“Are you still all right, buttercup?” asked Gaedynn from somewhere behind her. Despite their predicament, his tone was no longer grave and gentle as it had been before the vampires came for them. Now it was as jaunty as usual.
“I’m well,” she answered.
Light appeared ahead of them, revealing the dimensions of the tunnel they were traversing. She could tell it was magical illumination, silvery and soft, but after her time in the dark it made her squint like the glare of a summer sun.
As her eyes adjusted, her pale, gaunt guards marched her and Gaedynn into a broad, high-ceilinged chamber where glowing white balls floated in the air and slowly drifted from one point to another. Their light gleamed on the treasure below. Gold and silver coins filled open coffers or simply lay in heaps and drifts on the floor. Emeralds, diamonds, sapphires, water stars, and red tears lay scattered among the rounds of precious metal-some loose, some set in necklaces, rings, and brooches.
It could have been a spectacle to make an observer smile at its glittering beauty or drool with greed, except that there was more to it. Corpses-human, halfling, orc, goblin, and others-sprawled amid the wealth. Some were old and withered, and others still fresh enough to nourish the scuttling rats. All were mangled and had had the heads ripped from their shoulders. Their rotten stink made Jhesrhi queasy.
Suddenly a shape surged from the rear of the chamber. It was so huge that she couldn’t understand how she’d missed it before, but it truly seemed to burst out of nowhere. Startled, she tried to recoil, although the cold iron grips of the vampires kept her from succeeding. Gaedynn gasped.
Jaxanaedegor was immense enough to make the blue dragon who’d carried the prisoners there seem puny by comparison. Subtly pattered with scales of lighter and darker green, his clawed feet were the size of oxcarts. The spiny crest that ran from the top of his wedge-shaped head down the length of his body was nearly as tall as a human being all by itself.
Yet the most daunting thing about him was the pale unearthly sheen in his yellow eyes, a surface manifestation of the insatiable hunger and boundless malice of the undead. Jhesrhi recognized it from her time in Thay, but she’d never seen it melded with the profound intelligence and prodigious might of an ancient wyrm before.
As she struggled to contain her fear, Gaedynn’s guards brought him forward to stand beside her. He ran his gaze over the nearest corpses and said, “You might think about tidying up a bit.”
Jaxanaedegor stared at him for a moment that seemed to drag on endlessly, scraping at Jhesrhi’s nerves. Then the lesser vampires let the captives go and backed away. She assumed their master had given them some silent signal to do so.
It didn’t matter. If she had had her staff and Gaedynn his bow, or at least some weapon and armor, they might have had an infinitesimal chance of fighting their way clear of the situation. As it was, they had no hope at all.
“I know you,” the dragon said. “Jhesrhi Coldcreek and Gaedynn Ulraes. Lieutenants to Aoth Fezim.”
Jhesrhi tried to keep her surprise from showing in her face.
“Who?” Gaedynn replied. “My name is Azzedar, and my woman is Ilzza. We-”
Fast as a striking serpent, Jaxanaedegor lunged forward. A flick of his forefoot flung Gaedynn backward to slam down on an old sack. It burst under the impact, and clinking coins splashed out.
Meanwhile, the same forefoot grabbed Jhesrhi around the middle and shoved her to the floor. Jaxanaedegor’s scaly hide was as cold as his servants’ skin, and his weight squashed the breath out of her.
She wheezed a word of power. The wyrm glared down at her. The force of his will stabbed into her head and made it throb, but failed to paralyze her. She forced out the next word of her incantation, and he shifted his stance to make her take a fraction more of his weight.
“All I have to do is bear down,” he said, “to crush you into jelly.”
She left the rest of the spell unspoken. The stillborn magic dispersed with a crackling sound.
Gaedynn jumped up and started toward Jaxanaedegor. The dragon’s head whipped in his direction. Wisps of yellow-green vapor fumed from the creature’s nostrils and between his fangs. Jhesrhi caught a whiff of it. It seared her nose and throat and made her cough.
Gaedynn stopped.
“That’s better,” Jaxanaedegor said.
“Let her up,” the archer said.
“Are you done lying?”
“Yes.”
“You’d better be.” The wyrm picked up his foot.
Jhesrhi sucked in a breath, then rose and scurried to stand with Gaedynn. She realized that putting a few paces between the dragon and herself meant absolutely nothing in terms of making her safer. But it felt better than lingering within arm’s reach.
“If I may ask,” Gaedynn said, “how is it that you know us?”
“For obvious reasons,” Jaxanaedegor said, “we in the north take an interest in the soldiers the war hero sends against us.” His breath weapon had stopped leaking into the air, though the little that had escaped was enough to fill the cave with an eye-watering haze. “I have an observer in Soolabax, and when he lost track of you, I told my people throughout Threskel to keep an eye out. Because you had to be going somewhere.”
To Jhesrhi it seemed, if not a false explanation, certainly an incomplete one. She could understand a lord of Threskel monitoring the Brotherhood of the Griffon as a whole, or its captain for that matter. But it still surprised her that the wyrm had taken such a close interest that he knew two lesser officers by name.
“Well,” Gaedynn said, “we’re honored to have snagged the attention of the terror of Mount Thulbane.”
“It could work out to your advantage,” Jaxanaedegor said. “You could attain eternal life.”
“As an eternal menial eternally creeping around in a hole in the ground, like these?” Gaedynn waved a hand to indicate the undead standing at the mouth of the tunnel.
“Servants with minor talents,” the dragon said, “must content themselves with minor roles. But you’re a skilled warrior, and your companion is versed in elemental sorcery. I might consider giving you the true Dark Gift of the Undying. To make you master vampires and knights of the realm.”
Jhesrhi took a breath. “We had an undead comrade named Bareris Anskuld. We saw what his condition made of him. We’re not interested.”
“You assume you have a choice.”
“I don’t assume I could hurt you or fend you off for any length of time. But I do think I could raise enough fire to burn Gaedynn and me to ash.”
Actually, probably not-not without her staff. But it was possible that despite his cunning, Jaxanaedegor couldn’t tell that.
The dragon grunted. “Well, don’t set yourself ablaze quite yet. I’m still deciding what to do with you. Tell the truth, and I might show more mercy than a spy deserves. What were you looking for in Mourktar?”
Gaedynn cocked his head. “Didn’t your own spy tell you?”
“He reported you were asking about rumors of a dragon somewhere in the Sky Riders. I want to know why.”
“The stories suggest the wyrm in question is inconvenienced in some way. We hoped that would make it possible for us to pilfer from its horde.”
“And how would that help Chessenta?”
“It wouldn’t. Jhesrhi and I have parted company with the Brotherhood of the Griffon. Deserted, if you want to put it unkindly. We just want to get our hands on enough coin to keep us in comfort for the rest of our days.”
“I find that difficult to believe. By all accounts, both you and the wizard have been loyal members of Aoth Fezim’s company for several years.”
Gaedynn grinned. “I don’t know what accounts you’ve heard, but I’ve never been loyal to much of anything but my own self-interest. Now, Jhesrhi-I admit-is somewhat more prone to that particular weakness. But not to the point of stupidity. Captain Fezim led us to near ruin in Thay and again in Impiltur. Now he’s dragged us to a kingdom where mages like her are pariahs. She doesn’t trust him anymore, and wants out just like me.”