The Spectral Blaze

Indeed, she wouldn’t try but not because of fear, for all that he’d once defeated her in battle. It was because Skalnaedyr, the blue wyrm to whom she owed everything, had given Dracowyr to Brimstone and commanded her to serve its new master as she had the old.

“Got it,” the vampire said as the image cleared.

Her staff of office in hand, Ananta moved up beside his head for a better view. She was a dragonborn, with the tall, sturdy frame of her kind, but even so, for a moment, standing so close to Brimstone with his dark gray, red-speckled scales and luminous crimson eyes made her feel like a mouse who’d ventured too close to a cat.

She suppressed the feeling by focusing on the humans in the mirror.

They were feasting in a lordly hall, and accompanying himself on a lute, a bard was just finishing a song. To Ananta’s ears, the sound was a tiny, ti

The bald, smiling man at the center of the head table rose and leaned over the goblets, plates, and trays to shake the minstrel’s hand and give him a bulging purse. Then he looked around, possibly to summon the next entertainer, but a nobleman in a red jerkin spoke and distracted him.

They conversed for a moment; then the man in red called out. Slowly and carefully, so as not to stir up the sediment, a servant carried a dusty bottle to the table.

He served the lord of the hall first. The bald man sniffed the red vintage, made some comment on the bouquet, then took a sip. He started to say something else, and his eyes opened wide. He tried to lift his hands to his throat or face, but they made it only partway. Then he pitched forward across the table.

A priestess of the Great Mother rushed forward and tried to heal him. But after three prayers, she shook her head to indicate that he was gone. And that was when the bald man’s retainers fell on the gaping aristocrat in red and the equally shocked-looking fellow who’d brought the wine.

Brimstone chuckled. “Neatly done,” he said in his sly, sardonic whisper of a voice.

Like any dragonborn worthy of the name, Ananta disdained poison as a coward’s weapon. But she felt disinclined to say so and elicit a jeer at her supposed naivete. “How so, my lord?” she asked.

“The bald man was Quarenshodor’s chief lieutenant. It was actually Eeringallagan who ordered his murder, but the assassin arranged for Lyntrinell’s servant to serve the poison. Well, Lyntrinell’s servant’s servant, but you get my point. The wrong dragon prince ends up taking the blame. It’s good, solid xorvintaal, subtler than much of the play we’ve seen of late.”

“How did you know to watch?” Ananta asked.

“Oh, Eeringallagan requested it,” Brimstone said. “He wanted to make sure he’d receive the points for it.”

Ananta grunted, Brimstone twisted his head to regard her straight on, and blackness washed over the scene in the human hall.

“You don’t approve,” the dragon said, his breath smelling of smoke. “You try to hide it-to avoid bruising my tender feelings, no doubt-but I can tell. Does it all seem somehow petty? Unworthy of the mightiest creatures in the world in general, and your beloved Prince Skalnaedyr in particular?”

Ananta scowled. “Something like that.”

“Believe it or not, I can see that side of it. But it’s a pettiness that will remake Faerun.” He turned suddenly, lifting a wing so he wouldn’t swat her with it. “I’ll explain further another time, but for now we have a visitor.”

After another heartbeat, she, too, smelled a scent like incipient lightning and heard buzzing and crackling. Then, dripping sparks, a dracolich crawled into the cave. Entirely skeletal, it dwarfed Brimstone as he dwarfed Ananta.

She wondered if that could possibly be who she thought it must be: a player who, despite or maybe because of possessing every advantage, had been eliminated from the Great Game early, when a cabal of his rivals and underlings conspired against him.

Brimstone’s greeting removed her uncertainty. “My lord Alasklerbanbastos,” he said. “I rejoice to see you returned to the world of the living and cloaked in a form every bit as imposing as the last one.”

“Did you know?” the dracolich growled.

“That Jaxanaedegor and your lesser vassals intended to betray you?” Brimstone replied. “By the end, I did.”

“And yet you didn’t warn me!” Pale light flickered inside Alasklerbanbastos’s ribs, through his fangs, and behind the orbits of his skull. The smell of an approaching storm thickened.

Ananta shifted her grip on her staff. It had formidable powers, but she doubted they were formidable enough to contend with the Great Bone Wyrm.

“Nor did I warn anyone else of any of your schemes,” Brimstone said. If he felt threatened, Ananta couldn’t tell if from his demeanor.

“But all against one?” Alasklerbanbastos said. Little lightning bolts sizzled from one bone to the next. “In the opening moves?”

“If I were speaking to anyone else,” Brimstone replied, “I might suspect that individual was about to embarrass himself by whining about fairness. But I know Lord Alasklerbanbastos understands that’s a concept for weaklings, without applicability to xorvintaal or the deeds of dragons in general.”

Alasklerbanbastos glared back at him for several heartbeats. Then, to Ananta’s relief, the flickering light inside the skeletal dragon dimmed a little.

“I want to know my current standing,” he said.

“You’re in last place,” Brimstone said. “You started out reasonably well. You conspired with Skalnaedyr and his circle to good effect and mounted a credible war of conquest. But then your enemies smashed your army, stole your kingdom and your hoard, and destroyed you, albeit temporarily. You can’t deny that your ranking really is fair.”

“Whatever it is,” Alasklerbanbastos said, “we need to adjust it.”

Brimstone shrugged, giving his leathery wings a little toss. “You said it yourself. The game has barely begun. Over the course of decades-”

“I want it adjusted now,” snarled the undead blue. His tone was so fierce that, despite her desire not to provoke him, Ananta lifted her staff. Fortunately that elicited a nasty little chuckle, not a thunderbolt. “Relax, guardian. I didn’t mean that I intend to force this jumped-up snake to help me. I meant that I’m about to make a new play. One that by rights should earn more points than anyone else has acquired for anything because its purpose is to ensure the survival and integrity of the game itself.”

“That’s… intriguing,” Brimstone said.

“Use your black mirror to look in on Vairshekellabex and Gestanius too. Then I’ll tell you what I have in mind.”

Tchazzar generally conducted official business in the Green Hall or one of the comparable chambers inside the War College. But for reasons he hadn’t confided to Jhesrhi, he’d decided to assemble his court on the roof.

When she arrived, she found servants serving wine and a trio of minstrels playing the yarting, longhorn, and hand drum while the sunset bloodied the western sky. It made her wonder if the war hero had decided to turn the gathering into a purely social occasion, or as close to purely social as an assembly of Chessenta’s rich and powerful could ever be.

Before she had a chance to work her way through the crowd to ask him, the servant at the top of the stairs thumped the butt of his staff on the floor and, raising his voice to make himself heard above the music, a

Tchazzar clapped his hands, and the musicians stopped playing. Daelric bowed like those who’d arrived before him.