But Athrogate exploded into laughter instead of into action. "Bwahaha! Hey, I'm stealin' that!"
"An appropriate price," Ilnezhara said. "Can we be on with this? I've a shop to attend in the morning."
"Of course, milady," Jarlaxle said with one of his characteristic, hat-sweeping bows. "But we must prepare our oblivious friend—"
"No, I don't think we shall," said Ilnezhara, and her voice changed abruptly in timbre and volume, cutting Jarlaxle short and sending Athrogate's jaw to his chest.
"I care not what he might say, and less that he runs away!" Ilnezhara roared, and the boulders shook from the strength of her voice.
Her jaws elongated, as if the sheer power of the words had pulled it forward, and a pair of copper-colored horns prodded through her golden hair and stretched upward. As she half-turned, a heavy tail thumped onto the ground and began to lengthen, as her torso stretched and twisted, bones popping into place.
"You thought we'd ride in a wagon," Entreri teased the mercifully speechless dwarf. "But instead we're flying a…" He paused and waved his hand to prompt the poet dwarf. "Yes, as I expected," Entreri remarked when no words came forth.
"Uh-uh," said Athrogate, his hands out in front of him and waving, and he began backing away.
Hardly noticed at the side, Jarlaxle produced a thin wand and pointed it at Entreri, then Athrogate, then himself, each time speaking the command word to enact its magic.
"Ah, but to soar to the clouds!" Jarlaxle said, and he moved around Ilnezhara. "May I mount you, good lady?" he teased, and Ilnezhara, her transformation continuing, her body elongating, roared in reply. Jarlaxle scrambled astride her scaly back just before two great leathery wings erupted from behind her shoulders, snapping out mightily to their full extension.
"Dragon," Athrogate muttered.
"You missed the cue, sorry," Entreri said to him, his voice mirthless though he enjoyed the spectacle of a befuddled Athrogate.
"Dragon," sputtered Athrogate. "It's a dragon. She's a wyrm… a dragon… a dragon."
"May I eat the dwarf?" Ilnezhara asked Jarlaxle as soon as her transformation was complete. She stood on four legs, a mighty copper dragon. "I will need sustenance for the journey."
Jarlaxle leaned forward and whispered into her ear, and her serpentine neck snapped her head out toward Athrogate, who blanched and nearly fainted. Ilnezhara hit him with a burst of her windy breath, a magical cone of «heavy» air. Suddenly Athrogate seemed to be moving much more slowly, and he turned as if running through deep mud.
But Ilnezhara had no such bonds on her, and she reared and leaped forward, a single snapping beat of her wings lifting her and her rider drow from the ground. They shot past Entreri, who fell away, and Tazmikella, who seemed to take pleasure in the sudden buffet of wind.
Athrogate dived aside—or was beginning to—when Ilnezhara passed over him, and her claw grabbed him hard and yanked him along. In a blink of the stunned and terrified dwarf's eye, he found himself fifty feet off the ground and climbing fast.
"I will miss you, Artemis Entreri," Tazmikella said when the two were alone on the field. "I grew fond of you, though I never came to trust you." She gave a little grin as her face started to twist and distort. "Perhaps there is something to this element of danger that my sister so enjoys."
Entreri wanted to remind her that she was a dragon, but it occurred to him that insulting such a creature might not be the smartest thing he ever did. As Tazmikella moved more fully into her transformation, he slipped around her side and onto her back, thinking to emulate Jarlaxle instead of Athrogate.
In a few moments, they were airborne, the wind whipping around them, the world spinning below in a dizzying blur. Entreri and Athrogate didn't know it, but Jarlaxle's use of the wand saved them from the killing bite of the winter wind. As the dragons climbed higher into the cold sky, the trio of lesser creatures would have frozen to death had it not been for the protective enchantment.
Artemis Entreri didn't notice any of that. His cape buffeted out behind him and the world below moved past at dizzying speed. Shortly into the flight, he could see the northern shore of the Moonsea.
Still the dragons climbed, so that any observers on the ground would think them nothing more than a bird. A short while later, to Entreri's surprise, they went out over the sea, and the sisters executed a right turn, veering west-southwest. They flew through the night and landed on a small island just before the break of dawn.
Entreri scrambled down from Tazmikella.
"Rest," the dragon instructed. "We will be up again at nightfall, to finish crossing the sea. We will set you down north of Cormyr, and there your road is your own."
Entreri noted the approach of Jarlaxle and Athrogate—mostly from the sputtering and grumbling of the obviously thoroughly shaken dwarf.
"Ought to hit 'em both," he mumbled. "Treatin' a dwarf like that. Just ain't polite."
Entreri could only hope that his threat was more than mere words. The spectacle of Tazmikella's giant maw closing over Athrogate was one the assassin surely would enjoy, but he let the pleasant image go and kept his attention on the dragon.
"I have coin," he said. "Some, at least." He gave a look to Jarlaxle. "I would ask that you take me farther along that course, to the southwest."
Jarlaxle came up beside him then, and offered him a curious glance. "Cormyr is a fine diversion," he said.
"I wish you well there, in that case," said Entreri, and Jarlaxle backed a step and blinked as if he had been slapped. "I've neither the time nor the desire."
"How far would you wish to go?" Tazmikella asked, keeping her dragon voice as quiet as she could so that it did not carry across the open water.
"As far as you will take me. My road is to Memnon, on the southern Sword Coast."
"That is a long way," remarked Ilnezhara.
Entreri looked to Jarlaxle. "Whatever my share is, give it to them."
"Share of what?" the drow replied. "We lost."
Entreri narrowed his eyes.
"I can arrange some payment," Jarlaxle said to the dragons. "How much will you require? Or perhaps there are other things for which you would barter. We can discuss it later."
The dragons exchanged wary looks, which struck Entreri as very strange, since they were, after all, dragons.
Except at that moment, Ilnezhara reverted to her human form, and bade her sister to do likewise. "In case the island has visitors," the blond-haired woman explained, though Tazmikella's look as she came out of her natural form showed that she understood Ilnezhara's ulterior motives all too well, particularly when Ilnezhara shot Jarlaxle a rather lewd wink.
"That, too, of course," said Jarlaxle. "Though I feel as if I should pay you even more."
"You should," said Ilnezhara.
Entreri's sigh showed that he had heard about enough of that nonsense. "Will you fly me?"
"Not all the way to Memnon, no," Tazmikella replied. "I've made enemies in the southern deserts that I do not wish to encounter. But we will see how far the winds will carry us."
"And what of you?" Ilnezhara asked Jarlaxle.
"And meself?" Athrogate asked hopefully.
Jarlaxle and the dragon looked at the dwarf.
"Well, ye taked me from the place I've known as home for many a year," Athrogate protested. "Ye can't be expecting me to just swim to Cormyr, now can ye?"
"We will stay together, we three," Jarlaxle answered both the dragon and the dwarf. "I would be grateful if you would fly me in the wake of your sister and Artemis."