Текст книги "Whisper of Venom"

Автор книги: Richard Lee Byers

Соавторы: Richard Lee Byers
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

TWELVE

28 KYTHORN -5 FLAMERULE T HE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

Summer had come, and, as Khouryn had observed on the march southwest, Tymanther was blooming. Trees were full of green leaves and singing birds; pastures of grass and the sheep, goats, and cattle grazing there; and fields of oats and barley. In contrast, Black Ash Plain had simply gotten nastier. The hot air was smokier, and some of the cinders adrift on it were stinging hot.

I don’t blame the giants for wanting to steal somebody else’s country, he thought. I wouldn’t want to live here either.

He wondered how they even managed to live in the midst of such desolation, then dismissed the question as irrelevant. His concern was to make sure that a goodly number of them didn’t live much longer. To that end, he took another look at the ash drifts and cracked, rocky soil to either side of the column.

Towers of ash glided in the distance, somewhat like ships under sail except that they moved independently of the wind. Then suddenly a gray-black bump bobbed up and then back down out of sight behind one of the true cinder dunes, if that was the right term for them. They were drifts big as hills, and a fellow could climb them like hills until he set his foot wrong. Then the ash would swallow him like quicksand.

Despite the haze in the air, and the smarting blur in his eyes, Khouryn knew he’d just seen a giant skirmisher. He drew breath to shout an alert, but one of the dragonborn marching under the banners of the Platinum Cadre did it first.

So instead Khouryn shouted, “Form up! Protect yourselves!” He was sure there were only a few giants lurking on their flank, or somebody would have spotted one before then. Since they were too few to pose a serious threat, their purpose was to slow the advance, giving the bulk of Skuthosiin’s army more time to prepare. By halting and covering up with their shields, the Tymantherans were essentially giving them what they wanted. But they had to do something to keep the barbarians from picking them off one and two at a time.

Five giants popped up, and their long arms whipped. They didn’t throw spears or any other sort of crafted weapon. They must have been hoarding those for the true battle to come. But they were an offshoot of the race called stone giants and, like others of their kind, could fling rocks with deadly force and accuracy.

The impacts cracked and banged. One dragonborn fell down. But no stones streaked past shields to hammer the bodies behind them.

The barbarians ducked back down. Several crossbows clacked, an instant too late to have any hope of hitting their targets.

A female voice chanted words that sent a pang of chill stabbing through the hot air.

Khouryn turned. Several paces to his left, Kanjentellequor Biri, the albino wizard who’d unraveled the deeper secrets of Nala’s papers, had somehow prevailed on two spearmen to open a gap in the shield wall. Where she stood, inviting another stone as she rattled off her incantation and flicked a rod of roughly hewn and polished quartz through small, repetitive downstrokes.

Just as Khouryn reached her side, hailstones pounded down to batter the far slope of the dune. A giant howled.

Khouryn gripped Biri’s wrist and hauled her back behind the warriors. “I didn’t tell you to do that,” he said.

She grinned. “But it worked. They had cover, but not in relation to something that dropped straight down from overhead.”

“You didn’t have any cover either. It’s only by the Luckmaiden’s grace that you didn’t end up with your brains splashed across the ground. As it is, you showed the giants where you are.”

Tarhun had scattered the mages throughout the army, partly so the giants couldn’t target all of them at once. He’d also instructed them to refrain from casting spells till he said otherwise.

Biri’s smile melted away. Despite his time among them, Khouryn wasn’t good at guessing how old a dragonborn was. But he got a feeling the wizard was younger than he’d first supposed. “I just wanted to help,” she said.

“You already have,” Khouryn said, “and trust me, you will again. But for now, let the soldiers do the work. They can handle it.”

As if to illustrate his point, a squadron of outriders charged the giants. Khouryn couldn’t see everything that happened next. His hulking spearmen with their overlapping shields were in the way, and so was the ash dune. But he made out Medrash’s heater, painted with the steel gauntlet of Torm, and Balasar’s targe, emblazoned with the six white circles of Clan Daardendrien. He also saw giants toppling with lances embedded in their guts, or blood streaming from sword cuts on their necks and chests.

The infantry raised a cheer. Except that there was something wrong with it. Khouryn strained to make out the one voice that wasn’t jubilant, all but lost amid the clamor.

“Turn around!” someone bellowed. “Turn around!”

Khouryn did, and suffered a shock of amazement and dread. A brown dragon was heaving itself out of the ground. Huge as the burrowing creature was, it defied common sense that so few of the dragonborn had noticed its relatively blunt head with its mass of short, thick horns looming high above their own. But there hadn’t been anything there just a moment before, and almost everyone was watching the fight between the outriders and the giants.

The dragon glanced around, then oriented on Khouryn. Or maybe on the wizard standing beside him.

“Crouch down behind me!” he shouted. He wanted to tell her to close her eyes and turn her head too, but the brown didn’t give him time. Its neck whipped forward. Its jaws opened and spewed its breath weapon.

Khouryn covered up with his shield and squinched his own eyes shut, which was possibly the only thing that saved them from the hot grit that rasped across his skin. When he opened them again, sand and ash hung so thick in the air as to make the smoky haze he’d despised before seem clear by comparison.

Dragonborn cried out, because the brown’s breath had scraped them, or simply in fear and confusion. Khouryn could see some of the nearer ones, milling around or sprawled on the ground, but he couldn’t see the wyrm. A moment before, the sudden appearance of such a behemoth had seemed a nightmarish impossibility. Its vanishing felt like another, even though he assumed the cloud was actually responsible.

He only knew when it charged because its strides jolted the ground, and because dragonborn yelled as it trampled them or brushed them out of the way. “Run!” he rasped, his mouth foul with sand, and then his huge foe pounced out of the murk. The scalloped, winglike frills that extended down the sides of its body were undulating. Maybe that was how it kept the air agitated and full of grit even when it wasn’t spitting the stuff out of its gullet.

It struck at Khouryn, and he met its head with a thrust of his spear. The weapon drove straight into a nostril. The brown screeched and recoiled, jerking the spear out of his hand. It whipped its head back and forth until the foreign object tumbled out.

That gave Khouryn just enough time to discard his shield and snatch the urgrosh off his back.

The brown dragon clawed at him. He spun aside and chopped at its foot. The axe glanced off its scales.

At almost the same instant, the head at the end of the long neck arced over him, too high for him to attack. The brown was reaching for Biri. But she conjured a blast of frost that spattered the wyrm’s jaws and eyes and made it falter.

“You get away from it!” Khouryn bellowed. “Spears, follow my voice! It’s here!”

The dragon lifted a forefoot high. He only just spotted the action in the brown, swirling gloom. It stamped down at him. He sidestepped, cut, and that time hacked a gash in its hide.

Thunder boomed and light flared as Biri burned the wyrm with lightning. From a safer distance, Khouryn hoped. They were holding their own, but it couldn’t last-not unless they had help. Where were the damn spearmen?

There! Shadows swarmed out of the murk on either side of the dragon. Spears jabbed.

The brown struck left, then right, biting a dragonborn to pieces with each snap. Some spearmen cried out and retreated madly. But others were less frantic. They fell back just far enough to protect themselves, then attacked again as soon as the wyrm pivoted away.

Not that such maneuvering was easy. The dragon was faster and less predictable than the Beast. Its rippling alar membranes could swat a warrior, or its sweeping tail could shatter his legs, whether it was facing him or not.

Still, most of the warriors managed to stay alive for a few moments. Long enough for Khouryn to charge the wyrm and, taking advantage of his shorter stature, dash on underneath it.

He reversed his grip on the urgrosh and stabbed repeatedly upward with the spearhead. At first the dragon didn’t seem to notice. But then when he yanked the spike free, arterial blood spurted after it, spattering his arms, and the reptile jerked.

The brown wheeled, stamping, trying to claw and crush him or, failing that, at least get him out from underneath it. He scurried to avoid its feet, keep its ventral surface above him, and go on stabbing.

That worked long enough for him to draw a second huge spray of gore. Then the wyrm lashed its winglike frills and pounced far enough that he had no hope of keeping up with it. The same leap carried it back in striking distance of Biri.

Its head hurtled at her. But, galloping, Balasar reached her first. Leaning out of the saddle, he scooped her up, and the brown dragon’s fangs clashed shut on empty air.

Meanwhile, Medrash charged the wyrm, and his lance plunged into its flank. The brown jerked and roared. It was still roaring when a second lancer speared it a couple of heartbeats later.

Like the brown, hunched, long-armed saurians Khouryn and his comrades had met before, the dragon dissolved into a flying swirl of sand. The grit streamed through the air and hissed down the hole from which the reptile had first emerged.

Where, Khouryn hoped, it would return to dragon form and bleed out. Although he wasn’t certain of it. Dragons were notoriously hard to kill.

But as he could see since the cloud of sand was subsiding, at least they’d driven it off before it could kill or injure very many of them. The spearmen who’d surrounded it deserved much of the credit, and half of them wore purple and silver tunics or tokens.

Khouryn caught Medrash’s eye, then jerked his head toward the group. The paladin nodded in acknowledgment.

Balasar set Biri back on her own two feet. Then he grinned, bowed from the saddle, and said, “A thousand thank-yous for the dance, milady.” To say the least, his gallantry seemed incongruous amid the warriors noisily spitting out sand and ash on every side, but it made the mage smile in return.

But her smile withered as soon as she turned and took a good look at the corpses, and at the wounded clenching their teeth against the urge to cry out as the healers set to work on them. Khouryn realized that what looked like minimal harm to a hardened sellsword might seem like ghastly carnage to even a dragonborn, if she’d never been to war before.

She asked, “Is this my fault?”

“No,” Khouryn said. “The dragon was going to hit us at some point, and some of us were going to die when it did. But follow orders from now on.”

The unnatural power of his condition compensating for the lack of hide stretched across the bony framework of his wings, Alasklerbanbastos floated on the night wind and studied the enemy camp. Gliding at his master’s side, Jaxanaedegor surreptitiously studied him.

Tchazzar and his servants weren’t relying on invisibility to mask their true strength. It was difficult to keep such a glamour in place for days on end, and a wizard as accomplished as a dracolich was apt to see through it anyway. Instead they were using other tricks. A paucity of campfires, tents, and noise. Men and beasts tucked away wherever there was cover to obscure their numbers. Freshly turned earth to give the appearance of a mass grave. Lamplight and motion inside the healers’ pavilions. The absence of any whisper or tingle of mystical power at work.

Finally the Great Bone Wyrm wheeled. Jaxanaedegor did the same, and they beat their way back toward the north and the massed might of Threskel’s army.

But they didn’t go all the way back to their own camp. Alasklerbanbastos evidently didn’t want to wait that long to talk. Blue sparks jumping and cracking on his naked bones, he spiraled down to the crest of a low hill. From there, he’d be able to spot anyone or anything suicidal enough to approach him.

You’re always so wary, Jaxanaedegor thought. But not wary enough of me. I could strike at you right now, while you’re on the ground and I’m still on the wing.

But it was just a pleasant fantasy. Neither the high air nor the element of surprise would suffice to defeat a creature so endowed with every other advantage. Jaxanaedegor set down on coarse grass and weeds that had already started to wither simply because the dracolich was near.

Pale light gleamed in Alasklerbanbastos’s eye sockets, and the air around him smelled like a rising storm. “There are more soldiers,” he growled, “than you led me to believe.”

Jaxanaedegor felt a pang of uneasiness. He made sure it didn’t reflect in his tone or expression. “Truly, my lord? I estimated their numbers as accurately as I could.”

“Yes, truly,”the skeletal dragon replied, with the sneering mimicry his vassal had come to hate. “Are you sure Tchazzar hasn’t received reinforcements?”

“I can’t imagine how. They would have had to swing far to the east. Even if they’d had time, our watchers in the Sky Riders would have spotted them.”

Alasklerbanbastos grunted.

Jaxanaedegor had hoped he wouldn’t need to encourage the undead blue to attack. It seemed better-safer-if Alasklerbanbastos arrived at the decision on his own. But if he was having second thoughts, Jaxanaedegor supposed he’d have to give him a nudge.

“If I did underestimate,” the vampire said, “I apologize. But even so, there are more of us than there are of them, and you can feel the pall of demoralization hanging over their camp. The battle we already fought cost us, but we won. We crippled them.”

“They supposedly had necromancers. And sunlords.” Alasklerbanbastos was particularly cautious of those who wielded special power against the undead.

“We killed them,” Jaxanaedegor said. “Or most of them, anyway.”

Using the tip of a claw, Alasklerbanbastos scratched a rune in the dirt. A different symbol inscribed itself beside it, and then another after that, until there were seven in a line. Despite his own considerable knowledge of arcana, Jaxanaedegor didn’t recognize any of the characters, nor did he have any idea what the magic was meant to accomplish. Not knowing twisted his nerves a little tighter.

“But you didn’t kill Tchazzar,” the Bone Wyrm said.

“No,” Jaxanaedegor replied. “But our spies say he’s behaving erratically, and I myself told you how long it took him to join the battle. He’s not the same dragon you remember, and surely not Tiamat’s Chosen anymore.”

“He was dragon enough to kill three others when he finally did take flight.”

“My lord,” Jaxanaedegor said, “if you think it prudent, return to the safety of Dragonback Mountain. That’s a king’s prerogative. Your knights and captains will stay to fight for you and die for you if need be. That’s a vassal’s duty. But I ask you to consider whether you truly wish to forgo the joy of destroying Tchazzar with your own breath and claws. I ask you also to consider the effect on your reputation.”

Sparks crawled on Alasklerbanbastos’s fangs, and the light in his orbits grew brighter. “Meaning what, exactly? Choose your words carefully.”

“Great one, you know Ifear you. How could I not? How many times have I felt the pressure of your foot on my spine or the top of my head? How many years have I lost to true death, my ghost wandering Banehold until it suited your whim to pull your stake from my heart? But xorvintaal… changes things. Every dragon is studying every other for signs of weakness. And, while one wins points for achievement and guile, a player can also score for daring and renown-if he makes the right move.”

At first Alasklerbanbastos didn’t reply. The moment stretched until it seemed that something-Jaxanaedegor’s composure, perhaps-must surely snap.

Then the dracolich snorted. “You may be right about the game. You’re certainly right that it’s past time for Tchazzar to die, and that I want to be the one who dowses the flame. Come!” He lashed his rattling, fleshless wings and climbed.

Jaxanaedegor followed with a certain feeling of joyful incredulity. He possessed considerable faith in his own cunning. Still, perhaps there was a buried part of him that hadn’t believed he could bring the scheme to fruition.

Yet he had. After centuries of preliminary maneuvering, the two most powerful wyrms in Chessenta were going to meet in final battle.

During the early phases of the combat, Jaxanaedegor would perform as Alasklerbanbastos expected, and if the army of Threskel gained the upper hand, he’d simply continue to do so. But if, as he hoped, Tchazzar seized the advantage, then Jaxanaedegor and his followers would switch sides just as he’d promised the red. And whichever elder dragon ultimately won, he’d reward Jaxanaedegor for playing a key role in his victory.

There was even a chance that Alasklerbanbastos and Tchazzar would destroy each other, making Jaxanaedegor the most powerful creature in Chessenta. He reminded himself it was such a remote possibility that he didn’t dare base his strategy on it. But if it happened, it would be the sweetest outcome of all.

From on high, the Threskelan army looked rather like a mass of ants creeping across the ground. Aoth supposed he should be glad the ground was where most of them were. He and his comrades had apparently wiped out most of the Great Bone Wyrm’s flying minions in the previous battle.

Of course, there were dragons in the air, as well as bats with suspiciously phosphorescent eyes. Aoth reminded himself that if he could trust Jaxanaedegor-a significant if-then most of the flyers were actually on his side.

Whether they were or not, he was ready to fight. Partly, he supposed, because an honest battle would provide a respite from mysteries and pandering to Tchazzar’s eccentricities. But mostly because a decisive victory that night would restore the Brotherhood’s reputation. Afterward would be time enough to fret over the meaning of the dragons’ Precepts and to decide how much longer to remain in the war hero’s service.

Time enough as well to sort out Jhesrhi. She’d told him that Tchazzar had expressed sympathy with Skuthosiin’s desire to slaughter the dragonborn-not that he knew what to make of that either-but he sensed there was something else, something more personal, that she was keeping back.

You can guess what it is, said Jet. Tchazzar wants to make her a princess, and she’s decided to let him.

Aoth sighed. You may be right. What sellsword doesn’t want to retire to a life of luxury? And this is the country of her birth.

So you’d leave her to the whims of a mad king?

Not happily, but it’s her choice. Anyway, if the Great Bone Wyrm slaughters us all before morning, it won’t much matter, will it? Why don’t we focus on winning the war for now?

Jet gave an irritated rasp and then, responding to his rider’s unspoken will, wheeled and flew back toward Tchazzar’s army. A first star glimmered in the charcoal-colored eastern sky.

Below Aoth, warriors scurried, preparing for battle. His eyes instinctively sought out his own men, griffons, and horses. It looked like the sergeants were doing a good job of putting everything in order.

Jet furled his wings and swooped toward the patch of open ground in front of Tchazzar’s pavilion. The war hero stood with his legs apart and his arms away from his torso as a squire buckled gilt plate armor onto him a piece at a time. Why, only the Firelord knew. He was supposed to fight in dragon form.

Other folk were hovering around him, either because they were awaiting final orders or simply because he wanted them there. Jhesrhi, Gaedynn, Shala, and Hasos were all armed in their various fashions and looked like the seasoned combatants they were. Halonya’s top-heavy, bulbous miter and garnet-dotted robe with its long dragging train made her look like a parody of a priestess costumed for a farce.

But although she was the one person manifestly out of place, it was to her that Tchazzar looked as Aoth swung himself out of the saddle. “What do you think, wise lady?” the red dragon asked. “What do the omens say?”

Halonya blinked. “Uh … your soldiers are strong in their faith. But the dark is rising.”

Gaedynn grinned. “That often happens at sunset.”

“Respect!” Tchazzar snapped.

The archer offered a courtly little half bow. It was a silent apology if one cared to take it that way.

“The dark isrising,” the dragon said. He peered about as though a demon lurked in every deepening shadow. “We should have attacked by day.”

“Majesty,” said Aoth, striding toward him and the folk clustered around him, “if you recall, we wanted to give the appearance of weakness to lure Alasklerbanbastos to the battlefield. Which meant we couldn’t attack at all. We had to let him advance on us, and we assumed from the start that he’d come by night.”

“Actually,” Shala said, “we need him to. Jaxanaedegor couldn’t help us if we fought in the sunlight.”

“Jaxanaedegor,” Tchazzar sneered, as though it were she and not himself who’d made a pact with the vampire. “Yes, by all means, let’s hang our hopes on him.”

Shala’s square jaw tightened. “Does Your Majesty have a shrewder strategy?”

“Perhaps,” Tchazzar said. “We could withdraw. Fight at a time of our choosing.”

“Majesty,” said Aoth, “this isthe time of our choosing. Of yourchoosing. And it’s too late to withdraw. You can fly away, but most of your army can’t.”

Tchazzar turned back toward Halonya. Who, Aoth was certain, meant to go on saying exactly the wrong thing.

He whispered words of power, then pointed his finger at the gangly, towheaded youth who was trying to strap Tchazzar’s armor on, having a difficult time of it as his liege lord fidgeted and pivoted back and forth. The cantrip sent a chill stabbing through the squire. He stumbled, and his hands jerked, jamming the war hero’s gorget into the soft flesh under his jaw.

“Idiot!” Tchazzar snarled. He spun, grabbed the boy, and dumped him on the ground. Then he started kicking him.

Aoth winced. But he hoped that with a battle and an archenemy awaiting his attention, Tchazzar could be persuaded to stop short of doing the lad permanent harm. And in any case, the chastisement gave Aoth the chance to shift close to Jhesrhi and whisper, “Distract him.”

She immediately headed for the war hero. “Majesty, please!” she said. “I understand that you’re upset. But I have something I need to say.”

“What?” Tchazzar said.

“I think … I think that walking among us mortals in a form of flesh and blood, you sometimes half forget what you truly are-a god. Above all signs and auguries except the ones you find in your own heart, and your own nature.”

Tchazzar frowned. “I suppose …”

“If you want to know how the battle will go, then I promise, just peer into flame, and your own divinity will show you.” Jhesrhi waved him toward a fire crackling and smoking several paces away.

Halonya scowled and started to follow.

Aoth grabbed her by the forearm and clamped down hard enough to hurt her. “Lady,” he whispered, “a word.”

She sucked in a breath.

“Scream,” he said, still just as softly, “and I swear by the Black Flame, I’ll kill you. I can do it with one thrust of this spear. Even Tchazzar won’t be able to act fast enough to save you.”

“This is sacrilege,” she said through clenched teeth. But her voice was as hushed as his own.

“What do I care? I’m a mage and a Thayan, remember? Now, this is how it’s going to be. Right now, Jhesrhi is doing her best to nurse Tchazzar through his case of nerves. When they turn around again, you’ll help her. You’ll convince him to follow through and fight.”

“You can’t bully me.”

“Maybe not. But I truly will kill you if you don’t do what I say, and I won’t have to be this close to do it. I know spells-”

“Let her go,” Hasos said. From the sound of it, he was standing right behind Aoth.

“No,” said Aoth.

“I have my dagger in my hand. You told the priestess that even Tchazzar couldn’t act quickly enough to save her. Well, neither your griffon nor Ulraes can save you.”

“Listen to me,” said Aoth, wondering how many more heartbeats he had left before Tchazzar turned back around. “You and I have had our differences. But I’ve learned that you’re an able warrior when you need to be. So you know Tchazzar hasto fight tonight. He’ll lose Chessenta if he doesn’t. Halonya will lose her holy office. You’ll lose your barony, and the men-at-arms who followed you to this place will lose their lives. As a worshiper of Amaunator and Torm, you also know the difference between a true cleric revealing insights and a charlatan improvising blather.”

Hasos stood silent for what felt like a long while. Then he said, “My lady, please forgive me for intruding on a private conversation.” Aoth sighed in relief.

“Come back!” Halonya said. “You cowardly, blaspheming son of a-”

“Shut up,” said Aoth. “You know what to do. You know what will happen if you don’t. Make your choice.” He stepped away from her.

Gaedynn gave him an inquiring look, and Shala helped the scraped and bloodied squire to his feet. Then Tchazzar whirled around. For the moment at least, his uneasiness had given way to a grin.

“I saw victory!” he said. Aoth wondered if Jhesrhi had surreptitiously supplied the images, or if the red dragon’s imagination had done all the work.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Shala said.

Tchazzar looked to Halonya. “Still,” he said, a hint of hesitation returning to his voice, “you had … concerns.”

The high priestess took a deep breath. “No longer, Majesty. I too saw triumph in the fire, even from over here.”

“Then why are we standing around?” Tchazzar cried. “To your stations! Boy, why is my collar lying on the ground? And what happened to your face?”

As it turned out, riding a giant bat wasn’t much like riding a griffon. Both the voice and the touch commands were different. The animal moved differently, perhaps even more nimbly, in the air, and Khouryn was still learning how and when to lean to aid its maneuvering.

It also seemed incapable of making anything comparable to the diversity of rasps and screeches a griffon could emit. Which might be the only reason it wasn’t subjecting him to an ongoing critique of his technique.

But his clumsiness notwithstanding, it felt good to fly again. And the loan of the winged steed was a mark of Tarhun’s trust, even though it was also a practical necessity if he was to scout the giant stronghold from the air.

Biri’s arms shifted their grip around his waist. “Have you ever flown before?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I always wanted to. It was why I meant-well, mean, I guess-to join the Lance Defenders when I’m older.”

So she was young. “Well, ordinarily this isn’t the first flight I’d pick for you. Or the first time aloft on a bat that I’d choose for myself. But our companions know their business. We’ll be all right.”

“I know,” she said. “The Daardendriens are very brave.” Her front brushed his back as she twisted to look left.

She could have said that the Lance Defenders were very brave, for it was active members of the corps who made up most of the scouting party. She could also have looked right, toward Medrash and his borrowed bat, instead of to the left and Balasar.

But she hadn’t done either of those things. So Khouryn sighed and said, “Balasar’s a fine warrior and my good friend. But not a suitable match for you.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she replied.

Did the love-struck young ever listen to sound advice? Probably not. The Shining Dancer knew, Khouryn hadn’t. Nor did he regret it, despite all the horror and heartbreak that followed.

The smell of smoke that tainted the entire wasteland grew stronger. Black masses rose from the ground, and veins of glowing, flickering red threaded their way among them.

The dragonborn called the place Ashhold. In one sense that was a misnomer, because the dark shapes were mostly extrusions of basalt, not the ashen spires encountered elsewhere on the plain. But it was a sacred site to the giants, where the fires that burned beneath their country found their way to the surface and, by ancient custom, the tribes set even the bitterest feuds aside. It was also the redoubt to which the survivors of Skuthosiin’s horde had retreated after Tarhun’s warriors pushed them out of Tymanther.

Khouryn could see why. The hillocks of rock shouldn’t be as tough to crack as a castle with continuous walls, battlements, and other civilized defenses-thanks be to the Lord of the Twin Axes that the giants lacked the knowledge to erect such a structure. Still, they provided the advantages of high ground, partial cover, and a maze of obstructions to confuse an attacking force and break it up into smaller, less-effective units. The patches of flame and hot coals would further complicate the assault.

So far, no giant was bellowing the alarm. The bats were evidently hard to see in the smoky, benighted sky. With the tap of a finger against the surprisingly soft fur on its shoulder, Khouryn made his steed swoop a little lower. Then he studied Ashhold and imagined the various ways in which it might be attacked with the troops at the vanquisher’s disposal, and how the giants might respond in each instance. The possibilities danced before his inner eye like pawns and pieces moving on a sava board.

“Go farther in,” Biri said, “and lower.”

“Why?”

“Magic. I feel a lot of force stirring. I see it too, like a spot in the air after you glance straight at the sun. It’s there.” She stretched her arm past his head to point the way.