Richard Byers: The Spectral Blaze

“No?” the vampire asked. “No one? I realize you imagine the paladin has freed you from some sort of enchantment. But surely you remember the beauty of the game, the fascination. How alive you felt as you crafted your strategies.”

“We do,” Domborcojh rumbled. The sapphire dragon held his truncated foreleg bent, with the stump well off the ground. “But a poison can taste sweet.”

“We acknowledge you as one of the saviors of our kind,” Chelnadatilar said. “That and the sanctity of Dracowyr are the reasons we didn’t simply attack you.”

Brimstone grinned and two of his upper fangs grew longer. “And here I thought it was because you have no way of knowing what other secrets I brought back from the north.”

“Don’t posture,” rapped the gold. “We recognize that we owe you a debt. But even the benefactor who freed us from one madness can’t be allowed to afflict us with another.”

“In other words,” said Aoth, “end the game. Dissolve the spell you cast on the other players.”

“You may find,” Brimstone whispered, “that many of them will want to play regardless.”

“Then what a pity,” said Aoth, “that the contest can’t continue without its judge and scorekeeper, a role you’ll abandon and never take up again. Otherwise we’ll hunt you down and kill you.”

Brimstone chuckled. “Well. When you put it that way. Give me a moment.”

Hissing words of power, he scratched glyphs in the rock beneath his forefoot. Each flared red, white, blue, green, or somehow black, as he completed it. Khouryn watched the smoke drake even more intently than before because he had no idea what the creature was doing, although he took some reassurance from the fact that Jhesrhi, Aoth, and the other mages looked vigilant but not alarmed.

As Brimstone inscribed the final rune, power rushed outward like a ripple in a pond where someone had dropped a stone. Khouryn couldn’t see it or feel it in any normal way because, he supposed, it jolted his spirit and not his flesh. But it rocked him back even so.

“There,” Brimstone said. “Are you satisfied?”

Balasar turned to Medrash and asked, “Are we?”

“Yes,” the paladin said. “I felt Tiamat’s power wither.”

“Then I should think we’re done,” Brimstone said, “and I can feel that the sun has slipped below the horizon. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be off.”

“Give us one more moment,” said Aoth.

“Yes?”

“You don’t seem all that upset that we wrecked the game.”

“I rarely explain myself to lesser creatures,” Brimstone said. “But just for fun, let’s imagine that I wasn’t really the impartial arbiter of the tournament. Let’s suppose I was playing too, and my goal was to kill or at least weaken Tchazzar, Skuthosin, Gestanius, and Alasklerbanbastos.

“That would make sense, wouldn’t it? They were the most powerful wyrms in this part of the world. There wasn’t much chance that anyone else would achieve preeminence among dragons with them squatting on top of the heap.

“But now they’re not. And what if it’s because I manipulated my own chosen pawns into eliminating them without said pawns ever even suspecting they were working for me? Then I wouldn’t have any reason to feel disheartened, would I?”

“Is that what happened?” asked Aoth.

“Oh, no, of course not. As Chelnadatilar quite properly observed, I’m the savior of dragonkind, and how could a savior stoop to cheating? Watch out for Alasklerbanbastos, Captain. If you didn’t destroy his phylactery, he might return one day.” Brimstone leered. “Come to think of it, so might I, and perhaps on that night, you won’t have such a formidable assembly of allies standing ready to assist you.”

“Maybe I won’t need them,” Aoth replied.

Brimstone nodded to Ananta. “Good-bye, my lady. I hope I wasn’t too troublesome a guest.” He turned, paced back into the tunnel, rounded a bend, and disappeared.

“Well,” Gaedynn said, “that was interesting.”

“Don’t pay any heed to his insinuations or his threats either,” Medrash said. “He just wanted to salvage his pride and leech the joy from our victory. And it is a victory. We accomplished everything we set out to do.”

“Which means we can go home,” Balasar said.

“Then I guess this time really is farewell,” Khouryn said. He and the dragonborn climbed off their bats for a round of handshakes. “If you see them, give my best to our comrades from the Platinum Cadre.”

“Oh, we’ll see them,” Balasar said. “Torm told Medrash to appoint himself their protector.”

Medrash scowled as if his clan brother had revealed something embarrassing. “No, he didn’t. And ‘protector’ is an exaggeration. But as time passes, those who scorned the Cadre before may forget how well they fought against the giants. They may need someone who’s not a dragon worshiper to speak up for them.”

“Whereas I,” Balasar said, “intend to sink into a life of idleness and debauchery.” Biri snorted and he grinned. “I mean, in a married sort of way.”

There was a final round of good-byes. Then the dragonborn climbed back onto their bats, the one that had survived the battle against Tchazzar and the two they’d borrowed when Perra reached Luthcheq, and the animals fluttered up into the air.

Everyone else watched the Tymantherans vanish into the gloom. Then, her dark garments somehow all but invisible even to a dwarf’s eyes, her pale face floating disembodied like a ghost’s, Meralaine said, “It’s funny.”

“What is?” Oraxes asked.

“We never will know if Brimstone was really using us as his weapons. And we don’t know there aren’t other games of xorvintaal going on across the world right now. Even if Brimstone believes he rediscovered a secret that everyone else had lost, that doesn’t necessarily make it so. So ultimately, how can anybody ever know if he’s making his own choices for his own reasons or if he’s just a pawn on a lanceboard?”

Khouryn glowered at Oraxes. “For the Dancer’s sake, give the girl a kiss. Or a drink. Anything to shut her up.”