The Spectral Blaze Page 4

  His body still smoking and reeking of combustion, Alasklerbanbastos struggled to his feet. “Is that so terrible?” he asked, a hint of mockery in his voice. “Tchazzar’s the enemy, isn’t he? That’s why you want to trick him.”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Gaedynn said. Aoth’s professional ethics might allow him to trick and manipulate an employer, but he balked at assassination. And far more importantly, if everything had gone as planned, Jhesrhi and Tchazzar were wandering around in the night together. “Call them back.”

  “I can no more do that,” the dragon said, “than you can call back an arrow after you let go of the string.”

  “It’s true,” said Meralaine. “But Jhesrhi is powerful. She’ll be all right.”

  Gaedynn stared Alasklerbanbastos in the eye. “She’d better be,” he said.

  * * * * *

  Astonishment made Jhesrhi falter but only for a heartbeat; then the combat instincts honed on many a battlefield spurred her into motion once again. Those and the staff, crowing with excitement inside her head.

  Most of the phantoms were rushing Tchazzar. Of course, that was more or less what they were supposed to do. But they were closing the distance too quickly, and she could feel their malice like a frigid winter wind. They were really out to kill him.

  He had only to transform to become an entity so mighty as to make their intentions laughable. Or perhaps—no one really knew—he need only call on powers he possessed even in his human guise. But he did neither. He simply stumbled backward.

  Much as his attentions had repelled Jhesrhi mere moments before, his manifest terror filled her with guilt and a need to protect him. She scrambled to interpose herself between him and the dead. Then, rattling off an incantation, she sketched a line on the ground with the still-burning head of her staff. Fire roared upward, making a barrier to hold the dead at bay. The staff exulted.

  She didn’t, because she suspected the wall of fire would only delay the undead for a few heartbeats at most. Without turning away from the foe, she called, “Majesty! Become the dragon! You’ll be safe!”

  “Yes,” said Tchazzar in a thin voice unlike his usual exuberant tone. “I will.”

  But he didn’t. Enormous wings didn’t snap as they unfurled, and nothing swelled up from the ground to rustle and break the branches overhead. Apparently he couldn’t muster the willpower to initiate the change.

  A murky thing with elongated limbs and a head that was all glimmering needle fangs and gaping mouth leaped over the wall of flame. Its feet caught fire, but it didn’t seem to notice as it plunged down at Jhesrhi. She rammed her staff through its torso, and it burned away to nothing in an instant.

  By then, though, other apparitions were leaping the blazing barrier or simply pouncing through. Those that attempted the latter perished within moments, but apparently their hatred of the living was so fierce that they were willing to trade existence for the chance to strike a blow.

  Jhesrhi whirled, blocking, clubbing, and jabbing with her weapon. It was scarcely her preferred mode of fighting. She liked to throw spells at her foes from far away. But in the first years of her training, Aoth had insisted that she master the quarterstaff. He’d assured her there would be moments like this, and he’d turned out to be correct.

  And fortunately, even in a melee, it was possible to use some magic, especially when a wizard was as closely attuned to an arcane implement as she was to hers. With a thought, she released a bit of the power stored inside the staff, and the entire length of it burst into flame. The blaze didn’t pain or otherwise inconvenience her, but provided a searing, blinding shield to hinder the undead.

  Finally the phantoms’ attack flagged, as every assault must if the defender could only wait it out. That gave her time to rattle off a charm, and flame sheathed her entire body, affording her even more protection.

  She sprang at three more phantoms, taking the fight to them. Shrieking war cries, she spun the staff and struck. Bursts of flame incinerated a dead thing every time she connected.

  When the three were gone, she looked around, making sure no more were creeping up on her. Then she cast her eye over a wider area and scowled in dismay.

  She’d preserved only her own life, not Tchazzar’s. While she’d fought her fight, other phantoms had simply dashed around the ends of the wall of the flame. Once again, they were rushing at Tchazzar, who still hadn’t changed into a dragon or done anything else that might have saved his neck.

  Then Aoth and Jet plunged down into the midst of the bounding, gliding shadows. The familiar’s talons and momentum crushed one phantom to mist and smears of ectoplasmic jelly. A snap of his beak annihilated another.

  Aoth pointed his spear to the right. A hedge of whirling blades made of green light appeared on top of the phantoms on that side, slicing them to wisps and tatters of gloom.

  At once he swung the spear to the left. Bright, crackling lightning sprang from the head, leaping to one dead thing, and from that murky, shriveling figure to another, then on to another after that.

  It was potent battle magic, but even so, he didn’t get them all. A dozen remained, still racing toward Tchazzar.

  Then, however, the red dragon finally transformed. His clothing and jewels melted away, and his body expanded to prodigious size. A serpentine tail and batlike wings sprouted from his torso, and layered scales rippled into existence across his skin. The lower part of his face jutted into a reptilian snout and jaws.

  He opened those jaws, swept his head from right to left, and spewed fire. Jhesrhi saw that the flame was going to fall on Aoth as well as the phantoms. She sucked in a breath to shout a warning.

  It would have come too late, but Aoth or Jet had already recognized the danger for himself. The griffon lashed his wings and sprang, and his leap carried him and his master out of harm’s way.

  The phantoms failed to do the same, and Tchazzar’s breath obliterated them in an instant. Still, he spit fire three more times, scourging the ground before him with the blasts. When he finished, he stayed in his crouch and kept staring in the same direction. The membranes of his leathery wings rattled softly.

  Jhesrhi was reluctant to speak or move. She had the feeling that if she attracted his attention, he might lash out at her before he realized who she really was.

  Aoth, however, was less diffident. “Majesty,” he said. “Others are right behind me, rushing to defend you. Maybe you should go back to camp and show them you’re all right. Jhesrhi and I can clean up here.”

  “Yes,” the dragon said. “And I’ll confer with my lieutenants at dawn.” His tail sweeping through patches of flame, he turned and stalked away.

  Aoth waited a while to speak, and even then, he kept his voice low. Wyrms had sharp ears. “The dead were more … enthusiastic than we expected.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And Gaedynn hasn’t come back. I’ll go check on him and the others. Cover for me if you have to.”

  With the uneven gait of a creature whose front and hind legs were formed quite differently, Jet trotted to a spot where no branches would block his assent. Then he ran, sprang, lashed his wings, and soared upward.

  Jhesrhi turned her attention to the fires that she and Tchazzar had kindled. Like any sellsword, she had little compunction about destroying other people’s property to achieve an objective. Still, there was no reason the village should lose every tree once the mock attack—except that it hadn’t turned out to be mock, had it?—was over.

  She puffed on her staff as she’d blow out a candle. Its corona of flame and her mantle of fire blinked out together. Then, her voice like a lullaby, she crooned to the fires consuming trees and fallen branches, calming them and coaxing them to dwindle. The staff helped but grumbled without words.

  * * * * *

  Aoth’s stomach rumbled and Tchazzar shot him a glare.

  “I’m sorry, Majesty,” said Aoth. “I haven’t eaten since supper. I’ve been busy strengthening the camp’s defenses.”<
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  It wasn’t entirely a lie. On his flight into the Sky Riders, he’d met Gaedynn coming back and so hadn’t needed to travel all the way to the spot where Meralaine and Alasklerbanbastos—curse him!—had summoned the dead.

  “I’m glad someone is,” Tchazzar said. “However belatedly.” He shifted his glare to Shala.

  Seated at the foot of the trestle table, the ridged scar on her square jaw just visible in the wan dawn light that penetrated the silk wall of the pavilion, Shala took a moment to answer. Maybe because she had to suppress the retort that first sprang to mind.

  “With all respect, Majesty,” Shala said, “may I point out that the camp itself was not attacked, and its defenses did not prove inadequate? It was you, wandering beyond the perimeter with only a single wizard to guard you, who drew an attack.”

  “Are you scolding me?” Tchazzar asked.

  “Of course not, Majesty,” she replied. But her voice was cold, and Tchazzar didn’t look placated.

  Aoth had come to respect Shala even if she did in some measure share the general Chessentan prejudice against mages, Jhesrhi and himself included. So he decided to intervene before the exchange grew any more acrimonious.

  “Your Majesty,” he said, “clearly nobody is or should be blaming anyone else for anything because none of us expected trouble last night. Why would we? The war’s over. Chessenta and Threskel are truly one kingdom at last. Our focus now should be figuring out who attacked you.”

  “I agree,” Jhesrhi said. Tchazzar had seated her at his right hand, in the place that properly belonged to Shala.

  “So do I,” said Hasos. A tall, muscular man with a long-nosed, aristocratic face, he looked like the very personification of the Chessentan martial ideal and had in fact proved to be a competent commander within his limits. “And I say we start our search right here in this tent.” He turned a cold eye on Kassur Jedea.

  The scrawny, grizzled wizard-king took a breath. “Majesty,” he said, “you will recall that I was never absolute master of Threskel, with no overlord set above me, and so I took no harm from your victory. To the contrary. I was overjoyed to escape the rule of an undead thing and pledge my fealty to a god incarnate.”

  “Or perhaps,” Tchazzar said, “you merely feigned happiness to convince me to lower my guard. Then you struck at me in the hope of becoming the supreme lord of this miserable kingdom at last.”

  “No,” said Aoth. “I’ve had people keeping an eye on him throughout the procession, yesterday and last night included. He was never out of view long enough to conjure up dozens of spirits.”

  “And how would they have moved unnoticed from his tent to the orchard if he had?” Jhesrhi said. “I think, Majesty, that if we’re going to look for enemies who might plausibly attack you inside Threskel, and use the undead as their agents, we should begin with the obvious.”

  Tchazzar frowned. “Alasklerbanbastos is gone, and I made sure he can never return.”

  “I know,” said Aoth, “but Jaxanaedegor is still with us. I understand that you and he made common cause to destroy the dracolich. But now that you’ve succeeded, it’s hard to see why the truce would hold. After all, the creature is what he is.”

  Which was to say, everything that Tchazzar had come to loathe and fear, as well as an opponent in the Great Game.

  Still, the Red Dragon looked skeptical. “He seemed content with my promise to let him rule Mount Thulbane and its environs without interference.”

  “But lacking any trace of honor himself, would such a treacherous creature trust anyone else to keep such a pledge?” Aoth replied. “Especially when you gave it under what amounted to duress, and Mount Thulbane, like the rest of Threskel, is indisputably yours by right.”

  “Possibly not,” Tchazzar said. “Yet as best we could judge, the undead didn’t come from the north. They came from the direction of the Sky Riders.”

  “And you and I know there are terrible things hiding in those hills,” Jhesrhi said. “But they don’t generally come out to trouble the lands beyond. I think it would take a powerful creature at one with darkness and undeath, a being like a vampire dragon, to call them forth.”

  “Perhaps,” said Tchazzar, “perhaps.”

  “If Jaxanaedegor has turned against you,” said Aoth, “then we need to consider the implications. The other dragons who betrayed Alasklerbanbastos were following his lead, not yours. The raiders out of Murghôm left off harrying Chessenta because he arranged it, not any of us. It’s possible that we’re going to have to contend with all those foes again as well.”

  Tchazzar fingered the round medallion—gold set with the red gems called Tempus’s tears—he wore around his neck. “What, then, do my advisers recommend?”

  Hasos, who, bless him, always preferred defending to attacking, spoke up at once. “Majesty, we can’t turn our backs on Threskel if the kingdom isn’t truly pacified. I fear the invasion of Tymanther will have to wait.”

  “That’s out of the question!” Tchazzar snapped.

  Inwardly Aoth cursed.

  You knew he wouldn’t like it, said Jet. He’d been eavesdropping on the palaver through his psychic bond with his master, and he was using it to speak mind to mind. Whoever humbles Medrash’s people, or wipes them out altogether, will score a lot of points in the dragons’ game.

  But everyone says Tchazzar was a great commander in his day, Aoth replied. Like it or not, he should still see the sense in it.

  “Majesty,” he said aloud, “as you’ve probably noticed, Lord Hasos and I almost never agree. We do now. It would be unwise to march south while a threat remains within your own borders.”

  Tchazzar scowled at him. “Back in Luthcheq, you were friends with the dragonborn from the embassy. You advocated for them from the day you arrived.”

  Careful! said Jet. But Aoth had never allowed himself to flinch in the face of Tchazzar’s displeasure, and he figured that if he backed down, it would only lend weight to the dragon’s suspicions.

  “It’s true,” he said, “I liked Sir Medrash and Sir Balasar. Why not? They’re brave warriors. But it didn’t influence the way I did my job, then or now. That job being to give you good intelligence and good advice, and then to go kill whomever you tell me to.”

  “Then you’ll go kill dragonborn!” Tchazzar said.

  Jhesrhi put her hand on top of his.

  The war hero looked at her in surprise. Aoth felt a pang of pity because he knew what that seemingly innocuous gesture cost her.

  But she didn’t let it show in her face or her voice either. “Isn’t there a middle way?” she asked. “With Threskel now loyal, and Akanûl sending troops to help you, you now command a larger host than before. Can’t some of your warriors stay in the north?”

  “I volunteer the Brotherhood,” said Aoth.

  Tchazzar sneered. “Because you have no stomach for fighting Tymanther?”

  “Because you need someone here with the knack for unmasking hidden foes, and I’m the man who caught the Green Hand killers. Also, to be honest, because the Brotherhood was in the forefront of every fight with Alasklerbanbastos. We could use some time to recover. So for the moment, hunting leftover rebels and watching out for pirates will suit us better than undertaking a long march and an entirely new campaign.”

  “It makes sense,” Jhesrhi said to Tchazzar. “And you can always summon them later if you need them.”

  “Fine!” The dragon sprang to his feet. “Let’s get the procession moving! Away from these wretched hills!”

  * * * * *

  “She’s not coming,” Gaedynn said. “Tchazzar wants her company.”

  Then a tall, slender figure stepped out of the darkness. The light of the campfire gleamed on her long, blonde hair and the gold rings on her staff.

  “Although I could be wrong.”

  “He did want me for quite a while,” Jhesrhi said. She gave a nod to the others sitting around the fire. “But I kept yawning, and he finally let me go.”

  If o
nly, Gaedynn thought.

  It had taken three days to arrange the gathering. First, Oraxes, Meralaine, and Cera had to slip back into camp without revealing that they’d ever been away. Then Aoth had to decide how to proceed and pass the word around.

  He’d decided that an assembly outdoors, around a fire, ought to appear less suspicious than a palaver in a tent. He and his fellow plotters would just look like insomniacs keeping one another company, and if they kept their voices down, no one would hear what they had to say. Most of the camp was asleep, and Oraxes had cast subtle charms to deflect the attention of anyone who happened to be awake. He was good at spells of concealment and misdirection, as many a shopkeeper back in Luthcheq had discovered to his cost.

  “Join us,” said Aoth. He made room for Jhesrhi to sit down and handed her a wineskin. It was a fresh one, not the one they’d been passing around, so she wouldn’t have to put her mouth where someone else’s had already been.

  Right, Gaedynn thought, human beings aren’t allowed to touch her even at one remove, but a mad wyrm—

  He closed his eyes, took a breath, and tried to push the unfair, useless thoughts out of his head.

  “Well, let’s get on with it,” said Aoth. “As you all know, our trick failed to convince Tchazzar that he shouldn’t invade Tymanther.”

  “I think it may have made him even more eager to get away from Threskel and the Sky Riders and back to someplace he feels ‘lucky.’ ” Jhesrhi’s habitual frown deepened. It made her look haggard. “I should have known.”

  “Well, you are supposed to be the expert,” Gaedynn said.

  Cera shot him a reproachful look.

  “Tchazzar’s crazy,” said Aoth. He accepted the communal wineskin, took a swig, and passed it on. “We could only guess which way he’d jump. And we did accomplish something. After the procession splits up tomorrow, we—well, all of us except for you, Jhes—will be away from him. That will leave us free to act.”

  “And do what?” asked Meralaine. She looked subtly different than everyone else in the circle. The light of the smoking, crackling fire didn’t illuminate her quite as well as it did everyone else. But that hint of eeriness evidently didn’t bother Oraxes, who was holding her hand.