“Give it to me now,” Tchazzar groweled.
“If you insist,” Shala said. And the black sphere hurtled straight at Tchazzar’s head.
Halonya screamed. Tchazzar leaped aside, and the jewel missed. As it started to turn, presumably to make a second pass at him, he leaped off the dais and charged Shala.
Retreating, she reached into her sleeve and snatched out the throwing knife she’d kept hidden there. Darkness rippled inside the steel, a telltale sign of the death magic that Jhesrhi also felt like a pang of headache. Shala lifted the flat, leaf-shaped blade for a cast.
Tchazzar spat fire. It was a puny flare compared to the mighty blasts he spewed in wyrm form, but it caught Shala in the face and she reeled. The dagger tumbled from her hand. The jewel slowed down, curved away from Tchazzar, and drifted back in her general direction.
The living god closed with Shala and backhanded her across her square, blistered face. Her knees buckled and he caught her by the forearms with red-scaled fingers. His claws pierced her clothing and the flesh beneath. He opened a mouth full of fangs and cocked his head to rip the side of her neck.
“Are you sure?” Jhesrhi called.
Tchazzar looked around. “What?” he snapped.
“I just thought, what you’re about to do would be very quick, wouldn’t it?”
The dragon took a breath. “You have a point.” He flung Shala to the floor, grabbed the black gem out of the air, and stared at it until it stopped trying to float back out of his grip. Then he glowered at the nearest guards. “You! You were apparently asleep when the bitch tried to kill me. Have you awakened sufficiently to take her to the dungeons?”
As the soldiers dragged Shala away, Jhesrhi couldn’t judge whether she’d done a good thing or a bad one. Maybe all she’d accomplished was to consign her rescuer to a long, excruciating death by torture, for surely Tchazzar had taken measures to ensure that no one would liberate a second prisoner from his cellars. Yet she couldn’t have stood idly by and watched an ally be slaughtered.
For the moment, she decided, all she could do was make sure that Shala’s act of self-sacrifice didn’t go in vain. And deliberate self-sacrifice it had surely been. The soldier couldn’t possibly have believed that the gem and the knife, potent weapons though they were, would prove capable of slaying the Red Dragon.
Tchazzar started pacing around the chamber, peering into one face after another. Looking for signs of disloyalty, no doubt. Fearful of the potential consequences of cringing, people met his gaze as best they could.
Jhesrhi put on a mournful expression. “Majesty,” she said.
Tchazzar turned. His teeth looked human again. His fingers showed only a hint of scales, and his nails were only a trifle long. Jhesrhi supposed that was something. “Yes?” he asked in a gentler tone than she’d previously heard from him that day.
“May I have your permission to depart?” she asked. “I can be gone by sunset. It goes without saying that I won’t carry away any of the gifts you gave me, so I won’t need long to pack.”
Tchazzar blinked. “What?”
“I assume Shala Karanok’s actions have exonerated me. Still, I have disappointed you, and you don’t trust me. So it would be wrong and selfish for me to stay. You need deputies you know to be dependable and true, especially on the eve of war.”
He looked back at her in silence for a moment. Her heart sank as she decided that her instincts had failed her. She shouldn’t have pushed and obliged him to make a choice that very instant.
But then he strode to her. Up close, he smelled of the blood that covered him, and of smoke and burning too. “No,” he said, “no, no, no. You don’t have my permission to depart. What you have is my heartfelt apology. Obviously Shala was our traitor all along, not you, never you.” He grinned. “Fortunately when a woman tries to assassinate you in open court, it pretty much answers any lingering questions concerning her true allegiance.”
“No!” Halonya wailed.
Tchazzar sighed and turned in her direction. “My dear, stubborn daughter-”
“Think about it!” Halonya jabbered, scurrying closer, her gaudy, voluminous vestments flapping and her amulets and necklaces swinging and clinking together. “The witch still had the wet cloak hidden in her quarters! It has to mean something!”
“Why?” Tchazzar asked.
Jhesrhi could have laid out that particular chain of reasoning for him. But although Halonya apparently had a sense of it, she seemed unable to articulate it. “Because!” she sputtered.
Stiff with reluctance, Jhesrhi lowered herself to her knees in front of Halonya. She bowed her head like a humble petitioner awaiting permission to kiss the bejeweled, curling toe of the other woman’s slipper.
“High Lady,” she said, “I beg your forgiveness. For whatever it was I did that first turned you against me, and for every unkind word I’ve spoken since. I know you’re wise and good, and that your person is sacred. I know our god wishes us to be friends. Yet it’s been hard for me to let go of my ill will. Maybe I’m the one who’s jealous.”
Halonya gaped down at her. Never in a dozen lifetimes would she have expected this, which was part of the point.
Tchazzar smiled at Halonya. “My lady?” he said.
Though still trembling with frustration, the priestess was prudent enough to give the living god what he manifestly wanted. She drew a hissing breath and, in a half-strangled voice, said, “Of course I forgive you, Jhesrhi. Sister. All I ever wanted was to be sure you were loyal to our master.”
Tchazzar released the gem, and it started to float and circle him as it had Shala. Then, either forgetting or not caring that Jhesrhi found it difficult to be touched, he took hold of her with his bloody hand and lifted her to her feet.
Then he wrapped one arm around her, the other around Halonya, and drew them both against him. “At last!” he said. “At last.”
Jhesrhi’s stomach churned. She felt as if she had to shove him away or puke, and strained to keep from doing either.
Meanwhile, Halonya gave her a glare that promised their feud wasn’t over.
Jhesrhi had already been sure of that, just as she knew there were a dozen other ways the conspiracy could unravel. And it almost certainly would if it had to continue much longer.
Gaedynn, she thought, Aoth, Khouryn, where are you?
Balasar watched Nellis set up a wooden tripod. The telescoping legs had runes carved into them and, at the point where they met, supported a leather bowl.
Slowly, with a sort of exaggerated, ceremonial care, the Imaskari ambassador set his crystal orb in the socket. Then he paced around the tripod widdershins, shifting his hands into a new position then freezing and crooning one line of an incantation with every step.
Nearby, Jemleh used his cane to draw a curve of silvery glimmer in the air. He sketched an oval, and once it was complete, more shimmer flowed inward from the edges, until it looked like a hanging mirror.
Biri opened her waterskin and spilled a dash of water on the cavern floor. Whispering, she swept her wand of congealed cloudstuff through vertical strokes that made it appear she was encouraging the liquid to rise up. Eventually it turned to mist and did precisely that. Vague shapes formed and dissolved within the swirls of vapor.
When their preparations were complete, each wizard peered and muttered at his or her own preferred mode of scrying until Balasar felt like he was going to explode with impatience. Finally Jemleh turned and said, “I’m sorry, dragonborn. Divination still isn’t working. I’m almost certain Gestanius laid down enchantments to block it.”
Nellis lifted the orb from its bowl. “I agree.”
“Me too,” Biri said. Her miniature cloud drifted apart and disappeared.
Balasar scowled. “All right. We can’t see them, but that doesn’t mean we can’t reach them. We know more or less where they were when the ceiling fell.”
“Unfortunately,” said Jemleh, “ ‘more or less’ isn’t good enough when a wizard is shifting himself through space. Either the magic won’t work at all or it’s likely to stick whoever attempts it inside solid rock.”
