Lies of Light

55

2 Marpenotk, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) The Golden Road

Insithryllax, in the form of a human, stepped out into the middle of the road and crossed his arms in front of his chest. The rider pulled his horse to a stop and regarded the dark man with a soldier’s critical, suspicious eye, but didn’t draw his sword.

“Let me guess,” the rider said.” ‘Stand and deliver,’ is it?”

Insithryllax laughed, hiding an incantation in the stuttering chuckle. The power gathered inside him, tingling first the tips of his fingers, then making his forearms almost sizzle. The sensation made him stop laughing and just smile.

“I am a rider in the service of the League of Lightning Mercenary Company and House Wianar of Arrabar,” the soldier said. “Think twice, bandit.”

“Ah,” the disguised dragon replied, “good. You’re the ambassador’s escort.”

The soldier’s eyes narrowed, and his cheeks flushed. Insithryllax let the gathered Weave energy loose, thrusting his arm up and out to point at the rider. The soldier got a hand almost to his sword before the blinding blue-white flash of lightning arced from the dragon’s outstretched palm and slammed into him.

The soldier jerked forward, not back, in his saddle. The horse screamed, but the man made no sound at all. It was if he screamed in reverse. He lungs seized, drew in air, but kept it lodged in his collapsed chest. The skin stretched tight over cramping muscles, and his eyes popped in his skull.

The warhorse bucked, trying to dislodge its rider. The man’s armor had begun to glow red from heat, and Insithryllax could smell the stench of smoldering horseflesh. The lightning bolt disappeared, and finally the horse was able to dislodge its rider. Insithryllax fought down the urge to transform into his true form and make a meal of the animal, and he let it run westward up the Golden Road in a blind, agonized panic.

The soldier lay motionless in the middle of the road, slowly broiling inside his own armor.

A bloodcurdling scream ripped through the air from the east, and Insithryllax broke into a run, casting a spell as he went.

“Remember what I told you, children,” he whispered into the wind, “no acid, and no survivors.”

He ran half a mile down the middle of the road, uphill most of the way, and when he came to the hillcrest, he skidded to a stop, sending a little splash of standing water into the still, cool air. Rain began to patter on the muddy road around him. A black shape passed over his head with a flutter of leathery wings, but Insithryllax didn’t flinch. He followed the black firedrake’s swooping dive. It went for another of the riders, a man so like the one he’d just killed they could have been twins. The rider got his sword out of his scabbard before the f iredrake tore his face off as it passed. He screamed and fell from his mount. Another black firedrake perched on him and started eating him while he died.

His horse reared and shrieked, confused, until it was taken down by a firedrake’s crocodilian fangs. As it went down, it kicked the side of the carriage, popping it up on two wheels. The firedrake, its mouth still on the horse’s neck, pushed out with one wing and tipped the carriage the rest of the way over. The driver ran, heading perpendicular to the road and downhill.

Insithryllax cast a spell as he walked toward the overturned carriage. When he was done, he sent five slivers of green light speeding after the fleeing driver. The missiles twisted around each other in the air, dipping up and down as though avoiding a series of invisible obstacles in the air, but they hit the running man in a cluster in the middle of his back, and dropped him. He slid in the mud for half a dozen yards on his face, his arms limp at his sides.

The rear outrider thundered up, a lance held firmly at his side. He growled out a long, guttural battle cry that made Insithryllax laugh, but then the dragon’s attention was drawn to the carriage. A hand appeared in the open window, smeared with blood.

A black firedrake roared, and Insithryllax broke into a run, casting another spell as he did so. A crackling sizzle cut the air. The approaching rider let loose a shriek of agony, and before Insithryllax even turned to look he knew the source of the sizzle. The smell hit him next, and he redirected the spell away from the carriage and to his errant child.

The gust of wind knocked the black firedrake on its face and caught in its wing. The veiny black membrane ballooned up, and the force of the magic-driven air twisted its wing back and up so hard the bones snapped like twigs.

The firedrake shrieked in concert with the melting rider. The other firedrake turned on Insithryllax with an angry hiss, but backed off when the dragon merely tipped his head to one side.

He stood next to the carriage and muttered another spell, allowing himself the luxury of using the human gestures. The exercise gave the man time to crawl through the window and on to the sidewhich had become the topof the carriage.

Insithryllax reached up, grabbed the man around the wrist, and pulled. With a yelp the man tumbled to the mud at the dragon’s feet.

“What?* the man demanded, struggling to get to his feet. “What in the name of Toril do you think you’re doing?” He got to his feet, but staggered. Stepping back from Insithryllax, he steadied himself with a hand on the carriage. “Have you any idea who I am?”

“Ambassador Fael Verhenden of Arrabar,” Insithryllax said.

The ambassador looked up at him, blood trickling down the side of his face from a cut in his scalp. He studied the dragon’s dark face as though trying to place him A black firedrake reared up behind Insithryllax and the man screamed and fell back against the underside of the carriage. He put his arms up to fend the creature off.

Insithryllax knelt down in front of the man and grabbed him by his bloody jacket. Drawing him close, he looked the terrified ambassador in the eye. The spell he’d cast worked on the man’s mind, opening it like a sack into which the dragon could toss whatever he pleased. He could see the spell working in the way Verhenden’s pupils dilated.

“It was nagas,” Insithryllax said. “You were beset by nagas. Your men managed to kill one, but they overwhelmed you with spells.”

The ambassador quivered, whimpered a little, and nodded.

Insithryllax drew the dagger out of the sheath at the ambassador’s belt. He held it up close to the man’s bulging, accepting eyes.

“You fought as best you could, but were armed only with this dagger. One of the nagas used some kind of magic to take it from you. It danced in the air of its own accord” Insithryllax bounced the dagger up and down in front of his face”then it slit your throat.”

“With a flick of his wrist Insithryllax dragged the sharp edge along the side of the ambassador’s throat, pressing it in deep. Blood poured out, the Arrabarran gasped for air and managed only to begin drowning in his own blood. Insithryllax watched him die then stood up, turned, and went to stand over the firedrake that still writhed in the mud with its wind-shattered wing twitching at its side.

“You,” he said. “I told you no acid.”

The wounded firedrake cringed beneath him as Insithryllax shed his human guise. His body trembled then convulsed, and as the black firedrakes watched, he grew to many times his human size. Finally he stood in his true form, his long, lithe body protected by scales the color of the sky at middark. Horns curved forward from each side of his head, and his eyes blazed with crimson light.

The wounded firedrake looked away.

Insithryllax opened his enormous jaws over the crippled monster and bit it in half. With only a few bone-splintering chews, he swallowed the first bite, then took the rest. That done, he ate the acid-burned rider, armor and all.

When he’d swallowed the last bite, made bitter by the black firedrake’s acid, he turned on the other firedrake.

The creature shrank back from him a little but stood his ground before his gigantic father.

“You,” the great wyrm rumbled, “get the dead naga and leave it here.”

The black firedrake bowed and went off in the direction of the place where Insithryllax had hidden the water naga’s remains. He looked around at the carnage and checked for any other signs of acid, or any evidence that the black firedrakes might have been involved, but saw none. Even if they brought the ambassador back from the dead, or questioned his corpse, he would insist that it was water nagas who’d killed them all.