“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.”
What indeed? “According to my information,” Oraxes said, “the coven will gather tomorrow night. We’ll attack them when they do. If we sneak up on them with a small force, maybe we can take them alive and interrogate them. Then we can find out if they’re agents of Jaxanaedegor, diehards loyal to the memory of Alasklerbanbastos, or maybe even in the pay of the dragonborn.”
Sphorrid narrowed his eyes and considered. Then he said, “That does sound like a sensible way to proceed. My acolytes and I will accompany you, of course.”
“Fine,” Oraxes said. “But for now, I’ve had a long journey, and this is my tent. Ramed will find you suitable quarters and provide for your mounts as well.”
After the wyrmkeepers left, he flopped down in a chair. Meralaine grinned at him. “You were wonderful,” she said. She picked up the half-empty wine bottle, took a swig, then brought it to him.
“Did I say what you wanted me to say?” he asked. “When you started talking about a coven and the place in the hills, I had to guess.”
“You read my mind exactly. It was clear that the only way to satisfy the bastards is to actually show them some rebels. So we will.”
“Are there any ghosts left haunting that patch of ground? You and Alasklerbanbastos raised a bunch of them, and then those were all destroyed.”
“I’ll call some new ones somehow.”
He smiled. “And then we use them to put on another pantomime. Why not? If the trick fooled Tchazzar, it ought to fool his servants too.”
Her silver-skewer piercings gleaming in the glow of the floating orbs of light, Biri walked toward Balasar, and he felt the usual contradictory pulls, the inclination to enjoy the undeniable pleasure of her company pitting itself against the urge to draw away. But at the moment, there was really no question of how he would behave. A warrior of Clan Daardendrien didn’t spurn a comrade in a strange and dangerous place.