You’re right. But no one else was standing close enough to tell.

Using his spear as a prop and doing his best to move like a man in hideous pain, Aoth rose and clambered onto the griffon’s back.

The staff seemed to quiver in Jhesrhi’s hand like a dog straining at a leash. She willed it into quiescence.

Patience, she thought. If this idiot scheme works, you’ll get the chance to make plenty of fire. But in the meantime, she needed to avoid sparking big, telltale flashes of light in the midst of all the gloom.

She peered from the brush Gaedynn had chosen to serve as their blind at the trail meandering down the hillside several yards away. Tchazzar’s captors traversed it often to take gray crawfish as long as her forearm and black eyeless pike from the murky river at the end.

Though she and Gaedynn were waiting for the dark men, their silence and the dusk that shrouded the wooded hills even by day kept her from spotting them until they were unnervingly close. One was a shadar-kai with a bow in his hand, a chain around his waist, and triangular scars on his forehead and cheeks. The other six were hunched servants carrying cast nets and baskets.

Jhesrhi whispered to the earth, and the patch of trail beneath the creatures’ feet turned to muck. They all plunged in up to their knees or deeper.

Gaedynn sprang to his feet and loosed his last two arrows. The first pierced the shadar-kai’s torso. The second stabbed all the way through a servant’s throat.

She willed the soil to well up higher around the foes who were still alive, like waves in a stormy sea. Dirt flowed over one and covered him entirely.

But the other three vanished, leaving holes in the ground. Prompted by instinct, Jhesrhi spun around. Two of the servants were right behind her. Covered in mud, ugly faces contorted, they sprang at her with their knives raised over their heads.

She spoke to the wind, and it howled and shoved them back. That gave her time to rattle off a charm of slumber, each syllable softer than the one before.

The little gray men collapsed. She killed one by ramming the butt of her staff into his forehead. His scimitar already bloody-from dispatching the servant who’d shifted elsewhere, presumably-Gaedynn trotted up beside her and slashed the throat of the other. The bodies exploded into dark vapor, and their killers stepped back to avoid it.

“Well,” Gaedynn said, “that was easy enough.”

“It will get harder once their friends find the corpses and realize we’re still in their territory. And hunting them as they hunted us.”

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll cope.” He strode to the mired corpse of the shadar-kai and removed the dead man’s quiver. He pulled out one of the many black arrows, sighted down the length of it, and smiled.

Cera sat cross-legged on a flat portion of the temple roof. The elevation brought her closer to the sun.

Amaunator’s radiance was shining just as brightly at ground level, so her ascent was purely a symbolic gesture. But every acolyte learned early on that where meditation was concerned, symbolism helped the practitioner achieve the proper frame of mind.

She studied the golden light reflecting from the rooftops around her. Then, when she felt centered, she lifted her eyes and gazed directly at the sun. No layman could have done so without pain and, if he persisted nonetheless, permanent damage to his sight. But the blaze simultaneously calmed and exalted her. It made her feel the majesty of her god.

Until a screech split the air, and a big black shape with outstretched wings cut between her and the object of her adoration. She felt a pang of dread, but the emotion disappeared when she recognized Jet for what-or, according to Aoth, who-he was.

“Sunlady!” cried the griffon.

“Yes?” she replied, thinking that even though she knew the beast could speak, it was a marvel to hear it nonetheless.

“Meet me in your garden! Now!”

She started to ask why. But then Jet swooped level with her rooftop, and she gasped at the sight of a crimson figure slumped on his back.

She clambered down her ladder and scurried through the interior of the temple with no regard for the dignity of a high priestess. As she burst out into the garden, Jet said, “A drake, or some creature like a drake, hurt him bad! I think he may be dying!”

Cera tried to put dismay aside and think with the calmness befitting a cleric and healer. “I’ll call my people to carry him to a bed.”

“No,” Jet said. “This town is full of people who want to be rid of him. You’re the only one I trust. You open doors for me and I’ll carry him.”

She trusted her own subordinates, but it wasn’t worth arguing about, certainly not when Aoth was in urgent need of care. “Whatever you say.”

People either recoiled or goggled to see the enormous black mount with his scarlet eyes stalking through the temple at her back. Prayers and litanies stumbled to a halt.

She had Jet bear his rider to her own chambers and her own bed. Then she checked the saddle for straps securing Aoth in place. There weren’t any. Either he wasn’t worried about losing his seat and falling, or magic prevented it. She took hold of him to ease him onto the bed. He was heavy, particularly in his mail, but she’d had a lot of practice lifting patients.

“Boo!” he whispered.

She jumped back.

“Some healer,” he said, grinning and swinging himself off Jet’s back. “You couldn’t tell the blood isn’t mine?”

She took a breath, and her heart stopped thumping quite as hard. “Not before I examined you.”

“Good. If the ranking sunlady of the temple couldn’t tell close up, then I doubt anyone else did from farther away.”

“What is the matter with you? If this is a joke-”

He raised a hand. “It’s not. Well, the boo part was, but the rest no. This is me taking advantage of a chance to catch our elusive dragonborn.”

“How?”

“In Luthcheq, when we couldn’t find the Green Hand killers, we set a trap to flush them out. We’re doing it again, and this time the bait is me. We’ll spread the word that I got badly hurt on the other side of the border. And that you think you can save me, but even with your strongest prayers mending me, I’ll be a helpless invalid for a couple of days. That should prompt the dragonborn to come after me while I can’t fight back.”

She frowned. “I suppose that could work.”

“I’m glad you think so, because obviously I need your help to make it work. For one thing, we have to provide a lure that really is enticing. My being wounded won’t look like such a perfect opportunity if Jet and a bunch of sellswords are standing guard over me. There has to be a credible reason why they’re not.”

Cera nodded. “I can handle that.”

“I want to fight,” Medrash said.

Patrin smiled. “But?”

“But it’s a bigger party than the one that defeated us Daardendriens.” The admission still tasted bitter in his mouth. “They’ve already seen us just as we’ve seen them, so we can’t surprise them. I think it would be wiser to avoid them if we can.”

Her upper body swaying ever so slightly, Nala said, “The blood of dragons flows in our veins. We can kill these giants like we killed the others.”

“I agree,” Patrin said. He looked back at Medrash. “But we won’t think less of you if you stay behind and guard the carts and horses.”

“We’d think less of ourselves,” Medrash said. “We said we’d stand with the Platinum Cadre. So if you fight, we will too.”

Patrin grinned and gripped Medrash’s shoulder. “I knew I could count on you. How could it be otherwise, when your god and mine are staunch friends and fellow lords of Celestia?”