“All right,” Tchazzar said. “I pardon everyone.” He looked at Jhesrhi. “Understand, I’m still your friend. But if I owed you any sort of debt, this pays it. So no more talk of dark hills.”
“I understand,” the wizard said.
Meanwhile, Halonya glared. Well, another present or two should mollify her. For all his deficiencies as a high priest and counselor, Daelric was right about one thing. She was endearingly childlike in some ways.
“That’s that, then,” Tchazzar said, gripping the arms of the throne as he prepared to rise. “We can still get a little sleep before my brother Amaunator summons us from our beds.”
To his astonishment, Aoth took a step forward. “Actually, Majesty, I still need you to tell me when you’re coming north.”
In truth, Tchazzar knew he had to go. He reminded himself several times each day he needed to announce his departure. But it was hard to forsake the pleasures of Luthcheq after decades of pain and deprivation. Nor was he eager to launch a campaign that would take him back to Threskel and conceivably even the Sky Riders.
He didn’t fear Alasklerbanbastos or any other foe he could fight with sword or fang. But no one could fight bad luck, and who could doubt that the hills were unlucky for him? It was there that the Blue Fire had crippled him and hurled him into the Shadowfell for Sseelrigoth to find and imprison.
“If Aoth says the matter is urgent,” said Jhesrhi, “then I promise you it is.”
And she’d be there with him, good luck to counter bad. He sighed and said, “So be it. Those of us who can fly will leave tomorrow. The rest of the army will follow as soon as it can.”
It was like the night of Balasar’s initiation. As he stood in the shadow of a stall on the dark Market Floor, laughter and the music of a mandolin, longhorn, and hand drum trio drifted on the breeze. He wasn’t close enough to hear the clatter of dice, but his imagination supplied it, just as it put the tart heat of spiceberry liqueur in his mouth.
Although he didn’t actually have to depend on imagination for the latter. He opened the pouch on his belt, removed a silver flask, pulled the cork, and took a swig.
Medrash might not have approved of him drinking when he had important work to do. But as far as Balasar was concerned, he’d earned a nip. Because it turned out that he didn’t care for spying. Not so much because of the ongoing strain of trying to pass himself off as a true worshiper of the dragon god, although that could be nerve-racking. Because it was so cursed hard to find out anything.
He’d infiltrated the Platinum Cadre on the assumption that there was something truly sinister about it, something that tied it to the wave of calamities that seemed to be afflicting countries all around the Alamber Sea. But he still had no idea what that might be. It didn’t become obvious just because a fellow wormed his way inside.
That left Balasar to grope for clues. Things that made no sense or didn’t fit, although he had little faith in his ability to recognize them. How was he supposed to know what was anomalous when none of this praying and groveling before altars made sense to a rational, properly raised dragonborn like himself?
But finally, he noticed something. It might not mean anything, but, bereft of more promising leads, he meant to find out for sure.
Raiann was one of Nala’s most fervent converts, and one far advanced in the mysteries. She swayed constantly from side to side like her mentor, went berserk in every battle, and could spew lightning a dozen times before running dry. More to the point, she’d abandoned her trade as a glassblower to serve the cult full-time.
So why did she still periodically slip away to the fields surrounding Djerad Thymar and fill a cart with fine white sand?
It was possible she was merely stockpiling the stuff for when the war ended and she could resume her profession. But hoping, if only forlornly, for a more damning explanation, Balasar had shadowed her to her dark, shuttered shop.
Two figures stalked out of the murk. Balasar couldn’t make out their faces, but they too displayed the subtle slithering-straight-up-into-the-air tic that afflicted Bahamut’s most devoted worshipers. They glanced around, then knocked on the door to the shop. Raiann opened it immediately, and the others went inside.
It was probably just Balasar’s impatience playing tricks on him, but it seemed to take a long while for anything else to happen. Then hooves clopped on the granite, and Raiann drove her donkey out from behind the building. A tarp covered the sand in the bed of the cart, and the other cultists walked to either side like they were guarding something precious.
Balasar waited for them to get a little way ahead, then followed.
He wasn’t surprised when they descended into the Catacombs, or when the wyrm-lovers subsequently chose a path that led into a part of them that wasn’t patrolled. He just hoped they wouldn’t turn down one of the passages where the working sconces gave out altogether. Although he supposed they couldn’t do that without striking a light of their own.
The echoing click of the donkey’s hooves was somehow sad and dreamlike in the gloom. A draft from somewhere blew cold in Balasar’s face and moaned almost inaudibly in his ear. It was like he was rubbing shoulders with a ghost, and it whispered his name as it brushed by.
Axles creaking, the cart turned another corner. Raiann or one of her companions whistled three ascending notes.
A signal? Balasar skulked onward even more warily than before. He peeked down the branching passage.
He glimpsed a surge of forward motion and the flicker of wings just beneath the ceiling. He started to look up, and then everything went black. At the same instant the floor beneath his feet became uneven. He lost his balance and fell on the hard edges of something. Stone steps or risers?
Before he could feel around and find out, something slammed down on the back of his head and neck. It reached around to scrabble at his face, slashing him just above one eye and just below the other.
He threw himself backward in an effort to crush his attacker between his body and whatever he was lying on. He grabbed, caught handfuls of what might be leathery wing, and shredded them with his claws.
Something hissed right beside his ear. Then his hands were empty. His attacker was simply gone, and his back and shoulders dropped through the empty space it had just occupied, giving him another bump.
A hiss rasped, then another from a point farther to the right. Balasar’s assailant was in motion. He scrambled up, snatched out his broadsword, and cut at a spot where, he judged, its trajectory might have taken it. The blade whizzed through empty air.
Then one cold, slimy hand seized the wrist of his sword arm and dug its claws into his skin. Another, just bare bones smeared with deliquescence, gripped his throat, and the rotten stink of it filled his nostrils and made his stomach turn over. He realized his original attacker had hissed repeatedly to cover the noise of its ally’s approach.
In time, Tchazzar dismissed everyone but Halonya and Jhesrhi. Perhaps he hoped to mend the quarrel between them. In any case, Aoth would have to wait for a private consultation with his lieutenant.
But there was someone else to talk to. When they were clear of the Green Hall, Nicos murmured, “I stood by you in there, even when Tchazzar’s pet priestess cried for your blood.”
“I know,” Aoth replied. “We’re in this together, and I’ll look after your interests as you looked after mine.”
“See that you do. And see that you acquit yourself well in the field.” Nicos gave him a brusque nod and took his leave. Glowering, Luthen and Halonya’s subordinates departed in a different direction even though, like Aoth’s patron, they were presumably bound for the War College’s primary exit.
Still a resident of the fortress, albeit in less exalted circumstances than before, Shala Karanok strode off in yet another direction with purpose in her gaze and, despite the hour, a spring in her stride. Her clerk had to scurry to keep up. Aoth inferred that she’d been impatient to march to war and meant to begin her preparations immediately.