Another hand fell on his shoulder. He turned and looked into the beak-nosed, bushy-browed face of Ramed, a sellsword he’d first met during the siege of Soolabax. In fact, it was Ramed who’d saved him from falling off the top of the wall.
“My friend!” Oraxes said. “Have a drink on me!”
“You have to come with me,” Ramed answered. “Meralaine too. Right away.”
Oraxes started to ask why, then realized that might be indiscreet with so many folk loitering close enough to overhear the answer. He smiled and gave a wave to his audience, then beckoned to Meralaine. She picked up her slim bone wand where it lay within easy reach of her dainty-looking hand, and rose. They followed Ramed out into the night.
Alasklerbanbastos’s war had brought an influx of coin to Mourktar as the mercenaries the dracolich had hired passed through the port. Most of those warriors were gone, in many cases added to Tchazzar’s army in the south, but the town still clung to a fading air of celebration. The windows of taverns and festhalls burned bright, and music lilted through. It was as if the proprietors couldn’t bring themselves to admit the boom was over.
But it mostly was, and once Oraxes and his companions had progressed a few paces down the rutted, muddy street, Oraxes judged that they had enough privacy to converse. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“A wyrmkeeper showed up,” Ramed said. “He’s got a paper with Tchazzar’s seal on it. Apparently it authorizes him to get a report from Captain Fezim about how the hunt for the rebels is going.” Oraxes inferred that Ramed was as illiterate as most men who followed his trade and hadn’t been able to read the document for himself.
“Did you tell him the captain is away on patrol?”
“Yes,” said Ramed. “He said he’ll wait.”
“Well,” said Oraxes, “let him wait, then. Maybe Lady Luck will smile, and Captain Fezim and the others will get back soon.”
The soldier shook his head. “That’s a lot to hope for. It’s a ways to Akanul, even on griffons, and it wasn’t an easy chore they had to tackle once they got there.”
“And what if the wyrmkeeper starts asking questions,” said Meralaine, “and some of the other sellswords say they haven’t seen Aoth or Gaedynn in days? What if they say their officers have marched them this way and that, but they haven’t seen a trace of renegade necromancers or any other leftover enemies?”
“Right,” Oraxes said. The tipsiness that had seemed so exhilarating in the tavern was like a blanket smothering his ability to think. He took a deep breath in an effort to clear it away. “We can’t just let him hang around. We need to send him on his way, and that means we need either Captain Fezim or someone who can pass for him. Ramed, I’m going to shroud you in his appearance.”
The sellsword goggled at him. “Me?”
“Yes. You’re an officer of the Brotherhood, and the captain let you in on the secret of what’s going on before he left. You’re the perfect man for the job.”
Ramed shook his head. “Truly, lad, I don’t think so. I’m a warrior, not a player. I’d botch it.”
“He’s right,” said Meralaine. She was standing right beside Oraxes, but it was still oddly difficult to see her features clearly. It was as though the darkness had stained her with itself. “You’re the illusionist, and if you conjure a mask, it will fit you better than it would anyone else.”
“But I’m not a warrior,” Oraxes said.
Meralaine smirked. “That’s not what you think to yourself when you’re swaggering around with that pot on your head.”
Oraxes felt his face grow hot. “I’m saying that I won’t be able to answer questions the way a veteran soldier would.”
“But we can hope,” Ramed said, “that the dragon priest won’t ask difficult questions. After all, he’s not a soldier, either.”
“And your magic,” said Meralaine, “will lend an air of plausibility to anything you say.”
Oraxes shook his head. “I still don’t think-”
She raised her hand to cut him off. “This is why Captain Fezim left us here, so if it was needed, we’d do what only wizards can. And you can do this. Ramed and I will help you.”
He took a breath. “You’re right, curse it.” He looked around and found the mouth of a narrow, litter-choked alley even darker than the street. He waved at it. “Let’s duck in there.”
“You don’t have to do it right now,” said Meralaine.
He grinned. “Don’t worry. The prospect of what’s to come is sobering me up fast. And it’s like you said. We want to send the wyrmkeeper back to Luthcheq before he talks to a bunch of other people.”
He took off the steel and leather helmet Meralaine had mocked, then started the magic by writing runes on a clapboard wall. His fingertip trailed blue phosphorescence. Ramed kept watch and stood in such a way as to hide the two wizards from anyone who might happen to pass in the street.
After he finished writing, Oraxes murmured rhymes in dactylic hexameter. Meralaine whispered contrapuntal responses. They hadn’t practiced performing that particular ritual together, nor did he understand the language she was speaking. But he could feel how her efforts supported his own, and it made sense that they would. Darkness and deception were natural allies.
As his recitation progressed, he gradually raised his hands to his head. He ran them through his hair and imagined it falling away. He felt it just as if it were really happening. He shifted his hands to his face and molded it like clay, reshaping his sharp features into Aoth Fezim’s blunt ones and branding them with the Thayan’s black tattoos.
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.