plates and utensils in front of each of them.
When they were finally gone, the priestess said, “We have known for some time that you have been employing undead to work the docks and the canal.”
Phyrea held her breath.
Typical, the little girl sneered.
Hush now, the man with the scar cut in. They’re zombies she’s talking aboutless than beasts. What do we care? Pay her no mind, Phyrea.
The ghost of the little girl didn’t reply to that, but Phyrea could sense that there was much left unsaid.
“I have,” Pristoleph admitted. “I understand that that may not meet with your approval, but I’d hoped we could forgive each other’s” he paused on purpose to sound as though he was choosing his words carefully”little indulgences, in the name of peaceful cohabitation.”
“And for the longest time,” the woman replied, “we turned a blind eye. Now, I must tell you, I am ashamed to admit that.”
“All of the zombies have disappeared form the canal site,” Pristoleph said. “But then you knew that.”
The woman tipped her chin up and gazed back at him with such a look of pure self-confidence it made Phyrea’s palms start to sweat.
Oh, the old woman whispered from somewhere in the corner of the huge room, I like this one.
She might be worth the trouble to kill, after all, the scarred man concurred.
“That was a service I’m sure the entire city-state will thank us for, Ransar Pristoleph,” said the priestess.
“And you’re providing the same service now, on the quayside,” he said.
The high priestess nodded and replied, “But, apparently, not without opposition.”
“Mother,” Pristoleph said, leaning forward to look the woman in the eyes, “you have my assurance as Ransar of Innarlith that I had nothing to do with the deaths of your priestesses. You also have my sincere assurance that my offices are at your disposal in the effort to find those responsible and to bring them to justice.”
Phyrea was certain he was telling the truth with the first part, but the first part only, and from the look the high priestess gave him, they shared that opinion.
Phyrea took hold of the little knife the servants had placed in front of her, and while Pristoleph and the high priestess stared each other down, examining each other as one would look for a hairline crack in a piece of expensive pottery, she put her hand under the table.
Well, the man with the scar said, it looks as though you won’t have to kill her for that brooch.
Phyrea lifted her skirt with one hand and held the knife with the other. She made her movements slow and quiet so the other woman wouldn’t look at her.
“I hope that that is indeed the case, Ransar,” the high priestess said.
“It is,” Pristoleph assured her.
Phyrea held the blade of the little knife against her bare thigh.
Yes, the old woman cackled, it looks as though your husband is going to do it for
She stopped when the blade bit into Phyrea’s soft flesh.
“And we will agree that it is improper to employ the animated corpses of our fellow citizens as slaves,” the high priestess said.
Phyrea closed her eyes against the pain of the cut in her thigh, while at the same time reveling in the silence.
“I like to think I’m the sort of gentleman who can admit when he’s wrong, Mother,” Pristoleph said, but his voice was thick with a not-so-subtle warning.
With that, the two of them moved on to niceties and vacuous small talk, in which Phyrea couldn’t bring herself to join.
39
25 Eleint, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR) The Land of One Hundred and Thirteen
The sky in Marek Rymiit’s tiny universe roiled and thundered. The clouds moved in many different directions at once, pulling away from the tall tower of dark stone atop the lone hill. Lightning arced across the horizon, making it appear as though the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen was contained in a cage of blue-white light.
Marek grinned and took a deep breath of air that reeked of dragon and ozone. He looked up again and spied the huge, sinuous form of Insithryllax diving in and out of the tortured gray-black clouds. The dragon’s batlike wings caught the air and rode it in great sweeping arcs. The wyrm kept the black firedrakes at a distance, and Marek could only rarely see one of the much smaller forms dart from cloud to cloud closer to the lightning-traced horizon.
The Red Wizard turned his attention to the stone-tiled roof of the tower upon which he stood. Before him, carefully scribed to sit in the exact center of the cylindrical structure, he had drawn a circle of chalk, blood, and magic. Placed at uneven but carefully delineated points around the circle were six candles made of wax mixed with the blood of an Abyssal tanar’rinot an easy commodity to get one’s hands on, even in Thay.
Looking up once again at the dragon circling high above him, Marek called out, “Stay close! I begin!”
The dragon tipped one wing and waved his head in response and began a sweeping descent toward the roof of the tower.
Marek set his hands in the first of a complex series of uncomfortable gestures and began to chant. The words stung his ears, and the foul language of a malignant civilization millennia dead grated in his dry throat until his voice sounded like the growl of a rabid dog. Ignoring the little aches and pains, the Red Wizard twisted his fingers through the series of gestures, and when he came to the last of them and the final word of the incantation, he took one step back from the circle.
A blue-violet glow traced the outside of the circle, one he’d carefully measured to be precisely sixteen feet in diameter, then poured into the middle as though the light was water filling a low pool from all sides.
Marek smiled when the bright light faded to a deep indigo. He looked up once more and made eye contact with the dragon.
Insithryllax tucked his wings to the sides of his black-scaled body and dived headfirst at the pool of indigo light. Before the dragon reached the top of the tower, a gout of red and black smoke belched from the circle of light, and the air around them was assaulted by the sound of a million people screaming while another million cried. Marek flinched away from the agonized cacophony, but the dragon never wavered in his downward pathnot until he was only feet above the circle, which had become a doorway into the heart of the Abyss.
The black dragon spread his wings, and a sound like a great ship’s sails catching a stiff wind drowned out the screams of the tormented. Insithryllax stopped in midair for the briefest momentless than one of Marek’s rapid, excited heartbeatsthen he dipped his head into the very Abyss itself and came out carrying the writhing form of what at first appeared to be a man.
Holding the squirming form in his mighty jaws, Insithryllax beat his wings once and fell away over the lip of the tower’s roof. As the tip of his right wing dropped from sight, Marek brought his hands together in a firm clap. The sound sent a shudder through the stone floor and the gate sent out a deafening crack in response. The candles and the circle both were gone, and a waft of acrid smoke remained, but otherwise the doorway to the horrific plane of chaos and evil was closed.
The Red Wizard took a deep breath and smiled, waiting.
Insithryllax, with a flapping of wings that made Marek stagger backward and hold onto a battlement lest he be blown over the side, rose above the roof. Like a cat toying with a mouse, the dragon snapped his neck and tossed the writhing form onto the roof. The gray-skinned creature rolled to a stop but was instantly on its feet and hissing its infernal rage at the black wyrm. Ignoring it, Insithryllax took wing, and before the demon even noticed Marek standing only a few feet away, the dragon was lost to the clouds.
“Be at peace, maurezhi,” Marek said.
The creature spun on him. The Red Wizard could feel its gray eyes fix on him though they held no iris or pupil.
