go kill them.”
Despite the handicap of broken fingers, Diero had managed to fumble the belt from around his waist, loop it around his stump, pull the makeshift tourniquet tight by clenching the end in his teeth, and stanch the bleeding. It had been the most difficult thing he’d ever done, and now he wondered if it had been a waste of effort.
For a quick death might have been preferable to his current circumstances. The victors had locked him in the bare, stony misery of a slave cell. Tu’ala’keth had used her magic to, in effect, cauterize the end of his mutilated arm. But she’d done nothing to mend his fractured jaw and fingers, and all his injuries throbbed in time with the beating of his heart.
He suspected the pain, severe as it was, would pale in comparison to torments to come.
He needed to escape, which meant he needed his magic. He tried to articulate a simple cantrip, but garbled the words. He strained to crook his swollen fingers into an arcane sign, and that was hopeless, too.
“I respect a man,” a bass voice drawled, “who doesn’t give up easily.”
Startled, Diero jerked around. Anton and Tu’ala’keth stood outside the iron grille, looking in at him. He realized he was so weak from blood loss, shock, and dehydration, so sunk in his own wretchedness, that he hadn’t even noticed their arrival. He struggled against an unfamiliar impulse to cringe from them.
Anton recited a charm then swung the rasping door open. “I still haven’t found the key to this thing. I’m lucky I never needed it.”
Tu’ala’keth approached Diero where he slumped on the granite floor. “I am going to heal your jaw,” she said. “If you then attempt to conjure, Anton and I will kill you.” She recited a prayer, took his chin in her webbed blue fingers, and gave it a little jerk.
A bolt of agony stabbed through his head. But afterward, his jaw didn’t ache as it had before. He worked it gingerly, and it clicked. The bone seemed intact and in its proper place.
“We brought you a drink, too,” Anton said. He pulled the cork from a waterskin and held it to Diero’s lips. The magician gulped the lukewarm liquid. For a moment all he could think of was how wonderful it felt to slake his thirst.
Anton took the sloshing pigskin bag away. “That’s enough for now.”
“I know,” Diero sighed. He’d watched thirsty men guzzle too quickly and make themselves ill.
“Now,” said the spy, “let’s take a walk.”
Diero felt another jab of fear and struggled to mask it. “Where to? What do you want with me?”
“Explanations,” said Tu’ala’keth. She hauled him to his feet, and they marched him out of the cell, catching and steadying him when, in his weakness, he stumbled.
A miscellany of bodies littered the tunnels. Here and there, ixitxachitls glided and fish-men shambled about but not in great profusion. Diero suspected that after the battle, most of them had returned to the sea, thus conserving the magic that enabled them to function above it.
At one intersection lay the shredded carcass of a fire drake, still radiating warmth hours after its demise. “We only killed some of the wyrms,” Anton said. “The rest flew away when they realized the outcome of the battle was in doubt. Not very loyal to their devoted worshipers, are they?”
“No,” Diero said. He wished the invaders had killed them all. Had Eshcaz only heeded him, none of this would be happening.
His captors conducted him to the upper levels, where the cult’s mages, priests, and artisans had labored to produce dracoliches and where their conquerors had heaped amulets, swords, scrolls, battle-axes, quivers of arrows, vials, wands, and books atop a worktable. The pile seemed almost to glow, to radiate a palpable tingle of arcane force.
Diero recognized many of the items but not all. He inferred that in addition to plundering the shrines, libraries, and conjuring chambers, the invaders had located Eshcaz’s hoard wherever it lay hidden deep in the mountain. The bastards were clever, he had to give them that.
“Given time,” said Tu’ala’keth, “I could study these articles and learn all about them. But I do not have time, so you will help me. You will tell me what they are, how they work, and how they can best be employed to kill dragons.”
Despite repeated efforts to muster his courage,
Diero still felt weak and afraid. But if he hoped to help himself, now was the time. “Why should I?” he replied.
“The rack survived the battle,” Anton said. “I checked. Maybe you’d like to find out how it feels to be stretched. Or what life is like without any hands at all.”
Diero gave him a level stare. “You can certainly torture me. I’ll break eventually. Everybody does. But I’ll hold out as long as I can. Perhaps long enough to ruin the shalarin’s plans. Or maybe the stress will kill me outright. At present, I’m not strong.”
“What do you want?” asked Tu’ala’keth.
“Freedom, once I supply what you need.”
“No,” Anton said. “Even leaving my personal feelings out of it, my chief would flog me if I agreed to that. But I will offer this: When my fellow captives leave the island, you’ll go along as their prisoner. They’ll hand you over to the Turmian navy and earn themselves a bounty. They deserve some recompense for their suffering, and the ‘chitls won’t let them carry away any gold.
“From then on,” the spy continued, “my superiors will decide what becomes of you, and they just might spare your life if you cooperate. I’ve heard it said that one Cult of the Dragon coven knows nothing of the others. That way, no matter what calamity befalls it, it can’t betray them. But you’re a wearer of purple, and reasonably clever. I suspect you possess some information you shouldn’t, and in a season when everyone’s frantic to ferret out your conspiracy wherever it hides, you may be able to parlay it into soft treatment.”
Diero shook his head. “No. I insist you release me.”
“To Baator with that,” Anton snapped. “You claim you can last under torture? I doubt it. I doubt you can take much pain at all.”
Quick as a striking snake, he grabbed Diero’s broken fingers in his own and bore down hard. The agony dropped the magician to his knees.
“All right!” he sobbed. “All right! We have a bargain.”
“Good.” Anton shifted his grip to Diero’s forearm and dragged him back to his feet. “Drink some more water then tell us what we need to know.”
‹§›SSSS-SSSSSSSS
Anton found Diero a chair. In his weakened condition, the wizard might have fainted if required to remain on his feet much longer.
After that, Tu’ala’keth brought him the enchanted articles one at a time. She didn’t permit him to touch them, and Anton hovered behind him with a dagger in hand. In his experience, magicians were always dangerous, even when placed at a disadvantage.
It was difficult to remain vigilant, though, when Diero’s explanations were so intriguing, so promising. Some of the weapons possessed virtues enabling them to strike dragons with extraordinary force and precision. Scrolls contained spells to soften their scaly armor, blind them to the presence of their foes, addle their minds, or render the caster impervious to their breath. Shields and coats of mail possessed magics to fortify them against the bite of a wyrm or a swipe of its talons.
“Checkmate’s edge,” Anton exclaimed at length. “I suppose this is what we were hoping for, but I don’t understand it. I thought you cultists served the wyrms. Why did you stockpile arms specifically intended for use against them?”
Diero smiled a crooked smile. “We didn’t. Not as such. At its higher levels, the Cult of the Dragon is a fellowship of wizards and priestswhich is to say, scholarswho venerate wyrms. When scholars take an interest in a subject, they want to study it and learn all about it, and one way to study dragons is to examine artifacts that pertain to them. So, over the decades, our cabal assembled an extensive collection of such thingsincluding dragon banes.
“In addition to those,” the mage continued, “you have the items from Eshcaz’s horde. Before we mages woke him, he slept for so many human generations that most folk have forgotten him. But prior to that, he was the terror of the Sea of Fallen Stars. Armed with the finest gear desperate princes and hierarchs could provide, heroes used to challenge him on a regular basis. Obviously, after he killed them, he added their swords and staves to his
