The Spectral Blaze

by Richard Lee Byers

  She chanted percussive words full of hard consonants, and gripping her staff in both hands, swung it like a mallet she was using to break down a wall. The raindrops pouring down on the spinagon glowed white and steamed and sizzled on its hide.

  That seemed promising, but it was still no guarantee that she’d overcome the other spellcaster’s power. She supposed she’d know in a moment. “Now will you talk to me?” she asked.

  Still wallowing in mud, the creature was appeared to be trying. Its mouth moved but no sound came out, or at least, none she could hear through the clatter of the rain. Then it shrieked and snatched out two more handfuls of its quills.

  Jhesrhi prepared to defend. But the spinagon stabbed the spines deep into its own torso and pitched forward onto its face.

  Well, that settles that, she thought. Scowling in annoyance, she floated to the ground and kneeled down to inspect the iron ring that had enabled the spinagon to hurl its own burst of countermagic and probably to become invisible before that. Presumably the creature’s master had given it the talisman, but there was nothing distinctive about the design to suggest who that person was.

  Not knowing made returning to the War College an even less appealing prospect than it would have been otherwise. But that was where Aoth’s strategy dictated Jhesrhi should be. So she murmured to the mud, and it churned, sucked down the spinagon’s body, and buried it completely. Then she flew back toward the fortress.

  * * * * *

  Like many mages, Oraxes had trained himself to be cognizant of his own internal states, and as a result, he often recognized a dream for what it was. Such was the case currently, and he was enjoying it. When he’d lived through the “raid” in reality, he’d been dry mouthed with anxiety that the ruse wouldn’t work. No longer. He could bask in his own cleverness as the pantomime unfolded.

  He’d masked himself in Aoth’s appearance and made a common griffon look like Jet. Occasionally he even made it talk. Maintaining the illusions was tricky, but as he and his companions flew through the night toward the proper hillside in the Sky Riders, he knew that Meralaine had an even more difficult task. She had to make it look as if she were attacking to some effect while simultaneously controlling her puppets on the ground, the zombies and skeletons masquerading as a coven of traitorous necromancers and their undead minions.

  She managed it, though. Swooping on the back of her griffon, stabbing with her wand, she actually threw the first attack, and jagged shards of something blacker even than the night rained down on the figures below.

  The sellsword archers started loosing an instant later. As befitted supposed wizards, the zombies struck back with flares of power from the miscellany of arcane weapons and talismans Oraxes had found among Aoth’s belongings. And as instructed, the dead aimed the blasts at the drakkensteeds and the wyrmkeepers astride them. If anyone was going to get hurt, let it be them.

  Throughout the action that followed, Meralaine managed to create the appearance of such fierce, fanatical resistance that when the battle ended, it seemed credible that the attackers hadn’t succeeded in taking any of the coven “alive.” The wyrmkeepers weren’t happy about it, but Oraxes mollified them by “discovering” folded papers in the pocket of a zombie’s robe. The ambiguous but suggestive jottings looked like just the clues to lead the Brotherhood on to other enemies of the Crown. It would simply take a little study.

  It was all Oraxes could do to keep from laughing as Sphorrid Nyra congratulated him on the success of the assault. He took a breath to steady himself and started to reply with the same cordiality. Then, suddenly, something covered his mouth.

  That jolted him awake, to find that he really did have a hand clamped over his lips and a dagger at his throat as well. It was dark in Aoth’s tent, with just the first gray hint of dawn light seeping through the canvas, but he could still tell it was Sphorrid and the other wyrmkeepers standing over him and Meralaine. One of the priests was covering the necromancer’s mouth and holding a big, curved knife with a single-edged blade to her neck as well.

  “Don’t struggle,” Sphorrid said. “Don’t raise your voice above a whisper. Don’t say anything that even sounds like it might be the start of a spell. Otherwise, I swear by the Five Breaths that we’ll kill you both immediately.”

  He nodded to the priest restraining Oraxes, and the man uncovered his mouth.

  “I never did meet the real Aoth Fezim, did I?” the wyrmlord continued. “It was you all along. That’s why you’re sleeping in his pavilion and his bed, to keep up the imposture until we leave camp.”

  Oraxes kept silent.

  “Why was it necessary?” Sphorrid asked. “Where is Fezim?”

  Oraxes groped for a credible, useful lie. He couldn’t think of any.

  Sphorrid shrugged. “Suit yourself. If you won’t talk here, I guarantee you will when we get you to Luthcheq. Let’s get them up and dressed. Make sure they don’t have any weapons or charms hidden in their clothes.”

  The wyrmkeeper with the dagger threw the sheets back and dragged Oraxes up off the cot, and the one with the knife did the same to Meralaine. Oraxes felt a flash of anger that the priests were seeing her naked, but there was nothing lewd in their demeanor. They were intent on their business, and that, he realized, was worse. Had she been able to distract them, perhaps it would given him a chance to … do something.

  But since that hadn’t happened, maybe he could serve as a distraction for her. As the third acolyte started pawing through their discarded garments, he asked, “How did you know?”

  Sphorrid sneered. The filed teeth made the expression jarringly ugly. “You aren’t nearly as clever as you imagine. Wyrmkeepers are priests. Did you think you could pass reanimated corpses off as living men and we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference?”

  “We hoped,” Oraxes said. The acolyte tossed him his clothes. “We were high above them, and it was dark. Why didn’t you confront us on the spot?” He already knew the answer, but it was the only thing he could think of to say to keep the conversation going.

  “Because I had to assume,” Sphorrid said, “that all the soldiers you brought on the raid were in on the deception. In other words, you and they had the four of us outnumbered.”

  “We still do,” Oraxes said, pulling on his breeches. “The entire Brotherhood is camped around this tent.”

  “And for the most part,” Sphorrid answered, “fast asleep. You’ll make sure that any who are awake don’t notice anything amiss as you walk us to our steeds because I’ve already indicated what will happen if they do. Now, both of you, hurry and finish dressing.”

  Oraxes and Meralaine drew out the process as long as they could, but that wasn’t long at all, and Tchazzar’s agents never relaxed their vigilance. When the captives were fully clad, the two priests sheathed their blades and picked up their fighting picks. All four wyrmkeepers held the weapons in a casual-looking way that would nonetheless allow them to swing in an instant. And they stayed close behind Oraxes and Meralaine as they all exited the pavilion.

  As Sphorrid had said, the whole camp seemed asleep in the last precious, fading bit of the night before the bugles started blowing and griffons began screeching, horses neighing, and mules braying for their provender. Snores rumbled from the various tents, and from the men who, in the warm summer weather, had opted to sleep out under the stars.

  I have to do something, Oraxes thought. It will get me killed, but if all four of them are busy butchering me, that might give Meralaine a real chance.

  But the right moment never came. Or else he hesitated whenever one of the wyrmkeepers glanced elsewhere or he got a quarter step farther ahead of them, and so lost his opportunities. They all rounded the big, patched tent containing the armorers’ portable forge, and they were facing the paddock where the drakkensteeds were waiting.

  The reptiles gave odd cries, harsh, yet low and tremulous, when they spied their masters. They already had their saddles cinched around their middles and their saddlebags buc
kled in place, and they crouched down to make it easy to mount when the priests and their prisoners were still several paces away.

  “Put them on the steeds one at a time,” Sphorrid said. “The boy first.”

  Oraxes’s particular captor shoved him forward then backhanded him across the ear when he tried to mount. “Not in the saddle, blasphemer,” growled the priest. “In front of it.”

  That made for a precarious and uncomfortable perch, with the drakkensteed’s vertebrae digging into Oraxes’s tender parts. Still, as the priest looked down to clip his fighting pick to the saddle, he thought Lady Luck might finally have given him his chance. But no, curse it, it wasn’t so, not with two of the other wyrmkeepers still hovering right behind Meralaine.

  Oraxes’s keeper mounted behind him, buckled the straps that would hold him in his seat, and pulled his dagger from its sheath. Meralaine’s special guard got her and himself situated in the same way. Sphorrid and the other acolyte swung themselves onto their drakkensteeds. Then the reptiles rose, scuttled, lashed their batlike wings, and climbed into the air. The camp and Mourktar fell away beneath them.

  This is it, Oraxes thought, clinging to the beast beneath him as best he could. As soon as we’re clear of the Brotherhood, they’ll set down again, gag us, and bind our hands. Then we really won’t have a chance. If I’m going to make a move, it has to be now.

  But what move could that be when it was a struggle just to keep from sliding off the drakkensteed and his captor’s dagger was poised at his back? What would Gaedynn do?

  Even in the midst of his desperation, he noticed that was a strange thought for him. He wasn’t used to wondering what others might do, probably because, when he was growing up in squalor in Luthcheq’s arcane quarter, who had there ever been worth emulating? Certainly not his teacher, an able wizard, but a bitter, drunken wreck of a man in every other way.

  He shoved such useless reflections and memories aside. Think, curse it! Think, think, think!

  Like a griffon, the drakkensteed had no reins. Was it possible that a rider controlled such a reptile in the same way, with voice commands and by touching it on the neck? Could the system of signals be the same for both sorts of creature?

  Oraxes didn’t know, but maybe he could find out. His hands were already on the drakkensteed’s scaly, bony neck. Indeed, he could hardly have lifted them away without risking a tumble.

  He surreptitiously pressed his right index finger into the reptile’s neck. It turned a hair in that direction. Oraxes held his breath while he waited for the man behind him to react but he didn’t. The shift had been too minimal to capture his attention.

  Oraxes slid his finger half an inch down the ridge that was the drakkensteed’s spine. The beast lashed its wings and climbed a little. The wyrmkeeper still didn’t react.

  All right, then. Oraxes took a breath then, pressing harder, swept his whole hand toward the drakkensteed’s head. The reptile furled its wings and plummeted.

  The wyrmkeeper cried out in surprise. And at that instant, when he was presumably intent on asserting control, Oraxes heaved himself backward, smashing the back of his head into the priest’s face.

  The man didn’t instantly retaliate with a dagger thrust, so Oraxes assumed he must have stunned him. But he didn’t think he’d hit the whoreson hard enough to knock him out. As the drakkensteed started to level off, he flung his head backward again.

  But he failed to connect because something held him away. Dazed or not, the wyrmkeeper had evidently interposed an arm.

  Oraxes was lucky it wasn’t the arm with the blade. Otherwise, he would probably have impaled himself. That didn’t make what he had to do any easier. Since he no longer had surprise on his side, his only hope of contending with the priest was to let go of the drakkensteed, twist around, and fight the man more or less face-to-face.

  As soon as he turned, he started to topple. When he grabbed the wyrmkeeper, it was as much to anchor himself as to fight him.

  The priest’s nose was flattened and streaming blood. He didn’t have the dagger in his hand anymore—he must have dropped it when Oraxes butted him—so he hammered at his captive with both fists. At the same time, he shouted a command in what sounded like Draconic. The drakkensteed started veering back and forth, making it even more difficult for Oraxes to stay on top of it.

  Oraxes realized that the wyrmkeeper wasn’t trying to subdue him. The bastard meant to throw him to his death and stood an excellent chance of succeeding. They both knew how to brawl, but the cleric was bigger and stronger and, seated as he was, possessed every other advantage.

  Except wizardry. If Oraxes could bring his gift to bear even with the wyrmkeeper mauling him and without a talismanic device to focus his power, he might still have a chance.

  Clinging with one hand, struggling to shield himself from his adversary’s bludgeoning fists with the other, he gasped the opening words of an incantation. The acolyte’s eyes widened when he realized what his captive was doing. The man redoubled his efforts to fling or shake Oraxes off the drakkensteed’s back or, failing that, to hurt him sufficiently to make him stumble in the midst of his recitation.

  As Oraxes reached the final words of power, the wyrmkeeper grabbed him by the arm he’d been using to block. Oraxes had no way to make the necessary mystical gesture except with the hand he’d been employing to hold on to his foe. He let the cleric go, and now there was nothing except the cleric’s grip keeping him in place.

  He could see the realization of that fact dawn in the wyrmkeeper’s face. The man snarled and started to heave him sideways. Oraxes curled his free hand through the necessary pass, thrust it under the priest’s scale-armor chasuble, and grabbed hold of the leather garment beneath.

  Force stabbed from his hand just as if he’d cast darts of light, but it passed directly into the wyrmkeeper’s body. The man convulsed, then went limp as a rag doll. Still zigzagging, the drakkensteed made him flop from side to side.

  Oraxes was afraid to let go of the corpse, but he had to if he was going to turn back around and try to control the drakkensteed. He did it in one fast, frantic motion, then leaned down over the serpentine neck, so he was lying on the reptile as much as sitting astride it.

  He squeezed a fold of skin, giving the command that meant stop what you’re doing. To his relief, the drakkensteed resumed flying in a straight line. Whether or not it understood that one of the humans on its back had just killed the other, it was evidently willing to obey the only rider left.

  Oraxes looked around. The sky was somewhat lighter, light enough to reveal the fury and consternation in the faces of the remaining wyrmkeepers. He sneered and started to make a filthy gesture. Then Sphorrid bellowed, “Surrender or we’ll kill Meralaine!”

  A jolt of dread obliterated Oraxes’s momentary feeling of satisfaction. But he was sure that if he gave up, he and Meralaine were as good as dead anyway.

  “I’m going to fight to the death no matter what!” he shouted back. “If you kill both of us, you won’t have anyone left to question!” At the same time, he made his drakkensteed climb, seeking the advantage of the high air.

  It was a sensible tactic to attempt, but he knew he couldn’t afford to let the fight come down to who was the best flyer because it surely wasn’t he. Still a novice when it came to riding griffons, he was bound to prove even clumsier on his current mount. He started another incantation.

  Meanwhile, the wyrmkeepers were climbing too. Sphorrid chanted a spell of his own.

  Oraxes finished first and shrouded himself and his mount in a haze that ought to make them particularly hard to target in the predawn gloom. It didn’t blur his own vision, but he felt a sudden chill in the air around him as the enchantment sprang into being.

  An instant later, one of his enemies’ drakkensteeds spewed a flare of fire at him, while another spit a puff of what was surely poisonous or corrosive vapor. They evidently had no compunction about striking at one of their own kind if directed to do so. Sphorrid roar
ed the last word of his spell, thrust out his hand, and for an instant the luminous head of a ghostly blue dragon glimmered around the extremity. The illusory wyrm spit a crackling zigzag of lightning that Oraxes assumed to be entirely real.

  The flames fell short, and the other two attacks missed, although not by much. So far, so good, but the cloak of blur wouldn’t last much longer. Glaring at Sphorrid, Oraxes started another incantation. Then, on the final word, he wrenched himself around and thrust out his hand at the wyrmkeeper seated behind Meralaine.

  He hated doing it. He was terrified of hitting her instead of her keeper or of killing the beast beneath her and making her fall. But he needed her in the fight.

  And because she was bending over the neck of her drakkensteed as he had, the shaft of blue-white light that leaped from his fingertips blazed over her and stabbed at her startled captor’s neck. The priest jerked then went limp, his throat and upper torso covered in frost and his heart stopped by a shock of bitter cold.

  Or at least Oraxes hoped he’d stopped it. Before he could be sure, his drakkensteed lashed its wings and flung itself sideways. The motion nearly dumped him off its back, and for an instant, he thought that was precisely what the beast had intended. Then, claws poised to catch and rend, another reptile and its acolyte rider plunged through the space his own mount had just vacated.

  “Get the girl!” Sphorrid bellowed. The acolyte pulled his drakkensteed out of its dive and wheeled in Meralaine’s direction. Oraxes could tell that he had indeed killed her captor, leaving her in control of his mount. Unfortunately he could tell it primarily by the clumsy, floundering way the beast had begun to fly. When it came to riding a winged creature, Meralaine was even more of a beginner than he was, and she was plainly overcontrolling, confusing, and irritating the reptile.