The vanquisher started again. “Be that as it may, milord, High Imaskar professes friendship for Tymanther. Will you stand with us if Chessenta attacks?”
Nellis shifted his gleaming black orb from the crook of one arm to the other. “Majesty, we’re already fighting Chessenta on the sea, and I’m confident that will continue. I can’t commit land troops to Tymanther’s defense without consulting the empress. I know she’d want to send them, but it might not be possible until we counter the threat from the Purple Dust.”
“Will she also want to send them if Shala Karanok grants passage to a genasi army?”
Now it was Nellis’s turn to hesitate.
“I’ll spare Lord Nellis the awkwardness of answering that question,” Perra said. “Toward the end of my time in Luthcheq, it came to light that Akanul and High Imaskar have sealed an alliance.”
“That’s an… overstatement,” Nellis said. “Naturally, we Imaskari want to trade with as many-”
“Dragons and genasi?” Tarhun snarled. “Get out, milord. I’ll send for you again when I feel sure of my ability to give you the courtesy due an ambassador.”
The Imaskari bowed and withdrew.
Light rippling on his emerald scales, the vanquisher turned to Khouryn, Medrash, and Balasar. “Sirs, I excuse you as well. No doubt you’d like to refresh yourselves after your journey. Perra, my deputies, and I have a long palaver ahead of us.”
Gaedynn woke in absolute darkness. For a moment, he was confused, and then memory flooded back.
The last thing he recalled was flying tied to the blue dragon’s back. His wounds throbbed and made him weak. The ropes cut off his circulation. The high air chilled him. At some point it had all been too much, and he passed out.
And ended up lying on hard stone. Thanks to the wyrmkeeper’s magic, his wounds only hurt a little now. But he was parched and stiff, and when he sat up, he felt the shackles around his wrists and the weight of the rattling chains attached to them.
“Gaedynn?” asked Jhesrhi, somewhere to his left.
He swallowed away some of the dryness in his throat. “Yes.”
“Are you all right?”
“More or less, as best I can judge. You?”
“Yes.”
“Well, now that I’m awake, I recommend you rid us of our chains, strike a light, and lead me to safety. While slaughtering any foes we meet along the way.”
“I can’t. Someone enchanted the shackles to inhibit spellcasting. If I had my staff, I might be able to overcome the effect, but I don’t.”
He sighed. “That’s inconvenient. Do you know where we are?”
“A cave inside Mount Thulbane.”
He winced. The volcano was the lair of Jaxanaedegor, the vampiric green dragon who was the Great Bone Wyrm’s principal lieutenant. “I have to say, I’m a little offended we don’t rate the hospitality of Alasklerbanbastos himself.”
“Is there anything you can do?”
“At the moment? Just wait for a chance to present itself. Well, that and divert you with witty and erudite conversation. I referred to Alasklerbanbastos as ‘himself,’ but in your opinion is that accurate? I understand he started out male, but supposedly there’s nothing left of him but a skeleton. Is a fellow still a fellow if his manliest parts have rotted away?”
Jhesrhi didn’t answer.
“I suppose we could pose the same question about Szass Tam,” Gaedynn continued. “The last time Aoth saw him, he was nothing but bone and flame. Although he probably looks more lifelike now. That’s one of the advantages of being a lich and a necromancer, isn’t it? If you need a patch job, you just find or make a fresh corpse and cut-”
“I didn’t freeze,” she said.
He hesitated. “What?”
“Fighting in the street. The enemy didn’t overwhelm us and take you prisoner because I wasn’t doing my part.”
“I know that,” he said. “It happened because we were outnumbered and Lady Luck was busy elsewhere.”
She was quiet for several heartbeats, then said, “I thought you might think it was my fault because of what happened with the kobolds. And the way I’ve been since we arrived in Luthcheq.”
“I have wondered and worried about you. So has Khouryn.”
“What about Aoth?”
“Well, I could tell he’s not puzzled. He knows what’s bothering you, although much to my annoyance he kept your secret. But he was concerned. I think it’s one reason he wished we had somewhere to go besides Chessenta.”
Another silence. Finally she said, “I was born in Luthcheq. I started showing signs of having a talent for wizardry from an early age.”
“Were your parents mages?”
“No. They were respectable merchants who shared the general prejudice against wizards. They were afraid I was going to draw demons into their home or grow up to commit horrible crimes. Most of all they worried that other people would find out I was an abomination, and that would damage their own reputations. So they forbade me to use my gift and prayed to Chauntea to take it away.”
Chauntea, Gaedynn reflected, being the goddess who oversaw natural, healthy growth. “Obviously, that didn’t work.”
“No. I tried to be good and obey, but I couldn’t keep from experimenting with my talent any more than you could have refrained from picking up a bow after you saw your elf friends practicing archery. And so my mother and father grew ever more afraid and loved me less and less.
“And then,” she continued, her voice still oddly cool and matter-of-fact, “they led a caravan north. This was during one of those times when Chessenta and Threskel were supposedly at peace. But the north country was still full of brigands, human and otherwise, and a band of elemental magi waylaid us.”
Elemental magi were ogres who, somewhat like the genasi, possessed an innate affinity for fire, earth, or air. “When you half saw that big kobold-thing standing in the dark, you took it for an elemental mage, didn’t you? That’s what… rattled you.”
“Yes. But let me finish telling this my own way. The caravan was better prepared than the giants expected, and the guards withstood their first attack. But the magi still posed a threat, and the creatures knew it. They demanded tribute to let my parents go on their way.”
Gaedynn felt sick to his stomach. “You were the tribute, weren’t you? Or a part of it.”
“Yes.” Jhesrhi’s voice, though still soft and calm, grew bitter. “The elemental magi liked the idea of having a human child for a slave, and by that point my parents barely thought of me as their daughter anymore. I was just a problem, and this was a solution.”
She took a breath. “The next several years were bad. The giants brutalized me in all the usual ways. When the shaman perceived my gift, they taught me their own kind of magic, but even that, which should have been joyous, was awful. Partly because they made me use it to help them attack other travelers.”
“Knowing you as I do, I assume they must have taken precautions to keep you from turning the power on them.”
“Yes. I don’t know where they got it, but they had an old leather collar with an enchantment of obedience on it. And they made me wear it. But even if they hadn’t, I don’t know if I would have found the courage to rebel. I was so afraid of them! To some extent, that fear started trickling back as soon as I learned we were bound for Luthcheq, and it grew stronger when Aoth asked us to travel to Threskel.”
“Levistus take him for that, and for dragging you to this wretched kingdom in the first place.”
“He has to do what’s right for the Brotherhood. The whole Brotherhood. And I have to perform the duties that fall to me, or I never should have joined the company in the first place. And I have performed them, except for those few moments with the kobolds.”
“You performed them then too.” He chuckled. “It just took you a little longer than I found comfortable. Still, for Aoth to send you on this particular mission-”