The Spectral Blaze

by Richard Lee Byers

  Peering in all directions, Khouryn was prowling around at the point where the pale, steady shine of the floating orbs faded out. He’d explained that was intentional. There were things a dwarf could see in the dark but not in the light and vice versa. Operating at the leading edge of the illumination made it easy to switch back and forth between the two modes of sight.

  “Anything?” Balasar asked.

  “Not yet,” Khouryn said. He turned toward Biri. “I noticed you and a couple of the Imaskari wizards casting a spell a while back.”

  She shrugged. “More divination. It didn’t reveal anything. But that could be because Gestanius has countermeasures in place.”

  “I imagine it is,” Balasar said. “But saying so won’t keep our new friends from getting restless. They’re going to want to turn back pretty soon.”

  “We have lanterns,” Biri replied, and Balasar liked the matter-of-fact way in which she said it.

  “That we do,” he said. “Still—”

  “Look at that,” Khouryn said.

  Balasar turned. The dwarf was using his new battle-axe, a cherished heirloom and gift from the Daardendriens, to point at a spot where the high wall met the vaulted ceiling.

  Balasar squinted then said, “I don’t see anything.”

  Khouryn grinned, a flash of white teeth inside his bushy beard. “Good.” He waved for Medrash, Nellis, and Jemleh Bluerhine to come forward.

  Predictably Medrash looked keen as a newly honed dagger to learn what was afoot. Clad in a black greatcoat with four layers of shoulder cape, the crystal globe that served as his arcane focus cradled against his chest, Nellis appeared almost as eager. The diplomat had been startled when Tarhun ordered him to join the expedition, but at some point on the sea voyage, his attitude had shifted, and he was enjoying himself.

  It was Jemleh who advanced in a more leisurely fashion. Tall for a human, the Imaskari commander wore the same sort of ink black greatcoat as Nellis. But his had an oval onyx clasp to hold the high collar shut, and he carried a cane with a crook carved from the same stone to help him cast his spells.

  “What do you need?” he asked.

  Khouryn pointed as he had before. “It looks to me like there’s a rift at the very top of the wall, right before it bends out and turns into ceiling. It’s hard to see because it’s almost beyond the reach of the lights, and because of the way the stone humps out to either side. That makes it look like just an indentation, not the start of another tunnel.”

  Jemleh squinted at it for a couple of heartbeats. “I think it is just an indentation.”

  Biri smiled. “We don’t have to speculate.” She murmured a rhyme and pressed her hands together as though making a snowball. Between them appeared an orb of light like the ones the Imaskari had conjured except that the glow was golden, not silvery. She tossed it and it floated upward.

  Its radiance spilled into a gap broad enough to allow the passage of even the biggest creatures assailing High Imaskar. It would be tight for the largest ones, but they could squirm through. Balasar felt a pang of excitement.

  “You have good eyes,” Jemleh told Khouryn. “I admit we never noticed that. But you don’t know that it goes anywhere. There could be a back wall just beyond reach of the light.”

  Balasar grinned. “It’s like the lady said. We don’t have to speculate.”

  “Right,” said Medrash. “We don’t.” He turned and beckoned for a couple of warriors of the Cadre to come forward. Jemleh achieved a similar result by pointing to a pair of Imaskari soldiers with his cane.

  Nellis conjured another ball of light and floated it halfway up the wall. Gripping a first handhold, Medrash started to climb. Other men-at-arms followed. Meanwhile, the two Imaskari mages muttered incantations that Balasar realized were the same, perhaps a charm to enhance their strength or agility. Biri didn’t, though. Smiling, she simply awaited her turn to begin the ascent.

  Balasar stuck close to her as they pulled themselves up. But there were plenty of places to grip or plant one’s toes, and she didn’t need any help. Above them, one of the Cadre warriors hauled himself up onto the floor of the gap and swore softly.

  When Balasar reached the top, he saw what the excitement was about. Though it was impossible to know how far it extended, he and his companions had entered a cave every bit as spacious as the one below. He found it vaguely disquieting that such a prominent feature had gone undetected. It made him imagine a whole world riddled with lightless, secret spaces whose existence no dragonborn ever suspected, even when they were right above his head, beneath his feet, or within arm’s reach.

  Mainly, though, it made him eager to press on. He looked around for Medrash and Khouryn; then everything went black.

  He realized some countermagic had put out Biri’s light. He snatched out his broadsword; he and Medrash had left their greatswords behind in Skyclave, the Imaskari capital. The larger weapons were fine for showing what important fellows they’d become, but they preferred the blades with which they’d practiced all their lives when it was actually time to fight.

  Khouryn bellowed, “Troglodytes!” Then came a thunk that was likely his axe cleaving flesh. An Imaskari yelled something in his own language. Perhaps trying to make a new light, Biri rattled off a spell in dactylic trimeter.

  Balasar smelled a putrid odor. Instinct prompted him to pivot to the right and cut. His blade sliced something that gave a hissing screech. At the same time, he felt something sweep past his head as his foe’s attack, whatever it had been, just missed him.

  Then amber radiance flared through the cave, revealing that their foes did indeed appear to be troglodytes, cave-dwelling reptilian savages like stunted parodies of dragonborn. But they had long necks like the creatures that had attacked Balasar and his companions beside the Methmere, skins that gleamed like quicksilver, and a quicksilver fluidity to their movements.

  The cave started flickering from light to dark as Biri’s magic fought the power that sought to snuff her conjured glow. It made everything appear to move in a series of sickening, disorienting jerks.

  Balasar had gashed his particular foe across the snout. It was hardly a mortal wound, and he followed up with a lunge. But the creature melted into shapelessness as if it really were made of liquid metal, flowed and splashed out of reach of the attack, and reformed itself. Its jaws opened.

  Balasar abruptly remembered that the long-necked reptiles beside the Methmere had possessed breath weapons. He sidestepped, held his own breath, and lifted his buckler to cover his face.

  A jet of vapor washed over him. His eyes burned and filled with tears. But in spite of them, and the flickering, he could just make out the troglodyte rushing him. He ducked a stroke of its flint-studded war club and thrust his point up under its ribs. It collapsed and Biri cried out behind him.

  He turned. Two troglodytes had grabbed her by the arms, a tactic that deprived her of the use of any spell requiring mystical gestures, and were wrestling her toward the edge of the drop. She started shouting words of power, but Balasar doubted she could finish the incantation in the moment she had left.

  He jerked his sword out of the creature he’d just killed, rushed Biri’s assailants, and slashed the throat of the one on the left. The other let go of her and pounced at him with raking claws and snapping fangs. He jumped out of the way, killed the thing with a cut to the spine, and only then recognized that he himself was teetering on the very lip of the drop. The wretched flickering was still playing tricks on his eyes. He heaved himself forward and banged down on his knees. It hurt but it was preferable to plunging to his death.

  The ambient light belatedly grew brighter and steadier. Several paces away, Medrash had set the blade of his sword shining with Torm’s power. Peering around, Balasar was relieved to see that only a couple of his comrades were down. No doubt that was because there actually weren’t all that many quicksilver troglodytes, and those there were had only primitive weapons. Apparently they’d counted on their breath attacks
and the explorers’ blindness to even the odds.

  Well, you lose that wager, Balasar thought. He chose another foe, but before he could reach it, Khouryn stepped up behind the creature and chopped its head half off. Balasar oriented on still another just in time to watch Medrash drive his sword into its torso.

  And that was the end of that. As the last troglodyte’s legs crumpled beneath it, Nellis and Jemleh clambered up into the chamber.

  “Perfect timing,” Balasar said.

  Nellis, who’d gotten used to his sense of humor, smiled and made an obscene gesture in response. Jemleh glowered. Biri giggled.

  Peering down the passage that stretched away before them, Khouryn flung some of the gore from his axe with a snap of his wrist. “I’m now reasonably sure this is the right path,” he said. “Does anyone disagree?”

  “It remains to be seen,” Jemleh said. “But I admit, the troglodytes were sentries. And you don’t post sentries where there’s nothing to protect.”

  “And if I’m not mistaken,” Medrash said, “these sentries were akin to some of the creatures that served Skuthosin. The ones the giant shamans summoned with their talismans.”

  Khouryn took a rag from the pouch on his belt and wiped more blood from his weapon. “We should rig some ropes,” he said, “so the rest of the company can climb up here without it taking all—look!”

  Balasar peered down the new tunnel and felt a stab of alarm when he saw the dragon glaring back at him.

  Crouching at the edge of the light, it gleamed like the quicksilver troglodytes. Its head had a pair of short horns curling forward under the jaws and two longer ones curving back behind the eyes. Its body was serpent-slim, and Balasar could just make out the lashing tail all but concealed behind its wings.

  He and his fellow warriors came on guard. The wizards lifted their arcane implements and started chanting, at which point the wyrm fled—but not by turning and retreating up the tunnel. Instead, it dissolved and flowed sideways, pouring itself through a narrow crack in the granite. It took only a heartbeat, and then it was gone. The mages’ voices trailed off, leaving their incantations unfinished. The forces that had been accumulating around them dissipated in crackling showers of sparks.

  “The real guardian of the way,” Biri said.

  “And we scared it off,” said Nellis.

  Balasar grinned. “Don’t feel too smug. I imagine we’ll see it again. It just means to fight us at a place and moment of its choosing.”

  Still, he shared the wizard’s good humor because he and his comrades clearly had found Gestanius’s secret path, and the dragonborn had contended with wyrms before.

  But when everyone had made the climb into the new cave and the expedition was arranging itself in the proper marching order, he noticed that not all of his comrades looked eager. Vishva had a clenched, dour set to her jaw.

  That wouldn’t do. She was one of the mainstays of the Cadre, and if she lost her nerve, it might well prove contagious.

  Balasar sauntered over to her and murmured, “Buck up. We beat Skuthosin, didn’t we?”

  The cultist glowered. “I’m not afraid.”

  “Then what is wrong?”

  “From the description, the creature you saw down the tunnel was a quicksilver dragon. A metallic.”

  Balasar shrugged. “If you say so.”

  “Skuthosin and the dragons who served him were chromatics,” Vishva said. “Children of Tiamat. It made perfect sense that they were doing evil. But metallics are the children of Bahamut. So why is this one helping Gestanius?”

  “Did you ever listen to the old stories and songs?” Balasar replied. “Our ancestors had all sorts of wyrms eating and enslaving them in the world that was.”

  “I know that!” Vishva snapped. “I’m not an idiot. But those dragons didn’t know the gods. The ones here do. It ought to make a difference.”

  Balasar didn’t know what to say to that. “Just promise me that when the quicksilver drake comes back, you’ll fight, whether you think it’s supposed to be friendly or not.”

  “Of course.” Vishva shook her head, and the ropelike scales dangling at the back rattled together. “But truly, I don’t understand.”

  S

  I

  X

  20–22 ELEASIS, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE

  Aoth leveled his spear and spoke a word of command. With a sharp crack, a thunderbolt leaped from the point and split a skull-sized stone on the slope above him.

  “Impressive,” said Jet dryly.

  “Let’s hope they think so,” Aoth replied. Otherwise, orcs being orcs, they were likely to try to kill him, and he and his comrades would have to slaughter them when all he really wanted to do was talk.

  He waved the leafy branch that signified peaceful intentions over his head. Then he and Jet clambered on toward the ruined little fortress. Aoth’s boots slipped in the scree. Flying would have been easier but maybe a little too impressive. People sometimes panicked when a huge, black griffon with blood red eyes swooped down at them.

  “As well they should,” said Jet, perceiving the tenor of his master’s thoughts.

  Aoth glanced back at Gaedynn, Cera, Mardiz-sul, Yemere, Son-liin, and the other folk assembled on the trail below. Nobody was pointing or signaling, so apparently no one had spotted anything that had escaped his own attention. Of course, people rarely did, but it was still a good idea to have several pairs of eyes keeping track of a tense situation.

  Eventually one of the half dozen gray-skinned, pig-faced archers on the crumbling battlements deigned to acknowledge him. Squinting despite the shade provided by the broad brim of a soft felt hat—orcs tended to be nocturnal—he yelled, “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “My name is Aoth Fezim. I want to parley with your leader.”

  “Lay down your weapons and come in. Leave the beast outside.”

  Aoth grinned. “No. To all of that. It’s a nice day. If your leader feels like talking, he can come out.”

  “Wait,” said the orc.

  Aoth did. Judging that the branch had served its purpose, he set it down. Then three figures strode out of the shadowed arch where gates had once hung.

  Two of them were orcs who’d each gouged out an eye in devotion to the war god Gruumsh, and were likely the most formidable in the group. But it was the third one who made Aoth wary and inspired him to activate a tattoo whose power shielded against poison.

  That was because the creature was a medusa, and while the males of his kind were somewhat less terrible than the females, whose stare could actually turn a man to stone, they were fearsome enough. Tall and bald with yellow, slit-pupil eyes, he had a bitter, intelligent face and wore black and purple brocade garments that, though stained and faded, had once been elegant. He looked as if he’d started out as an important fellow in some sophisticated place, and Aoth wondered what ill fortune had reduced him to leading a handful of barbarians in the middle of the wilderness.

  “You and your friends are on my road,” the medusa said.

  “If it’s yours,” said Aoth, “you should maintain it better.”

  “You’ll have to pay the toll,” the medusa persisted. “Half of what you have. My warriors will go through your possessions to make sure you don’t cheat.”

  “Please,” said Aoth. “Peering from those walls, someone must have noticed that the folk down below are just the vanguard of a larger force. And by larger, I mean a great deal larger than yours. Do you really think you can keep us from passing by? Why, just because this heap of rubble commands the trail? Maybe if you had catapults, but I flew over, and I know you don’t.”

  The medusa scowled. “This one time, you have my permission to pass.”

  “Good,” said Aoth. “Thank you. But don’t give up on making some coin just yet. I am willing to pay for information about the area around the Old Man’s Head.”

  The bandit chieftain smiled a snide sort of smile. “Do you have business with the gray wyrm?”

&nbs
p; “Well, I’m certainly interested in hearing all about him.”

  “Then it will be my pleasure to help you find him. Provided that the price is right.”

  “How does ten gold—”

  Something overhead made a thumping sound. Aoth looked up. One of the orcs on the battlements had an arrow sticking out of his chest. He tottered and pitched backward out of sight.

  At the same instant, Jet spoke mind to mind, not with language but rather a wordless urging to look back down. As Aoth did, the medusa and his bodyguards finished snatching their scimitars from their scabbards.

  Jet crouched, then, with a snap of his wings, sprang to tear the threatening creatures apart. The medusa hissed, hunched forward, and glared. The griffon jerked in mid-leap, and a vicarious spasm of pain and nausea knotted Aoth’s insides.

  Despite the assault, Jet slammed down on one orc and pierced him with his talons. But the other bodyguard jumped clear, then came on the attack. Shaking and seeing double, the familiar ducked an initial sword cut.

  Aoth couldn’t go to his aid. He had his own adversary. The medusa lunged and slashed at his throat.

  Gripping his spear with both hands—he’d left his targe behind so he could manage the cursed tree branch—Aoth parried, then riposted with a thrust to the guts. The medusa sidestepped and made it look easy.

  Maybe for him it was. As they traded attacks, Aoth observed how economical and precise his adversary’s actions were and how he always returned to a perfect guard after even the fiercest exchange. The creature was as adept with a scimitar as Khouryn was with an axe or Gaedynn, with a bow.

  And the poisonous power of a medusa’s gaze stabbed at Aoth whenever the exigencies of the duel obliged him to look his foe in the face. So far it was producing only twinges of headache, but it was bound to break through his defenses eventually.

  Judging that he needed to finish the confrontation fast, he retreated right off the relatively flat space where the old fort sat and back onto the slope. He slid again, and swayed as he struggled to keep his balance. But he’d gained the distance and time he needed to rattle off rhyming words of power.