Whisper of Venom botg-2

  Whisper of Venom

  ( Brotherhood of the griffon - 2 )

  Richard Lee Byers

  Richard Lee Byers

  Whisper of Venom

  PROLOGUE

  19 MIRTUL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

  Is this wise?” Ananta asked.

  Surprised, Brimstone turned, and his tail whispered across the cavern floor. Though the chamber was spacious, Ananta stood against the wall, her sturdy, scaly body wrapped in a gray cloak and her blackwood staff in her hand. In the course of her duties as guardian of Dracowyr, she’d no doubt learned to give wyrms room lest they accidentally step on her.

  “Why, Ananta,” Brimstone said, “I didn’t know you cared.”

  The guardian responded with what Brimstone had come to recognize as a frown, a slight baring of the fangs coupled with a twitch of the frills on the sides of the saurian head. The facial expressions of the strange new creatures called dragonborn had much in common with those of true dragons.

  “My lord Skalnaedyr commanded me to look after you,” Ananta replied, “and so I do.”

  The explanation lacked a certain warmth. Still, it pleased Brimstone to think that Ananta was at least getting used to him. Given his vampirism, perhaps that was much as he could expect.

  “Well,” he said, “to answer your question, I survived the first time, and even if the magic misbehaves just as badly tonight, I daresay I can bear up again. And we needn’t assume it will. I’m a highly competent scryer, even if you couldn’t tell from my performance thus far.”

  “Yes, milord,” Ananta said.

  Brimstone turned back to the pool, if one cared to dignify it with that term. It was really more of a shallow puddle in a low place in the floor. A mirror or crystal orb might have suited him better, but it took time to import the amenities when one chose to lair in an earthmote, an island floating in the sky high above the wilderness known as the Great Wild Wood.

  He stared into the water, focusing his will on it. He whispered incantations that both gathered mystical energy and helped put him in the proper receptive frame of mind.

  In time, nothing remained but the pool and his desire to see what it could show him. Then the surface of the water turned gray with red sparks shining inside it. As it rippled, it looked like his own smoky breath weapon streaming forth from his jaws.

  The water smoothed and cleared, becoming like a window opening on a deep, rocky bowl in the earth with crags and spires jutting from the top like the points of a broken crown. Their scales glinting in the starlight, dozens of dragons perched on ledges and outcroppings. Brimstone was peering out from the same high shelf he’d occupied when the convocation had happened in reality.

  He stared at what appeared to be an empty balcony. He knew it wasn’t really, and after a moment two shadows appeared there, framed in an arched opening to the warren of passages honeycombing the rock. It was impossible to tell if they were ghosts or the spirits of living folk who’d temporarily left their bodies. Impossible as well to make out their blurred, wavering features.

  When the event had really happened, Brimstone had attacked the phantoms, and they’d escaped. In the recreation, he simply gazed, whispered words of command, and willed their features to come clear.

  The bulkier of the two figures resolved itself somewhat into what was probably a powerfully built human male. The implement in his hand was a staff. No, a spear.

  His companion-

  The view exploded into blazing light and heat. Seared and dazzled, Brimstone recoiled, and then, mercifully, the puddle was just a puddle again.

  “What was that?” a deep voice snarled.

  Startled, Brimstone whirled and beheld the newcomer. Alasklerbanbastos filled the opening between that cavern and the next. Perhaps the Great Bone Wyrm didn’t want to come all the way through because he feared his skeletal wings would snag and scrape on the rim.

  Brimstone hated it when anyone sneaked up on him. He was supposed to do the sneaking. And it seemed especially unfair that anything as huge as Alasklerbanbastos could do it. Why didn’t all those bare bones clink together?

  Frustrated by the failure of the divination, pained by the burns on his face and neck, Brimstone had to strain to maintain civility and to remember that he had no particular reason to hate dracoliches anymore. He could lay that quarrel to rest along with Sammaster, who’d created the undead wyrms.

  “Greetings, Lord of Threskel,” Brimstone said.

  Alasklerbanbastos came a stride deeper into the chamber. Sparks jumped and popped on his bones, and the air started to smell like the advent of a storm. Ananta backed away to give him extra space.

  “I asked what that was,” the undead blue dragon said.

  “Well,” Brimstone said, “you remember our convocation, when I laid out the precepts, and everyone agreed to them.”

  “Of course,” Alasklerbanbastos said.

  “I’m trying to use divination to discover the identity of the phantoms who came to spy on us. Unfortunately, some Power is opposing me.”

  Alasklerbanbastos gave a disgusted-sounding grunt. “That was true daylight bursting forth from the pool.”

  “I know,” Brimstone said. “Given my nature, the burns it inflicted are something of a giveaway.” He felt a tickle partway down his snout as one of the chars started to heal.

  “I meant,” the dracolich rasped, “that the specific nature of the Power may provide a clue to the trespassers’ identities.”

  “In theory, I agree. Unfortunately, Faerun abounds in spellcasters who can evoke sunlight. Now, my lord, what brings you here? Surely you didn’t travel so far just to assist my inquiry, especially since you didn’t know I’d undertaken it.”

  “I came about Tchazzar.” Alasklerbanbastos hesitated. “You know he’s reappeared?”

  “Yes,” Brimstone said.

  “I want your assurance that he isn’t a part of this. That you won’t allow him to take part.”

  “Thus condemning him to eventual servitude, exile, or worse.”

  Logic indicated that it was impossible for Alasklerbanbastos’s fleshless, wedge-shaped skull of a head to smile, but Brimstone could have sworn that it did so anyway. “If you want to put it like that.”

  “I regret,” Brimstone said, “that I can’t oblige you.”

  The smile, if it had ever been there, vanished. A blue glow flared in the dracolich’s eye sockets, and more sparks leaped and crackled on his bones.

  Ananta unobtrusively hefted her staff. It was her responsibility as guardian to enforce the truce that was supposed to prevail on Dracowyr. And though her weapon had formidable powers, her tense features made it plain that she didn’t relish the prospect of trying to subdue the colossal undead blue.

  Brimstone didn’t feel especially enthusiastic about it either.

  “Tchazzar didn’t attend the first assembly,” Alasklerbanbastos said.

  “That doesn’t preclude his participation,” Brimstone said, meanwhile trying to decide which spells to cast, and in what order, if it came to a fight. “Not according to the rules.”

  “Rules you cite without warning, as it suits you.”

  “Complicated rules. Would you like me to teach you the entire codex? Do you have a few years?”

  “Don’t mock me.”

  Brimstone’s breath weapon burned painlessly in his chest and throat. He struggled with a spasm of anger, with the urge to forget prudence, strike first, and take his chances against the arrogant, petulant spawn of Sammaster’s madness.

  When he had himself under control, he said, “I beg you to pardon my flippancy. It was inappropriate. But surely you can see it would be even more inappropriate to forbid Tchazzar to join in what amou
nts to the adoration of our Dark Lady. He was her anointed champion.”

  “That was another time. Another world.”

  Brimstone privately conceded the point. It was the time and world before the cataclysm called the Spellplague, when all the dragonborn lived somewhere unimaginably far away, and no islands floated the sky.

  But there was no point in agreeing out loud. “Surely it was only a moment ago in the life of a dragon. An instant in the span of an undead.”

  “But I didn’t agree to Tchazzar!”

  “But surely you recognized that the world is a chaotic, ever-changing place and that unforeseen challenges would arise. That’s all part of the fun. Honestly, I don’t even know why it matters to you whether Tchazzar’s in or out. You’d have to deal with him either way.”

  “Of course you know! The difference lies in whether the others will treat him as a peer.”

  Brimstone sighed, and stray wisps of sulfurous smoke blew from his nostrils. “I suppose that’s true. Still, the situation is what it is, and I don’t see that it’s so terrible for you. You control a kingdom and an army. Most of the others are making do with less.”

  “Always,” Alasklerbanbastos growled, “it was three against one. Tchazzar, Gestaniius, and Skuthosiin all conspiring to bring me down. And now it’s the same again!”

  Actually, Brimstone thought, it’s worse than that. And you’re so obsessed with Tchazzar that you’ll never see the new threat coming. He could almost have felt pity for the dracolich. If Alasklerbanbastos hadn’t so thoroughly annoyed him, and if pity were anything more than a vestigial part of his nature.

  “You have your own dragon vassals,” he said.

  Alasklerbanbastos spat a small, crackling arc of lightning. “Young ones. It’s not the same.” His fleshless limbs bent as he gathered himself to lunge. “I insist that you ban Tchazzar.”

  “No,” Brimstone said, “and I suggest you pause to reflect before you do anything rash. If you destroy me, it all comes to an end. And it’s already fascinating, isn’t it? As lovely and intricate as any treasure in your hoard. It will only become more so as events unfold.”

  The dracolich glared, blue-white radiance seething in the pits where his eyes had once resided. Then he shivered, and at last Brimstone heard bone clink against bone.

  “If I ever decide,” said Alasklerbanbastos, “that you’re not impartial, we’ll continue this conversation.” He backed out of the opening in one sudden surge, and exited the caverns a moment later. Brimstone could neither see nor hear his departure, but an oppressive feeling of power and menace abated.

  Ananta lowered her staff and let out a long exhalation. “That was … stimulating,” she said.

  Brimstone smiled. “I knew he’d stop short of an actual fight,” he lied.

  “It’s like a drug, isn’t it? Like dreammist or bloodfast. Once your people have tasted it, they need more.”

  “It’s one of the Dark Lady’s great gifts to her children, and like most of them, it comes with some barbs and sharp edges.”

  Ananta’s eyes narrowed. “Are you impartial? Or do you have an agenda of your own?”

  “Because if I do, you have a responsibility to report it to your master.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’s just as well my probity is intact.” Brimstone felt a cool tingle on his neck as new scales grew over another burn. A dryness in his mouth and an ache in his fangs told him the rapid healing was rousing his thirst. “I’m going down to the forest for a while.” It might be a wilderness, but there were wild men and goblins to hunt and drink.

  ONE

  20 MIRTUL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS NE (1479 DR)

  It started out the way it was supposed to. The two teams of dragonborn approached one another in formation, each warrior in the front lines covering himself with his shield. They jabbed at the fighters on the other side with the padded lengths of wood that represented spears. When a fellow was hit, he kneeled down to indicate he was a casualty, and the soldier waiting behind him shifted forward to take his place.

  But then everyone got excited. If a warrior pushed a foeman back, he lunged forward to chase him. The dragonborn waiting in the rear grew impatient and either tried to shove forward prematurely or swarmed out of the formation to engage an opponent. What had been a clash between two organized squads dissolved into an amorphous brawl.

  “No!” bellowed Khouryn Skulldark. “No, no, no! Break it up!”

  Some of the combatants heard and obeyed. Some kept fighting.

  Khouryn understood that. Dragonborn and dwarves possessed a similar fighting spirit. It was one reason he felt at home among the manlike saurians.

  But the vanquisher’s troops weren’t in the muddy field to entertain themselves. They were there to train. Khouryn strode in among those who were still fighting and rapped knees with his cudgel. His smaller stature allowed him to do so without too much concern that a stray thrust or cut from a practice weapon would score on him.

  Finally, everyone calmed down. Then he took up a position in front of them, and they all stared down at him expectantly, some no doubt with veiled resentment or apprehension, as so many trainees had before them.

  “That was pitiful,” he said. “My blind, one-legged granny fights better than that. Why is it so difficult to stay in the damn formation? Stand where you’re supposed to stand and hold your shield where it’s supposed to be, so it protects your neighbor and yourself. Stay alert for chances to stick the enemy who’s in front of your comrade. A lot of the time he’s not looking at you, and that makes it easy to hit him.”

  “In other words, fight like a coward,” muttered a yellow-eyed, bronze-scaled warrior standing behind two others. He had two copper owl-shaped piercings-the emblem of Clan Linxakasendalor-gleaming in the left side of his blunt snout.

  Khouryn smiled at him. “What was that?”

  The Linxakasendalor looked momentarily taken aback. For some reason, such grumblers never expected the instructor to catch what they said.

  But then he glowered. Since Khouryn had found him out, he figured he might as well stand up for his opinions.

  “I meant, sir,” he said, “with all respect, that this isn’t how dragonborn fight. It isn’t how our ancestors fought when they won their freedom.”

  Others muttered in support of his opinion.

  Khouryn raised his voice to cut through the drone. “Then it’s a wonder they prevailed. You’ll notice you’re not prevailing. The giants are kicking your soldiers from one end of Black Ash Plain to the other.”

  “We’ll beat them in the end,” said the Linxakasendalor. “We always have.”

  “Maybe,” Khouryn said. “But not by doing the same things you’ve always done. The giants are fighting differently, and you have to fight differently too. Now, I could go on trying to pound that simple truth into your thick skulls. Or I could remind you that Tarhun hired me to train you, so you have to do as I say whatever you think. But I’m not going to do either of those things. Do you know why? Because I heard the word coward.”

  The Linxakasendalor blinked. “Sir, I didn’t mean that personally.”

  “I don’t care a rat’s whisker what you meant. Come here. And you, and you.” He pointed to two other dragonborn, and the trio emerged from the crowd. “The three of you are going to try to stun, cripple, or otherwise incapacitate me, and I’ll do the same to you. At the end of it all, everyone can judge for himself whether I know enough about fighting to teach you anything.”

  The three exchanged glances. Perhaps it was their sense of honor that balked them. The average dragonborn possessed that in abundance-another characteristic they shared with dwarves-and three against one must have seemed like long odds, especially when each of the three towered over the one.

  “Do it!” Khouryn roared.

  The three fanned out, plainly intending to surround him. As Khouryn had learned fighting among them on the journey from Chessenta and on Black Ash Plain, dragonborn were capable of using
teamwork when a situation called for it. But only the teamwork that came naturally. It hadn’t traditionally been a part of their martial training.

  Khouryn feinted a step to the right, then whirled and raced left, straight at a warrior with silvery scales. The reptile thrust with his practice spear. Khouryn dodged and then he was inside the reach of the weapon, where it was more or less useless.

  The dragonborn tried to clout him with his oval shield. He had good technique, but Khouryn was expecting the attack and evaded it as well. He stepped up beside the warrior and clubbed him in the knee, using almost enough strength to break it.

  The silver-scaled saurian fell onto both knees. By then his comrades were rushing in, but his body shielded Khouryn for a heartbeat. Long enough to bash him in the head, make his steel and leather helmet-fashioned with holes so his crest of thick, scaly tendrils like braided hair could flop out the back-clank, and lay him out in the trodden muck and the new spring grass.

  Khouryn scuttled backward. His foot slipped, and a spear thrust nearly cost him some teeth. He whirled his baton in a circular parry and slapped the attack out of line less than a finger-length from his mouth.

  By the time he felt sure of his balance, he had his opponents’ patterns and rhythms too. When they both jabbed, missed, and pulled their spears back at the same moment, he charged between them. When they tried to follow the motion and keep their long weapons pointed at him, they more or less tangled together.

  Dragonborn were big, but they weren’t ogres. Khouryn had no trouble stabbing the one with the dark green scales in the throat with the end of his club. Once again he was careful not to kill. The warrior just reeled, dropped his spear, and clutched his neck while making choking sounds.

  Hoping to end the fight, Khouryn rounded on his remaining opponent, only to find that the Linxakasendalor had been too quick. He’d retreated, taking himself beyond Khouryn’s reach and reestablishing the proper distance to use his spear.

  He wasn’t attacking though. Maybe Khouryn had thrown a scare into him-although given that he was a dragonborn, it was more likely he was simply taking his time.