“That would be a portico,” Marek replied.
“Portico…” Pristoleph repeated, as though he’d never heard the word. “I suppose it’s important to have an entrance that conveys a sense of power.”
“Indeed.”
“Why Salatis?” the senator asked.
Marek blinked at the question, and took a step backward. Pristoleph raised an eyebrow and stared at him, waiting for an answer. In order to simply have something to do while he thought, Marek laughed. Pristoleph smiled, but didn’t join him in laughing.
“It’s terrible in there, isn’t it?” Marek asked. “All the colors… it confuses the eye.”
Pristoleph glanced through the open doors at the garish decorations, rugs with intricate designs, everything gilded and overly decorated.
“I keep trying to focus on one thing,” the Thayan said.
“I think if I can pay most of my attention to one thing among many, I might be able to put up with the confusion around me.”
“But when there is so much detail,” Pristoleph said, “so many colors, and all this embarrassment of riches, it can be difficult to choose one thing worthy of attention. Certainly it’s not something that should be selected at random.”
“I will admit, though with some reluctance,” said Marek, “that I too often act with some impetuosity. But then one always hopes he’ll think through every decision with care, but time and circumstances don’t always allow that luxury.”
Pristoleph smiled and tipped his chin down in the tiniest bow. His bright red hair moved in a way that seemed unnatural, as though it had a life of its own. Marek couldn’t look away from it.
“Perhaps,” the Red Wizard said, his voice low and coming from deep in his throat, “a little impetuosity might do me well tonight.”
“Risking a thunderbolt,” Pristoleph said, looking Marek in the eye and slowly, infinitesimally shaking his head, “I wonder what you think of the persistent rumor that the Merchant’s Friend has actually fled her worshipers.”
“I have heard that,” Marek replied, forcing his face to mask his disappointment.
“That she was killed, or fled Toril’s sphere, a decade ago?”
“During the Time of Troubles,” Marek said. “But then, here we are.”
“Could the Waukeenar simply be putting up a brave front?” asked Pristoleph.
“Everything is possible,” Marek said, “but to answer that with any accuracy one would have to ask the very people who would be most intent on keeping the secret.”
“And I suppose it doesn’t matter anyway.”
A bell rang, and one of the younger Waukeenar called the faithfuland those just visitinginto the temple’s central hall for some formal rite or another. Pristoleph gave Marek a smile and started to move off into the crowd. The Thayan stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. The genasi glanced down at the touch with a face so stern it seemed carved from stone. Marek took his hand away and reached into a pocket. Pristoleph watched his every move, and Marek had no doubt that the senator was ready for anythingincluding an assassination attempt.
Marek withdrew a polished silver box from his pocket, two inches by six inches, and hinged on one side. He offered the box to Pristoleph with a shallow bow.
“What is this?” the senator asked.
“A gift,” Marek replied. “Consider it a token of good will from the Thayan Enclave.”
Pristoleph took the silver box and looked Marek in the eye. He’d been taken off guard, and Marek made a note of that.
“Please don’t try them on,” Marek said when Pristoleph opened the box to reveal a pair of pince-nez spectacles with lenses of opaque magenta, “until you are in a private place.”
Pristoleph closed the box and smiled. Marek could see that he had intrigued the genasi, and worried him at least a little.
55
2 Marpenotk, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) The Golden Road
Insithryllax, in the form of a human, stepped out into the middle of the road and crossed his arms in front of his chest. The rider pulled his horse to a stop and regarded the dark man with a soldier’s critical, suspicious eye, but didn’t draw his sword.
“Let me guess,” the rider said.” ‘Stand and deliver,’ is it?”
Insithryllax laughed, hiding an incantation in the stuttering chuckle. The power gathered inside him, tingling first the tips of his fingers, then making his forearms almost sizzle. The sensation made him stop laughing and just smile.
“I am a rider in the service of the League of Lightning Mercenary Company and House Wianar of Arrabar,” the soldier said. “Think twice, bandit.”
“Ah,” the disguised dragon replied, “good. You’re the ambassador’s escort.”
The soldier’s eyes narrowed, and his cheeks flushed. Insithryllax let the gathered Weave energy loose, thrusting his arm up and out to point at the rider. The soldier got a hand almost to his sword before the blinding blue-white flash of lightning arced from the dragon’s outstretched palm and slammed into him.
The soldier jerked forward, not back, in his saddle. The horse screamed, but the man made no sound at all. It was if he screamed in reverse. He lungs seized, drew in air, but kept it lodged in his collapsed chest. The skin stretched tight over cramping muscles, and his eyes popped in his skull.
The warhorse bucked, trying to dislodge its rider. The man’s armor had begun to glow red from heat, and Insithryllax could smell the stench of smoldering horseflesh. The lightning bolt disappeared, and finally the horse was able to dislodge its rider. Insithryllax fought down the urge to transform into his true form and make a meal of the animal, and he let it run westward up the Golden Road in a blind, agonized panic.
The soldier lay motionless in the middle of the road, slowly broiling inside his own armor.
A bloodcurdling scream ripped through the air from the east, and Insithryllax broke into a run, casting a spell as he went.
“Remember what I told you, children,” he whispered into the wind, “no acid, and no survivors.”
He ran half a mile down the middle of the road, uphill most of the way, and when he came to the hillcrest, he skidded to a stop, sending a little splash of standing water into the still, cool air. Rain began to patter on the muddy road around him. A black shape passed over his head with a flutter of leathery wings, but Insithryllax didn’t flinch. He followed the black firedrake’s swooping dive. It went for another of the riders, a man so like the one he’d just killed they could have been twins. The rider got his sword out of his scabbard before the f iredrake tore his face off as it passed. He screamed and fell from his mount. Another black firedrake perched on him and started eating him while he died.
His horse reared and shrieked, confused, until it was taken down by a firedrake’s crocodilian fangs. As it went down, it kicked the side of the carriage, popping it up on two wheels. The firedrake, its mouth still on the horse’s neck, pushed out with one wing and tipped the carriage the rest of the way over. The driver ran, heading perpendicular to the road and downhill.
Insithryllax cast a spell as he walked toward the overturned carriage. When he was done, he sent five slivers of green light speeding after the fleeing driver. The missiles twisted around each other in the air, dipping up and down as though avoiding a series of invisible obstacles in the air, but they hit the running man in a cluster in the middle of his back, and dropped him. He slid in the mud for half a dozen yards on his face, his arms limp at his sides.
The rear outrider thundered up, a lance held firmly at his side. He growled out a long, guttural battle cry that made Insithryllax laugh, but then the dragon’s attention was drawn to the carriage. A hand appeared in the open window, smeared with blood.