necromancers, aren’t they? And when you consider that the man profaned my temple-”
“Majesty, I beg you to remember that like the rest of Chessenta’s arcanists, Meralaine owes everything to you. And Aoth is as honorable a mercenary as you could hope to hire, and outcast from his own people for
“I suppose.” Some of the tension went out of his face. “I’m fortunate to have you for my
She could tell he meant it as a compliment, and that pleased her. Still, she had to admit, “I don’t know that word, Majesty.”
He hesitated, then said, “It’s an old Draconic word. It means the faithful friend and lieutenant of a king.”
The enemy had seen a few griffon riders. So Tchazzar’s army wasn’t giving away any secrets by having a few in the air as the foe approached. Aoth had chosen to be among them to obtain the best possible view of all that was happening.
The decoy force stood at the top of a rise behind earthen ramparts. He wished Khouryn were there to command it. He tried to draw some comfort from everyone’s assurances that while it was always Hasos’s instinct to avoid battle if possible, he fought well if you managed to push him into one.
Aoth had had a century to grow accustomed to his fire-kissed eyes. Still, it was momentarily disconcerting to look down at the various stands of oaks and elms and plainly see the rest of the illusion-veiled army. He had to remind himself that the Threskelans couldn’t.
Or at least that was the idea. Unfortunately, dragons had keen senses. But if Tymora smiled, the wyrms would have other things to occupy their attention.
All three enemy dragons, the two reds and the green, were in the air along with other flying creatures. They were heading for the top of the rise. Aoth assumed the wyrms intended to start the battle by raking the position with flame and poisonous fumes.
Though he lacked Jhesrhi’s enhanced rapport with the winds, he was wizard enough to feel it when she started to command them. The enemy dragons and flying drakes floundered and plunged as gusts of wind shoved them one way and another, and the air beneath their wings thinned.
Aoth lifted his ram’s horn bugle and blew three notes. No doubt the battlefield was already noisy with the thumping, clanking sound of Threskelan saurians, horsemen, and infantry-a mix of men, orcs, and kobolds-hurrying along beneath their flying allies. But his men were listening for the call, and he was confident they’d hear it even so.
They did. More griffon riders bounded from the copses, then-clear of the branches that would otherwise have hindered their ascent-beat their way up into the sky. Meanwhile, arrows flew from the trees and over the earthworks. Threskelan warriors and creatures began to drop.
Aoth grinned. Discerning what he wanted through their psychic link, Jet raced toward the nearer of the red dragons. Since the elementals weren’t playing pranks on him, the familiar could fly as nimbly as ever.
Which was a good thing. Aoth judged that like its companions, the red was relatively young. But it was still capable of burning Jet and him out of the sky or biting and clawing them to shreds.
He chanted words of power and aimed his spear, releasing some of the energy bound inside it to augment the innate force of the spell. A silvery blast of cold erupted from the weapon’s point and splashed across the dragon’s crested back.
It roared, twisted its neck, and spat fire in return. But perhaps the turbulence around it threw off its aim, because Jet didn’t even have to dodge.
Once they’d flown on by, Aoth conjured fire of his own and blasted two spiretop drakes out of the air. As Jet wheeled for another pass at the red dragon, there was a moment to take a look at how everyone else was faring.
Aoth’s fellow griffon riders loosed arrow after arrow at the winged reptiles. Often, for all their skill, they missed, since few things were more difficult than hitting a moving target from the back of a flying griffon. Sometimes the unquiet air around their targets sent the shafts glancing and tumbling awry. But Aoth estimated that one arrow in five hit and penetrated its mark. With luck, that would be good enough.
On the ground, archery was exacting a heavier toll. Caught in a three-sided box, the Threskelan warriors and their saurian allies scrambled to break out. But whenever they reached the earthworks or the stands of trees, they ran into shield walls bristling with spears.
In short, everything looked like it was going well. Then the blue sky darkened.
Aoth snarled an obscenity. His old enemy Ysval had been capable of blotting out the sunlight. As had Xingax, after he grafted the night-haunt’s hand onto his own arm. Both were long dead, but someone or something on the Threskelan side knew how to create the same effect.
They did catch sight of spellcasters of one sort or another-human sorcerers chanting and sweeping staves, wands, or orbs through intricate passes; wyrmkeepers doing much the same with their picks; and orc and kobold shamans brandishing fetishes made of bone, mummified hands, and shrunken heads. At another time Aoth would have seized the opportunity to hurl flame or hail at any one of them. But none looked capable of leeching the sunlight out of the sky.
Then he noticed a pocket of murk under a stand of oaks at the back of what passed for the enemy formation. No eyes but his could have made out the huge green form hidden in the darkness, or, quite possibly, even noticed the blotch of shadow itself amid the general gloom.
The dragon was staring into a night black orb supported by an iron tripod. So was a circle of his attendants- men, or things that had once been men, with gaunt frames and ashen skin. Judging from the way their mouths were moving, they were chanting in unison as well. The trees around them dropped their leaves as though spring had turned to fall.
The wyrm was almost certainly Jaxanaedegor, the vampiric dragon who was Alasklerbanbastos’s chief lieutenant. Aoth recognized him from Gaedynn and Jhesrhi’s description, and he knew it would be worse than reckless for Jet and him to attack the creature and his followers alone.
But somebody needed to disrupt their conjuring before it produced something worse than darkness. Aoth looked around to see how many griffon riders he could gather. Then he felt a chill and smelled decay. A sense of virulent wrongness knotted his guts.
EIGHT
15 KYTHORN, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
Scar gave a querulous rasp. He wanted to fly and fight with his brothers and sisters, not hide behind the earthworks at the top of the hill.
But for the moment at least, Jhesrhi could direct the winds from where she was, so it would be foolish to take to the air and make herself a target. Entranced, perceiving what the winds perceived and in the same manner-by a sort of remote touching-she was nonetheless aware of the griffon’s displeasure just as she heard the clash of metal on metal, snarls, and screams sounding along the ramparts. She stroked the feathers on his head.
Then the bright day dimmed to filthy twilight. Without leaving the battle line, Hasos bellowed for the sunlords the army had brought along to do something about it.
Jhesrhi could only wish them luck. She couldn’t abandon her own task to help.
The priests chanted prayers and swept their golden maces over their heads in arcs that suggested the sun’s
