"At first," Phenotar replied, "I thought it was a simple insect bite. But I ran some more tests. That's when I discovered that someone had poisoned Brother Arranoth.
"Adder's root," the herbalist added. "Very deadly."
"Then Arranoth was—" Drakken began.
"He was already dead when the wounds to the throat were made," Brother Phenotar finished. "I examined the throat wounds further and I discovered tiny slivers of metal. Whatever made the wounds wasn't natural."
Drakken felt his knees begin to buckle as relief flooded through him. He wasn't the one who'd killed the sub-prior! All of the hours of self-recrimination and hatred seemed like a dream. The Brother Herbalist's discoveries put a part of his mind at rest, while another part began to whirl with dark possibilities.
He stammered his thanks to Brother Phenotar and took his leave. If he hadn't killed the sub-prior, then
Brother Arranoth's murderer was still at large—and had gone to quite some length to incriminate him. Looking at the darkening spring sky, Drakken headed back to his cell. He had only a few hours to prepare for his meeting with whoever left that note.
-—«Cfc—*
Drakken stood quietly in the Upper Cellar, one hand resting lightly on a stack of wooden crates, the other fingering a small set of prayer beads hanging from a belt loop sewn into his simple robe. Despite a bitter chill permeating the dank cellar, the half dragon's spirits were higher than they had been in months. Brother Phenotar's discovery had lifted a dark weight hanging upon his shoulders ever since he'd known of the sub-prior's death. Sure of his own innocence, Drakken could barely contain his relief. He only hoped that whoever had dropped him the mysterious note could shed some more light on Brother Arranoth's murder.
The half dragon was so wrapped up in speculation that he only had a moment's warning before the attack. His keen sense of smell caught a faint musky scent an instant before two figures shimmered into existence before him. Sharpened steel arced toward him in the darkness, but the half-dragon had already begun to move, ducking beneath the whistling edge of one blade. As he turned, a second blade caught in the folds of his robe, slowing him down. He lashed out with a heavily muscled foot, catching one of his attackers in the gut. The assailant let out an explosive grunt and doubled over. Without hesitation, Drakken dived past the assassin and rolled to his feet.
Even in the tomblike darkness of the cellar, his dragon's vision caught sight of his attackers. Both were human. One, a beefy warrior who, by the look of
him had once been an extraordinarily muscled man since gone to fat, wielded a wicked looking curved axe. His companion, a whipcord slim human with a well-groomed goatee, twirled a simple short sword in one hand and a hooked dagger in the other.
Despite the half-dragon's disadvantage, Drakken found his blood beginning to warm at the nearness of death. The beast slumbering deep within him began to awaken, and this time, he didn't fight it. In an instant, he knew what he would have to do. A low grumble escaped his lips as he launched himself at the smaller of the two assassins.
The man struck quick, a viperlike attack with the point of his short blade. Drakken didn't attempt to dodge, but almost seemed to leap onto the weapon. As the sword met thick scales, it bent slightly and slid to the side. Still moving forward, the half-dragon stepped slightly to the left of his assailant, grabbed the assassin's neck with a single clawed hand, and pulled the man to him as if in an embrace. In desperation, the screaming attacker sliced wildly with his dagger. Drakken let out a bellow of pain and rage as the blade cut through hardened scales as if they were silk.
Before he could finish his maneuver, however, the half-dragon sensed the second assassin moving in for a solid strike. He spun, holding his captive before him like a shield. As the man's axe fell, it bit deep into the chest of the first assassin, shattering the hapless man's ribs as it ended its fateful arc.
The fat warrior took a step back, releasing the axe as his eyes widened in obvious horror. At that moment, Drakken pounced. Dropping the gurgling remains of his captive, he leaped forward. Batting away his opponent's feeble attempts at stopping him, the half-dragon wrapped two clawed hands around the man's neck and squeezed with frightful force. The assassin's
eyes bulged wildly moments before his windpipe collapsed between Drakken's scaled hands. Blood erupted from the warrior's mouth as he fell to the floor.
The half-dragon raised gore-encrusted hands before him and nearly roared with delight. The beast, he knew, was nearly free. He could feel it straining and pounding against the doors of its captivity. Drakken cast one last contemptuous look at the piles of meat before him—and froze as he caught sight of a familiar shape around the finger of the sword-wielding assassin.
He knew at once who was behind the murder of Brother Arranoth, and the knowledge quelled the wild anger within him. Not caring if anyone stumbled upon the two corpses, Drakken bounded up the stairs in search of the murderer.
Somewhere deep within him, the beast raged!
He emerged into chaos.
Despite the late hour, gray-cowled brothers scuttled to and fro, muttering prayers to Illmater as they carried buckets of water, heavy bags filled with grain and flour, and sundry other items. Drakken even caught the glint of steel, illuminated by the soft moonlight, among several of the abbey servants.
"Scouts spotted the humanoid horde outside the abbey gates," he heard some of the brethren say to one another. Still others said, "The ores were already in the abbey cellars."
The half-dragon ignored it all, intent on his quarry. In the near pandemonium, he found it easy to slip by bands of abbey residents excitedly pursuing their specific tasks. No one accosted Drakken as he made his way to the guest house. A brief search of the guest
master's logbook revealed the information he needed. Within moments he stood before a simple wooden door. Briefly, he thought about knocking, but a memory of Brother Arranoth's face, locked in the rigor of death, flashed in his mind. The door cracked and shattered beneath his blows.
He entered the room like a whirlwind, tossing silk blankets, richly woven clothing, and stacks of ledgers in his search. He knew what he sought would have to be there somewhere. Not caring about the noise he made, Drakken began rifling through cedar chests, dumping the contents on the floor. The half-dragon's frustration mounted as the moments went by without any discovery. A cold seed of doubt began to sprout within his mind. What if he was mistaken?
And yet he kept on searching, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. Finally, he reached the simple straw bed in the corner of the room. Angrily, he tore off the bedding, sending old straw reeds spilling to the floor. He was about to crack the whole bed frame when he caught sight of a small slip of paper among the reeds. He nearly shouted with triumph as he looked at the familiar neat lines of Brother Arranoth's handwriting.
It is clear to me now that Valerix has some deeper purpose for staying at the abbey than mere commerce. I have suspected for some time that he may be a dragon cultist, but today I discovered proof. I must tell Brother Abbot immediately upon his return from the village. I only hope I am in time.
Drakken's hands nearly shook as he read the missing journal entry. Valerix ... a cultist! It began to make some sense. He would return to the abbot and—
The sound of hands slowly clapping behind him froze the half-dragon in place.
"Well done my scaled friend," the merchant's familiar voice seemed to echo in the room. "Well done, indeed."
Drakken turned to face the voice. Valerix the merchant stood in the entryway to the room, his corpulent face covered in a sheen of greasy sweat. The man's lips were pursed in a half pout.
"I see that you managed to survive the meeting with my associates," Valerix said. "A shame really, but I suppose it was to be expected."
The half-dragon took a step forward, the question already forming on his lips: "Why did you—?"
"Oh, come now," the merchant interrupted, his voice wheezing. "Surely you're not that stupid, are you? You've read Arranoth's journal. He's right. I was sent here by the Cult of the Dragon to see how things were progressing with Foilsunder—and I discovered you.
"Arranoth," he continued, waving pudgy fingers in the air, "simply got in my way."
Drakken took-another step forward, baring his teeth.
"I will kill you myself," the half-dragon nearly roared—the beast was lashing out at its cage once again.
"Ah, I might watch my temper, if I were you," Valerix lectured, a sneer evident upon his sagging face.
"What do you know of it," the half-dragon growled. His fingers twitched with the urge to tear apart the smug man's body. Drakken felt his hold upon himself weakening, and he knew with a terrible certainty that if he gave in to the rage rising within him, he would lose himself completely.
"More than you could ever imagine," the cultist replied. "The men I hired were supposed to dump another body in the cellar, murdered like Arranoth. I thought that might be enough to break you, to push
you over the edge. But when you paid me a surprise visit the other day, I knew you were getting too close."
"So you sent them to kill me," Drakken stated.
Valerix shrugged, the motion sending ripples of bloated flesh bobbing beneath his silk robe.
"It seemed like the thing to do at the time."
"And now?" the half-dragon asked.
"If you kill me, we'll still win," Valerix replied, sweat dripping down from the wide expanse of his forehead.
"How?" Drakken nearly shouted the question.
"You feel it within you, don't you?" replied the merchant. "That sweet, delicious madness. Like a fever in the blood. It goads you, doesn't it?"
Drakken took a step back, horrified by the truth in the cultist's words. The maris eyes shone with a feverish light.
"Why do you let these damned clerics treat you like a servant?" Valerix continued. "They have tried to make you what you are not. Kill them. They deserve to die. Unleash your anger. Let it go. You've kept it within you for too long."
Drakken shook his head in denial, but in his heart he knew that Valerix was right. For just a moment, he saw the broken bodies of the Ilmatari, dead at his hand. He felt no remorse or guilt, but rather a deep sense of satisfaction. Then he remembered who it was who had taken him in when he was lost and alone. He remembered, too, the fact that the man before him had poisoned the only friend he really had in the world.
The vision ended.
With a growl, he took a step toward the sweating cultist. When the man squealed like a pig being butchered, Drakken found himself smiling.
At that moment, the monastery bells began to ring.
"Ahh," the cultist blubbered, "it appears... it appears
that the ores have breached the abbey gates. You'll have to make a choice now. Take your revenge and kill me j ...or... or save your brothers from certain death." 1
The bells rang with renewed urgency, and even from | the guest house Drakken could hear the screams. He 1 hesitated for a moment, then with a roar that shook < the room, he pushed the cultist out of the way and ran toward the abbey gates.
"Farewell, my friend," Valerix called after him in a sneering voice. "I doubt we shall meet again."
The half-dragon ignored him.
When he arrived at the gates, he found the courtyard strewn with the bodies of ores, goblins, and humans alike. A group of Ilmatari were backed against a wall as a band of ores pressed in. Drakken grabbed a pitted sword from a corpse and charged forward, yelling his defiance.
The beast was fully awake inside him, all but out of its cage. Three bounding steps brought him in the midst of the ores. He swung the ancient sword with all the force of his anger. Two other blades cracked beneath the blow as the ores erected a hasty defense. With another swing, he gutted an axe-wielding ore and ducked beneath the wild swing of another opponent.
He would have cleaved the heads of two other ores except that a goblin darted forward and threw a weighted net, tangling Drakken's legs. The half-dragon stumbled slightly, giving the other ores an opening. Three glowing spears pierced his chest with enough force to knock him back a few steps.
Red rage crested through him like a vast wave, carrying his pain, anger, and madness. He let out a roar and it changed, deepened, as the Rage spilled out of him in a single acidic blast. He watched in delicious satisfaction as the band of ores before him fell back before the acid, skin sloughing off bone like melting
ice. With a strangled groan, the remaining ores fled, leaving sizzling flesh behind.
With a triumphant roar, he snapped the wooden hilts of the spears imbedded in his chest and turned to survey the foolish humans cowering before him. He was free at last! Free of their damned meddling, their concern, and most of all, their damnable prayers. He took a step toward them, ignoring the blood streaming from his wounds. With a single, painful motion he tore off the gray cloak, delighting in the feel of chill wind on hardened scale.
Another step brought him face to face with the cleric standing irt the front of the others. He wasn't cowering. The man stood before Drakken with his head held high, one arm held back as if protecting the others. Anger coursed through the half-dragon's veins.
This one, he thought, will pay for his insolence.
A single swipe of his clawed hand raked the offending cleric's face, sending him to his knees. Drakken stepped forward, intent on snapping the maris neck, but when the cleric looked up, the half-dragon saw the eyes of another old man, someone who, even in the midst of his madness, he remembered.
Time froze with that memory. He stood there with his hands poised to strike, gazing into eyes that were not simply eyes, but mirrors, reflecting his own soul.
This is not me/a voice from somewhere deep within the madness screamed.
This is you, the eyes seemed to say. And it is this that I love.
Drakken would have fled before the reality of that love, but his feet were rooted to the ground. Beneath the weight of that unyielding gaze he realized that for the past five years he had been running from himself, trying to be something that he wasn't. He looked upon the beast in all of its power, and he knew that he would
never truly be free of it if he kept trying to lock it away. He and the beast were one. In the end, all he could do was let it go.
At once, the pain of his wounds became too great to stand. The half-dragon fell to his knees before the wounded form of Abbot Meremont.
"Forgive me," he whispered as a bubble of blood appeared on his lips.
"You are forgiven, my son," the abbot said, laying a bloodied hand upon Drakken's face.
And so, on a chill spring night, with three spears piercing his heart, Drakken Thaal yielded to love and gave himself up to a mystery older even than the gods. He toppled to the ground.
Finally at peace.
HOW SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH
Dave Gross
25 Ches, the Year of Rogue Dragons
Act I
Because..." said Talbot Uskevren, his voice rising with each syllable until it echoed throughout the Wide Realms playhouse, "... we... dorit ...do... commissions!"
Mallion retreated so quickly that Ennis had to grab him before he fell backward off stage. Sivana flinched at the force of Talbot's outburst, and Presbart closed his eyes and grimaced. Not since his father's death had Talbot lost his temper so badly. He feared the worst, but a glance at the clenched fist he had been shaking at Mallion showed that his hands, at least, still appeared completely human.
Thank Tymora for small favors. His fellow players knew all too well that, despite
appearances, the leader of their troupe was never completely human. It had been over two years since Talbot had become a werewolf—far more than a werewolf—but in that time he had learned to master the change, even when the moon was full. In moments of great anger, however, it was hard not to let the black beast emerge.
Talbot opened his hands and relaxed his big shoulders. He considered apologizing but knew that would only weaken his position, morally if not legally. He remained the majority shareholder of the playhouse, so any decision was dependent upon his approval, but he did not want to lose any of his company, especially his fellow owners. They had been nibbling at him for tendays on the same matter, and he supposed that it was at last time to have it out. He waited for Mallion to speak again, since he was the instigator.
Mallion looked at Sivana for support, but she shrugged and looked to Presbart. As the eldest player in the company, one who had traveled the Realms with Mistress Quickly long before she established the playhouse in Selgaunt, Presbart enjoyed an air of authority that far outweighed his relatively few shares in the company. As patiently as if he were merely considering what to eat for supper, the old thespian stroked his mustache and pretended not to have noticed Sivana's prompting gaze.
Sivana turned instead to Ennis. The hulking player was almost as big as Talbot, but unlike Talbot's, his dim appearance was not, alas, deceiving. He looked curiously back at Sivana until a dopey smile creased his face. He loved her, as did all the company, and he would gladly support her in any argument, but Ennis would do the same for any other friend, making him useless in an argument among the players.
With a sigh, Sivana finally crossed her arms and turned back to Mallion.
"Don't look to us, my bonny lad," she said. Since the death of the troupe's former leader, the younger actress had picked up many of Quickly's quaint expressions. "You are the one who found a patron."
"W/ia£?"Talbot's voice shook the timbers of the playhouse's new roof, a creaky flat cone that shielded the open yard from the rain while leaving a ring of open space between its edges and the eaves of the original circular building. The resident tasloi shrieked and swung through the rafters to their nest in the "heavens" above the stage. Even Lommy, the diminutive father of the clan of jungle creatures, who had been listening to the discussion from the edge of the balcony, pulled his pointed green head back from view as Talbot rumbled, "I never said you could solicit—"
"Sheapproached him"offeredPresbart.
His smooth and reasonable tone blunted Talbot's ire. No one could shout back at the distinguished player of kings and high priests, but Talbot raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"It's true!" insisted Mallion. "She liked what she had seen of our performances this spring. In fact, she specifically mentioned your role in AzounP
"It's true," said Sivana.
Her hair was just coming back in from having shaved it for their previous production, but she had already dyed it grass green, perpetuating the eternal speculation on her original color.
"And just what did you tell her about our policy?" said Talbot.
" 'We don't do commissions,'" Mallion replied, not quite mocking Talbot's tone, which was fortunate for him, Talbot thought.
"Good," said Talbot. "Great! Then it's settled. Let's get back to work."
He hopped down from the stage and went back to
the stack of lumber they had bought to repair the roof. Since the rainproof enchantment over the previously open roof had expired, the shareholders built a conical shelter over the yard rather than pay the wizard's exorbitant fee. Unfortunately, they had since learned that the constant repairs and the need for continual flame spells to light the stage were almost as dear as the spellcaster's price.
"But why is that?" asked Ennis,
Despite his thirty-odd years and three hundred pounds, Ennis sounded like a querulous child when perplexed.
"Why what?" said Talbot.
"Why don't we do commissions?"
Talbot laughed, but soon he realized he was the only one laughing. The other players were staring at him with their arms crossed, their eyebrows raised.
"We all know why" he said, moving the lumber from the ground to the stage so as not to look his fellows in the eye. "You tell him, Sivana."
Sivana sniffed and said, "Well, I might once have said it was to preserve our reputation, but considering what everyone in Selgaunt is saying about Azoun and The Rose...."
"Never mind that," said Talbot. He didn't appreciate the reminder that the past few productions at the Wide Realms had become fodder for the most vicious gossips among the nobility. While The Uninvited Rose was indeed a hackneyed comedy that made none of the players proud, Talbot was pleased with Azoun, a tragedy in which he had finally played a title role. Unfortunately, the critical tongues of the gossips were sharper than the fangs of the wyrm that had slain the king of Cormyr.
"There are plenty of other reasons," Talbot said, nodding affirmatively at Ennis. "Tell him, Mallion."
"Tell him what?" said the actor. He had just passed thirty years and was beginning at last to look his age. In truth, Talbot was often jealous of the older actor, whose good looks and natural talent made him the obvious choice to play the lead in most plays. "I can think of no reason not to accept a commission when our treasury is so poor and attendance dwindles by the day."
"What's the matter with you? It is a matter of artistic integrity!" insisted Talbot. "We can't have some dilettante hiring our troupe to satisfy his own vanity. Presbart agrees with me. Don't you?"
Presbart made a study of his fingernails, but as it became increasingly clear that the others would not look away from him, he sighed and said, "It would be far easier to take your part, dear boy, if I had dined somewhere more elegant than a street cart this month."
"If we wanted a life of security," said Talbot, "we'd all be coin-counters, wouldn't we? The player's life is full of adventure, and sometimes that means a few lean months. Listen, even after buying these supplies, there's still a little left from my shares. Maybe it's time for a summer bonus all around."
"It's not about the shares, Talbot," said Sivana. "You and Ennis spend more time repairing the playhouse than rehearsing with the rest of us. It's beginning to tell in the shows—even the fight scenes."
"That's true," said Ennis.
Talbot thought immediately of a once-thrilling fight that had degenerated into unfunny slapstick in their last performance of Azoun.
"Shut up," he told Ennis.
He winced to hear himself snap. There was no point taking out his irritation on Ennis, of all people.
"She said she chose us because she liked you as Azoun," said Mallion.
"She said that? Exactly who is this worn-?" Talbot smelled a rat. "Say, if you think a little flattery will change—*
"That's what she said," said Sivana." 'He is the very image of a king,' I think were her words. Believe me, we were as surprised as you are."
"She did not even appear to be drunk," offered Mallion.
"Maybe she fancies him," suggested Ennis, grinning.
"Well," said Talbot, "I suppose it couldn't hurt to hear her out before explaining to her that we do not accept commissions."
"That's the spirit," said Sivana.
Mallion clapped Talbot on the arm and said, "You won't regret this."
Act II
She arrived just after dawn, when Talbot was the only one left awake in the playhouse. Talbot had spent the night finishing the thrones intended not for the actors but for guests willing to pay a premium price for a seat directly on the stage, where everyone could see them. It was a custom that had lapsed since the days of Mistress Quickly's management, and he hoped to parlay a few days of his labor—and the vanity of his fellow nobles—into enough hard currency to pay for the next production's costumes.
Lommy had wrangled his brood back up into their nest after they had spent the wee hours leaping from rafter to rafter, practicing by instinct the locomotion they would have needed had they been born in the jungles from which their parents had been stolen. While Lommy served as one of the troupe's favorite clowns, his mate, Otter, and their offspring were the only permanent residents of the Wide Realms
playhouse. And as long as Talbot had a stake in it, they would be welcome there. All night long, the nocturnal creatures had kept him company with their chatter as they bounded through the playhouse. They were already more facile with human language than their pidgin-speaking sire, but with their mother they communicated only in the clicks and shrieks of their kind.
After they had quieted, Talbot set aside his hammer lest he keep the youngsters awake. He was debating between scoring the leather upholstery and staining the wood when he felt the hair on his nape rise. He had learned to trust that feeling since the Black Wolf awoke within him, and he tensed as he turned to face the main entrances.
He smelled her before he saw her. The scent of her body was dry, warm, and spicy, with a hint of some foreign incense, but he realized instinctively that she wore no perfume but her own natural musk.
When he saw no one at either of the ground floor entrances, Talbot looked up to see her standing on the mezzanine. The woman stood so still that at first she appeared like a statue over which someone had thrown a dark crimson cloak. Even from thirty feet away, he could feel the warmth of her body, and the morning gloom did nothing to diminish the luster of her hair. It might have been a wig of gold wire as the ladies of the Old Chauncel fancied, but its strands were far too fine and light where they floated above her shoulders like wheat chaff soft-lifted by a summer breeze.
Talbot realized he was sweating, and some invisible force broke over him like warm air in the cool, damp morning. Whatever the nature of the woman's aura, it made his body yearn toward her even as his most primal intuition tickled at his brain to flee. She was powerful.
"Mnomene," she said.
Talbot gaped, realized he was gaping, and shut his mouth.
"My name is Mnomene," she clarified. "You are Talbot Uskevren, the playwright?"
No one had ever called him a playwright before, at least not outside of a joke. He had never written a complete work by himself, for the Wide Realms typically purchased its plays before adapting them to their particular strengths: sword fights and broad humor. It had given the troupe an unfortunate reputation: "As actors, they are excellent fighters," was the common jibe. While the other players winced at the backhanded compliment, Talbot was secretly pleased that his fellows had become, under his tutelage, nearly as famed as Master Ferrick's students of the blade.
"Yes," he said. "I am he."
Mnomene stepped closer to the railing, and Talbot saw that she was smiling. He blushed, thinking her smile aimed at his self-consciously correct grammar, but he could not look away from her golden skin, smooth and flawless as a fresh-minted coin.
"You are the man I need," she said, and his next heartbeat was a prayer to Sune that it was true. Mnomene, however, turned immediately to business. "Craft me a tragedy to break a miser's heart, perform it each night for three rides, and I will match your receipts for the duration."
It was a good offer. Even with poor attendance, a guaranteed match of receipts would do much to recoup the year's losses. His previous protests all but forgotten, Talbot almost agreed at once, but years of his father's unwelcome lessons had left an indelible impression on his brain. No matter how hard he had striven to avoid the fate, his parentage demanded that he would always be, in part, a coin-counter.
"Match the receipts for a full house," he said. "Plus expenses for all costumes, sets, and props. And we will discuss the details."
It was Mnomene's turn to gape. She recovered smoothly, smiling down at Talbot with an expression of dawning respect. He noticed then that she was very tall, and her neck was as long and as elegant as a swan's.
"I will guarantee half the house," she countered. "And I must approve all of the costumes, sets, and props if I am to cover their cost. Also, you must always reserve the finest seat in the house for my guest."
Talbot nodded as he walked toward the base of the gallery. The edge of the mezzanine rail was twelve feet from the floor, but he leaped straight up and over it to land on the wooden floor. One of the advantages of being the Black Wolf was that he enjoyed all the beast's strength even in human form, but he was disappointed to see neither surprise nor particular admiration for his stunt in Mnomene's expression.
"You will be wanting plenty of fight scenes," he said hopefully.
"If you think that will draw a bigger audience, then by all means," she said. "I want the largest possible audience, and for word of the play to travel far and wide. The details I leave to you, so long as you craft the drama around this scheme." She handed a roll of vellum pages sealed with gold-flecked red wax.
Talbot accepted the scroll and broke the seal. His fingers tingled as he unrolled the pages and scanned the outline. As he read, Mnomene perched upon the mezzanine rail, graceful as a bird upon a branch. Each time Talbot glanced up to see her watching him, he felt a warm flush upon his face. Nonetheless, he could not resist continued glimpses.
"This has... potential," he said at last.
"It needs an artist's touch," said Mnomene. She slipped down from the rail and put a hand on his arm.
"This King Krion," he said. "He could make quite a tragic hero."
"No," said Mnomene. "Do not try to make a hero of him. He is a miserly old fool, blind to the qualities of his offspring."
She did not raise her voice, but Talbot felt the heat of her body rise as she gripped his arm with surprising strength. He realized she was taller than any woman he had ever met, only a handspan shorter than he.
"That may be, my lady," he said. "Yet an audience must find something sympathetic about him, or the play will not move them."
Mnomene hesitated, considering.
"They must be moved," she agreed. "But they must see his greed, too, and know that he is wrong to withhold his treasury from the prince and princesses."
"Well," said Talbot, "it would help if the children were not all so innocent. Perhaps if two of them schemed to inherit his fortune alone, leaving the other with nothing..."
She frowned at the suggestion but then slowly nodded.
"That could do, so long as the youngest daughter remains true. She must be our heroine."
Talbot looked down at her, finally feeling comfortable enough to smile as he might at a pretty barmaid.
"The youngest daughter, is it?"
Mnomene pushed back and released his arm, but then she offered her hand and said, "We have a bargain?" - Talbot imagined how Mallion would triumph at the news of his hasty capitulation to a situation he had so fervently opposed. It occurred to him that he had been smitten by Mnomene's beauty, but no one could say he
had not made a fair bargain with her. He took her hand and felt its iron grip match the strength of his own.
Act III
Sivana spun through the air and hit the floor rolling until she slammed into the stage-right pillar with a bone-crunching impact. Above her head, Perivel's sword shook on its pins where it hung as one of the set's permanent decorations. The massive blade Talbot inherited from his great uncle was far too dangerous to use in a stage fight, but Talbot kept it there both as an impressive decoration and as a handy weapon in case serious trouble ever returned to the Wide Realms.
Sivana glanced nervously up at the monstrous sword, rubbed her shoulder, and said, "Take it easy, big fellow!"
"Sorry," moaned Ennis, holding his quarterstaff gingerly, as if it had suddenly become hot to the touch.
Presbart took it away from him.
"Tal!" shouted Presbart. "We need you down here. This choreography needs work."
"The problem is not with the choreography," muttered Mallion, rubbing his chin with the back of his hand.
A bruise was already forming where Ennis had clipped him earlier. Behind Mallion, two junior players clutched their elbows.
Ennis slumped his shoulders and hung his head. He had been exceptionally clumsy ever since meeting Mnomene. It was worst when she was present, but even a day after her last visit to consult with Talbot, her aura lingered, inspiring almost all of the actors to greater fervor. Everyone wished to please their new patron—everyone except the tasloi, who scurried into
their nest above the stage whenever she arrived, and Presbart, who became uncharacteristically quiet in her presence. The old actor had even seemed ready to protest the commission—a futile gesture, once Talbot and any one other shareholder decided to support it—until he saw the coffer full of gems she offered as initial payment on the work.
Talbot looked down from the upper gallery, where he had made a desk between the benches so he could work in the fresh air near the gap between the roofs. Throughout the rehearsal, he had paid scant attention to the battle scene in which the king's disgraced but loyal retainer fought the soldiers of the treacherous prince and princess. Usually Talbot's greatest pleasure was in directing those scenes, but for the first time he found himself absorbed in the text.
When he saw that no one was bleeding or unconscious, Talbot waved his quill absently and said, "You take care of it, Mallion. This dialogue between Krion and Nesme needs more work."
"Come on, Tal," complained Sivana. "You have been saying the same thing about every scene with them. It's good enough, which is more than I can say for this battle."
"It is rather good," said Presbart.
That got Talbot's attention, since Presbart was notoriously critical of any text they performed, even those bought from real playwrights.
"I think Tal just wants any excuse for more 'story conferences' with Mnomene," said Ennis.
His grin evaporated when he saw Sivana scowling at him and hefting a practice sword, vengeance in her eyes.
Tal set aside the quill and spilled sand upon the page he had been writing. "Very well," he sighed.
He stood up and stretched until the bones in his neck popped. Then he spun down around the support beam to land on the mezzanine rail, from which he leaped out in a somersault to land in a swashbuckling posture on the stage.
Applause from a lone viewer came from the ground entrance. All of the other players turned to see Mnomene approach, but Talbot had scented her moments earlier.
"What a show-off!" Sivana stage-whispered.
Talbot's heightened senses no longer fooled any of the regular players.
Talbot shot Sivana a glare. Yes, he had been showing off, but he did not want it to be so obvious, especially to Mnomene.
"Welcome, my lady. We did not expect you until tomorrow," he said. "Unfortunately, I have not finished with the revisions."
"That is quite all right," she said, gesturing gracefully to the gallery above. "Are they upstairs?"
"Yes, but they are not ready to—" Before he could finish, Mnomene had already levitated up to the gallery to land gracefully beside his makeshift desk, where she began perusing the new pages.
"I told you she was a sorcerer," whispered Mallion.
Talbot shrugged. His brother was a sorcerer, too, though no one had known it until recently. His own family members were so far beyond eccentric that Talbot practically expected anyone who entered his life to be some sort of magician, monster, or otherworldly visitor.
He didn't even wonder which one Mnomene might be as he looked up at her reading the pages. He hoped only that she would approve of the additional changes he had made. They were not exactly what she had requested the last time they'd conferred.
"All right, troupe," said Talbot, turning back to the assembled players. "Let's figure out this fight. I am the seneschal this time. Ennis, watch me."
They drilled for half an hour as Mnomene read. Try as he might, Talbot could not help glancing up to the gallery for some indication of her reaction. Her face was a study in stoicism as she read through the new fourth act and went on to the conclusion. Once Talbot saw her hand rise involuntarily to her mouth, as if she found something shocking. He knew at once what she had read, and he turned back to the fight work lest she catch his eye.
Talbot turned over the seneschal's role to Ennis, who got it right the first time. They did it again, faster, and faster again. As the rest of the company joined in by twos and fours, Presbart and Talbot walked away to view the scene from the groundlings' view.
"Nice," said Presbart.
Talbot nodded and said, "She was just the inspiration we all needed."
"Maybe to you," he said, "but she is much more of a distraction to the rest of us. Do you not realize what Ennis needed today?"
"Just an example," said Talbot.
"That is correct," said Presbart. "But not of the sword play."
Talbot looked down at the neat little man. To be fair, he was not particularly little, but everyone at the playhouse except Ennis—and Mnomene—seemed small since Talbot's late, and continuing, growth spurt.
"What are you getting at?" Talbot asked.
"When Quickly led the troupe," said Presbart, "she was more than just our employer. She was like a—"
"Pardon my intrusion," said Mnomene. She had floated down from the gallery too quietly and too
quickly for Talbot to smell her approach. "Perhaps you can explain why you have given all of Nesme's lines to this fool character."
"I think I hear my dear old mother calling," said Presbart, holding a cupped hand to his ear and retreating to the stage.
"Well," said Talbot, "it seemed to me that the basic problem between Nesme and Krion is that they never tell each other what they truly feel."
"Go on."
"So if she is the one who explains that she loves him, how can we believe that he continues to refuse her?"
"Because he is a greedy old man who does not admit he is wrong!"
"Right!" said Tal. "But why is he wrong? What goes wrong between them?"
Mnomene frowned and said, "Nothing goes wrong between them. He is the only one who is wrong. It is all his fault."
"But that makes him just a bad king, a bad father. In your outline, he was a great hero once. There must be something of that greatness still in him, only his children cannot see it."
"But he can't see that they love him."
"That is it exactly! He cannot say the things he feels, nor can Nesme unfold her heart to him. That's why the fool is there to tell him the truth, only he cannot believe it, since it comes from the mouth of a jester."
"So..." said Mnomene, "by the time he realizes the truth..."
"It is too late," said Talbot. "Because she has died first." "What?"
Mnomene shuffled the pages to find the final scene.
"Oh," said Talbot. "I thought you'd finished it."
Her eyes widened as she read the final pages. "You killed her!"
"You said you wanted something 'to break the heart of-'"
"No, no," she said, her finger tracing the dialogue down the final page. "You were right. This is terrible. I mean this is perfect. Let me see this scene."
"Well, Presbart hasn't read it yet."
"Then you play Krion."
"Oh, no," said Talbot. "Presbart is the better choice, I assure you."
"These are your words, are they not?"
"Well, mostly," said Tal. "Yes. The others always add-"
"Then it is decided," said Mnomene. "Just as you played Azoun, I want you to play King Krion."
Act IV
Presbart did not object to trading the role of king for that of fool. In fact, the entire company seemed smugly satisfied that Talbot had taken another title role, and he might have wondered why if he didn't spend every waking hour practicing his lines and revising the text. Rehearsals continued for another month, and soon the junior players took it upon themselves to boast in fes-thalls and taverns that audiences could look forward to something special with the new production.
King Krion opened with only half the house filled, a respectable showing compared to the past year's attendance. But by the third night the gatekeepers had to turn away more than fifty people, including nobles willing to stand after the gallery seats were sold out. The next night, Talbot doubled the price of the gallery and throne seats, yet still they turned away nearly a hundred.
The Wide Realms had never known such success. But while the rest of the company spilled out of the playhouse each night to hold court in the Green Gauntlet or the Black Stag, Talbot remained at the Wide Realms, where he and Mnomene dissected the evening's performance over a copy of the play and a bottle of Usk Fine Old, the favored vintage of Talbot's late father.
"I still do not like to watch the torture scene," said Mnomene. "It is so repulsive! Does he really need to throw the jelly eyes to the groundlings?"
"Ah, but the reaction was perfect. I tell you, the crowd loves a little gore."
Mnomene tried and failed to suppress a smile.
"All of Selgaunt heard those screams," she said, "which is why they will be gathering at the gate by midday tomorrow."
"So, are you pleased?"
"Aye," said Mnomene.
She stared over Talbot's shoulder, toward the empty thrones on the stage still stained with stage blood. The one Talbot had reserved for her guest had remained empty every night, despite the complaints of nobles who wanted to buy it. Talbot never thought of asking Mnomene to release it. Unless he was sorely mistaken, Mnomene's play was ultimately intended for an audience of one.
By the middle of the second tenday, Talbot's mother and brother arrived to see the play. Tamlin at first pretended to be offended that his brother had not reserved him the throne seats, but then he praised the show in tones so sincere that Talbot tensed, suspecting mockery. He was surprised when Tamlin embraced him before leaving the playhouse.
"I had no idea you and father were so close," said Tamlin. "I envy you, my big little brother."
Only their sister had called Talbot by that childhood nickname, but it was the emotion in Tamliris voice that choked him up. Talbot knew that they both mourned a father he had never really known, but perhaps he had come to understand something of the man in learning the role of King Krion.
The house was filling the night Mnomene's guest arrived.
The crowd parted for him as they would for the Overmaster of Sembia, though the guest approached without herald or fanfare. His robes were more golden thread than silk, and his slippers seemed to be composed entirely of red and black gemstones, though they appeared as supple as lambskin and attracted not one fleck of mud as he tread over the damp ground. His hair and beard were silver-shot gold. Talbot recognized him immediately; he could be only Mnomene's father.
He did not pay as he passed the turnstile, but Ennis made no move to stop him. The big fellow only gaped at the imperial figure as he entered the playhouse and walked with stately assurance to the reserved seat, as if it truly was a throne. As the man sat, the hush over the playhouse was dispelled, and the typical hubbub filled the vast space.
Talbot found Mnomene peering at the man from the edge of the stage. She seemed eager and nervous.
"Your guest arrives at last," he said.
She nodded and withdrew from the stage.
"No matter what happens tonight," she said, "I wish to thank you."
"What do you mean," said Talbot," 'Whatever happens tonight'?"
"Here," she said. "For luck."
She pressed a ruby into his hand and kissed him on the cheek.
Dizzy from the kiss, Talbot hesitated as she turned to walk briskly through the backstage area toward the gallery stairs.
Shed almost escaped before he called out, "Luck for what? What's going to happen?"
Mnomene paused and looked back over her shoulder.
"I will watch from the gallery," she said. "It is best if he does not look upon me." "Mnomene!"
"Just remember, this is your house, and he is a guest here."
She gave him one last, nervous smile, murmured a word of sorcery, and vanished.
"Dark and empty," cursed Talbot.
"What's wrong?" said Sivana, emerging from the prop room beneath the stage.
She wore half of her costume and held the rest under her arm along with Talbot's kingly robes and crown. Mallion was right behind her in the garb of the prince.
"Nothing," said Talbot. "I hope."
His hope did not last long after the play began.
In the opening scene, as King Krion, Talbot demanded that his children declare their devotion to him before dispensing their inheritances. Mallion's prince honored his father's martial conquests and promised to take up his arms in eternal defense of his realm. To him Krion entrusted his armies and granted a paltry annual stipend.
"You set me to arms, sire, but arm me not," protested the prince.
Mnomene's father snorted derisively.
The elder princess, played by a pretty young actress Mallion had "discovered" in a local festhall, praised the king's wisdom and pledged tireless diligence in
overseeing justice in his kingdom. The king awarded her a magistrate's scepter and another paltry income.
"Judge them best who toil in economy, as you provide exemplar to their lives."
The groundlings hissed the niggardly advice, but Mnomene's father sneered.
"If you had matched her worth to her wits," he spat, "you should demand a return of your gift!"
At last, Sivana stood before the king as his beloved youngest princess. In response to his demand for praise, she promised love in the precise amount of the duty of a daughter, no more, no less.
"Ha!" barked the guest. "Nothing will come of nothing."
Talbot narrowed his eyes, thinking it unlikely that the man had guessed the very lines he was about to speak. He realized Mnomene's father must have observed the play before, clandestinely, and while the troupe did not object to the groundlings' reacting to the play, a heckler on the stage—especially a noble guest—could throw them.
Talbot forged again, his voice shifting almost involuntarily to mimic the guest's voice. "Nothing will come of nothing," he said, shaking a dire finger at the princess.
For the rest of the first act, the visitor said no more, but he shifted in his seat and coughed every time some character protested Nesme's innocence or implored King Krion to reason.
The trouble began when Krion banished his loyal seneschal.
"Ridiculous!" he barked, standing up to point at Talbot. "This is where it all goes inexcusably wrong. No such thing happened. Never!"
Presbart, in his motley and bells, sidled up to the man as if he were an attendant lord at Krion's court.
He had decades of experience dealing with hecklers, most of whom merely wanted to share the attention of the crowd.
"Can you not see, my lord?" he said, taking his arm to ease him back into the throne. "The king is mad!"
The visitor brushed him aside, and the other players continued, trying to ignore his outburst even as Ennis, at a nod from Talbot, changed direction in his retreat from Krion's court to stand near the belligerent guest. If he noticed Ennis's intention, the visitor made no show of it.
"Only this fool could think the wise man mad who measures his hoard against impudent, wanton youth!" The visitor strode toward Talbot, admonishing him with a wagging finger. "And whose fool are you—?" with the most casual flick of his hand he shoved Ennis away as the big man reached for his arm—"to so abuse a good father in this pitiable pantomime?"
"For a heckler," observed Mallion, edging away from Talbot, "he's pretty good."
"Be at peace, my loyal subject," said Talbot.
He was not as smooth as Presbart at such improvisation, but he had to give it a try before tossing the man bodily from his stage. He raised his prop scepter and gestured for the guest to return to his throne
Undaunted, the guest slapped the scepter out of Talbot's hand.
"Where is she?" he demanded. "Mnomene, show yourself!"
"That is enough," Talbot growled at the man. "Get out."
"Who are you to order me, you mincing imitation of a man?" He turned and called out to the gallery. "Mnomene, show yourself at once! This farce of yours is over."
"It has only just begun," cried Mnomene's voice from
the upper gallery. She was either still invisible or else well hidden. "Everyone has seen for tendays what a callous miser you are."
"Listen, old man," said Sivana, coming up behind him. "You have had your fun, but the paying customers— oof."
She flew across the stage, just missing the pillar and crashing into the crowd with half a dozen groundlings. Their laughter turned nervous, for while they loved a good brawl, they could not understand the course of the sudden improvisation.
Talbot reached for him, but the visitor was already transforming. His gold-threaded robes shrank and merged into his flesh to form metallic scales while his arms stretched up, fingers splayed and forming wide golden wings even as a new set of taloned arms grew out of his sides and his legs turned to powerful haunches.
The groundlings' laughter turned to screams, and the galleries rumbled with the sound of running feet.
The gold dragon continued growing. As he grew too tall to remain under the stage roof, he stepped out into the yard, scattering more groundlings as his wings twitched and snapped. He reached toward the gallery where Mnomene's voice had come, grabbed a support beam, and tore it away.
"Face me, child! Or I will tear apart this shack stick by stick."
"Face him, Mnomene! Face him!" yelled Mallion.
He drew his prop sword, looked at it, and threw the useless thing away before retreating from the dragon.
Talbot began his own transformation, feeling his robes tear down the back as his shoulders grew great and wide.
"Ennis, make sure Sivana's all right," he yelled while his throat was still human enough to articulate words.
"The rest of you, help everyone get out of here."
The dragon tore away the gallery railing and groped for his invisible prey. His scaly claw came away with a mass of splintered benches reduced to so much firewood. He trumpeted his anger and blasted a cone of fire into the seemingly deserted area.
"Show yourself, girl! Face me!"
"No, you great fool," roared Talbot from the stage. His voice had become a howl. "You face meV
Only the barest scraps of his costume clung to his black furred body as he stood brandishing Perivel's sword in his clawed hand. Half-wolf, half-man, he stood as tall as an ogre, his body surging with the hot power of fury. Still, even on the stage, he stood barely as high as the dragon's gleaming thigh.
The dragon hesitated when he saw the Black Wolf at his knee.
"What a curious mammal," he said. "Do not stand between a dragon and his wrath."
"Stop wrecking my playhouse," roared Talbot, leaping. "And stop stepping on my lines!"
He swung the massive sword hard across the dragon's knee, striking with the blunt of the blade. The blow sounded like the fall of a pillar in a marble hall, the report deafening the panicked few who still had not escaped the playhouse.
A huge stretch of wall ripped away in the upper gallery, and a smaller gold dragon appeared as her invisibility spell fell away. She looked fearfully at the big dragon and leaped away to fly over the houses of Selgaunt.
"You cannot escape me, rebellious child!"
For an instant, Talbot hoped the dragon would fly off after Mnomene, but the great drake hesitated, looking around at the playhouse.
"But first," he rumbled, reaching up to tear at the roof, "let us put a sure end to this despicable place."
"No!" Talbot howled.
The dragon raised a leg to kick Talbot, who rolled to the side, sprang up, and drove his sword through the dragon's foot and deep into the hard-packed earth of the playhouse floor. The dragon's bugling scream drowned out the human shrieks before it turned into fire that washed over the playhouse roof and spread over the thatching. Despite the wards against mortal fire, the thatched roof exploded into flame under the extraordinary heat.
The dragon pulled at its captured foot, but the thick crossbars pinned it to the floor. Talbot leaped up and climbed the dragon's thigh, raking his way up the golden body like a bear sharpening its claws on a tree.
"You listen to me, beast!"
The dragon snatched him up like a man might grab a mouse upon his tunic. Talbot pushed and strained against the gigantic grip, but the dragon held him fast and moved him close to his jaws, still smoldering from the heat of his flame.
"By what right in these wide realms do you command me, little wolf?"
Talbot felt his own rage rising like fire within his breast. He could surrender to it, let the fury consume his mind until he burrowed like a badger through the dragon's hand then toward the furnace of his heart to seek vengeance, or die trying. Instead, just as his humanity teetered on the brink of savagery, he remembered Mnomene's last words to him, and he chose one last gambit as a man.
"I am your damned host," he shouted. "You have endangered my fellows, terrorized my patrons, and ruined my house. You, sir, have abused my hospitality!"
The dragon gnashed his jaws and snapped his snout closed. He snarled, hissed flame through his teeth, and squeezed Talbot so hard he felt his ribs grind together.
The dragon stared so hard at the little mammal in his hand that Talbot thought he might burst into flames under that gaze. At last, the dragon thrust Talbot down upon the stage and released him. As embers from the burning roof drifted down, the great dragon bowed his head.
"Perhaps..." said the dragon. "Perhaps I have been a bit rude."
Act V
Krion—as Talbot had come to think of the dragon-muttered a few grudging excuses and flew away the moment Talbot removed the sword from his foot. Talbot imagined the dragon was chasing after Mnomene once more, and he hoped he would catch up to his daughter in another city—any where but Selgaunt.
He stood alone in the smoldering remains of the Wide Realms, long after the fire brigade had left. He counted his blessings as he accounted the losses. The calculation was simple: Of the playhouse, total ruin. The foundations that survived the fire were not worth saving. Any rebuilding would have to begin from the ground up, and even the coin from King Krion was insufficient to begin such a grand project.
On the positive side of the tally, and more than a little miraculously, no one had died in the conflagration. Lommy and family had fled the moment they smelled Krion arrive, but they were homeless, as was the troupe. Even mounting a new production of the popular play would be only a tiny first step toward rebuilding the Wide Realms. Innkeepers always kept fifty percent of the receipts, and they could accommodate only much smaller audiences.
If nothing else, Talbot thought, he learned that he, with a little help from his fellow players, could write
a play that would "break a miser's heart"... or at least really, really irritate him. More than that, though, Talbot had written a play that spoke to all sorts of people, from the groundlings to the snootiest members of the Old Chauncel, all while finally coming to grips with his own feelings about a father to whom he had said far too little in the time they had left.
"I suppose I should apologize," said Krion.
His nostrils full of smoke, Talbot couldn't smell the dragon approach. Krion was once more in human form, but he had given himself far more modest garb.
"Nothing says 'I apologize' like fifty thousand five-stars," said Talbot, estimating the amount he would need to begin rebuilding.
"That is a handsome sum," said Krion. "No doubt, were I to subject myself to your human laws, you might extract it from me through your courts. I have never understood how you mammals equate treasure with civility. As I said, I apologize "
Talbot did not correct him, and he tried not to entertain any notions about other ways in which he might extract the coin from the dragon. Even at his most furious, he was not insane enough to think that even the Black Wolf was a match for a gold dragon.
"I have had a notion," said Krion. "One that might serve us both in the long term. While the content was of dubious value, this notion of a play intrigues me."
"No," said Talbot.
"Now that you have had some experience with the collaborative process, and with a more mature patron guiding the story...."
"Oh, no," said Talbot. "If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times."
"I am certain that your audience will appreciate my story of a monarch much abused by his ungrateful children."
"We...don't... do..."
"With that great big sword of yours," said Krion, "you did cut a rather kingly figure." "Did you really think so?" "Let's talk terms." "Fifty thousand fivestars." "Bah! Twenty."
"Plus another twenty for my assurance not to revive King Krion."
"What? That's extortion!"
"No, that's an annual, renewable stipend."
"You drive a mean bargain, wolf," said the dragon.
"Thank you," said Talbot. "I learned it from my father."
BEER WITH A FAT DRAGON
Don Bassingthwaite
Late Tarsakh, the Year of Rogue Dragons
The caravan moved slowly down the dusty slope and into the oasis, the sinking sun at the riders' backs throwing long shadows across scrub trees and coarse grass. Tuigan women watched the riders from benches outside round, felt-covered yurts while children raced about in the fading heat of the day, running alongside the caravan's horses, pack mules, and ox carts. A few of the caravan travelers laughed and threw trinkets to the boldest children, but Tycho Arisaenn threw smiles toward the watching women. Especially the pretty ones.
A young woman with a delicately squared face and the rich bronze complexion of the steppe tribes gave him a smile and lingering glance in return. As the caravan coiled to a stop beside one of the stones that marked the
long route of the Golden Way east across the Endless Wastes, Tycho grinned at his companion.
"Only the women at home, Li!" he crowed. "The men must be out raiding!"
"It's strange they wouldn't leave some men behind to guard the oasis." Kuang Li Chien tilted back the broad straw hat that had shaded him from the searing sun and scanned the oasis. His face darkened. "Mother of dogs," he muttered. "I know where we are. I remember this place from my journey west."
Tycho followed his gaze. Beyond the yurts of the Tuigan, an enormous pavilion sprawled on the edge of the muddy pond that was the oasis's heart. A large figure—a man as fat as any Tycho had ever seen—was just emerging from the door flap, one thick arm raised in greeting.
"Well met, thirsty travelers," he bellowed in a voice that carried across the entire oasis. "Come! Come and drink at Ong's tavern!"
"Tavern?" As the rest of the caravan let out a cheer, Tycho looked to Li. The Shou's expression was glum. "Li, we haven't seen anyplace that called itself a tavern since we left Almorel on the Lake of Mists. What's wrong with a tavern?"
"Look after your horse," Li said, sliding out of the saddle, "then come with me. You'll see what's wrong."
--QER—»
Tycho stepped through the door flap of the pavilion and was immediately engulfed by fetid warmth. The main chamber of the makeshift tavern was already crowded with the guards and passengers of the caravan. Some sat at rough tables, others on rickety chairs, but most lounged against heaped cushions of indeterminate age and color. All of them held
vessels—earthenware mugs, waxed leather drinking jacks—and drank and laughed with a vengeance. Many of the women of the oasis were there as well, a few serving the tavern's customers, but many customers themselves, gathered in clusters to talk or around tables to play some boisterous game involving rune-carved bone tiles and a number of knives.
"Hoil" shouted the women around one table.
They snatched up cups and drank. Their knives, striking the tabletop in an intricate rhythm, didn't miss a beat.
Charcoal braziers added to the heat. Fat dripped, sizzling and popping, from long skewers of meat onto the hot coals, the heavy smell of it fighting a valiant battle with the odors of smoke and bodies. Soot and grease from the braziers left a shiny coating on the fabric of the pavilion's walls. High in the folds of the roof, long strands of black grease swayed like noxious icicles. Stained carpets covered the ground, though they might have supported a small garden on the dirt mashed into them. Tycho's foot came down in a wet spot where something had been spilled and simply left to soak in.
Tycho turned and glared at Li as the Shou followed him in.
"Sweet chum in a bucket, Li! Are you saying you don't like this place because it's dirty?"
Li shifted, as if longing for the heavy dao saber he had left back at the caravan's campsite, and said, "I don't like it because it's the most foul drinking house I have ever seen."
"Then I'll look forward to seeing the wine shops of Shou Lung. They must all be scrubbed out every night and painted fresh every morning."
He took a deep breath, savoring the smell of grilling meat and—
"Beer!" he gasped. "Blessed Lliira, a break from that foul horse milk drink the Tuigan make!" He captured two mugs from a passing serving woman and thrust one at Li. "Drink!" he ordered and drained his mug at a gulp.
The beer within was thin, sour, and studded with tiny, soft chunks that lodged against Tycho's throat and threatened to make him gag. Li gave him a gloating smile.
"Millet beer," the Shou said casually. "Brewed by the tavernkeeper in big goat skin bags."
"Pagh." Tycho stared at the residue that clung to the bottom of his mug and said, "It tastes like the goats are still inside them!"
"Here, here," boomed a loud, deep voice, "who's giving away my secrets?"
A heavy hand fell on Tycho's shoulder and spun him around. Tycho stared up into the face of another Shou easily as tall as Li, but plump where Li was lean and smiling where Li was dour. It was the big man who had greeted the arriving caravan—and almost certainly the tavernkeeper. Tycho bent low.
"Honored master Ong," he said in Shou, "my humblest apologies—"
Ong waved him to silence.
"My beer is terrible," he replied cheerfully. He held up a pitcher. "Would you like some more?"
Tycho blinked, then laughed and held out his mug.
"Bad beer gets better the more it's drunk!" he said and toasted Ong when his mug had been refilled.
The tavernkeeper turned to Li.
"Countryman?" he asked, lifting the pitcher.
Li shook his head and replied, "I learned my lesson last time."
Ong's smile, almost impossibly, grew even wider. "A return guest," he said. "I thought I recognized
you. Let me see..." he closed his eyes in concentration. "A warrior and a servant of the imperial bureaucracy unless I misjudge your stance. Your voice has the sound of Keelung in Hai Yuan province—one of the silk families of Keelung, I think." Ong opened his eyes. "Kuang LiChien."
Li's eyebrows rose.
"Your memory is impressive."
Ong shrugged.
"A tavernkeeper's trick." Ong glanced back to Tycho and said, "Now you speak Shou with the accent of Ch'ing Tung province, hut if you come from Shou Lung, I'll drink my own beer. You have the look of someone from Faerun's near west, but your accent eludes me. Your voice is excellent, however, and I'd wager that you can sing more than a little."
"Tycho Arisaenn of Spandeliyon in Altumbel," said Tycho with a grin. "If you'd like a song, I'd be happy to oblige." He slid the chunky wooden body of a strilling around on the strap that held it slung across his back and plucked one of the instrument's strings with his thumb. "Though," he added casually, "it's the custom in Altumbel that a bard drinks for free as long as he plays."
"Ancestors bless Altumbel!" roared Ong. "I've often said it's the most civilized nation of Faerun! Come in, come in!" Wrapping thick arms around both men, he drew them farther into the crowd. "My usual singer is away at present—gone raiding with the other men of the oasis, the ungrateful dog!"
"We'd noticed the scarcity of men around the oasis," Li said. "Aren't they afraid to leave their wives and children unprotected?"
"The men of this oasis have a fierce reputation," Ong explained as they squeezed past a lounging cluster of merchants from the caravan. Ong freed Tycho from his
embrace long enough to slosh beer into their mugs. The merchants cheered. Ong raised his pitcher in acknowledgment, then swept Li and Tycho along. "No other ordu or bandit gang would dare raid this oasis for fear of reprisals—though if you were to suggest that to one of them they'd run you through."
"They don't like to admit they're afraid?" asked Tycho.
"They don't like to admit they're afraid of men of flesh and blood," Ong replied, nodding back toward the door flap. "Local tales say that a powerful spirit dwells in the water here and the Tuigan will do almost anything to avoid offending it. It means they have some strange taboos but it also means—" He spread his arms wide and proclaimed loudly—"that there isn't a safer oasis in all the Endless Wastes!"
A mixture of travelers and local women shouted their agreement. Tycho looked toward the door flap.
"Is there really a spirit in the water?" he asked.
Li groaned and said, "No."
"But what if-?"
"No. No investigating, no exploring," Li said, shaking his head as Ong raised one eyebrow in an unspoken question. "Tycho has an unerring ability to find trouble."
Tycho glared at his friend.
"And Li," he said to Ong, "has an uncanny ability to ignore anything at all interesting!"
Ong slapped his arms around both of them once more, drawing them close.
"Curious or dull," he murmured, "don't question the Tuigans' beliefs. They take them very seriously."
Tycho gave him a disappointed look and asked, "Have you ever seen this spirit?"
"So long as I am among the Tuigan," said Ong, "I have no doubt that it exists. And if you have any sense
beneath your curly hair, neither will you." He clapped them on the shoulders and stood back. "Now I believe there was talk of a song?" He reached to refill Tycho's mug again, but his pitcher was finally empty. "No matter," he said and called out, "Ibakha!"
A young Tuigan woman with a full pitcher of beer in her hand—the flirtatious young woman Tycho had seen as the caravan rode into the oasis—came pushing through the crowd. His disappointment vanished as she stopped at the sight of him. Maybe things wouldn't be so dull after all. He gave Ibakha a wink and another smile.
An older woman caught the gesture. In an instant, she was at Ibakha's side, snatching away the pitcher and delivering a few sharp words that made Ibakha flush as red as a bad sunburn. The young woman vanished into the crowd, while the older stalked up to Tycho, Li, and Ong. The pitcher she shoved at Ong, but her anger she unleashed at Tycho in a rush of Tuigan-accented Shou.
"You stay away from Ibakha, Faroon. She is betrothed." She slapped Tycho in the center of his chest and repeated, "Stay away from her!"
She stomped away. Tycho stared after her. After a moment of stunned silence, Ong cleared his throat.
"I apologize for Chotan. Did I mention that the most significant reason no one would raid this oasis is that everyone is afraid of the women?"
"Really?" Tycho rubbed his chest and winced. "Have you wondered if maybe the men go out raiding to get away from them?"
Ong howled with laughter and poured him fresh beer from the pitcher.
"Play, master bard, and if there's anything you need, just ask any of my women." He grinned and added, "Except perhaps Chotan."
He rolled away into the crowd, greeting each of his customers in turn. Li stared after him.
"There's something I don't like about our host," he said.
"He's friendly, Li," said Tycho with a grin. "You should try it sometime."
He set his mug on a nearby table and settled the butt of his strilling against his shoulder, then undipped the bow from the strap and drew it across the instrument's strings.
"Olare!" he called as faces turned at the sound. "Who wants a song?"
"—but hearts or gold," sang Tycho, "my swag must be sold, because I am—
He lifted his bow and swept it through the air.
"—the king of piiiirrates!" roared the crowd. Tycho ended the song with a flourish and leaped down from the tabletop to applause and ringing cheers. He grinned at Li as he wiped sweat from his face.
"You know," he said, "I think even the Tuigan women enjoyed that."
"And they probably don't have any idea what a pirate is," commented Li. "The pond outside is likely the largest body of water most of them have ever seen."
He sipped cautiously at his millet beer. Tycho laughed, then clipped his bow to the strap of his strilling and slid the instrument around against his back. He reached for his mug. It was empty.
"When did I finish this?"
"Sometime between The Thayan Pox and A Dwarf Went Delving" said Li.
Tycho looked around. With the music finished, many of the caravan travelers were leaving to stagger back
to their bedrolls, though the fearsome women of the oasis were still drinking and playing their game of knives. Pretty young Ibakha was nowhere to be seen, probably sent home for her own protection. There were other serving women almost as pretty, though. Tycho caught the eye of one and gestured with his mug. She boldly sauntered over.
"More beer, FaroonV She didn't wait for a reply before filling his mug. "I am Chaka."
"I'm Tycho," he said. "Faroon—what does that mean, Chaka?"
She grinned and replied, "It's the land where you come from, isn't it?"
"Faroon... Faerun." Behind him, Tycho could hear Li snorting derisively at his flirtations. He ignored Li and said, "Your Shou is very good. Do you all speak it?"
"Ong insists on it. He teaches us. He thinks it's a more proper language than Tuigan." Chaka bent close. "You sing very well, Tycho. Maybe tonight I could teach you to sing a Tuigan song."
Her breath smelled of sweet spices. Tycho smiled
"Maybe I could sing a little song just for you, Chaka"
He cupped his hands over hers and sang a ripple of music. As he sang, he reached into himself, focusing his will through the music. Between his fingers and Chaka's, a fragile form took shape. He lifted his hands away to reveal a pale, delicate flower. Chaka stared at it.
"Magic," she breathed.
"A little," Tycho said modestly. "A beautiful flower for a beau—"
"Magic!" squeaked Chaka. She dropped the flower as if it was spider and jumped away from him. "There is no magic in the oasis! You'll offend—"
She clamped her mouth shut, but her eyes darted toward the tavern's door flap and the water beyond.
"The spirit?" Tycho asked in disbelief. "Magic offends the water spirit?"
Chaka gave a little nod. Tycho cursed the Tuigans' taboos silently and stood up, reaching for her.
"Chaka, I didn't know! It was nothing, just a little trick."
"No!" she yelped and started backing away.
Other people—other Tuigan women—were starting to look toward them. Surly Chotan was already heading in their direction, a storm of a scowl brewing on her face. Tycho took another step toward Chaka.
She turned around and darted through the crowd, vanishing through another flap in the fabric walls and deeper into the pavilion.
"Faroonl" yelled Chotan. "What did you do to her?"
Tycho cursed out loud. Li sighed and stood up.
"How do you manage this, Tycho?" he asked.
"I don't know," he said as he patted Li's chest. "You hold off Chotan. I'll go find Chaka before she gets everyone upset."
He dashed after the frightened woman before Li could do more than sputter and Chotan squawk in outrage.
Beyond the flap, the back rooms of Ong's pavilion were much like the back rooms of any tavern Tycho had ever crept through: small, jammed with stored goods, and dark. Very dark. Tycho cracked his shin against something low and hard, and swallowed an exclamation of pain. Unlike other back rooms, the walls that separated him from the rest of the tavern were literally no thicker than a good carpet. He could hear Chotan berating Li, and closer to hand the suddenly ominous rhythm of falling knives in the women's game.
"Hoi!" shouted the women.
Their cry covered a muffled yelp as Tycho tripped
again. Should he risk more magic and Chaka's fear or maim himself in the darkness?
"Damn water spirit," he muttered, and fished in a belt pouch for a coin.
Clenching it in his fist, he sang a spell. Light leaked out between his fingers—not much, but enough to keep him from stumbling. Playing the faint illumination across the floor, he edged forward.
"Chaka?" he called softly. "Chaka, come out. It's all right."
There was no movement. He crept on. The back room was larger than he expected, and divided up by thin hangings. Chaka could have ducked through or under any of them. Tycho stuck to what seemed to be the largest of the back chambers, stepping quietly around an assortment of boxes, barrels, and sacks. The sounds of the tavern, muffled by the fabric walls, faded to a background murmur. Tycho cursed silently. There was no sign of Chaka. Maybe she had slipped into one of the side chambers after all. Maybe she knew of another door flap he had missed and was no longer even in the pavilion. He clenched his jaw.
Don't worry about it, he told himself, you've talked yourself out of much tighter situations than this!
He started to turn back to the main chamber of the tavern.
"Ah, my beauty! You grow more lovely with each passing day."
Ong's voice. Tycho froze, wrapping his fist tight around the glowing coin and choking off its faint light entirely. In the darkness, he could see an even fainter glow that leaked from a side chamber where the fabric of the hanging wall was rumpled by a box pushed against it. There was no passage to the chamber here—the entrance must have been from one of the other side chambers.
A woman's voice answered Ong in Tuigan and Tycho heard the tavernkeeper click his tongue in gentle reprimand.
"Speak Shou to me, my lovely."
The woman giggled.
"As you command, tremendous one!" she said saucily.
Tycho didn't recognize the woman's voice, but it was soft and musical, like the little bronze bells that the Tuigan women wore on their jacket cuffs. He grinned to himself. What woman of the oasis had Ong charmed into his arms? More importantly, what woman was worth tempting the wrath of a husband or father for a dalliance? He stretched out on the ground and wiggled forward to peer under the hanging.
His eyes went wide.
On the other side of the hanging, carpets and furs and rich eastern silks had been piled up into a kind of bed. Ong sprawled on the pile, his shirt open and his broad belly hanging out. Lounging beside him and rubbing his belly, her beautiful face illuminated by the soft, clearly magical glow of green glass globes, was Ibakha! Ong kissed a finger, then pressed it to Ibakha's lips.
"Are you teasing me?" he asked. Ibakha shook her head and replied, "You, O protector? Never!"
Her fingers paused and Ong gasped as she tweaked a hair.
"Perfidious wench!" the Shou growled. "Do you think that familiarity will protect you from a dragon's wrath?" He forced his voice deep so that it rolled in his chest. "My rage has wiped villages from the face of the world and carved canyons through mountains. I have become a man for you, and your beauty is all that stands between your people and my anger! Do you dare to displease me?"
"Never, great guardian of the oasis, never!" gasped Ibakha in mock fear, then lunged into Ong's arms with such force that they both rolled off of the heaped carpets.
Tycho stifled his laughter as he wriggled back away from the peep hole and stood.
"Ong has what?" exclaimed Li in disbelief. "He's seduced Ibakha."
Tycho leaned back. The main chamber of the tavern was growing empty. They were the last of the caravan travelers in the tent and only a few of the oasis's women, playing one last round of the knife game, were left. A pitcher of millet beer had been abandoned on the table—Tycho drank straight from it. '
"He's told her that he's the water spirit of the oasis incarnate," Tycho added, "the sly dog!"
Li scowled and said, "I knew there was something I didn't like about him! When he said the Tuigan would do anything to avoid offending their spirit..."
"I don't know if Ibakha really believes her people will be punished if she doesn't keep Ong happy," Tycho said, "but she does believe that the guardian of the oasis has fallen in love with her. I could see it in her eyes." He tapped one finger under his own eye. "Believe me, I've told enough stories to women myself to know the look."
"It's still wrong."
"Ha!" Tycho took another drink from the pitcher. "Where's Chotan? I'd like to know what she'd say about this!"
"Gone," said Li. He nodded toward the door flap. "Possibly to organize the women into a mob to hunt you down. She found the flower you made for Chaka and
it vanished while she was holding it. She knows you worked magic in the oasis."
"Ong should hope-she never finds out about the magic lights he has back in his love nest then. He's probably breaking Tuigan taboos with every step." Tycho chuckled. "But I guess he doesn't need to worry. After all, if he's the water spirit, he's the source of them!"
"Hoi! Hoi! Hoi!"
The last women finished their game with a rousing cheer and a final swallow of beer, then rose and swaggered out of the tavern. Li's eyes followed them.
"I think," he said grimly, "that Ong should be careful. I wouldn't want those knives turned away from the gaming table."
"Shhh!" Tycho hissed, kicking him under the table.
Li winced but Tycho flicked his eyes toward the back of the chamber. Ibakha was stepping out from the flap ¦ that led to the back rooms. She saw them and blushed a deep red. Her eyes darted to the floor and stayed there as she rushed out of the tavern. A few moments later, Ong emerged from the back rooms as well. If he was startled or if he saw Li's glower, he hid it well.
"Still here, my friends?" Ong called. He came over and joined them at the table, producing a mug and holding it out for Tycho to fill. "You'll have a hard ride tomorrow if you linger too long, I can guarantee that."
"I've traveled under worse conditions," Tycho said. He tapped the pitcher against Ong's mug in a toast. "To good health and bad beer. Tell me, Ong, how does a Shou come to run a tavern at an oasis haunted by a Tuigan water spirit?"
Ong drank a mouthful of beer, wincing as he swallowed, and explained, "Through a tragic disagreement. Offend the wrong powers in Shou Lung, Tycho, and you can find yourself exiled to—well, to such a place
as this." He waved a hand around them. "Still, it's possible to make the best of a bad situation. This is a good oasis. It's safe, the water is good, caravans stop here fairly frequently—"
. "The men leave their women in the care of the oasis spirit when they go raiding," said Tycho, fighting to hold back a grin.
Li just grunted in distaste. Ong's cup hesitated briefly in its journey back to the tabletop. He glanced at each of them.
"The women can take care of themselves," he said, cautious.
"No doubt they can," Tycho replied, "so long as they don't displease the—"
It was too much. He tried to give Ong a knowing smile, but as soon as his lips even twitched, the grin he had been fighting broke out across his face like a riot. He clapped a hand over his mouth, trying to keep his laughter from bubbling out as well. Beer slopped out of the pitcher as he rocked back and forth. Ong's eyes were narrow. Tycho shook his head and lifted his hand away from his mouth.
"I'm sorry, Ong," he gasped. "I was in the back looking for Chaka and I saw you and Ibakha. It's just..." He choked off another chuckle. "Well, you saw how Chotan reacted to my just smiling at her!"
He reached across the table to pour Ong more beer.
The Shou put his hand over his mug.
"No," he said.
Tycho shook his head.
"Don't worry! It's your business, not mine!" He raised the pitcher to Ong and added, "But you're a clever one, taking advantage of the Tuigans' own superstitions!"
"The Tuigan are no more superstitious than they should be," said Ong. He reached out and pulled the pitcher from Tycho's hand. "You should go now."
Tycho stared at his empty fingers then at Ong. The tavernkeeper looked back with a flat expression. "Ong..." he began. "Get out."
Tycho could feel blood rush to his face, but Li was the first to move. The Shou pushed his chair away from the table sharply and stood up, leaning forward with his fists on the tabletop.
"Your tavern reflects your soul," he said in distaste, "and both offend me. I don't find this so amusing as Tycho does. I'll leave with pleasure. Perhaps I understand now why you were exiled from the Great Empire."
Ong scowled and said, "Or perhaps you do not. Are all the sons of Kuang so rude?"
Li's breath hissed between his teeth and his hand reached for the sword he hadn't worn. Tycho jumped up.
"Whoa! Easy!" he said, hands held between the two Shou. "Easy, both of you. This is-"
"Oh, be quiet!" Ong snapped. He jerked his head toward the door. "That is the way out. Go, take this ill-bred dog with you, and never foul my presence with your flatulent singing again!"
Tycho stopped and turned slowly to glare at Ong, meeting him harsh gaze for harsh gaze.
"If my singing is flatulent, then I guess no one will listen when I break wind with a new song." He gave Ong a thin smile. "What do you think, Li?" he asked over his shoulder. "The Water Spirit's Lie?"
"For a song," said Li, "it smells very good."
For a moment, Ong regarded them with narrow eyes, then rose slowly from his seat. His massive chest rose and fell with deep, slow breaths.
"If you will not leave on your own," he growled, "maybe you will leave if I take you outside myself!"
"Outside?" Tycho spread his arms. "If you want to try something, O great guardian of the oasis, try it right here."
"It's bad enough when customers break up my tavern," Ong grumbled as he stepped around the table and walked to the door flap, holding it aside for them. "I don't want to do it myself."
Li passed though stiffly, as if the tavernkeeper were invisible, but Tycho spat at Ong's feet as he passed. Outside, the night air of the steppe was cool and still. On the other side of the oasis, the caravan lay silent, the shapes of carts, beasts, and sleeping men indistinct in the moonlight. Nearer to hand the yurts of the Tuigan settled into similar silence as the women of the oasis finally took to their beds. A few paces from the pavilion, Li turned and dropped into a disciplined fighting stance, his hands up and open. Tycho, however, stripped off his strilling and loosened the sleeves of his shirt, stalking back and forth and swearing angrily under his breath.
"Are you sure you're ready for this, you lying barrel of lard?" he called.
Ong let the door flap fall closed behind him and turned around.
"Why," he asked, "would you assume I was lying?"
He took a step forward. The foot that left the ground was human. The foot that came down was not.
"Blessed Lliira," gasped Tycho.
"Mother of dogs!" cursed Li.
Toes twice as long as Tycho's fingers, each with a membrane of webbing stretched between them and tipped with a thick claw, dug into the hard ground. The creature's hind and forelegs were short, like a crocodile's, but its body was long and sinuous. It reared back on a whiplike tail, and a neck almost as long and thin arched against the night. Scales glittered blue-green
on the creature's back, glossy yellow on its belly—a belly as unmistakably fat as Ong's.
Do you think that familiarity, Ong had asked Ibakha, will protect you from a dragon's wrath?
In a streamlined, wedge-shaped head that carried pearl-white horns and thick whiskers of red and gold, Ong's angry eyes stared down at them.
"Perhaps," he said in a deep, rolling voice, "you don't understand as much as you think you do."
His fat chest swelled with breath.
The rushing sound of air struck terror through Tycho like a cold sword. With a yelp of fear, he hurled himself to the side—and straight into Li. They slammed into the ground together. Tycho managed to twist around just in time to see massive jaws gape wide. Fire? Ice? Poison? He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the agony of the dragon's breath.
Except that instead of agony, the dragon's breath enveloped him in gentle coolness. He opened his eyes to thick mist and heavy drops of water falling on him. He touched his cheek.
"Rain?" he breathed.
Li's hand clapped over his mouth. Tycho could just make out his friend's face as he scanned the gray darkness overhead.
Somewhere above, something moved. Tycho caught a brief glimpse of a long body writhing through the air—Ong had no wings, but he flew like a snake crawling along the ground—then it was gone, vanished in the mist.
"Honored ancestors watch over us," groaned Li, releasing Tycho.
Tycho wiped water from his eyes. The rain was beginning to come down harder.
"He flies without wings, he breathes rain clouds," the bard choked. "What kind of dragon does that?"
"A chiang lung a dragon of the east, guardian of rivers," said Li. He kept his gaze on the darkness overhead, one hand raised to shield his eyes from the rain. "Ong really is a water spirit, Tycho!"
"He didn't look very spiritlike to me!"
"Lung dragons aren't like the dragons of Faerun. They're mandarins of the Celestial Bureaucracy. They hold posts assigned by the lords of the spirit world."
"He's a bureaucrat?" Tycho hissed
"An angry bureaucrat who could kill us with a swipe!" Li snapped. He scanned this mist. "Where is he? What's he doing?"
From somewhere across the oasis, muffled shouts penetrated the mist—the travelers from the caravan, though it sounded like they were shouting more in wonder at the rain than in fear at a dragon soaring through the night. Ong was hiding in his own rain clouds, Tycho realized. The caravan couldn't see him. He and Li were the only ones who knew what danger they were in.
"He's toying with us!" Tycho cursed. "Li, we have to get to the caravan! There's enough of us together to make a stand!"
He whirled around, groping along the muddy ground for his abandoned strilling.
His fingers closed on wet wood just as Li shouted, "Down!"
From the corner of his eye, Tycho saw mist billow as a long shape came rushing down from the sky. He didn't wait to see more, but just threw himself flat in the mud. The wind of Ong's passage howled cold along his back and the lash of the dragon's tale caught him, sending him tumbling across the crowd like a toy. He ended up on his back, gasping for air.
Ong was climbing again, gaining height before making another pass. Rage and terror lurched in
his belly but Tycho sang out desperately, hurling a discordant note after the vanishing dragon. Magical sound, strong enough to knock a man off his feet, blasted through the clouds and rain. Ong just laughed, a deep chuckle of grim amusement. The clouds opened and rain poured down in heavy curtains. Tycho's guts churned. His magic wasn't enough even to shake the dragon!
The noise of the spell had, however, brought cries of alarm from the unseen caravan. At least they knew something was wrong. Tycho half-staggered, half-slid along the wet ground to Li. The Shou was as muddy as he was.
"The caravan!" Tycho shouted at him over the sound of the rain. "Which way?"
"Here!" Tycho called as he swung around. Human shapes loomed in the darkness. He bit back a yelp of surprise.
"What have you done, Faroon?" snarled Chotaris voice.
A hooded lantern slid open. Its light turned the shadowy clouds to glowing mist, but Tycho could see Chaka, Ibakha, and all the other Tuigan women as well. Many of them were clutching knives.
"Close the lantern before he sees the light!" he urged frantically. "It's Ong—he's a dragon!"
"Of course he is!" spat Ibakha.
"Hold your tongue!" Chotan screeched. Tycho blinked and Li stared, but Ibakha stood tall and proud. Beside her, a wrinkled old woman rolled her eyes. Chotan glared at the old woman. "Khui!"
Khui gave her a suffering look.
"Enough jealousy, Chotan!" she said as calmly as if they were standing around a campfire. "We all have to move aside eventually."
The old woman's Shou was flawless, better than Chotan's or Chaka's. Tycho's mouth fell open.
"Y-you..." he sputtered. The women of the oasis turned to stare at him. "But..."
"You truly understand nothing, Tycho Arisaenn."
The night air stirred and a wind blew down from above. It pushed aside the rain clouds, clearing an eye of calm before the pavilion though mist still cloaked the rest of the oasis. Tycho and Li stared up as Ong eased his bulk down to float protectively over the women, moonlight and lanternlight combining to flash over his scaly hide.
"You stand on the threshold of the east but still think that you are in the west," Ong continued. "This is no longer Faerun!"
Li made a strangled noise in his throat. Ong's head dipped down until it swayed level with the Shou's.
"And you, son of Kuang. You presume to judge me?" he snarled. His head thrust forward. Tycho could smell his breath—it carried the wet scent of mud, mist, and green leaves. "I have spoken no lies tonight! I am an exile, three hundred years condemned to the westernmost post of the Celestial Bureaucracy by powers greater than you can imagine. Once I was the spirit of a mighty river. Now I am guardian of a sluggish pond, my reach bound by an oasis!"
Tycho swallowed.
"Well," he said weakly, struggling to force back his terror, "I guess that would explain why you've gotten as a fat as a lord."
Ong reared back and roared at the sky, the sound of his voice like thunder rolling across the oasis. Out of the silence that followed, new sounds rose: terrified bleats and bellows of frightened animals, shouts of fear and panic from the caravan.
"Ong!" warned Khui. "They'll know you're here!"
Ibakha gasped. Even Chotan looked worried.
The dragon's jaws ground together.
"Three hundred years," he snarled at Tycho and Li through clenched teeth. "Three hundred years of hiding like a beast, unable to reveal myself. The love of my Tuigan beauties sustains me. The tavern that you so despise, Kuang Li Chien, is my connection to the world. To lose either would be true condemnation. In jest or in truth, I will not let you take them from me!"
Three hundred years of hiding, unable to reveal , myself.
Ong's words fluttered like butterflies against Tycho's fear. That the dragon might be discovered had frightened the fearsome Tuigan women. Even at the height of his rage, Ong had hidden himself in clouds before turning against the men who had angered him.
Tycho's eyes went wide even as Li spread his hands and said desperately, "Great one, neither of us will ever speak of this. By the honor of my ancestors, I swear it!"
"My apologies to your ancestors," Ong growled back, "but I cannot take that chance."
His jaws parted and he lunged forward.
Tycho grabbed Li's shirt and jerked him back and through the door flap of the tavern as Ong's teeth snapped together like a hundred knives only a hand-span in front of them. They stumbled to the soiled carpets of the tavern floor, the door flap falling closed behind them. The fabric shook with Ong's anger. Li stared at it, his face pale. Tycho dragged him to his feet.
"Li, he can't leave the oasis!"
Li's eyes blinked, then focused on Tycho.
"Whatever powers forced Ong into exile here won't let him leave the oasis," Tycho explained urgently. "That's why he's afraid of being discovered—caravans
would avoid the oasis if they knew a dragon occupied it, and warriors would just keep coming after him until he was dead. I bet that's why the Tuigan have a taboo against magic in the oasis. Magic could ferret out Ong!"
. Li flung up his arm and cried, "Tycho, we're still stuck in a tent! A tent won't keep out a dragon!" "But it will keep him busy!"
Outside, Ong was shouting, his voice changing as he spoke, dwindling from the roar of a dragon to the bellow of a man. The Tuigan women were shouting too. Tycho forced the thought of their flashing knives from his mind. He pulled a dagger from his belt and shoved it into Li's hands.
"Get to the back of the tent and be ready to cut us a new door!"
Li swallowed and ran for the back of the pavilion. Tycho muttered a desperate prayer to whatever deities might be watching and grabbed at the iron leg of a brazier. The hot metal seared his palm, but he choked back the pain and dumped the coals out onto the nearest pile of cushions. He didn't wait to watch the smoldering embers take hold of the fresh tinder, but just ran after Li toward the back of the tent, knocking over every brazier he could.
"Tycho!" shouted Ong.
Tycho whirled around. The fat dragon, wearing his human shape once more, stood in the door of the tavern, flap clutched in his hand, and women crowded behind him.
All of them were momentarily frozen by the sight of the flames rising in the tent.
To lose either women or tavern, Ong had said, would be condemnation. Tycho's music might not have been strong enough to harm the dragon directly, but that didn't mean it couldn't affect him in other ways.
"How about one last song, Ong?" Tycho yelled. He reached inside himself and sang, light ripples of music that hissed and crackled on the air. He sang to the fire.
From within the flames, something answered. Glowing embers rose and shifted like eyes, staring first at Tycho then shifting to Ong. Flames gathered together into a form the size of a child and tendrils of fire reached out. Ong's eyes flashed with anger.
"A fire elemental? You attack a lord of water with a puppet of fire?"
The elemental's tendrils brushed the walls of the tent, which burst into flame. It moved across the carpets and they too burned.
"Who said I was attacking you?" called Tycho. He spun around and plunged through the flap into the back of the tavern. "Now, Li!" he screamed.
Over the crackle of flames and the howls of the dragon, Tycho heard cloth tear as Li opened a rip in the wall of the tent. The fire gave him just enough light to see. He dived through the tavern's new door hard on Li's heels, and kept running-
"Are you sure that will get us enough time?" Li gasped as they raced through the rain.
"Ask me again after we've made it out!"
Behind them, women were shouting and Ong was roaring. A strange liquid rush rumbled through the night, followed by the long hiss of an extinguished flame. Tycho bent his head and ran harder.
The caravan that came straggling along the Golden Way in the morning light was a good deal more subdued than the one that had entered the oasis the night before. All eyes turned—some with wary suspicion,
some with outright fear—to the two figures that waited in the meager shadow of the marker stone. Li nudged Tycho as the caravan approached.
"Mother of dogs!" he breathed.
Tycho looked where the Shou pointed.
Chotan and Ibakha rode alongside the caravan—on Li's and Tycho's horses. As they drew close to the marker, they jumped down, letting the horses walk on their own. Both women glared at the men.
"We have a message for you," growled Ibakha. She flung a Tuigan knife into the ground at Tycho's feet. "Ride the Wastes with care."
Tycho swallowed and said, "Is that a message from Ong?"
"No," said Chotan. "It's a warning from the Tuigan." "And Ong?" asked Li.
"He sends his respect for your fast thinking—and reminds you that even exiles have friends." The grin she gave them was vicious and eager. "Enjoy Shou Lung, Faroon. You ride with a dragon's attention now."
They turned and walked back down the trail toward the oasis. Li and Tycho stared after them.
THE PRISONER OF HULBURG
Richard Lee Byers
1 & 2 Mirtul, the Year of Rogue Dragons
His leather cloak rattling in the cold night wind, Pavel Shemov hurled his god-granted power against the pale, twisted things hovering around the sailboat. First, assuming them to be a product of sorcery, the priest tried to wipe the gaunt, translucent figures from the air with a counterspell. Next, suspecting them to be spirits of the dead, he tried to burn them away with a blaze of conjured sunlight.
Nothing worked. Every second, more phantoms oozed into view, whispering obscenities, pawing at their prey. At first, Pavel had been unable to feel their touch. Then it had become a slimy brushing. Soon, he reckoned, the specters would be substantial enough to hurt a person.
The three-man crew realized the same thing, and panic-stricken, yammered and flailed ineffectually at the phantoms.
A child-sized figure among the humans, Will Turnstone shouted, "Ignore them! Put in to shore!"
The halfling might as well have been a mute for all the good his exhortations did. An apparition raked at Pavel's forehead. The attack stung, and blood dripped down into his left eye. Across the deck, specters ripped the flesh of sailors, or assailed the boat itself, clawing at the timbers.
"Dive overboard!" Pavel shouted.
It was their only chance. He cast about for Will.
Swinging his curved, broad-bladed sword, the half-ling slashed one glimmering assailant to fraying ecto-plasmic tatters and sidestepped the talons of another. He was holding his own, but it couldn't last. There were just too many phantoms.
Pavel dashed forward, snatched up his friend, and leaped over the side. As he splashed down in the frigid waters of the Moonsea, he invoked the magic of his enchanted cloak.
The folds of the leather mantle expanded into rippling, pulsing wings to propel him through the depths like a manta ray. He could breathe like a fish as well. The water was cool in his lungs.
Will squirmed in his grip, pointed upward, and he realized that though he could breathe, his comrade couldn't. He surfaced warily, but found he'd swum far enough to evade the apparitions. They remained intent on the sailboat and its immediate vicinity.
Pavel carried Will on to shore, then swam back to look for the sailors. By then, the wraiths had disappeared, and unfortunately, the mariners and boat had, too. Nothing remained but drifting planks and other flotsam.
Will crouched and hid in the shadow of a stand of brush, then waited, shivering, his heart still pounding, for Pavel to return. At last the lanky, handsome cleric reared up from the shallows and waded onto the pebbly strand.
Will was relieved to see his friend, but it wouldn't do to show it. It would violate the spirit of their perpetual mock feud.
The half ling straightened up and sneered, "Nice job out there on the boat. It's good to see your magic is as useful as ever."
Though plainly upset at the slaughter of the crew, Pavel made the effort to answer in kind: "At least I had sense enough to flee when the situation became hopeless. What were you trying to accomplish by standing and fighting? That was idiotic even by your standards."
"The spooks piled on me—obviously, they knew which of us posed a threat to them—and I had to cut my way clear. You might want to fix that scratch on your brow before what passes for your brains leaks out."
"Right. I forgot all about it."
Pavel recited a prayer to his patron deity, Lathander, lord of the dawn, sketched a sacred symbol on the air, and his hand glowed with a red-gold light. He touched it to the cut, and the wound closed.
Will ripped up some grass and wiped his exquisitely balanced hornblade, as such oversized halfling swords were called, and asked, "So what happened out there?"
"I don't know," Pavel admitted. "Obviously, something uncanny attacked us, but it didn't feel like conventional magic, or spirits, either."
"Which leaves...?"
The human shook, his head and answered, "At this point, all I know is, we've seen how the Zhentarim are destroying 'unlicensed' ships and caravans."
"But we were sailing a stolen Zhentish patrol boat," said Will. "We were supposed to be safe."
"Apparently that trick has stopped working."
"No, really? You think?" The half ling sighed. "What do we do now?"
"Well, at least we made it almost to Hulburg before the Zhents spotted us." Pavel pointed to the ruined city farther up the shore, a vague mass just visible in the dark. "Let's find a safe place to rest, then start our explorations in the morning. We can worry about how to get back to Thentia when the time comes."
For centuries, war had plagued the Moonsea, laying waste to town after town. Hulburg was one such casualty. Twenty-five years past, the Zhentarim sacked the port. The wilderness was well on its way to reclaiming it. Animals laired amid the rubble of crumbling houses, while grass, brush, and small trees choked the streets. At least, Pavel thought, it meant a fellow didn't have to look too hard to find breakfast. He picked berries, taking care to avoid the long thorns protecting them, and handed half to Will. His curly black lovelocks bedraggled from the dunking they'd received, Will eyed the fruit askance.
"What's this, a prank to give me the runs? They're green."
"It's spring, cretin," said Pavel. "Naturally, they're green. They're still edible."
The halfling chewed one up and swallowed it, grimacing the while, and said, "Why did I ever leave Saerloon?"
"Because your thieves' guild, showing excellent judgment, decided to kill you. Look, if you don't want the berries, give—"
"Hush!" Beckoning for Pavel to follow, Will darted into one of the decaying houses. The thatched roof had fallen in, but skilled hunters both, they nevertheless managed to traverse the floor without their steps snapping and crunching. They hunkered down behind a window and peered out.
Pavel understood what was going on. Will had heard someone, or something, coming. It wasn't necessarily a threat. They'd assumed they might find a few people still dwelling among the ruins, inoffensive farmers or fishermen most likely. But it seemed wiser to find out for sure before revealing themselves.
Pavel scowled when four men-at-arms tramped into view, chatting, uncocked crossbows dangling in their hands. Each wore the somber trappings of a Zhentilar soldier, with the Black Network's dragon-and-scepter emblem emblazoned on their tunics.
Once the warriors had drifted on past and out of earshot, Pavel said, "Do the Zhents know we survived? Are they hunting us?"
Will snorted, "Of course not. Those soldiers weren't expecting any trouble. It was a routine patrol."
"If so, it means the Zhents have taken control of Hul-burg. But why allocate troops to occupy a ruin? There's nothing here anymore."
"Could they be looking for the same lost knowledge we are?"
Pavel shook his head and replied, "I don't see how. They don't have Sammaster's notes. But even so, with Zhents prowling about, it's going to be difficult to explore the ruins unmolested."
"No fooling."
"Curse it, anyway! How many are there, where are they camped, and what are they up to?"
"Seeing as how I'm the scout," Will answered, grinning. "I guess I'd better find out."
A battered castle, its crenellated ramparts stained and jagged as a beggar's teeth, overlooked the harbor. As soon as he caught a glimpse of it, Will surmised the Zhentarim had set up shop there, and when he spotted the black-clad sentries walking the battlements, he knew he was correct. Two vessels, a war galley and a patrol boat, were moored at one of the sagging docks below.
Will turned and skulked on, through streets overgrown with weeds and littered with rubble, slipping from one bit of cover to the next. Until, at the juncture of two lanes, he heard approaching footsteps. He squatted behind a horse trough and peeked around the side.
A freckled, snub-nosed youth, his Zhentish uniform too loose and short on his gangly limbs, slunk by with many a glance back over his shoulder. Will inferred that the lad had slipped away from the castle without permission, to shirk work or scratch a carnal itch in private.
Will pulled the warsling from his belt, glad that oil and enchantment had kept the leather supple despite its immersion the night before. He rose and let fly.
The polished skiprock hit the Zhent in the back of the head. An expert marksman, Will would have been astonished if it hadn't. The only question was whether it had done more harm than intended, some skulls being more brittle than others. As the youth pitched forward, the halfling darted forth to check him.
It was all right. The warrior was still breathing, and any damage short of death, Pavel's prayers could reverse.
Pavel could also do something else that Will couldn't accomplish. He could haul the ungainly bulk of a fellow human away before some other Zhentilar discovered the youth lying unconscious in the street. The halfling ran to fetch his friend.
"We're running a risk," Pavel said. "What if somebody misses him?"
"The longer you dawdle," Will said, "the more likely that is. So get on with it."
Pavel had carried the youth into a shadowy derelict shop and set him on the dusty floor. Will then tied the prisoner's hands and feet with strips of cloth cut from his tunic. The soldier still lay motionless where they'd secured him, the hair on the back of his head matted with blood.
It struck Pavel that the wretch didn't look much like the popular notion of a vicious Zhentilar. Maybe he wasn't. Perhaps he was just a callow lad the Black Network had conscripted into its forces.
But even if he was, Pavel and Will still couldn't afford to be gentle with him. The Zhentarim garrison posed too great a danger, and their mission was too important.
Pavel murmured a prayer. His hand tingled with warmth and radiated a rosy light. He pressed his palm to the wound in the Zhent's scalp, and the gashed skin twitched as it knit itself back together. The captive gasped and jerked away from his touch.
Will pounced on the Zhent and pressed a dagger to his throat.
"Don't call out, and don't struggle!" the halfling snarled. The soldier froze.
"That's good," said Will. "Now, we're going to ask you some questions, and I recommend you answer truthfully. Do you see the sun amulet hanging around my partner's neck? He's a priest of the Morninglord, and he's going to weave a spell that will alert him if you lie to us. If you do, I'll cut you. Understand?"
"Yes," the youth wheezed.
Pavel murmured and swept the talisman through a mystic pass, pretending to weave an enchantment. He couldn't really utilize the magic Will had described, because, unable to anticipate that he and his comrade would soon be interrogating a prisoner, he hadn't requested that particular spell when praying for his daily allotment at dawn. But the Zhent didn't know that, and thus would fear to dissemble.
Pavel gave the youth a cold stare and asked, "Why is the Black Network occupying this empty place?"
"Please," said the youth, "if I betray them, they'll torture me to death."
Will shifted the knife. The Zhent gasped and flinched away as best he could with his limbs bound and the halfling holding onto him. A drop of blood slid down his neck.
"If you don't cooperate," said Will, "I'll do the same right now."
It was another bluff. Will and Pavel weren't torturers. But the Zhent had no way of knowing that, either.
"I swore oaths to Bane," the soldier pleaded. "If I break them, then, after I die, he'll rip my soul forever."
"No," said Pavel, "he won't. Renounce the Black Lord, run away from the Zhentarim, find a decent way of
living, and he'll have no power over you. I give you my word as a servant of the Morninglord."
"So," said Will, "you can die today, or have a second chance. What's it going to be? Decide fast, I'm getting bored."
He flicked the knife, making a second superficial cut.
The Zhent cringed and said, "All right! Ask your questions."
"I already asked one," Pavel said. "Why are you here?"
"To protect the dragon."
Pavel and Will exchanged glances.
"What dragon?" the half ling asked.
"He's called Vercevoran," said the Zhent. "Somebody said he's an emerald dragon. He looks like he was carved out of a big, green jewel."
"Oh, blessed powers!" Pavel exclaimed.
"What?" asked Will. "Does that tell you something?"
"The forces that attacked us on the water," said the priest. "They didn't seem like true magic, or actual unclean spirits, either. But there's another sort of power, exceedingly rare, a pseudo-wizardry of the mind. Gem dragons are among the creatures possessing such abilities, talents well suited to keeping watch over the entire Moonsea and striking at those who journey without the Zhentarim's authorization." He turned back to the soldier. "Am I right?"
The youth goggled in amazement at his perspicacity and said, "Yes."
"I don't understand" said Will. "Why would an emerald dragon help the Zhents? Gem wyrms aren't totally evil, are they? And why aren't his keepers worried about him succumbing to the Rage and running amok?"
"He's a prisoner," said the Zhent, "magically forced to serve. The spellcasters back in the Citadel of the Raven called up something special to control him. I don't know what. It keeps to itself, and walks abroad shrouded in a cloak and hood."
"Then explain this," Will said. He stalked to the doorway to take a wary look at the street outside. "The dragon's important to your masters' plans. So why keep him in Hulburg? Why not in one of your strongholds, the citadel, Zhentil Keep, or Mulmaster?"
"I think I know," said Pavel. "This one creature, mighty as he is, can't perform the task the Zhentarim have set him all by himself. The dastards need a ring of watchers linked mind to mind positioned around the Moonsea. They need a psychic hereabouts to close the circle." He smiled at the youth. "Am I correct?"
"I think so," said the captive. "I mean, common soldiers like me aren't even supposed to know, but you hear things. Vercevoran and the other slaves are all linked in a pattern that makes their minds stronger than normal."
"This is... interesting," said Will.
"And important," said Pavel. "We knew we were in peril every time we traveled. Now we know why."
"And we know how to remove the threat. Break one strand loose and the whole psychic web collapses."
"Exactly."
Will played with his bloody dagger, tossing and catching it as he mulled the prospect over.
"We could try hiking back to Thentia for reinforcements," said the halfling, "but the wyrm would probably sense us making the trip and hammer us again. Whereas you and I have already slipped in close enough to strike."
"Right. I wouldn't like our chances fighting an entire Zhentarim garrison and this shrouded demon, too, but
that's not the point. We simply have to creep in and divest them of Vercevoran." "Any thought as to how?"
"I may be able to dispel the enchantments binding him."
Will arched an eyebrow and asked," 'May?'"
"It could be tricky, time-consuming, or dangerous."
"Then how about this? We kill the wyrm. If the Zhents have taken away his free will, he may not lift a claw to defend himself."
Pavel frowned and said, "That option doesn't sit well with me."
"Me, either, really, but think about it: Jewel drakes aren't utterly wicked by nature, but they're not exactly good, either. I've heard tales of them killing folk and raiding for treasure."
"We don't know that Vercevoran has ever done such things."
"But we do know there's a Rage building. What if the wyrm's already in frenzy, with only his bonds holding him in check? What if he goes berserk as soon as we free him, and tears into us?"
"Look," said Pavel, "let's evaluate the situation when we actually reach the creature, and decide then."
"Fair enough." Will pivoted back toward the captive, who, having overheard their exchange, was gaping at them as if they were crazy to contemplate such a venture. "We need to know everything about the layout of the castle and the disposition of the guards."
The weathered limestone curtain wall provided plenty of handholds for a burglar of Will's abilities. He just wished Selune would see fit to hide her silvery smile behind a cloud. If, as Pavel claimed, the hunters
were doing the work of the deities of light, it seemed the least she could do.
Still, moon or no, people seldom saw Will when he didn't want them to, and he made it onto the battlements without incident. Crouching low, he peered about, making sure none of the sentries was close at hand, then crept down a stairway into the courtyard. The smells of wood smoke, fried sausage, and the Zhents' sanitary arrangements drifted on the chilly night air. Snoring sounded from the outbuildings along the base of the wall.
But a few of the Zhents were awake, and the spearman sitting on a bench behind the sally-port was one of them. Will spun his warsling, bounced a skiprock off the warrior's head, and the human toppled off the seat. Will dragged the bench closer to the secondary egress, climbed atop it, and slid the bar to the side.
As soon as he opened the postern, Pavel, wrapped in the black mantle he'd appropriated from their prisoner, slipped inside. He peered across the bailey at the central keep that, according to the gangly youth, held Vercevoran.
Will gave his comrade an inquiring look. Pavel nodded, and they advanced on the massive slab of a tower. In the dark, wrapped in his black war cloak, the priest hoped to pass for a Zhent if anybody noticed him at all. Will continued to trust in his thief-craft to hide him from hostile eyes.
The keep had two entrances, an imposing set of double doors on one face and a smaller one on the opposite side. The intruders skulked to the humbler entry, and Pavel tried to open it. It wouldn't budge. Will selected a pick from his pouch of thief s tools and inserted it in the keyhole.
After a moment, he whispered, "It isn't locked."
"You mean, you're too incompetent to defeat the mechanism."
"I mean, it isn't engaged. Now that I think about, where would the Zhents have found a key to this old lock anyway? The door's magically sealed, which means it's your job to open it."
The priest frowned and said, "I only have three dis-pellings prepared. I'd hoped to save them all to attack Vercevoran's bindings."
"Don't be even stupider than usual. We have to reach the wyrm, or we're beaten before we start."
Pavel murmured a rhymed couplet and swirled his hand through a pass. Power whined, and for an instant, the whole door shone with a golden light. Will winced at the commotion, but when he peered about, saw no sign that anyone else had noticed.
Pavel twisted the tarnished brass handle, and the latch clicked open. He cracked the door, and he and Will peeked inside. Will caught his breath.
The keep's entire ground floor was one big, high-ceilinged room. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been large enough to hold its prisoner. Vast and serpentine, batlike wings furled, Vercevoran lay motionless in the middle of the floor, with only the slow expansion and contraction of his chest demonstrating he was still alive. The blank, phosphorescent eyes, a paler green than the scintillant scales, stared at nothing.
Despite the wyrm's immobility, his evident helplessness, he was so imposing that Will needed a moment to take in the other features of the hall. Crystal globes atop wrought iron tripods shed the soft, steady light illuminating the captive. Limned in gold and scarlet pigments, intricate geometric designs entwined with writing radiated out from Vercevoran across the floor. The air smelled of bitter incense and the drake's own dry, reptilian scent.
"What do you think?" whispered Will.
"I need a minute," Pavel replied.
He prowled the room, examining first the glowing orbs, then stooping to inspect the figures painted on the floor.
"Well?" Will demanded.
"Patience."
"Bugger that. We're in danger, lingering here. Look, it's wizardry holding the drake, and you're no wizard. It's no shame to admit you can't figure out how to free him."
"I do know, in theory. I've studied how arcane magic works, and I understand how to pit my own kind of power against it."
"I don't want to butcher the poor creature, either," said Will, "but if we don't fix it so we can travel freely, we're never going to solve the puzzle of Sammaster's journal in time to do anybody any good. It's thousands of lives against one."
Will drew his hornblade from its scabbard.
"No. The Morninglord teaches—"
Pavel cried out and clutched at his head with both hands.
For an instant, Will didn't understand what was wrong. Then he too staggered as agony burned inside his skull. When the pain finally abated, his upper lip was wet with the blood flowing from his nostrils, and a figure stood on the stairway that ran up the wall to the higher levels of the tower.
Will had never seen anything like the creature, but reckoned it could only be the demon the Zhents had summoned to control Vercevoran. In the keep, the tanar'ri had dispensed with its cowl and mantle to reveal a slimy, burly, ogre-sized frame so hunchbacked it was natural for it to lumber about on all fours. Fanged jaws jutted beneath a protuberant brow, a long, thin tongue flickered beyond its teeth, and a sort of cage of bony extrusions ran all the way along its
crooked spine. Within that latticework glistened moist, whorled tissue like a prodigious quantity of exposed brain.
"Splendors of the dawn," breathed Pavel, "it's a cere-brilith."
"I'm guessing that's bad," said Will.
The demon knuckle-walked farther down the steps. "Who are you?" it snarled. "How did you get in here?"
Will's head still throbbed from the cerebrilith's psychic attack. But he knew he and Pavel had to shake off the shock of the unexpected assault and fight. The hal-fling leaped to the side—a sudden maneuver he hoped would startle his foe—readied his warsling, and let fly. The skiprock struck the demon in its round black eye. The cerebrilith recoiled.
"Hit it, you idiot!" Will shouted.
Spurred into motion, Pavel rattled off a prayer. The air grew warmer for an instant, and sparks of red-gold light danced about the cerebrilith's misshapen head. Will couldn't tell exactly what his friend had done to the demon, but the magic must have had some effect, because the tanar'ri let out a screech.
Amazing, Will thought, snatching for another sling stone, we're winning.
Then the cerebrilith roared, "Kill them!" Whereupon Vercevoran surged to his feet and spun around toward the intruders.
Gigantic jaws gaping, sinuous throat swelling, the emerald dragon howled. Knowing the noise could kill anyone caught in front of the wyrm's head, Will and Pavel flung themselves to opposite sides. Still, the cry shook the half ling's bones and spiked pain through his head and torso, even as it vibrated the floor, threatening his balance, and jolted dirt loose from the rafters.
Vercevoran pivoted, chasing Pavel. Reeling, the priest only barely managed to dodge the dragon's
raking talons. So long and heavy were the hooked, glittering claws that if only one of them snagged in his flesh, it could easily rip him limb from limb.
And if no one intervened, taking the pressure off Pavel, enabling him to recover his equilibrium and come on guard, Vercevoran certainly was going to rend him. Bellowing, Will cut at the wyrm's hind leg. The hornblade penetrated the shimmering jade scales to gash the flesh beneath, but not deeply. The wounds wouldn't even slow a dragon down.
They likely stung, though, and the reptile whirled toward him. The time had come to vault or somersault clear, away from its fore claws and jaws. Unfortunately, though, Will had never fought a gem drake before, and some subtlety in the way Vercevoran moved threw off his reckoning. He hesitated, unable to gauge precisely when or in what direction to spring, and in that instant, the chance was lost. The emerald wyrm lunged forward, and he had to scramble backward to avoid being trampled.
It only took a second for Vercevoran to pin him against the wall. The dragon struck at him. He sidestepped, and the enormous fangs clashed together on empty air. He riposted, but the hunting sword failed to penetrate the reptile's natural armor.
Vercevoran lifted a forefoot. Still caught against the wall, Will poised himself to dodge, and a voice whispered in his mind, commanding him to stand still. He froze, and the dragon's claws slashed in a horizontal arc.
Somehow, at the last possible instant, Will broke free of the compulsion and leaped to the side. Vercevoran's attack caught him anyway, flung him through the air, and only a tumbler's trained reflexes enabled him to roll and avert a skin full of shattered bones when he smashed down on the floor. He scrambled up and took
stock of himself. His last-ditch defensive maneuver had thrown off Vercevoran's aim just enough to save him from serious harm. The drake's claws had slashed his leather armor and cut the flesh beneath, but not deeply enough to incapacitate him. Above him on the stairs, the cerebrilith snarled in frustration.
Will didn't think the tanar'ri had any actual reason to be upset. If it could still attack despite the enchantment Pavel had cast to hinder it, then it and Vercevoran were likely to kill the intruders soon enough. It was obvious the hunters couldn't contend with a demon and a dragon simultaneously in that cramped, enclosed arena.
The only hope, then, was to change the game. Grateful that, when Vercevoran had tagged him, the blow had at least served to fling him to a spot where he didn't have his back against a wall, Will spun his warsling and slammed skiprocks into the reptile's head.
"You want me?" he cried. "Here I am! Come get me!"
He faked a dodge to the right, then sprinted toward the smaller door, which was too low and narrow for a full-grown wyrm to use. Will reached it ahead of his pursuer. He plunged through and spun himself to the side, where Vercevoran couldn't reach him. Behind him, the wyrm's claws clacked on the floor, and his tail swept from right to left. Inferring from those noises that the drake had turned, Will risked a peek back inside. Sure enough, Vercevoran was racing toward the double doors on the far side of the hall. When the dragon hit them, they burst apart as if they were made of paper.
When Vercevoran followed Will out into the night, Pavel understood what his partner had in mind. While the halfling led the dragon on a chase, Pavel
was supposed to slay the cerebrilith, then dissolve the enchantments holding Vercevoran in thrall. All this in the brief time before an old and powerful dragon would otherwise catch and kill a lone halfling.
Even though the cerebrilith was presumably still blind from the spell he'd cast on it, Pavel had no idea if he was up to the challenge, but knew he had no choice but to try. He began a prayer, reciting the words under his breath so his adversary wouldn't hear.
Then the cerebrilith vanished. Perhaps it had become invisible, but Pavel knew there was another possibility: Some demons could translate themselves instantly from one location to the next. He whirled, and standing more or less erect for the first time, shovel-sized hands poised to rake, jaws gaping, the hulking tanar'ri was right beside him. Though Pavel had blinded it, its clairvoyance enabled it to orient on him.
But maybe the blindness slowed it down. It hesitated before lashing out with its talons, and that gave Pavel time to skip back out of range, still maintaining the precise cadence and enunciation his incantation required.
Red-gold light washed through the room. A luminous mace appeared in the air, then bashed the cerebrilith as if a ghost were swinging it.
Pavel smiled. With luck, the conjured weapon would confuse and hold the demon back while he assailed it with more magic.
But the harassment didn't hinder the cerebrilith as much as he'd hoped. The tanar'ri roared, and a harsh white light blazed from its body. The radiance seared Pavel like a brand, and the agonizing heat didn't end with the flare. The priest looked down. His clothing was on fire.
He dropped and rolled. That extinguished the fire, but by the time he finished, the demon was stooping
over him. The hovering mace bashed chips from the bony spikes along its spine, but it ignored the punishment to reach for the human laying supine on the floor.
Pavel swung the enchanted mace of steel and oak he carried in his hand. Sprawled as he was, he had no hope, of striking with much force or accuracy, but somehow managed to knock the cerebrilith's big, gnarled hand away. He scrambled backward, trying to get clear.
He wasn't quick enough. The tanar'ri caught him by the leg and lifted his foot toward its stained, jagged fangs.
"Freeze!" Pavel cried.
That too was a spell, and it snagged the creature's will for a second. He kicked free of the demon's grip.
Not unscathed, however. The creature's talons had pierced his boot and the muscle beneath, and in the course of flailing loose, he tore and enlarged the wounds. When he floundered to his feet, his leg nearly buckled. It would give way if he didn't favor it.
Indeed, he hurt all over, and reckoned he was hurt pretty badly. Fortunately, he could heal himself, but he couldn't focus on that and fend off a demon at the same time. He had to neutralize the tanar'ri first, and quickly, before shock and blood loss eroded a critical measure of his strength and agility.
Commencing another spell, he backed away from the cerebrilith. The demon turned its head, tracking the movement, then vanished from beneath the pounding, luminous mace. The conjured weapon streaked forward, pursuing its target. The line in which it flew pointed to the spot where the creature had reappeared, otherwise Pavel would never have sensed it on his right flank in time to recoil to the left.
Even so, a swipe of its claws ripped his brigandine and scored the skin beneath. It hurt, but he refused to
let pain ruin his spell. He kept the rhythm, and lashed his unarmed hand through the proper figure.
Power burned in his palm, and when the cerebrilith lunged after him, he thrust out his hand and discharged it. A beam of brilliant light leaped forth and caught the demon square in the muzzle, shattering a number of its fangs. The tanar'ri stumbled, and the flying mace smashed through a section of the bony extrusions on its spine and started pulping the whorled tissue beneath. The demon fell to one knee. It lifted an arm, evidently to ward off the glowing weapon, but then the limb flopped back to the floor as if it had run out of strength.
Pavel hobbled forward to strike at the cerebrilith. It roared, startling him. Not so weak after all, it grabbed the wrist of his weapon arm and yanked him close. Its jaws spread wide, and alas, Lathander's light hadn't broken all its teeth—it still had all the dentition required to bite him to pieces.
Will knew it would only take Vercevoran a moment or two to dash around the outside of the keep. He spent a precious instant standing still, listening, until he knew from which direction the dragon was coming. Then he sprinted in the other, keeping ahead of his pursuer.
When he'd circled the tower, he dashed on toward the line of outbuildings at the foot of the curtain wall. Zhents, roused by the commotion, were scurrying from the barracks. Some spotted him, and maneuvered to intercept him. Without breaking stride, he spun his warsling. The skiprock cracked into one soldier's head, then rebounded to strike the comrade next to him. The first human fell, and the second reeled.
Then the remaining Zhents balked and peered upward, eyes wide. Will didn't need to look back to know they'd just caught sight of Vercevoran. The dragon was still on his track, and he was flying.
Something—hunter's instinct, maybe—warned Will the wyrm was about to unleash that devastating roar. He sprang, somersaulted, trying to dodge. It must have worked. The deafening bellow jolted him, but did no crippling harm. Whereas three Zhents flailed and dropped, blood streaming from every opening in their heads.
Vercevoran attacked again just a heartbeat later. Glowing white strands of some unearthly stuff writhed from the empty air around Will's body to snatch for him like tentacles. He dived and flipped to his feet beyond their reach.
Above him, something occluded the light of the moon and stars. He ran on, plunging through a doorway of an outbuilding. Vercevoran, thwarted in his attempt to swoop down on the half ling like an owl catching a mouse in its talons, landed on the ground instead, then lunged, jaws gaping. Will slammed the door. The whole wall banged and shook as the drake rammed into it.
Will cast about. The wall would only keep out a wyrm for a few seconds. His survival depended on finding another way out of that room.
There! A small, round opening intended for ventilation, high in the right-hand wall, it wouldn't accommodate a human, but a halfling might manage. Will sprang onto the desk, leaped again, and caught hold of the laths crisscrossing the hole. The wood was soft and easy to bash away. He squirmed through an instant before Vercevoran smashed down the wall behind him.
He dashed out of the narrow space between one outbuilding and the next and on through another door.
Vercevoran had caught up with him, so he couldn't run around in the open anymore. His only chance was to take cover in enclosed spaces, slipping from one to the next before the dragon crashed in on him.
Time after time, a collapsing wall or roof nearly battered him and buried him in rubble. Again and again, he only escaped a storeroom, carpenter's workshop, or kitchen in the last second before the drake burst in. Meanwhile, he was grimly aware he was running short of outbuildings.
He scrambled out a window. To his left, Vercevoran roared. The noise had a different timbre than before. Something about it made Will pause in his frantic scuttling and try to determine what was going on.
His head and forelegs inside, wings, hindquarters, and lashing tail outside, Vercevoran had jammed in the doorway of the armory his quarry had vacated mere moments before. In a matter of seconds, the wall surrounding the opening would crumble and liberate the wyrm. But for the moment he was stuck.
Will stared at the creature's flank,-at the vulnerable point so temptingly exposed, the thin spot in the scaly hide with the pulsing heart behind. If he advanced quickly but silently, he had a fair chance of landing a mortal blow.
He glided forward, then, recalling what Pavel had said, he hesitated. The Zhents had enslaved Vercevoran. He wasn't responsible for his actions.
He spat. To the Abyss with Pavel's squeamishness. Will needed to kill the dragon or Vercevoran would kill him, simple as that. He skulked onward.
Too late. The wall shattered, and Vercevoran rounded on him.
Will spun around to flee, but his legs wouldn't run. They tangled, and as he fell, he realized a psychic assault had paralyzed him.
A great weight pressed him down into the mud. Vercevoran had his forefoot on him, and for a moment it seemed the reptile simply intended to crush him. Then, however, the dragon gripped him in his talons and lifted him toward his jaws.
Pavel planted both feet on the cerebrilith's breast, exerting every bit of his dwindling strength, and braced his legs to keep the tanar'ri from dragging him to its fangs.
The cerebrilith raked at his head with its other hand. He jerked up his free arm, and the creature's claws tore it from wrist to elbow. It was better than if they'd ripped his face away.
Still, it was only a matter of time before the demon, its blindness and the trauma of its various wounds notwithstanding, landed a crippling or lethal attack. With his weapon hand locked in his opponent's grasp, Pavel needed another way to strike at it, and the knife in his belt wouldn't serve. Since it bore no enchantments, it wouldn't pierce a tanar'ri's flesh.
He started gasping out an incantation, yanked the sun amulet from around his neck, and swept it through the initial pass. The cerebrilith snatched to stop him. Somehow Pavel managed both to avoid its groping talons and complete the figure properly as well. Golden light pulsed from the pendant.
He had to drop the amulet to receive the second luminous mace materializing inside his bloody fingers. He used it to beat at the demon's head, while the flying weapon he'd conjured previously continued to hammer its spine.
The demon collapsed and sprawled motionless, acrid fluids leaking from its wounds. Pavel didn't know
which weapon had struck the, mortal blow, nor did he care. He pried his wrist from the tanar'ri's death grip.
The effort made his head swim. He was in danger of passing out. He wheezed a prayer that drew Lathander's warm, healing radiance into his body. He felt steadier, though still weary, weak, and sore. It would have to do, because he lacked the time for anything more. Will needed him.
Pavel scrutinized the glyphs on the floor. When he thought he understood them, how they interconnected and how to disassociate them, he croaked out the incantation and lashed his amulet through the proper pass.
To no effect. He could feel that nothing changed.
Perhaps that was because he didn't fully understand the bindings, but he wasn't going to comprehend them any better, not without hours of study. He simply had to try again with his final counterspell.
He drew a deep breath and declaimed the incantation with all the precision and force of will he could muster. A sweet and intricate harmonic, like a note sustained by a choir, sang through the hall. The painted words and symbols burst into flame, and the lights in the orbs atop the tripods guttered out.
Vercevoran stumbled. Helpless in the drake's grip, Will certainly hadn't done anything to cause it. Could it be that Pavel had finally set the reptile free?
Evidently so. Will had no extraordinary facility for reading what passed for a dragon's facial expressions, but still, as Vercevoran hissed and shook his head, he could see something—intelligence, maybe, or self-awareness—returning. It showed in the set of the
wyrm's jaw, the flare of his nostrils, and the narrowing of his lambent eyes.
Then those eyes blazed. Vercevoran lashed his wings, a snap like a thousand whips cracking at once, and gave a prodigious roar.
Wonderful, thought Will, he's got the Rage, and he's still going to eat me. Pavel, you jackass.
But Vercevoran didn't pop him into his mouth. Instead, the dragon wheeled toward the Zhents the halfling hadn't even noticed until just then. The chaos following on Will and Pavel's intrusion had caught them by surprise, but the officers had managed to rally the men-at-arms to sort the situation out. The reavers stood in formation, facing the wyrm, but thus far, not attacking. They were hoping they didn't need to, that Vercevoran was still under the cerebrilith's control.
The dragon dashed that hope by setting Will down, then launching himself at his erstwhile masters. He hadn't fallen into frenzy after all, but that didn't keep him from hating those who'd presumed to bind him.
Will stood back and watched the slaughter. It only took a minute or so. Then the wyrm leaped up and flew away into the night.
--9£Jd—-
Pavel reckoned he and Will had found the archives Sammaster had visited Hulburg to consult, records not scribed on paper but graven in stone. Dimly lit by the shafts of golden sunlight spilling through the doorway and the cracks in the roof, the cavernous temple of Oghma, god of knowledge, had endless lines of words and pictographs chiseled from floor to lofty ceiling on the white marble walls.
Pavel tried to feel excited, but perhaps because his half-healed wounds still ached, simply couldn't
manage it. It was going to take days, maybe tendays, to decipher all that lore and determine which parts pertained to the frenzy, if, in fact, any of it did. It was time the search could ill afford.
"What's wrong?" asked Will.
Evidently Pavel had let his demoralizing reflections show in his expression.
"Nothing," said the priest, trying to shake off defeatism. "Let's each take a wall. You'll find a lot you can't read, but just look for anything pertaining to dragons."
"What is it exactly you wish to learn?" asked a cold bass voice.
Startled, the hunters jerked around to behold a tall, thin figure clad in shades of jade and olive. The slanted eyes in the hairless, ascetic face were likewise a blank and luminous green. Vercevoran had assumed an approximation of human form to fit inside the temple.
"Brandobaris's dirk!" Will swore. "Don't sneak up on a fellow like that!"
"What is it you seek?" Vercevoran persisted.
"Information on the Rage," said Pavel. "We're trying to determine how to stop it."
"Then you're fools," the dragon said. "Nothing can stop it. Yet I owe you a debt for freeing me, so if you wish, I'll help you."
The transformed reptile stalked through the temple, scarcely breaking stride to gaze at the various sections of wall. Pavel wondered if Vercevoran could actually be perusing all that information so quickly. -
Glories of the sunrise, what manner of intellect could accomplish a feat like that?
Vercevoran pointed to a string of symbols and said, "Here. This is all there is, and it's merely the usual warning: 'When the King-Killer shines, then burns the Rage.'"
"It's not 'usual' to us," said Will. "What's the King-Killer?"
Vercevoran sneered but answered, "You don't even know that? It's a red star that appears in the sky every few centuries."
Will shook his head and said, "It's not there now."
"We already knew," Pavel said, "that Sammaster altered the elves' magic to suit his own purposes. They evidently tied this King-Killer to the enchantment, but he severed the link."
"It's a pity the undead whoreson was too impatient to wait for the star to return," the halfling said "This whole dung storm could have broken a century hence, when it would be somebody else's problem. Anyway, I guess the point is, what we just learned here is worthlesa"
For a moment, Pavel thought so too. Then he realized the possibilities.
"No," he said, smiling, "it gives us a cross-reference."
"A which?"
"A signpost, ignoramus. Something to guide us as we sift through the ancient lore. Now that we know the elf wizards drew power from the stars, we look for allusions to the King-Killer, and the heavens in general. With luck, it could save us tendays, even months of seeking."
Pavel turned to Vercevoran and said, "As could you. You've just demonstrated how valuable you could be. Let me explain exactly what's going—"
"Don't bother," the dragon said. "I don't care for the society of humans, my debt is paid, and I feel frenzy eating at my mind. I go to the Plane of Air, to wait out the Rage as my kind has always done."
The wyrm vanished, leaving only a fleeting ripple on the dusty air.