Текст книги "Whisper of Venom"

Автор книги: Richard Lee Byers

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Richard Lee Byers
Whisper of Venom

PROLOGUE

19 MIRTUL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

Is this wise?” Ananta asked.

Surprised, Brimstone turned, and his tail whispered across the cavern floor. Though the chamber was spacious, Ananta stood against the wall, her sturdy, scaly body wrapped in a gray cloak and her blackwood staff in her hand. In the course of her duties as guardian of Dracowyr, she’d no doubt learned to give wyrms room lest they accidentally step on her.

“Why, Ananta,” Brimstone said, “I didn’t know you cared.”

The guardian responded with what Brimstone had come to recognize as a frown, a slight baring of the fangs coupled with a twitch of the frills on the sides of the saurian head. The facial expressions of the strange new creatures called dragonborn had much in common with those of true dragons.

“My lord Skalnaedyr commanded me to look after you,” Ananta replied, “and so I do.”

The explanation lacked a certain warmth. Still, it pleased Brimstone to think that Ananta was at least getting used to him. Given his vampirism, perhaps that was much as he could expect.

“Well,” he said, “to answer your question, I survived the first time, and even if the magic misbehaves just as badly tonight, I daresay I can bear up again. And we needn’t assume it will. I’m a highly competent scryer, even if you couldn’t tell from my performance thus far.”

“Yes, milord,” Ananta said.

Brimstone turned back to the pool, if one cared to dignify it with that term. It was really more of a shallow puddle in a low place in the floor. A mirror or crystal orb might have suited him better, but it took time to import the amenities when one chose to lair in an earthmote, an island floating in the sky high above the wilderness known as the Great Wild Wood.

He stared into the water, focusing his will on it. He whispered incantations that both gathered mystical energy and helped put him in the proper receptive frame of mind.

In time, nothing remained but the pool and his desire to see what it could show him. Then the surface of the water turned gray with red sparks shining inside it. As it rippled, it looked like his own smoky breath weapon streaming forth from his jaws.

The water smoothed and cleared, becoming like a window opening on a deep, rocky bowl in the earth with crags and spires jutting from the top like the points of a broken crown. Their scales glinting in the starlight, dozens of dragons perched on ledges and outcroppings. Brimstone was peering out from the same high shelf he’d occupied when the convocation had happened in reality.

He stared at what appeared to be an empty balcony. He knew it wasn’t really, and after a moment two shadows appeared there, framed in an arched opening to the warren of passages honeycombing the rock. It was impossible to tell if they were ghosts or the spirits of living folk who’d temporarily left their bodies. Impossible as well to make out their blurred, wavering features.

When the event had really happened, Brimstone had attacked the phantoms, and they’d escaped. In the recreation, he simply gazed, whispered words of command, and willed their features to come clear.

The bulkier of the two figures resolved itself somewhat into what was probably a powerfully built human male. The implement in his hand was a staff. No, a spear.

His companion-

The view exploded into blazing light and heat. Seared and dazzled, Brimstone recoiled, and then, mercifully, the puddle was just a puddle again.

“What was that?” a deep voice snarled.

Startled, Brimstone whirled and beheld the newcomer. Alasklerbanbastos filled the opening between that cavern and the next. Perhaps the Great Bone Wyrm didn’t want to come all the way through because he feared his skeletal wings would snag and scrape on the rim.

Brimstone hated it when anyone sneaked up on him. He was supposed to do the sneaking. And it seemed especially unfair that anything as huge as Alasklerbanbastos could do it. Why didn’t all those bare bones clink together?

Frustrated by the failure of the divination, pained by the burns on his face and neck, Brimstone had to strain to maintain civility and to remember that he had no particular reason to hate dracoliches anymore. He could lay that quarrel to rest along with Sammaster, who’d created the undead wyrms.

“Greetings, Lord of Threskel,” Brimstone said.

Alasklerbanbastos came a stride deeper into the chamber. Sparks jumped and popped on his bones, and the air started to smell like the advent of a storm. Ananta backed away to give him extra space.

“I asked what that was,” the undead blue dragon said.

“Well,” Brimstone said, “you remember our convocation, when I laid out the precepts, and everyone agreed to them.”

“Of course,” Alasklerbanbastos said.

“I’m trying to use divination to discover the identity of the phantoms who came to spy on us. Unfortunately, some Power is opposing me.”

Alasklerbanbastos gave a disgusted-sounding grunt. “That was true daylight bursting forth from the pool.”

“I know,” Brimstone said. “Given my nature, the burns it inflicted are something of a giveaway.” He felt a tickle partway down his snout as one of the chars started to heal.

“I meant,” the dracolich rasped, “that the specific nature of the Power may provide a clue to the trespassers’ identities.”

“In theory, I agree. Unfortunately, Faerun abounds in spellcasters who can evoke sunlight. Now, my lord, what brings you here? Surely you didn’t travel so far just to assist my inquiry, especially since you didn’t know I’d undertaken it.”

“I came about Tchazzar.” Alasklerbanbastos hesitated. “You know he’s reappeared?”

“Yes,” Brimstone said.

“I want your assurance that he isn’t a part of this. That you won’t allow him to take part.”

“Thus condemning him to eventual servitude, exile, or worse.”

Logic indicated that it was impossible for Alasklerbanbastos’s fleshless, wedge-shaped skull of a head to smile, but Brimstone could have sworn that it did so anyway. “If you want to put it like that.”

“I regret,” Brimstone said, “that I can’t oblige you.”

The smile, if it had ever been there, vanished. A blue glow flared in the dracolich’s eye sockets, and more sparks leaped and crackled on his bones.

Ananta unobtrusively hefted her staff. It was her responsibility as guardian to enforce the truce that was supposed to prevail on Dracowyr. And though her weapon had formidable powers, her tense features made it plain that she didn’t relish the prospect of trying to subdue the colossal undead blue.

Brimstone didn’t feel especially enthusiastic about it either.

“Tchazzar didn’t attend the first assembly,” Alasklerbanbastos said.

“That doesn’t preclude his participation,” Brimstone said, meanwhile trying to decide which spells to cast, and in what order, if it came to a fight. “Not according to the rules.”

“Rules you cite without warning, as it suits you.”

“Complicatedrules. Would you like me to teach you the entire codex? Do you have a few years?”

“Don’t mock me.”

Brimstone’s breath weapon burned painlessly in his chest and throat. He struggled with a spasm of anger, with the urge to forget prudence, strike first, and take his chances against the arrogant, petulant spawn of Sammaster’s madness.

When he had himself under control, he said, “I beg you to pardon my flippancy. It was inappropriate. But surely you can see it would be even more inappropriate to forbid Tchazzar to join in what amounts to the adoration of our Dark Lady. He was her anointed champion.”

“That was another time. Another world.”

Brimstone privately conceded the point. It was the time and world before the cataclysm called the Spellplague, when all the dragonborn lived somewhere unimaginably far away, and no islands floated the sky.

But there was no point in agreeing out loud. “Surely it was only a moment ago in the life of a dragon. An instant in the span of an undead.”

“But I didn’t agree to Tchazzar!”

“But surely you recognized that the world is a chaotic, ever-changing place and that unforeseen challenges would arise. That’s all part of the fun. Honestly, I don’t even know why it matters to you whether Tchazzar’s in or out. You’d have to deal with him either way.”

“Of course you know! The difference lies in whether the others will treat him as a peer.”

Brimstone sighed, and stray wisps of sulfurous smoke blew from his nostrils. “I suppose that’s true. Still, the situation is what it is, and I don’t see that it’s so terrible for you. You control a kingdom and an army. Most of the others are making do with less.”

“Always,” Alasklerbanbastos growled, “it was three against one. Tchazzar, Gestaniius, and Skuthosiin all conspiring to bring me down. And now it’s the same again!”

Actually, Brimstone thought, it’s worse than that. And you’re so obsessed with Tchazzar that you’ll never see the new threat coming. He could almost have felt pity for the dracolich. If Alasklerbanbastos hadn’t so thoroughly annoyed him, and if pity were anything more than a vestigial part of his nature.

“You have your own dragon vassals,” he said.

Alasklerbanbastos spat a small, crackling arc of lightning. “Young ones. It’s not the same.” His fleshless limbs bent as he gathered himself to lunge. “I insistthat you ban Tchazzar.”

“No,” Brimstone said, “and I suggest you pause to reflect before you do anything rash. If you destroy me, it all comes to an end. And it’s already fascinating, isn’t it? As lovely and intricate as any treasure in your hoard. It will only become more so as events unfold.”

The dracolich glared, blue-white radiance seething in the pits where his eyes had once resided. Then he shivered, and at last Brimstone heard bone clink against bone.

“If I ever decide,” said Alasklerbanbastos, “that you’re not impartial, we’ll continue this conversation.” He backed out of the opening in one sudden surge, and exited the caverns a moment later. Brimstone could neither see nor hear his departure, but an oppressive feeling of power and menace abated.

Ananta lowered her staff and let out a long exhalation. “That was … stimulating,” she said.

Brimstone smiled. “I knew he’d stop short of an actual fight,” he lied.

“It’s like a drug, isn’t it? Like dreammist or bloodfast. Once your people have tasted it, they need more.”

“It’s one of the Dark Lady’s great gifts to her children, and like most of them, it comes with some barbs and sharp edges.”

Ananta’s eyes narrowed. “ Areyou impartial? Or do you have an agenda of your own?”

“Because if I do, you have a responsibility to report it to your master.”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s just as well my probity is intact.” Brimstone felt a cool tingle on his neck as new scales grew over another burn. A dryness in his mouth and an ache in his fangs told him the rapid healing was rousing his thirst. “I’m going down to the forest for a while.” It might be a wilderness, but there were wild men and goblins to hunt and drink.

ONE

20 MIRTUL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS NE (1479 DR)

It started out the way it was supposed to. The two teams of dragonborn approached one another in formation, each warrior in the front lines covering himself with his shield. They jabbed at the fighters on the other side with the padded lengths of wood that represented spears. When a fellow was hit, he kneeled down to indicate he was a casualty, and the soldier waiting behind him shifted forward to take his place.

But then everyone got excited. If a warrior pushed a foeman back, he lunged forward to chase him. The dragonborn waiting in the rear grew impatient and either tried to shove forward prematurely or swarmed out of the formation to engage an opponent. What had been a clash between two organized squads dissolved into an amorphous brawl.

“No!” bellowed Khouryn Skulldark. “No, no, no! Break it up!”

Some of the combatants heard and obeyed. Some kept fighting.

Khouryn understood that. Dragonborn and dwarves possessed a similar fighting spirit. It was one reason he felt at home among the manlike saurians.

But the vanquisher’s troops weren’t in the muddy field to entertain themselves. They were there to train. Khouryn strode in among those who were still fighting and rapped knees with his cudgel. His smaller stature allowed him to do so without too much concern that a stray thrust or cut from a practice weapon would score on him.

Finally, everyone calmed down. Then he took up a position in front of them, and they all stared down at him expectantly, some no doubt with veiled resentment or apprehension, as so many trainees had before them.

“That was pitiful,” he said. “My blind, one-legged granny fights better than that. Why is it so difficult to stay in the damn formation? Stand where you’re supposed to stand and hold your shield where it’s supposed to be, so it protects your neighbor and yourself. Stay alert for chances to stick the enemy who’s in front of your comrade. A lot of the time he’s not looking at you, and that makes it easy to hit him.”

“In other words, fight like a coward,” muttered a yellow-eyed, bronze-scaled warrior standing behind two others. He had two copper owl-shaped piercings-the emblem of Clan Linxakasendalor-gleaming in the left side of his blunt snout.

Khouryn smiled at him. “What was that?”

The Linxakasendalor looked momentarily taken aback. For some reason, such grumblers never expected the instructor to catch what they said.

But then he glowered. Since Khouryn had found him out, he figured he might as well stand up for his opinions.

“I meant, sir,” he said, “with all respect, that this isn’t how dragonborn fight. It isn’t how our ancestors fought when they won their freedom.”

Others muttered in support of his opinion.

Khouryn raised his voice to cut through the drone. “Then it’s a wonder they prevailed. You’ll notice you’renot prevailing. The giants are kicking your soldiers from one end of Black Ash Plain to the other.”

“We’ll beat them in the end,” said the Linxakasendalor. “We always have.”

“Maybe,” Khouryn said. “But not by doing the same things you’ve always done. The giants are fighting differently, and you have to fight differently too. Now, I could go on trying to pound that simple truth into your thick skulls. Or I could remind you that Tarhun hired me to train you, so you have to do as I say whatever you think. But I’m not going to do either of those things. Do you know why? Because I heard the word coward.”

The Linxakasendalor blinked. “Sir, I didn’t mean that personally.”

“I don’t care a rat’s whisker what you meant. Come here. And you, and you.” He pointed to two other dragonborn, and the trio emerged from the crowd. “The three of you are going to try to stun, cripple, or otherwise incapacitate me, and I’ll do the same to you. At the end of it all, everyone can judge for himself whether I know enough about fighting to teach you anything.”

The three exchanged glances. Perhaps it was their sense of honor that balked them. The average dragonborn possessed that in abundance-another characteristic they shared with dwarves-and three against one must have seemed like long odds, especially when each of the three towered over the one.

“Do it!” Khouryn roared.

The three fanned out, plainly intending to surround him. As Khouryn had learned fighting among them on the journey from Chessenta and on Black Ash Plain, dragonborn were capable of using teamwork when a situation called for it. But only the teamwork that came naturally. It hadn’t traditionally been a part of their martial training.

Khouryn feinted a step to the right, then whirled and raced left, straight at a warrior with silvery scales. The reptile thrust with his practice spear. Khouryn dodged and then he was inside the reach of the weapon, where it was more or less useless.

The dragonborn tried to clout him with his oval shield. He had good technique, but Khouryn was expecting the attack and evaded it as well. He stepped up beside the warrior and clubbed him in the knee, using almost enough strength to break it.

The silver-scaled saurian fell onto both knees. By then his comrades were rushing in, but his body shielded Khouryn for a heartbeat. Long enough to bash him in the head, make his steel and leather helmet-fashioned with holes so his crest of thick, scaly tendrils like braided hair could flop out the back-clank, and lay him out in the trodden muck and the new spring grass.

Khouryn scuttled backward. His foot slipped, and a spear thrust nearly cost him some teeth. He whirled his baton in a circular parry and slapped the attack out of line less than a finger-length from his mouth.

By the time he felt sure of his balance, he had his opponents’ patterns and rhythms too. When they both jabbed, missed, and pulled their spears back at the same moment, he charged between them. When they tried to follow the motion and keep their long weapons pointed at him, they more or less tangled together.

Dragonborn were big, but they weren’t ogres. Khouryn had no trouble stabbing the one with the dark green scales in the throat with the end of his club. Once again he was careful not to kill. The warrior just reeled, dropped his spear, and clutched his neck while making choking sounds.

Hoping to end the fight, Khouryn rounded on his remaining opponent, only to find that the Linxakasendalor had been too quick. He’d retreated, taking himself beyond Khouryn’s reach and reestablishing the proper distance to use his spear.

He wasn’t attacking though. Maybe Khouryn had thrown a scare into him-although given that he was a dragonborn, it was more likely he was simply taking his time.

Hoping to goad him into doing something reckless, Khouryn grinned and said, “Now in East Rift, where I come from, we say a fellow fights like a coward if he hangs back while his friends take all the chances.”

It worked a little too well. The Linxakasendalor’s face twisted, and he sucked in a breath. He meant to spit frost, fire, or something equally unpleasant, a trick the dragonborn shared with actual wyrms.

And here was Khouryn without a shield to block the spew. He hadn’t appropriated one because he wanted to impress, and fighting with only the baton was impressive. Right up until the moment he got frozen solid or burned to cinders.

The Linxakasendalor’s head jerked forward, and his jaws opened. Pearly frost streamed out.

Khouryn dodged left. The edge of the jet still gave him a chill, but nothing worse. He rushed the Linxakasendalor, knocked his spear out of line, and rammed the end of the baton into his gut. The dragonborn grunted and doubled over. The involuntary movement brought his head within easy reach. Khouryn hit him in the temple, and that was that.

Controlling his breathing-the win was supposed to look easy, after all-Khouryn turned, surveyed the rest of the troops, and judged that he had indeed impressed them.

“You see?” he asked. “That’s how a small fighter-and we’re all of us small compared to ash giants-turns his size to his advantage. That’s part of what I’m trying to teach you. Now, somebody clear these fools out of the way until they’re ready to resume the training. I want to see the rest of you fight the Beast. Move!”

The Beast was a big, drum-shaped, timber shell that one of the vanquisher’s wizards had enchanted to Khouryn’s specifications. When someone touched one of the small runes carved on the sides, it floated up and flew around three feet off the ground. The object then was to jab a rune with a spear point and render the contraption inanimate again.

The game was difficult because the Beast spun and changed direction unpredictably. And if a person didn’t fall back smartly when it lurched in his direction, it gave him an unpleasant bump. The point was to teach warriors how to assail a large adversary when its back was turned, then scramble out of reach when it turned in their direction.

Khouryn watched for a while and was pleased to see that at least some of the trainees were getting the hang of it. Then hoof beats thumped the earth. He turned to see Daardendrien Medrash trotting toward him astride a big, black mare.

Big and powerfully built even by dragonborn standards, Medrash had russet scales and bore the six white studs of Clan Daardendrien pierced into his left profile. He was an oddity among his people, a worshiper of one of Faerun’s gods. In fact, he was a paladin of Torm-a champion whose rapport with the Loyal Fury granted him certain mystical abilities.

Behind him, Djerad Thymar rose from the grasslands against a blue sky striped with wisps of white cloud. It was the strangest and most impressive city Khouryn had ever seen in a life of wandering, because it was all one colossal structure. The base was an immense block of granite. On top of that sat hundreds of pillars supporting a truncated pyramid.

Specks soared and swooped around the apex. The aerial cavalry called the Lance Defenders were coming and going on various errands. Their mounts were enormous bats, nocturnal by nature but capable of daytime service, and, seeing them, Khouryn felt a pang of sadness. He still missed Vigilant, his own winged steed, killed by a topaz dragon on the trek south from Luthcheq.

Medrash swung himself off the mare. “How is it going?” he asked.

Khouryn waved a hand at the training exercise. “See for yourself. I had to thump a couple of them to get this batch to take me seriously.”

Medrash smiled. “I know how you fight well, but eventually that ploy is going to turn around and bite you.”

“We’ll see.”

“I’m just saying they know how to fight too. All dragonborn do. Some of them have already served a year or two with the Lance Defenders.”

“I know. That’s why I only called out three of them. Ordinarily it’s four. Now tell me about the horses.”

“We’ve selected the most spirited and the steadiest. The riding masters tell me there’s no way to train them naturally in the time we have. But after conferring with the mages, they grudgingly agreed that if an animal carries the proper talismans of courage and obedience, it might do what you want it to.”

“ ‘Grudgingly’?”

“They love horses. They don’t want to see them get anywhere near the giants or those lizard things they conjure out of the ash.”

“I don’t blame them. But we need lancers on horseback as well as batback.”

That too would be an innovation. Khouryn suspected that back in wherever-it-was, when Medrash’s people had rebelled against their dragon overlords, war-horses had been in short supply.

“We’ll have a few,” Medrash said. “Let’s hope they’re enough to make our troops look as impressive as the Platinum Cadre’s.”

“And that Balasar learns something that will discredit the Cadre in any case.”

Across the field, the trainees raised a cheer as someone finally managed to thump a rune and make the Beast drift back down to the ground.

Jhesrhi Coldcreek loved flying, and never more than today. It was exhilarating to see the buildings and tangled streets of Luthcheq laid out before her and hear the cheers and hymns of thanksgiving rising from the folk crowding the streets, hanging out the windows, and gathered on the rooftops.

Not, of course, that the cheers were for her. They were for Tchazzar. His scaly crimson wings shining in the sunlight, the red dragon was returning to the city he’d ruled a century before. His long-tailed shadow swept along beneath him, and the griffon riders with whom he shared the sky looked tiny by comparison, like hummingbirds escorting an eagle.

Still, until recently Jhesrhi had feared and loathed the city of her childhood as it had feared and loathed her. Its prejudices were to blame for the nightmarish captivity that had scarred her spirit for all time. But recent events had given her the chance to heal at least one of her psychic wounds, and like it or not, Luthcheq was going to change for the better as well. Tchazzar had promised that it would.

Luthcheq sat at the foot of a towering cliff, and the citadel called the War College actually protruded from the rock face. Tchazzar landed in the plaza in front of it, which the city guard had kept clear for him. On the other side of the peace officers and the barricades, a collective moan rose from the crowd, many of whom carried the scarlet banners or wore the trappings of the Church of Tchazzar. For a moment Jhesrhi thought they’d rush in and mob the dragon, but somehow they managed to control themselves.

She set Scar down in the fenced-off corner reserved for griffons, and her fellow mercenaries did the same with their mounts. Stocky, bald, and covered in runic tattoos, his blue eyes glowing noticeably even in the daylight, Aoth Fezim had flown down from Soolabax with plump, pretty Cera Eurthos riding behind him. The sunlady, a high priestess of Amaunator, wanted to observe the ceremonies and had prevailed on her new lover to bring her.

Jhesrhi could tell that the captain of the Brotherhood of the Griffon was somewhat more ambivalent about attending, and she reckoned she knew why. Aoth needed to be there to make sure the company received the credit it deserved for Tchazzar’s deliverance and any rewards that came with it. But on the other hand, war was brewing in the north, and he resented the time filched from his preparations.

Meanwhile, Gaedynn Ulraes smiled as if all the drama and pomp was an entertainment staged for his personal amusement. Elegantly clad in a purple, red-slashed doublet, not a shining coppery hair out of place despite the fact that he’d just flown for miles, the lanky archer gave Jhesrhi a wink as he swung himself out of the saddle.

Tchazzar twisted his long neck to survey the waiting throng, then spat an arc of flame high enough to avoid incinerating anyone or setting a building on fire. The onlookers screamed in excitement.

Then the red dragon shrank, dwindling into a tall, broad-shouldered warrior with golden armor and a flame red cloak and plume. Though seemingly human, and despite his massive frame, he had a long, tapered face and slightly pointed ears subtly suggestive of his wyrm form. His slanted eyes were as tawny as Jhesrhi’s. She, Gaedynn, Aoth, and Cera hurried to attend him.

Tchazzar offered Jhesrhi his arm, and despite the extraordinary honor the gesture represented, she froze. If he scowled in response, it was only for an instant, and then the expression became a look of rueful comprehension.

“Forgive me,” he murmured. “But since you have no difficulty touching me when I’m a dragon, it makes it hard to remember you flinch from the man.”

“I’m sorry, Majesty,” Jhesrhi said.

“Don’t be.” He glanced around, evidently making sure everyone had taken up his or her proper ceremonial position. “Shall we?”

They climbed the stone staircase that led up to the terrace where Chessenta’s foremost dignitaries waited. The butt of the staff Jhesrhi had carried away from Mount Thulbane clicked on the steps. Behind them the city guards admitted the crowd to the plaza. As they streamed in, they made a noise like the rush of water when something breached a dike.

Tchazzar walked to the edge of the platform and gazed out at his people. As one, the folk in the crowd fell to their knees. So did everyone on the platform.

Then, as had been arranged, Shala Karanok paced out onto the terrace. A strongly built woman in her middle years, the war hero carried a steel and diamond circlet in her hands. Her face with its scarred, square jaw was without expression, and it was impossible to guess how she felt about what was happening.

She kneeled before Tchazzar and proffered the diadem. “I acknowledge your sovereignty and surrender my office,” she said.

Tchazzar took the circlet, raised it high to gleam in the sunlight, and set it on his own brow. “I crown myself War Hero of Chessenta,” he said. “And you may all rise.”

As soon as they did, the cheers began. The noise rose and fell, surging up at the platform like waves battering a rocky headland.

Tchazzar let his subjects vent their jubilation for a while. Then he raised a hand, and over the course of several heartbeats they fell silent.

“I thank you for your welcome,” the transformed dragon said. “It’s good to be back in the land and the city I love.”

That set off more cheering. After a few moments, he quelled it as he had before.

“As I always did and always will,” Tchazzar continued, “I have returned when you need me most. War is coming. Enemies, hateful and envious, threaten Chessenta on every side. But don’t be afraid. With me to lead you, you’ll butcher them to the last man!”

Again he had to pause and let the crowd roar.

“But vengeance and victory are tomorrow’s business. We have other matters to address today.

“I told you I come to my people when they need me. And how do I know you need me? Because I hear your prayers. Over the years, many have deemed me a god, and now it pleases me for everyone to know the truth. I am a god. A god in every sense, a being as exalted as Amaunator or Waukeen, and you will worship me as such.”

At that, no one cheered. Even if a person believed in Tchazzar’s divinity-and many Chessentans did-there was something disconcerting about hearing him proclaim it outright.

Jhesrhi peered surreptitiously at Cera, stout Daelric Apathos-her superior in the Church of Amaunator-and the other high priests assembled on the terrace. Presumably they all had their professional opinions concerning Tchazzar’s claim, but she couldn’t tell what those were from scrutinizing their solemn expressions.

“Some of you already worship me,” Tchazzar continued. He looked down at the front of the throng, where a profusion of scarlet standards and red cloaks cut to resemble scalloped dragon wings revealed the presence of many adherents of the Church of Tchazzar. “Who is your prophet?”

For a moment it looked like whoever it was, he or she was too shy to say so. Then a skinny adolescent girl stepped forward. She had crimson symbols painted on her starveling, acne-pitted face and wore a fine vermilion cloak-a gift from a follower, perhaps-over the grimy rags underneath.

“I am, Majesty,” she quavered. “My name is Halonya.”

“From this day forward,” Tchazzar said, “you’re a lady of the realm. Your rank is the same as that of any of the patriarchs who stand behind me, and the church you lead is equal in dignity and importance to any of theirs. Others will heed my call and offer themselves to serve as priests and priestesses under your direction. Together, you will build the grandest temple in Luthcheq. My deputy”-he gestured in Shala’s direction-“will assist you with everything you need.”