He leaped into the air, lashed his wings, and soared upward.
That rid him of all the foes who didn’t have wings to follow. He swiped with his claws, smashing birds by the dozen, and snarled an incantation. Meanwhile, he felt some sort of psychic magic pounding at his mind. But it wasn’t divine power like the despicable sunlady wielded, and it couldn’t pierce his defenses.
He bellowed the last word of his spell, and a cloud of acidic vapor seethed into existence around him. It stung him, but it was worth it because it annihilated the shadowravens. Sizzling, they fell like stones and corroded away to nothing before they reached the ground.
A beat of his wings carried Alasklerbanbastos clear of the burning mist, and he looked around for the deathlord. He was reasonably sure the creature had followed him aloft, but at first glance, he couldn’t spot him.
A weight thumped down on top of Alasklerbanbastos’s head. Certain that he had only an instant before the deathlord’s scythe would slash at one of his eyes, he lashed his neck as though he were cracking a whip. The sorrowsworn tumbled from his perch.
Alasklerbanbastos twisted his head and tried to snap him out of the air. His teeth clashed shut on nothing. The deathlord had shifted through space to dodge the attack. Another psychic attack beat at Alasklerbanbastos’s consciousness. He snarled in annoyance as he tried to locate his opponent once again.
There! Even blurrier than before, probably turned intangible, the deathlord was swooping toward the ground to rejoin his underlings. Alasklerbanbastos’s snarl turned into a laugh because abandoning the high air was the wrong play.
He furled his wings, plunged downward, and rattled off three words that drew all the lightning that continually danced in a blue dragon’s body down into his foreclaws. Crackling, they glowed white and should annihilate an insubstantial foe as readily as any other.
Just before Alasklerbanbastos plummeted into striking distance, the deathlord sensed the danger. He wrenched himself around, congealed into solidity, and swung the scythe. It gashed Alasklerbanbastos’s leg, but that was all.
Then the dragon’s claws stabbed into the sorrowsworn’s body, piercing it, all but splitting and tearing it to pieces. It was a killing stroke even without the lightning that discharged itself with a thunderous bang an instant later.
Alasklerbanbastos flicked the charred scraps that were all that remained of the deathlord off his talons and spread his wings for a softer descent.
The remaining sorrowsworn were brave, stupid, or compelled by some enchantment. Even with their chieftain and the shadowravens destroyed, they kept fighting, and pretty well at that. Still, it took Alasklerbanbastos only a few more moments to rip them apart.
He looked around and made sure he’d gotten them all. Then he stalked on to the dead god’s temple.
Since the building was lying on its side, the entry was halfway up the wall. At some point, the doors had come loose from the hinges, leaving just a hole. He stuck his head inside.
Somehow, the outer shell of the temple had survived its slide or tumble into the crevasse partially intact. But the disaster had shattered interior walls and shaken everything loose from its proper place. Broken pews, icons, and skeletons lay heaped and jumbled altogether.
Alasklerbanbastos felt a little disappointed. Whatever the sorrowsworn had believed was growing inside the ruinous womb, he couldn’t detect any sign of it. But he could still feel the throbbing, malignant power of the place, and that was what was important.
He crawled through the doorway. The litter shifted under his weight, so, using his claws and tail, he scooped and swept it to the sides until he had a clear place to work. Then he chanted words of power and scratched a rune on the stone beneath him whenever the ritual called for it.
When he’d written all twenty-five, he slit the hide on his left foreleg and started to flay himself.
It wasn’t easy. Even though the undead were less susceptible to pain than the living, the discomfort was considerable. And on top of that, the skin was damaged. Tchazzar had burned it, death had rotted it, and the fights Alasklerbanbastos had gotten into since occupying the body hadn’t done it any good either. Yet he needed to remove it in just a few pieces. Cutting or inadvertently tearing it into too many would spoil the magic.
Finally the painstaking task was through. He laid out the sheets of hide in the proper places, refocused his concentration, and whispered the final rhyme.
The darkness seemed to spin around him. Disembodied voices wailed, and a stench like vomit filled the air. Broken bones jerked and rattled.
Blue light danced where one sheet of scaly skin touched another, fusing them back together. Then the hollow, flapping but united thing they’d become heaved itself up off the floor. It whipped around toward Alasklerbanbastos and opened its jaws, revealing the hard, serrated ridges that had formed to substitute for fangs.
But Alasklerbanbastos had expected resistance. He grabbed the dragon shell by the neck, slammed it to the floor, and held it there while it tried to wrap around him like a python. He bound it with words of command.
When it stopped struggling, he let it up and gave it a more leisurely inspection. Satisfied with his handiwork, he smiled.
A watersoul functionary had informed Aoth that he and his companions would have to wait until Queen Arathane could find the time to receive them. He suspected the reality was somewhat different. Her Majesty was more likely conferring with Tradrem Kethrod, the Steward of the Earth and her spymaster, and anyone else who might have some idea why a sellsword captain in service to Chessenta had unexpectedly appeared to request a palaver with the ruler of Akanul.
Waiting made Aoth edgy, and he tried to calm himself by taking in the view. The royal palace was a spire that, from the outside, resembled a narwhal’s horn. It occupied the highest point in Airspur, and the outer wall of the waiting room was made entirely of glass. He could see much of the capital spread out below.
Even in the Thay of his youth, where the Red Wizards had not infrequently turned their Art to spectacle and ostentation, he’d never seen another city like it. It incorporated dozens of small, low-floating earthmotes, linked to one another and adjacent towers by bridges. And everything reflected the genasi’s kinship with, and mastery of, the elemental forces. Most structures had a flowing, rounded look to them, as if they’d been molded from clay, not hewn from stone. A few hung like mirages in midair. Sparkling in the sunlight, water cascaded from the higher levels of the city to the lower.
“You’d think,” Gaedynn said, “that if Jhesrhi wanted to settle down anywhere, it would be here, not Luthcheq.”
“Our childhood homes keep a hold on us,” Cera said. “And I suspect that if you were an unhappy child, the hold can be all the stronger.”
Gaedynn grinned. “Speak for yourself. I’d sooner take another run at Szass Tam than return to my father’s castle.” He turned back to Aoth. “I’m still vague on our strategy. Exactly how much are we going to tell them?”
“You’re vague because I’m vague,” said Aoth. “This is potentially dangerous. I’ll need to read Arathane’s reactions and make decisions as we go.”
“Thanks for clarifying. I feel so much more confident.”
Cera frowned. “The Keeper of the Yellow Sun teaches us to cast the light of truth as widely and brightly as we can.”
“Is that why you’ve been doing things behind your high priest’s back ever since this craziness started?” Aoth replied.
She tried to look at him sternly, but humor tugged at the corners of her mouth, and after a moment, she gave it up. “Perhaps I am trying to put the milk back into the cow.”