Azure Bonds

29 The Sacrifice

When Dragonbait woke, he was tethered face up on a cold, stone slab with his tail flattened uncomfortably beneath him. He flexed his claws, trying to cut at the bindings that pulled his limbs toward the four corners of the stone, but little metallic twanging noises told him the bindings were not hemp or leather, but thin, steel wires. A dull ache warned him that the wire was slicing through his scales whenever he moved.

He opened his eyes and, through the great fangs carved of stone that ringed the hillock, saw that the sky was beginning to redden. Just beside the stone slab, in the center of the fanged maw, was a large fire circle filled with day-old ash. He had seen it from the air yesterday—the mound outside Westgate where the worshipers of Moander had waited to receive Alias from their god. The ancient and worn stone they had tied him to was lined with blood-gutters, leaving him no doubt as to the stone’s purpose.

Concentrating, he summoned his shen. Mist had come as close as she could when she described him to the others as a paladin. From what he had gathered in his short time on this world, he and his brothers had much in common with that breed of fighter, and they had many of the same gods-given powers. But shen was not quite the same as a Realms paladin’s ability to detect evil. With it, Dragonbait could determine all the myriad types of evil that preyed on the soul, the absence of evil, and the grace that nourished the soul. He was also able to judge the strength of a spirit.

The human mage’s spirit had begun as an orb of dull yellow—weak, but without malice or arrogance; a little greed, but not much. The change in him had been astounding. His battle with Moander had strengthened his spirit a hundredfold. His soul grew cleaner, though grace was something he had yet to reach for.

The halfling had changed little—a wavering spirit, colored with avarice and ambition, heightened by pinpricks of petty, but deeper, nastiness. Her music helped keep these things at bay, but recently not even that had halted a growing smear of jealousy.

He would not ordinarily have searched two such as these, but the human swordswoman had decided to travel with them, and he took his oath to protect her very seriously. Her spirit was often so weak it frightened him. He was afraid her spirit would falter, not only because he was duty bound to her, but because her soul was touched with a midsummer sky blue of grace. He wanted to preserve that.

Now, though, he admitted to himself that he had failed. The hill around him ebbed and pulsed with an evil light. Soon, he would be killed, the swordswoman’s spirit would be quenched, and she would be turned to evil.

Evil climbed the hill in many bodies. Weak and strong spirits mingled. A double file of cloaked and hooded men and women entered the circle of stone fangs. They split their ranks upon stepping into the circle and surrounded him. Their dress marked them as followers of Moander and their leader bore the faceless mask common to evil masters, even in the saurial’s world.

But the worshipers handled their long robes clumsily and their voices faltered as they sang, occasionally missing notes or forgetting the cadence, only to pick it up again several beats later. Could they be imposters? Dragonbait wondered. They all had the feel of the assassins Cassana worked with—The Fire Knives.

When the pseudo-worshipers of Moander, numbering two dozen, had formed a circle about the perimeter of the hilltop, four figures in gaudy array stepped into their midst.

First came the small, grinning form of Phalse. He was all in blue—a sickening blue of decaying meat. His blue-on-blue-on-blue eyes shone with anticipation. Dragonbait hissed, and Phalse smirked. Phalse had found the saurial roaming the plane of Tarterus stalking demons. The pseudo-halfling had captured the paladin and brought him to this plane so he could be slain to enslave another.

Zrie Prakis entered second, decked in red robes the color of blood, trimmed with dirty, bone-white edgings. He bore his staff of power like a ceremonial weapon, ready to strike down any who failed to obey him. His movements were filled with energy, though his atrophied muscles stretched and popped over his bones.

The lich’s liveliness was due to the proximity of his mistress, Cassana, who strode in behind him. She was dressed in a strapless gown of shimmering green, slit up the side. In her hands she turned the small, slender wand she used to control her pets. She had a wicked, cruel smile.

Last of all, Alias entered the circle, moving more like the undead that Prakis was than a living being. The puppet’s body was under control of her mistress. She was garbed in leathers split up the sides, the bare flesh cross-tied with thongs which looped about silver button-hooks. Long, shiny black boots with incredibly high heels covered her feet and calves. She wore an ornate girdle at her waist, with the skull of some creature etched in silver at the front. She had been given a chain shirt split open at the middle, baring the flesh between her breasts and offering any sword an easy target. Shoulder plates of lacquered black, a red velvet cape, and a collar of black and silver completed the showy, but impractical, ensemble.

In her hands she gripped Dragonbait’s diamond-headed sword so tightly her knuckles were white. Her face was drawn into a tight mask, the lines and vessels of her neck standing out. Along her sword arm, the runes glowed with a hellish light, creating a false blue dawn around her.

Dragonbait pulled at his metallic bonds, trying not to give his captors the pleasure of seeing him thrash. The wires were too well mounted to give way, though, and his wrists grew wet with blood.

Zrie Prakis stood at one end of the stone, near Dragonbait’s head, and Phalse stood at the lizard’s feet. Cassana took one side, and Alias, fighting the pull of the runes, lurched to a position directly across from her. The saurial understood all that was to happen. They would use Hill Cleaver, his own sword, to slay him. If only he’d been able to reach the blade back at The Rising Raven, he could have negated all of Cassana’s magic and turned the tide of the battle. Now the blade would shatter upon tasting his innocent blood and two good things would be destroyed in a single blow. Three, counting Alias. If all of this was not evil enough, Cassana was forcing Alias to perform the deed. It was completely unnecessary to the ritual. The witch did it only to bring pain and grief to her puppet.

Dragonbait looked deep into Cassana’s eyes. She would permit no flower to grow without her permission, and before Alias could bloom, the sorceress would encase her in amber. A perverse curiosity prompted him to use his shen sight on her before he died, just to know what such evil looked like. The heat of her soul caused him to flinch. Within was a black wall riddled with flaming red cracks. Hatred burned deep in her and crackled between her, Zrie Prakis, and Phalse. The lich, like a void, sucked up emotions, and beside Cassana he was a vortex of hatred and fear. Phalse glowed like a city put to the torch by invaders. His maliciousness ran the gamut of yellow greed, red hatred, and a sickly green jealousy.

Cassana grinned, as if she guessed what the saurial was doing. She looked at the sky behind Alias. The sun had almost cleared the horizon. The tops of the sharp, tooth-shaped plinths looked as if they had bitten into something bloody.

The sorceress motioned to Phalse, who turned his back on Dragonbait. The small servant motioned with his hands in an arcane fashion that seemed to deny the existence of bones in his arms. They swayed back and forth like snakes. Beyond him, a pinprick of light appeared, then grew. It began as a sphere of multicolored magical force, then flattened, turning into a swirling pattern of silver and red.

Dragonbait had seen this gate before. It was the passage to the Citadel of White Exile, where he and Alias had been branded. Now, that passage had to be opened again to draw power from the domain of Phalse’s master. With it, they would seal control over Alias at the moment of Dragonbait’s death.

Dragonbait finally looked up at Alias; he did not want to grieve her, but he could not help himself. Their eyes locked like pieces in a magical puzzle. Her eyes were red-rimmed from exhaustion and evaporated tears. He used his shen sight. If he was going to die, he wanted to do so with his eyes fixed on the brilliant blue of her soul.

Her spirit’s glow was as slender as the flame from a single candle. It flickered like a living sapphire. Yet on all sides rose a tide of darkness, crackling with energy, forcing itself upward to smother the flame. The flame blazed for a moment, but the forces surrounding it rose as well.

The chanting increased as Phalse worked his spells to control the spinning disk that reached between the planes. The first tendrils of dawn caught Alias’s hair from behind and set it on fire, a glory of bright red against the newborn sky. “Prepare to sacrifice the innocent!” the sorceress bellowed. “Raise the blade!”

Alias hesitated and Dragonbait saw the candle’s flame burn hotter. Cassana made a pass with her wand, and the sapphire flame dimmed as if a smoked glass chimney had been dropped over it. Alias raised her hands, clasping Hill Cleaver’s hilt, the blade pointed down at the saurial’s chest. His own sigils were now answering the dark siren call of their masters, and Dragonbait thought his hearts would burst from the strain.

Through eye contact, he tried to plead with the swordswoman to fight, to strengthen her will. He wished desperately to add his own inner strength to hers and fight off the darkness. However, while his skill allowed him to see her spirit, he could not encourage it. Silently he cursed his inability to communicate with her.

Blue sparks arced between the sigils on his chest, and the runes on Alias’s arm responded in kind. The Abomination had told her that she drew strength from him, but Dragonbait had not discovered how. Maybe, the saurial suddenly realized, he had denied the evil brands for too long. Perhaps they could yet be turned to good.

Deliberately, he channeled his will through the runes, trying to force the light to arc higher. The sparks showered upward like water in a fountain, their display mirrored on Alias’s arm. Finally, sparks touched and interwove, bridging the gap between sacrificer and sacrifice.

Cassana’s voice sounded far off as she shouted, “Seal the pact!” The darkness in Alias rose like bile, and the candle flame of her spirit faltered. Then, feeding at last on the saurial’s own, her flame strengthened and grew in intensity.

Dragonbait shuddered. He felt as if he had just rolled a massive stone up to and over the crest of a hill. Every muscle in his body spasmed. Now that the stone had been given one last push, however, it rolled of its own accord. Alias’s flame grew hotter and brighter with each passing second. The well of darkness began to harden and then crumble like drying mud. New surges of the surrounding mass of evil rose, but they were repelled by the increasing blue fire.

Alias hovered over Dragonbait, her muscles locked, her face almost serene. Phalse and the Fire Knives impersonating Moander worshipers held their breath, as would have Prakis, had he any breath to hold.

Cassana screwed her comely face into a twisted mask of rage—rage mixed with a hint of fear that the made-creature should reveal a newfound strength. Clenching her wand in her fist, she brought her hand up in a sweeping gesture, yanking hard on the strings of her rebellious puppet in an attempt to force her will on Alias.

Like an old leather thong stretched to breaking, something within Alias snapped. She drove the blade down hard, but she leaped forward as she did so, plunging Hill Cleaver not into Dragonbait, but straight through Cassana. The diamond-headed tip protruded out of the witch’s back, but there was no blood on it.

The sorceress staggered backward, a look of shock on her face. Both Phalse and Prakis stepped toward her, but she waved them off. Still clutching her wand in one hand, she reached up to draw the blade from her body. Blue sparks danced from Hill Cleaver where she grasped it. Sorcery kept her alive despite her fatal wound, yet nothing could negate the power of the saurial’s sword to defend itself from the touch of evil. Cassana screamed and ripped the blade from her. Very slowly, blood began to well up from the gash in her chest.

Her face contorted with pain, Cassana whirled the blade at Alias’s throat. The swordswoman fell backward, dodging the weapon, as Prakis and Phalse lunged at her. She rolled from the lich’s chilling touch. Phalse came at her with a dagger as she rose to her feet. The pseudo-halfling caught one of Alias’s boots in the face and the Fire Knives at the edges of the circle began to converge, prepared to bring Alias down by force of numbers.

There was a shattering explosion to Dragonbait’s right, behind the kneeling form of Cassana. A pillar of fire shot up from the base of one of the sharp-toothed plinths, catching two Fire Knives. The great tower of stone rocked, then toppled sideways.

A second and a third explosion followed, as screaming fanfares of fireworks and smoke struck two more of the stone fangs, blinding anyone looking at them. Dragonbait at once recognized the handiwork of Akabar Bel Akash, as the southerner proved he was indeed a mage of no small water.

Then the saurial felt small hands creep across his body. He turned his head, intent on biting them if he could. He caught himself when he spotted Olive Ruskettle moving alongside him. The halfling carried a glass vial, from which she poured a thick, greenish mixture on his metal tethers. The wires smoked and gave off a deadly, acrid stench, but weakened immediately, as if suddenly rusted through.

Dragonbait yanked at his bonds, snapping them in half as the halfling moved to free his legs. Still caught up in the mild trance of his shen sight, the saurial could not help but notice that the halfling was purged of much of her bitterness and her vacillating spirit burned with a strength of purpose.

A Fire Knife charged at Olive with a blade tipped with the yellow ichor that had felled Dragonbait in Westgate. The halfling dodged, and Dragonbait swung his free foot with claws extended. His sharp, natural weapons sank deep into the assassin’s belly, and she fell backward, spurting a fountain of blood.

Dragonbait searched the circle for Alias. She was surrounded by Fire Knives, but she had acquired one of their swords and two of the assassins already lay at her feet. He looked in the other direction for Cassana, but she had disappeared. The saurial slid off the sacrificial stone and moved to regain Hill Cleaver.

Cold, bony fingers closed around Dragonbait’s throat from behind, and an icy chill flowed into his veins and crept through his body. Prakis laughed hoarsely as his paralyzing touch began draining the saurial paladin’s strength. On a human, the lich’s grip might have been impossible to break, but taking a saurial from behind was not so easy. Dragonbait threaded his tail between himself and the lich and used it as a lever to pry Prakis away from him. The lich staggered back a few paces, then lowered his staff’s tip at the saurial and muttered something.

Prakis burst into a pillar of fire.

That was hardly the reaction Dragonbait had expected. He whirled around to see who might have aided him. Standing atop the stone was a graying, clean-shaven man in ragged garb. He pulled a small vial from his cloak and flung it at Phalse, who was trying to take Alias from behind. Phalse saw the missile and dodged. A Fire Knife behind him was not so lucky and became a human pyre.

Dragonbait recognized the man. He had been the one who had demanded the saurial protect Alias in exchange for his freedom. Dragonbait had seen him only once since then, in Alias’s dream in Shadow Gap—Nameless. Now he fought openly on their side. The saurial took the briefest moment to study Nameless with his shen sight, but all he detected was a gray mountain against a gray sky. Neither evil, nor good, but very, very proud.

Prakis laughed with the horrible mechanical vocal sounds of the undead and walked out of the pyre that Nameless’s potion had lighted around him. The lich’s clothes were ash, and his remaining skin a blackened ruin, crumbling from the bones. Yet the pinpricks of light still danced in his eyes, and he still carried his staff.

Alias had felled two more assassins, but they had tightened their ring around her. She was closed in on all sides. One blade was deflected by the tightly knit chain shirt, but another came perilously close to her head, clipping some of her hair.

A bolt of lightning struck at Alias’s feet, knocking her to the ground. Action froze on the battlefield. Blackened Prakis grinned through fire-stained teeth, swaying his staff of power back and forth, aiming it at Dragonbait, then Ruskettle, then Nameless, making it quite clear that any sudden moves would result in instant destruction. The remaining assassins stood guard around the fallen swordswoman.

A red light shot up from one of the remaining stone plinths. Cassana stood atop the pillar, one hand clutching her wand, the other gripping shut the skin of her chest, as a modest woman would hold closed the front of a torn gown. Dragonbait twitched, debating whether he could lunge for Hill Cleaver and put an end to the mages’ threats before they fried him to a cinder

“Let this be ended,” the sorceress shouted from her perch. “Nameless, your little play is over. Phalse, take a sword and slay the saurial and Nameless. I will keep Puppet occupied.” She raised the wand over her head. Dragonbait could feel a sympathetic ache as Cassana used the blue wand to rack Alias’s body with pain.

A shadow rose behind Cassana, snatching the wand and kicking the sorceress off the stone. Cassana screamed a curse as she fell and landed hard on her side. Zrie Prakis whirled with his staff, trying to set his sights on his mistress’s attacker. Akabar’s flying form appeared for a moment above the stone pillar, the wand grasped tightly in his hand, then he dodged back and forth in an erratic pattern. Long lances of energy spat from the tip of Prakis’s staff, exploding just behind the mage in huge fireballs, but Akabar stayed just ahead of their swelling blossoms of flame.

Dragonbait finally managed to grab his sword, but with Akabar in flight he couldn’t risk using Hill Cleaver to dispel magic in the area. Instead, he used the sword to bite deeply into the lich, pulling ribs from the burned chest. Prakis’s fighting ability was still unaffected, though. He backhanded Dragonbait with a swipe of his wickedly sharpened finger bones.

“Akabar!” Nameless shouted. “Throw the wand into the disk!”

Dragonbait whirled about anxiously. It made the best tactical sense to remove the wand from their enemies’ reach, but would it ultimately prove their undoing? What effect would it have on Alias?

Akabar swooped low to evade the lancing bolts of the staff of power. One caught him in the leg, and he almost lost concentration and flight. He reached his goal, however, pulling up at the last moment and flinging the wand into the silver and red disk.

Three screams went up at once. Phalse shouted and barreled toward the disk. Olive stood blocking his path, but he leaped over her and tumbled into the vertical pool. He was swallowed without a ripple.

Zrie Prakis screamed and in screaming fell apart. With the wand thrust into another plane of being, he could not tap the energy bound up in it that kept him from death. He crumbled to dust. But in the moment before his spirit fled from the bones that Cassana had “cherished,” the lich cried out, “Die, Cassana!” His hideous laughter was carried away on the breeze.

His staff of power fell to the ground. Dragonbait felt a sharp pain in his chest, just as he had when Moander had died. Without checking, he knew that a sigil had disappeared. He glanced at Alias, who was wielding a sword two-handed, but if she felt Zrie Prakis’s mark burn away from her arm, she did not let it disrupt her combat.

Lastly, Cassana shrieked, for much of her own magic was locked up in that wand. She, too, began to decay—her shoulders stooped, her skin became more torn and ragged, so that she looked dressed in the tatters of her own dead flesh. The sorceress’s chest wound began spurting blood.

Akabar swooped down and plucked the staff of power from the battlefield. Some of the Fire Knives, uncertain whether or not the mage could wield it, began to move toward the perimeter of the circle. Dragonbait stood guarding the rear, as Olive and Alias backed toward him. The saurial paladin now bid Hill Cleaver to swallow any magic cast.

And not a moment too soon. The hag form of Cassana pointed toward the saurial paladin and muttered. A bolt of zigzag lightning shot from her finger, only to dissipate into a harmless shower of sparks.

“Kill them!” the sorceress shrieked to the remaining assassins, as she struggled to her feet.

The Fire Knives regrouped and began driving the party back. Akabar could only use the staff of power to strike their foes. Alias had lost her weapon, and Olive stumbled as she moved. In the chaos and frenzy of the sword fight, no more of the assassins had chosen to poison their blades. That was fortunate for the adventurers; Alias was bleeding from half a dozen cuts, and Olive was clutching at a jagged wound running down her side. Dragonbait risked taking his attention from parrying a sword thrust long enough to look for Nameless. The graying man dove into the silver pool. Like Phalse, he disappeared without a trace.

The saurial felled an assassin closing on their left flank and chirped to gain the swordswoman’s attention. When Alias met his eyes, he jerked his head toward the silver pool. She jerked her head back indicating he must go first. He growled. If he went first, Cassana could again use her magic to attack them, but he couldn’t explain this to Alias. He jerked his head indicating again that she must go before him, but she shook her head seconds before she launched a kick at an assassin’s chin with her boot.

Minutes ago, she had no will power of her own, he thought with grim amusement. Why does she pick now to be so stubborn? He caught her attention with another chirp before he spun Hill Cleaver about and tossed it to her.

Alias caught the weapon, reclasped her hands about the grip, and spun to decapitate an assassin who had lunged forward when her attention was focused on the saurial. Dragonbait snatched up the halfling and loped to the planar disk.

The silver pool had already shrunk to half its original size. The swirls had become solid rings and the portal now resembled the bull’s eye sigil of Phalse’s master.

Dragonbait plunged in, taking Olive with him. Alias and Akabar blocked the portal. The Turmish mage brought the end of the staff up hard, cracking the jaw of an assassin.

Then two withered hands, strong as steel, closed around the staff. The aged face of Cassana, drooling and twisted beyond the limits of humanity, confronted the mage. “You use it as a club,” she lisped. “Now feel its full force.”

Alias slew another assassin with Hill Cleaver, but there were more than a dozen left, and the effects of her wounds were taking their toll on her reaction time. “Into the portal!” she ordered the mage.

“But the witch,” Akabar protested, as Cassana began to intone words of power.

“In!” the swordswoman cried.

Alias put her foot on Akabar’s stomach and shoved the mage through the disk. Akabar would not loosen his hold on the staff, and Cassana was dragged toward the bull’s eye. Akabar was lost to sight beyond the silvery glow of the portal, but the haggish sorceress managed to plant her feet firmly on the ground and hold her position. With the tendons of her arms popping from the strain, Cassana began to pull the staff back from the portal.

Alias stepped halfway into the portal, straddling it with one foot on each side of the planar gate. She brought Hill Cleaver down on the half of the staff of power that jutted out from the disc hovering over the Hill of Fangs.

The blade cut through the ancient wood like an axe, and a multicolored fireball blossomed out from the broken staff. Alias felt heat wash over her body as the force of the explosion pushed her through the gateway, into the lands that lay beyond. The shock wave caught the last pieces of Cassana’s body and the fire-ravaged forms of the remaining assassins, carrying them from the top of the Hill of Fangs. The last curved and pointed stones toppled from their moorings, and, for the second day in a row, a new star burned over Westgate.