The final offering was a dove. She could feel its heartbeat through her wet, red fingers. She started to make the cut, and then Tchazzar said, “My lady!”
She hadn’t realized he’d come up behind her. His voice startled her, and she didn’t slice as deeply as she’d intended. Wounded but not slain, the dove shuddered.
She felt a shift in the attitude of the hovering spirits, a sudden doubt that she was strong and clever enough to command them. She rattled off words of power and made a second cut. The dove stopped struggling. For a moment it looked like the blood was going to drip to the ground, but then it whirled upward like that of the previous sacrifices.
Jhesrhi sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. Then she recited the closing incantation and made a chopping motion with her staff to end the ritual safely. She felt the residual power drain into the ground, and the winds departed with a whoosh that set her clothing flapping and branches lashing.
Tchazzar was a dragon, a monarch, and the Brotherhood’s employer. All good reasons not to let on that she was annoyed with him. Still, as she turned around, she had to struggle to keep it from showing in her expression. She had yet to learn if he was a wizard or if all his legendary powers were innate. But either way, he surely knew enough about magic to understand that it was stupid to disturb a conjuror in the middle of a ritual.
But when she saw the contrition and anxiety in his handsome face, it took the edge off her irritation. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize you were still working. Did I spoil it?”
“No, Majesty,” she said. Although the binding likely wasn’t as strong as it could have been.
“Good. Come walk with me.”
Her throat was raw from reciting so many incantations, and her body sore from standing in one spot for too long. Still, even at a moment when she would have preferred to flop down on the ground and drink a jack of ale, it was flattering that he desired her company. She found a smile for him and used the butt of her staff to open the circle she’d earlier drawn on the ground.
Then they strolled through the darkened camp with its paucity of crackling, smoky fires. (Aoth didn’t want enemy scouts to count the points of light and arrive at an accurate estimate of the size of their army.) Chessentan soldiers and sellswords alike saluted as the war hero passed. Tchazzar acknowledged them, but in a perfunctory fashion.
For a while Jhesrhi wondered if they were simply going to wander around in silence. Then he said, “The enemy force is stronger than expected.”
“I know,” she said. By then everyone knew what Gaedynn and Oraxes had seen.
“Hasos recommends that we fall back to Soolabax.”
She said what she knew Aoth must have said if he’d heard that particular proposal. “Your troops didn’t break one siege of the town just to run back inside the walls and wait for another. We need to take the fight to the enemy to solve the problem of Threskel for good and all. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Tchazzar smiled a tight-lipped, troubled smile. “Of course. What king, what god, could tolerate a part of his dominions defying his authority? It’s just … Do you understand why I didn’t want that wretched little witch to call the dead?”
Jhesrhi hesitated. “Not entirely, Majesty.”
“The dead are dark things. And it was here, in this very place, that dark things held and tortured me until I nearly lost my mind.”
“It wasn’t really here, Majesty. It was in the Sky Riders. It was also in the Shadowfell, a whole different world than the one we’re walking and talking in now.”
“Can I trust a necromancer, who draws her strength from darkness? Or a Thayan mage? They’re all necromancers, aren’t they? And when you consider that the man profaned my temple-”
“Majesty, I beg you to remember that like the rest of Chessenta’s arcanists, Meralaine owes everything to you. And Aoth is as honorable a mercenary as you could hope to hire, and outcast from his own people for fighting necromancers. There’s no question that either of them is loyal.”
“I suppose.” Some of the tension went out of his face. “I’m fortunate to have you for my lovac.”
She could tell he meant it as a compliment, and that pleased her. Still, she had to admit, “I don’t know that word, Majesty.”
He hesitated, then said, “It’s an old Draconic word. It means the faithful friend and lieutenant of a king.”
The enemy had seen a few griffon riders. So Tchazzar’s army wasn’t giving away any secrets by having a few in the air as the foe approached. Aoth had chosen to be among them to obtain the best possible view of all that was happening.
The decoy force stood at the top of a rise behind earthen ramparts. He wished Khouryn were there to command it. He tried to draw some comfort from everyone’s assurances that while it was always Hasos’s instinct to avoid battle if possible, he fought well if you managed to push him into one.
Aoth had had a century to grow accustomed to his fire-kissed eyes. Still, it was momentarily disconcerting to look down at the various stands of oaks and elms and plainly see the rest of the illusion-veiled army. He had to remind himself that the Threskelans couldn’t.
Or at least that was the idea. Unfortunately, dragons had keen senses. But if Tymora smiled, the wyrms would have other things to occupy their attention.
All three enemy dragons, the two reds and the green, were in the air along with other flying creatures. They were heading for the top of the rise. Aoth assumed the wyrms intended to start the battle by raking the position with flame and poisonous fumes.
My feelings are hurt, said Jet.
Don’t worry, Aoth replied. We’ll give them a reason to pay attention to us in a moment.
Though he lacked Jhesrhi’s enhanced rapport with the winds, he was wizard enough to feel it when she started to command them. The enemy dragons and flying drakes floundered and plunged as gusts of wind shoved them one way and another, and the air beneath their wings thinned.
Aoth lifted his ram’s horn bugle and blew three notes. No doubt the battlefield was already noisy with the thumping, clanking sound of Threskelan saurians, horsemen, and infantry-a mix of men, orcs, and kobolds-hurrying along beneath their flying allies. But his men were listening for the call, and he was confident they’d hear it even so.
They did. More griffon riders bounded from the copses, then-clear of the branches that would otherwise have hindered their ascent-beat their way up into the sky. Meanwhile, arrows flew from the trees and over the earthworks. Threskelan warriors and creatures began to drop.
Aoth grinned. Discerning what he wanted through their psychic link, Jet raced toward the nearer of the red dragons. Since the elementals weren’t playing pranks on him, the familiar could fly as nimbly as ever.
Which was a good thing. Aoth judged that like its companions, the red was relatively young. But it was still capable of burning Jet and him out of the sky or biting and clawing them to shreds.
He chanted words of power and aimed his spear, releasing some of the energy bound inside it to augment the innate force of the spell. A silvery blast of cold erupted from the weapon’s point and splashed across the dragon’s crested back.
It roared, twisted its neck, and spat fire in return. But perhaps the turbulence around it threw off its aim, because Jet didn’t even have to dodge.
Once they’d flown on by, Aoth conjured fire of his own and blasted two spiretop drakes out of the air. As Jet wheeled for another pass at the red dragon, there was a moment to take a look at how everyone else was faring.