Richard Byers - The Spectral Blaze

“It could be a diversion,” said a baritone voice in more cultured, aristocratic tones. “I need eyes looking the other way.”

“What about this thing?”

“Let’s see if we can convince it to be on our side.” The speaker-the wyrmkeepers’ leader, Jhesrhi surmised-switched to the language of dragons with its sibilant, polysyllabic words and convoluted phrasing.

Like many priests, he evidently had the ability to command the undead and thought he could use it on Jhesrhi. That gave her a moment to act.

She turned her back on him as though cringing from the power he was bringing to bear. Then, hoping the darkness in the passage would help to hide what she was doing, she fumbled in the pouch on her belt for the small pewter bottle inside. She’d intended to give all the healing elixir to Khouryn, but if she didn’t use some to restore herself, he was never going to get any.

She pulled out the stopper and took a swig. Her pains subsided and once she blinked the tears away, her vision cleared. She finally managed to draw a proper breath.

The wyrmkeeper with the rough voice said, “Wait. If it’s a vampire or something, why was it coughing?”

Jhesrhi hastily jammed the stopper back in, thrust the bottle into her bag, jerked around, and snarled an incantation. She clenched the fist wearing the ring, then flicked her fingers open on the final word. An enormous spiderweb flickered into existence. Their ends adhering to the walls, floor, and ceiling, the sticky, white strands clung to the foes in the midst of them and only entangled them more as they floundered in surprise.

But either because she’d scarcely had time to aim or because they’d been nimble enough to spring clear before the web fully materialized, she hadn’t netted all her foes. Jaws open wide, the drake, a green-scaled creature the size of a wolfhound, bounded at her on its hind legs.

She had just time to speak a thumb-sized, crystalline wasp into existence. Buzzing, it stung the surprised drake on the snout then whirled around its head. The reptile spun too, snapping at it repeatedly.

When the drake halted, the wyrmkeeper, charging a stride behind, ran right into it. They fell in a heap together, and as the wasp blinked out of existence, the confused reptile bit a final time and plunged its fangs into the priest’s neck. An instant later, Jhesrhi thrust out her hand and splashed the creature with a burst of freezing light. It convulsed, then stopped moving. The chill had evidently stopped its heart.

Jhesrhi felt a surge of satisfaction, but it lasted only until she pivoted, looking for new threats, and found one. A big man with long, drooping black mustachios had somehow freed himself from the web. Judging from the quality and ornamentation of his gear, he was the leader. He wore a ring on every finger of his left hand and a helm whose contours suggested a dragon’s head. The light spilling through the doorway sent multicolored streaks running through his chasuble, and glints of the same hues oozed inside the curved head of his fighting pick.

He charged out of the direct illumination spilling through the doorway and into the gloom, and power flared from the rings. Ghostly, crested, wedge-shaped heads at the ends of serpentine necks writhed up from the floor between him and Jhesrhi. The closest one struck at her.

She dodged it but the defensive action put her in range of a second head. She wrenched herself to one side, and its misty but no doubt murderous fangs snapped silently shut on empty air.

The heads withered into nothingness an instant later, but by then their creator himself had rushed into striking distance. Bellowing the name of his goddess, he swung the pick, the head glowing red hot and bursting into flame. Jhesrhi jumped back and the weapon missed. Hoping the darkness would hinder her foe, she kept retreating down the passage while she started another spell.

On the next stroke, the corona of fire surrounding the head of the pick became a crust of frost, then on the one after a cloud of poisonous smoke. Jhesrhi kept dodging and the priest kept missing, although each swing came closer than the last.

Finally she reached the end of her incantation, and a prickling danced over her hands. She held them low to avoid drawing attention to them and murmured nonsense so the priest wouldn’t realize she’d finished the spell.

Crackling and showering sparks, the pick whizzed past her nose. And as Aoth and Khouryn had taught her, if a weapon was long and heavy, particularly at the striking end, then after a swing, it took even a skillful warrior an instant to ready it for another. So she raised her hands, which, thanks to the spell, wore gauntlets of articulated bone with talons on the fingertips, and lunged.

The attack surprised the wyrmkeeper. He managed a chop even so but only clipped her shoulder with the wooden shaft of the pick. The steel head with its charge of magic fell behind her.

She clawed the left side of his face to gory ribbons. He threw back his head, maybe to scream, and that exposed his throat. She ripped it open. He toppled with blood spurting from the second wound.

As her claws melted away, she turned toward the web. It still held two wyrmkeepers helpless, but a third stood unbound on the far side of it. Maybe he’d never been entangled in the first place. Maybe he was the fellow the leader had told to watch for trouble coming from the other end of the hall.

Whoever he was, he bolted, abandoning his comrades. Jhesrhi rattled off another incantation and thrust out the hand with the ring. Putrid-smelling fog swirled into existence around him. He staggered and collapsed.

Jhesrhi then returned her attention to the pair in the web. Eyes wide, they struggled even more frantically but still ineffectually to break free.

Their panic filled her with contempt. Maybe it was because she was sure they’d mistreated Khouryn. Whatever the reason, she felt a sudden urge to burn them alive.

But she didn’t. She picked up a fallen pick, and heedless of their pleas and cries and, careful not to get herself or the weapon stuck in the web, used the butt end to club them both unconscious.

Then she went through the doorway and cursed.

She’d been expecting a torture chamber, so the lamp-lit space, with its tiny cage, spiked chair, ducking tank, whipping post, and similar implements, held no surprises. Still, it was ghastly to see Khouryn’s burly, hairy, naked form covered in welts and stretched utterly taut on the rack.

She knew he wouldn’t want a show of pity any more than she would have in his place. So she swallowed the clog in her throat, dissolved the illusion that made her resemble Bareris, and said, “Halonya’s followers are stuck in a rut. They racked Cera too, as I recall.”

Khouryn gave her a grin, although it appeared even that movement pained him. “In my case, it was Chessentan humor,” he croaked. “They said they’d cure me of being a dwarf. How much time do we have?”

“I don’t know,” she said, hurrying closer, into the stink of his abused and unwashed flesh. “Some, I hope. We’re in a separate section of the dungeons from any of Tchazzar’s guards, and there are prisoners closer to them. Their noise may have masked the noise of the fight.”

She spoke the words that had unlocked the door to the dungeons, and the leather cuffs flopped open to release his wrists and ankles. The flesh inside was raw.

Khouryn sucked in a breath and struggled to sit up. She reached to help him then faltered as her aversion to touching others asserted itself. But curse it, if she could let Tchazzar fondle her and slobber on her, she could help a friend!

Her skin crawling, she supported Khouryn with one arm and dug out the healing elixir with the other. “Drink it slowly,” she said, holding it to his mouth. “We don’t want you coughing it back up.”