The Rite Read online

  “Still, it’s remarkable that the dread Malazan let enemies escape. I hope frenzy isn’t rotting your faculties.”

  “That’s two insults,” she said. “I beg you, puke up a third.” Rather to her regret, he prudently stood mute. “Why should I absent myself from the battleground just to kill a couple of our ‘kindly’ kin? Such creatures are doomed one and all to permanent lunacy. Isn’t that as cruel a fate as any I could give them?”

  It pleased her that, for all his glibness, Ishenalyr couldn’t come up with an argument for that.

  The blue dragon was dead, but its conjured storm howled on. Yagoth Devil-eye had found an overhang of rock under which he could sit, hold court, and stay relatively dry. There was only enough room for one to lounge comfortably, though. Those who came to confer with him had to stand in the cold, pelting rain, and he rather liked it that way.

  At the moment, the human and halfling awaited his pleasure. Bundled up in their hoods and cloaks, their layers of “civilized” clothing, they looked puny and effete as such little vermin generally did, but they’d already demonstrated during the fight with the drake that the appearance was misleading. They were two of the rare human or demihuman bugs who might prove a match for an ogre in a one-on-one fight.

  The question was, what in the name of the Great Claw did they want? Their presence surely portended something important. They’d arrived at the same time as the blue wyrm, and Yagoth had never in his life seen a dragon of that color before, hadn’t even known that they existed. The reptile must have been an omen, but of what, he wasn’t yet sure.

  When he’d observed everything about the strangers that two eyes could reveal, Yagoth closed the left to peer with the blood-red one alone. His shaman powers had awakened after a manticore ripped open his face, and occasionally the blemished eye revealed secrets imperceptible to normal sight. Often enough, its unblinking stare made folk quail, and that could be useful, too. But it failed to show him anything unusual, and the human and halfling bore its regard without flinching.

  Yagoth growled, “Who are you?”

  “I’m Pavel Shemov,” said the human, “a servant of the Morninglord, as you already noticed. My companion is Will Turnstone.”

  “My people are hungry,” said Yagoth. “Tell me why I shouldn’t ‘dump your arses in the stewpot.’”

  Will grinned. “I didn’t realize you heard that.”

  Yagoth spat. “I hear everything I need to hear.”

  “It would be foolish to kill us,” said Pavel, “when we can help you.”

  “How?” the ogre asked.

  “Do you know what a Rage of Dragons is?” the human asked.

  “I’m not stupid, sun priest. Don’t hint that I am.”

  “I didn’t mean any insult,” Pavel said. “If you know what a Rage is, you likely also know we’re in the middle of one. Flights of wyrms are rampaging across all Faerûn, not just Thar. What you may not know—Will and I only recently discovered it ourselves—is that this Rage is the worst ever. In fact, it’s so bad, it’s never going to end of its own accord.”

  Yagoth snorted. “Ridiculous.”

  “I assure you, it’s so. Perhaps you know a spell to sort truth from lies. If so, cast it. I won’t resist.”

  The shaman frowned, pondering. Pavel really did sound sincere. Which didn’t necessarily mean he knew what he was talking about, but unlike many of his kind, Yagoth was too canny to dismiss the learning of human scholars and spellcasters out of hand.

  “Even if it is true,” Yagoth said, “so what?”

  “In ancient times,” said Pavel, “the wise knew things about the Rage that we modern clerics and wizards have forgotten. Will and I belong to a band of folk trying to recover that lore so we can use it to restore the wyrms to their senses.”

  Puzzled, Yagoth cocked his head and asked, “You think I know the cure?”

  “No,” Pavel said. “No living person does. If the knowledge still exists, it’s preserved in all-but-forgotten shrines and the like. Will and I came to Thar seeking one such site.”

  “Only it wasn’t where my idiot partner expected it to be,” said Will.

  “I have a map …” Pavel paused as if trying to judge whether Yagoth knew what such a thing was. “But I hesitate to take it out where I’m standing. The rain will soak it.”

  Yagoth wasn’t sure whether to laugh or take offense at the lanky man’s effrontery. He shifted over a bit and said, “Squeeze in under the rock, then, if you’ve got the nerve.”

  Many humans, Yagoth knew, would have hesitated to come so close, and once they did, might well have gagged at what they claimed was the stink of an ogre’s warty skin. Pavel, however, simply said, “Thank you,” and entered the cramped space without any display of trepidation or distaste.

  The human produced a piece of parchment from inside his mantle, unfolded it, and held it for Yagoth to see.

  “This is the lake,” said Pavel, pointing, “that your clan passed a few days back. I thought the site would be there, but all we found were the worn remnants of a few standing stones. Yet, unless I’m completely mistaken, the ruin must be somewhere in this region—” he drew a circle with his fingertip—“and it should be near a body of water.”

  Yagoth leered, comprehending at last. “You think I can point you in the right direction.”

  “Can you?” Pavel asked. “This is your country, and I suspect that, as a shaman, you have some interest in old places of power.”

  “Even if I can,” Yagoth said, “why should I?”

  “My guess,” said Will, a drop of water escaping the top edge of his hood to drip across his face, “is that you’re trying to lead your tribe to a place of safety. Caves, maybe. Unfortunately, it’s pointless. Over the long run, there won’t be any safe havens. The wyrms will keep roaming and killing till they’ve eaten us all, and I guarantee, you ogres may think of yourselves as big and strong, but you’re just a mouthful of lunch to a dragon, the same as halflings and humans.”

  Yagoth glared at him and said, “We’ve killed the drakes that threatened us.”

  Will glanced back at the scene behind him, at the ogres bearing enormous, grisly wounds, and the females wailing for those slain outright by the blue wyrm.

  “Right, on second thought, you’re doing splendidly. Forget I said anything.”

  “The point,” said Pavel, “is that your folk and mine have a common interest in ending the Rage, so why not help us do it? It won’t cost you anything.”

  “It could cost the lives of my followers,” Yagoth said.

  Pavel’s brown eyes narrowed. “I don’t follow.”

  “I know where there’s a second lake,” Yagoth said, “with ruined temples overlooking it. I could mark the location on this badly drawn, misleading map of yours. But you still wouldn’t find it hidden among the hills. You’ll only reach it if we ogres turn around and take you.”

  Pavel and Will exchanged glances. Yagoth was sure he knew what they were thinking: Spending an hour or two among “savage,” man-eating giant-kin was a daunting prospect. Lingering for days in their company might be tantamount to suicide.

  Yet Pavel turned back to Yagoth and said, “If you’re willing, we’d be grateful to have you as our guides. Since we’re going to travel together, may I use my skills to tend your wounded? I don’t mean to disparage your own abilities, but there are more injured folk than any one healer can manage alone.”

  Yagoth smirked and said, “I guess you don’t want any sick ogres slowing down the march. Don’t worry, they wouldn’t. I wouldn’t let them. But do what you want.”

  In point of fact, it was a good idea. Yagoth’s patron Vaprak, a god of carnage and destruction, was niggardly when it came to granting healing magic to his shamans. A priest of soft, nurturing Lathander might do more in a day to restore the strength of the troupe than Yagoth could do in a tenday.

  Though Pavel’s services wouldn’t lull Yagoth into dropping his guard, or make him falter when the time came to k
ill the human and his insolent halfling friend.

  Thar had once been the site of a mighty kingdom of ogres and orcs, one so ancient that even they only vaguely remembered it. That bygone age had indeed left a scatter of ruins behind, if one knew where to look. According to legend, buried in those haunted sites were enchanted weapons and other valuable relics.

  So Yagoth found it plausible that Pavel and Will truly had come seeking some sort of long-lost treasure or lore, and once they located it, he’d dispose of them and seize the booty for himself. Even if they were after exactly what they claimed, he saw no reason to permit them to carry the secret away. For in that case, the prize was essentially the power to control dragons, wasn’t it, and Yagoth could rise high wielding a weapon like that. He could unite and rule the warring tribes of Thar like old King Vorbyx come again, with a blue wyrm for his emblem.

  In Raryn’s opinion, the trouble with magical fog was that no one could see through it from either side. As he and Chatulio flew onward, he kept peering backward. He invariably saw that nothing had poked a reptilian snout through the cloud Kara had conjured to shroud the mouth of the pass. Still, he would have felt more secure had he possessed some way of knowing what lay beyond the mist—of verifying that the chromatic dragons, that colossal red and the others, truly had abandoned the chase.

  In fact, the dwarf was so busy looking over his shoulder and casting about in general—because his experience as a hunter had taught him that flying predators could appear just about anywhere—that it took a while for Chatulio’s muttering to snag his attention. The gods only knew how long the copper had been ranting under his breath.

  “Stupid,” Chatulio snarled, “stupid, incompetent, useless. Crazy!”

  He used one forefoot to rake at the other. The talons drew blood.

  “Don’t!” Raryn said, patting the base of the copper’s neck as he might gentle a pony. The gesture felt wrong—Chatulio was a sentient being, not an animal—but he had to try to reach his companion somehow.

  “Crazy!” Chatulio repeated.

  He slashed himself again.

  “No,” Raryn insisted. Dorn and Kara were flying ahead of their comrades. Raryn considered calling out to them for help, but he had a feeling Chatulio might react badly to that. “The Rage had you for a second, but you’re all right now.”

  “I’m supposed to be the illusionist,” Chatulio said. “The trickster. The sneak. My magic should have slipped us past the chromatics, but I’ve lost my cunning. The frenzy has eaten it away.”

  “It was just bad luck,” Raryn said. “When spell fights spell, the outcome is always uncertain. I’m so sorcerer, but even I know that.”

  “Then I was going to throw away my life, and yours, too. At that moment, I didn’t even remember you were on my back. I just wanted to kill something. Kara and Dorn had to risk themselves to save us.”

  “Back at the village,” Raryn said, “it was Kara who became confused. It’s happening to all of you, and there’s no point in feeling ashamed. Don’t you see, exaggerated self-hatred is simply another way the Rage gnaws at you.”

  “You don’t know,” Chatulio said. “It’s not happening to you, so you can’t understand.”

  It seemed to Raryn that the dragon was waxing even more hysterical. What if, wracked with self-loathing, Chatulio decided simply to fold his wings and fall out of the sky? In all likelihood, neither of them would survive. The ranger realized he’d better involve his other comrades after all. If nothing else, maybe Kara could shackle the copper’s will with another charm.

  Raryn drew in a breath and placed two fingers before his mouth to whistle, but Chatulio twisted his neck and said, “What’s that?”

  Chatulio’s enormous body and outstretched wings largely obstructed his rider’s view of the landscape directly below. Raryn had to shift forward to see what the copper had noticed, but then he spotted it easily enough. A dead human lay amid a tumble of rocks on an escarpment.

  “We should take a closer look,” Raryn said.

  The corpse had distracted Chatulio from his poisonous self-absorption. Maybe, if the diversion lasted for a while, the copper wouldn’t slip back into the same mood.

  Raryn whistled, and Kara’s head whipped backward. Maybe she thought he’d signaled to warn that the chromatics had reappeared, and he made haste to reassure her.

  “We’re all right,” he shouted, “but Chatulio spotted a dead man. We want to see if we can figure out who he was, and what he’s doing out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  “All right,” the song dragon said, and her lustrous lavender eyes narrowed.

  Raryn had a hunch she’d just noticed the fresh blood on Chatulio’s forefeet, but if so, she evidently decided not to mention it.

  Still keeping an eye out for signs of pursuit, the drakes wheeled, glided, and set lightly down on the steep incline where the dead man lay. Raryn and Dorn swung themselves down from the reptiles’ backs, and they all clambered toward the body. With their sharp talons and prodigious strength, the wings and tails they poised to enhance their balance, Kara and Chatulio moved almost as nimbly as they would on a horizontal surface. Raryn had learned to climb on the icy crags of the Great Glacier, and he too had little difficulty. It was Dorn who floundered, slid, and sent loose pebbles and dirt bouncing and streaming down the mountainside. In the dwarf’s opinion, the big human with his iron limbs wasn’t clumsy, but he thought he was, and accordingly, he acted like it. Fortunately, in combat he forgot to limp and lurch.

  The corpse was burned and blistered, as if by a black or green dragon’s corrosive breath. The disfigurement made it difficult to tell much about the victim, but it looked to Raryn as if he’d been relatively young, and had dressed all in gray. Judging from the bloated belly, and the leakage around the mouth and nostrils, he’d been dead for a few days, though the local animals, evidently disliking the acidic tang underlying the commonplace reek of putrefaction, had left him alone.

  “Poor man,” Kara sighed.

  “Poor monk, maybe,” said Dorn. “This Monastery of the Yellow Rose is dedicated to Ilmater, isn’t it, and the servants of the Broken God wear gray.”

  “I think you may be right,” Chatulio said.

  “So,” Dorn asked, “what is he doing out here instead of in the stronghold?”

  “The monks travel all over Damara on various errands,” Kara said. “Perhaps he was simply away from home when the chromatics arrived to lay siege to the place.”

  “Maybe,” the half-golem said, sunlight glinting on his iron arm and half-mask. “But there’s another possibility. Many castles are built with secret tunnels underneath. Maybe this lad used such a passage to come out. If so, we can go in the same way.”

  “If we can find it,” Chatulio said.

  “Raryn can backtrack him,” said Dorn, “even over these rocks.”

  “I’ll try,” said the dwarf, though he recognized, as his comrades perhaps did not, that even if he found the hidden gateway to a subterranean path, there was a good chance the road would only take them to their deaths.

  26 Mirtul, the Year of Rogue Dragons

  “I don’t understand” Taegan said, “why this dreary subject fascinates you so.”

  “Just as I don’t comprehend,” Rilitar retorted, a crystal goblet of a passable Sembian white in his hand “why it seems to embarrass you.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way.” Taegan paused to hack into his handkerchief. “It’s just that the lives of avariels are simple. Primitive. There’s little to say about them.”

  The wizard shook his head. “I can’t believe that. I’m not one of those elves who arrogantly believes our race superior to all others. But our longevity does afford us certain advantages. It gives us perspective, perhaps even wisdom, time and continuity to develop subtle arts and rich traditions. That’s why it’s difficult for me to credit that the life of any elven community, no matter how small or isolated, could be as drab as you suggest.”

  “You say that,
but we have both forsaken our kin to dwell among humans.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way,” Rilitar said, echoing his guest’s turn of phrase with a smile. “I wanted to see the world, and learn what other races had to teach, but I certainly didn’t leave because I disdained my people or homeland. Cormanthor is the loveliest place in Faerûn, and one day, I’ll return.”

  Taegan wondered if the great forest held any elven cities as magnificent as the long-vanished one he had, with Amra’s guidance, visited in a dream. If so, he almost thought he’d like to see it, an impulse that caught him by surprise. He put the odd notion aside to try to turn the conversation in a more useful direction.

  “How did you wind up in Thentia?” he asked. It was an innocuous question intended to pave the way for others that might, in one way or another, prove more revelatory.

  “Well,” Rilitar began, and above the ceiling, something crashed.

  Inwardly, Taegan winced. He’d accepted Rilitar’s supper invitation partly so he could surreptitiously unlock a second-story window. While he kept the mage occupied, Jivex was supposed to sneak inside and see what he could discover in Rilitar’s library and conjuration chamber. It sounded as if the faerie dragon had knocked over a piece of crockery or glass.

  Rilitar sprang to feet, snatched a piece of leather from one of his pockets, and chanting, twirled it through a mystic pass. For an instant, light shimmered across his body as the spell enclosed him in an aura of protection then he ran for the stairs. Hoping to look just as startled and concerned as the wizard was, Taegan grabbed his sword from the cloak rack and dashed after him. He prayed that Jivex had the sense to beat a hasty retreat back out the window, or, failing that, at least make himself invisible.

  Then he smelled smoke, and felt warmth emanating from overhead. The rustle of flame mixed with a grating buzz. Jivex hissed. Taegan realized the faerie dragon was fighting something.

  Taegan and Rilitar reached the top of the stairs and dashed on. The mage threw open the door to his workrooms, releasing a swirl of acrid smoke. Beyond the threshold crouched a creature like a horsefly the size of a donkey with a sneering caricature of a human face. The apparition stood shrouded in flame, but the blaze neither consumed its flesh nor appeared to cause it any distress. Its shivering wings produced the ambient drone. It seemed to be peering at empty space, but Taegan suspected it had actually oriented on the invisible Jivex. Chanting, it thrust out one of its forelegs, which, the bladesinger observed, somewhat resembled a starving man’s withered arm. Fire exploded from its fingertips, momentarily outlining the faerie dragon’s form as it splashed against him.