The Spectral Blaze

Tchazzar laughed. “I almost believed you until you said that.”

“But I don’t want to kill you. Not tonight, anyway. The Spellplague swept the old world away. Why not let our conflict die along with it? Think how we can dominate the Great Game and the new world it will create if we join forces! And if we find we still despise one another after we establish our supremacy over lesser creatures, we can fight our final duel a few centuries hence.”

Tchazzar stood and thought about it for several heartbeats. Then he said, “All right. How do you want to proceed?”

“Where is Captain Fezim?”

“In a suite here in the War College. Cera Eurthos is with him.”

“Excellent! Don’t do anything to alert him until the other dragons and I are in the city. We’ll surround the fortress and make it absolutely impossible for him to escape.”

“I could kill or capture him right now, in his sleep.”

“It’s better to wait and come at him with every bit of our strength. My companions and I will be there before he wakes. The only thing I want you to do now is deal with the humans I hear blubbering nearby.”

“I’m sure neither of them speaks Draconic.”

“They could still prattle about a strange occurrence in the war hero’s bedchamber. Somehow, someway, the tale could find its way to Fezim or one of his allies. Let’s not take the chance.”

“I suppose you have a point.”

“I’ll see you before dawn, then.” The flickering died, plunging the room into almost total darkness.

But the casement let in a little light. Enough, evidently, to reveal the motion when Tchazzar pivoted and raised his sword. The daughters screamed but had time for nothing more.

Some of the time, Jhesrhi knew she was dreaming. The knowledge seemed to slide in and out of her mind like cargo shifting in the hold of a rocking ship.

Gaedy

But at other moments, loathing welled up inside her. Her guts churned and bile burned in the back of her throat. She tried to focus on his face, tender and open for once, not armored in cockiness and mockery. But memories assaulted her. Huge and hideous, the elemental mages held her down. Tchazzar planted his eager mouth on hers.

Then, suddenly, she realized that the person who was embracing her really was Tchazzar. He drew his head back and leered at her then opened a mouth full of fangs. A long, forked tongue slid out to lick her lips. Its surface was rough and blistering hot.

It repulsed her beyond bearing, and she tried to push him away. But he was too strong and either indifferent to her unwillingness or too intent on his own satisfaction to notice. She spoke a word of power.

Flame exploded between them, breaking his grip, flinging him backward, but incapable of actually harming a red dragon. That was why she’d chosen that particular magic.

But then he started screaming and thrashing on the floor, and it wasn’t just clothing blazing but his hair. He was Gaedy

His agony was hers, yet it wasn’t the only thing she was feeling. A part of her rejoiced simply because flames were leaping and crackling. Maybe that was the reason that no matter how she strained, she couldn’t remember the words to put them out. Gaedy

With a gasp, Jhesrhi jerked awake, and her eyes flew open. Tchazzar was standing over her bed. Even in the gloom, she recognized his tall, muscular frame and the long head with the tapered chin and pointed ears.

She drew a ragged breath and let it out. “Majesty,” she said. “No one told me you were here.”

“That’s because I sent your maids away.”

Jhesrhi assumed that meant he’d grown impatient with waiting for her to overcome her dread of intimacy. Heart pounding, she told herself she could put him off as she had before.

“If Your Majesty will excuse me for a moment,” she said, “I can put on proper clothing.”

“That won’t be necessary,” he said, and with the nightmare fading, she caught the strangeness in his voice. Maybe it wasn’t lust that had brought him to her apartments, or at least, not lust alone.

“Well, then.” Half expecting him to stop her but unwilling to keep lying supine, she tried to sit up. And when he permitted that, she rose and moved to pick up a robe to pull on over her nightdress. In so doing, she also positioned herself close to her staff. “Is there something urgent? Something wrong?”

“You could say that. I’ve learned that Aoth Fezim betrayed me. It was his duplicity that made it impossible for Chessenta to march on Tymanther.”

“Majesty, with all respect, that’s absurd. Aoth’s a sellsword. He earns his living-”

“Don’t!” Tchazzar snapped. “I know he’s guilty. I suggest you devote your energy to convincing me you weren’t involved.”

If there was no hope of persuading the Red Dragon of Aoth’s i

“I truly don’t believe,” she said, “that Aoth would ever do anything disloyal. But even if he has, I’m not a part of the Brotherhood anymore, and I haven’t been with them. I’ve been here with you.”

“Yes, here in Luthcheq. Where some agency helped your friend Skulldark escape and a prodigious wind ruined the supplies. Where you looked me in the eye and urged me to consider my position in a game.”

Trying not to be obvious about it, Jhesrhi swallowed. “Majesty, we’ve already talked about the escape and what happened to the supplies, and I don’t understand why it was wrong for me to talk about war and statecraft in terms of a game. It’s common for people to talk that way.”

Tchazzar scowled. “I know that! And I don’t want you to be guilty. I want you to be my consort and my luck, like I imagined.”

“Then allow me to be those things,” Jhesrhi said. “Allow it by trusting me.”

“It isn’t that easy. You have to prove yourself, and do it before Alasklerbanbastos arrives. Otherwise-”

“Alasklerbanbastos?” She’d heard how the Great Bone Wyrm had escaped but, like her friends, had assumed the dracolich had simply gone to ground somewhere. Obviously not. “Now I understand! Majesty, that foul thing is your enemy! You can’t believe anything he says!”

“Yet I do. I believe I’ve been mired in lies since the day of my return, and now I’m free at last, which is bad luck for the liars. They’re about to find out the punishment for trying to trick a god.”

“Majesty, whatever you suspect, surely you’ll at least give them a trial.”

“When will you insects understand that I’m a god? I can judge and punish as I please, without the mortal rigmarole of courts and laws. In other words, your friends are already as good as dead. The only question left is whether you’ll join them in the Hells.”

“You said I could prove myself. How?” She assumed she knew and wondered if she could endure it any better in reality than she had in dream.

But Tchazzar surprised her by laughing at whatever he’d seen come into her face or heard in her voice. “Do you think I’m that besotted? That it will be that easy?”

Bewildered and, crazily, a little hurt in spite of everything, she said, “Majesty, I believe I’ve explained that it wouldn’t be easy for me.”

“Or perhaps you’ve just tantalized me endlessly because you judged that would be the best way to keep me obsessed and distracted.”

“I swear that isn’t so.”

“Well, you’ll have to prove it as worshipers have always proved themselves to the gods. By sacrifice. Your friend Ulraes is in the fortress. Now, I told Alasklerbanbastos that I wouldn’t move against any of you until he arrived. But I had to figure you out, and the archer is no wizard, just an insolent man-at-arms. Surely you can dispose of him without making enough fuss to rouse Captain Fezim, and then you and I will make love beside the corpse. That will make our first time all the more special.”