Текст книги "Whisper of Venom"

Автор книги: Richard Lee Byers

Соавторы: Richard Lee Byers
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Just in time. Jhesrhi stumbled on into the lavatory and dropped to her knees in front of the commode. The fine supper Tchazzar had given her came up in a series of racking heaves.

It left a nasty acidic taste burning in her mouth. She spat some of it away, but for the time being would have to tolerate the rest. Because she had another vile sensation to deal with-or maybe just the memory of one. But whatever it was, it was even more repugnant.

She poured water from the pitcher into the basin, then focused her will on it. It steamed as it grew hot. Then she rubbed soap onto a brush meant for cleaning fingernails and scrubbed her hand till it was raw.

When it was finally enough, and her feeling of violation subsided, she took a bottle of wine from the cabinet and rattled off a cantrip. Magic popped the cork out of the neck. She used the first mouthful of something red and sweet to rinse her mouth, spat it in the spattered and stinking commode, then flopped down in a chair and took a long pull.

She wanted to drink until her memories of the evening grew dim and meaningless. It had disgusted her to play the weak, helpless, pleading damsel, especially since the lie was built around a core of truth. She wasfreakish and broken, even if it was beyond Tchazzar’s power to mend her.

He’d keep trying though, since she’d opened the door. He’d paw her whenever he could, and how was she supposed to bear it?

She couldn’t imagine. But the ploy had been the only one she could think of to lower the red dragon’s defenses and cozen him into telling her what she needed to hear.

As she’d promised she would when Aoth had asked her in his apartments the night before. Even though he’d asked in a diffident manner quite unlike the man she knew.

“I don’t know if it’s right,” he’d said. “I’ve always believed that ‘right’ is honoring your contracts. I don’t know if it’s prudent. I’ve always thought that prudence is not sticking your nose into things that are none of your business. I definitely don’t know if it’s right and prudent for you. You’re on your way to a splendid life in the country of your birth. All I can offer is more of the same mud, blood-”

Perhaps it was his guilt, and the affection that underlay it, that abruptly made all other loyalties seem inconsequential. At any rate, she’d lifted her hand to silence him. “Stop. Please stop. I’ll do it whatever it is, if only to stop you blathering.”

And since she had, and since it had worked, she supposed she mustn’t drink herself into a stupor after all. She needed to work on what Tchazzar had given her. She set the bottle on the floor and snapped her fingers. Her staff leaped from the corner into her hand.

Though Gaedynn had never admitted it, he occasionally found Aoth’s augmented vision annoying. Like now, for example. Gaedynn was supposed to be the master scout, but it was the war-mage-with plump, pretty Cera riding behind him-who sent his griffon swooping toward a particular barren crag. Presumably because he’d spotted the cave mouth they were seeking.

Eider followed Jet down, and then Gaedynn saw it too, not that there was much to see. Just a crack in the sloping granite. But at least it had a ledge in front of it big enough for griffons to set down on.

The riders dismounted, and Cera somewhat awkwardly adjusted the round shield on her arm. She was game and sharp, but no trained soldier, and Gaedynn wondered if Aoth had been wise to bring her.

Maybe not, but then again if any of them were truly wise, no one would have embarked on this secret expedition.

“Are you sure this is the place?” Gaedynn asked. He squatted to examine the ledge more closely. “I don’t see any claw marks or other signs that a dragon’s been here recently.”

“No,” Aoth admitted. “But Jhesrhi got Tchazzar talking, and he told her he hid Alasklerbanbastos’s phylactery where no one would ever find it. He also told her stories involving an old secret refuge he had in the Smoking Mountains. Afterward, she skimmed some of the histories archived in the War College and performed a divination, all in an effort to figure out where the place was. And this is the location, give or take.”

Gaedynn straightened up. “Well, we might as well go in and look around. And if we don’t find anything, we can probably count ourselves lucky.”

Cera peered at him. “But you won’t feel that way.”

He smiled. “No, sunlady, I confess I won’t.”

Aoth looked at Jet. “I don’t think you and Eider can squeeze through that narrow gap.”

“No,” the black griffon rasped.

The Thayan turned to Cera. “That makes it even more important that you stick close to me and do anything I tell you to.”

She grinned. “So you want a repeat of last night.” Aoth scowled. “All right, I understand!”

Gaedynn laid an arrow on his bow. “Perhaps you could kindle a light to help us on our way. And then, with this sour old codger’s permission, I’ll go first.”

Cera recited a prayer and swung her gilt mace through an arc that mimicked Amaunator’s daily transit across the sky. Gaedynn couldn’t see the results until they entered the cave. But then it became apparent that she’d cloaked herself in a warm golden glow that pushed back the dark for a stone’s throw in every direction.

Gradually the way widened until several people could walk abreast. The ceiling lifted away from their heads until Gaedynn would have needed to rise on tiptoe to touch it. He watched for movement at the point where Cera’s light failed, and for sign on the floor. He listened and sniffed the air. And detected nothing but stone and darkness.

Then Aoth rapped, “Stop!”

His nerves jangling, Gaedynn froze. “What is it?”

“If you take another step, the ceiling will fall on you. I can see the cracks running through the granite, along with a flicker of magical force.”

Gaedynn took a breath. “In its way, that’s helpful. It tells us this really is Tchazzar’s secret hiding place, and at least suggests he’s hiding something here now. Still, it would have been nice if those miraculous eyes of your had noticed the cracks a little sooner.”

“Sorry. They’re very tiny cracks, and it’s a very faint flicker. If it makes you feel any better, there’s a chance that if the ceiling comes down, it will crush Cera and me too.”

“That is comforting. But on the whole, I think I prefer that we all remain unsquashed. What should I do, back up?”

“No. It’s like you’re at the center of a spiderweb that sprang into being around you. You’ll break a strand whichever way you step.”

“That’s … inconvenient.”

“I can try to dissolve the enchantment,” Cera said, with only the slightest quaver in her voice.

“I know,” said Aoth. “But do you think you can channel enough power to outmatch Tchazzar?”

Cera frowned. “Perhaps not.”

“Then maybe we should try another way. When he set this trap, Tchazzar wrote runes on the ceiling with a wand or his fingertip. I can see those too, and I think they contain the phrase that allows safe passage.”

“You ‘think,’ ” Gaedynn said.

“Yes,” said Aoth, “and I thinkI can pronounce them correctly too, even though Aragrakh isn’t my best language.”

“Then take your shot,” Gaedynn said.

Aoth raised his spear over his head and held it parallel to the floor. The point glowed red, like it had just come from the forge. He hissed sibilant words that filled the air with a dry reptilian smell, as though a wyrm were lurking just a pace or two away.

The cracks in the ceiling became visible as they too flared with crimson light. Despite himself, Gaedynn tensed. But then the glow simply faded away.

“It’s safe now,” said Aoth.

Gaedynn grinned. “Of course it is. I never doubted you for an instant.”

They prowled onward. Until Aoth called for another halt.

“What is it this time?” Gaedynn asked. “Am I about to burst into flame?”

“No,” said Aoth. “Or at least I don’t think it’s another snare. But there’s somethingjust ahead of you. Tchazzar dug into the floor, then fused the broken stone back together.”

Cera smiled. “And you can see that too.”

“I have to admit,” Gaedynn said, “the bastard’s clever. To those of us without truesight, there’s nothing to distinguish this bit of passage from the rest of the cave. No trap or guardian in the immediate vicinity. No widening out into a vault or anything like that. Even if a searcher knew something was in here somewhere, he’d likely walk right on by.”

“But we won’t.” Aoth stepped past Gaedynn, and then the head of his spear glowed blue as he charged it with force. He gripped the weapon in both hands and plunged it repeatedly into the floor. The resulting cracks and crunches echoed away down the tunnel.

Something scuttled into the light.

Big as a man, it looked like a scorpion carved from black rock and possessed of a pair of luminous crimson eyes. But it was charging faster than anything made of stone should have been able to move-and, intent on his digging, Aoth plainly didn’t see it rushing forward to seize him in its serrated pincers.

“Watch out!” Gaedynn said. He drew, released, nocked, drew, and released.

Both shafts pierced the creature’s body but failed to stop it or even slow it down. Nor was there time for a third shot. Gaedynn dropped his bow, snatched out his short swords, and lunged past Aoth, interposing himself between the war-mage and the beast.

When Gaedynn got close to the thing, he discovered its body was blistering hot-standing near it was like standing too close to a fire. It snatched for him, and he sidestepped and thrust. His primary sword chipped a dent in the scorpion’s claw, then popped out of the wound and skated along, leaving a scratch behind.

The scorpion reached for him with its other set of pincers. He stabbed again. The claws snapped shut on his blade and yanked it from his grasp.

At the same moment, the pincerlike parts on either side of its mouth spread apart. A glowing red drop of some viscous liquid oozed out, and Gaedynn’s instincts warned him the beast was about to spit. He poised himself to dodge.

Then, behind him, Aoth growled a word of command. A flare of silvery frost shot past Gaedynn and burst into steam when it splashed against his foe. Cera called out to Amaunator, and the light with which she’d surrounded them burned brighter.

The scorpion fell down thrashing. Its pincers clattered, and Gaedynn’s bent and twisted sword clanked on the floor. He lunged and drove his remaining blade into the creature’s left eye. It heaved in a final convulsion, then lay still.

It was still hot though. Stepping back from it, he panted, “Let me just point out that I said, ‘No guardian in the immediate vicinity.’I never said there wasn’t one lurking around somewhere, listening for the sound of digging.”

Aoth grinned, lifted his spear, plunged it down, and broke away another chunk of floor. And that was sufficient to reveal what lay beneath.

It was a gem the size and shape of an egg. Or at least Gaedynn thought it was. At certain moments, it looked less like a solid object than a mere oval of shadow with tiny blue lightning bolts flickering inside it.

“Is that it?” he asked.

“That’s it,” Aoth answered. “Alasklerbanbastos’s spirit. His life.”

“I still say that if Tchazzar weren’t as crazy as a three-tailed dog, he would have destroyed the thing.”

Aoth shrugged, and his mail clinked. “Maybe he thought that would be letting his old enemy off easy. I mean, it would be hellish to be stuck inside a stone, alone and bodiless, for eternity, wouldn’t it? Or maybe he plans to haul out the Bone Wyrm by and by, and torture him for his amusement.”

“Except that we’re going to haul him out first,” Cera said. She drew a deep breath, opened the leather pouch on her belt, produced a gold box large enough to hold the phylactery, and dropped to one knee beside the hole. His pulse ticking in his neck, Gaedynn did his best to believe that the spellcasters knew what they were doing.

EPILOGUE

15 FLAMERULE THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

Blind and deaf, aware of nothing but the alternating mumble and yammer of his own thoughts, Alasklerbanbastos floated in the void. Deliverance came as a sudden feeling of soaring.

For an instant, the mere fact of sensation filled him with such ecstasy that he could think of nothing else. Then he remembered that Tchazzar, Jaxanaedegor, and the rest of the traitors had destroyed his body and sent his ghost into his phylactery. So it was almost certainly the red dragon calling him forth, and not because the lunatic had decided to show him any mercy.

Well, so be it. Tchazzar would no doubt thrust him into some weak and possibly crippled form, but Alasklerbanbastos still had his spells. And with magic, many things were possible.

For a heartbeat, he felt heavy as lead, and then merely corporeal once more. But that didn’t entirely relieve him of the feeling of burdensome weight. Someone had buried the body he now occupied, a frame of rotting flesh as well as bone.

Which was strange. Tchazzar couldn’t possibly expect a mere grave to hold him.

Puzzled, Alasklerbanbastos snarled an incantation and noticed how odd it felt to have an actual tongue curling and flapping in his mouth again. Then the earth above him rumbled and split, revealing a glimpse of the stars. He heaved himself up into the open air, and dirt streamed from his wings.

When he noticed the crooked talon on his right forefoot, he realized he’d entered the corpse of Calabastasingavor, a relatively young blue Tchazzar had killed at the start of his campaign. That explained all the charred, flaking patches on his hide, not that they or the provenance of his new body mattered at the moment.

What did was that much to his amazement, neither Tchazzar nor Jaxanaedegor was anywhere to be seen. Instead, it appeared that Aoth Fezim, Gaedynn Ulraes, and a woman with a mace and shield had taken it upon themselves to call Alasklerbanbastos back into the world.

The idiots apparently thought themselves safe because they had his phylactery. They had no idea how fast and to what lethal effect he could strike, even locked in a youthful dragon’s body. He drew breath to roar a word of power, and then conjured sunlight blazed around the woman.

Agony ripped through Alasklerbanbastos’s frame. Magic was suddenly impossible. So was moving, or even standing upright. His legs buckled beneath him, dumping him back down into the pit.

Fezim came to the edge and peered down at him. “I know liches aren’t as susceptible to sunlight as, say, vampires,” the Thayan said. “But none of you undead like it, do you?”

“How are you doing this?” Alasklerbanbastos growled.

“We tampered with your phylactery,” said Fezim. “You could say we poked a hole in it to let the light in. And my friend the sunlady can make a very bright light when it suits her. She’s going to hold on to the stone for now, to guarantee your cooperation.”

“What is it you want?”

“Answers. She and I were the disembodied souls who spied on you dragons palavering atop your mountain. What was the point of that council? Why are so many of your servants trying to turn everyone against Tymanther? When wyrms talk about Precepts, what does it mean?”

Alasklerbanbastos hesitated. “I can’t tell you.”

“No, I think you probably can.”

The light spilling over the edge of the grave blazed brighter. Alasklerbanbastos screamed, and parts of his hide burst into flame. He convulsed, and his thrashing brought earth pouring down, half burying him again.

Finally the light dimmed, and the searing flames went out. “Well?” said Fezim.

Alasklerbanbastos surprised himself by laughing a grinding laugh, and he found it gratifying when the impudent mites before him flinched. “All right, human. I’ll tell you what you want to know. But I warn you. You won’t like it very much.”

On the trip north, Khouryn had named his bat Iron, for the gray-black color of its fur and its manifest endurance. The animal was demonstrating the latter quality now. It had already flown for hours, but showed no signs of fatigue as it wheeled and swooped over the rooftops of Luthcheq.

Unfortunately, despite Iron’s willingness to carry him wherever he wanted to go, Khouryn could see no sign that the Brotherhood of the Griffon was currently in the city or anywhere near it. Not that he was surprised. He’d assumed his comrades would be somewhere in the north fighting Threskel. But it meant he’d have to ask somebody to point him in precisely the right direction.

He could inquire of Nicos Corynian, but the nobleman might not be privy to all the latest news and every detail of the war hero’s plans. Whereas someone in the War College surely would be. So Khouryn sent Iron winging toward the citadel.

Even a giant bat wasn’t a griffon, and as far as Khouryn knew, Iron and its kind had no special yen for horsemeat. Still, it might be asking a lot of human grooms to take charge of such an exotic and intimidating animal. So he set down on top of the great mass of sandstone, where the Chessentans had carved battlements and emplaced catapults and ballistae. A sentry noticed his sudden, plunging arrival and yelped.

“It’s all right!” Khouryn called. “I’m the dwarf sellsword. Remember me? I want to see Shala Karanok. Or whoever’s in charge, if she’s gone north.”

“Wait here,” said the guard, then scurried away. Khouryn frowned. So much had happened since his departure that he’d half forgotten that the average Chessentan didn’t like dwarves-until the sentry’s curtness reminded him. But maybe the fellow was just rattled.

Whatever he was, he eventually returned with two others like him, as well as an officer with a jutting plume on his helmet and a baton tucked under his arm. Khouryn greeted them and repeated his request.

“It’s been arranged,” the officer said. “But what about your … animal?”

“He’ll be all right here for a while,” Khouryn said, “as long as no one bothers him.”

“Then come with us.”

The soldiers took Khouryn down several stairways into the heart of the cliff, then through a series of passages. The corridors became more ornate, more palatial, as they progressed toward the east and the rest of the city. Finally they arrived at cast bronze double doors decorated with a relief of warships fighting. A guard stood on either side of the entry.

“You have to surrender your axe and dirk,” said the warrior on the left.

Khouryn frowned, but he knew better than to argue. “It’s actually called an urgrosh,” he said, pulling the weapon off his back.

Once they’d disarmed him, the doorkeepers opened the valves. When he saw who waited on the other side, he stopped short.

The hall was predominantly green, with jade tile on the floor and ships on the tapestries battling amid emerald seas. At the back rose a dais surmounted by a thronelike chair.

The skinny woman who appeared to be in charge hadn’t presumed to occupy it. But she’d had someone carry in an almost equally fancy seat of her own and place it right in front of the platform. Glowering, she perched there, a splash of red amid all the green, her ruby-and topaz-bedizened robe hanging on her like a tent.

“Go on!” the officer said. “And bow!”

Khouryn obeyed. To the best of his recollection, he’d never seen the woman in red before. But she was evidently somebody important.

“Good evening, milady,” he said. “I apologize for disturbing you so late in the evening. But I’m Khour-”

“I know who you are!” she snapped.

“Oh. Well, then you probably realize why I’m here. I want to rejoin Captain Fezim’s company as quickly as possible.”

She smirked. “I’m sure you do, dwarf. I’m sure you do.”

He hesitated. “Excuse me?”

“You must think I’m a fool. You dare to come here on the back of one of the dragonborn’s special steeds. Yet you imagine I’ll simply smile and send you on your way.”

“I realize there was a … problem between Chessenta and Tymanther. That’s why my men and I had to take Ambassador Perra home. But-”

“There’s more than a problem, dwarf. There’s war! And since His Majesty is away raising fresh troops, it’s my responsibility to watch for spies and enemies.”

HisMajesty? The more the madwoman talked, the less Khouryn understood. “Milady, please believe I mean no offense. But I think I really need to speak to Lord Corynian. Or Shala Karanok.” Or anyone but you.

“The Red Dragon put me in charge in his absence! Shala Karanok is only a minor functionary now, and will be lucky to cling to even that. And you’re my prisoner. You’ll pay for every threat and insult your master and his witch … I mean, you’re going to tell us everything you know about Tarhun the Vanquisher’s schemes! Arrest him!”

Hands fell on Khouryn’s shoulders. He spun, breaking their grips, and drove a punch into a guard’s gut. The human doubled over. Khouryn backpedaled, looking for a way out.

The madwoman in the gaudy finery might be it. If he could get his hands on her, he could threaten to break her neck if the guards didn’t let him go. He charged her, and then a man in a chasuble of shimmering scales stepped out of the shadows. He hissed words of power and whirled a hand with rings on all five fingers through a serpentine pass.

Khouryn’s muscles locked, and he pitched forward onto his face. He was still lying that way when something hard slammed down on the back of his head.