“My friend!” Oraxes said. “Have a drink on me!”
“You have to come with me,” Ramed answered. “Meralaine too. Right away.”
Oraxes started to ask why, then realized that might be indiscreet with so many folk loitering close enough to overhear the answer. He smiled and gave a wave to his audience, then beckoned to Meralaine. She picked up her slim bone wand where it lay within easy reach of her dainty-looking hand, and rose. They followed Ramed out into the night.
Alasklerbanbastos’s war had brought an influx of coin to Mourktar as the mercenaries the dracolich had hired passed through the port. Most of those warriors were gone, in many cases added to Tchazzar’s army in the south, but the town still clung to a fading air of celebration. The windows of taverns and festhalls burned bright, and music lilted through. It was as if the proprietors couldn’t bring themselves to admit the boom was over.
But it mostly was, and once Oraxes and his companions had progressed a few paces down the rutted, muddy street, Oraxes judged that they had enough privacy to converse. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“A wyrmkeeper showed up,” Ramed said. “He’s got a paper with Tchazzar’s seal on it. Apparently it authorizes him to get a report from Captain Fezim about how the hunt for the rebels is going.” Oraxes inferred that Ramed was as illiterate as most men who followed his trade and hadn’t been able to read the document for himself.
“Did you tell him the captain is away on patrol?”
“Yes,” said Ramed. “He said he’ll wait.”
“Well,” said Oraxes, “let him wait, then. Maybe Lady Luck will smile, and Captain Fezim and the others will get back soon.”
The soldier shook his head. “That’s a lot to hope for. It’s a ways to Akanûl, even on griffons, and it wasn’t an easy chore they had to tackle once they got there.”
“And what if the wyrmkeeper starts asking questions,” said Meralaine, “and some of the other sellswords say they haven’t seen Aoth or Gaedynn in days? What if they say their officers have marched them this way and that, but they haven’t seen a trace of renegade necromancers or any other leftover enemies?”
“Right,” Oraxes said. The tipsiness that had seemed so exhilarating in the tavern was like a blanket smothering his ability to think. He took a deep breath in an effort to clear it away. “We can’t just let him hang around. We need to send him on his way, and that means we need either Captain Fezim or someone who can pass for him. Ramed, I’m going to shroud you in his appearance.”
The sellsword goggled at him. “Me?”
“Yes. You’re an officer of the Brotherhood, and the captain let you in on the secret of what’s going on before he left. You’re the perfect man for the job.”
Ramed shook his head. “Truly, lad, I don’t think so. I’m a warrior, not a player. I’d botch it.”
“He’s right,” said Meralaine. She was standing right beside Oraxes, but it was still oddly difficult to see her features clearly. It was as though the darkness had stained her with itself. “You’re the illusionist, and if you conjure a mask, it will fit you better than it would anyone else.”
“But I’m not a warrior,” Oraxes said.
Meralaine smirked. “That’s not what you think to yourself when you’re swaggering around with that pot on your head.”
Oraxes felt his face grow hot. “I’m saying that I won’t be able to answer questions the way a veteran soldier would.”
“But we can hope,” Ramed said, “that the dragon priest won’t ask difficult questions. After all, he’s not a soldier, either.”
“And your magic,” said Meralaine, “will lend an air of plausibility to anything you say.”
Oraxes shook his head. “I still don’t think—”
She raised her hand to cut him off. “This is why Captain Fezim left us here, so if it was needed, we’d do what only wizards can. And you can do this. Ramed and I will help you.”
He took a breath. “You’re right, curse it.” He looked around and found the mouth of a narrow, litter-choked alley even darker than the street. He waved at it. “Let’s duck in there.”
“You don’t have to do it right now,” said Meralaine.
He grinned. “Don’t worry. The prospect of what’s to come is sobering me up fast. And it’s like you said. We want to send the wyrmkeeper back to Luthcheq before he talks to a bunch of other people.”
He took off the steel and leather helmet Meralaine had mocked, then started the magic by writing runes on a clapboard wall. His fingertip trailed blue phosphorescence. Ramed kept watch and stood in such a way as to hide the two wizards from anyone who might happen to pass in the street.
After he finished writing, Oraxes murmured rhymes in dactylic hexameter. Meralaine whispered contrapuntal responses. They hadn’t practiced performing that particular ritual together, nor did he understand the language she was speaking. But he could feel how her efforts supported his own, and it made sense that they would. Darkness and deception were natural allies.
As his recitation progressed, he gradually raised his hands to his head. He ran them through his hair and imagined it falling away. He felt it just as if it were really happening. He shifted his hands to his face and molded it like clay, reshaping his sharp features into Aoth Fezim’s blunt ones and branding them with the Thayan’s black tattoos.
As he reached the final line of the spell, he touched his eyes with his forefingers, and, as though lighting a pair of candles, commanded a blue glow to flower inside each one. For a moment he felt a double pulse of warmth.
He lowered his hands. “Well?”
Meralaine smiled. “It’s good. You look like him and sound like him too.”
Ramed turned and his eyes widened. “She’s right! You truly do!”
Oraxes snorted. “You don’t have to sound so surprised about it.” He put his helmet back on, looked around for Aoth’s spear, and found it leaning against the wall. Naturally he knew it was just another piece of the illusion, but the deception would be stronger if there were a part of him that didn’t know, and when he closed his fingers around it, the ash shaft felt solid and smooth. “Let’s go see the wyrmkeeper before the magic starts to wear away.”
Even if Ramed hadn’t come to find him, he would have known something was different even before they reached the Brotherhood’s camp on the outskirts of town. Griffons were screeching when they should have been asleep, and when he came within sight of Aoth’s pavilion he saw the reason. Leathery wings folded, saddles cinched to their torsos, four drakkensteeds crouched on the ground near the entrance. Created from the blood of wyrms, or so Oraxes understood, the reptiles looked like scrawny, runt dragons with unusually long necks and probably smelled like them as well. So it was no wonder their proximity agitated beasts that had just helped their masters fight a war against dragons.
It agitated Oraxes for a different reason. “You said there was one wyrmkeeper!”
“One main one,” Ramed said, “and three underlings. Convince the leader, and you’ll be fine.”
“Each of them surely has some skill with his own kind of magic,” Oraxes said. “Any one of them could see through—” He heard the whine in his voice and made himself stop. “Forget it. You’re right. Let’s do this.”
One of the drakkensteeds growled as they approached. The sellsword sentry in front of the tent came to attention and saluted. Responding as he’d seen Aoth acknowledge such shows of respect, Oraxes gave the warrior a clap on the shoulder as he passed by.
The wyrmkeepers inside the tent had made themselves free with Aoth’s possessions. They were working on their second bottle of wine and, by the looks of it, rummaging through bundles of dispatches and the like. All four were unmistakably priests of Tiamat, their garments and jewelry marked with the draconic imagery and pentad motifs emblematic of their faith. But the big man seated in Aoth’s favorite camp chair had carried things further. He had a scaly pattern tattooed on his hands and neck, and when he smiled, he revealed teeth f
iled to points.
“Captain Fezim,” he said, rising. “Good evening. I’m the wyrmlord Sphorrid Nyra.”
“And this is Meralaine,” Oraxes replied. “She’s one of the wizards the war hero assigned to help the Brotherhood accomplish its tasks.”
Sphorrid’s eyes flicked to Meralaine then back again. “I hope you don’t mind that my acolytes and I made ourselves comfortable. From what this fellow was able to tell us”—he indicated Ramed with a vague gesture—“I was afraid you might not return for a tenday.”
“No one can predict exactly how long it will take to fly over half a province,” Oraxes said.
“I imagine that’s especially true when you wander off by yourself,” Sphorrid said. “Do the masters of sellsword armies typically behave that way?”
The question ratcheted Oraxes’s nerves a little tighter. But he told himself that Sphorrid hadn’t really seen through his disguise, nor did he know anything about Aoth’s plans. Otherwise, the whoreson wouldn’t bother with this particular line of conversation. He might be suspicious, but he was just fishing.
“When I was a young legionnaire,” Oraxes said, “I was often sent on scouting missions. I guess old habits die hard. And sometimes one man can catch foes who’d spot a whole company coming over the horizon and scurry for cover. You may have heard that I was searching alone when I found the cellar where Sunlady Eurthos was being held and tortured.”
Sphorrid’s eyes narrowed at the implication of hostility. But so be it. Oraxes was fairly sure that Aoth wouldn’t have tied himself in knots trying to be cordial. So he supposed he shouldn’t either.
“I understood,” said the priest, “that that incident had been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.”
“Yes,” Oraxes said, “but you’ll also understand if the sunlady doesn’t feel inclined to partake of the pleasure of your company.”
“No matter,” said Sphorrid. “Our business is with you.” He proffered a roll of parchment, no doubt the same one he’d waved in front of Ramed.
Oraxes looked it over without haste, as he imagined Aoth would have done. At the top, the listing of Tchazzar’s titles went on for line after line, but once he waded through those, the sense of the rest was clear enough. He rolled it back up and tossed it on the trestle table beside the wine bottles.
“If His Majesty wants to know what I’m doing,” he said, “he could have just asked for a written report. I was planning to send one anyway.”
“He thought I might be able to provide additional insight,” Sphorrid said. “Why don’t you start by telling me about the reconnaissance you just concluded? What did the lone man see that an entire company would have missed?”
Oraxes swallowed. “It will be easiest to show you on a map,” he said, then realized he didn’t remember where Aoth kept them. He looked around and felt a twinge of alarm when he failed to spot them. But, like a dutiful subordinate, Ramed hurried across the tent, opened a chest, lifted out a roll of lambskin, and spread it on the tabletop.
That left Oraxes to concoct a tale of flying and searching from place to place and to stuff it with enough detail to make it convincing. Sphorrid put up with the tedious story for a while, but finally said. “Excuse me, Captain, but let’s stab to the heart of the matter. Did you find some trace of rebel holdouts and traitor necromancers or not?”
Oraxes took a breath and pointed at a place on the map that was a little farther along his imaginary route. “Right here, on a hill overlooking the crossroads, there was a campsite where someone burned a carving of a red dragon in the fire. The scraps of wood that survived had symbols of hatred and murder cut into them.”
Sphorrid gave him a skeptical look. “I thought you were searching for cunning, dangerous wizards, not folk so dim they’d try to curse a red wyrm with a ritual involving flame.”
Inwardly Oraxes winced. If he weren’t so nervous, he wouldn’t have slipped up like that! “The intent is the important thing.”
“With respect, Captain, the important thing is whether you’re making any real progress. If not, Chessenta could use your sellswords in the campaign against the dragonborn. The Church can pursue the work of ferreting out rebels and blasphemers closer to home.”
Meralaine laughed. Both Oraxes and Sphorrid turned to her in surprise.
“I’m sorry, my lords,” she said. “Truly. But it’s comical to see you scowl and bluster when there’s nothing to quarrel about.”
The wyrmkeeper cocked his head. “Explain.”
“Captain Fezim has a methodical mind,” she said. “It’s probably what makes him a good commander. But it also makes him a dull storyteller, and tonight is a case in point. His inclination is to describe every step of his journey instead of skipping to the discovery in the end. But I’ve already suffered through the tale once, so I can tell you the trail eventually led him to a place where His Majesty’s enemies meet to scheme and work their sorcery. The site of an ancient battle in the Sky Riders.”
Oraxes assumed she meant the place where she and Alasklerbanbastos had summoned the dead to frighten Tchazzar. “Yes,” he said, touching his finger to the map again, “right here.”
Sphorrid smiled a wry, less arrogant smile that almost made him likable for a moment. “The wizard’s right, Captain. We could have had a less contentious discussion if you’d told me this at the start. But never mind. Just tell me what you intend to do about it.”
What indeed? “According to my information,” Oraxes said, “the coven will gather tomorrow night. We’ll attack them when they do. If we sneak up on them with a small force, maybe we can take them alive and interrogate them. Then we can find out if they’re agents of Jaxanaedegor, diehards loyal to the memory of Alasklerbanbastos, or maybe even in the pay of the dragonborn.”
Sphorrid narrowed his eyes and considered. Then he said, “That does sound like a sensible way to proceed. My acolytes and I will accompany you, of course.”
“Fine,” Oraxes said. “But for now, I’ve had a long journey, and this is my tent. Ramed will find you suitable quarters and provide for your mounts as well.”
After the wyrmkeepers left, he flopped down in a chair. Meralaine grinned at him. “You were wonderful,” she said. She picked up the half-empty wine bottle, took a swig, then brought it to him.
“Did I say what you wanted me to say?” he asked. “When you started talking about a coven and the place in the hills, I had to guess.”
“You read my mind exactly. It was clear that the only way to satisfy the bastards is to actually show them some rebels. So we will.”
“Are there any ghosts left haunting that patch of ground? You and Alasklerbanbastos raised a bunch of them, and then those were all destroyed.”
“I’ll call some new ones somehow.”
He smiled. “And then we use them to put on another pantomime. Why not? If the trick fooled Tchazzar, it ought to fool his servants too.”
* * * * *
Her silver-skewer piercings gleaming in the glow of the floating orbs of light, Biri walked toward Balasar, and he felt the usual contradictory pulls, the inclination to enjoy the undeniable pleasure of her company pitting itself against the urge to draw away. But at the moment, there was really no question of how he would behave. A warrior of Clan Daardendrien didn’t spurn a comrade in a strange and dangerous place.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered. “After Nellis Saradexma vouched for us, the empress accepted our offer. She even loaned us the big red dragonflies so we could get to the mountains faster. But these men act like they don’t want our help.”
She was referring to the Imaskari soldiers and war wizards who’d accompanied the dragonborn into the caverns. Uniformed in somber colors, their pale skins mottled with dark streaks and spots in a way that, so far as Balasar was aware, made them unique among humans, they were courteous enough. But when they thought no outlander was looking, their expressions betrayed varying degrees of skepticism, amusement, and impatience.
“I thi
nk it’s a matter of professional pride,” Balasar murmured back. “They already explored these particular tunnels. They couldn’t find a path that leads all the way under the Dragonswords to the desert beyond. So it will make them look inept if somebody else does.”
“But Khouryn is a dwarf.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing to them that it does to us. Not if they believe they’re just as at home underground as his people are.”
Biri gave him a puzzled look. “Is that what they believe?”
“I don’t know and don’t intend to ask. If it’s not already common knowledge, they may not want outsiders to know. But have you ever wondered where they spent all those centuries between the fall of their old empire and the founding of the new one? Or why the new one is called High Imaskar?”
She smiled at him. “You think like a wizard.”
He normally took compliments as his due, but for some reason, hers always disconcerted him, although he trusted it didn’t show. “I doubt that. My poor tutors had to thrash me on a regular basis just to inspire me to learn my letters and numbers.”
She chuckled then her face turned serious again. “Do you think the Imaskari could be right that there’s nothing to find?”
He shrugged. “Alasklerbanbastos didn’t show Jhesrhi where to search. He just told her. Then she passed the information along to Khouryn when they were mainly worried about sneaking him out of the War College. So it could have gotten muddled along the way. But I doubt it. Jhesrhi and Khouryn are both sharp, and Gestanius’s creatures have to be slithering under the mountains somewhere. Why don’t we go inquire how things are going?”
They headed for the front of the column. Warriors of the Platinum Cadre greeted them or nodded as they passed. Like any sensible dragonborn, Balasar had no use for religion, and a wyrm-worshiping religion least of all. But he was still glad the cultists had forgiven him for infiltrating their fellowship to spy.
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