She was still trying when something fluttered overhead.
Tchazzar jerked, gripped her hand painfully tightly, and yelped. Maybe it was because, like her, he’d just noticed that dusk had given way to night.
She spoke to the wind, and it whispered that the creature fluttering over the roof was only a bat. She opened her mouth to share the reassuring knowledge with Tchazzar.
But she was too late. He sprang to his feet and grew as tall as a gnoll. Seams in his garments ripped. He tilted his head back, opened protruding jaws, and spit a jet of yellow fire. The pseudo-mind in Jhesrhi’s staff exclaimed in excitement.
Tchazzar’s breath caught the bat, and the burning carcass dropped onto the roof. Panting, trembling, the war hero stared at it as if he suspected it might rise from the ashes like a phoenix. Guards came scurrying.
“It was just a bat,” Jhesrhi said.
“Or another vampire!” Tchazzar snapped. “I understand that you only wanted to comfort me. But you’ll serve me better with the truth. And the truth is I’m not safe. I can never be until I rule everything and everyone who wishes me ill is dead. And even then, there will always be the dark.” He flashed a fierce, mad grin. “Unless…”
Inwardly Jhesrhi winced. “Unless what, Majesty?”
“You gave me the germ of the idea. If Amaunator won’t or can’t drive back the night, we’ll use torches instead. Geysers of perpetual fire drawn from the Undying Pyre. And if Kossuth doesn’t like it, we’ll make him like it. Think what an adventure that will be! An army of gods and men descending into Chaos to kill a primordial!”
The staff all but vibrated at the prospect of entering a world made wholly of fire. For half a heartbeat, its excitement infected Jhesrhi, but she crushed out the alien emotion as though grinding an ember under her boot.
Unfortunately the reassertion of her own natural perspective just made her feel sick to her stomach. I was right the first time, she thought. Tchazzar’s sunk too deep into lunacy for me or anyone to reach him anymore.
That meant Shala had sacrificed herself for nothing.
TWELVE
5-6 E LEINT, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE
Oraxes couldn’t see Luthcheq from the ground. But when he rode a griffon just a little way up, there it was. He could make out the great slab of sandstone that was the War College, the crazy tangle of streets behind it, an ongoing demolition that must be the first stage in the erection of Tchazzar’s temple, and the sprawl of the assembled forces of Chessenta, Threskel, and Akanul.
It was over, then. He, Meralaine, Ramed, and the few others who shared the secret of Aoth’s absence had kept the Brotherhood marching as slowly as it plausibly could. But there was no way to stop it from reaching its destination by the next day.
Oraxes stroked his steed’s neck and sent it swooping back toward the ground. Meralaine followed him down. They gave the griffons into the custody of a groom and headed for Aoth’s pavilion.
Once inside, Oraxes let the warmage’s appearance dissolve. Meanwhile, the shadows around Meralaine deepened just a little. It reminded him of a cat rubbing against its owner’s ankles.
He pulled the cork from a jug of some clear, biting Threskelan spirit-he’d never gotten around to finding out what the vile stuff was called or made from-and filled two pewter cups. His hand trembled. He hoped she hadn’t noticed.
They each took a drink. Her face twisted, and he suspected his did too. Then he asked, “What do you think?”
“The masquerade’s worked so far,” she replied.
“Maybe on the sellswords. It didn’t fool Sphorrid Nyra, did it?”
“Well, it kind of did. At first.”
“We’re about to face Tchazzar, who’s already going to be suspicious because Sphorrid and the other wyrmkeepers never came home. And because he sent orders for Captain Fezim to fly to Luthcheq ahead of the rest of the company and he didn’t.”
“So which way do you want to run?” Meralaine asked.
Oraxes shook his head. “I don’t know. I figured we’d take the drakkensteeds. They actually belong to us, or at least more than any of the griffons do. But I don’t know how far they can travel over open water. That means…”
Meralaine frowned. “Why did you stop?”
“I guess because I don’t want to go.”
“You’d rather let Tchazzar kill you?”
He groped for the words to explain, for his own benefit as much as hers. “I said I’d do this. I’d rather take a risk-even a big risk-and follow through than not. I mean, it’s not that bad here.” He took a breath. “But you should probably leave. I’ll feel better if you do.”
She smiled a crooked smile. “You’re an idiot and a liar.”
He snorted. “Maybe.”
“If not for the idiot part, you’d know I don’t want to go either. Not away from the Brotherhood and especially not away from you.”
“True love,” said a voice from the direction of the tent flap. “A debilitating affliction but fortunately nearly everyone recovers.”
Oraxes spun around toward the sound. Just as he’d imagined, it was Gaedynn who’d spoke, and Aoth was entering right behind him.
Oraxes almost started babbling about how glad he was to see them, but that would have looked soft. So he simply smirked and said, “I was just about to give up on you and become Aoth Fezim permanently.”
The Thayan smiled. The dimness inside the pavilion made the glow of his eyes more noticeable. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he said.
Cera entered behind him, and after her came a young genasi, a stormsoul, apparently, although some of the lines in her purple skin were gold instead of silver. She wore a pentagonal badge that likely identified her as some sort of Akanulan soldier or official.
“The camp already saw Captain Fezim enter this tent just a little while ago,” Meralaine said.
“So they shouldn’t see it again?” Aoth replied. “I doubt that anyone’s been keeping such close track of ‘my’ movements that it will rouse suspicion, and even if it does, I’m too tired to care.” He dropped into a camp chair. “Bring me that jug and report. You can talk in front of Son-liin. She knows pretty much everything.”
Resisting the temptation to embellish the account into a celebration of his own cunning and prowess-and Meralaine’s too, of course-Oraxes laid out recent events as clearly and succinctly as he could.
When he finished, Aoth grunted. “Could be better, could be worse.”
“But mostly better,” Gaedynn said.
As he and Aoth strode through the corridors of the War College with Nicos Corynian, the captain and the Brotherhood’s original sponsor murmuring urgently back and forth, Gaedynn’s nerves felt taut as bowstrings.
Partly it was because he and his companions were about to face Tchazzar, who was likely displeased with them anyway and whose mood would almost certainly sour further before the audience was over. But mainly, he realized, it was because he was about to see Jhesrhi.
He sneered at himself, reminding himself she was simply his friend. That was all she could ever be, and that was how he wanted it because friends were worth having, but frustrations and encumbrances were not.
Still, although making sure he wasn’t obvious about it, he peered around for her as soon as he and his companions entered the Hall of Blades. For after all, he had to make sure she was all right.
As the name suggested, the decor in the chamber celebrated swordplay. Sculpted bronze warriors brandished greatswords over their heads. Their counterparts in the tapestries assailed one another with broadswords and targes. The design in the floor tiles was made of stylized scimitars, and atop the high back of the throne on the dais, a fan-shaped arc of five blades projected to threaten the ceiling.