“ ‘A tad disturbing’?” Cera exploded. “It’s horrible!”
Aoth sighed. “Maybe. But nobody’s paying us to do anything about it. In fact, the Brotherhood’s in service to Tchazzar. We’re being paid to further his ambitions.”
Cera scowled. It didn’t make her round face any less pretty, or at least not in Aoth’s opinion. But it revealed a fierceness that might have surprised the many folk who, despite her holy office, regarded her as a merry little flirt.
“You signed a contract to serve Nicos Corynian, Shala Karanok, and the Chessentan people,” she said. “At that point, Tchazzar was nowhere around.”
“But he’s the war hero now,” Aoth replied. “Shala handed him the crown herself.”
“Because she didn’t realize he’s insane!”
“Well, yes,” Gaedynn said, and only one of his closest friends would have noticed the steeliness underlying his customary light, flippant tone. “There is that. And it’s not as though we haven’t done some poking around and conspiring behind his back already.”
“To an extent,” Aoth said, “because it endangered us not to understand what was truly going on.”
Gaedynn grinned. “And because a certain stubborn little dumpling snapped the whip.” He winked at Cera.
Aoth sighed. “My point, jackanapes, is that through it all, my goal was to find a path through all the mystery and come out the other side. So we could go back to our proper roles: fighting wars for coin, without giving a mouse’s fart about the reason for the quarrel.”
“But you had to know it wouldn’t be that easy,” Cera said. “Not when Amaunator himself set us on this path. Why would he reveal the truth to us if he didn’t want us to use it to help his children?”
Inwardly Aoth winced. At the end of the War of the Zulkirs, he’d blundered his way through a tense few moments when the fate of the entire East, perhaps the entire world, had depended on him and him alone. To say the least, he hadn’t enjoyed the experience, and he didn’t want to believe that a higher power was pushing him into anything remotely comparable again. It seemed particularly unfair considering that Amaunator wasn’t even his patron god.
Yet there came a moment when only a fool kept swimming against the current, and however much he might resent it, his gut told him that the time had come around again.
He glowered at Alasklerbanbastos. “Gaedynn guessed that only Brimstone completely understands the Great Game. Is he right?”
“Essentially,” the dragon said.
“So what does that mean, exactly?” Aoth persisted. “Is he the scorekeeper? The referee?”
“All of that,” Alasklerbanbastos said.
Gaedynn grinned. “In that case, I know who I’d bet on to finish on top. Him.”
“Because you’re a fool,” said the undead blue. “The game is a sacrament. We play with all the cunning and ferocity in us, but no one-certainly not its anointed arbiter-would pervert its fundamental tenets for personal gain.”
“If you truly believe that,” the bowman said, “then I understand how Jaxanaedegor outsmarted you.”
“I don’t care whether Brimstone’s an impartial judge or not,” said Aoth. “What I want to know is this: could the game continue without him?”
With so much flesh burned, torn, and rotted away from the skull beneath, it seemed impossible that Alasklerbanbastos could produce a spiteful grin. Still, Aoth could have sworn that he did.
“No,” said the dracolich, “it couldn’t. So there, clever humans, is your solution. Just go kill him.”
“I’ll bite,” said Jet. “Where is he?”
“Dracowyr,” Alasklerbanbastos replied.
Cera shook her head. One of her tousled yellow curls tumbled down over her forehead. “I assume that’s the place we visited in spirit. But I don’t recognize the name.”
“I do,” said Aoth. “It’s an earthmote floating miles above the Great Wild Wood. Which means that only griffon riders could assault it, not the Brotherhood as a whole.”
“And let’s not forget that the Great Wild Wood’s on the far side of Murghom,” Gaedynn said. “I imagine the dragon princes are all playing the game. They wouldn’t want us to spoil their fun, so they wouldn’t just let us fly over their territories unopposed.”
“Maybe we can’t reach Brimstone in his lair,” Cera said, “but can’t we just tell all the peoples around the Alamber Sea that they mustn’t let the dragons manipulate them?”
“Would people believe such a strange story?” Aoth replied. “Would they even understand it?”
“One thing’s for certain,” Gaedynn said. “The wyrms would exert themselves mightily to silence the tattletales.”
Cera scowled. “There must be something we can do!”
Aoth scratched Jet’s neck as he pondered the problem. The feathers rustled and tickled his nose with their scent. “Maybe we can’t shut down the whole game,” he said eventually. “But we might be able to spoil the dragons’ immediate plans. Convince Tchazzar that now’s not the right time to go to war with Tymanther.”
“I know he listens to Jhesrhi,” Cera said, “but even she doesn’t have that much influence over him.”
Aoth smiled. “I have an idea that ought to help.”
“And if we can get him to call off the war,” Gaedynn said, “then maybe he won’t mind us leaving his service. Not now that he has the army of Threskel calling him master. And once the Brotherhood is out of his reach, maybe we can find a way to end the game in its entirety.”
“Meanwhile,” Cera said, “my kingdom will have to go on enduring the rule of a mad creature who thinks of his subjects as tokens on a lanceboard.”
“You don’t have to endure it,” said Aoth, with a flicker of surprise at how easily these particular words were slipping out. “If we make it out of here, you’re welcome to come with us.”
She smiled at him. “I like it that you said that. But I have responsibilities to my temple and my parishioners. I can’t just run away if times are bad.”
Aoth sighed. “I understand.” How could he not when he was a leader too? “Look, let’s find out if we can even prevent the war and then see where we are.”
“You’ll be in your graves,” said Alasklerbanbastos, “or Tchazzar’s torture chambers. He may be insane, but he’s clever too. You can’t go on deceiving him for long.”
“What about if we have your help?” Aoth replied. “Wouldn’t you like a little taste of revenge?”
ONE
26-30 F LAMERULE, THE Y EAR OF THE A GELESS O NE
Oraxes rubbed his forearms through his leather armor. “It’s cold here,” he said. “The middle of summer and it’s cold.”
“Not really,” Meralaine answered. “You’re just feeling all the people who died here. And all the things that grew out of their deaths or came to feed on them. We woke them up, and now their essence is bleeding into the night.”
His long mouth grinned. “You know, you could have just put your arms around me and given me a hug.”
She laughed, did as he’d suggested, and threw in a kiss for good measure. Up close, his skinny body and gear had a sour, sweaty, unwashed smell, but it didn’t bother her. She was used to smelling considerably fouler things.
“Did that warm you up?” she asked.
“A lot,” he answered.
“You need to prepare yourself for your task,” rasped a deep voice. Startled, Oraxes jerked. “Not wallow in the petty, animal pleasures of living flesh.”
Oraxes freed himself from Meralaine’s embrace and turned to face Alasklerbanbastos. She was sure he found the dracolich intimidating. She certainly did and she was used to the undead. But he sneered as he would have at any bigot or bully who accosted him in a Luthcheq tavern or alleyway.
“Mind your own business,” he said.
“This ritual is my business,” Alasklerbanbastos said, sparks crawling on the horn at the end of his snout, “or so I’ve been given to understand. You’re the one who knows nothing of the forces involved and has nothing to contribute.”
There was an element of truth in that. Oraxes was a wizard but not a necromancer. He was there because he’d refused to let her sneak off with Alasklerbanbastos with only Cera and the phylactery to control him. Actually, Aoth, Jhesrhi, and Gaedynn hadn’t liked it either. But Tchazzar would have missed them if they’d disappeared for days on end. And so far, no one else was in on the scheme.