The Captive Flame

“It’s all right,” Aoth said. “Well, not really. I wanted to find out who the whoreson was. But anyway, he’s gone.”

“See the dragon?” Jhesrhi asked.

“What?” said Gaedy

It was one of those rare moments when he seemed genuinely flummoxed. Despite the potentially dangerous circumstances and her sour mood, it gave her a moment of malicious amusement to see the master scout discomfited at having missed something as big and threatening as a wyrm.

Although if she were inclined to be fair, she’d admit that it was surprisingly easy to miss a blue dragon flying against a blue sky. Fortunately, the wind in these farmlands was now her ally, and as a result she hadn’t needed her own eyes to learn of the creature’s approach.

“Just keep riding,” Gaedy

The remark implied that he thought she might be on the verge of panic. In light of her behavior back at the kobold outpost, he had every right to, but it irked her anyway.

“I know what to do,” she snapped. She proved it by kicking the paint into motion and trotting on up the muddy road to Mourktar.

From a distance, with a number of towers jutting high above the buildings huddled around them, Mourktar looked like a fairly impressive city. Jhesrhi supposed that viewed from the seaward side, it would seem even more so. Because the town was Threskel’s one deepwater port on the Alamber Sea, and by all accounts, the bustling heart of the place was the docks and the warehouses adjacent to them.

Although Jhesrhi had no reason to care about that. Not unless she gave in to the temptation to board an outbound ship and flee. She and Gaedy

The blue dragon flew on toward the city, and then a second such creature soared up from among the buildings. Surprised, Jhesrhi reined in her mount. Gaedy

The blues circled each other. After a while, Jhesrhi said, “I can’t hear them at this distance, but I suppose they’re talking.”

“I’m sure they are,” Gaedy

She reached out with her perceptions. It was only partly a matter of seeing, partly a matter of feeling at a distance. “Yes. You’re right.”

“And notice the smell in the air, like a storm is brewing. Notice the flicker inside their mouths. You can see it blink like a twinkling star, even this far away. I doubt there’s much point to it. It’s difficult to hurt a dragon with the same element it breathes itself. But it’s their instinct to ready the weapon, no matter what.”

“So they really are going to duel. I wonder why.”

“I have no idea. But I do know I’d rather not be in the town underneath them while they do it. Let’s watch from here.”

And that was what they did, for what seemed a long while. Then the dragons swooped toward the buildings below. One disappeared into the streets on the north side of Mourktar, and the other into the southern part of town.

Gaedy

“Apparently,” Jhesrhi said. She felt a little disappointed. How often did a person have the chance to watch dragons fight each other?

“Then shall we?” Gaedy

By the time they reached the outskirts of the city, the clear sky was giving way to gray clouds blowing in from the sea. The streets teemed with a mixture of races. Humans. Kobolds. Goblins no taller than Khouryn with big pointed ears and ruddy skin, and orcs with swinish tusks and, occasionally, one eye gouged out in honor of their patron deity Gruumsh.

Whatever his kind, if a person was well armed and carried himself like a warrior, he often wore the wand-and-scepter badge. Mourktar was full of soldiers, some likely sellswords arrived by sea. It was additional evidence that Threskel really did intend to mount an invasion.

In a sensible world, Jhesrhi thought, she and Gaedy

With the streets so crowded, it was slow going, and she worried they wouldn’t find anywhere to stable the horses or to stay themselves. Gaedy

By that time, the sun had set. They ate a supper of fish stew, rye bread, and ale in the i

But she tolerated it because she had to. She caught Gaedy

Which perhaps he didn’t deserve, for he wasted no time leading her to a narrow, doglegged street where the taverns had names like The Five Nuggets and The Hill Man’s Bliss and the merchants sold shovels, pans, sluice boxes, traps, bows, and boar spears. Since he’d never visited Mourktar before either, she had no idea how he found the right part of it so quickly. It didn’t seem fair that a man raised in the woods should seem so completely at home in cities as well. Especially since she seldom felt fully at ease anywhere at all.

As they wandered from one smoky, boisterous taproom to another, he presented himself as the woodsman and hunter he was, and the hill men took him for one of their own. She looked on quietly as he bought rounds of drinks, swapped preposterous boasts and filthy jokes, and in time turned the conversation to strange tales and rumors from the wild.

It was probably because she remained aloof from the conversation that she was the one who noticed someone watching them.

A small man sat alone in the shadowy corner nearest the door. He wore the same stained, patched, rugged garb as most of the people in the room, but to judge from the pallor of his face and hands, he hadn’t really spent much time in the sun and the rain. He wasn’t quite staring at Gaedy

She wondered how best to find out who he was and what he wanted. She was still pondering when he abruptly rose and headed out into the night.

She took hold of her staff, still shrouded in a layer of cloth to hide the rare, valuable blackwood and inlaid golden runes. The wrapping attenuated her mystical link to the rod, but not so much as to render it useless. She waited another moment, then rose and started for the door. Gaedy

Though she was only a few heartbeats behind the watcher, by the time she stepped out the door, he was nowhere to be seen. She whispered to the breeze that carried both the stink of the city’s garbage and the saltwater smell of the sea. Unfortunately, it hadn’t taken any notice of the pale man.