Richard Byers - The Spectral Blaze

With every sip, his condition improved. His body made popping sounds as dislocated joints snapped back together. Some of the whip marks disappeared, and bruises changed from black to yellow.

“How are you now?” she asked when the vial was empty.

“Good enough.” Moving like an old, arthritic man, he slumped to the floor, hobbled to the corner where the wyrmkeepers had dropped his clothes, and started putting them on. “What’s our next move?”

“I’ll tell you as we go. But first I need to disguise us.”

She rattled off the rhyme needed to shroud herself in Bareris’s image again. Then she made Khouryn look like a halfling, which was to say, a member of a demihuman race that her countrymen didn’t regard with disdain. Though halflings were slimmer than the Stout Folk, they were of a comparable height, and that point of similarity might aid the deception.

After that, she wrapped them both in another don’t-look-at-me spell, and they were ready. Since his weapons and armor hadn’t been with his clothes, Khouryn paused to appropriate a corpse’s pick and dagger, then glowered at the merely battered and unconscious men dangling in the web.

“I wouldn’t ordinarily kill a fellow in this condition,” he said. “But now I’m tempted.”

“I’d like somebody left alive,” Jhesrhi cut in, “and the way I beat these two in the head and poisoned the one lying over there, a couple of them may not make it as it is.”

Khouryn spit. “It’s not worth it anyway. Just lead me out of here.”

She did. They slipped past the guard station, climbed the stairs, and magically locked the door behind them. Then they made their way upward through the passages honeycombing the enormous sandstone block that comprised the greater part of the War College. To her relief, Khouryn’s limp became less pronounced, and he stopped gasping and grunting so often as exercise worked more of the stiffness and soreness out of his muscles.

Finally they reached the roof with its turrets, battlements, and catapults. She pointed and whispered, “The bat is over that way.” On Halonya’s orders, the guards had given the animal drugged food, then secured it. Eventually, Jhesrhi suspected, the newly minted high priestess meant to sacrifice it to Tchazzar, but she hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

“Thanks,” Khouryn said, rolling his massive shoulders. “For everything. I’ll take it from here.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course.” He gave her a nod, then, crouching low and keeping to the shadows, crept toward the spot she’d indicated.

She judged that he would have made it all the way too, except that the bat somehow perceived its master coming. It gave a little squeak of a cry and strained upward, trying to break free of the netting that pressed it flat against the roof. The guard who stood watch over it cast about, spotted Khouryn, and raised a javelin. The dwarf rushed him.

The soldier threw the javelin, but Khouryn didn’t bother to duck or dodge. His practiced eye could evidently tell it was going to fly wide of the mark. As he lunged into the distance, the guard snatched out his sword.

After all that Khouryn had endured, Jhesrhi wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d taken the easy path and simply killed the soldier. But apparently he’d absorbed enough of her hasty, tangled explanation of recent events to grasp that, despite everything, wyrmkeepers were the enemy but Chessenta wasn’t. Not exactly, not yet. Because instead of striking with the point on the head of the pick, he rammed the blunt, curved part of it into the soldier’s gut.

The guard doubled over, but his armor cushioned the blow. He could still fight and slashed at Khouryn’s face. The dwarf leaned backward, and the blade flashed past him.

Then he hooked the Chessentan’s lead leg with the pick and jerked it out from under him. The human fell and, still using the blunt part of his weapon, Khouryn jabbed him in the head. His helmet clanked.

Khouryn kept his eyes on the guard for another heartbeat, making sure he was out, then peered around. Jhesrhi did the same. As far as she could tell, the brief scuffle hadn’t attracted any other sentry’s attention. Thank the Foehammer that it was a dark, overcast night and a spacious roof.

Khouryn yanked the net off from the cleats normally used to lash a catapult or ballista in position. He pulled the mesh off the bat, and it rose and shook out its wings. The snapping sound did attract attention and someone shouted.

Khouryn gave a command in what Jhesrhi assumed to be the dragonborn language. The bat lowered itself, and he scrambled onto its back. Then it crawled to the edge of the roof, clambered onto a merlon, and sprang out into space.

Jhesrhi smiled and hurried back the way she’d come.

6-10 E LEASIS, THE Y EAR OF THE AGELESS ONE

Halonya trembled with rage and impatience, and the motion rattled and thumped the stiff, jewel-bedizened layers of her gaudy vestments. Enthroned behind her, Tchazzar looked more composed but no happier. Watching them both, Hasos tensed his jaw muscles to hold in a yawn.

The yawn wanted out only because Tchazzar’s summons had hauled him out of bed at sunrise. His feelings were an untidy jumble, but boredom wasn’t any part of the mix.

He was curious to learn how the dwarf had escaped, but also a little apprehensive and resentful. He’d observed that it was dangerous for anyone to be around Tchazzar when he was angry, and in that instance, there was no real reason Hasos should be present. No one had tasked him with keeping Khouryn Skulldark locked away.

He supposed the war hero had called for him simply because, after the successful defense of Soolabax and the subjugation of Threskel, he was accounted one of the champions of the realm. Fighting the thought every step of the way, he’d finally come to realize that the attendant honors and responsibilities didn’t please him as much as he might have expected. He sometimes wished he were home, looking after the farmers and townsfolk, chasing sheep rustlers through the scrub, and jousting in the occasional tournament, not stuck in Luthcheq preparing for another war.

The functionary at the door announced, “Lady Jhesrhi Coldcreek.” Then the wizard herself walked in, the butt of her staff bumping softly on the floor.

Hasos studied her, striking and lovely as always in her clenched, frigid way. If she was guilty of anything, he couldn’t see any sign of it.

“Your Majesty,” she said, curtsying stiffly.

“Arrest her!” Halonya shrilled.

Tchazzar shot the prophetess a glance, and she caught her breath. She was one of his favorites, but she’d still overstepped by presuming to give a command in his presence, and she realized it.

He didn’t make an issue of it, though. Instead, he turned his gaze on Jhesrhi.

Who met it without flinching. “Clearly,” she said, “something has agitated His Majesty’s high priestess. May I ask what?”

“Sometime between midnight and dawn,” the Red Dragon said, “someone, or something, helped Khouryn Skulldark escape from his cell, reclaim his bat, and flee.”

Jhesrhi raised an eyebrow. The flicker of expression reminded Hasos of her annoying comrade Gaedynn Ulraes, and he wondered if she’d picked it up from the archer without even realizing it. “ ‘Something,’ Majesty?” she asked.

Tchazzar gestured to one of the men standing by the wall, a wyrmkeeper with bloody bandages wrapped around his head. “He looked like a vampire,” said the priest, stammering slightly. “Or some kind of undead.”

“The last time I checked,” Jhesrhi said, “I was both female and alive.”

“You didn’t have to sneak down and free the dwarf yourself!” Halonya said. “You could have called something out of the night and sent it to do your bidding!”