The Captive Flame

TEN

12 MIRTUL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

Gaedynn straightened up and loosed two arrows. Jhesrhi looked in the direction they flew and belatedly spotted the black silhouettes of two sentries, each of whom collapsed with a shaft in his chest.

The humans waited until it seemed plain that no one else had noticed the shadar-kai falling. Then they crept onward until they had a clear view of the hillside where Tchazzar lay manacled to the ground.

“Are you ready?” Gaedynn whispered.

“Of course,” she snapped.

Actually, she wasn’t certain. Since arriving in the Shadowfell, she’d gradually discerned that even the elements here had a filthy, alien feel. In her own world, they leaped to do her bidding. In the Shadowfell, they balked and looked for ways to turn her magic against her.

It didn’t matter as long as she was working an ordinary sort of spell. But it might when she tried to exert her powers to the fullest.

Essentially it was a problem of attunement, and she’d spent the better part of a day meditating, striving for a better fit between her consciousness and the shadow world she currently inhabited. It had helped, but the only way to find out just how much was to attempt a truly powerful spell and see what happened.

But first she had two lesser ones to cast. “Hold out your hand,” she said.

He did. She poised a fingertip over his palm and sketched a rune there. For a second it glowed yellow, and the pseudomind inside her staff experienced a pang of pleasure.

“It tickles,” Gaedynn said.

“Shut up. Get ready.”

She spoke to the fire implicit in the air, in all that could burn, and to the fire locked inside her staff. It cloaked her in warmth and wavering yellow light. Across the hillside, shadar-kai and their stunted servants jerked around toward the radiant figure suddenly burning in the dark.

Gaedynn shot the three nearest, dropping them before they had a chance to recover from their surprise. Giving Jhesrhi time to cast the first major spell without interference.

Fortunately, it had been possible to cast part of it in advance. If she tried, she could feel the forces she’d invoked balanced and aligned like the works of a mill, waiting for a final push to set the waterwheel turning and the stones grinding. She chanted words of power.

As she’d feared, when the process was at its most precarious, the earth tried to deny her. She could feel its spite and defiance as an ache in her feet and ankles.

But she knew how to talk to it now. She promised to satisfy the love of pain and destruction festering in everything in the Shadowfell. She wallowed in fantasies of slaughter by crushing and suffocation.

It didn’t make earth and stone despise her any less. It did, however, persuade them that she could help them lash out at other soft, scurrying mites they hated just as much. It beguiled them into using her as she was using them.

She pounded the butt of her staff repeatedly on the ground. Rings of swell flowed outward from the point of impact like ripples in a pond.

She kept hammering, and the ripples rose higher and swept farther. She could feel the disturbance, but had no trouble keeping her balance. The sensation in her feet had changed from gnawing pain to one of pure connection, like she’d set down roots as deep as a mountain’s. Gaedynn, however, staggered, fighting to keep his feet, then fell down anyway. He wasn’t alone. No shadar-kai could stand up either. The ones struggling free of the burrows had to crawl.

The captive dragon stared at Jhesrhi, but she had no idea what it was thinking. Nor, at that moment, did it matter. She had to stay focused on jolting the ground harder and harder and harder.

Cracking and crashing, trees toppled against their neighbors. Sections of hillside, and thinner strips connecting them, fell in on themselves. The earth laughed a rumbling laugh as it squeezed the shadar-kai caught in the tunnels in its murderous grasp.

Jhesrhi realized it was time to stop, but it took three more stamps of the staff before she managed it. Her will was entangled with the earth’s, and her mad collaborator wanted to go on quaking until it knocked down, shattered, or buried everything-even itself.

Gaedynn sprang to his feet. “Keep moving!”

He was right. That was exactly what they had to do, no matter how tired she felt. They turned and ran into the trees.

There, she willed her blazing cloak to go out. Gaedynn waved the hand where she’d drawn the rune. A tongue of flame leaped from his skin to become a tall, slender figure with a feminine shape. From a distance, the elemental ought to pass for a mortal woman wrapped in fire.

Gaedynn dashed onward. The living flame sprang after him.

Jhesrhi stepped behind an oak and whispered charms of silence and concealment. Invisibility was largely a magic of the mind, and she was nowhere near as proficient at it as she was at elemental wizardry. But since she’d given the enemy a nice, bright lure to follow, perhaps they wouldn’t even bother to look elsewhere.

It was only a few heartbeats before, moving in eerie quiet even now, the first shadar-kai came racing after Gaedynn and the fire spirit. Had they been human, some of the dark men might have stayed behind to dig for survivors or simply because they’d succumbed to grief for those presumably lost. But she and Gaedynn had learned that malice and bloodlust were the shadar-kai’s ruling passions even when unprovoked, and they’d done everything in their power to enrage them. They hoped the final outrage would goad every last one of them into giving chase. Leaving Tchazzar unattended.

It looked like it was working. Dozens of the gray-skinned, black-clad folk, and the other creatures that dwelled alongside them, hurried past her hiding place.

But she wouldn’t know for certain until she returned to the hillside and determined what was waiting for her there. She let a final band of the dark little servants flicker by, then took a breath, shifted her grip on her staff, and headed in that direction.

Aoth sat inside the wardrobe with Cera’s garments dangling all around him. He peered out the peephole he’d bored and reflected that he was like a lover in a bawdy tale hiding from the jealous husband or suspicious father.

He was trying to find the humor in his situation but was too impatient to feel truly amused. Come on, he thought, what are you waiting for?

He was impatient because he’d decided that whatever did or didn’t happen, he couldn’t continue the ruse beyond that night. It had seemed pretty clever when he’d first hit on it, but now that it was underway, he realized that he couldn’t allow a do-nothing like Hasos to have sole charge of the defense of the barony for very long, nor could he leave the Brotherhood without a single one of its senior officers in command. Any number of his men might decide that their obligations to their unlucky company had died with its leader and that they preferred to seek their fortunes elsewhere.

He reached out with his mind and made contact with Jet, who was skulking on the gabled roof of a building adjacent to the temple. He could tell immediately that the griffon hadn’t noticed anything suspicious.

He scowled in frustration. But at that moment, the door swung open and a figure in a hooded robe slipped into Cera’s bedchamber. Aoth wasn’t surprised that this time there was only one assassin. It should only take one to kill an invalid, and a single murderer could sneak into a sickroom more easily than a larger number, even with a kind of invisibility aiding the endeavor.

The black-scaled dragonborn took a wary look around. Then he strode to the bed and pulled back the blankets, revealing the motionless form beneath. Aoth held his breath. This was the moment when the scheme could all too easily fall apart.

The dead sellsword had perished taking the same fort where Aoth allegedly received his terrible wounds. He’d been short and burly, and with his head shaved and his skin painted with false tattoos, he made a fair approximation of his commander.

Cera had used cosmetic and magical tricks to mask the appearance of death. It was Aoth’s good fortune that little Soolabax had no temple of Kelemvor and that in the absence of doomguides, other clerics had to learn how to prepare the dead for their funerals.

Still, despite the plotters’ best efforts, it was entirely possible the dragonborn would realize the man lying before him wasn’t Aoth. Or that he was no longer alive and therefore this must be some sort of trap.

But it didn’t happen that way. As soon as the dragonborn had the corpse uncovered to the waist, he whipped out a poniard, drove it into his victim’s heart, then turned and headed for the door. He was eager to finish his task and get well away before anyone discovered his handiwork.

Too late, thought Aoth. I’ve got you, you son of a whore.

He gave the assassin time to exit the temple. Then he ran through the building, startling yellow-clad sunlords who were astonished to see him up and around and fully armed. He plunged out into Cera’s garden. Aware of his need through their psychic link, Jet swooped down in front of him.

Aoth swung himself into the saddle. “The dragonborn didn’t spot you, did he?”

“He shouldn’t have,” said the familiar, “but I can’t be sure because I still haven’t seen him.”

“Go,” said Aoth. “Stay high and be quiet.”

Jet grunted. “I know how to hunt.” He loped forward, beat his wings, and carried Aoth aloft.

Once they were well above the rooftops, the griffon flew in a spiral search pattern. At first Aoth couldn’t see any sign of their quarry and feared that somehow the dragonborn had already gotten away. Then he spotted a robed figure hurrying down a narrow, crooked alley.

Got him, said Jet, speaking mind to mind. Now that his master’s fire-kissed eyes had spotted the assassin, he could see him as well. I wonder where he’ll lead us.

Gaedynn considered himself proficient at evading pursuit. But in the past, his goal had generally been to leave the enemy far behind as expeditiously as possible. It was trickier when he needed to stay just a little way ahead so they wouldn’t get discouraged, give up, and go back to their captive dragon. Trickier too, when he was fleeing with a living beacon to draw his pursuers on.

Fortunately, it wasn’t necessary to have the fire spirit constantly burning at his side. He could make her disappear when his foes drew as near as they were now. He held out his hand.

The elemental’s features were a vague, inconstant blur, but he thought he saw her pout. Then she thinned to a long sliver of flame, which leaped into his palm and vanished. The contact stung for an instant-further evidence, perhaps, that she didn’t want to go.

He slipped between two stands of brush, on a course at right angles to the one he’d been following before. He climbed a steep hillside, then looked around.

Dark figures stood clustered together not far from the point where he’d started his ascent. As usual he couldn’t really hear shadar-kai voices, but he suspected they were trying to figure out what direction he’d taken. The elemental’s abrupt disappearance had confused them.

Well, Gaedynn thought, maybe I can help them out with that. He nocked an arrow, drew it to his ear, and let it fly. One of the shadar-kai reeled and fell.

Without even pausing to check on him, the others swarmed up the slope. Gaedynn turned and scurried into a tangle of gnarled, scabrous-looking oaks.

Something whispered from behind one of the trees. A slim, shadowy hand beckoned. It filled him with a yearning so keen that when he strode on anyway, it was like tearing free of a barbed hook. His would-be seducer giggled after him.

He didn’t think the haunt was an ally of the shadar-kai. It was just one of the many small perils infesting the Shadowfell. In fact, for an instant as he peered around, he wondered if he was leaving the chase too far behind. Then a pair of gray-black figures skulked out of the gloom.

Naked, genderless, and hairless, virtually identical, at first glance they looked less like creatures of flesh and blood than living sculptures-and unfinished ones at that. They had empty pits for eyes and a vertical groove to suggest both a nose and a mouth. Otherwise their heads were featureless bulbs.

Gaedynn had seen such things in the company of the shadar-kai. But he had no idea exactly what they were or how they went about attacking a foe, and he hoped to avoid finding out. He snatched out an arrow and drove it into the nearest creature’s chest.

The dark thing frayed apart to nothing. Maybe it was its nature to dissolve when it died, or perhaps the black arrows carried an enchantment that made them particularly deadly to such beings. Pleasantly surprised that the kill had been so easy, Gaedynn pivoted toward his remaining foe.

It was gone. And when it suddenly rematerialized, it was standing right in front of him. Its empty sockets stared into his eyes.

Pain ripped through Gaedynn’s skull. His guts churned. His legs buckled and dumped him to his knees. The faceless creature grabbed his bow, jerked it out of his hand, and tossed it aside.

Hard as it was to think with his head throbbing, Gaedynn realized it was his enemy’s gaze that was hurting him. He tried to avert his eyes. The creature caught his chin in cold, leathery fingers and held his head in place. He struggled to grip its forearm and break its hold, but could only paw and fumble feebly.

He held out his hand and the fire spirit leaped into existence. The dark thing automatically turned its head to track the apparition.

Gaedynn still felt weak and sick, but not quite so much as before. He yanked an arrow from his quiver and stabbed it into his enemy’s stomach like a dagger.

The creature didn’t fall down or break apart, but its grip on Gaedynn’s chin loosened. He knocked its hand away and scrambled to his feet. The ground tilted beneath him, but then he caught his balance.

The dark thing’s head turned back in his direction. Making sure not to meet its gaze, he pulled out another arrow and thrust, aiming for the spot where a human would carry his heart.

Made of a substance that resembled polished obsidian, the black point punched into his adversary’s chest. The creature stumbled backward, but he had the feeling it still wasn’t ready to drop. He drew his scimitar and slashed three times. That made it fall down and start unraveling too.

He just had time to grin. Then a cold hand grabbed him by the wrist of his sword arm and jerked him around.

He could tell from the arrow still sticking out of its chest that it was the first faceless creature, not slain after all. Even though strips of its body had dissolved all the way through from front to back and it was impossible to understand how the remaining pieces maintained their proper positions with nothing but empty air between them. Its eyeless gaze reached out for his own and, startled as he was, he waited an instant too long to start resisting.

He felt compulsion take hold of him. He was going to look, and the fire sprite, now simply standing and watching the struggle from several paces away, wouldn’t save him a second time.

He shifted the scimitar to his off hand and cut at the dark creature’s head. At the same instant, its power blazed into his eyes, and the world exploded into agony.

When the pain ebbed, he was sprawled on his belly. He looked around. The faceless thing was gone again. For good this time, he hoped.

Suddenly the nausea he was suffering became irresistible, and he retched up the contents of his stomach. It left a foul taste and burning sensation in his mouth and nose, but even so he felt better afterward.

Not well, though. He supposed it would take time for the faceless things’ poisonous influence to work its way out of his system completely.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t wait. Sick or hale, he had to move or more of his pursuers would catch up with him. He sheathed the scimitar, retrieved his bow, and loped onward. The living flame fell into step beside him.

Though it was difficult to be certain from high above, Aoth thought that he and Jet were looking down at an apartment house. The assassin slipped through the easternmost in a row of doors.

Aoth decided to descend. Sensing his intent, Jet furled his wings, swooped, and set down lightly in the empty, darkened street, far enough away from the apartment in question that no one looking out a window was likely to see them.

Although Aoth doubted anybody was. The shutters were closed, and no light gleamed through the cracks.

“What now?” asked Jet.

Aoth swung himself off the griffon’s back. “I go in after him.” He considered taking his shield, then left it clipped to the saddle. He’d rather have both hands available to grip his spear.

“Is that wise?” asked Jet. “You could watch the place from here while I go for reinforcements.”

“When someone breaks in in force, the enemy will know it. It will give them another chance to destroy their papers and such. If I sneak in alone, it increases the odds of finally getting some answers.”

“It increases the odds of somebody tearing your head off too.”

“We killed a number of dragonborn that night in the garden. There can’t be an unlimited supply hiding here in Soolabax with nobody noticing. Even if one of them spots me, I expect I can contend with however many are left until you get back with those reinforcements you mentioned.”

“All right. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” The familiar trotted, lashed his wings, and soared up toward the stars.

Aoth invoked the magic of one of his tattoos, and for a moment the design felt cold as ice on his chest. The charm didn’t grant actual invisibility, but it made the bearer easy to overlook.

Then he skulked up to the door the dragonborn had entered. He couldn’t hear anything on the other side. He tried the handle. As he’d expected, it was locked.

He slipped the point of his spear into the crack beneath the latch and released a bit of power from the weapon. The door made a sharp snapping sound and lurched open.

He peered into an unfurnished hallway with doorways opening off it and stairs leading upward. He neither saw nor heard anything moving, which suggested that no one had caught the noise of his forced entry.

Aoth prowled onward. None of the rooms on the ground floor was furnished or showed any signs of recent occupancy. It made him wonder if he and Jet actually had killed all the dragonborn but one.

In a small room at the back, his fire-kissed eyes saw the square outline of a low concealed panel that evidently connected the apartment with another. He reached for it, and then it started to slide. Somebody was opening it from the other side.

He turned and scrambled through the doorway to an adjacent room. Then he peeked around the corner.

Stooping, a man with bushy salt-and-pepper side-whiskers, eyebrows to match, and a mole at the corner of his narrow mouth came through the low opening, then closed the panel behind him. He wore a slashed velvet doublet with turned cuffs, like a prosperous merchant, and Aoth realized they’d actually been introduced at some point. Although he couldn’t recall the fellow’s name.

Whoever the whoreson was, he walked on without noticing anything amiss. Aoth considered jumping him, then opted to follow instead.

The man headed down the cellar stairs. Aoth gave him time to reach the bottom, then crept down just far enough to see what lay below.

Someone had done a fair amount of work to turn the basement into a proper shrine to Tiamat, the five-headed Dragon Queen. Votive candles burned before a bronze statue of the goddess. One flame glowed red, one white, one blue, one green, and one was a quivering teardrop of shadow. The sculpture’s necks almost appeared to weave in the soft, wavering light.

A portrait depicting the Nemesis of the Gods in her human guise as a beautiful woman with long black hair hung on the wall beside an intricately painted, multicolored pentagram. The smell of bitter incense hung in the air.

Dark scales glinting in the candlelight, the dragonborn assassin stood naked before the pentagonal bloodstone altar. His robe lay discarded on the floor.

He glared at the man with the side-whiskers. “I don’t like mortals in general,” he said. “I definitely don’t like it when they keep me waiting.”

Aoth frowned. Mortals? What in Kossuth’s name was that supposed to mean?

“I have an ordinary life,” the man replied. “I have to devote some time to living it. Otherwise people will get suspicious.”

“Just restore me to myself.”

“I’m working on it.” He took down a robe from a peg on the wall and pulled it on over his other clothing. Its shimmering scales changed color whenever he moved. He slipped on five rings, each bearing a stone the hue of one of the candle flames, and picked up an implement or weapon like a miner’s pick.

Evidently he himself was the wyrmkeeper of this particular sanctuary.

He faced the dragonborn. “Stand still.” He recited sibilant words of power and swung the heavy, unwieldy-looking pick through a looping figure with a dexterity that would have done credit to a juggler. The five wedge-shaped heads of the Tiamat statue seemed to cock forward ever so slightly, although that was likely just Aoth’s imagination.

And the assassin changed form.

His features remained reptilian, but twisted from a dragonborn’s rather handsome lineaments into ugliness. Batlike wings sprouted from his back, and a long tail with a spike on the end writhed out from the base of his spine. He-or it-dropped into a crouch.

Aoth wasn’t a scholar of demons. But he’d met a fair assortment on the battlefield, and knew an abishai when he saw one. And it made sense that with the aid of magic, one of the devil-like spirits could assume the form of a dragonborn. Both races were kin to wyrms and thus to each other, whatever the Tymantherans might care to believe.

In fact, a lot of things suddenly made sense. Like why the dragonborn murderers, raiders, and pirates had no clan piercings and why knowledgeable Tymantherans like Perra were unable to account for them. Why they possessed supernatural abilities ordinary dragonborn didn’t, and how they could lurk unnoticed in the heart of a city between atrocities. In point of fact, they didn’t. They went home to Tiamat’s domain in the astral world called Banehold until a human spellcaster saw fit to call them forth again.

Aoth felt a swell of elation. This truly had been a puzzle worth solving. When he reported what he’d discovered, it would save the alliance between Chessenta and Tymanther.

Its metamorphosis complete, the black abishai said, “Good. Now send me-” It whipped around toward the stairs.

Aoth realized it had glimpsed him from the corner of its eye. His veil had sufficed to fool it while it wore its dragonborn shape, but not now when its senses were evidently somewhat different.

The abishai charged up the risers. Sweating drops of fuming acid, its tail reared over its shoulder to strike like a scorpion’s stinger.

Aoth hurled darts of green light from his spear. The devil-kin twisted aside, and they missed. It resumed its climb. He charged the head of his weapon with destructive power and thrust it at the creature’s chest.

The abishai dodged that attack as well. Its tail whipped at Aoth’s shoulder. The bony point clanked against his mail and rebounded, although just the track of vapor it left in the air was enough to sting his eyes and make them water.

Meanwhile, the wyrmkeeper chanted.

Aoth feinted to the abishai’s foot. It leaped upward, beating its leathery wings as well as it could in the cramped space of the stairway, to rise above the attack. He whirled his spear-another maneuver that wasn’t easy in the confines-and smashed the butt into his opponent’s fanged, snarling mouth and snout.

The blow knocked the abishai back down the steps. He hurled more darts of light and, deprived of its balance, the creature couldn’t dodge. The missiles plunged into its body. It jerked and then lay still.

Aoth immediately looked for the wyrmkeeper. Whatever magic the bastard was attempting, he needed to put a stop to it.

But it was too late. The man with the pick had finished his incantation, and the pentagram, and the section of wall on which he’d painted it, had disappeared. In their place, a hole opened on a bleak, rocky landscape and a red sky mountainous with black thunderheads. Abishais were swarming through.

Jhesrhi studied the hillside with all its new pits and ditches to show where the underlying tunnels had collapsed. The dragon lay motionless, his head between his forefeet like a dog’s, as though merely looking around at all the commotion had exhausted him.

As far as she could tell, nothing else was moving either. That didn’t mean there wasn’t someone lying in wait-if there was one thing for which the denizens of the Shadowfell had a natural gift, it was sneaking and hiding-but if there was, she’d just have to wait for him to reveal himself and kill him when he did.

She strode out into the open. Drew breath to hail Tchazzar. Then a patch of earth heaved as something started to force its way out from underneath.

All right, she thought, let’s get this over with. She lifted her staff and felt its pleasure that she finally meant to use it in the manner it preferred.

Huge hands, their skin the same color as the surrounding dirt, gripped the edge of the new hole and heaved. A head with brutish features and curved taurine horns surged into view. Beneath it were massive shoulders armored in bands of sculpted stone.

Jhesrhi started backing away. She tried to stop.

I’m not a coward, she told herself. It unsettled me to return to Chessenta, and then to Threskel, but I got better. Gaedynn said I was better.

But evidently she wasn’t, because she couldn’t stop retreating. She couldn’t stop shaking or gasping either. Although she knew it couldn’t really be there, she seemed to feel her stiff, scratchy, filthy slave collar half choking her neck.

The elemental mage-a ken-kuni, one of the giants with an affinity for earth-sneered, drew himself to his feet, and lumbered toward her.

Abishais of various colors rushed the stairs. Aoth knew that like the dragons they resembled, each was largely immune to the force that infused its nature. The reds couldn’t burn, the whites couldn’t freeze, and so forth. So he hurled a rainbow of destructive power down the steps in the hope that multiple varied attacks would kill them all.

The barrage blasted them back and smashed the wooden risers beneath them. Some then lay motionless, charred and shriveled or transformed into stone. Another, plunged into dementia, looked around in confusion.

But others picked themselves up and snarled at the man who’d hammered them. And more of the vile things were still coming through the hole.

Maybe if Aoth killed the man who’d opened it, the gate would close. He pointed his spear, rattled off words of power, and hurled a jagged bolt of shadow. Like the abishais, the wyrmkeeper might be impervious to an attack resembling one or even all of his goddess’s breaths. But Aoth hoped the pure essence of death would knife through any defenses.

The magic pierced the wyrmkeeper’s torso. He dropped his pick and fell, patches of his flesh dissolving into slime before he even hit the floor.

But the hole didn’t close. And hands locked around Aoth’s ankles. While he’d focused his attention on the priest, one of the abishais had jumped up through the splintered wreckage of the stairs and grabbed him.

The devil-kin’s weight nearly dragged him over the edge. Its green stinger stabbed repeatedly against his reinforced boot, and the haze that surrounded the creature seared his mouth and nose and made him cough. The section of staircase beneath him, hanging with little or no support from below, swayed like it was about to give way.

He struggled not to cough. To articulate instead a word that swelled into an unearthly howl. The green abishai lost its hold and fell away. Three of its fellows dropped dead too.

But an instant later, Aoth heard banging and crashing at his back. He glanced around and saw the ruddy dancing glow of flame.

Instead of attempting a frontal assault up the stairs, some of the red and blue abishais were smashing, burning, and blasting their way through the basement ceiling. If he stayed where he was, he’d be trapped with foes assailing him from the front and rear simultaneously.

He hurled another rainbow at the opponents below him as he scrambled backward. He didn’t like doing it. Even a master war-mage didn’t command an inexhaustible supply of magic, and he was burning through his most powerful spells too quickly. But he had to hold back the creatures still in the cellar for at least another moment while he got clear of the stairs.

He felt searing heat and pivoted toward it. Shrouded in flame, a red abishai reached for him with hooked talons and whipped its stinger at him. He blasted it with a booming flare of lightning.

An instant later, a lightingbolt struck him, almost like his own magic had bounced back. Every muscle clenching and spasming, he shuddered in place for a moment, then dropped to his knees.

The power would likely have killed him if not for the protective enchantments bound into his mail and tattoos. As it was, it left his head empty and ringing like a bell. A light crawled in the blue abishai’s eyes, sparks popped and sizzled on its scaly hide, and a part of him realized it was gathering its strength to throw more lightning. But at first he couldn’t make himself react.

Even when his mind snapped back into functionality, his still-twitching muscles didn’t want to obey it. But somehow he pointed his spear and sent a blade of white light leaping from the point. The floating sword slashed, and the abishai toppled backward. Its lightningbolt shattered a section of the ceiling.

Panting, heart pounding, Aoth rose and retreated through the empty rooms. The flying blade finished killing its first target. He called it back to hover close by and strike at whatever popped out at him.

But the sword couldn’t keep all the abishais away. There were too many. There were ragged, smoldering holes gaping in the floor of every room, waiting to punish any misstep, and devil-kin lurking around every corner. When he was lucky enough to spot them while still a step beyond their reach, he blasted them with flame and frost. Otherwise he drove his spear into their vitals.

Suddenly he smelled a scent like a gathering storm, and a stray spark fell in front of his face. He wrenched himself aside, and a dazzling lightningbolt roared down from above. One of the blue abishais had gone up to the second story, clawed a hole in the floor there, and waited for him to pass underneath. He sent the flying sword streaking at it to shear the fiend’s head from its shoulders.

He realized he had no idea of his direction. He’d turned and dodged so often that, ridiculously, the handful of interconnecting rooms now felt like a maze. Clamping down on a surge of panic, he glanced around and spied a window.

He blew the shutters to splinters with a blast of sound, then ran toward the opening. Shrouded in mist and bitter cold, a white abishai lunged at him. He stabbed it in the eye with his spear, jerked the weapon free, and leaped through the opening-into the street where Jet had set him down.

No help was in sight, and he realized he shouldn’t have expected any. He’d only been inside for a little while, even if it had felt like all night to him.

He took a breath and aimed his spear at the abishais springing and clambering out after him. Come on, then, he thought.

Gaedynn loosed his last arrow, dropped his bow, pulled his scimitar out of the ground, and lunged from the thicket. He closed to striking distance before the shadar-kai he’d shot finished falling down.

He cut the second one across the kidney. By then the remaining two had their chains whirling. He jumped back, and the ends of the weapons streaked past him. He instantly stepped in and sliced into the torso of yet another silent, scar-faced opponent.

He looked for the last one and couldn’t find him. Pain smashed through his ankle, and then something yanked his leg out from under him. As he slammed down on his belly, he realized the last shadar-kai had shifted behind him and caught his leg with his chain.

Gaedynn heaved himself over onto his back and slashed. The shadar-kai was diving down at him with a wavy-edged dagger in his hand, and the scimitar sheared through his throat. Blood gushing from the wound, he fell on top of Gaedynn, shuddered, and then lay still.

Gasping, his ankle throbbing, soaked in gore, Gaedynn rolled the corpse away, rid himself of the chain, and crawled to the shadar-kai he’d shot. He relieved that body of a full quiver of the black arrows.

It was actually rather ridiculous how glad he was to have them. He was still ill from the poisonous gaze of the faceless men. If anything, fatigue was making the sickness steadily worse. Most likely, thanks to the stroke of the chain, he’d be limping from now on.

His flight had taken him to a patch of relatively low ground where flickers of shadow told him his pursuers were on the wooded slopes and ridges to every side. Despite his best efforts they’d somehow managed to surround him, and now they were going to converge on him.

And there was still no sign of a rescue in the offing. Taken all together, it meant that unless Lady Luck truly loved him today, the arrows could only extend his life for a little longer and make the shadar-kai pay more dearly for the honor of snuffing it out.

Still, that was better than nothing. It just might mean the mad gamble would pay off-for Jhesrhi anyway-and in any case, better to go down drawing a bow than swinging a blade. That way, Keen-Eye would know to welcome his spirit into his camp.

Just to make sure the enemy stayed eager, he flicked the living flame out of his hand and into visible existence. “If you can fight,” he told her, “this would be a perfect time to show me.”

He wasn’t certain, but he thought her glowing, fluid features smiled derisively.

As Jhesrhi backed up, she told herself, I don’t have to cringe and run. I can kill this brute. My magic is stronger than any kenkuni’s ever was.

Her staff too implored her to stand her ground. It promised that if she only unleashed its power, she could incinerate any foe.

Still, she kept retreating. Leering, the giant came after her in a leisurely manner, evidently so unimpressed with her that he didn’t see any urgency about closing the distance.

She realized he hadn’t even bothered to draw the enormous sword strapped across his back. Perhaps he didn’t even mean to kill her. Maybe he planned to keep her, put his collar on her neck, touch her in all the dread, unbearable ways.

So fight! Don’t let him! But instead, she merely gasped and whimpered.

He waved his massive, dirt-colored hand. A tremor ran through the ground and tossed her off her feet. Then suddenly he ran, and before she could even scramble up, he was looming over her. He bent down.

I’m sorry, Gaedynn, she thought. I tried. She imagined the archer fleeing and fighting in the dark.

And somehow that-or that combined with the urgings of the staff and all the things she’d already tried to tell herself-brought her to the tipping point.

She’d tried? And that was how it ended? That was all she had to offer one of the only true friends she’d ever had? Rage and hatred welled up in her like lava, burning her panic away, excoriating the elemental mage and herself in equal measure.

But the torrent of flame that leaped from the staff only targeted the giant. It caught him square in the face and hurled him backward.

When he caught his balance, she saw that the attack hadn’t seared his body exactly as it would char human flesh. But it had plainly hurt him. Parts of him looked hard, discolored, and cracked, like badly made pottery.

He bellowed and stamped his foot.

She disregarded the staff’s yearning for fire and reestablished her connection to the earth. When the shock reached her, it simply lifted her and set her back down. It didn’t even stagger her, let alone snap her neck or jolt her limbs out of their sockets.

The giant snarled, and bits of his contorted features broke loose. She laughed at him.

He pulled his sword from his scabbard and charged. She spoke to the wind, and it carried her upward, her magic in a race with his long legs and reach.

A close race-he leaped as high as he could, swung the sword in an overhand cut, and it whistled by just a finger length under her feet.

But after that, there was nothing more to fear. Hovering above him, she hurled down gout after gout of flame. While he staggered around and screamed, and his body broke and broke again.

By the Nine Dark Princes, it felt good! So good that when it was over, a part of her just wanted to keep raining fire on the shards of the corpse.

But she had a job to finish. So she struggled to control her ragged breathing and put her thoughts in order. Then she asked the wind to carry her to the prisoner.

Despite his shackles and extreme emaciation, he was still a colossal red dragon, and she floated down in front of him with a pang of trepidation. But all he did was study her with his smoldering golden eyes.

“Are you Tchazzar?” she asked.

“You see that I am,” he answered. His voice was more of a wheeze than either a rumble or a hiss, like it strained him just to talk.

“People say you were a great wizard.”

Despite his debility, his eyes burned brighter, and she found herself taking a step back. “I’m a god!” he said.

“I beg your pardon for misspeaking,” she said, holding her voice steady. “But my point is this. If I set you free and restore your strength, can you take my comrade and me back to the mortal world?”

“I’d do so gladly,” Tchazzar said, “if you could truly keep your end of the bargain.”

“I believe I can. You’ve seen I have an affinity for fire, and that’s the essence of life to you. I’m going to pour it into your blood and sinews.”

Tchazzar hesitated like she’d surprised him. “That might actually work, assuming you can channel a prodigious quantity without losing control. If you’re willing to try, you’d better get started.”

“Before the shadar-kai come back?”

“Before Sseelrigoth-the blight dragon-himself arrives. It’s our good fortune that he can’t actually live here, lest he drain the life from his subjects. But I’m sure that by now, he’s sensed all the commotion and is on his way.”

Pivoting constantly, alternately targeting the abishais at street level and those flying overhead, Aoth rattled off words of power and worked his way through his last remaining attack spells. He’d killed plenty of his foes and meant to kill more. But he suspected that when he finished casting his flares of fire and howls of bone-shattering vibration, there would still be enough left to swarm on him and tear him to pieces. He never did get that damn gate in the cellar to close.

Either way, it looked like he was going to die fighting for Chessenta. A place he decided he detested almost as much as it detested people like him.

Galloping hoof beats clattered behind him. He glanced over his shoulder.

Armored in a gilt helmet and breastplate, Cera charged in his direction. He realized she too must have been waiting for the assassin to make a move, and when Aoth had gone running through the temple, she’d tried to follow him. She couldn’t have kept on Jet’s track in any normal way, but maybe some trick of divine magic had made it possible. Or maybe all the thunderclaps and flashes had drawn her. Now that Aoth thought about it, it hadn’t been a particularly inconspicuous fight.

Her golden-colored mare balked well short of the action. The animal tried to turn around and run the other way, and Cera struggled to reassert control.

“Get out of here!” Aoth croaked. Then he heard the flap of leathery wings and whirled back around.

A green abishai leaped at him. Holding his breath and squinting against the stinging haze that surrounded it, he ducked a sweep of its tail, drove his spear into its midsection, pulled it free, and scrambled back out of the cloud.

When he glanced back again, Cera was picking herself up off the ground. She didn’t look hurt, but she didn’t even have a weapon. Her mace was still slung on the saddle of the mare now racing away as fast as she could go.

“Run!” said Aoth. “You can’t fight these things!”

“You don’t need a fighter!” Cera said. “You need an exorcist!” She started to chant.

Apparently recognizing the power in her words, the abishais charged or flew at her. Draining his power to the dregs, Aoth created walls of flame and hovering, spinning blades between the priestess and her assailants. Anything to hold them back.

Or at least he did so during the fleeting moments when one or more abishais weren’t trying to burn, blast, or stab him to death. The rest of the time he thrust the spear at what seemed an endless succession of snarling, clawing monstrosities. The weapon felt strangely heavy and dead in his hands, and not just because of his exhaustion. Because there was no magic left inside it anymore.

Then a glow flowered at his back and lit the street as bright as day. Some of the abishais charred away like dry leaves in a bonfire. The rest faltered, and when they came forward again, they appeared to struggle like swimmers fighting against a current. They seemed to grope and fumble too, as though they were half blind.

It helped. Aoth killed three more of them. But then he spotted a blue abishai that had gotten past him. Now it was soaring over Cera. Sparks jumped on its scaly hide as it prepared to hurl a lightningbolt.

Aoth rattled off words of power and hurled a ray of freezing cold from his outstretched hand. It was as powerful a ranged attack as he had left, and it wasn’t enough. The devil-kin jerked and wobbled in flight but survived. Its body lit up from the inside-

And then Jet swooped at it and drove his talons deep into its back. Its power discharged in a crackling flash that made Aoth wince, but when the griffon shook the lifeless body off its claws and flew onward, it was plain he’d survived the shock.

More griffons dived out of the night sky into Cera’s light. The sellswords on their backs loosed arrow after arrow, and the abishais fell. Aoth had fought so hard and for what had felt like such a long time that there was something dreamlike about how quickly the battle ended.

It wouldn’t have been as quick if there were still fresh abishais rushing out of the apartment house, but he now saw that at some point that had ended. Something-either the wyrmkeeper’s death, Cera’s exorcism, or simply the magic running out of power-had finally closed the opening to Tiamat’s domain.

Smelling of singed feathers, Jet set down in the street. “Surely,” he said, “there can’t be too many enemies left hiding in Soolabax. Even if worst comes to worst, you can cope with however many remain.”

Aoth snorted. “It sounded reasonable when I said it. You must have thought so too, the way you took your time getting back here.”

“That was because humans are idiots. I don’t know how many times I had to repeat myself to make the men understand you were well and needed-”

Cera’s incantation cut off abruptly.

Aoth and Jet whirled in her direction. There were no abishais anywhere near her, and no blood on her person. But she was collapsing, and as she did, darkness reclaimed the street.

Aoth ran toward her. Jet started a heartbeat later, but outdistanced his master with his first prodigious bound.

The embrace of fire was as glorious as the touch of a mortal lover had always been vile. It filled Jhesrhi with ecstasy and the yearning to open herself even more completely.

She didn’t know what would happen if she did. Maybe she’d simply burn to ash. Or perhaps her humanity would melt away like dross, leaving a being like an efreet, more truly a creature of flame than even a red dragon could ever be. Either possibility would be a blissful consummation.

But she was a wizard, with a wizard’s trained intellect and will, and she refused to surrender wholly to mere sensation, no matter how pleasurable. She maintained her awareness of the other aspects of her nature-of earth, air, water, and spirit, or identity, memory, and purpose-even as she drew the rarified essence of flame from the Elemental Chaos, gathered it in her staff, and then hurled it forth into Tchazzar’s body.

Strangely, the result reminded her of the action of water, specifically of the explosion of life that came when rainfall ended a drought. Glowing like a hot coal but without heat-every bit of that was turning into muscle-the dragon’s form swelled, and new scales closed old sores. Head thrown back at the end of his long neck, he gasped and groaned. Perhaps his transformation hurt, but if so it was clearly a pain he welcomed.

It looked to Jhesrhi like he was nearly restored. Then nausea and vertigo stabbed through her, and her control over her magic wavered. The fire from beyond clutched at her, trying to claim her, and her treacherous staff rejoiced.

She couldn’t bend the element to her will again. She could only break the flow. The roaring, twisting jet of flame went out, and Tchazzar roared as it suddenly stopped playing over his body.

His progress more like a manta ray swimming than a bat flying, shrouded in a cloud of dust, Sseelrigoth twisted and rippled down from the sky. Newly dead leaves whispered as they dropped from the trees adjacent to the hillside.

“By the Lady of Loss,” said the blight dragon, “are all my slaves killed?” He sounded amused rather than upset. “We’ll have to find a way for you to pay for that, wizard. Right after I eat this wonderful meal you provided.”

“I was weak when you bound me to the earth,” Tchazzar growled. “You kept me weak for all the years since. But I’m not weak anymore.” He heaved, and the staples securing his limbs tore out of the ground.

Sseelrigoth’s black eyes widened in shock, but he reacted quickly. A flick of the writhing membranes on his flanks backed him farther away from the red dragon. He opened his jaws and spewed a jet of grit.

Sick and spent as she was, Jhesrhi managed to lift her staff and ask the wind for help. It howled, swirled around her, and kept any of the dragon’s breath from reaching her.

But it reached Tchazzar. Some of the particles scoured his hide like a sandstorm. Others stuck to him and burned.

Then Sseelrigoth snarled, and dust devils sprang up around Tchazzar’s head, no doubt to blind and confuse him. The red wyrm whipped his head back and forth, but the whirling clouds moved with it. Meanwhile, Sseelrigoth sucked in air.

Jhesrhi focused past her grinding sickness and whispered words of command. The wind screamed and tore the dust devils apart.

Vision restored, Tchazzar lashed his gigantic wings and sprang into the air. The tip of his tail whirled in Jhesrhi’s direction and she threw herself flat so it wouldn’t hit her.

Tchazzar slammed into Sseelrigoth and assailed him with his jaws and the talons on all four feet. He whipped his tail around him like a python. The blight wyrm responded in kind.

So entangled, they couldn’t fly. They crashed to earth and rolled toward Jhesrhi. She scrambled clear just in time to keep them from crushing her.

She scurried until she was well clear and, panting and trembling, simply leaned on her staff and watched thereafter. She was too ill and tired for more and doubted she could help Tchazzar any further even if she weren’t. As long as the wyrms were entwined together, it would be difficult to cast elemental magic at one without hitting the other as well.

The struggle shook the ground, and the bits of the warren that her earthquake hadn’t collapsed now caved in on themselves. Chunks of ripped flesh arced through the air. Flame leaped around the dragons’ fangs as they snapped and bit. Tchazzar’s fire was blue and bright gold. Sseelrigoth’s was a murky red, the poisonous grit he’d spat before superheated by his rage.

For a time it looked like Tchazzar was gradually tearing his adversary apart. Then Sseelrigoth’s eyes grew even blacker, and his shroud of dust darkened. Tchazzar bellowed and his wounds widened, rotting at the edges while the blight dragon’s hurts began to close.

Finish it! Jhesrhi thought. Before he leeches away everything I gave you!

As if he’d heard her, Tchazzar strained with every limb to loosen Sseelrigoth’s coils. Unequal to the pressure, a bone in his left wing snapped and a jagged end stabbed through the membrane. But then he broke free of his adversary’s grip.

At once he opened his jaws wider than Jhesrhi would have imagined possible. Taking advantage of his regained mobility, he launched himself at Sseelrigoth fast as an arrow leaping from a bow. And she perceived for the first time just how much bigger he was than the other wyrm. Big enough for his fangs to crash shut on Sseelrigoth’s head from the snout to just behind the eyes.

Tchazzar’s jaw muscles bunched as he bit down with all his might and wrenched his head from side to side. Flexible as a serpent, Sseelrigoth whipped his coils around his foe and clawed. In some places, his talons sliced to the bone. Meanwhile, his tail whipped up and down, battering a section of Tchazzar’s neck.

Jhesrhi held her breath. She couldn’t imagine the battle lasting much longer. No one, not even a dragon, could endure such punishment for long. One of them was going to succumb.

It turned out be Sseelrigoth. A splintering crunch sounded from inside Tchazzar’s jaws, and then the blight wyrm’s neck lashed back and forth. Nothing was restraining it anymore. Blood sprayed from the jagged bowl that was all that remained of Sseelrigoth’s head.

His decapitated body raked and bashed Tchazzar another time or two. Then, the spurts of gore abating, his neck flopped to the ground and his limbs went limp as well.

Tchazzar spat out several pieces of Sseelrigoth’s head. Jhesrhi took note of the short horns that encrusted them, realized the inside of the red dragon’s mouth must now be a mass of sores, and winced. Still employing every bit of his strength and speed, Tchazzar kept clawing his foe’s corpse.

Jhesrhi frowned. Surely Tchazzar realized Sseelrigoth was dead. But he looked like he didn’t mean to stop until he’d reduced the blight dragon to tiny specks of flesh and bone.

And that wouldn’t do. Gaedynn needed them now.

She stepped forward. “My lord!” she called.

Eyes blazing, flame leaping from between his fangs, Tchazzar whirled in her direction. A shock of terror jolted her as she sensed he had no idea who she was. He crouched to spring-

And then he evidently remembered her. She was no expert at reading the features of dragons, but even so she saw some of the radiant fury go out of his eyes.

He straightened up into a less threatening posture. He started to speak, grimaced, spat out a mix of blood and flame, and then tried again. “My daughter.”

“My comrade Gaedynn,” she said. “The shadar-kai are hunting him.”

“Yes. I saw the chase begin.”

“If we don’t help him soon, it will be too late.”

Tchazzar turned and dipped a wing to touch the ground.

She realized she was supposed to climb it like a ramp. Thinking of the broken bone and all his other wounds, she asked, “Can you still fly?”

He laughed. “I could fly to the stars for a chance to burn those maggots.”

So Jhesrhi scrambled up the wing into a smell compounded of combustion, blood, decay, and a sort of dry reptilian musk. The act of climbing didn’t repulse her. Though intelligent, Tchazzar was so different in form from a giant or a man that she could touch him as easily as a griffon.

She seated herself between two of the dorsal frills at the base of his neck. At once he lunged forward, lashed his wings, and carried her into the sky.

As they hurtled along, she studied the hills below. All she saw was earth and trees. She asked the wind for news of the pursuit, but this was one of those occasions when it hadn’t taken any notice of the doings of creatures of flesh and blood.

Then Tchazzar dived lower, and she spotted the living flame she’d conjured shining in a depression among the hills. Shadar-kai flickered down the slopes toward the lure at the bottom. One of them fell. She couldn’t actually see the arrow that had pierced him, but she was sure it was there, and she smiled.

Tchazzar didn’t roar to announce his coming. He swooped at the dark men like an owl descending on a mouse. The first ones didn’t know he was there until a plume of his fiery breath seared them from existence.

He wheeled and burned a second group. By the time he made a third pass, the rest were ready to fight, but it didn’t matter. Their javelins and arrows couldn’t stop a creature that had survived Sseelrigoth’s fangs and claws. Most of the weapons glanced off Tchazzar’s scales, and, all but berserk with the joy of vengeance, he didn’t even seem to notice the ones that stuck.

To Jhesrhi’s surprise, she felt a pang of pity. Run, she thought. Some of you might get away.

But none of them tried. And when the last of them was dead, and Tchazzar set down on the ground, Gaedynn limped out of the stand of gnarled spruces where he’d taken cover. Gray-faced, his hair plastered down with sweat, he grinned and said, “That went better than I expected.”