway. The litter shifted under his weight, so, using his claws and tail, he scooped and swept it to the sides until he had a clear place to work. Then he chanted words of power and scratched a rune on the stone beneath him whenever the ritual called for it.

  When he’d written all twenty-five, he slit the hide on his left foreleg and started to flay himself.

  It wasn’t easy. Even though the undead were less susceptible to pain than the living, the discomfort was considerable. And on top of that, the skin was damaged. Tchazzar had burned it, death had rotted it, and the fights Alasklerbanbastos had gotten into since occupying the body hadn’t done it any good either. Yet he needed to remove it in just a few pieces. Cutting or inadvertently tearing it into too many would spoil the magic.

  Finally the painstaking task was through. He laid out the sheets of hide in the proper places, refocused his concentration, and whispered the final rhyme.

  The darkness seemed to spin around him. Disembodied voices wailed, and a stench like vomit filled the air. Broken bones jerked and rattled.

  Blue light danced where one sheet of scaly skin touched another, fusing them back together. Then the hollow, flapping but united thing they’d become heaved itself up off the floor. It whipped around toward Alasklerbanbastos and opened its jaws, revealing the hard, serrated ridges that had formed to substitute for fangs.

  But Alasklerbanbastos had expected resistance. He grabbed the dragon shell by the neck, slammed it to the floor, and held it there while it tried to wrap around him like a python. He bound it with words of command.

  When it stopped struggling, he let it up and gave it a more leisurely inspection. Satisfied with his handiwork, he smiled.

  * * * * *

  A watersoul functionary had informed Aoth that he and his companions would have to wait until Queen Arathane could find the time to receive them. He suspected the reality was somewhat different. Her Majesty was more likely conferring with Tradrem Kethrod, the Steward of the Earth and her spymaster, and anyone else who might have some idea why a sellsword captain in service to Chessenta had unexpectedly appeared to request a palaver with the ruler of Akanûl.

  Waiting made Aoth edgy, and he tried to calm himself by taking in the view. The royal palace was a spire that, from the outside, resembled a narwhal’s horn. It occupied the highest point in Airspur, and the outer wall of the waiting room was made entirely of glass. He could see much of the capital spread out below.

  Even in the Thay of his youth, where the Red Wizards had not infrequently turned their Art to spectacle and ostentation, he’d never seen another city like it. It incorporated dozens of small, low-floating earthmotes, linked to one another and adjacent towers by bridges. And everything reflected the genasi’s kinship with, and mastery of, the elemental forces. Most structures had a flowing, rounded look to them, as if they’d been molded from clay, not hewn from stone. A few hung like mirages in midair. Sparkling in the sunlight, water cascaded from the higher levels of the city to the lower.

  “You’d think,” Gaedynn said, “that if Jhesrhi wanted to settle down anywhere, it would be here, not Luthcheq.”

  “Our childhood homes keep a hold on us,” Cera said. “And I suspect that if you were an unhappy child, the hold can be all the stronger.”

  Gaedynn grinned. “Speak for yourself. I’d sooner take another run at Szass Tam than return to my father’s castle.” He turned back to Aoth. “I’m still vague on our strategy. Exactly how much are we going to tell them?”

  “You’re vague because I’m vague,” said Aoth. “This is potentially dangerous. I’ll need to read Arathane’s reactions and make decisions as we go.”

  “Thanks for clarifying. I feel so much more confident.”

  Cera frowned. “The Keeper of the Yellow Sun teaches us to cast the light of truth as widely and brightly as we can.”

  “Is that why you’ve been doing things behind your high priest’s back ever since this craziness started?” Aoth replied.

  She tried to look at him sternly, but humor tugged at the corners of her mouth, and after a moment, she gave it up. “Perhaps I am trying to put the milk back into the cow.”

  The door behind them clicked open, and they turned to see the same green-skinned watersoul servant as before. Her tabard bore a pentagram emblem that symbolized the five subraces of the genasi people, although after his experiences of late, Aoth found it unpleasantly reminiscent of the wyrmkeepers’ sigils and regalia.

  “Please follow me,” the watersoul said.

  They did and she soon led them up additional flights of stairs. Arathane’s throne room was at the very top of the spindly tower. The arrangement probably wasn’t convenient for anybody, but anyone reaching the round chamber would likely admit it provided an air of grandeur. With glass on every side, Aoth could see all of Airspur, as well as the brown, snow-capped
Akanapeaks to the west, and the expanses of blue water to the north and east.

  Supporting the small keeps that belonged to the individual stewards, the four “thronemotes” floated in a ring, almost but not quite as high above the city as the chamber. Bridges like the spokes of a wheel joined them to the central spire.

  Arathane sat in a massive, silver chair resting on a dais floating two feet above the floor. The usual gaggle of courtiers and attendants clustered around it. The queen was young and slender, with delicate features and a pointed chin, and had only a couple of silvery lines running down her purple face from scalp to chin; unlike some genasi, she didn’t look as if she were wearing a filigree mask. One of her maids had affixed dozens of tiny sapphires to the crystalline spikes that took the place of hair. The jewels matched the ones in her necklace and rings.

  “Welcome, Captain Fezim,” she said in a clear, soprano voice. “My mother told me stories about you.”

  Aoth sensed Gaedynn and Cera glancing at him in surprise. He hadn’t bothered to tell them the tale because it hadn’t seemed relevant. He hadn’t thought it likely that the Akanûlans would remember something that had happened thirty years before.

  “She was a great lady,” he replied.

  “Who would have lost her throne and probably her life if not for you and your company,” Arathane said. “So I’m happy to welcome you and your companions. Happy but also perplexed, for reasons I’m sure you understand.”

  “Yes, Majesty,” said Aoth. “You wonder why I’m not in Chessenta helping Tchazzar prepare to invade Tymanther.”

  “Something like that,” Arathane said.

  “It’s because my companions and I have learned something you ought to know. You’re going to war over a misunderstanding. The dragonborn didn’t raid your villages. The servants of a gray wyrm named Vairshekellabex, a creature native to your own kingdom, did it.”

  The queen turned her head. “Can this be true?”

  A barrel-chested, square-jawed earthsoul—Tradrem Kethrod, Aoth surmised—looked back at her. His brown leather garments nearly matched the color of his skin, as their golden ornaments matched the pattern of parallel lines and right angles that ran through it. It made him look disconcertingly like a terra cotta statue come to life.

  “No, Majesty,” said the Steward of the Earth. “As you will recall, a handful of witnesses saw the raiders and lived to tell the tale. The perpetrators were unquestionably dragonborn.”

  “With respect, my lord,” Cera said, “your witnesses were mistaken through no fault of their own. Vairshekellabex has wyrmkeepers in his service. They know magic to summon fiends called abishais from the Hells, then disguise them to look like dragonborn. I swear by the Keeper’s light that Captain Fezim and I have seen it for ourselves.”

  Tradrem frowned. “You’ve seen for yourselves that this Vairshekellabex has wyrmkeepers working for him and that they’re playing this particular trick?”

  Cera hesitated. “Well … no. Not that … exactly.”

  “Have you ever even seen Vairshekellabex?”

  The priestess sighed. “Again, no.”

  “Then how can you be certain of any of this?”

  Aoth considered then dismissed the idea of admitting that he and his comrades had, on their own initiative, reanimated a creature who was both their employer’s greatest enemy and one of the terrors of the East. Maybe the moment would come, but he wasn’t there yet. “By mystical means,” he said.

  “Well, then,” Tradrem said, “with respect to all of you, divination has its uses, but there are a number of ways it can mislead or yield the wrong intelligence entirely. That’s why I put my trust in people reporting what they’ve observed with their own eyes.”

  “And yet,” Arathane said, “there are rumors of a gray dragon lairing in the wasteland. You brought me the accounts yourself.”

  “True enough,” Tradrem said, “but that alone scarcely makes Captain Fezim’s case. Especially considering that, even if he’s right, it’s far from clear why he would rush here to give us the information.” He pivoted back to Aoth. “Or am I mistaken? Did you confer with Tchazzar first, and did he excuse you from your normal duties to pay us a call?”

  “No,” said Aoth. “When we learned the truth, we were in Threskel, completing the pacification of the province. Tchazzar was already back in Luthcheq. I thought it would save time to fly straight here.”

  “But why did you want to?” Tradrem persisted. “Why bring news to Tchazzar’s allies that could persuade us to forsake him?”

  “For coin,” Gaedynn said. “Aoth and I are sellswords, after all, and surely this information is worth a little something.”

  Arathane frowned. “Worth betraying the sovereign to whom you pledged your service?”

  “The Brotherhood of the Griffon fought hard to conquer Threskel,” the archer said, “and then Tchazzar forbade us to plunder the place. That curdled our loyalty a little.”

  “Majesty,” said Aoth, “whatever you think of our motives, the fact remains that Vairshekellabex is slaughtering your subjects and casting the blame on the dragonborn so he can keep doing it with impunity. And I’m not asking you to take my word for it. I’m asking for the chance to put an end to it.”

  Arathane cocked her head. “How?”

  “I know where to look for Vairshekellabex’s lair. Lend me some warriors. I’ll go kill him and bring back proof of all we’ve told you.”

  Gaedynn smiled. “What do you have to lose?”

  “Quite a bit,” Tradrem said. “Most of the army has marched south. The portion that remains is already stretched thin to protect Airspur and the northern parts of the realm from the aboleths.”

  “Surely you can spare someone,” Cera said.

  “Even if we could,” Tradrem said, “we’d need more convincing because it makes perfect sense that the dragonborn would raid our lands. They’ve always been our enemies, for as far back as anyone can remember.”

  “I picked up a little history when I lived with the elves,” Gaedynn said. “Mainly I learned that if you go back far enough, you find out that at one point or another, everybody’s ancestors pissed on everybody else’s. And that’s convenient if you enjoy holding a grudge, but you can’t let it blind you to what’s happening here and now.”

  Tradrem’s mouth tightened. “Thank you, sellsword. I’m sure we’ll all cherish that nugget of moral instruction. But it doesn’t alter the fact that Her Majesty’s ambassador in Luthcheq reported that you and your comrades showed bias toward the dragonborn almost from the moment you arrived in the city.”

  Aoth sighed. “That’s a … skewed interpretation of events. We simply kept the peace as we were charged to do and counseled Shala Karanok to the best of our ability.”

  Tradrem turned to the queen. “Majesty, I think it likely that these folk are in the pay of Tymanther and have come here to perpetrate a hoax, the object being to keep Akanûl from retaliating against its enemies as justice and prudence both demand.”

  Arathane frowned. Sparks crawled and popped on the web of silvery lines on her throat and hands. “It’s hard to imagine the champion from my mother’s tales doing such a thing.”

  “If I’m not mistaken,” the earthsoul said, “the man in the late queen’s reminiscences served her for coin, not out of nobility of spirit. And even if he did demonstrate some finer qualities, as Sir Gaedynn was just kind enough to remind us, the past doesn’t provide an infallible guide to the present. People change.”

  “Majesty,” said Cera, “please, listen to your heart.”

  “By all means,” Tradrem said, “but listen to your ministers as well. My lords, what do you say?”

  The first to answer was a watersoul with a leaping dolphin emblem on his buttons and belt buckle and black smears on his gray velvet doublet. It appeared he was in the habit of absentmindedly wiping his inky fingers on it. Aoth assumed that he was Myxofin, the Steward of the Sea, also called the Lord of Coin.

  “Meaning no of
fense to Captain Fezim, his lieutenant, nor certainly to a sunlady,” he said, “I have to agree with Lord Tradrem. Your Majesty already made her decision. Your army is already on its way to Chessenta. We’ve already spent a great deal of treasure to equip and provision them. And this story is just too strange.”

  When he finished, everyone looked to a female windsoul with the silver skin and blue patterning of her kind. Despite the urging implicit in their regard, she still stood, frowned, and deliberated for a couple moments longer. She was evidently Lehaya, the Steward of the Sky and Akanûl’s Lawgiver.

  “Majesty,” she said when she was ready, “you no doubt remember that from the start, I had misgivings over going to war.” Aoth felt a pang of hope. “Still, I must agree with my fellow stewards.”

  Curse it! “Just give me fifty men,” he said. “Fifty to rid your realm of a horror.”

  Now it was Arathane’s turn to hesitate. She looked out over them all with troubled eyes.

  “Majesty,” Tradrem said, “pardon me for bringing this up. But you know that, by your mother’s decree, if the Four Stewards stand united in opposition to the queen, it’s our will that prevails. And I believe we all know how Magnol would vote if he were here.”

  “But he isn’t,” Gaedynn said. “He’s marching south at the head of Akanûl’s army. So Your Majesty can do whatever you want. And where’s the fun in wearing a crown if you don’t make an unpopular decision once in a while and then make everybody eat it?”

  Inwardly Aoth winced but Arathane surprised him by chuckling. “You’re not shy about speaking your mind, are you?” she said.

  Gaedynn grinned. “It’s merely one of my many endearing qualities.”

  “I’m sure. Still … gentlemen, sunlady, you’re welcome in Akanûl for as long as you care to stay. And you needn’t worry that anyone will inform Tchazzar of what you said to me. But I truly don’t know what to make of it, so I’ll abide by the advice of my counselors. Vairshekellabex, if indeed he exists, will have to wait until the war is over.”