The Captive Flame

NINE

9-10 MIRTUL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

Aoth and Jet floated on a northerly wind and studied the fortress. Other griffon riders glided to either side but surely couldn’t see the outpost, not at such a distance in the feeble predawn light.

To the untrained eye, the stronghold with its palisade walls might not have looked impressive. But it had a warren of tunnels underneath it, and a garrison large and varied enough to fill up both the above ground and subterranean barracks.

“You don’t like this, do you?” asked Jet.

“I don’t dislike it,” Aoth replied, “but it’s about the limit of what we ought to tackle by ourselves, especially with Gaedynn, Jhesrhi, and Khouryn absent.”

“Then why do it?”

“The Threskelans have a lot of supplies stored there. On top of that, it’s supposed to be a mustering point for troops bound for Chessenta. So let them arrive and find the place burned, its provisions stolen, and its garrison slaughtered. It might give them second thoughts, particularly the sellswords.”

“Let’s get on with it, then.”

Aoth peered down at the rolling scrubland and the foot soldiers and horsemen making their way across it. In theory, a ridge higher than the surrounding terrain shielded them from the view of the sentries in the fortress. “We’ll give our comrades on the ground a little more time to maneuver into position.”

As he waited, his thoughts drifted back to the events of the day before the previous one. He’d eliminated Cera as a possible traitor-to say the least-but otherwise he was no closer to flushing out the dragonborn assassins or figuring out why they wanted to kill him.

In fact, the jaunt into the past had left him with new questions. Why had all those dragons been palavering? Were they all Alasklerbanbastos’s allies? Was every single one of them going to attack Chessenta at the dracolich’s behest? If so, then how could the war hero’s forces possibly withstand them?

He scowled and tried to set such puzzles aside. He needed to focus on winning this battle. Everything else could wait.

He looked at the pale gleam on the eastern horizon and decided he’d delayed long enough. He willed power into the head of his spear to make it glow yellow, then swept it forward to point at the fortress. All around him, wings snapped and flapped as riders urged their griffons toward the objective.

Men laid arrows on their bows. Aoth pondered whether to start with fire or lightning and decided on the latter. Griffons furled their wings and swooped lower.

Then a horn blatted in the watchtower at one of the corners of the palisade. Aoth had hoped sentries who’d watched through the night would be tired and inattentive at the end of it, but evidently one was still alert.

Annoyed, Aoth rewarded the fellow’s vigilance by hurling a bright, booming lightningbolt at the tower. It blew apart the clapboard roof and, he hoped, fried whoever was underneath.

Meanwhile, arrows whistled down at the wall walks, stabbing into other sentries as they tried to ready their own bows. Orcs and kobolds toppled from their perches to smash down in the courtyards below.

But what came next wouldn’t be as easy. Warriors scrambled from the buildings below. They scurried for their various stations and started shooting back at the attackers in the sky. A crossbow bolt whizzed past Jet’s beak, and he screeched in irritation.

Then an expanding glimmer of force leaped upward. Jet lashed his wings, flung himself to the side, and avoided all but the edge of the flare. Still, cold bit into Aoth’s body. Hit squarely and encrusted with frost, another mount and rider plunged toward the ground.

Aoth roused a tattoo to warm him and looked for the source of the magic. At first, even his fire-touched eyes couldn’t spot it. There was just too much happening. Then the tip of a white wand poked out an arrow loop at the top of one of the towers.

Jet dodged, and the next shimmering blaze missed him entirely. Aoth rattled off words of power and pointed his spear. A dark cloud materialized around the top of the bastion. The boards sizzled and crumbled as the acidic vapor ate into them. Inside the structure, people screamed.

As Aoth turned Jet toward the gate, he noticed the watchtower he’d blasted apart was barely burning. The flaming arrows some of the griffon riders were loosing weren’t doing much to set the fort on fire either. Some treatment evidently kept the timbers from burning easily.

Oh well, he’d half expected as much. Once they won the battle, the Brotherhood could still turn the place into a useless ruin. It would just take a little more sweat.

He threw a lightningbolt at the gate-which jumped in its frame, but weathered the assault without a mark. It definitely possessed protective enchantments.

But fortunately, the men and orcs poised to defend it didn’t. He bloodied them with a barrage of fist-sized hailstones, and while they were still reeling, he and three other griffon riders plunged down into their midst.

Beaks snapped and talons snatched, tearing the Bone Wyrm’s warriors to gory tatters. Aoth looked for an enemy to stick with his spear, but Jet didn’t give him the chance. The familiar was still angry from the blast of cold that had chilled him to the marrow, and this was a good opportunity to take it out on someone.

When all the defenders were dead, Aoth and his human companions dismounted, shoved back the bars securing the gate, and swung it open. The sellswords massed outside came streaming in.

After that, the combat became a chaos of packed bodies and slashing, jabbing blades, with aerial cavalry shooting from on high and occasionally diving to pick off some particularly appealing target. Aoth circled with the other griffon riders. It made it easier to oversee the progress of the battle as a whole and to use his spells to best effect.

Gradually the sellswords cleared the courtyards and bastions until only stubborn pockets of resistance remained. Khouryn’s spearmen regrouped, lighting lanterns and unpacking everburning torches with their heatless, greenish flames as they prepared to venture into the tunnels. It might well turn out to be the most dangerous part of the attack, but they knew what they were doing. A dwarf had trained them to fight underground.

Still, Aoth wondered if he should lead them personally. Then something burst out of one of the buildings with access to the burrows below. It could have fit through the doorway, but only just, and only if it had been moving carefully. In its haste, it smashed loose scraps of wood and sent them flying.

The beast was an enormous blue lizard with big frilled ears and a spike on its snout. It moved in a glittering haze that also shrouded the creature on its back. The rider was a kobold with a single enormous azure scale seemingly grafted in the center of his chest. The scale flickered repeatedly, like lightning was flashing inside it, and pus seeped around the edges.

The blue lizard crashed into the front ranks of the spearmen. Dipping and tossing its head, it caught sellswords on its horn and flung them into the air. At the same time, small lightning bolts leaped from its massive body to sear one soldier, then another. The men so afflicted danced spastically in place, and the kobold howled with laughter.

Aoth wondered why this terror was only entering the battle now. He was lucky it hadn’t shown up earlier, before the balance tilted in the attackers’ favor.

He rattled off words of power and hurled darts of light. They vanished when they touched the seething aura. Other griffon riders loosed arrows. The shafts broke on contact with the haze.

Still laughing, the kobold raised a length of blue metal. Lightning crackled from the tip and burned into a griffon. The beast dropped, then spread its wings and arrested its fall. Plainly injured and struggling, it flew beyond the walls, no doubt looking for a safe place to set down. Aoth couldn’t tell if the man now slumped on its feathery neck was still alive or not.

Meanwhile, the stormlizard went on bulling, rending, and trampling its way through the lines of spearmen. Aoth decided its master might not have waited too long to unleash it after all. If somebody didn’t find a way to stop it, it could still win the fight for Threskel.

He cast a rainbow from his spear. Each colored beam had the potential to smite the reptile in a different way. None of them pierced its halo.

“There’s no way to hurt it except close up,” said Jet. “Of course, then the halo burns us. But I’m game.”

“Wait.” Aoth rattled off charms of protection against lightning in particular and hostile magic in general. He activated tattoos with similar functions. “There. That might help. Now yank the kobold off the beast’s back.”

Jet poised his talons and swooped.

The kobold twisted and pointed his wand. Jet dived even lower and streaked along mere inches from the ground. Aoth ducked, and lightning crackled over his head.

Jet lashed his wings and bobbed back up to the kobold shaman’s level. Aoth aimed his spear, just in case the griffon’s claws somehow missed the target.

Then, faster and more nimbly than Aoth had imagined it could move, the stormlizard spun around and reared up onto its hind legs like a horse. One of its forefeet struck at Jet.

Through their psychic link, Aoth felt his mount’s determination to swerve and avoid the blow, and then the shock when it hit him anyway. They lurched off balance and nearly tumbled over, and the griffon fought to stay right side up and regain control of his trajectory.

He managed the former but not quite the latter. He jolted to earth amid a scatter of dead orcs, and momentum pitched him off his feet.

Fortunately, Aoth could feel that neither the stormlizard’s claws nor slamming into the ground had hurt Jet badly. Mostly they’d made him angry. He drew breath to let out a screech and plunge back into the fight.

“Wait!” Aoth snapped. “Pretend you’re hurt. Stay here. When they’ve forgotten all about you, then come at them again.” He swung himself out of the saddle.

As he started to run, he saw that the stormlizard had resumed tearing into the spearmen. No doubt realizing that even if they avoided the jabbing horn, the flares of lightning would sear them where they stood, the sellswords were falling back, their ranks disintegrating.

“That’s right!” Aoth yelled. “Get clear! Leave it to me!”

Charging his spear with destructive power, he poised himself in front of the stormlizard. He was close enough to attack it-close enough too that the kobold would have difficulty casting spells at him past the enormous blue reptile’s head.

Which was good as far as it went, but it also put him within easy reach of the stormlizard’s horn. It surged forward and tossed its head, and the spike nearly caught him even though the creature had done exactly what he expected.

Still, he did sidestep the blow and riposted with a thrust. His spear leaped through the sparkling haze without difficulty and stabbed the stormlizard in the face. It roared, and he grinned. He’d finally hurt the thing.

The trick was hurting it enough. Over the course of the next several heartbeats Aoth inflicted several wounds on its snout and jaws, but the superficial punctures only made it more eager to rend him. And he couldn’t get past the tossing, jabbing horn to attack a different part of its body.

Meanwhile, lightning leaped repeatedly from the stormlizard’s body to his. At first he couldn’t feel it. Then it stung like insect bites. His protective magic was wearing away.

Trying to line up a shot, the kobold leaned from side to side. He slashed the wand through a zigzag pass and started a lengthy incantation. Aoth inferred that while lightning was the shaman’s favorite weapon, he knew other magic as well and had decided now was the time to use it.

Then Jet hit the kobold like a bolt from a ballista. His talons pierced the scaly little body all the way through, and his momentum whisked the corpse off the stormlizard’s back, all in the blink of an eye.

Enraged by Aoth’s stabbing spear, and his refusal to stand still and let himself be gored, the stormlizard didn’t even seem to notice its rider was gone. It just kept striking at the man on the ground.

Jet streaked in, plunged his claws into almost the exact spot where the kobold had sat, clung, and ripped away scaly blue hide and the muscle beneath with his beak. The stormlizard bellowed and rolled, trying to crush the griffon beneath it.

But Jet beat his wings and sprang clear. And when the stormlizard flopped over, it exposed its underside. Aoth willed fresh power into the head of his spear, charged, plunged it into the spot where he judged the beast’s heart ought to be, and instantly yanked it out for a second thrust.

Hot blood sprayed and spattered him from head to toe. He swiped the blinding gore from his eyes.

Just in time to see the stormlizard heave itself around, and its horn rip upward. He tried to jump away. The point caught him anyway and flipped him through the air to smash down on his back.

His chest ached, but when he looked down he saw the horn had only grazed him. It hadn’t breached his mail to cleave the flesh beneath.

And that had been the stormlizard’s final effort. Now it simply lay shuddering, more blood pumping out in diminishing spurts and its shimmering corona fading. One final arc of lightning crackled from the tip of a claw to the ground.

At that same instant, an idea popped into Aoth’s head.

He had no idea why. He’d resolved to concentrate solely on the assault, and he had. But apparently without him even being aware of it, some buried part of his mind had kept on worrying at his other problems, and now it was making a suggestion.

It was a suggestion he couldn’t take if his men still needed him. But when he glanced surreptitiously around, that didn’t appear to be the case. There were no more stormlizards coming out of the tunnels, and in general the Brotherhood seemed to have things under control. In battle, few things were ever absolutely certain, but he was willing to gamble they could carry on without him.

Smelling of singed feathers, wings rustling, Jet landed beside him. “Why aren’t you getting up?” the familiar asked.

Because, Aoth replied, speaking mind to mind, I’m horribly wounded. Don’t you see all the blood?

It’s the lizard’s blood. Its horn just bumped you.

You’re right. But no one else was standing close enough to tell.

Using his spear as a prop and doing his best to move like a man in hideous pain, Aoth rose and clambered onto the griffon’s back.

The staff seemed to quiver in Jhesrhi’s hand like a dog straining at a leash. She willed it into quiescence.

Patience, she thought. If this idiot scheme works, you’ll get the chance to make plenty of fire. But in the meantime, she needed to avoid sparking big, telltale flashes of light in the midst of all the gloom.

She peered from the brush Gaedynn had chosen to serve as their blind at the trail meandering down the hillside several yards away. Tchazzar’s captors traversed it often to take gray crawfish as long as her forearm and black eyeless pike from the murky river at the end.

Though she and Gaedynn were waiting for the dark men, their silence and the dusk that shrouded the wooded hills even by day kept her from spotting them until they were unnervingly close. One was a shadar-kai with a bow in his hand, a chain around his waist, and triangular scars on his forehead and cheeks. The other six were hunched servants carrying cast nets and baskets.

Jhesrhi whispered to the earth, and the patch of trail beneath the creatures’ feet turned to muck. They all plunged in up to their knees or deeper.

Gaedynn sprang to his feet and loosed his last two arrows. The first pierced the shadar-kai’s torso. The second stabbed all the way through a servant’s throat.

She willed the soil to well up higher around the foes who were still alive, like waves in a stormy sea. Dirt flowed over one and covered him entirely.

But the other three vanished, leaving holes in the ground. Prompted by instinct, Jhesrhi spun around. Two of the servants were right behind her. Covered in mud, ugly faces contorted, they sprang at her with their knives raised over their heads.

She spoke to the wind, and it howled and shoved them back. That gave her time to rattle off a charm of slumber, each syllable softer than the one before.

The little gray men collapsed. She killed one by ramming the butt of her staff into his forehead. His scimitar already bloody-from dispatching the servant who’d shifted elsewhere, presumably-Gaedynn trotted up beside her and slashed the throat of the other. The bodies exploded into dark vapor, and their killers stepped back to avoid it.

“Well,” Gaedynn said, “that was easy enough.”

“It will get harder once their friends find the corpses and realize we’re still in their territory. And hunting them as they hunted us.”

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll cope.” He strode to the mired corpse of the shadar-kai and removed the dead man’s quiver. He pulled out one of the many black arrows, sighted down the length of it, and smiled.

Cera sat cross-legged on a flat portion of the temple roof. The elevation brought her closer to the sun.

Amaunator’s radiance was shining just as brightly at ground level, so her ascent was purely a symbolic gesture. But every acolyte learned early on that where meditation was concerned, symbolism helped the practitioner achieve the proper frame of mind.

She studied the golden light reflecting from the rooftops around her. Then, when she felt centered, she lifted her eyes and gazed directly at the sun. No layman could have done so without pain and, if he persisted nonetheless, permanent damage to his sight. But the blaze simultaneously calmed and exalted her. It made her feel the majesty of her god.

Until a screech split the air, and a big black shape with outstretched wings cut between her and the object of her adoration. She felt a pang of dread, but the emotion disappeared when she recognized Jet for what-or, according to Aoth, who-he was.

“Sunlady!” cried the griffon.

“Yes?” she replied, thinking that even though she knew the beast could speak, it was a marvel to hear it nonetheless.

“Meet me in your garden! Now!”

She started to ask why. But then Jet swooped level with her rooftop, and she gasped at the sight of a crimson figure slumped on his back.

She clambered down her ladder and scurried through the interior of the temple with no regard for the dignity of a high priestess. As she burst out into the garden, Jet said, “A drake, or some creature like a drake, hurt him bad! I think he may be dying!”

Cera tried to put dismay aside and think with the calmness befitting a cleric and healer. “I’ll call my people to carry him to a bed.”

“No,” Jet said. “This town is full of people who want to be rid of him. You’re the only one I trust. You open doors for me and I’ll carry him.”

She trusted her own subordinates, but it wasn’t worth arguing about, certainly not when Aoth was in urgent need of care. “Whatever you say.”

People either recoiled or goggled to see the enormous black mount with his scarlet eyes stalking through the temple at her back. Prayers and litanies stumbled to a halt.

She had Jet bear his rider to her own chambers and her own bed. Then she checked the saddle for straps securing Aoth in place. There weren’t any. Either he wasn’t worried about losing his seat and falling, or magic prevented it. She took hold of him to ease him onto the bed. He was heavy, particularly in his mail, but she’d had a lot of practice lifting patients.

“Boo!” he whispered.

She jumped back.

“Some healer,” he said, grinning and swinging himself off Jet’s back. “You couldn’t tell the blood isn’t mine?”

She took a breath, and her heart stopped thumping quite as hard. “Not before I examined you.”

“Good. If the ranking sunlady of the temple couldn’t tell close up, then I doubt anyone else did from farther away.”

“What is the matter with you? If this is a joke-”

He raised a hand. “It’s not. Well, the boo part was, but the rest no. This is me taking advantage of a chance to catch our elusive dragonborn.”

“How?”

“In Luthcheq, when we couldn’t find the Green Hand killers, we set a trap to flush them out. We’re doing it again, and this time the bait is me. We’ll spread the word that I got badly hurt on the other side of the border. And that you think you can save me, but even with your strongest prayers mending me, I’ll be a helpless invalid for a couple of days. That should prompt the dragonborn to come after me while I can’t fight back.”

She frowned. “I suppose that could work.”

“I’m glad you think so, because obviously I need your help to make it work. For one thing, we have to provide a lure that really is enticing. My being wounded won’t look like such a perfect opportunity if Jet and a bunch of sellswords are standing guard over me. There has to be a credible reason why they’re not.”

Cera nodded. “I can handle that.”

“I want to fight,” Medrash said.

Patrin smiled. “But?”

“But it’s a bigger party than the one that defeated us Daardendriens.” The admission still tasted bitter in his mouth. “They’ve already seen us just as we’ve seen them, so we can’t surprise them. I think it would be wiser to avoid them if we can.”

Her upper body swaying ever so slightly, Nala said, “The blood of dragons flows in our veins. We can kill these giants like we killed the others.”

“I agree,” Patrin said. He looked back at Medrash. “But we won’t think less of you if you stay behind and guard the carts and horses.”

“We’d think less of ourselves,” Medrash said. “We said we’d stand with the Platinum Cadre. So if you fight, we will too.”

Patrin grinned and gripped Medrash’s shoulder. “I knew I could count on you. How could it be otherwise, when your god and mine are staunch friends and fellow lords of Celestia?”

The suggestion that Torm willingly associated with any sort of dragon deity struck Medrash as blasphemous, but he did his best to hide his distaste. “I look forward to fighting alongside you as well.”

“Then let’s go kill some giants.”

As the warriors of the company fell into a loose formation, Balasar said, “It’s a funny thing. I wouldn’t think a bit less of myself if I stayed behind.”

“Yet here you are,” Medrash answered. Patrin flourished his sword, and everyone started forward.

“Here we all are,” Khouryn said, his urgrosh in one hand and a crossbow in the other. “Me, because I want to see how this ragtag band accomplishes what a better company couldn’t.”

“Let’s hope the answer isn’t pure luck,” Balasar said. “Or if it is, let’s hope this isn’t the day the luck runs dry.”

When they reached the top of a rise, they saw the giants awaiting them. Several ash spires towered in the enemy’s vicinity, three with horizontal branches interconnecting them, two others sliding sluggishly. Medrash couldn’t actually tell if the enemy had a shaman capable of pushing the landforms around, but he assumed so.

The dragonborn jogged forward. Khouryn broke stride for a moment to discharge his crossbow. Other warriors loosed their bows.

Medrash just had time to see some of the shafts hit their marks. Then one of the giants-clearly the adept he’d been trying to spot-swung a long stone rod in a circle over his head and growled a word of power. The interconnected spires exploded into ash. The wind howled and blew the grit into the oncoming dragonborn’s faces.

Medrash’s eyes burned, and he coughed. The ground shuddered under his feet, surely a sign that the giants were charging and perhaps that other ash spires were sliding toward the Tymantherans as well.

He raised his sword over his head and chanted a prayer. Off to his left in the streaming murk, visible only by virtue of the white light shining from his blade, Patrin did the same. Nala chanted a spell.

The wind died, and the blinding, choking ash simply vanished from the air. Someone had countered the shaman’s power. Or perhaps they’d all three done it working together.

But unfortunately, the ash storm had lasted long enough to neutralize the advantage afforded by their bows. The giants were closing fast. So were two ash spires, looping in on either flank.

“Swords!” bellowed Patrin. “Charge!” Medrash saw it was the right move. At least once the Tymantherans closed with their foes, the spires couldn’t threaten them anymore. Not without running into the giants as well.

The attackers raced forward. An enormous javelin flew at Medrash. He threw himself flat, it hurtled over his head, and he leaped up again.

His allies were as eager to close as he was, and the momentary break in his advance allowed the foremost to reach the giants ahead of him. As a result, he had a good view when they spat their breath weapons.

Then he nearly faltered in amazement. A dragonborn’s breath attack could be formidable but, in his experience, rarely as devastating as this. The blasts of fire, frost, or what have you hurled the gray giants reeling backward.

About half the dragonborn pressed their foes and spewed a second attack. That was astonishing too. The ability almost never renewed itself so quickly. In that moment, Medrash almost believed the Platinum Cadre had found a way to invoke a “dragon within.”

But only almost, because the notion of such a kinship was obscene. And, combined with the shame attendant on all his previous blunders and defeats, the illusion of it fueled his determination to show every deluded follower of a false creed like Patrin, and every scoffer like Balasar, what the servant of a true god could do.

“Torm!” he bellowed. “Torm!”

A giant ran at him with a sword made of stone held in a middle guard. The edges of the weapon glowed and threw off heat like a bed of red-hot coals.

The ash giant cut. Medrash caught the blow on his shield, and sparks flew. It was a hard impact, but not hard enough to rob him of his balance.

He shifted forward and slashed the giant’s knee. As the huge barbarian pitched off balance, he shifted behind him and cut the same leg again. The giant toppled, and he drove his sword point into the knobbed ridge of his spine.

He glimpsed motion from the corner of his eye and pivoted toward another giant rushing to avenge his comrade. The creature hadn’t quite closed to striking distance, so Medrash used the time to chant a prayer.

White light flared from his sword. The giant cried out and stumbled as a spasm wracked his body. Hoping to strike him before he recovered his balance, Medrash rushed in.

The giant managed to jab the tip of his greatclub at Medrash’s head. Medrash slipped the attack and slashed. His sword bit into his opponent’s flank.

And hurt him badly too, if Medrash was any judge, but he didn’t seem to feel the effects as yet. He twisted, pulling free of the sword in the process, and swung his club straight down at Medrash’s skull.

At another moment, Medrash would have dodged out from underneath. Now, however, instinct prompted him to hold his shield over his head and depend on his god.

Composed of hazy luminescence, the form of an upturned hand in a metal gauntlet flickered into being around the shield. The greatclub hit the combined defense and shattered into three pieces. Medrash scarcely felt the jolt.

The phantom gauntlet vanished, but its power didn’t. That burned down Medrash’s arm and through his body, and he cried out in exhilaration. He felt strong as one of the Brotherhood’s griffons and light as air.

He sprang high enough to make it easy to strike at the startled giant’s neck. His sword sheared through slate-colored flesh. The huge creature toppled backward, blood leaping like a geyser from the gash.

“Torm!” Medrash shouted. He turned, seeking another foe, and spotted the adept. He still had his wand, but now he was holding up an egg-shaped crystal in his offhand. Unlike the gray talisman the other shaman had used, this one was red.

Medrash charged the adept. But before he could close the distance, a drift of ash churned, then exploded. A creature lunged out of the flying grit.

Massive enough that it almost seemed to waddle on its four thick legs, the gigantic lizard had scales of a mottled, dirty red. Its piggy eyes gleamed white, and a pair of horns swept back from the base of its skull. Rows of fangs lined its beaklike jaws, and fire flickered at the back of its mouth. Its body threw off heat like an oven.

It immediately oriented on Medrash, either because the adept wanted it to or simply because he was the nearest foe. It opened its jaws wide and, with a thunderous belching noise, spewed a plume of fire.

Medrash threw himself down, and the flame washed over him. The red lizard charged, and he rolled aside to avoid the champing, fiery jaws and stamping feet.

The firebelcher turned, trying to compensate, and bumped him as he started to rise. The beast was heavy enough that even that slight contact flung him reeling off balance.

Meanwhile, the huge lizard completed its turn and put him in front of its jaws again. It spewed more flame, and a shock ripped through him. For an instant, he couldn’t see, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.

“Torm,” he croaked, and a cool surge of vitality restored him. It didn’t heal all his burns and blisters, or quite take away the pain, but it turned it from something that hindered him into a source of righteous fury.

And fortunately, it did so quickly enough for him to dodge when the firebelcher tried to catch him in its fangs. He spun aside, and the triangular teeth clashed shut on empty air. He cut. His blade split scaly hide and grated on the bone beneath. The lizard thing kept coming.

And coming. As the fight progressed, he channeled Torm’s power repeatedly, using it to augment his natural might and to smite the brute with attacks that cut both flesh and spirit, until he simply couldn’t draw down any more. Still, the creature wouldn’t stop-and soon, heart pounding, breath rasping in his throat, he felt his physical might flagging as certainly as his mystical talents had.

Then Balasar and Khouryn rushed in on the firebelcher’s flank. Medrash’s clan brother spat frost at the creature. The dwarf chopped it with his urgrosh. The lizard spun in the direction of the attack, taking the pressure off Medrash for what felt like the first time in days. He wanted to retreat and catch his breath. He snarled Torm’s name and swung his sword instead.

“Do you… want us… to back off?” Balasar panted. “You seemed so… keen… to kill giants all by… yourself!”

“You can… have a piece of this thing,” Medrash answered.

“That’s… very generous.”

As the three of them fought on, circling in an effort to stay away from the firebelcher’s jaws, Medrash caught glimpses of the rest of the battle. Giants and dragonborn slashed, battered, and stabbed at one another. Piles and pits of ash churned as the adept tried to summon more reinforcements. But no more creatures burst or clambered into view-probably because Nala stood chanting with her shadow-wood staff sketching S curves in the air. Patrin stood protectively before her, his sword uplifted to kill whatever threatened her. Light shone through the red blood on the blade like sunbeams through stained glass.

Evidently Nala’s countermagic was holding the shaman’s power in check. That was useful, but Medrash couldn’t help wishing she’d started a little sooner. Because even with three warriors hacking at it, the firebelcher still wouldn’t drop.

Suddenly it heaved itself around in an arc, spewing fire as it spun. The jet washed over all three of them, but Balasar caught the worst of it, reeled, and fell. The firebelcher lunged at him. Medrash and Khouryn scrambled to intercept the beast and, striking furiously, held it back.

Risking a glance over his shoulder, Medrash saw Balasar coughing and stirring feebly. He was trying to get up but couldn’t manage it.

“We have to end this,” growled Khouryn, voice tight with the pain of his burns. “Can you keep its attention on you for a few moments?”

“Yes.” Medrash hurled himself at the lizard.

He struck and dodged repeatedly, evading the snapping, fiery fangs by inches, unable to retreat more than a step or two lest he leave Balasar exposed. Then suddenly, Khouryn appeared on the beast’s humped back. Medrash realized he must have run up its tail.

As he was still running, while avoiding the spikes jutting at intervals from the firebelcher’s spine, the lizard lunged at Medrash. Khouryn staggered and appeared on the brink of losing his balance, but then somehow recovered. He scrambled onward, grabbed one of the creature’s horns, and used it to anchor himself in place while he jabbed and scraped at its eyes with the spearhead on the haft of his urgrosh.

For a moment, the firebelcher didn’t seem to notice him. Then the spearhead skated across one of its eyes, and it shrieked and spewed flame straight at Medrash, most likely without even intending it. He caught the jet on his shield.

The firebelcher lashed its head back and forth, trying to shake Khouryn off. Most dragonborn would have lost their grips and gone flying, or else had their arms jerked out of their sockets. But the dwarf, though bounced from side to side, kept himself steady enough to go on fishing for an eye.

With everything shaking, he wasn’t able to gouge one out. But while he kept the firebelcher preoccupied, Medrash rushed in and thrust his sword point deep into the hollow where its neck jointed its body.

The red lizard froze, then shuddered. Seeming to topple with a dreamlike slowness, it flopped over onto its side. Khouryn jumped clear and landed with a clink of mail.

“Help Balasar,” gasped the dwarf. “I’ll keep watch.”

Medrash dropped to his knees beside his clan brother. Please, Torm, he thought, grant me just a little more of your grace. He rested his hand on Balasar’s shoulder, then felt power flow through the point of contact. New scales covered raw, seeping burns.

“That looks better,” Khouryn said, his voice sounding from behind Medrash’s back. If he could stand there and talk, it must mean the firebelcher really was dead, and that no other threats were advancing on them.

Balasar grinned up at the dwarf. “That was a good trick.” He wheezed. “Were you a ropewalker in a carnival, to keep your balance like that?”

“I’m a dwarf,” Khouryn answered. “We have low centers of gravity.”

Even with an invasion looming, Hasos couldn’t completely neglect the mundane business of the barony. On market day, that meant he had to sit in judgment on his dais in Whistler’s Square.

It wasn’t a permanent platform. Workers set it up in the morning and dismantled it again in the evening, and in recent years it had started to creak and quiver at odd moments.

Hasos tried to stop wondering if and when it might actually collapse, and at what cost to him in dignity and bruises. Tried to focus instead on the two peasants squabbling over where one’s farm ended and the other’s began.

It was an effort, because he despised boundary disputes. In the wake of the Spellplague and the changes it wrought, his greatgrandfather had ordered the fief surveyed. That should have settled every conceivable conflict in advance. Yet somehow the glib and the greedy still found arguments to challenge the placement of markers, hedgerows, and fences.

“The stones have always marked the line,” said the farmer nervously twisting a soft, broad-brimmed hat in his hands.

“You dug them up and moved them!” said the plaintiff, an old fellow seemingly bedizened with every religious trinket he could lay his hands on, either to persuade the gods to favor him or to convince Hasos he was devout and thus, surely, honest. “Do you think people can’t see the fresh-turned dirt?”

“Has anyone else seen it?” Hasos asked. Or would he have to send someone to look?

The pious peasant hesitated. “Well… not exactly. The wife has bunions. She can’t-”

Hasos spotted a stirring at the back of the crowd of waiting disputants and spectators, and a flash of bright yellow clothing. He raised his hand to silence the plaintiff and craned for a better look at what was happening. Followed by a pair of her subordinates, Cera came bustling toward his platform.

His feelings for Cera were complicated. They’d been lovers for a season, and he’d liked her well enough to start considering whether a priestess of her rank could possibly make a suitable wife for a baron. Then she’d told him that as far as she was concerned, their affair had run its course.

It had probably saved him from making a foolish decision, but it still stung, and kept stinging at odd moments over the three years since. It was worse when he knew she was keeping company with another man, and had been particularly bad since she’d taken up with the very scoundrel-a soulless mage, no less!-who’d come to Soolabax to subvert his authority.

Yet there was a part of him that always craved her company, even when he felt most jealous and resentful-even when he expected it to hurt. And besides, whatever she wanted, it was bound to be more interesting than the trivia on the docket.

He rose and gave her the shallow bow appropriate to their stations. “Sunlady. This is an unexpected pleasure.”

“Milord.” Cera was a little out of breath, and her golden vestments hung slightly askew. “I realize others have been waiting for their turns, and I apologize for shoving in ahead of them. But the dignity of Amaunator demands immediate action!”

“What do you mean?” Hasos asked.

“You’re aware Captain Fezim is badly wounded.”

“Of course. It’s a pity. Although I did warn him that his forays into Threskel were reckless in the extreme.”

“I assume you know too that I’m tending him myself in the temple.”

Just kick me in the stones, why don’t you? Hasos thought. “Yes, I heard.”

“Well, I don’t mind doing it. Since the war hero herself sent the sellswords to us, it seems only right that a senior priest or priestess should take the responsibility. But I won’t have the Keeper’s worship and rituals disrupted!”

She seemed so put out that Hasos wondered if he could have been mistaken about her interest in the Thayan. Or maybe that too had already run its course. Small wonder if it had. With his tattoos and glowing eyes, the man was positively freakish.

“Actually,” he said, “the way I see it, it was Nicos Corynian who sent the sellswords. But I take your point. Well, part of it. How does the presence of one invalid interfere with temple business?”

“If it was only Captain Fezim,” Cera answered, “it wouldn’t. But his soldiers insist on standing guard over him, and they’re a pack of thieving, blasphemous ruffians. Worse, his griffon is there! A huge, black, man-eating beast roaming among the altars! People are afraid to come and pray! My clerics can’t perform their sacred offices!”

For a moment Hasos enjoyed her distress and thought that if he refused to help her, it would only be what she deserved. But whatever his personal feelings, public order was his responsibility. And anyway, even though he realized the notion was probably stupid, he couldn’t help wondering if this was a chance to win back her affections.

“I assume you want me to clear out the riffraff,” he said.

“If you can,” she said.

“Certainly I can. While the mage was well, he and I shared command. But now that he’s incapacitated, every soldier in Soolabax, whether loyal Chessentan or sellsword, answers to me.” And didn’t that assertion taste sweet in his mouth!

So sweet, in fact, that he left his humbler petitioners to wait while he helped Cera shoo the surly outlanders and the black griffon-which truly was an enormous, terrifying brute-out of her domain. She gave him a hug and a light little kiss when they finished.

His burns aching, but not as badly as before Medrash healed him, Balasar looked up at his clan brother and Khouryn. Both were blistered, and Khouryn’s black beard was singed and smoking. Their chests heaved as they sucked in air.

“Help me up,” Balasar said.

Khouryn held out a hand. “Sure you’re ready?”

Balasar gripped the dwarf’s hand and dragged himself upright. He felt a trifle unsteady on his feet, but it was nothing he couldn’t manage. “That patch of ground would make anyone ready. It’s hard, and it smells like rotten eggs.”

“Balasar’s not one to stay down while the outcome of a battle’s still in doubt,” Medrash said. Which was true, but it sounded idiotic when spoken aloud.

“That does Daardendrien credit,” Khouryn said. “But I’m not sure it is. In doubt, I mean.”

Balasar took a look around and decided the dwarf was right. Most of the giants had already fallen, and the Platinum Cadre was pressing the others hard. It really didn’t appear that there was much left for his companions and him to do.

Medrash’s face betrayed little, but Balasar thought he knew what was going on behind it. His clan brother was undoubtedly glad the dragonborn were winning, and if he had any sense, he must realize he’d acquitted himself in a manner that brought honor to his peculiar creed. Still, on some level, it bewildered and even rankled him that their demented new allies had performed so much better than a war band of Daardendriens.

“Look.” Khouryn pointed with the axe head of his urgrosh.

Nala and the ash giant adept now stood a stone’s throw apart, staring fixedly at each other. Light rippled up and down the rods they swung and shifted like swordsmen cutting and parrying. The space between them seethed and shimmered with the forces contending there.

Meanwhile, Patrin fought to keep a giant warrior away from the dragonborn wizard. A huge greatclub crashed repeatedly on his shield.

Balasar decided Patrin’s adversary had the right idea. Kill the enemy spellcaster while he and his opposite number were busy tossing magic back and forth. He ran toward the adept, and Medrash and Khouryn followed.

But they were only halfway to their objective when Nala cried out in a voice as loud as thunder, and rainbows swirled around her body. The shaman froze in position, and a kind of discoloration ran through his flesh, staining it a different shade of gray. Then his outstretched arms crumbled under their own weight, because Nala had turned him into a figure of solidified ash like the spires. The red crystal egg fell to the ground.

An instant later, Patrin roared, “Bahamut!” His sword streaked in a high horizontal slice that opened his opponent’s belly. Guts bulged out, and the giant dropped his weapon and clutched at the wound to hold himself together. While he was working on that, Patrin thrust his point up under the rib cage into his heart.

Khouryn had been right the first time. There truly wasn’t much more to do. Balasar felt an odd mix of anticlimax and relief.

As the giant warrior fell, Nala trotted toward the gradually eroding remains of the adept. Patrin followed, but he was a pace behind her.

She bent at the waist and straightened up with the scarlet egg in her hand. She glared into its translucent depths, and Patrin said, “Stop!”

But she didn’t look away. And the talisman suddenly blazed with multicolored light bright enough to make Balasar squint and avert his eyes. When the glow faded, the egg was gone.

“Curse it!” Patrin exclaimed. Balasar realized it was the first time he’d heard the fellow sound upset. Up until then, he’d projected the same annoying calmness that Medrash so often displayed. “I told you, if we kept one of those intact, the vanquisher’s wizards could study it and maybe learn something useful.”

“And I told you,” said Nala, “the stones are evil.” She still sounded calm. In fact, Balasar thought he heard a trace of amusement lurking in her tone. “Bahamut wants them destroyed.”

“I’m his champion, and I don’t sense that.”

“I’m his champion too, in my own fashion, and he talks to me about different things.” She gazed into his eyes. “I hope you aren’t going to start doubting me now. Not after we’ve come so far.”

Patrin sighed, his glare softened, and Balasar’s suspicion that the two of them were lovers as well as fellow fanatics strengthened into certainty. “Of course I trust you.”

“Then let’s talk of other things. If you can draw down more power, the wounded could use your healing touch. And we need to get everyone organized again.”

“All right.” Patrin turned toward Balasar, Medrash, and Khouryn. “Can you help?”

“I don’t know that I can work any more magic,” Medrash said. “Not for a while. But I can knot a bandage.”

“That’s something at least.” Patrin led them toward two dragonborn, one lying on his back, the other applying pressure to his comrade’s bloody chest wound.

When they’d left Nala several paces behind, the dwarf murmured, “For what it’s worth, I agree with you. We should have kept the talisman for study.”

Patrin shook his head. “No. No. Nala’s wise. You see what we can accomplish with her powers backing up our swords and bows.” He peered down at the wounded warrior. “I can handle this. You help someone else.”

Medrash led the rest of them onward, toward another injured cultist. Meanwhile, other dragonborn sank to their knees.

In itself, that wasn’t strange. Combat was exhausting. Soldiers often flopped down where they stood when it was over.

But the members of the Platinum Cadre also rocked their upper bodies from side to side. It was the same repetitive motion that kept Nala’s frame perpetually writhing, only more pronounced.

“Do you see this?” Balasar asked.

“Yes,” Medrash said, “but I also see something more pressing.” Evidently perceiving just how badly his prospective patient was hurt, he broke into a trot and left his companions behind.

“Fair enough,” said Balasar, “but I want a closer look.” He headed for the nearest swaying cultist, a ruddy-scaled female with the silver falcons of Clan Clethtinthtiallor pierced into her right ear and the back of her right hand. Khouryn tramped along at his side.

Suddenly the Clethtinthtiallor turned and scuttled to the nearest giant corpse. Her sway becoming more pronounced, and she clawed the foe’s gray, ash-smeared flesh with alternate swipes of her right and left hands.

Balasar and Khouryn faltered in surprise and distaste.

The cultist tore out a handful of flesh, then peered down at it as though entranced. She opened her mouth.

Balasar lunged, grabbed her by the shoulders, and gave her a shake. “No!”

She tried to twist free of his grip and bring the raw flesh to her face at the same time. But by then Khouryn was there too. He seized hold of her wrist with one hand and dug most of the meat out of her fingers with the other.

Then a feminine voice murmured a string of words, each softer than the one before. For a moment, Balasar’s eyelids drooped. The Clethtinthtiallor went limp in his grasp and started snoring.

“Thank you,” Nala said, stepping closer. Her hand trailed a blur of power as she lowered it to her side. “We wouldn’t want her to do something that might embarrass her later.”

Balasar laid the sleeping cultist on the ground. “What’s wrong with her? With all of them?” He waved his hand to indicate the other swaying warriors. Some of them had started tearing at giant bodies too, although it didn’t look like they necessarily meant to eat them.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Nala answered. “It’s just… well, you saw how powerful their breath attacks were, and how fiercely they fought in general.”

“Yes.”

“That’s because the Platinum Dragon exalted them as Torm grants power to Medrash. And it isn’t always easy for ordinary people to channel the might of a god. Afterward, they sometimes experience a brief period of… altered consciousness.”

“I understand why you’re taking the ears. But it’s degrading to oneself to desecrate the body of any enemy, even an ash giant, in some sort of frenzy. And sick to want to eat it!”

“I assure you,” Nala said, “the urge to eat is unusual, and we stop those few who feel it. But even if we didn’t, you can’t condemn what a person does while under the control of the divine. The gods are beyond your judgment.”

Balasar smiled. “With respect, wizard, not even Medrash’s special god matters a flyspeck to me, and I don’t consider anything beyond my judgment.”

“You may yet,” Nala said. “You may yet.”