“Watch out!” Khouryn shouted. He stepped back and readied his axe. Two warriors against a dragon was rotten odds. But if he and Medrash both struck in the instant when the quicksilver wyrm became solid but before it could make an attack, they might have some kind of chance.
“I see it,” Medrash said. He raised his sword, cried the name of his god, and the glow of the blade burned so brightly that Khouryn flinched away. Then the paladin thrust at the fissure. It was a fast, hard action, but even though the crack was so narrow that Khouryn wasn’t sure the blade would even fit, it stabbed in cleanly, with nary a scrape of steel on stone.
Quicksilver churned and separated into separate droplets around the burning sword. Then it streamed away from the weapon and out of sight.
Medrash slid the sword back out much more slowly than he’d driven it in. Without the god’s power augmenting his skills, he was leery of dulling the blade. “I didn’t kill it,” he said.
“I figured,” Khouryn said. “But you ran it off, and I really didn’t want to fight it this very instant. So, well done.”
Medrash kept peering at the crack. “Up this close, I thought I sensed something.”
“What?”
“I’m not sure. A vileness.”
Khouryn snorted. “I didn’t have to be a paladin to pick up on that.”
As she entered the Green Hall, Jhesrhi looked around at the assembly and decided that a fair number of people had come to dread being summoned into the royal presence just about as much as she had.
Of course, not every face betrayed such feelings. Halonya was smirking like the half-demented thing she was. Lord Luthen and other peers who had thus far received only friendship and preferential treatment from the Red Dragon looked smug and self-satisfied. Zan-akar Zeraez kept his purple, silver-etched features composed into a mask of wise and sober courtesy.
Still, some courtiers, men who’d been stripped of property or offices merely on Tchazzar’s whim or been commanded to send their wives or daughters to his chambers, glowered and sulked. Daelric and some of the other high priests stood in a huddle, muttering together.
But only Shala kept scowling when the Red Dragon actually strode into the room, although some others couldn’t resist the impulse to wince or gasp.
That was because Tchazzar had blood spattered all over the front of him, from his long, handsome face all the way down to his pointed shoes, soaking his vermilion-and-black silk and velvet garments and dulling the glitter of his diamond buttons. Jhesrhi suspected that he’d been taking a personal hand in punishing supposed miscreants in the dungeons, although that was by no means a certainty. He’d proved himself capable of committing mayhem anywhere and anytime something angered him.
Everyone bowed or curtsied as, seemingly oblivious to his bizarre and disquieting dishevelment, Tchazzar mounted the dais and flopped down on the throne, immediately fouling the gold and sea green cushions with smears of blood. “Rise,” he said, and Jhesrhi noticed that he had significantly more gore on his mouth than the rest of his face. It even stained his teeth.
“Well,” Tchazzar continued, surveying them all, “here we are again, facing the same annoying paradox. With a god to rule it, Chessenta is blessed beyond all other realms. Yet no monarch could find himself more beset by malcontents. Why is that?”
After a moment, Jhesrhi decided it wasn’t just a rhetorical question. He was actually waiting for an answer. But no one knew what to say, or else those who did feared to draw the dragon’s attention to themselves.
Finally, looking like an overfed canary in his yellow vestments, Daelric cleared his throat and said, “Majesty, the brightest light casts the deepest shadows. When one studies the Keeper’s sacred texts-”
“Fire and blood!” Tchazzar screamed. “Did you think I was asking for platitudes? Not one word more! Or you can try studying the sacred texts without eyes and prattling about what you find there without a tongue!”
Daelric’s round, ruddy face turned a shade paler. He bowed and stepped back among his fellow clerics, who in some cases edged away from him as though Tchazzar’s displeasure were contagious.
Jhesrhi supposed that if anyone could calm the dragon, or at least encourage him to get to the point, it would be either Halonya or herself. And for once, the prophetess didn’t appear on the quivering verge of blurting something out. Although she did appear to be trying to maintain a grave expression to mask an underlying eagerness.
So Jhesrhi guessed it was up to her. “Majesty,” she said, “I ask you to remember that others don’t see as far or clearly as you.” As usual, she felt awkward and a little dirty concocting the kind of fulsome, roundabout speech such moments required. “But if you tell us what’s angered you, maybe we can help to find a remedy.”
Tchazzar shocked her by baring his pinkish teeth in a sneer. “Do you truly not know, my lady?”
Jhesrhi took a breath. She wanted to be sure her voice remained steady. “No, Majesty, I don’t.”
“Yet I’m sure you know how the storm damaged the supply cache.”
“Of course. But I don’t understand how that piece of bad luck connects to talk of treason.”
“Liar!” Halonya shrieked, reverting to form.
Flame rippled up Jhesrhi’s staff, and judging that it was better to look angry than scared, she let it burn as it would. “Majesty, I can’t tell you how sick I am of having this harpy fly at me with one false accusation after another.”
“I’m sure,” Tchazzar said. “I was tired of it myself because you convinced me she was mistaken. But you know how to command the spirits of the air, and it was a great wind that ruined the supplies.”
“Great winds have been known to blow of their own accord in the middle of great storms,” Jhesrhi said, doing her best to sound scornful. “Is that all there is to the charge against me? That, and Halonya’s spite?” If so, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
But the Red Dragon said, “No, milady. Actually, there is a little more. You see, much as I resisted them, I’d already begun to have doubts about you. You’d… disappointed me in certain respects. And when I shared those doubts, the wyrmlady convinced me to set a spirit to spy on you. If it reported you were behaving as you ought, as I profoundly hoped you were, that would ease my mind. And if it reported something else, well…” He shrugged.
Inwardly Jhesrhi cursed herself for not fleeing as soon as she killed the spined devil. “And what has your spy reported?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Tchazzar said. “It didn’t keep its rendezvous with the wyrmkeeper who called it out of the Hells.”
“Then we’re back where we started,” Jhesrhi said. “There’s not a particle of evidence against me, just a jealous snake dribbling venom in your ear.”
“The fiend was invisible,” Halonya said. “It would take someone with knowledge of the wicked arts to detect and kill it.”
“Not if it simply slipped its leash and went home,” Jhesrhi said. “Those of us ‘with knowledge of the wicked arts’ understand that happens from time to time. Majesty, I’ll point out again that there isn’t a trace of proof to support these slanders, and then I’ll entrust myself to your sense of justice.”
“Actually,” Tchazzar said, “there might be a smidge of evidence. Hold up the item for everyone to see.”
One of the wyrmkeepers in Halonya’s entourage stepped forward, shook out a piece of gray cloth, and raised it high. Jhesrhi felt a jolt of alarm as she recognized the cloak she’d worn the night she destroyed the spinagon. Someone had evidently searched her quarters and found the garment where she’d tucked it away in the bottom of a trunk.
“It is yours, isn’t it?” Tchazzar asked. “I believe I saw you wear it shortly after we met.”