Текст книги "The Spectral Blaze"

Автор книги: Richard Lee Byers

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But since that hadn’t happened, maybe he could serve as a distraction for her. As the third acolyte started pawing through their discarded garments, he asked, “How did you know?”

Sphorrid sneered. The filed teeth made the expression jarringly ugly. “You aren’t nearly as clever as you imagine. Wyrmkeepers are priests. Did you think you could pass reanimated corpses off as living men and we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference?”

“We hoped,” Oraxes said. The acolyte tossed him his clothes. “We were high above them, and it was dark. Why didn’t you confront us on the spot?” He already knew the answer, but it was the only thing he could think of to say to keep the conversation going.

“Because I had to assume,” Sphorrid said, “that all the soldiers you brought on the raid were in on the deception. In other words, you and they had the four of us outnumbered.”

“We still do,” Oraxes said, pulling on his breeches. “The entire Brotherhood is camped around this tent.”

“And for the most part,” Sphorrid answered, “fast asleep. You’ll make sure that any who are awake don’t notice anything amiss as you walk us to our steeds because I’ve already indicated what will happen if they do. Now, both of you, hurry and finish dressing.”

Oraxes and Meralaine drew out the process as long as they could, but that wasn’t long at all, and Tchazzar’s agents never relaxed their vigilance. When the captives were fully clad, the two priests sheathed their blades and picked up their fighting picks. All four wyrmkeepers held the weapons in a casual-looking way that would nonetheless allow them to swing in an instant. And they stayed close behind Oraxes and Meralaine as they all exited the pavilion.

As Sphorrid had said, the whole camp seemed asleep in the last precious, fading bit of the night before the bugles started blowing and griffons began screeching, horses neighing, and mules braying for their provender. Snores rumbled from the various tents, and from the men who, in the warm summer weather, had opted to sleep out under the stars.

I have to do something, Oraxes thought. It will get me killed, but if all four of them are busy butchering me, that might give Meralaine a real chance.

But the right moment never came. Or else he hesitated whenever one of the wyrmkeepers glanced elsewhere or he got a quarter step farther ahead of them, and so lost his opportunities. They all rounded the big, patched tent containing the armorers’ portable forge, and they were facing the paddock where the drakkensteeds were waiting.

The reptiles gave odd cries, harsh, yet low and tremulous, when they spied their masters. They already had their saddles cinched around their middles and their saddlebags buckled in place, and they crouched down to make it easy to mount when the priests and their prisoners were still several paces away.

“Put them on the steeds one at a time,” Sphorrid said. “The boy first.”

Oraxes’s particular captor shoved him forward then backhanded him across the ear when he tried to mount. “Not in the saddle, blasphemer,” growled the priest. “In front of it.”

That made for a precarious and uncomfortable perch, with the drakkensteed’s vertebrae digging into Oraxes’s tender parts. Still, as the priest looked down to clip his fighting pick to the saddle, he thought Lady Luck might finally have given him his chance. But no, curse it, it wasn’t so, not with two of the other wyrmkeepers still hovering right behind Meralaine.

Oraxes’s keeper mounted behind him, buckled the straps that would hold him in his seat, and pulled his dagger from its sheath. Meralaine’s special guard got her and himself situated in the same way. Sphorrid and the other acolyte swung themselves onto their drakkensteeds. Then the reptiles rose, scuttled, lashed their batlike wings, and climbed into the air. The camp and Mourktar fell away beneath them.

This is it, Oraxes thought, clinging to the beast beneath him as best he could. As soon as we’re clear of the Brotherhood, they’ll set down again, gag us, and bind our hands. Then we really won’t have a chance. If I’m going to make a move, it has to be now.

But what move could that be when it was a struggle just to keep from sliding off the drakkensteed and his captor’s dagger was poised at his back? What would Gaedynn do?

Even in the midst of his desperation, he noticed that was a strange thought for him. He wasn’t used to wondering what others might do, probably because, when he was growing up in squalor in Luthcheq’s arcane quarter, who had there ever been worth emulating? Certainly not his teacher, an able wizard, but a bitter, drunken wreck of a man in every other way.

He shoved such useless reflections and memories aside. Think, curse it! Think, think, think!

Like a griffon, the drakkensteed had no reins. Was it possible that a rider controlled such a reptile in the same way, with voice commands and by touching it on the neck? Could the system of signals be the same for both sorts of creature?

Oraxes didn’t know, but maybe he could find out. His hands were already on the drakkensteed’s scaly, bony neck. Indeed, he could hardly have lifted them away without risking a tumble.

He surreptitiously pressed his right index finger into the reptile’s neck. It turned a hair in that direction. Oraxes held his breath while he waited for the man behind him to react but he didn’t. The shift had been too minimal to capture his attention.

Oraxes slid his finger half an inch down the ridge that was the drakkensteed’s spine. The beast lashed its wings and climbed a little. The wyrmkeeper still didn’t react.

All right, then. Oraxes took a breath then, pressing harder, swept his whole hand toward the drakkensteed’s head. The reptile furled its wings and plummeted.

The wyrmkeeper cried out in surprise. And at that instant, when he was presumably intent on asserting control, Oraxes heaved himself backward, smashing the back of his head into the priest’s face.

The man didn’t instantly retaliate with a dagger thrust, so Oraxes assumed he must have stunned him. But he didn’t think he’d hit the whoreson hard enough to knock him out. As the drakkensteed started to level off, he flung his head backward again.

But he failed to connect because something held him away. Dazed or not, the wyrmkeeper had evidently interposed an arm.

Oraxes was lucky it wasn’t the arm with the blade. Otherwise, he would probably have impaled himself. That didn’t make what he had to do any easier. Since he no longer had surprise on his side, his only hope of contending with the priest was to let go of the drakkensteed, twist around, and fight the man more or less face-to-face.

As soon as he turned, he started to topple. When he grabbed the wyrmkeeper, it was as much to anchor himself as to fight him.

The priest’s nose was flattened and streaming blood. He didn’t have the dagger in his hand anymore-he must have dropped it when Oraxes butted him-so he hammered at his captive with both fists. At the same time, he shouted a command in what sounded like Draconic. The drakkensteed started veering back and forth, making it even more difficult for Oraxes to stay on top of it.

Oraxes realized that the wyrmkeeper wasn’t trying to subdue him. The bastard meant to throw him to his death and stood an excellent chance of succeeding. They both knew how to brawl, but the cleric was bigger and stronger and, seated as he was, possessed every other advantage.

Except wizardry. If Oraxes could bring his gift to bear even with the wyrmkeeper mauling him and without a talismanic device to focus his power, he might still have a chance.

Clinging with one hand, struggling to shield himself from his adversary’s bludgeoning fists with the other, he gasped the opening words of an incantation. The acolyte’s eyes widened when he realized what his captive was doing. The man redoubled his efforts to fling or shake Oraxes off the drakkensteed’s back or, failing that, to hurt him sufficiently to make him stumble in the midst of his recitation.

As Oraxes reached the final words of power, the wyrmkeeper grabbed him by the arm he’d been using to block. Oraxes had no way to make the necessary mystical gesture except with the hand he’d been employing to hold on to his foe. He let the cleric go, and now there was nothing except the cleric’s grip keeping him in place.

He could see the realization of that fact dawn in the wyrmkeeper’s face. The man snarled and started to heave him sideways. Oraxes curled his free hand through the necessary pass, thrust it under the priest’s scale-armor chasuble, and grabbed hold of the leather garment beneath.

Force stabbed from his hand just as if he’d cast darts of light, but it passed directly into the wyrmkeeper’s body. The man convulsed, then went limp as a rag doll. Still zigzagging, the drakkensteed made him flop from side to side.

Oraxes was afraid to let go of the corpse, but he had to if he was going to turn back around and try to control the drakkensteed. He did it in one fast, frantic motion, then leaned down over the serpentine neck, so he was lying on the reptile as much as sitting astride it.

He squeezed a fold of skin, giving the command that meant stop what you’re doing. To his relief, the drakkensteed resumed flying in a straight line. Whether or not it understood that one of the humans on its back had just killed the other, it was evidently willing to obey the only rider left.

Oraxes looked around. The sky was somewhat lighter, light enough to reveal the fury and consternation in the faces of the remaining wyrmkeepers. He sneered and started to make a filthy gesture. Then Sphorrid bellowed, “Surrender or we’ll kill Meralaine!”

A jolt of dread obliterated Oraxes’s momentary feeling of satisfaction. But he was sure that if he gave up, he and Meralaine were as good as dead anyway.

“I’m going to fight to the death no matter what!” he shouted back. “If you kill both of us, you won’t have anyone left to question!” At the same time, he made his drakkensteed climb, seeking the advantage of the high air.

It was a sensible tactic to attempt, but he knew he couldn’t afford to let the fight come down to who was the best flyer because it surely wasn’t he. Still a novice when it came to riding griffons, he was bound to prove even clumsier on his current mount. He started another incantation.

Meanwhile, the wyrmkeepers were climbing too. Sphorrid chanted a spell of his own.

Oraxes finished first and shrouded himself and his mount in a haze that ought to make them particularly hard to target in the predawn gloom. It didn’t blur his own vision, but he felt a sudden chill in the air around him as the enchantment sprang into being.

An instant later, one of his enemies’ drakkensteeds spewed a flare of fire at him, while another spit a puff of what was surely poisonous or corrosive vapor. They evidently had no compunction about striking at one of their own kind if directed to do so. Sphorrid roared the last word of his spell, thrust out his hand, and for an instant the luminous head of a ghostly blue dragon glimmered around the extremity. The illusory wyrm spit a crackling zigzag of lightning that Oraxes assumed to be entirely real.

The flames fell short, and the other two attacks missed, although not by much. So far, so good, but the cloak of blur wouldn’t last much longer. Glaring at Sphorrid, Oraxes started another incantation. Then, on the final word, he wrenched himself around and thrust out his hand at the wyrmkeeper seated behind Meralaine.

He hated doing it. He was terrified of hitting her instead of her keeper or of killing the beast beneath her and making her fall. But he needed her in the fight.

And because she was bending over the neck of her drakkensteed as he had, the shaft of blue-white light that leaped from his fingertips blazed over her and stabbed at her startled captor’s neck. The priest jerked then went limp, his throat and upper torso covered in frost and his heart stopped by a shock of bitter cold.

Or at least Oraxes hoped he’d stopped it. Before he could be sure, his drakkensteed lashed its wings and flung itself sideways. The motion nearly dumped him off its back, and for an instant, he thought that was precisely what the beast had intended. Then, claws poised to catch and rend, another reptile and its acolyte rider plunged through the space his own mount had just vacated.

“Get the girl!” Sphorrid bellowed. The acolyte pulled his drakkensteed out of its dive and wheeled in Meralaine’s direction. Oraxes could tell that he had indeed killed her captor, leaving her in control of his mount. Unfortunately he could tell it primarily by the clumsy, floundering way the beast had begun to fly. When it came to riding a winged creature, Meralaine was even more of a beginner than he was, and she was plainly overcontrolling, confusing, and irritating the reptile.

Sphorrid kept on pursuing Oraxes. He thrust out his hand, and a glowing, transparent red dragon head appeared around it to spew flame. Acting in advance of Oraxes’s tardy prompt-and thank the Queen of Air for it!-his mount just managed to swoop beneath the blast. He replied with a bright, booming thunderbolt, and Sphorrid dodged with a veer to the left. The wretch made it look easy too.

They traded attack after attack, neither quite managing to score. Meanwhile, the other wyrmkeeper maneuvered to get both above and behind Meralaine, who was evidently still struggling to direct her own steed. Oraxes was frantic to go to her aid but knew Sphorrid would kill him if he tried.

Meralaine’s adversary had nearly reached the perfect position from which to attack when, suddenly flying more smoothly, the drakkensteed on which she was sitting wheeled to face it. The priest in the saddle sat up straighter. Oraxes realized Meralaine had reanimated the dead man so he could control their mount.

Their foe still had the advantage of the high air. But Meralaine shouted a word that made him cringe instead of doing anything useful, and at the same instant, the newly made zombie commanded their drakkensteed to use its breath weapon. The plume of poison mist reached just high enough to wash over the head of the living wyrmkeeper’s mount. It flailed and plummeted, and the man on its back screamed as it carried him down.

Perceiving that he had no allies left, Sphorrid turned his steed and fled. It was the wrong move. It kept him from dodging the thunderbolt that Oraxes threw after him. Charred and mangled, the wyrmlord and his mount also fell and broke into pieces when they smashed against the ground.

Oraxes and Meralaine followed them down and made absolutely certain both priests were dead. He took a deep breath and said, “Well. That was interesting.”

Meralaine swiped strands of hair out of her pale, sweaty face. “What’s the plan now?” she asked.

Oraxes tried to think. “We bury the bodies, and act oh so surprised if someone else comes from Luthcheq to ask what happened to the first band of busybodies. We watched them leave for home and have no idea why they never arrived.”

“That might work.” She waved her hand at the two surviving drakkensteeds. “What about these brutes?”

He strained to figure out if they could afford to keep them or set them free or if they needed to kill and hide them too, even though the animals had just helped to save their lives. He couldn’t sort it out.

“By the seven cold and broken stars,” he said, half laughing and half annoyed, “give me a moment, will you? Just a moment to catch my breath.”

SEVEN

23-24 E LEASIS, THE Y EAR OF THE A GELESS O NE

Praxasalandos oozed through a seam in the rock. It was a perfect way to stalk his prey. He could pace the Imaskari and dragonborn almost step for step, and they never even suspected he was near.

He found a spot where a crack connected his secret path to the open cavern. It wasn’t much of an opening, but it provided enough room for him to form an eye out of the liquid metal that was his body.

The intruders were still resting-in many cases, sleeping-and showed no signs of moving on in the immediate future. It made sense that they were tired. They’d marched a long way, sometimes taking the wrong tunnel and needing to double back despite the dwarf’s skill as a pathfinder. They’d also fought a pack of cave drakes that Praxasalandos had sent to hinder them.

The difference between the scene from before and what Praxasalandos looked at was that the dragonborn called Medrash was up and prowling around. Somewhat to his dismay, Praxasalandos had discovered that the explorers had a fair assortment of formidable individuals among them, but nonetheless, Medrash, his kinsman Balasar, and Khouryn, the dwarf, stood out from the rest. They were natural leaders in a way that transcended rank, although they possessed that too. Eliminate even one of them, and it would weaken the expedition significantly.

So that was what Praxasalandos intended to do.

He dissolved the eye before anyone noticed it then, guided by a kind of tactile instinct as reliable as sight, streamed back the way he’d come. He seeped out of the granite in a tunnel that connected to the area he’d just surveyed but beyond a dogleg, where none of his prey could see him.

There he compressed his mass as he solidified it and simultaneously sculpted it into an unaccustomed shape. The process was more difficult than assuming his natural form, but not much, not for a dragon possessed of his breed’s singular gifts.

When he was done, he peeked around the bend. There was an Imaskari sentry stationed there, but the human with his pale, mottled skin couldn’t see him hiding in the dark.

Praxasalandos kept peering out at intervals until finally Medrash was in view. Then he undertook the final and most difficult detail of his masquerade: putting a glowing lantern in his hand. Because obviously the real Balasar wouldn’t have wandered away from his comrades without a source of light.

It took a couple of heartbeats, long enough for Praxasalandos to feel a pang of doubt.

What was he doing? Why was he setting snares for folk who’d never done him any harm, especially when, judging from their standards and insignia, some of them worshiped Bahamut? Why was he serving Gestanius, a despicable creature that, by rights, any self-respecting metallic should oppose?

But of course, the answer was obvious: the game.

At certain moments, Praxasalandos regretted that he’d ever accepted the invitation to visit Brimstone on Dracowyr. But like most quicksilver dragons, he was curious; how could he pass up an opportunity to meet a creature who, though an undead horror, was also one of the saviors of their entire race?

And from the moment the vampire explained xorvintaal in all its intricate glory, there was no turning back. Praxasalandos had no interest in building a new Draconic Age, the alleged ultimate purpose for the contest. But the play itself was fascinating in its complexity, uniquely suited to divert a dragon’s deep and subtle mind not just for a month or a year, but down the long centuries of his near immortality. A wyrm could no more withstand its allure than he could resist the desire to amass precious objects into a hoard.

And once Praxasalandos opted in, he had to address the fact that, although powerful by ordinary standards, he lacked the resources to play in the same style as the most notorious wyrms of the East. If he wanted to fare well in the opening stages, his best chance was to ally himself with one of them. And Gestanius, who laired in the same mountains as he did, seemed a sensible albeit unsavory choice.

Medrash’s voice sounded down the tunnel. “Is there light shining around the corner?”

Praxasalandos decided that the lantern with its spot of phosphorescence had fully defined itself. He stepped around the turn, beckoned urgently for Medrash to come forward, then retreated out of sight.

“Balasar?” Medrash called.

Praxasalandos didn’t answer. He held his breath as he waited to see if the dragonborn would take the bait.

It was by no means a certainty. If Medrash doubted what his eyes had told him, he might retrace his own steps far enough to see that the real Balasar was still asleep. Or his voice might wake the real one, who would then presumably answer.

But when Praxasalandos heard the scuff of approaching footsteps and caught a whiff of Medrash’s scent, he knew the trick had worked.

He melted and poured himself back inside the rock. Then he flowed to the arch that linked the passage with the chamber the dragonborn and Imaskari currently occupied. There, by the pressure of thought alone, he started activating the runes that Gestanius had long ago concealed inside the granite.

*****

Khouryn woke to a shiver in the stone beneath him. Or at least, he thought he had. No one else had woken up, and no one who’d already been awake looked alarmed. His surroundings were steady.

Steady but wrong. A dwarf could feel it in his bones, even if the Imaskari with their claims to knowledge of the subterranean world couldn’t.

He looked around again. There were three corridors leading out of the cavern, and the sentry stationed at one of them was looking down it intently, apparently because there was something to see.

Khouryn considered pulling on the mail the Daardendriens’ armorer had made for him and decided not to take the time. He grabbed his new axe and headed for the Imaskari warrior.

By the time he reached the soldier, he knew he’d been right to hurry. The granite beyond the arch looked solid. It wasn’t shaking in any visible or audible way. But if felt precarious, like a child’s blocks piled in such an unstable fashion that the arrangement fairly screamed of imminent collapse. A couple of minute particles of rock dust drifted down from the ceiling.

That, however, was clearly not why the human was peering into the shadows and at the white light gleaming from around the bend. If he understood what was actually happening, he’d likely be yelling his head off, not that that was a good idea under the circumstances.

“What are you looking at?” Khouryn snapped. “What is that light?”

“I saw Balasar,” the human said haltingly. Mistrusted by most of their neighbors, the Imaskari were perforce a somewhat insular folk, and apparently the sentry wasn’t entirely fluent in the Common tongue that enabled Faerun’s many races and cultures to communicate one with the next.

Impatience ratcheted Khouryn’s nerves a notch tighter. “Balasar’s down there?” Could that be right? Hadn’t Khouryn just passed his friend on the way over?

“Medrash… followed,” the soldier said. “Light is from lantern and sword.”

“Herd everyone away from this passage,” Khouryn said, “quickly. But don’t shout. Understand me?”

The sentry’s eyes opened wide. “Yes!”

Khouryn trotted down the passage, and a perceptible tremor ran through the rock beneath his feet. More grit fell. With a tiny crunching sound, a hairline crack snaked through the wall on his left.

He rounded the bend. Peering about in seeming perplexity, Medrash was a few paces farther along. As the sentry had indicated, he’d set the blade of his broadsword aglow with silvery light to serve as a lamp.

“Get back here!” Khouryn said. “Now!”

Startled, Medrash jerked around. “Balasar-”

“Was never here,” Khouryn said. “This is a trap. Come on!”

Medrash ran toward him. Khouryn wheeled and sprinted but stopped when he turned the corner again.

The tunnel in front of him was vibrating. Enough grit was drifting down that not even a human could miss it. The granite rumbled softly but continuously.

Medrash rounded the dogleg and bumped into him from behind. “Keep going!” the dragonborn said.

“No,” Khouryn said. “We won’t make it. Back the other way!”

Medrash looked as if he wanted to argue, to protest that their comrades were just a few strides and a few moments away, but then he scowled and did as he’d been told.

The ceiling fell with a deafening crash and raised a blinding, choking cloud of dust. The jolt threw Khouryn off his feet. Coughing, eyes stinging, he looked around and could just make out the smudge of glow surrounding Medrash’s blade.

He drew himself to his feet and headed in that direction. Medrash met him halfway.

“Are you all right?” the dragonborn asked.

“Fine.” Noticing that the dust was settling, Khouryn turned, wiped his teary eyes, and inspected the mass of broken stone clogging the passage. For all their frantic haste, he and Medrash had just barely outdistanced the collapse, which meant the passage was blocked for twenty paces at least. “Well, we’re not going back that way.” A spasm of irritation twisted his guts. “Curse it, you’re not a dwarf. I don’t care what you think you see. Never walk down one of these tunnels by yourself.”

“I apologize,” Medrash said.

Khouryn sighed. “Forget it. Anyone can fall victim to a trick, especially a magical one.”

“And it seems that is what happened.” Medrash took another look at the rock fall. “Which reminds me that Biri and several of the Imaskari have magic of their own. If they work together, perhaps they can reach us.”

“Don’t count on it,” Khouryn said.

“Because the blockage is too big?”

“Partly. Also, remember that we don’t know how far the collapse extended, so we don’t actually even know that our comrades are all right. As they don’t know that we are.”

Medrash smiled grimly. “You’re saying we should plan on saving ourselves.”

“Pretty much.”

“Can we?”

“If this tunnel goes somewhere. I’m hoping it hooks back around and links up with the route our company is taking. It looks like it could, but there’s only one way to find out.”

“Then lead on,” Medrash said.

Khouryn did, meanwhile peering for signs of danger ahead. But he nearly missed, or at least disregarded, the line of silvery glimmer in the granite right beside him. Then, however, he realized what it was: the quicksilver dragon lurking behind another crack.

“Watch out!” Khouryn shouted. He stepped back and readied his axe. Two warriors against a dragon was rotten odds. But if he and Medrash both struck in the instant when the quicksilver wyrm became solid but before it could make an attack, they might have some kind of chance.

“I see it,” Medrash said. He raised his sword, cried the name of his god, and the glow of the blade burned so brightly that Khouryn flinched away. Then the paladin thrust at the fissure. It was a fast, hard action, but even though the crack was so narrow that Khouryn wasn’t sure the blade would even fit, it stabbed in cleanly, with nary a scrape of steel on stone.

Quicksilver churned and separated into separate droplets around the burning sword. Then it streamed away from the weapon and out of sight.

Medrash slid the sword back out much more slowly than he’d driven it in. Without the god’s power augmenting his skills, he was leery of dulling the blade. “I didn’t kill it,” he said.

“I figured,” Khouryn said. “But you ran it off, and I really didn’t want to fight it this very instant. So, well done.”

Medrash kept peering at the crack. “Up this close, I thought I sensed something.”

“What?”

“I’m not sure. A vileness.”

Khouryn snorted. “I didn’t have to be a paladin to pick up on that.”

*****

As she entered the Green Hall, Jhesrhi looked around at the assembly and decided that a fair number of people had come to dread being summoned into the royal presence just about as much as she had.

Of course, not every face betrayed such feelings. Halonya was smirking like the half-demented thing she was. Lord Luthen and other peers who had thus far received only friendship and preferential treatment from the Red Dragon looked smug and self-satisfied. Zan-akar Zeraez kept his purple, silver-etched features composed into a mask of wise and sober courtesy.

Still, some courtiers, men who’d been stripped of property or offices merely on Tchazzar’s whim or been commanded to send their wives or daughters to his chambers, glowered and sulked. Daelric and some of the other high priests stood in a huddle, muttering together.

But only Shala kept scowling when the Red Dragon actually strode into the room, although some others couldn’t resist the impulse to wince or gasp.

That was because Tchazzar had blood spattered all over the front of him, from his long, handsome face all the way down to his pointed shoes, soaking his vermilion-and-black silk and velvet garments and dulling the glitter of his diamond buttons. Jhesrhi suspected that he’d been taking a personal hand in punishing supposed miscreants in the dungeons, although that was by no means a certainty. He’d proved himself capable of committing mayhem anywhere and anytime something angered him.

Everyone bowed or curtsied as, seemingly oblivious to his bizarre and disquieting dishevelment, Tchazzar mounted the dais and flopped down on the throne, immediately fouling the gold and sea green cushions with smears of blood. “Rise,” he said, and Jhesrhi noticed that he had significantly more gore on his mouth than the rest of his face. It even stained his teeth.

“Well,” Tchazzar continued, surveying them all, “here we are again, facing the same annoying paradox. With a god to rule it, Chessenta is blessed beyond all other realms. Yet no monarch could find himself more beset by malcontents. Why is that?”

After a moment, Jhesrhi decided it wasn’t just a rhetorical question. He was actually waiting for an answer. But no one knew what to say, or else those who did feared to draw the dragon’s attention to themselves.

Finally, looking like an overfed canary in his yellow vestments, Daelric cleared his throat and said, “Majesty, the brightest light casts the deepest shadows. When one studies the Keeper’s sacred texts-”

“Fire and blood!” Tchazzar screamed. “Did you think I was asking for platitudes? Not one word more! Or you can try studying the sacred texts without eyes and prattling about what you find there without a tongue!”

Daelric’s round, ruddy face turned a shade paler. He bowed and stepped back among his fellow clerics, who in some cases edged away from him as though Tchazzar’s displeasure were contagious.

Jhesrhi supposed that if anyone could calm the dragon, or at least encourage him to get to the point, it would be either Halonya or herself. And for once, the prophetess didn’t appear on the quivering verge of blurting something out. Although she did appear to be trying to maintain a grave expression to mask an underlying eagerness.