Richard Byers - Whisper of Venom

“Welcome, brother,” she said. “You’re one of us now.”

“Thank you,” Balasar said. His response felt too brief and matter-of-fact for the occasion, but he was too spent to come up with anything better.

“Let us pray,” Nala said. She raised her hands and recited in a language Balasar didn’t recognize. He caught the name Bahamut but nothing more.

Whatever she was babbling, there was magic in it. He felt a hot sting of Power in the air. As it in some measure possessed them, the other cultists-all but Patrin-started to writhe from side to side like she was.

Balasar did his best to imitate the motion. He supposed he was going to have to practice.

21-27 MIRTUL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

In a different year, the fields around Soolabax would have been busy with peasants attending to the spring planting. Instead, they were empty.

Well, empty of anyone who belonged there. As they winged their way north, the griffon riders periodically saw some of Alasklerbanbastos’s men, orcs, or kobolds scouting, foraging, and-for no apparent reason beyond pure malice-setting farmhouses and barns on fire. Columns of dirty smoke striped the blue sky.

Aoth surveyed it all with a certain sense of contentment. He wasn’t oblivious to the fact that innocent people were having their property destroyed, and that was, well, sad. But he didn’t know those people, and war was his trade. Certainly he felt more at home there than mired in the intrigues and rivalries of Tchazzar’s court.

Thanks to their psychic link, he knew Jet felt much the same, only without the occasional mild twinge of empathy for the victims. And with the hope that soon he’d have a chance to kill and eat some horses.

But Oraxes might feel very differently. Though the adolescent had an insolent tongue, he’d gotten quieter when he mounted up behind Aoth and Jet lashed his wings and carried them both up into the sky. And he’d been completely silent for some time.

“Does seeing this bother you?” Aoth asked.

“No!” Oraxes replied, a little too quickly and vehemently.

“That’s good. Because you’re likely to see worse before you and your friends are done.”

On Tchazzar’s authority, he’d ordered four of Luthcheq’s sorcerers, ones who looked fit and claimed some knowledge of combat magic, to travel north with him. As far as he was concerned, it was fair recompense for saving their skins during the riot and ending the ongoing persecution. Besides, some of them might even discover they liked the soldier’s life. Certainly, his wizardry notwithstanding, Oraxes hadn’t seemed to be doing much with his days beyond slouching around and acting like a street tough.

Or maybe he and his fellows would hate war and prove utterly useless to boot. Only one thing was certain-Aoth would have traded them all to have Jhesrhi back. But she was stuck in Luthcheq for the moment. Tchazzar wanted her to help him draft new laws on magic, or some such nonsense.

Soolabax appeared on the plain ahead. “Curse it,” said Aoth.

“What?” Oraxes asked.

“You’ll see in a heartbeat or two if your eyes are good.”

During Aoth’s absence, the enemy had arrived to lay siege to the town. Since Soolabax controlled one of the primary routes south, it was only what he’d expected. But he wished the enemy had allowed him a little more time to prepare.

You always think that , said Jet.

The Threskelans were still in the first stage of the seige, pitching tents, digging trenches and latrines, and throwing up earthworks. Looking for ways to disrupt their activities, Aoth studied the vista below. Then on the far side of the town, a blue dragon spread its wings, lashed them, and soared upward. Its scales glinted in the late afternoon sunlight.

Aoth was no authority on wyrms, but he judged that the specimen wasn’t as big, old, and accordingly powerful as some. So that much was good. What was bad was that none of his companions seemed aware of the foe soaring up into the air to attack them. Thanks to some spell or talisman, the creature was currently invisible. Not to Aoth’s spellscarred eyes-or to Jet, who could look through them at will-but to everybody else’s.

Aoth pointed his spear and rattled off a charm. A spark leaped from the point and streaked over Soolabax. When it came close to the blue, it exploded with a boom, engulfing the reptile in a burst of yellow flame. The dragon screeched.

It kept coming though, and as soon as it hurtled beyond the point of detonation, everyone but Aoth and Jet lost track of its exact location. But at least the other griffon riders understood they were facing some sort of threat. They veered off and unlimbered their bows.

Meanwhile, the blue opened its jaws wide and spat a dazzling bolt of lightning. Jet swooped lower, and the thunderbolt burned over Aoth’s head.

Aoth struck back by hurling darts of green light. Jet’s wings pounded as he sought to maneuver and climb. They were rapidly approaching the dragon, only at a lower altitude, and neither of those things boded well for their survival.

Talons outstretched, the blue plummeted at them. Jet raised one wing, lowered the other, and flung himself and his riders to the left. The gigantic reptile plunged by. It leveled off fifty feet above the ground and then, wings beating, began to rise again.

An arrow appeared in the dragon’s back. Aoth hadn’t seen who loosed it, but he was sure it was Gaedynn. Master bowman that he was, he’d hit a rapidly moving target he couldn’t even see. Unfortunately, the reptile didn’t even appear to notice.

Aoth abruptly became aware of a band of pressure around his torso. Even though he was securely strapped to Jet’s saddle, Oraxes was hanging on to him. The youth was panting too, a ragged, rasping sound.

Positioned as he was, Aoth couldn’t grab the lad and shake him, so he elbowed him in the stomach. “Calm down!” he snapped. “Make yourself useful! The thing we’re fighting is a dragon. Do you know a spell to turn it visible?”

“Yes.”

“Then cast it. My attacks will show you where to aim.”

He conjured localized rains of pounding hailstones and silvery flares of frost. The blue still wasn’t slowing down. Jet zigzagged and wheeled, swooped and climbed madly, fighting to stay out of reach of the dragon’s fangs and claws and dodge its bright, crackling breath. Oraxes chanted an incantation. After a pause he repeated it, once again to no avail.

“If he botches it a third time,” Jet growled, “cut him loose and shove him off. I could do without the extra weight.”

Oraxes drew a long breath, then started again.

Then somehow, despite the griffon’s cunning maneuvers, the blue was above them and the rooftops of Soolabax below. Lightning blazed down, and Jet just managed to dodge it. The thunderbolt blasted shingles tumbling loose from the roof of a house and set the structure on fire.

Even spellscarred eyes weren’t immune to glare. Squinting against the flash of the attack, it took Aoth a precious moment to perceive that the blue had spat its lightning, then immediately dived after it. “Dodge!” he screamed.

Jet threw himself to the right. One of the dragon’s claws grazed him anyway, tearing feathers from his wing in a shower of blood. Aoth felt the slash of pain through their psychic bond.

Can you still fly? he asked.

You’d better hope so , the griffon replied.

Raising his voice, Oraxes snarled the last line of his incantation. Neither Aoth’s frightened outcry, Jet’s last frantic evasion, nor the sudden appearance of the bloody wound had shaken his concentration.

A greenish shimmer danced across the dragon’s body. Afterward, the creature didn’t look any different to Aoth. But he could tell from the way the other griffon riders oriented on it that they could finally see it too.