Whisper of Venom

EIGHT

15 KYTHORN, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

Scar gave a querulous rasp. He wanted to fly and fight with his brothers and sisters, not hide behind the earthworks at the top of the hill.

But for the moment at least, Jhesrhi could direct the winds from where she was, so it would be foolish to take to the air and make herself a target. Entranced, perceiving what the winds perceived and in the same manner-by a sort of remote touching-she was nonetheless aware of the griffon’s displeasure just as she heard the clash of metal on metal, snarls, and screams sounding along the ramparts. She stroked the feathers on his head.

Then the bright day dimmed to filthy twilight. Without leaving the battle line, Hasos bellowed for the sunlords the army had brought along to do something about it.

Jhesrhi could only wish them luck. She couldn’t abandon her own task to help.

The priests chanted prayers and swept their golden maces over their heads in arcs that suggested the sun’s daily passage from east to west. Power warmed the air. But the unnatural gloom persisted.

Until the dead began to rise from their forgotten graves, or perhaps the places where they lay unburied after Meralaine’s ancient dragon had massacred them. For the most part they were invisible. But warriors on both sides felt their nearness, gasped, and cringed.

The ghosts ignored the combatants on the ground and soared up into the air. Where, insubstantial as the spirits of the wind, they assailed them as even dragons couldn’t, snatching with hands that ripped away vitality.

Variously enraged, terrified, or shocked at feeling pain and weakness for the first time in their immortal existences, the winds struck back, faltered, or sought to flee. Few of them kept trying to hinder the dragons and other flying reptiles. The creatures roared and snarled in joy at the cessation of the harassment.

Concentrating, whispering words of command, Jhesrhi strained to reassert her control over the winds. To direct them so they could both defend themselves and continue hampering the winged saurians. Then warriors in front of her cried out and shrank back from the ramparts.

She looked up at the green dragon swooping at the top of the rise. Hating the necessity, she gave up on the spirits of the air, gripped her staff, and called for fire.

Shala’s guts turned to water when she saw the wyrm diving out of the gloom. Still, it wasn’t panic that sent her scrambling back from the earthworks. She did it to salvage the situation.

Meanwhile, Jhesrhi swung her staff over her head like the arm of a trebuchet. A point of light hurtled from the tip, hit the dragon in the head, and exploded into roaring, crackling fire. The wyrm screamed and veered off.

It occurred to Shala that they were lucky, if that was the right word for it, that the green had been the first to reach the hilltop. Fire likely wouldn’t have harmed either of the reds.

Not that the spell had hurt the green enough to deter it for long. It was wheeling to come at them again. Jhesrhi leaped onto the back of her griffon. And Shala reached Tchazzar.

The living god was still in human guise. The plan had called for him to remain so until the enemy army had fully committed itself to battle. Only then would he transform and attack with all the allegedly awesome power at his command.

But at this point, the Threskelans had committed themselves-and anyway, the plan had turned to dung. Yet Tchazzar still stood passively, as far back from the melee as the sunlords and the reserves. His eyes were wide and darted back and forth.

Shala pointed at the oncoming dragon with her bloody sword. “It’s there!” she gasped. “Right there!”

Jhesrhi hurled more fire as her winged steed sprang into the air. This time the wyrm bore the punishment without flinching and spewed vapor in return. Shala winced, but the griffon somehow wrenched himself and his rider out of the way.

Tchazzar still wasn’t moving. “Change!” Shala said. “Kill the thing!”

“It’s what they want,” Tchazzar said.

“What? Who?”

“The things that come in the dark. They want me to transform so they can find me.”

Shala didn’t understand and had no idea what to say to him. She only knew that if the god wasn’t going to fight, then it was all up to the mortals. Despising him, she sucked in a deep, steadying breath, then strode back to the ramparts.

Jet lashed his wings, bobbed above the drake that had apparently believed he didn’t notice it driving in on his flank, and tore its head apart with his talons. Where’s Tchazzar? he asked. If he’s anything like what he’s supposed to be, he can still turn this thing around.

I don’t know, Aoth replied. Nor did he have time to try to spot the war hero. Without the help of the air elementals, the fight in the sky had become far more difficult. And after he won that-if he and his fellow griffon riders could win it-there were half a dozen other situations that needed their immediate attention.

He chanted and aimed his spear. A bolt of dazzling, crackling lightning leaped from the point and struck one of the red dragons. The creature convulsed and plummeted halfway to the ground before it regained control of its wings.

But while Aoth was busy with that one, the other red dived toward the archers and spearmen in one of the copses.

Relatively safe behind the sellswords and their shields, Oraxes hurled darts of force at the Threskelans who kept rushing the formation. Despite the ominous and unnatural darkness, it seemed to him that things were going reasonably well. Then their living enemies-scaly kobolds and pig-faced orcs-fell back and let the dead assault them.

Oraxes had felt though not seen the initial arrival of the phantoms, but then they’d simply gone away again. Now they were back and advancing in the form of skull-faced shadows. It was like they’d fed on something that made them more real.

Sellswords who’d faced the previous foes stolidly or even with sneering bravado quailed. But only for an instant, and then they braced themselves for what was to come. Oraxes remembered that they were men who’d followed Aoth into Thay and fought the undead horrors there.

But courage and experience didn’t always save them. Sometimes their jabbing spears and slashing swords bit, but just as often passed harmlessly through their insubstantial targets. When that happened, the ghosts reached right through shields and mail to plunge their fingers into living bodies. Then men screamed, withered, and collapsed.

One phantom felled a mercenary, then glided through his body before he could flop all the way to the ground. Oraxes conjured a burst of vitriol, which flew right through the ghost to splash and sizzle on its previous foe.

Stupid! Oraxes should have thrown darts of light. Resolved to do so, he started to backpedal and chanced to look squarely into the vacant orbits of the murky, wavering skull face. Suddenly he couldn’t look away, move, or even draw a breath. The ghost reached for him-

Behind him, Meralaine chanted rhyming words in a language that even he, a fellow mage, didn’t recognize. Her voice was soft, but something about it made certain syllables seem to ring like hammer strokes on an anvil.

It was the ghost’s turn to falter. Its form rippled in place like it was straining to break free of the power constraining it. Then, with a howl, it turned and launched itself at one of its fellow spirits. Two other phantoms did the same.

Oraxes sucked in a breath. He wanted to attack the enemy ghosts, not the ones serving Meralaine, but it was hard to tell which shadow was which. He was still trying to choose a target when he glimpsed motion overhead.

A dragon swooped at the coppice. It opened its jaws and spewed bright yellow flame. The lance of fire ignited or simply obliterated everything in its path-branches, archers on their elevated platforms, and living warriors and ghosts battling on the ground. And, like an artist’s brush painting a line of ruin on the earth, it was heading straight at Oraxes.

He started to scramble out of the way, then noticed that if Meralaine didn’t move, the wyrm’s breath would sweep right over her as well. And, evidently startled, she wasn’t moving.

He grabbed her and dragged her with him. His foot caught on a corpse’s outstretched arm. He fell, carrying Meralaine down with him. The jet of flame slashed by just a couple of finger-lengths from their feet, close enough to make him gasp at the searing heat.

Close enough too for the grass and fallen twigs and leaves the flare set on fire to pose an immediate threat. He scrambled to his feet, dragged Meralaine up beside him, looked around, and felt a stab of terror.

At first glance it seemed that everything was burning, in all directions, with no path through the flames. The heat hammered at him. Smoke set him coughing. A burning platform, the charred corpses of the bowmen who’d perched there, and the boughs that had supported it crashed down in front of him. Meralaine yelped.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I can handle this.” Fighting the need to cough again, for that would spoil the cadence, he rasped an incantation.

A corona of flame sprang up around him, staining the world blue-but it didn’t burn him. Instead, it replaced the heat of the dragon’s conflagration with a pleasant coolness.

He pulled Meralaine into the blue fire, and she cried out at what felt painfully cold to her. But once he put his arm around her and drew her close, she was completely inside the effect and experienced it as he did.

“Now we run,” he said. Before the protective enchantment faded.

He tried to flee in the opposite direction from the enemy-although with his surroundings transformed, suffused with the glare of flame and the blur of smoke, he wasn’t sure of his bearings. He also tried to lead Meralaine around the worst of the fires. But sometimes, if they didn’t want to retrace their steps, they had no choice but to plunge right through. At those moments their shield couldn’t keep out all the heat, and it was speed as much as magic that protected them.

They stumbled clear of the blaze an instant before their own halo of fire guttered out. Oraxes drew Meralaine onward for several more paces, turned, then cursed in surprise. Because, as he could see from the outside, the dragon’s breath had only set a relatively small area alight. The blaze had seemed as big as all of Luthcheq while they were struggling to escape it.

Meralaine coughed so hard that it nearly jerked her free of his encircling arm. Once she stopped, he realized there was no longer any particular reason to hold on to her. Still, he let her go with some reluctance.

She rubbed tears from her reddened eyes. “What now?”

A part of him answered, Run! Before the ghosts and dragons find us again! But what he said aloud was, “Look. Some of the sellswords are right over there. We’ll join up with them.”

Gaedynn picked a target and drew the fletching back to his ear, and then Eider veered-probably to avoid a threat her master hadn’t even noticed.

He automatically compensated for the shift and, leading the drake he wanted to shoot, loosed his arrow. The shaft drove into the reptile’s flank, and the creature plummeted.

Gaedynn smiled and glanced around for another foe. A blast of fire, hurled by something else in the air, silhouetted a dragon flying near the top of the rise. Presumably it was the green, since most spellcasters would know better than to hurl flame at a red.

Though he couldn’t make them out in the gloom, Gaedynn suspected it was Jhesrhi, riding on Scar, who’d thrown the attack. She was adept at fire magic, and the staff they’d looted from Jaxanaedegor’s caverns had augmented her abilities.

Which didn’t mean she could kill even a young dragon all by herself. He sent Eider winging in her direction.

Meanwhile, the green gained the high air. It shouldn’t have been able to outmaneuver a trained griffon, but maybe Scar was injured. Why not? Everything else was going wrong.

Gaedynn reached to draw an arrow from one of his quivers, then left it where it was. If he didn’t call attention to himself, maybe he could gain the high air relative to the wyrm and hit it with something likely to do more harm to a dragon than even a shaft sped by his own unerring hand.

The dragon’s neck whipped, and its jaws opened. Barely visible in the dimness, vapor streamed out.

Scar lashed his wings and dodged. Instantly, the green dived. Somehow, it had predicted in which direction Scar would move and had poised itself to plunge and intercept him and the woman on his back.

Gaedynn sent Eider hurtling down at the wyrm. Jhesrhi blasted the ventral side of the reptile’s body with a final flash of fire. Then Eider slammed into the base of its neck with a jolt that Gaedynn, standing up in the stirrups, felt through every portion of his body.

The griffon’s talons stabbed deep. Her beak snapped, tearing away chunks of scaly hide and flesh.

The dragon convulsed and rolled over and over as it dropped. Gaedynn wondered if Eider could spring clear without a flailing wing or foreleg swatting her. But she timed the leap properly, and then they were gliding safely with the creature’s body tumbling away beneath them.

As it smashed into the ground, he stroked Eider’s neck and looked down at Jhesrhi. I did that, he thought. Not your stinking Tchazzar.

Then, impossibly, the green’s broken body rolled over and heaved itself to its feet. After all the punishment it had taken, Gaedynn couldn’t believe it was still alive.

Then he realized it wasn’t. Filthy, stinking necromancy, the same vile art that had nearly destroyed the Brotherhood in Thay, had revived it. But either way, he and Jhesrhi would have to fight it all over again.

The drakes were no bigger than cats. Compared to the enormous horrors on the battlefield, they should have seemed like little more a joke. But, hellishly agile and quick, they swarmed over the rampart and attacked en masse. There were three or four of them for each of the several warriors in their path, and they struck with fangs like needles.

By the time Shala killed two, another was perched atop her shield, its hind legs bent to launch it at her face. Unable to bring the blade of her broadsword to bear, she struck a backhand blow with the pommel. The heavy brass knob caught the drake in midleap and knocked it onto the ground. Instantly, it sprang up and ran at her. She raised her foot and stamped. Bone cracked. She ground the thing beneath her boot until it stopped squirming.

She glanced around. The other small drakes were dead as well. The carcass of the big reptile she’d killed a while before sometimes impeded the rush of other foes to the rampart, and this was one of those moments. As a result, she had a chance to catch her breath and take stock of the situation as a whole.

It wasn’t good. She and her comrades had killed plenty of the enemy, but there were plenty more left, and she thought she glimpsed a new problem-some sort of shadows or phantoms-stalking up the slope. How in the name of the Sunlord were they supposed to contend with those on top of everything else?

Had she allowed it, she could have succumbed to hopelessness or resentment at the sheer unfairness of it all. But she knew she couldn’t afford to feel anything but the will to prevail, or think of anything but strategy and tactics.

She tucked her sword into the crook of her shield arm and reached for the leather water bottle hanging on her belt. Then, a little way down the rampart, Hasos staggered back. His helmet flew off, and the face and crown beneath were dark with blood. A horned, thick-bodied reptile the size of a draft horse clambered over the earthwork after him. Other warriors recoiled from it, opening a wider gap in the line of shields and weapons. Unless somebody did something about it, dozens of saurians would pour through.

Shala grabbed the hilt of her sword and ran toward the trouble. A warrior backpedaled toward her, and she rammed him out of the way with her shield.

As she closed with the reptile, she saw that Hasos had slashed its head and shoulders before it scored on him. That was something, anyway. She cut and added a gash of her own, slicing across one of the wounds the baron had inflicted to make an X under the creature’s right eye.

It roared and pivoted toward her. But the back half of its body was still on the far side of the rampart, and maybe that made it clumsy. When it bit, it wasn’t too difficult to hop back out of range, then slash it across the snout.

Then it spewed fire.

Shala wasn’t out of range of that. Reflex snapped her shield into position to protect her face and torso. But the defense effectively blinded her, and pain still seared her lower body.

Then fangs searing as red-hot iron caught her leg and wrenched it out from underneath her. Her dwarf-forged greave kept the bite from nipping it off immediately. But even enchanted armor wasn’t likely to hold for more than a heartbeat or two. And even if it did, the heat would cook the limb inside.

Bending and twisting at the waist, straining to bring her blade into striking position, she wrenched herself around. Praying the awkward attack would penetrate, she thrust at the creature’s scaly throat.

The sword stabbed deep, and when she withdrew it, steaming blood spurted. The reptile roared, releasing her, then fell over sideways.

But more reptiles were climbing over the rampart after it. She rolled to her feet and caught one squarely between the eyes with another lucky thrust. The beast collapsed. “Chessenta!” she bellowed. “Chessenta!”

And warriors who’d followed her on many a campaign scrambled back to the battle line. Together, they hurled the wave of saurians back.

Next came the shadows, ghastly things that could shrivel a young man into an old one just by touching him. “Sunlords!” Shala shouted. “Kill these ghosts!”

And the priests too heeded her call. They abandoned their fruitless effort to restore daylight to the field as a whole and conjured localized flashes. Those repelled the ghosts or burned them away to nothing.

The next time the combat gave her a momentary respite, she realized that some of her comrades had taken up her battle cry. “Chessenta!” they howled. “Chessenta.”

While others chanted, “Shala! Shala! Shala!”

Aoth surveyed the battle. Neither darkness nor distance impeded his fire-touched vision. But the situation was so chaotic that even he, with all his experience with war, had difficulty making sense of it.

For the moment, the Chessentans were holding, although at a heavy cost and surely not for much longer. Not with all three enemy dragons still in the air, even if the one Gaedynn and Jhesrhi were fighting was just a mangled undead travesty of its former self.

On the positive side, even deprived of assistance from the winds, he and his fellow griffon riders had killed a substantial portion of the lesser winged reptiles. And some power-Meralaine’s perhaps-was hindering the ghosts, turning some against their fellows or melting them back into the ground. It wasn’t enough, but it was something.

Aoth tried to decide where he and Jet were needed most. The answer was everywhere. Which might mean that the only way for the Chessentans to survive the fiasco was to strike at the enemy commander, or at least his position. He blew the ram’s horn, signaling every griffon rider who could to follow his lead.

Jet wheeled, aiming himself at the pocket of deeper darkness. You don’t have many spells left. And Jaxanaedegor hasn’t even done any fighting yet.

But he’s been working powerful magic through that black orb, Aoth replied. He drowned the field in shadow, summoned a company of ghosts, and turned a dead dragon into a zombie. It’s possible he’s just as tired as we are.

That’s fine, then, the familiar said. By all means, risk our lives, just as long as “it’s possible.”

Aoth looked around. Other griffon riders had maneuvered into position to accompany him. Perceiving what his master saw through their psychic link, Jet screeched, lashed his wings, and hurtled forward.

Jaxanaedegor and his assistants were slow to react to the aerial charge. Perhaps they didn’t think that any of their foes could actually see them. Aoth disabused them of that notion by pointing his spear and hurling a thunderbolt from the tip. Unfortunately, though the lightning hit the black globe on its tripod, it didn’t do any damage. Well, he’d just have to keep trying.

Exploding into motion, Jaxanaedegor sprinted clear of the trees, lashed his wings, and rose from the blot of darkness. His companions, however, stayed on the ground. Aoth had hoped they were lesser vampires, the kind that didn’t turn into bats, and that appeared to be the case.

Don’t get too excited, said Jet. Jax doesn’t look like he needs the help.

Unfortunately, that was true. The wyrm was huge enough to dwarf the other three rampaging across the battlefield, and his pale yellow eyes blazed. Griffons wheeled and beat their wings, trying to stay away from him and above him while their riders shot their few remaining shafts as fast as they could draw and release.

Many of the arrows glanced off Jaxanaedegor’s scales. Others stuck-but only in his hide, without piercing what lay beneath. One, however, drove deep into his brow. In response, he spat a stream of vapor that engulfed the marksman and his mount. The two plummeted together.

Aoth hammered the dark orb with blasts of fire, six detonating in succession quick as the beats of his racing heart. The blasts flung vampires through the air and even tore a couple apart. But the talisman remained intact.

He decided he needed to get close to the thing. He hated to abandon his men to fight Jaxanaedegor by themselves, but if they could distract the wyrm and survive for just a few moments, maybe they’d be all right.

Jet wheeled. When he was behind Jaxanaedegor, he swooped.

For a moment Aoth thought the undead green truly had lost track of them. Then he felt Jet’s jolt of alarm and looked up. Growing larger by the moment, Jaxanaedegor seemed to fill the sunless sky. His claws were poised to catch and tear.

Jet lashed his wings to change course. Then he furled them and dropped like a stone into the leafless upper limbs inside the bubble of darkness.

Branches cracked beneath the griffon and his rider, and bashed and raked them as they fell through. The punishment was like enduring a beating and a tumble down a staircase at the same time. But at least a creature as huge as Jaxanaedegor couldn’t pursue them down into the treetops.

At least not in solid form. Aoth had hoped the dragon would veer off, set down outside the copse, then reenter at ground level. Instead, he dissolved into mist. Aoth caught a whiff of the putrid-smelling fumes. It nauseated him and made him feel dizzy and weak.

Aoth judged-or perhaps merely hoped-that he’d have a few moments to act before Jaxanaedegor floated to the ground and turned solid again. Then Jet slammed down hard. Aoth felt the flash of pain as an aquiline front leg snapped.

I’m all right! the griffon snapped. Go!

Gaunt, pale figures rushed them. Jet gave Aoth just enough time to swing himself out of the saddle, then sprang to meet the vampires. His beak slashed and bit, and his good foreleg clawed to devastating effect. Yet even so, creatures pounced on him and clung, gnawing and tearing with their fangs.

As before, Aoth couldn’t linger to help. He dashed toward the tripod. Another vampire ran in on his flank. It had a poleaxe with what appeared to be grimacing faces mirrored in the blade, although there was nothing outside the steel to cast the reflections.

The creature struck. Grunting with effort, Aoth parried with his spear, then thrust it into his opponent’s heart. Since he couldn’t leave it there, he used a bit more of his rapidly dwindling power to draw flame from the point, sear the organ, and so keep the vampire from getting right back up again.

That cleared the way to the black globe. He rattled off a spell to ensure he struck hard and true. Meanwhile, wisps of mist coiled together and congealed into a wedge-shaped head. Jaxanaedegor leaped forward, clearing Jet and his frenzied foes in the process.

Releasing every bit of force still bound in the spear, Aoth drove the weapon into the talisman. The orb shattered, and sunlight stabbed through the naked branches overhead.

Jaxanaedegor was lifting a foreleg to strike when the radiance caught him. At once his immense scaly body charred and smoked, and he jerked in agony. Backpedaling, Aoth thought, Burn, you whoreson! Die!

But the latter was too much to hope for. Mastering his pain, Jaxanaedegor snarled words of power and vanished. Magic had translated him through space, no doubt to somewhere dark and safe.

Aoth pivoted toward Jet. The lesser vampires actually had burned to death, and-still alive despite a dozen gory bite wounds-the griffon stood on three legs amid smoldering drifts of ash.

“Can you get me back up into the sky?” asked Aoth.

“Oh, why not?” Jet replied. “What’s one more painful test of strength at this point?”

Feeling guilty-but only slightly, because he knew how hardy the griffon actually was-Aoth climbed back into the saddle. Jet limped out of the trees, accelerated, lashed his wings, and flew. The sellswords above them cheered, and their mounts screeched. Aoth acknowledged it by brandishing his spear.

Until a prodigious roar drowned out the acclaim. At the other end of the battlefield, from behind the earthwork at the top of the rise, Tchazzar soared upward in dragon form.

Bigger even than Jaxanaedegor, he annihilated the zombie dragon with a flare of fiery breath that nearly engulfed Gaedynn and Eider as well. Then, wings beating, he climbed.

One of the enemy reds tried to do the same. But Tchazzar gained the high air, then plunged at the smaller reptile like a hawk diving at a pigeon. He seized it and ripped it apart with fang and claw.

By that time, the other enemy red was fleeing north. Aoth thought it had enough of a head start to escape. But Tchazzar snarled, and Aoth felt a charge of supernatural coercion in the noise. It made his head throb even though it wasn’t directed at him.

The lesser red flailed, then labored onward clumsily like it was carrying an enormous weight or its muscles were cramping. As a result, Tchazzar had no trouble overtaking it.

When the enemy red turned to fight, it regained its agility. Either Tchazzar had contemptuously restored it, or that particular curse could only afflict a fleeing victim. The Threskelan wyrm found rising air, soared, then dived as Tchazzar had hurtled down at his comrade.

The war hero spat flame. Which should have had little or no effect on a fellow red. Yet it blasted chunks of flesh from his foe’s skull and burned or melted its eyes in their sockets. Aoth winced to imagine the heat and force required.

Tchazzar then flicked his wings, got out of the way of the blind, maimed wyrm, and seized it as it plunged by. He held onto it for the heartbeat it took to bite its head off, then let the bloody, burning pieces fall.

After that, he turned his murderous attention to an unfortunate company of kobolds. But he couldn’t attack everyone at once, and so a fair number of the enemy would get away to regroup later.

For, the Firelord knew, Tchazzar’s warriors were in no condition to pursue them. Somehow they’d averted complete destruction while waiting-and waiting-for the self-proclaimed god to make his move. But they’d taken a brutal mauling.