Whisper of Venom

“All my life, people have told me how he was everything great and good.”

“The same people who said that every mage is evil at the core?”

Oraxes blinked. “I … Some of them, but it’s not the same thing.”

“It’s time you recognized a sad truth. You Chessentans are brave, and good at athletics, but not very bright.”

Oraxes bristled. “Tchazzar is good in his way. He truly did free us.”

“And if you want to live to enjoy it when this is over, stay away from him. Don’t accept an appointment at court, or any nonsense like that.”

“How would you know what goes on at court? You’ve been up here in the north.”

“I know a certain type of arrogance when I see it. I know how such lords behave.” Even when it endangered the lives of their sons.

“You just don’t like it that he likes Jhesrhi.”

“Nonsense. Since I seem to be in an advice-giving mood, let me advise you that one woman is much like another, and none of them is worth so much as the loss of your composure, let alone a drop of your blood. In other words, don’t go a

“I wasn’t pla

“Good, because I have a job for you. I’m going out to scout, and with the enemy so near, I want a wizard with me. The outing can do double duty as your first flying lesson. We’ll borrow Queen Umara. She’s docile-well, for a griffon-and she’ll follow Eider’s lead.”

Oraxes blinked. “I didn’t ask to learn to ride a griffon.”

“That’s one of the advantages of military life. Your superiors provide you with interesting experiences you didn’t even know you wanted.”

Queen Umara was a trifle small for a griffon, with a hint of red in her plumage, a scarred, featherless spot on the side of her aquiline head, and a crooked hind leg. She’d sustained both injuries on the expedition into Thay, but fortunately neither rendered her unfit to fly or fight.

Oraxes seemed surprised and suspicious that Gaedy

“Ready?” Gaedy

“Let’s go,” the wizard replied. His voice cracked, and Gaedy

He brushed a fingertip up Eider’s neck. She trotted, lashed her wings, and rose into the air. Gaedy

Eider found a column of warm, rising air and used it to lift her and her master high above the plain. Gaedy

He wheeled Eider toward the north, and Oraxes and Queen Umara followed. After a while a griffon rider passed them heading the other way, for of course the Brotherhood had other scouts watching on the enemy. And Gaedy

He kept an eye on Oraxes. The mage’s anxiety revealed itself in his hunched, rigid posture and in the grim intensity of his expression. But after a while, the ruffled feathers on Queen Umara’s neck lay down, and she stopped screeching in a

Some time after that, some of the stony grimness left Oraxes’s face. He still didn’t look like he was enjoying his situation, but he might have been feeling some satisfaction that he was able to cope.

Gaedy

Abruptly angry with himself, he cut off that line of thought. Plainly it would be worthwhile to recruit Oraxes, but it would have been a good idea at any time and under any circumstances. There was no if involved, because Jhesrhi wasn’t leaving.

And if she did, to the Abyss with her.

Not long afterward, he spotted a blot on the green and brown earth ahead and felt glad of the need to focus on it. Attending to business would keep his mind from straying where he didn’t want it to go.

But the relief, if that was the proper word for it, only lasted until he noticed there were two blots. It was barely conceivable the column had simply split lengthwise for some reason, but he wasn’t optimistic enough to believe it.

At the moment just a crimson speck in the distance, one of the dragons was currently in the air. So were some smaller flying creatures, hanging over their comrades on the ground like a cloud of mosquitoes, perhaps to deter griffon-riding bowmen from getting too close. Still, Gaedy

He needed to do it alone too. He didn’t want a fledgling rider like Oraxes going any nearer. He waved for the wizard to stay back, then urged Eider forward. She grunted like she was questioning his judgment, but obeyed as willingly as ever.

Making sure he’d notice if his flying foes moved to attack him, he divided his attention between them and the ones on the ground. At first, squinting, he couldn’t differentiate between the two columns. Points of yellow sunlight gleamed from each. But then he saw that in the larger one, it was reflecting from reptilian scales. In the smaller, it was glinting on steel.

A company of warriors-men, orcs, or goblinkin, he still couldn’t tell-had reinforced the dragons and the beasts they controlled. Wary of the brutes, they were maintaining some distance until such time as they all needed to fight as one.

It was bad news, but, as he made a rough count of the soldiers, worse arrived. Leathery wings beating, a second red dragon flew out of the north to join the one in the air.

Praying that he’d somehow lost track of a wyrm, that it had gotten up into the sky without him realizing it, Gaedy

He peered at the second red, trying to decide how old, large, and accordingly formidable it might be, and then it snarled. Though he couldn’t speak the language of dragons, he could tell the sound was complex and patterned enough to have words inside it. Three of the lesser specks abruptly hurtled forward.

Gaedy

Hoping the magic would run out of power soon, Gaedy