as opposed to demented ruminations about the will of the gods. And anyway, I’ve been stuck in the middle of this mess since the beginning. I might as well be there at the end.”
Biri looked down at her hands with their several rings, all of which had either an outre or a starkly utilitarian look that marked them as mystical tools rather than adornment. “Yes… well… I talked to Prax, and he says that carrying one more rider as far as the outpost where we left the redwings won’t slow him down.”
Balasar hesitated and thought how ridiculous it was that one maiden could so easily flummox a fellow glib and clever enough to infiltrate the Platinum Cadre and unmask Nala for the insidious traitor she had been. “You’ve done plenty already,” he said.
She sighed. “I hope you realize, it’s not every female who’d chase you down the gullet of a purple worm.”
“Thank you for that. I know I owe you my life.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want you to ‘owe’ me anything. I just want you to like me.”
“I do.”
“Then why does such a notorious lecher flinch whenever I smile at him?”
“Because it wouldn’t just be a dalliance with you. Not if our clan elders have their way. Not if you have yours.”
“So it’s the prospect of something permanent that’s unbearable?”
“Yes. No.” He groped for the words to express his feelings. “I’m proud to belong to Clan Daardendrien. But at the same time, for as long as I can remember, I’ve felt like if I let it, it would smother me. All the duties, the traditions, the expectations… I mean, some of it is fine. I joke about not wanting to, but I’m happy to go fight any bandit, giant, or wyrm that comes sniffing around. The rest, however, is…”
“Stifling.”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s all fine, but I think you’ve been so busy defending your precious independence that you haven’t noticed who’s clicking her claws at you. Ever since I broke out of the egg, my own clan elders have striven to make me as ‘marriageable’ as possible, and like most of our folk, they regard mages as ‘eccentric.’ Do you think they encouraged me to study wizardry?”
“I suppose not.”
“Then you’re right! I had to fight for it! Which makes you and me kindred spirits. So you know there wouldn’t be anything staid and proper about our marriage. We’d have the most scandalous, outrageous union in all Tymanther. Our elders would rue the day we met.”
Balasar laughed, then struggled to hold it in so he wouldn’t wake the exhausted folk snoring just a few paces away. “Well,” he said, “when you put it that way.”
Brimstone had finally acquired what he considered to be a proper instrument for his scrying, a trapezoidal sheet of polished obsidian in a silver frame. When he stared into it and whispered words of power, the blackness flowed to the edges of the stone, and images appeared in the center.
At first, Ananta had hesitated to peer through the magical window. But eventually the smoke drake had noticed her hanging back and invited her to satisfy her curiosity as she saw fit. She wasn’t sure if that reflected trust per se or the assumption that she wouldn’t dare try to use whatever she learned against him.
Indeed, she wouldn’t try but not because of fear, for all that he’d once defeated her in battle. It was because Skalnaedyr, the blue wyrm to whom she owed everything, had given Dracowyr to Brimstone and commanded her to serve its new master as she had the old.
“Got it,” the vampire said as the image cleared.
Her staff of office in hand, Ananta moved up beside his head for a better view. She was a dragonborn, with the tall, sturdy frame of her kind, but even so, for a moment, standing so close to Brimstone with his dark gray, red-speckled scales and luminous crimson eyes made her feel like a mouse who’d ventured too close to a cat.
She suppressed the feeling by focusing on the humans in the mirror.
They were feasting in a lordly hall, and accompanying himself on a lute, a bard was just finishing a song. To Ananta’s ears, the sound was a tiny, tinny thing, the lyrics indistinguishable, but she knew Brimstone could hear it clearly.
The bald, smiling man at the center of the head table rose and leaned over the goblets, plates, and trays to shake the minstrel’s hand and give him a bulging purse. Then he looked around, possibly to summon the next entertainer, but a nobleman in a red jerkin spoke and distracted him.
They conversed for a moment; then the man in red called out. Slowly and carefully, so as not to stir up the sediment, a servant carried a dusty bottle to the table.
He served the lord of the hall first. The bald man sniffed the red vintage, made some comment on the bouquet, then took a sip. He started to say something else, and his eyes opened wide. He tried to lift his hands to his throat or face, but they made it only partway. Then he pitched forward across the table.
A priestess of the Great Mother rushed forward and tried to heal him. But after three prayers, she shook her head to indicate that he was gone. And that was when the bald man’s retainers fell on the gaping aristocrat in red and the equally shocked-looking fellow who’d brought the wine.
Brimstone chuckled. “Neatly done,” he said in his sly, sardonic whisper of a voice.
Like any dragonborn worthy of the name, Ananta disdained poison as a coward’s weapon. But she felt disinclined to say so and elicit a jeer at her supposed naivete. “How so, my lord?” she asked.
“The bald man was Quarenshodor’s chief lieutenant. It was actually Eeringallagan who ordered his murder, but the assassin arranged for Lyntrinell’s servant to serve the poison. Well, Lyntrinell’s servant’s servant, but you get my point. The wrong dragon prince ends up taking the blame. It’s good, solid xorvintaal, subtler than much of the play we’ve seen of late.”
“How did you know to watch?” Ananta asked.
“Oh, Eeringallagan requested it,” Brimstone said. “He wanted to make sure he’d receive the points for it.”
Ananta grunted, Brimstone twisted his head to regard her straight on, and blackness washed over the scene in the human hall.
“You don’t approve,” the dragon said, his breath smelling of smoke. “You try to hide it-to avoid bruising my tender feelings, no doubt-but I can tell. Does it all seem somehow petty? Unworthy of the mightiest creatures in the world in general, and your beloved Prince Skalnaedyr in particular?”
Ananta scowled. “Something like that.”
“Believe it or not, I can see that side of it. But it’s a pettiness that will remake Faerun.” He turned suddenly, lifting a wing so he wouldn’t swat her with it. “I’ll explain further another time, but for now we have a visitor.”
After another heartbeat, she, too, smelled a scent like incipient lightning and heard buzzing and crackling. Then, dripping sparks, a dracolich crawled into the cave. Entirely skeletal, it dwarfed Brimstone as he dwarfed Ananta.
She wondered if that could possibly be who she thought it must be: a player who, despite or maybe because of possessing every advantage, had been eliminated from the Great Game early, when a cabal of his rivals and underlings conspired against him.
Brimstone’s greeting removed her uncertainty. “My lord Alasklerbanbastos,” he said. “I rejoice to see you returned to the world of the living and cloaked in a form every bit as imposing as the last one.”
“Did you know?” the dracolich growled.
“That Jaxanaedegor and your lesser vassals intended to betray you?” Brimstone replied. “By the end, I did.”
“And yet you didn’t warn me!” Pale light flickered inside Alasklerbanbastos’s ribs, through his fangs, and behind the orbits of his skull. The smell of an approaching storm thickened.
Ananta shifted her grip on her staff. It had formidable powers, but she doubted they were formidable enough to contend with the Great Bone Wyrm.
“Nor did I warn anyone else of any of your schemes,” Brimstone said. If he felt threatened, Ananta couldn’t tell if from his demeanor.
