But it would have to go unsatisfied at the moment. Flame in the dark could catch the eye of the wyrm that had flown away, or of something else she didn’t want to meet. She rattled off a different incantation and made a stabbing motion with the staff, and a dozen small knives appeared in the air around two of the chainfighters. They too stabbed. One gray warrior fell. The other scrambled clear of the effect, but with blood staining part of his shirt a different shade of black.
Jhesrhi hesitated, trying to decided whether to finish off the wounded man or attack someone else. In that instant, she sensed motion on her left, something different from the fast but steady rhythm of Gaedynn’s shooting.
She turned. A gray man with a dagger in either hand was lunging in on Gaedynn’s flank. And she couldn’t hit the enemy combatant with her magic, not in time to stop him from attacking, because the archer was in her way. All she could do was yell, “Watch out!”
Gaedynn pivoted. The gray man slashed, first with one blade, then the other. The archer tried to dodge. Standing behind him, Jhesrhi couldn’t tell if he succeeded either time.
But bands of darkness wrapped around him like a constricting serpent, crushing his arms and bow against his torso and binding his legs together. Off balance, he toppled to the ground.
That at least got him out of Jhesrhi’s way. Terrified that the gray warrior would bend down and finish him off, she jabbed the staff at the attacker and snarled a word of command. Raw force smashed in the dark man’s face and blew out the back of his skull.
At her feet, Gaedynn squirmed and strained. Good, he was still alive and able to struggle, but she couldn’t take the time to help him free himself. Despite the losses they’d already sustained, more of the gray people were advancing in their flitting, deliberate fashion. It was like they didn’t fear death at all.
She softened the earth beneath a chainfighter, and he plunged in up to his waist. Then suddenly, everything got even darker. She assumed it meant one of the enemy had crept in close to her.
Jhesrhi turned, looking for the threat. For a moment she saw a vague figure. Its dark eyes stared into hers, and then it was gone.
Hands grabbed her throat from behind. The iron grip cut off her air and seared her flesh as well.
She could no longer afford to care whether she showed a light in the darkness. Suddenly bereft of speech, she had to use the only magic she could still access quickly. She clutched the staff and, in her thoughts, recited words of command.
Flame erupted over her body like she’d soaked herself in oil. It didn’t hurt her, but it presumably burned her attacker, because the hands let go of her neck.
She pivoted to face the strangler, then felt a twinge of surprise because it was a gray woman. Not that that mattered. She threw the dark figure backward with a bolt of force.
But the strangler only flew a couple of paces. Then she slammed into one of the chainfighters who, plainly undaunted by Jhesrhi’s mantle of flame, were rapidly closing in on her.
She hated their single-minded bloodlust, their sheer uncanniness, and the prospect of them pressing in from all sides. She wanted the fight to be over, and the conjured fire responded to her desire. It lashed out all around her like the spokes of a wheel to blast and burn gray flesh. Her assailants reeled and dropped.
She took a deep breath, willed her own fiery halo and the patches of flame still dancing on the corpses to go out, and turned to see how Gaedynn was faring. A gray man crawling on the ground leered up at her and thrust a dagger at her belly.
Gaedynn heaved himself free of the loops of congealed darkness, scrambled, and grabbed the enemy warrior’s arm just before the blade could plunge home. The two combatants thrashed and rolled while Jhesrhi looked for a chance to smite the scarred man without hurting Gaedynn. Then the archer landed a short jab to his opponent’s throat. The gray man stopped struggling; suddenly all he could do was shake and choke. Using the heel of his palm Gaedynn hit him again, this time smashing his nose, and he stopped moving altogether.
Gaedynn turned and pulled his bow clear of the coils of darkness. “Are you all right? Those marks remind me of Thay, when a ghost would get its hands on somebody.”
She cautiously touched what she surmised to be hand-shaped bruises or discolorations on her neck. Now that the battle was over, they were really starting to sting. Still… “I don’t think they’re all that bad. How are you?”
“I wish we still had that healing balm, but really, the knife just scratched me. The brigandine stopped the worst of it.” He pulled the arrows from his quiver. He’d used a lot of them during the fight, and the pressure of the dark coils and rolling around on the ground had broken some of the rest. “Curse it! What were these bastards, anyway? Shades? Shadar-kai?”
“They were a long way from home if they were.” The Empire of Netheril, which bred men infused with the essence of darkness, lay two thousand miles to the west.
“True.” He grinned. “I just think it would be nice to have Netherese running around our part of the world. Because things aren’t nearly complicated enough already.”
“We should move out. In case something saw the flames.”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
Farther down the hill, they found yokes with buckets of water attached, and the carcasses of slaughtered deer. Jhesrhi inferred that the gray folk had dropped them when they decided to attack.
“Our foes were Tchazzar’s jailers,” she said, “charged with bringing him food and drink. They cleared out when the other dragon came to feed, for fear it would leech the strength out of them as well. When we met them, they were coming back.”
“Maybe.” Squatting beside it, Gaedynn was clearly more interested in examining one of the deer. “Look at this!”
She walked over and stood beside him. “What?”
He pointed. “Look at the striped pattern on the hindquarters.” He indicated one of the legs. “And here-no dew claw. During your time in Threskel, did you ever see a doe like this?”
“I don’t know. The elemental magi weren’t like your elves. They didn’t devote any time to teaching me woodcraft.”
“Well, I know I haven’t seen one before. It’s… peculiar.”
“You can ponder the mystery of its existence when we’re well away from here.”
He smiled. “I suppose that might be the prudent thing to do.”
They hurried onward, while the pain in the front and sides of her neck waxed and waned. Until Gaedynn finally halted and, turning in a complete circle, peered around.
“What is it?” Jhesrhi whispered.
“I think I must be lost,” he replied.
Jhesrhi wondered if he was making another poorly timed and pointless joke. “You don’t get lost.”
“No. I don’t. But we’ve walked far enough that we should be clear of the poisoned area. Yet we’re not.”
The hill rising in front of them wasn’t as utterly and obviously blighted as the dragon captive’s immediate vicinity. But when she looked closely, it was obviously tainted. Shadows seethed when they thought no one was looking. Twisted oaks sweated a pale, viscous fluid that reminded her of pus.
“And I can’t get my bearings,” Gaedynn continued. “The shape of the hills is off.”
“Keep walking,” Jhesrhi said. “We’ll come to something we recognize.”
They didn’t, though, and in time she began to suspect what had happened. But she had an irrational dread that somehow, saying it aloud would make it true. So she waited until what she supposed she could still call dawn. When the sky lightened from black to slate gray, but nothing recognizable as a sun rose to brighten it any further.
Columns of smoke ascended from behind a rise. Just the thought that someone might be cooking breakfast there made Khouryn’s mouth water and his belly growl.
Following their disastrous clash with the ash giants, he and the dragonborn survivors had tried to head east. Medrash wanted to tell the Lance Defenders about the threat of the lizard-bears, which apparently the enemy had never used before. But unfortunately, the riders kept spotting other giant war bands blocking the way to the Dustroad. Sometimes the giants spotted them too, and then they had to flee. Meanwhile their rations ran short, and only occasionally did they find potable water, or grass for their steeds. Two of the animals went lame.