The Spectral Blaze

Meralaine’s adversary had nearly reached the perfect position from which to attack when, suddenly flying more smoothly, the drakkensteed on which she was sitting wheeled to face it. The priest in the saddle sat up straighter. Oraxes realized Meralaine had reanimated the dead man so he could control their mount.

Their foe still had the advantage of the high air. But Meralaine shouted a word that made him cringe instead of doing anything useful, and at the same instant, the newly made zombie commanded their drakkensteed to use its breath weapon. The plume of poison mist reached just high enough to wash over the head of the living wyrmkeeper’s mount. It flailed and plummeted, and the man on its back screamed as it carried him down.

Perceiving that he had no allies left, Sphorrid turned his steed and fled. It was the wrong move. It kept him from dodging the thunderbolt that Oraxes threw after him. Charred and mangled, the wyrmlord and his mount also fell and broke into pieces when they smashed against the ground.

Oraxes and Meralaine followed them down and made absolutely certain both priests were dead. He took a deep breath and said, “Well. That was interesting.”

Meralaine swiped strands of hair out of her pale, sweaty face. “What’s the plan now?” she asked.

Oraxes tried to think. “We bury the bodies, and act oh so surprised if someone else comes from Luthcheq to ask what happened to the first band of busybodies. We watched them leave for home and have no idea why they never arrived.”

“That might work.” She waved her hand at the two surviving drakkensteeds. “What about these brutes?”

He strained to figure out if they could afford to keep them or set them free or if they needed to kill and hide them too, even though the animals had just helped to save their lives. He couldn’t sort it out.

“By the seven cold and broken stars,” he said, half laughing and half a

SEVEN

23-24 E LEASIS, THE Y EAR OF THE A GELESS O NE

Praxasalandos oozed through a seam in the rock. It was a perfect way to stalk his prey. He could pace the Imaskari and dragonborn almost step for step, and they never even suspected he was near.

He found a spot where a crack co

The intruders were still resting-in many cases, sleeping-and showed no signs of moving on in the immediate future. It made sense that they were tired. They’d marched a long way, sometimes taking the wrong tu

The difference between the scene from before and what Praxasalandos looked at was that the dragonborn called Medrash was up and prowling around. Somewhat to his dismay, Praxasalandos had discovered that the explorers had a fair assortment of formidable individuals among them, but nonetheless, Medrash, his kinsman Balasar, and Khouryn, the dwarf, stood out from the rest. They were natural leaders in a way that transcended rank, although they possessed that too. Eliminate even one of them, and it would weaken the expedition significantly.

So that was what Praxasalandos intended to do.

He dissolved the eye before anyone noticed it then, guided by a kind of tactile instinct as reliable as sight, streamed back the way he’d come. He seeped out of the granite in a tu

There he compressed his mass as he solidified it and simultaneously sculpted it into an unaccustomed shape. The process was more difficult than assuming his natural form, but not much, not for a dragon possessed of his breed’s singular gifts.

When he was done, he peeked around the bend. There was an Imaskari sentry stationed there, but the human with his pale, mottled skin couldn’t see him hiding in the dark.

Praxasalandos kept peering out at intervals until finally Medrash was in view. Then he undertook the final and most difficult detail of his masquerade: putting a glowing lantern in his hand. Because obviously the real Balasar wouldn’t have wandered away from his comrades without a source of light.

It took a couple of heartbeats, long enough for Praxasalandos to feel a pang of doubt.

What was he doing? Why was he setting snares for folk who’d never done him any harm, especially when, judging from their standards and insignia, some of them worshiped Bahamut? Why was he serving Gestanius, a despicable creature that, by rights, any self-respecting metallic should oppose?

But of course, the answer was obvious: the game.

At certain moments, Praxasalandos regretted that he’d ever accepted the invitation to visit Brimstone on Dracowyr. But like most quicksilver dragons, he was curious; how could he pass up an opportunity to meet a creature who, though an undead horror, was also one of the saviors of their entire race?

And from the moment the vampire explained xorvintaal in all its intricate glory, there was no turning back. Praxasalandos had no interest in building a new Draconic Age, the alleged ultimate purpose for the contest. But the play itself was fascinating in its complexity, uniquely suited to divert a dragon’s deep and subtle mind not just for a month or a year, but down the long centuries of his near immortality. A wyrm could no more withstand its allure than he could resist the desire to amass precious objects into a hoard.

And once Praxasalandos opted in, he had to address the fact that, although powerful by ordinary standards, he lacked the resources to play in the same style as the most notorious wyrms of the East. If he wanted to fare well in the opening stages, his best chance was to ally himself with one of them. And Gestanius, who laired in the same mountains as he did, seemed a sensible albeit unsavory choice.

Medrash’s voice sounded down the tu

Praxasalandos decided that the lantern with its spot of phosphorescence had fully defined itself. He stepped around the turn, beckoned urgently for Medrash to come forward, then retreated out of sight.

“Balasar?” Medrash called.

Praxasalandos didn’t answer. He held his breath as he waited to see if the dragonborn would take the bait.

It was by no means a certainty. If Medrash doubted what his eyes had told him, he might retrace his own steps far enough to see that the real Balasar was still asleep. Or his voice might wake the real one, who would then presumably answer.

But when Praxasalandos heard the scuff of approaching footsteps and caught a whiff of Medrash’s scent, he knew the trick had worked.

He melted and poured himself back inside the rock. Then he flowed to the arch that linked the passage with the chamber the dragonborn and Imaskari currently occupied. There, by the pressure of thought alone, he started activating the runes that Gestanius had long ago concealed inside the granite.

Khouryn woke to a shiver in the stone beneath him. Or at least, he thought he had. No one else had woken up, and no one who’d already been awake looked alarmed. His surroundings were steady.

Steady but wrong. A dwarf could feel it in his bones, even if the Imaskari with their claims to knowledge of the subterranean world couldn’t.

He looked around again. There were three corridors leading out of the cavern, and the sentry stationed at one of them was looking down it intently, apparently because there was something to see.