The stuff got in Gaedynn’s eyes, and for one terrifying instant he was blind. Then he blinked his vision clear.
Just in time to see the fallen rider vanish and reappear, still sprawled on the ground, among his servants. His face contorted; he spoke. Gaedynn couldn’t hear his voice, but he saw his lips move.
He did hear it when the little hunchback with the pipes blew a different note. And when the remaining hounds bayed and ran at him again.
He wondered if he had time to kill the horse and put it at his back, but decided the dogs wouldn’t have much trouble climbing over the carcass even if he did. Then a red spark flew into the midst of the onrushing beasts and exploded into a ragged burst of flame. The detonation tore the hounds apart.
The shadar-kai and his servants turned toward Jhesrhi. Too late. She snapped a word of command and jabbed the head of her staff at them. The hunter burst into flame. Then fire leaped from his body to the servant with the syrinx, and from him to another stunted creature, in a manner that reminded Gaedynn of water cascading down a series of ledges. In a moment, all the dark figures were burning. And flailing.
When they stopped doing the latter because there was little left of them but smoldering black husks, Gaedynn turned to Jhesrhi. “It wouldn’t have hurt my pride,” he said, “if you’d done that a little sooner.”
She shook her head, perhaps to convey that she hadn’t been able to-or simply that as usual, she didn’t appreciate his sense of humor. “Are you all right?”
“Somewhat miraculously, yes.” He looked around and retrieved his bow. He checked his quiver and found he had two arrows left.
“Do you think this shadar-kai was hunting us specifically? Because of what happened last night?”
“I don’t know and don’t particularly care. I just want you to get back to work before someone or something else shows up to bother us.”
“It’s no use.”
“What are you talking about? I felt something happening.”
“That was all you were going to feel. I just don’t know how to break through.”
He tried not to let the depth of his disappointment show in his face or his tone. “Ah, well. I’m sure we can last a month here if we have to.” And maybe afterward they could take a pleasure cruise on the River Styx.
Cheeks puffing, Jhesrhi exhaled sharply like she was blowing out a candle. For an instant, wind gusted and howled and all the little fires left by her two attacks died. “I have thought of one other thing that might get us home sooner.”
“Then tell me, please.”
She did, and when she finished, he felt a mix of dismay and admiration.
“Bravo,” he said. “That’s as crazy a scheme as I’ve ever heard. Easily crazier than invading Thay with nothing but the strength of the Wizards’ Reach behind us.”
She scowled. “Then you don’t want to try it?”
He grinned. “Actually, I do. But right now we need to clear out of here. Then we should find a place where we can go to ground, at least temporarily. We’ll proceed with your idea come nightfall.”
Waiting until night wouldn’t ensure they went undetected, not in a world populated by creatures that saw well in the dark. But he hoped that like the orcs and goblin-kin with which he was familiar, they couldn’t see as far in the dark as a man could in the light.
Once the Shadowfell was black as a coinlender’s heart, with just a few faint stars gleaming in the sky and a feeling of sheer poisonous wrongness suffusing the air like a stench, he and Jhesrhi crept back to the hill where Tchazzar lay imprisoned. They kept watch long enough for him to start feeling hopeful that the dragon truly was alone, with nothing but his weakness and the staples to prevent his escape.
Then suddenly, one of the shadar-kai’s small servants appeared on the hillside. Then another. Gaedynn peered closer and discerned that the dark little men were emerging from a hole in the ground like a line of ants.
Once he and Jhesrhi spotted the mouth of that tunnel, they soon noticed others, and the traffic that came and went, shadar-kai and other things that looked stranger and more dangerous still. Evidently, most of the time the hill was full of them, although they cleared out when the blight wyrm came to feed.
“Curse it,” Jhesrhi whispered. “It won’t work.”
“Yes it will,” Gaedynn replied. “It’s just that you only came up with half a workable plan. Fortunately I, clever fellow that I am, have now devised the rest.”
“Which is?”
“Do you remember wondering if the shadar-kai huntsman was hunting us specifically?”
She scowled. “Of course.”
“Well, if they weren’t before, we’re going to make them start.”
NINE
9-10 MIRTUL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
Aoth and Jet floated on a northerly wind and studied the fortress. Other griffon riders glided to either side but surely couldn’t see the outpost, not at such a distance in the feeble predawn light.
To the untrained eye, the stronghold with its palisade walls might not have looked impressive. But it had a warren of tunnels underneath it, and a garrison large and varied enough to fill up both the above ground and subterranean barracks.
“You don’t like this, do you?” asked Jet.
“I don’t dislike it,” Aoth replied, “but it’s about the limit of what we ought to tackle by ourselves, especially with Gaedynn, Jhesrhi, and Khouryn absent.”
“Then why do it?”
“The Threskelans have a lot of supplies stored there. On top of that, it’s supposed to be a mustering point for troops bound for Chessenta. So let them arrive and find the place burned, its provisions stolen, and its garrison slaughtered. It might give them second thoughts, particularly the sellswords.”
“Let’s get on with it, then.”
Aoth peered down at the rolling scrubland and the foot soldiers and horsemen making their way across it. In theory, a ridge higher than the surrounding terrain shielded them from the view of the sentries in the fortress. “We’ll give our comrades on the ground a little more time to maneuver into position.”
As he waited, his thoughts drifted back to the events of the day before the previous one. He’d eliminated Cera as a possible traitor-to say the least-but otherwise he was no closer to flushing out the dragonborn assassins or figuring out why they wanted to kill him.
In fact, the jaunt into the past had left him with new questions. Why had all those dragons been palavering? Were they all Alasklerbanbastos’s allies? Was every single one of them going to attack Chessenta at the dracolich’s behest? If so, then how could the war hero’s forces possibly withstand them?
He scowled and tried to set such puzzles aside. He needed to focus on winning this battle. Everything else could wait.
He looked at the pale gleam on the eastern horizon and decided he’d delayed long enough. He willed power into the head of his spear to make it glow yellow, then swept it forward to point at the fortress. All around him, wings snapped and flapped as riders urged their griffons toward the objective.
Men laid arrows on their bows. Aoth pondered whether to start with fire or lightning and decided on the latter. Griffons furled their wings and swooped lower.
Then a horn blatted in the watchtower at one of the corners of the palisade. Aoth had hoped sentries who’d watched through the night would be tired and inattentive at the end of it, but evidently one was still alert.
Annoyed, Aoth rewarded the fellow’s vigilance by hurling a bright, booming lightningbolt at the tower. It blew apart the clapboard roof and, he hoped, fried whoever was underneath.
Meanwhile, arrows whistled down at the wall walks, stabbing into other sentries as they tried to ready their own bows. Orcs and kobolds toppled from their perches to smash down in the courtyards below.