20 Alturiak, the Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR) Firesteap Citadel
They stepped out of the coach and into a cacophony of taps and cracks. Hundreds of men milled about, seemingly at random, groups surrounding pairs fighting each other with wooden swords. Other rings of men encircled half a dozen men fighting another half a dozen men with long, blunt-ended poles. Orders and encouragementand more than a few insults and jibesburst free of the general din.
Pristoleph nodded to a lieutenant who saluted him and helped Phyrea down from the coach. Not paying attention to the lieutenant’s status report, Pristoleph watched his young bride take in the scene. She squinted in the winter overcast from under a wide-brimmed hat.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Pristoleph said, cutting off the officer’s report.
The soldier bowed and scurried away into the general confusion.
“You’re sure you’re well?” Pristoleph said, allowing every bit of the doubt he held to show in both his voice and his face.
Phyrea didn’t look at him. She held a small black parasol under one arm, which she fiddled with. He couldn’t help thinking she wanted to open it, as though the dull gray light was too bright for her. He’d been noticing that she was growing more and more sensitive to light, as though she was becoming a creature of the Underdark, and he didn’t like that.
As he continued to watch her, her tight squint began to relax a little and she almost began to smile.
“Well?” he prompted.
“This is yours now?” she asked, and he could tell she was impressed. Just then Pristoleph thought he’d somehow done the impossible. “You bought this?”
“The citadel?” he replied, taking her by the arm and leading her along the winding dirt track that led through the drilling grounds toward the tall stone fortress. “Firesteap Citadel belongs to the ransaror, well, let’s say, the people of Innarlith. I bought the castellan.”
She smiled at him and he had no choice but to smile back.
“I served here,” he told her, his thoughts spinning back to those simpler times.
“I can’t imagine you as a soldier,” she said.
“I’ll admit I wasn’t much of a footman,” he confided. “I had… other duties.”
“Oh?”
“Let’s just say that I provided an essential… supply service for my comrades in arms.”
“Yes,” she said with a light laughlighter than he’d heard from her in some time, if ever, “let’s just say that.”
She slowed as they passed close to a group of soldiers lined up parallel to each other, swinging wooden pole arms in mock combat. One head turned her way, then another and another, until a sergeant started yelling at them while he looked Phyrea up and down himself. Pristoleph could see that she was so used to that sort of attention from that sort of man, that she didn’t notice it at all.
“I want you to stay here for a while,” he said, once again leading her slowly toward the citadel. “The city may not be entirely safeat least not for long.”
He looked at her, expecting her to look at him. Instead she seemed to be listening to one of those voices that only she could hear. He had to look away. When he watched her do that, his heart ached. Either she was indeed possessed, or she was mad. Either way he could pay a priest to make her better, but she refused to even hear of it. If anything else was mysteriously broken in his house, though, he would have her exorcised whether she agreed to it or not.
10
5 Mirtul, the Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR) Firesteap Citadel
Marek watched Insithryllax fidget. The black dragon wore his human guise, but his coal-dark eyes darted across the sky above him, his feet shuffled, and his shoulders twitched like a restless bird. The day was unseasonably warm, the sky a pure blue untroubled by clouds, and the dragon wanted to fly.
“He is himself again,” Wenefir said. His voice made Insithryllax jump a little and turn with an angry twist to his heavy brow. The priest of Cyric ignored him and went on, “I don’t know if it’s the clean southern air, or maybe even that trollop of his, but it’s as though he’s returned from a long journey.”
Marek shrugged while bowing to Wenefir in greeting. All three of them turned their eyes down to the ground fifty feet or more below them. From the top of the citadel, they could see the whole of the mustering grounds. There Pristoleph’s newly-acquired private army marched and drilled.
“Certainly you agree, Master Rymiit?” Wenefir prompted.
Marek shrugged and said, “I’ve seen better prepared, better armed, and better disciplined armies in my day.”
He could sense Wenefir stiffen at his side but didn’t look at him. Instead, he let his gaze wander back to Insithryllax, who had once again turned his attention to the beckoning sky.
“Well,” the Cyricist huffed, “of course we all have.” Marek could tell that Wenefir hadn’t. “Still, it’s been barely three months.”
“And they weren’t an army before?” Marek teased with a smile.
The priest didn’t return the smile when he replied, “Not hardly. They were rabble, most of them, living off the paltry wages of Salatis’s sorry excuse for a military and more than one of them had other interests… other business interests that is.”
“They were thieves,” Marek said.
“The best of them were, yes,” Wenefir replied, “while others either supported or extorted the camp followers, provided private security or other dark deeds for whatever coin might have been thrown at them… they were thieves, yes, and murderers, too.”
“I seem to recall,” Marek said, enjoying every second of what he was about to say with a wide, toothy grin, “hearing tell of a young soldier named Pristoleph who, some decades ago, provided his comrades in arms with the company of women… women, one might say, of generous affections.”
Wenefir tensed and Marek got the distinct impression the priest was holding himself rigid, as though unwilling to give the Red Wizard the satisfaction of whirling on him. His jaw tensed, his eyes closed, then all at once he relaxed. Behind him, the black dragon stared at the priest with the threat of violence in his eyes.
“What is it about you, I wonder,” Wenefirsaid, forcing a smile on his face with obvious difficulty, “that causes me to underestimate you in all the least important ways?”
“Let us call it ‘charisma’ and leave it at that,” Marek replied.
The priest tipped his head in acquiescence and once again the three of them turned their attention to Pristoleph at the head of his army.
11
14 Mirtul, the Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR) Firesteap Citadel
Phyrea dreamed of a monster with a beautiful face.
A snake, but bigger than any she’d ever imagined. Its smooth, dry scales shimmered in the dim candlelight, throwing off sparks of every color. She watched it approach the foot of her bed. While one part of her mind tried in vain to assign its slithering form a single color, another part screamed at her to move, to leap from bed and flee.
But she couldn’t move. The satin and silk bedclothes were loose and warm around her, but still she felt as though they held her firmly against the mattress. She lay on her back, her neck propped up on her favorite pillow,
