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Gaedynn disliked riding horses. He liked the animals themselves well enough, but he preferred to refrain from an activity unless he did it well. And he’d never learned to sit a horse with exceptional grace or skill. His elf captors hadn’t kept such animals, and after his release he’d generally ridden griffons.

But a griffon would have been far too conspicuous a mount for a spy, especially since griffon riders were about to start raiding Threskel. Gaedynn’s black mare and Jhesrhi’s paint gelding were the next best thing. Even in an impoverished, sparsely settled land, horsemen weren’t rare enough to attract a great deal of curiosity, and the animals would help them complete their fool’s errand and escape back across the border quickly.

He studied the terrain ahead, rolling scrub dotted with the occasional stand of trees. A cold wind out of the north made him squint and drove stinging rain into his face. Bunched, gray-black clouds and flickers of lightning suggested it was raining harder in the direction they were traveling.

He glanced over at Jhesrhi. Wrapped in a drab hooded cloak that did a fair job of hiding her shining hair, amber eyes, and the other aspects of her exotic comeliness, she could have been any commoner traveling for any mundane reason. Bundled in cloth, her staff might have been the central support of a wayfarer’s tent or even a fishing pole.

“I wouldn’t be averse to more cover,” Gaedynn said.

Jhesrhi didn’t answer. He wasn’t surprised. She hadn’t said a word since they’d set forth from Soolabax. But he was getting tired of journeying with a mute.

“Do you think we’ve crossed the border yet?” he asked, and then waited for her reply.

Which didn’t come.

“Good point,” he said, just as though it had. “There probably isn’t a clearly defined boundary. Who would bother to survey this dreary kingdom? And where would you find a Chessentan with the requisite knowledge? If they’re ignorant enough to fear magic, they’re likely deathly afraid of mathematics as well.”

He paused. She didn’t answer. He started to feel genuinely annoyed. Or perhaps concerned.

Either way, it tempted him to provoke her just to elicit some sort of reaction, even if the words picked at his own scabs too. “You know, I’ve been pondering what possessed Aoth to send the two of us on this mission. Of course, I remember what he said. I know how to uncover secrets in the wilderness and civilization alike. You’re a wizard. Together we, and only we, have the necessary skills.

“Still,” he continued, “with Khouryn headed south, this leaves the old man without any senior officers at all. In normal circumstances he would have balked at that, no matter what the object. I think sweet Lady Firehair came down from the moon and whispered in his ear. She heard you say it would never work for us to run away together, and she decided to prove you wrong.”

Jhesrhi still didn’t answer.

Now Gaedynn knew he was more worried than otherwise. He erased the grin from his face and the teasing edge from his voice. “What’s wrong, buttercup? I thought I understood why Luthcheq bothered you. By the Black Bow, I’m not even a wizard, and it bothered me too. But we’re out of there now, and you’re still upset. If anything I’d say you’re feeling worse.”

“I’m all right,” Jhesrhi muttered.

“The statue speaks! Astounding! But plainly you’re not all right. Tell me what the problem is.”

“No. You just want me to break down because you think that while I’m weak, you can take advantage of me.”

Stung, he smirked. “Can you think of a better reason?”

It was only after the words left his mouth that it even occurred to him that he could have responded differently, with something other than a jeer. But by then she’d already sunk back into stony silence.

He told himself it was for the best. For after all, he didn’t much care what she was feeling or why. Why should he? Keen-Eye knew, nobody, Jhesrhi included, had ever been all that interested in easing his distress.

The rain fell harder, and the sky darkened. Gaedynn judged it was around midday, but it looked like dusk. That was why he didn’t spot the guard outpost until he and Jhesrhi were nearly on top of it. That and the fact that there was no watchtower or bastion there, just a barricade of tangled brambles across the trail and a hole in one of the hillsides it ran between.

Gaedynn reined in the black mare. “Shouldn’t your damned wind have warned you we were coming up on that?”

“This is new country,” Jhesrhi said. “I’m still making friends with it. But I don’t see anyone. Maybe it’s abandoned.”

As if to mock her hope, two dwarf-sized figures with reptilian heads emerged from the opening. They were kobolds, specimens of one of the barbaric races often found in service to dragons.

Gaedynn grimaced. Had they detected the outpost in time, he and Jhesrhi could have ridden around it. But they couldn’t do that now without arousing suspicion.

Oh well. Like his companion, he’d disguised himself as a shabby drifter in search of nothing more than the chance to shoot, forage, filch, or—if absolutely necessary—earn his next meal. He expected to put the deception to the test many times before his mission was through, and he supposed this might as well be the first.

He kept one hand on the reins and raised the other to show that it was empty. Then he walked his horse forward. Jhesrhi did the same, except that she lifted both hands and guided the gelding with her knees. Show-off.

They halted their mounts in front of the barricade. For an instant Gaedynn wondered how the hunched, stunted kobolds with their oversized skulls, long lashing tails, and musky stink could simultaneously be so like and unlike the dragonborn he and his comrades had come to know over the course of the past few tendays.

“Names,” rasped the kobold on the left. Like his comrade, he wore the crossed-scepter-and-wand emblem of Kassur Jedea. Kassur was the nominal king of Threskel, although it was common knowledge he took his orders from Alasklerbanbastos just like everybody else.

“I’m Azzedar,” Gaedynn replied, “and this is Ilzza.” They were common Untheric names, and many Threskelan families descended from Untheric stock.

Two more kobolds wandered out into the rain. They must have had a sizable warren under the hill.

The black mare wasn’t a war-horse. Possession of such a valuable mount would have immediately discredited Gaedynn’s disguise. She was just a nag, and she tried to shy away from the reptiles. He drew back on the reins to steady her.

“Coming from Chessenta?” asked the kobold who’d spoken before. The glint in his narrowed eyes belied his casual tone.

“Abyss, no,” Gaedynn said. “Or mostly no. I may have done some hunting on the other side of the line, but not lately. Too many patrols. Mainly I’ve been camped just a little south of here.”

“Where are you headed?”

“My brother’s farm. His bitch of a wife wouldn’t let Ilzza and me winter there, but they’ll need help with the spring planting.”

“Well,” said the kobold, “maybe they’ll get it. If you can pay the toll.”

“Toll?” Gaedynn asked.

“Maybe you haven’t heard, wandering around in the wild, but we’re going to war. And the Bone Wyrm needs coin to fight it.”

Gaedynn was reasonably certain that no copper collected at this remote outpost would ever find its way to Alasklerbanbastos’s coffers. But from his perspective, that was hardly the point.

“I don’t have any coin,” he said.

“You’ve got horses,” the kobold answered. “True, they don’t look like much, but they’re something. How do you feel about walking the rest of the way to your brother’s place?”

“Wait.” Gaedynn rummaged in a saddlebag. “I have a little dreammist.” He pulled out a bundle wrapped in a rag and leaned down to proffer it.

The kobold slipped around the end of the barricade, opened the packet, and sniffed the few bits of brown crushed leaf inside. “You don’t have much.”

“Enough for you and your friends to have some fun,” Gaedynn said.

“Oh, take it and let them go on,” a different kobold said. “We’re getting soaked.”

“All right,” said the first kobold, evidently a sergeant or something comparable. It waved a clawed hand, and its fellows started to drag the mass of brambles aside.

“Stop,” a new voice rumbled. Less sibilant and two octaves deeper than the kobolds’ voices, it spoke Chessentan more clearly. Perhaps because it issued from a throat and mouth better shaped for human speech.

Gaedynn turned. Something more or less man-shaped, but as tall on its own two feet as he was on horseback, peered back at him from the darkness inside the burrow.

The big creature yawned. “What do we have here?”

“Nobody,” said the sergeant. “Just vagabonds.”

His superior emerged into the light and the rain. Perhaps it was a kind of kobold too. It had the same sort of claws, fangs, and greenish leathery hide. But sorcery, or conceivably mixed blood, had produced something more closely resembling one of the hulking giant-kin called ogres.

The big creature looked at the weapon clipped to Gaedynn’s saddle. “That’s a fine bow for a vagabond.”

Wishing he’d made do with an inferior one, Gaedynn inclined his head. “The one fine thing I own, sir. You wouldn’t take it, I hope. It’s what keeps the woman and me alive when times are lean.”

The leader grunted. “We’ll see.” It turned to the ordinary kobolds. “Search them. Persons and baggage both.”

If Jhesrhi knew a spell to change the creature’s mind, or to extricate herself and Gaedynn from this situation in some other way, now would be an excellent time to cast it. Before the kobolds unwrapped her staff or found the gold and silver they carried. Hoping to nudge her into action, he shot her a glance—then felt a pang of dismay.

Since they’d reached the barricade, she’d sat silently with her head bowed. She was trying to look cowed and submissive before the kobolds.

But now appearance had become reality. She was trembling.

By the Nine Hells and every flame that burned there, what was the matter with her? He’d watched her battle foes far more intimidating than kobolds and ogres without flinching.

“Get off your horses,” the kobold sergeant said.

Gaedynn wished he could drive an arrow into the reptile’s upraised snout. But an innocent traveler wouldn’t have had his bow strung, and so his wasn’t either. He yanked his sword from under the bundle intended to render it inconspicuous and cut.

The sergeant jumped back out of range. One of the other kobolds cast a javelin. It flew past the black mare’s head.

Spooked, she reared. Caught by surprise, Gaedynn tumbled from the saddle and over her rump to slam down on the ground.

Kobolds rushed him. Luckily they had to maneuver around the barricade and the frightened horse to do it, in the moment before she galloped back down the trail. It gave him time to roll to his feet and meet his first attacker with a slash that split its belly.

Javelins jabbed at him, and he knocked them out of line. Back foot splashing down in a puddle, he retreated to keep the smaller reptiles from encircling him. Then, from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed something looming on his flank. He pivoted in that direction, and the big creature’s long, brass-studded war club whizzed down at his head.

His warrior’s instincts kept him from trying to parry, lest he break his sword and perhaps his arm with it. Instead, he sidestepped and slashed the officer’s forearm. The brute snarled.

Instantly, before it could heave the club into position for another swing, he followed up with a second cut. A poorly aimed one—it missed the officer’s torso but at least gashed its lead leg. The brute stumbled backward, and Gaedynn turned just in time to parry another javelin thrust from one of the lesser kobolds. As he did, he noticed more of the creatures running out of the warren.

“Jhesrhi!” he yelled. “Do something, damn it!”

But she just kept sitting on the paint that, eyes rolling, looked like he’d bolt as soon as he discerned a clear path through the combatants. She wouldn’t even lift her head and look at the fight. Which likely meant Gaedynn wasn’t getting out of this.

The leader dropped its war club, turned, and ran at Jhesrhi. Perhaps caught by surprise, or simply still frozen with dread, she didn’t even try to resist as it grabbed her, dragged her out of the saddle, and held her up in the air like a toy.

“Drop your sword!” it bellowed. “Or I’ll pull her arms off!” Apparently Gaedynn’s prowess had impressed it enough that it didn’t want to risk losing any more of its warriors or getting sliced up any worse itself.

It would be idiotic to surrender. By her inaction, Jhesrhi had forfeited any claim on his consideration, and yielding probably wouldn’t help either of them anyway. He’d likely be trading a slim chance for none at all.

Yet he didn’t know if he had it in him to ignore the threat. He was still wondering when she finally came to life.

Perhaps it was the awareness that she was actually being held, touched, that roused her. She suddenly screamed and thrashed, and though her frenzy had no art in it—no precisely articulated words of command or flowing mystic passes—magic answered her anyway. The officer’s face burst into flame.

The hulking thing roared and let Jhesrhi drop so it could slap at the fire as it floundered backward. It reeled into the barricade. There was little chance of the thorns piercing its thick hide to any great effect, but Gaedynn supposed every little bit helped.

Jhesrhi rounded on her horse just as the animal lunged to follow the mare back down the trail. She rattled off a brief incantation, and the paint froze, his momentum nearly pitching him forward onto his nose. Even though Gaedynn wasn’t the target of the spell, for an instant his muscles bunched and locked as well.

Jhesrhi darted to the gelding and grabbed her staff. The rawhide lashings around the wrapping unknotted themselves.

A pair of kobolds rushed Gaedynn. He smeared the first one’s eye down its face with a stop cut and balked the second by chopping the steel point off its javelin.

Then he scrambled to interpose himself between Jhesrhi and as many of the enemy as he could. Now that she was belatedly making herself useful, it was his task to keep the kobolds off her while she cast her spells.

He landed a cut to a kobold’s flank, then twisted aside from a javelin thrust. Almost nimbly enough—the steel point ripped his jerkin and shirt and grazed along a rib. Because shiftless poachers, Glasya take them, didn’t wear brigandines. He killed his assailant before it could pull the weapon back for another try.

Behind him, Jhesrhi chanted a rhyme. For a heartbeat iridescence shimmered through the air. Rain fell upward, leaping from the puddles toward the clouds. A point of red light flew past Gaedynn into the mouth of the burrow—where, with a roar, it exploded into flame. The blast ripped the kobolds that were just emerging into burning, tumbling limbs.

Jhesrhi rattled off another spell. Rumbling and thudding in big chunks and little pellets, earth fell from the roof of the opening. The collapse didn’t quite fill it all the way to the ceiling, but no more kobolds would be coming out that way.

When the reptiles who’d already emerged saw what Jhesrhi could do, they hesitated. Panting, Gaedynn wondered if he and his companion could get past without having to fight the rest of them.

Then the big creature bellowed. Gaedynn glanced around just in time to see it launch itself at Jhesrhi. Its face was a charred, oozing mass. But the fire was out and had spared the brute’s eyes.

Jhesrhi spoke a word of command and stabbed with the tip of her staff. A fan-shaped flare of yellow flame leaped from the staff. It seared her attacker, but the creature kept charging, war club raised for a bone-shattering blow.

Gaedynn was too far away to interpose himself between the officer and Jhesrhi. So he hurled his sword.

He was no expert knife thrower, nor was the blade balanced for throwing. Tumbling, it hit with the flat, not the point, and did no more harm than if he’d tossed a stick.

But perhaps it startled the brute, for it looked around. And maybe it was that momentary hesitation that gave Jhesrhi time for one last spell. She stamped her foot, and the ground split beneath the officer’s feet. It howled as it plunged into the chasm. It released the club and snatched for the edge but failed to grab hold.

Whipping out the hunting knife he wore on his belt, Gaedynn spun back around to face the remaining kobolds. It wasn’t much of a weapon for a man battling multiple opponents, but to his relief, the reptiles looked even less inclined to keep fighting than they had a moment before.

One of them spoke in their own harsh, hissing tongue. Then they retreated, at first backing away with weapons leveled, then turning and scurrying into the rain.

Gaedynn watched to see if their withdrawal was a ruse. It didn’t appear to be.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jhesrhi said, looking around for creeping kobolds like he was. “You?”

“Scratched.” And the graze was starting to sting, now. “Some healer’s salve would be a good idea. What happened to you?”

“It won’t happen again.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“But it’s all I have to tell you.”

“Curse it, woman, it was my life in danger too.”

Her voice was ice. “It won’t happen again!”

“How deeply reassuring.” He took a breath. “Do you know a charm to help us catch the horses?”

*    *    *    *    *

The Brotherhood had conducted its first successful raid into Threskelan territory. Now they were bringing their plunder into Soolabax. Laden with sacks of flour and seed, the carts squeaked and rumbled. The skinny sheep baaed, and the goats bleated.

As Aoth watched from the battlements atop the gate, it occurred to him that his men had just condemned a bunch of peasants to hardship if not starvation. They’d left the wretches with nothing to eat or plant, with no better justification than that the farmers happened to live on the wrong side of the border.

For a moment, he felt guilty. Which was stupid, since he’d given the same order many times before and, if Lady Luck smiled, would give it many more. This kind of predation was just a part of war.

Better, then, to focus on the reaction of the people in the street below. Watching, grinning, chattering to one another, they seemed happy that someone had finally hurt the Threskelans as the Threskelans had injured them, even if it had taken a war-mage to lead the way.

Aoth waved his hand at the scene below. “You see, milord, with griffon riders scouting from on high, we can find what we want, hit it, and get away before the dragons and such even realize we were there.”

Hasos’s lip curled. “You were lucky your first time out, Captain. It doesn’t mean your overall strategy is sound.”

If anything, the baron seemed even colder than before. Maybe he felt that the sellswords’ quick success pointed out his own shortcomings as a soldier.

If so, then Aoth agreed with him. But he didn’t want Hasos to resent him. It would make his job harder. Unfortunately, he couldn’t see much to do about it, except keep offering the noble the chance to participate in his endeavors and so earn a share of the credit.

“Be that as it may,” Cera Eurthos said, “to me this seems a portent of greater victories to come.”

Short, snub-nosed, and pleasingly plump, Cera was one of several dignitaries who’d climbed to the top of the gate to watch the plunder come into town. With curly hair as yellow as her vestments, she seemed a fitting high priestess for the sun god.

She had a warm, sunny smile too, although, after his experiences with Daelric Apathos, Aoth was surprised to find it shining in his direction.

Hasos inclined his head. “With respect, Sunlady, perhaps that’s why you’re a cleric and not a soldier.”

“Oh, very likely, milord. Captain, now that you too are what passes for a notable in this sleepy little town, we should become better acquainted.”

Aoth inclined his head. “You honor me.”

“Perhaps we can start with a stroll along the wall.”

He looked out to the end of the column and beyond, making sure no one was in pursuit. Nobody was. “That sounds nice.”

Seeming more a coquette than the wise mistress of a temple, she reached to take his arm, then smiled at her own awkwardness when she noticed something was in her way. He shifted his spear into his other hand, and they set off down the wall walk. He fancied he could feel Hasos’s glare boring into the back of his skull.

Cera looked at the blue sky above the fields speckled with blades of new green grass. “Here in Chessenta, we have a saying. ‘Precious as a sunny day in Tarsakh.’ ”

Aoth smiled. “The gods know sellswords have reason to dislike this time of year. You have to come out of winter quarters and start making coin. Of course, you want to anyway. You’re half mad with boredom and confinement. But you always end up marching through storms and mud.”

“Like the man and woman who rode out just a day after you arrived.”

He started to frown then caught himself. His instincts suggested it was better to go on matching her light, casual air. “Keeping track of us, Sunlady?”

“Everyone’s keeping track of you, Captain. You’re objects of great curiosity. So be gallant and satisfy mine. Who were those people, anyway?”

“Just scouts.”

“On horseback. When I’ve just heard you extol the advantages of reconnaissance from the air.”

“You see things from on high that you wouldn’t from the ground, but occasionally the reverse is also true.”

They sauntered up on a sentry. He was one of Hasos’s men and looked like he couldn’t make up his mind how much courtesy he owed to Aoth. In the end he decided to salute, and Aoth acknowledged it with a dip of his spearhead.

“Interesting,” Cera said. Aoth couldn’t tell if she meant his explanation of the spies’ mission or the sentry’s reaction to him. “Do you know, you seem like a very … practical sort of person. If I had to guess, I’d have said you weren’t profoundly interested in any religion, let alone a mad cult like the Church of Tchazzar.”

“Well, that answers one of my questions. Daelric sent you a message conveying his opinion of me.”

“It’s one of my great blessings that my superior writes me often, with an abundance of observations and instructions.”

“Well, he was wrong about me. I couldn’t care less about the Church of Tchazzar. I didn’t let him roast the fools in that parade because I feared it would start a riot.” He smiled crookedly. “Of course, before we were through, Luthcheq had a riot anyway. But at least I tried.”

Down below them, sellswords started chivvying the plundered goats and sheep into the butchers’ pens. The carts rolled on toward the bakers.

“That’s good to know,” Cera said. “In dangerous times, people need to put their faith in the true gods, and the lords the gods appoint to watch over them.”

“You’re sure Tchazzar’s not a real god?” asked Aoth, simply to see her reaction. “Plainly, you know far more about such matters than I do. But as I understand it, it wouldn’t make him the first creature to start out mortal and ascend to divinity.”

“If he’d truly been a god, he wouldn’t simply have disappeared.”

“Didn’t Amaunator? For many centuries? When I was young, he was just a distant memory without a worshiper or altar to his name.”

She smiled. “When you were young, indeed! You don’t look all that withered and decrepit to me. But as for the Keeper of the Yellow Sun, we now know he was with us all along, in the guise of Lathander the Morninglord.”

“Then couldn’t Tchazzar put on his own disguise? The stories say he was always a shapeshifter, sometimes a man and sometimes a wyrm.”

“Are you sure you’re not a cultist?”

“I promise. When I pray, it’s to Kossuth.”

She cocked her head. “Not to Tempus, or some other war god?”

“During the War of the Zulkirs, when my comrades and I fought necromancers and the undead they sent against us, the fire priests were our staunch allies. I’ve never forgotten that.”

He supposed that even after all this time, he’d never quite forgotten Chathi, the Firelord’s priestess, either. For a moment, sadness cast its shadow over him.

Cera’s blue eyes narrowed. Apparently she’d noticed that fleeting change in his mood. But instead of asking about it, she said, “That’s understandable, and Kossuth is a legitimate object of veneration. So I won’t bore you with another theological argument explaining that technically, he’s not a god either.”

“The sunlady is as merciful as she is wise.”

Cera chuckled. “Thank you. And you don’t seem nearly as savage and depraved as a Thayan mage and sellsword ought to be.”

“I tried to learn to bite the heads off kittens and puppies, but I have bad teeth.”

“Perhaps I’ll give a banquet so that others can see what I see. It might make it easier for you to conduct your business here.”

“If they’re willing to eat at the same table with an arcanist, that sounds good.”

“Oh, they’ll come if I invite them. Especially since we’re all afraid of the Great Bone Wyrm, and you’re here to protect us. Now, shall we head back? I’m due at the temple soon, and it looks bad if the high priestess of the supreme timekeeper turns up late.”

As they strolled back the way they’d come, she chatted about the people he could expect to meet at the forthcoming feast. Humorous, gossipy, and occasionally salacious, the discourse lasted long enough to see them back to the top of the gate.

Hasos and his companions were gone. Aoth escorted Cera to the top of the stairs that would take them to the ground.

Though Soolabax was scarcely one of the great fortress cities of the East, the gate itself was a massive piece of stonework. The wooden stairs spiraled down an enclosed shaft with only a few windows narrow as arrow loops to light the way.

The dimness was no inconvenience to Aoth with his fire-kissed eyes. The cramped quarters, however, required that he and Cera stop walking arm in arm. She courteously waved for him to go first.

They were about a third of the way down when he saw something that brought him to a sudden stop. Cera bumped against his back, and he was glad she hadn’t done it harder. Because he wouldn’t have wanted her to knock him farther down the steps.

Just as he could see in the dark, and see even farther than a griffon, so too did he see the world in minute and exquisite detail. And thus, just as he was about to trust his weight to the next step, he’d spotted the webs of tiny cracks running through the half dozen risers immediately below him.

“Is something wrong?” Cera asked.

He reached with the point of his spear and touched the first stair below him. Most of it crumbled. He tapped the next. It disintegrated too. The fragments pattered on the undamaged steps one twist beneath them.

“They were fine when we climbed up,” Cera said.

“Yes.” Some spell or alchemical solution had weakened them in the brief period between Hasos’s descent and now.

And if not for his inhumanly keen vision, an edge Aoth liked to conceal from the world at large, the trap might have caught him. True, he had a tattoo to provide a soft landing if he fell, but it took an instant to activate the magic. Caught by surprise and dropping a relatively short distance, he could have cracked his head or broken his leg before he managed it.

Rushing footsteps thumped risers farther down the stairwell. Someone had been lying in wait to finish Aoth off if the plunge didn’t kill him. Now that it was plain that his target wasn’t going to fall, the assassin was trying to get away.

Aoth wished he could see the bastard. But even spellscarred eyes couldn’t peer through the plank stairs blocking the view.

He could give chase, though. He activated the tattoo, jumped through the hole created by the missing steps to the intact ones below, and charged onward.

He bounded all the way to the bottom and out into the street that ran parallel to the wall. Where people of various sorts were going about their business—they gasped and shied as he lunged into their midst with his spear at the ready.

“Did someone run out this doorway ahead of me?” he asked.

For what seemed an interminable moment, they all just gawked at him. Then a woman with the feet of a dead chicken sticking out of her wicker basket shook her head.

“Wonderful,” sighed Aoth. The would-be killer had evidently either exited the gate while invisible or used a spell or talisman to shift himself through space. Either way, he’d made a successful escape.

Aoth tramped back up the stairs, and warm yellow light gleamed down at him. Cera still stood where he’d left her, but now she was glowing. She’d raised her power in case she needed to defend herself, and her resolute expression made a marked contrast to her lighthearted manner from before.

“It’s all right,” Aoth said. “Well, not really. I wanted to find out who the whoreson was. But anyway, he’s gone.”

*    *    *    *    *

“See the dragon?” Jhesrhi asked.

“What?” said Gaedynn, wrenching himself back and forth in the saddle. “Where?”

It was one of those rare moments when he seemed genuinely flummoxed. Despite the potentially dangerous circumstances and her sour mood, it gave her a moment of malicious amusement to see the master scout discomfited at having missed something as big and threatening as a wyrm.

Although if she were inclined to be fair, she’d admit that it was surprisingly easy to miss a blue dragon flying against a blue sky. Fortunately, the wind in these farmlands was now her ally, and as a result she hadn’t needed her own eyes to learn of the creature’s approach.

“Just keep riding,” Gaedynn said. “In Threskel, a dragon’s one of the nobility, not a beast of prey. It likely won’t bother us unless we do something suspicious.”

The remark implied that he thought she might be on the verge of panic. In light of her behavior back at the kobold outpost, he had every right to, but it irked her anyway.

“I know what to do,” she snapped. She proved it by kicking the paint into motion and trotting on up the muddy road to Mourktar.

From a distance, with a number of towers jutting high above the buildings huddled around them, Mourktar looked like a fairly impressive city. Jhesrhi supposed that viewed from the seaward side, it would seem even more so. Because the town was Threskel’s one deepwater port on the Alamber Sea, and by all accounts, the bustling heart of the place was the docks and the warehouses adjacent to them.

Although Jhesrhi had no reason to care about that. Not unless she gave in to the temptation to board an outbound ship and flee. She and Gaedynn were there because prospectors, trappers, and others who sought their fortunes in the hills and mountains called the Sky Riders often passed through Mourktar on their way in and out.

The blue dragon flew on toward the city, and then a second such creature soared up from among the buildings. Surprised, Jhesrhi reined in her mount. Gaedynn caught up and halted beside her.

The blues circled each other. After a while, Jhesrhi said, “I can’t hear them at this distance, but I suppose they’re talking.”

“I’m sure they are,” Gaedynn replied. “By all accounts, dragons are garrulous creatures. But they’re doing more than that. I saw something like this once before and never forgot it. Each wyrm is trying to climb higher than the other. Given your affinity for the air, if you just look for the currents and updrafts, you’ll see it more clearly than I can.”

She reached out with her perceptions. It was only partly a matter of seeing, partly a matter of feeling at a distance. “Yes. You’re right.”

“And notice the smell in the air, like a storm is brewing. Notice the flicker inside their mouths. You can see it blink like a twinkling star, even this far away. I doubt there’s much point to it. It’s difficult to hurt a dragon with the same element it breathes itself. But it’s their instinct to ready the weapon, no matter what.”

“So they really are going to duel. I wonder why.”

“I have no idea. But I do know I’d rather not be in the town underneath them while they do it. Let’s watch from here.”

And that was what they did, for what seemed a long while. Then the dragons swooped toward the buildings below. One disappeared into the streets on the north side of Mourktar, and the other into the southern part of town.

Gaedynn shrugged. “Well, whatever it was that divided them, apparently they worked it out.”

“Apparently,” Jhesrhi said. She felt a little disappointed. How often did a person have the chance to watch dragons fight each other?

“Then shall we?” Gaedynn waved his hand at the road ahead. Jhesrhi gave a nod, and they rode onward.

By the time they reached the outskirts of the city, the clear sky was giving way to gray clouds blowing in from the sea. The streets teemed with a mixture of races. Humans. Kobolds. Goblins no taller than Khouryn with big pointed ears and ruddy skin, and orcs with swinish tusks and, occasionally, one eye gouged out in honor of their patron deity Gruumsh.

Whatever his kind, if a person was well armed and carried himself like a warrior, he often wore the wand-and-scepter badge. Mourktar was full of soldiers, some likely sellswords arrived by sea. It was additional evidence that Threskel really did intend to mount an invasion.

In a sensible world, Jhesrhi thought, she and Gaedynn would scurry back to the Brotherhood with this valuable piece of intelligence. But in this one, they had to proceed with their pointless errand, searching for a creature who’d surely perished in the cataclysm that had killed even mightier beings and altered the face of Faerûn itself.

With the streets so crowded, it was slow going, and she worried they wouldn’t find anywhere to stable the horses or to stay themselves. Gaedynn managed it, though. A silver coin and the promise of more persuaded an innkeeper that he could somehow provide care for two more nags and that it would be all right for a pair of weary travelers to sleep in the hayloft.

By that time, the sun had set. They ate a supper of fish stew, rye bread, and ale in the inn’s common room, then headed back out into the streets. Jhesrhi braced herself for the press of bodies. It had been unpleasant enough on horseback, when people could only brush and jostle her legs. It would be worse when she was fully submerged in the crowd.

But she tolerated it because she had to. She caught Gaedynn glancing at her repeatedly, checking on her, and shot him back a scowl.

Which perhaps he didn’t deserve, for he wasted no time leading her to a narrow, doglegged street where the taverns had names like The Five Nuggets and The Hill Man’s Bliss and the merchants sold shovels, pans, sluice boxes, traps, bows, and boar spears. Since he’d never visited Mourktar before either, she had no idea how he found the right part of it so quickly. It didn’t seem fair that a man raised in the woods should seem so completely at home in cities as well. Especially since she seldom felt fully at ease anywhere at all.

As they wandered from one smoky, boisterous taproom to another, he presented himself as the woodsman and hunter he was, and the hill men took him for one of their own. She looked on quietly as he bought rounds of drinks, swapped preposterous boasts and filthy jokes, and in time turned the conversation to strange tales and rumors from the wild.

It was probably because she remained aloof from the conversation that she was the one who noticed someone watching them.

A small man sat alone in the shadowy corner nearest the door. He wore the same stained, patched, rugged garb as most of the people in the room, but to judge from the pallor of his face and hands, he hadn’t really spent much time in the sun and the rain. He wasn’t quite staring at Gaedynn, Jhesrhi, and the hill men at their table, but his dark, pouched eyes kept returning to them.

She wondered how best to find out who he was and what he wanted. She was still pondering when he abruptly rose and headed out into the night.

She took hold of her staff, still shrouded in a layer of cloth to hide the rare, valuable blackwood and inlaid golden runes. The wrapping attenuated her mystical link to the rod, but not so much as to render it useless. She waited another moment, then rose and started for the door. Gaedynn gave her a questioning look. She raised her hand, signaling him to keep his seat.

Though she was only a few heartbeats behind the watcher, by the time she stepped out the door, he was nowhere to be seen. She whispered to the breeze that carried both the stink of the city’s garbage and the saltwater smell of the sea. Unfortunately, it hadn’t taken any notice of the pale man.

“What’s going on?” Gaedynn asked.

Startled, Jhesrhi jerked around to find him standing right behind her. “I told you to stay put,” she said. But he hadn’t, because he didn’t trust her nerve and judgment anymore.

“We’re done here anyway,” he said. “What pulled you out of your chair?”

“Someone was watching our table. I wanted to find out why, but somehow he outdistanced me.”

Gaedynn looked around. “Well, he could have ducked in any of these doors, and it’s not that far to the bend in the street. Who do you think it was?”

She shrugged. “Someone trying to pass for a hill man, but not. Beyond that I can’t say. I hope he wasn’t a spy looking for his opposite numbers from south of the border.”

“Even if he was, we weren’t doing anything overtly nefarious. I think it’s more likely he’s a spotter for the local thieves’ guild. I was spreading a little coin around. And even though you have that hood shadowing your face and a cloak obscuring your shape, a perceptive fellow could still tell you’d make a lot of coin for any of the local festhalls.”

She scowled at him.

He grinned back. “Facts are facts, buttercup. The point is, if we keep our guard up, we can surely handle a few toughs.” He hesitated. “Can’t we?”

“Yes,” she said, gritting her teeth. “In your estimation, have we learned anything?”

“I assume you heard most of it. Plenty of people have stories to share about a dragon roaring in the night. The problem is, the tales are vague as to what hillside or mountaintop it’s roaring on. But just now I got the name of a fellow who collects information about the Sky Riders, then sells it to trappers looking for particularly luxuriant pelts or prospectors looking for streams that run yellow with gold.”

“In other words, a swindler.”

Gaedynn smiled. “I’d bet my life on it. Or at least somebody’s life. But I’d also wager he gathers real information to make his lies more convincing. And that he’s not averse to peddling that as well, when there’s a market for it. Shall we go find out?”

Jhesrhi kept watch for the pale man, and for any lurking ruffians, as Gaedynn led her into a shabby dead-end street. She didn’t see anyone suspicious. Nor, when she consulted it, did the wind. Maybe the watcher had taken their measure and decided to seek easier prey.

She noticed the structures in the immediate vicinity were smaller than average, with windows placed lower to the ground. Some builder had thrown up a dozen apartment houses for people shorter than humans.

Gaedynn rapped on one of the street-level doors, then waited. After a time it squeaked open a crack, and a halfling peered out from the darkness within.

“Good evening,” Gaedynn said. “My companion and I are headed into the Sky Riders. We need information to ensure a successful journey.”

“I need silver to open this door,” the halfling answered. Because of their size, his kind tended to have voices higher than humans, and old age seemed to have pitched the scratchy one Jhesrhi was hearing higher still. Yet she was reasonably sure the speaker was male.

Gaedynn produced a coin and presented it with a flourish. It disappeared into the crack, and then the door opened. Despite a soldier’s familiarity with wounds and scars, Jhesrhi had to suppress an impulse to stare or wince at what stood revealed on the other side.

The halfling was missing the eye, the ear, and some of the white hair from the right side of his head. In their places were deep, livid, horizontal grooves. His right hand and some of the forearm were gone too, while the right leg, though present, was twisted shorter than the left, hitching his body off center.

He turned and, limping, conducted his visitors into a candlelit, low-ceilinged room. Bearskins, wolf pelts, racks of antlers, and halfling-sized hunting weapons hung on the walls. A scatter of maps lay on a table, along with the hook and leather cuff the halfling presumably wore when he felt the need for a prosthesis.

Jhesrhi was somewhat encouraged. Judging from appearances, their host might truly have known the Sky Riders well, in the days before some beast mauled and crippled him.

He flicked his remaining hand at a bench with chipped and peeling paint that looked like he’d salvaged it from the town dump. “That’s the one thing big enough for humans to sit on.”

“Thank you,” Gaedynn said.

The halfling flopped down in a chair. “What exactly do you want?”

“We’ve heard stories,” Gaedynn said, “about a dragon that roars by night somewhere high in the hills.”

“So?”

Gaedynn smiled. “A dragon’s lair is full of treasure.”

The cripple snorted. “And you think you can carry it off? Just the two of you?”

“The tales suggest this particular wyrm is inconvenienced somehow.”

“It’s still a dragon.”

“We don’t intend to fight it. Just sneak into its lair, pocket a few prize gems, and live like lords for the rest of our days.”

The halfling squirmed in his chair like he couldn’t get comfortable. “It sounds like you’ve got it all figured out already. What do you need me for?”

“The tales are either unclear or contradictory concerning the dragon’s location.”

The maimed hunter grinned, revealing gapped, stained teeth. “Easy to see why, if the creature only appears at night. And seeing as how fools are always getting lost in the Sky Riders. People who saw or heard the wyrm—if anyone truly did—may not have known exactly where they were.”

“Do you think anyone did?” Jhesrhi asked. “See it, I mean.”

“What’s the difference?” The halfling shifted again. “You and your man have decided they did, or else you wouldn’t be here. Nothing I say is likely to change your minds.”

“You’re probably right,” Gaedynn said. “So, can you help us?”

“Maybe,” the halfling said. “I’ve heard all the stories you have and more, and knowing the hill country, I can interpret details that don’t mean anything to you. I can make a good guess where you ought to look. But only if you make it worth my while.”

“I already gave you one piece of silver. How about four more?”

“That’s piddling for information that will make you rich, or so you tell me. How about ten gold?”

“If we had that kind of coin, we wouldn’t need to chase dragons. What about this? We’ll cut you in for a tenth of the profits.”

“Now, that sounds splendid! Because I’m confident you’ll come back loaded down with diamonds and rubies, and just as certain you’ll keep your word.”

“I take your point. We’ll pay you three gold. But I swear by the Merchant’s Friend, we can’t go any higher.”

The halfling grunted. “Hand it over.”

Gaedynn fished a purse out of the jerkin he’d mended with big, clumsy stitches after the kobold’s javelin tore it. “You just need to understand one thing.”

“What’s that?”

Gaedynn shook coins out into his palm. “My companion is a wizard. She’s going to cast a charm that will alert her if you try to cheat us.”

It was a lie. Jhesrhi had mastered dozens of spells, but none that would serve that particular purpose. But other people had no way of knowing that, and she and Gaedynn had used the bluff to extract the truth from the credulous on several previous occasions.

As he took the coins, the halfling made a spitting sound. “As long as she doesn’t turn me into a rat or make my manhood fall off, she can do what she likes.”

Jhesrhi whispered words of power. The room grew colder. For a moment, the candles burned green, and a breeze rustled the parchments on the table. It was likely enough to create the impression that some useful enchantment was in place.

“Now,” said Gaedynn, “go ahead.”

The halfling leaned over the table and riffled through the maps until he found one drawn on vellum. He sketched a circle on it with his fingertip. “Somewhere in this area. And I think that if it’s really there to be found, you’ll find it on the western side of a hill.”

Maintaining the fiction that Jhesrhi could tell if their informant was telling the truth, Gaedynn looked to her. She nodded.

The redheaded archer extended his hand. “Thank you for your help.”

The halfling blinked like he wasn’t used to courtesy or gratitude. “There’s one more thing I can tell you. People only ever glimpse or hear the dragon at the dark of the moon.”

“That complicates matters,” Gaedynn said, “but at least it’s not for a while yet. We have time to get to the right place. Thank you again.”

After the cripple showed them out, Jhesrhi said, “You could have just given the poor fellow ten gold.”

“That would have seemed very strange to him. He expected me to haggle.”

“And, it’s bad luck to swear a false oath by any of the gods.”

“Oh, I imagine Waukeen will forgive me.” He grinned. “As you know better than anyone, I’m well nigh irresistible to blondes with golden eyes.”

She scowled. “Where now? Back to the stable?”

“If you like. We have what we came for.”

They headed in that direction. To her relief, the crowds in the streets had thinned out. In fact, they soon found themselves entirely alone on a block lined with dark, shuttered shops at ground level. In the quiet, even the iron ferrule of her staff bump-bump-bumping against the mud seemed noisy. She picked up the weapon and carried it over her shoulder.

Then the wind whispered to her. She willed the bindings on the staff to loosen, and the cloth fell away. She lifted the rod into a middle guard and roused the power stored inside it. The golden runes glittered.

By that time, Gaedynn had noticed what she was doing and nocked an arrow. “What?” he asked.

“People are stalking us,” she said.

“Where are they?”

“All around us. I think. They’re using magic that hinders even the wind’s ability to perceive them, and—”

“And anyway, the breezes in Mourktar haven’t fallen in love with you yet.” He shifted so they stood back to back. “I’ve heard the song before. If the bastards are just thieves, now that they see that we’re ready for them, maybe they’ll go away.”

“I doubt common thieves would command such potent enchantments.”

“Permit me the comfort of my delusions.”

The breeze moaned, warning her. “Above us!” she said.

They both looked up at the wide, shadowy something plunging down at them. They each leaped forward, separating in the process because otherwise they wouldn’t have had time to scramble out from underneath. The weighted net thudded and rustled down between them.

A figure with a white face and hands jumped off the rooftop after the meshwork like a four-story drop was nothing. And apparently for him it was. He landed like a cat, and Gaedynn drove an arrow into his chest.

That too should have killed or at least incapacitated him. But he simply staggered a step, then charged. As he did, Jhesrhi recognized him as the small man from the tavern. She also noticed his bared fangs.

Fortunately, Gaedynn did too—and after the nightmarish campaign in Thay, he knew how to fight a vampire. His next shaft punched into the creature’s heart, where it would serve the same function as a stake. Paralyzed, the undead collapsed.

Jhesrhi glanced around. Other pale figures were creeping from between the houses. She hurled a blast of fire and set the nearest two ablaze.

Then she pivoted, searching for her next target. Even though she was trying to avoid it, she looked straight into another vampire’s eyes.

The undead’s coercive power stabbed into her head. Suddenly she couldn’t move. She wanted to, but it was like she’d forgotten how. She had the terrifying feeling she’d even stopped breathing.

She strained to break free. In her mind she recited words of strength and liberation that would no longer pass her lips. Abruptly, and without realizing it was about to happen, she wrenched her gaze away and gasped for air.

Her paralysis, brief though it had been, had given her foes the chance to rush closer. She spoke to the wind, and it hurled a vampire backward an instant before his outstretched hands could grab her.

Behind her, light flashed, momentarily painting the world blue-white. Thunder boomed, power crackled, and Gaedynn laughed a single “Ha!” of satisfaction. He’d used one of the special arrows she’d enchanted for him, evidently to good effect.

Even comparatively weak vampires—and it seemed to her that these were some of the weaker ones—were fearsome opponents, but so far it appeared that she and the archer were holding their own. Hoping to stand back to back again, she retreated a step, and then other figures stalked from the gloom behind the undead.

The newcomers weren’t pale as bone, and she didn’t see any glistening fangs or lambent eyes. Humans, then, wrapped in shapeless hooded cloaks much like her own.

She drew breath to cast a spell at the new enemies, then realized some of them were already chanting. A couple whirled implements resembling picks through serpentine passes with a nimbleness at odds with the weapons’ obvious weight.

Jhesrhi abandoned her offensive magic to rattle off a briefer charm. A disk of golden light shimmered into existence in the air before her.

Also floating and made of glowing light, but continually rippling from one color to another, several picks abruptly appeared in front of her defense. The magical weapons hurtled at her, and though her amber shield shifted back and forth, it couldn’t block them all. One red as flame whirled itself around the edge of the oval. She parried it with her staff, but at the same instant another such attack stabbed her in the back.

Wracked with pain and horribly cold besides, she crumpled. The pick that had wounded her changed from white to green and struck again before she finished falling. Her nose, mouth, and throat burned, and she started coughing uncontrollably.

Evidently recognizing that she was no longer able to oppose them, the enemy sent the animated picks streaking over her to take Gaedynn from behind. Still coughing, floundering in her own blood, she flopped over to watch the inevitable result.

Gaedynn whirled and loosed another arrow. Then, chopping relentlessly, the luminous, multicolored picks assailed him like a swarm of wasps. He fell with blood streaming from his wounds.

Between coughs, Jhesrhi caught the stink of charred flesh. Hands grabbed her and slammed her flat on her back. His skin burned black, a vampire dropped to his knees and bent over her.

Then one of cloaked men stepped into Jhesrhi’s field of vision. Now that he’d come close enough, she could make out the pattern of scales on the robe visible through the gap between the wings of his outer garment. She could even discern how the folds of the iridescent vestment changed color as he moved, although in the darkness she couldn’t truly see the colors themselves.

But she didn’t have to see them to recognize a priest of five-headed Tiamat, the Dragon Queen. “Get away from her,” the cleric said.

The vampire glared up at him. “She burned me,” he said, the words garbled for want of the lips the fire had taken. “It’s only fair that her blood help restore me.”

“If we injure her any further, she’s likely to die. As it is, we’ll have to cast healings on her and the bowman before they’re fit to travel.”

Coughing less, no longer shaking quite so hard with chill, but still too weak to resist, Jhesrhi silently thanked the Foehammer that Gaedynn was still alive.

“You … mortals,” the vampire snarled, like it was the foulest insult imaginable. “You priests. You order us to the fore to run the greatest risk——”

“And you obey,” the wyrmkeeper said, “because our master has given us authority over you.” Master, Jhesrhi noted, not mistress. Whomever he was talking about, it wasn’t his goddess. “And because you know we possess the power to compel you—or at least I assume you know. If necessary, I can provide a demonstration.”

Though still glowering with fangs extended, the undead rose and backed away. “Thank you,” the wyrmkeeper said. He stooped and tugged the staff from Jhesrhi’s feeble grasp. The runes stopped shining. He studied the tool with a knowledgeable eye. “Nice. Very nice. Now, we’re going to gag you and bind your hands. Then I’ll do something to restore your strength and take away the worst of—”

“Look!” someone yelped.

The wyrmkeeper pivoted and glanced around. “At what?”

One of the men armed with a pick made of ordinary steel and wood pointed at a rooftop. “He’s gone now, but he was there! Somebody spying!”

The wyrmkeeper turned toward the spot where three vampires stood clustered together. “Whoever it is, retrieve him.”

The pale-faced figures dissolved from bottom to top like icicles melting. Shrunken into bats with wrinkled snouts and eyes like gleaming ink, swirling around one another, they fluttered upward and vanished into the night sky.

Next the cloaked men restrained Jhesrhi, denying her any hope of using her magic. Then the wyrmkeeper prayed over her. The nasty, sibilant sound of the words made her skin crawl. But as promised, they closed her wounds, muted her pain, and brought a bit of her strength trickling back. The priest moved over to Gaedynn and did the same for him.

Shortly afterward the three vampires, in human guise once more, stalked into view. The one in the lead was carrying a motionless body in his arms. When he dumped it on the street, its cape fell open. Jhesrhi was surprised to see that under his outer garment, the dead man too wore a vestment of iridescent scales.

“Thank the Dark Lady,” the wyrmkeeper said.

“What do we do with him?” asked the fellow who’d spotted the skulker in the first place.

“It’s better that he should disappear than be found,” said the priest. “So I suppose we’ll have to drag him along with us. Get them up.”

The enemy hauled Jhesrhi and Gaedynn to their feet, and she saw that they’d disarmed, bound, and gagged the archer as well. The wyrmkeeper rubbed the black, mask-shaped ring on his finger, and she felt a powerful enchantment—no doubt the charm of invisibility—enfold the entire company, captors and captives alike.

Then they all tramped some distance through the city. Thanks to the wyrmkeeper’s restorative magic, Jhesrhi expected that she’d continue to recover from her wounds with preternatural speed. But for now she was still weak and sore, and the walk taxed her severely. She might have been glad when her foes pointed her toward the entrance to the ruins of an old warehouse, except that she had every reason to be wary of whatever waited inside.

First she caught its odor, the tang of a gathering storm like she’d smelled that afternoon. Then she saw the sparks jumping and popping on the body that was simply a huge, shapeless mass in the dark. Eyes big as serving platters glowed white at the top of the murky form.

“I see you caught them,” the creature said, its voice a sort of rumbling hiss.

“Yes, milord,” the wyrmkeeper said. “Unfortunately, a spy loyal to one of your brothers discovered us at our work. But he won’t tell anyone what he saw.”

“That’s all right, then. Tie the prisoners to my back.”

Jhesrhi felt a pang of dread and tried to shake it off. To take comfort in the fact that at least the dragon didn’t mean to torture or kill her and Gaedynn on the spot.

Someone produced a long coil of rope, and the worshipers of the Nemesis of the Gods proceeded to obey the wyrm’s command. Meanwhile, Jhesrhi noticed, although she hadn’t been able to tell it from the street, that most of the derelict building was open to the sky. A creature with wings wouldn’t have much trouble entering from above.

Or exiting in the same manner—as the blue dragon proved by lashing its own batlike wings and carrying Gaedynn and Jhesrhi aloft. In a hundred heartbeats or so, Mourktar was left behind.