The Spectral Blaze

After that, it was easy enough. In a few more heartbeats, all the wyrmkeepers and their servants were either dead or incapacitated.

“Is everyone all right?” Cera panted.

“Pretty much,” a sunlord replied. His knuckles were raw, possibly from swinging at flesh and hitting armor instead. “I think they were working up to killing us, but they hadn’t started yet. Why is this happening?”

“Haven’t you heard?” said a priestess with black, plaited hair. “Chessenta doesn’t need any gods except the Red Dragon.”

“That’s part of it,” Cera said. She explained what was going on as concisely as she could. “I was going to try to convince you to fight Tchazzar. After what’s happened here, I hope I don’t have to.”

The other clerics exchanged glances. Then the one with the ski

“Arm yourselves,” Cera said. “Then we’ll visit the temples of all the other true gods. If the wyrmkeepers are holding any other clerics prisoner, we’ll free them. Either way, we’ll ask our colleagues to fight alongside us. And then… well, we’ll figure it out as we go along.”

Light flickered and thunder cracked in the northern sky. Tchazzar knew it wasn’t a storm or at least not a natural one. Alasklerbanbastos was signaling his arrival.

Tchazzar hesitated and thought that no one could blame him for it. Alasklerbanbastos was his greatest enemy and the very embodiment of everything foul and u

But Tchazzar believed that, abominable as he was, the dracolich wanted to preserve the sanctity of Tiamat’s game as much as every other player. And he might actually need the blue’s help to preserve what was his and to punish those who sought to take it from him.

Especially Jhesrhi. He thought of the love and trust he’d given her and how she’d repaid him with treachery and lies, and he roared out his anguish and his rage. The absolute need for revenge pushed all other considerations aside.

He leaped from the roof of the War College, lashed his wings, soared upward, and flew toward the spot where the lightning had flared. Alasklerbanbastos and his allies were still there, gliding on the night wind and awaiting his coming. The lesser dragons were a black, an emerald, two sapphires, and a gold.

“I expected more chromatics,” Tchazzar said.

“I certainly wasn’t going to share this victory with Jaxanaedegor,” Alasklerbanbastos replied, sparks crawling and popping on his naked bones and pale light flickering inside the openings in his skull, “or anyone else who betrayed me. These particular wyrms happened to dwell within easy reach of Dracowyr, so I recruited them instead. Don’t worry. They’ll follow our lead.”

“They’d better,” Tchazzar said. “My human soldiers will attack when we do.”

“You do understand,” said the lich, “the way the armies will jam and tangle together, the homes of noncombatants cluttering the battleground… this is going to be messy.”

Tchazzar spit a streak of flame. “I’m not as fond of humans as I used to be. Slaughter every one in the city if that’s what it takes to carry the day.”

FOURTEEN

7 E LEINT, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE

If Jhesrhi survived the night, she’d choose a new griffon and teach it to know and obey her. For the time being, though, she’d coaxed a wind into the form of a giant eagle to bear her aloft.

That was where she needed to be, along with every other member of the Brotherhood who could get into the air. If Lady Luck smiled, their earthbound comrades could fend off Tchazzar’s human servants, but it would take flying cavalry to contend with dragons on the wing.

Having sharpened her eyes with a charm that enabled them to pierce the darkness, she looked around and found Aoth and Gaedy

Then the dragons hurtled into view.

Being wyrms, they unquestionably perceived the foes gliding and wheeling in front of them. But if Oraxes’s enchantments were working as promised, the dragons didn’t see as many griffon riders as were actually there. They registered only a handful and were experiencing a subtle psychic pressure to disregard those and look elsewhere for a more significant threat.

The illusion would hold for only a breath or two. But that was time enough for a first barrage of arrows and spells. Hurtling forward on Jet, his blue eyes glowing in the gloom, Aoth hurled a dazzling thunderbolt from his spear. Gaedy

Even though fire magic was likely to prove useless against him, she’d wanted to engage Tchazzar. She felt he was her responsibility. But it had been impossible to predict exactly where he’d appear, and chance had put them on opposite sides of the fight for the moment.

Her eagle plunged past the sapphire wyrm’s head and along its neck, and she seared it with another burst of flame. It swatted at her with an enormous wing, but her mount swooped safely under the stroke and, with a sweep of its own pinions, bobbed up again.

Elsewhere, her comrades were likewise streaking by dragons before the creatures could turn and retaliate. The defense worked because the colossal reptiles weren’t as nimble in flight as a griffon or a spirit of the wind.

From then on, the fight would be tougher. But as the eagle wheeled, Jhesrhi insisted to herself that it wouldn’t be any worse than the worst of Thay. Then her steed vanished beneath her, and she plummeted toward the rooftops below.

She tried to speak a word to slow her fall, and darts of amber light stabbed into her body. The jolt of pain made her botch the spell.

But fortunately the entity that had been the eagle shook off its own distress. Although it didn’t resume the form she’d given it, it managed a screaming invisible updraft that arrested her fall just short of someone’s chimney.

Bobbing like a cork in a brook, she looked around for her attacker or, as it turned out, attackers. A ski

“You’re fighting on the wrong side!” Jhesrhi called, voice grating with the lingering ache in her chest.

“No,” the elderly sorceress quavered. “Tchazzar set us free, and you’re betraying him.”

“It isn’t like that,” Jhesrhi said. “But if you won’t fight on the right side, just go away. Don’t make me hurt you.”

Instead of answering, the old woman gripped her staff with both hands and raised it over her head. Tears of blood slid from her eyes, and suddenly it made Jhesrhi feel dizzy and sick to her stomach to look at her. Meanwhile, the male wizard held a doll of jointed wood up to his face and whispered in its painted ear. Ghostly imps like deformed fetuses flitted and flickered around him, half-visible one instant, gone the next.

Jhesrhi could tell both her foes were casting lethal magic. And they’d started first. But neither of them was a battle wizard. Pointing her staff, she rattled off words of power, twice as fast as their author had intended but still with the proper rhythm and intonation, and she was the one who finished first. The resulting blast of fire tore her foes apart, along with much of the roof beneath them.