As he reached the final line of the spell, he touched his eyes with his forefingers, and, as though lighting a pair of candles, commanded a blue glow to flower inside each one. For a moment he felt a double pulse of warmth.
He lowered his hands. “Well?”
Meralaine smiled. “It’s good. You look like him and sound like him too.”
Ramed turned and his eyes widened. “She’s right! You truly do!”
Oraxes snorted. “You don’t have to sound so surprised about it.” He put his helmet back on, looked around for Aoth’s spear, and found it leaning against the wall. Naturally he knew it was just another piece of the illusion, but the deception would be stronger if there were a part of him that didn’t know, and when he closed his fingers around it, the ash shaft felt solid and smooth. “Let’s go see the wyrmkeeper before the magic starts to wear away.”
Even if Ramed hadn’t come to find him, he would have known something was different even before they reached the Brotherhood’s camp on the outskirts of town. Griffons were screeching when they should have been asleep, and when he came within sight of Aoth’s pavilion he saw the reason. Leathery wings folded, saddles cinched to their torsos, four drakkensteeds crouched on the ground near the entrance. Created from the blood of wyrms, or so Oraxes understood, the reptiles looked like scrawny, runt dragons with unusually long necks and probably smelled like them as well. So it was no wonder their proximity agitated beasts that had just helped their masters fight a war against dragons.
It agitated Oraxes for a different reason. “You said there was one wyrmkeeper!”
“One main one,” Ramed said, “and three underlings. Convince the leader, and you’ll be fine.”
“Each of them surely has some skill with his own kind of magic,” Oraxes said. “Any one of them could see through-” He heard the whine in his voice and made himself stop. “Forget it. You’re right. Let’s do this.”
One of the drakkensteeds growled as they approached. The sellsword sentry in front of the tent came to attention and saluted. Responding as he’d seen Aoth acknowledge such shows of respect, Oraxes gave the warrior a clap on the shoulder as he passed by.
The wyrmkeepers inside the tent had made themselves free with Aoth’s possessions. They were working on their second bottle of wine and, by the looks of it, rummaging through bundles of dispatches and the like. All four were unmistakably priests of Tiamat, their garments and jewelry marked with the draconic imagery and pentad motifs emblematic of their faith. But the big man seated in Aoth’s favorite camp chair had carried things further. He had a scaly pattern tattooed on his hands and neck, and when he smiled, he revealed teeth filed to points.
“Captain Fezim,” he said, rising. “Good evening. I’m the wyrmlord Sphorrid Nyra.”
“And this is Meralaine,” Oraxes replied. “She’s one of the wizards the war hero assigned to help the Brotherhood accomplish its tasks.”
Sphorrid’s eyes flicked to Meralaine then back again. “I hope you don’t mind that my acolytes and I made ourselves comfortable. From what this fellow was able to tell us”-he indicated Ramed with a vague gesture-“I was afraid you might not return for a tenday.”
“No one can predict exactly how long it will take to fly over half a province,” Oraxes said.
“I imagine that’s especially true when you wander off by yourself,” Sphorrid said. “Do the masters of sellsword armies typically behave that way?”
The question ratcheted Oraxes’s nerves a little tighter. But he told himself that Sphorrid hadn’t really seen through his disguise, nor did he know anything about Aoth’s plans. Otherwise, the whoreson wouldn’t bother with this particular line of conversation. He might be suspicious, but he was just fishing.
“When I was a young legionnaire,” Oraxes said, “I was often sent on scouting missions. I guess old habits die hard. And sometimes one man can catch foes who’d spot a whole company coming over the horizon and scurry for cover. You may have heard that I was searching alone when I found the cellar where Sunlady Eurthos was being held and tortured.”
Sphorrid’s eyes narrowed at the implication of hostility. But so be it. Oraxes was fairly sure that Aoth wouldn’t have tied himself in knots trying to be cordial. So he supposed he shouldn’t either.
“I understood,” said the priest, “that that incident had been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.”
“Yes,” Oraxes said, “but you’ll also understand if the sunlady doesn’t feel inclined to partake of the pleasure of your company.”
“No matter,” said Sphorrid. “Our business is with you.” He proffered a roll of parchment, no doubt the same one he’d waved in front of Ramed.
Oraxes looked it over without haste, as he imagined Aoth would have done. At the top, the listing of Tchazzar’s titles went on for line after line, but once he waded through those, the sense of the rest was clear enough. He rolled it back up and tossed it on the trestle table beside the wine bottles.
“If His Majesty wants to know what I’m doing,” he said, “he could have just asked for a written report. I was planning to send one anyway.”
“He thought I might be able to provide additional insight,” Sphorrid said. “Why don’t you start by telling me about the reconnaissance you just concluded? What did the lone man see that an entire company would have missed?”
Oraxes swallowed. “It will be easiest to show you on a map,” he said, then realized he didn’t remember where Aoth kept them. He looked around and felt a twinge of alarm when he failed to spot them. But, like a dutiful subordinate, Ramed hurried across the tent, opened a chest, lifted out a roll of lambskin, and spread it on the tabletop.
That left Oraxes to concoct a tale of flying and searching from place to place and to stuff it with enough detail to make it convincing. Sphorrid put up with the tedious story for a while, but finally said. “Excuse me, Captain, but let’s stab to the heart of the matter. Did you find some trace of rebel holdouts and traitor necromancers or not?”
Oraxes took a breath and pointed at a place on the map that was a little farther along his imaginary route. “Right here, on a hill overlooking the crossroads, there was a campsite where someone burned a carving of a red dragon in the fire. The scraps of wood that survived had symbols of hatred and murder cut into them.”
Sphorrid gave him a skeptical look. “I thought you were searching for cunning, dangerous wizards, not folk so dim they’d try to curse a red wyrm with a ritual involving flame.”
Inwardly Oraxes winced. If he weren’t so nervous, he wouldn’t have slipped up like that! “The intent is the important thing.”
“With respect, Captain, the important thing is whether you’re making any real progress. If not, Chessenta could use your sellswords in the campaign against the dragonborn. The Church can pursue the work of ferreting out rebels and blasphemers closer to home.”
Meralaine laughed. Both Oraxes and Sphorrid turned to her in surprise.
“I’m sorry, my lords,” she said. “Truly. But it’s comical to see you scowl and bluster when there’s nothing to quarrel about.”
The wyrmkeeper cocked his head. “Explain.”
“Captain Fezim has a methodical mind,” she said. “It’s probably what makes him a good commander. But it also makes him a dull storyteller, and tonight is a case in point. His inclination is to describe every step of his journey instead of skipping to the discovery in the end. But I’ve already suffered through the tale once, so I can tell you the trail eventually led him to a place where His Majesty’s enemies meet to scheme and work their sorcery. The site of an ancient battle in the Sky Riders.”
Oraxes assumed she meant the place where she and Alasklerbanbastos had summoned the dead to frighten Tchazzar. “Yes,” he said, touching his finger to the map again, “right here.”
Sphorrid smiled a wry, less arrogant smile that almost made him likable for a moment. “The wizard’s right, Captain. We could have had a less contentious discussion if you’d told me this at the start. But never mind. Just tell me what you intend to do about it.”