It was time to show what one pawn could do when she moved herself.
Jhesrhi put on an old, gray, hooded cloak Aoth had given her shortly after rescuing her from the elemental mages. It had seen so much hard wear that Gaedynn said it made her look like a beggar. But she’d kept it anyway, and certainly, no one would mistake it for the sort of ornate, elegant garments she’d worn of late.
She took up her staff, and it urged her to set something ablaze. Not tonight, she thought, not in this downpour. That would be far too much work and too suspicious as well.
She opened the casement. The rain battered her. She spoke to the wind, and howling, it picked her up off the little balcony.
She wasn’t worried that anyone would see. She was just a dark speck moving against the black sky.
Despite the weather, it was exhilarating to fly again, although not as exhilarating as it would have been on Scar’s back. She felt a fresh pang of loss for the steed who’d given his life to save hers, and wondered if she’d ever ride a griffon again. Then she scowled as she recognized the thought for what it was: a tacit admission of the fear that she’d never escape her current situation.
The wind carried over the precinct being demolished to clear a space for Tchazzar’s temple, then to the encampment beyond. In some portions, the tents stood in orderly rows, while in others a person would have to weave his way through. Jhesrhi suspected that the lower sorts of sellsword, the undisciplined ruffians who gave them all a bad name, were responsible for the areas of disarray.
She landed in the shadow of one of the outlying houses the camp had grown up around. It was late enough that no light showed through the windows shuttered against the storm. She walked on, her feet sliding in mud and slopping through puddles. Sensing that she still had work for it, the wind that had borne her aloft lingered close to her, gusting in one direction, then another. It made her cape swing back and forth like a bell and kept threatening to shove her cowl back off her head, not out of prankishness or resentment, but simply because it didn’t know any better.
She spotted a sentry huddled under a tree and passed within a stone’s throw of him. He didn’t challenge her. With a flicker of a smile, she decided that she probably would have needed to brandish a severed head and scream “Death to Chessenta!” to draw him out from under the meager shelter of the dripping branches, especially since, in a patchwork army, strangers were constantly wandering around.
In time she stopped under a tree of her own, as anyone who needed a respite from the drenching sting of the rain might. She stared out at the supply tents and wagons a short distance away, shifted her grip on her staff, and spoke to the wind again.
What she said was an incantation of sorts, possessed of a precise cadence and punctuated with words of command. But she didn’t feel like she was giving orders. Prior to the war with Threskel, she’d spent enough time in Luthcheq to get acquainted with the breezes and gales hereabouts, and it was more like asking help from friends.
It was help they proved eager to give. The wind roared and threw the wings of her cloak out in front of her like flapping banners. She had to snatch at the tree to keep from falling. And she wasn’t even the target of the blast. She was simply standing at the fringe of it.
It shoved the tents out of shape and sent ripples streaming through the canvas. A wagon rocked sideways, then settled back on all four wheels.
“More,” Jhesrhi murmured, and the wind wailed louder. The raindrops caught in the surge almost seemed to be hurtling horizontally, not falling from the black clouds on high.
A piece of tent ripped loose from the rope and stake holding it in place and flapped wildly. Other sections did the same until one tent flipped over, exposing its contents to the wind and rain. For a few heartbeats, the lines on the far side of the neatly stacked supplies anchored the canvas like a leash holding back a frantic dog. Then it tore loose and flew away.
One by one, the other tents pursued it into the night. Meanwhile, the piles of foodstuffs and other items essential to an army on campaign blew apart. Kegs tumbled over the ground until they ruptured and spilled the ale inside. Bags split and surrendered their contents to the gale. The flour looked like a band of ghosts put to rout, while the fletchings were too small for human eyes to make out in the rain and the dark. Had Jhesrhi not been attuned to the wind and perceiving partly as it perceived, with a sort of touching at a distance, she wouldn’t have noticed the bits of feather flying away.
With a crash, a first wagon overturned. Others followed. She couldn’t tell how badly they were damaged, but at least their contents came tumbling out of the cargo beds for the elements to scatter, pilfer, and foul.
Eventually she decided she’d done all the harm she could at that particular site. She considered turning the wind on some of the other tents nearby, the ones that had soldiers inside them, but decided against it. She’d taken enough risks for one night.
She thanked the winds and told them they could stop generating the magical gale. It started subsiding immediately, although the violence of the hammering rain, blazing lightning, and booming thunder remained impressive in its own right.
Jhesrhi glanced around, making sure no one was watching, then asked the particular wind that had carried her there to return her to Tchazzar’s palace. As she floated upward, she wondered how much she’d actually accomplished.
She’d likely delayed the start of the Red Dragon’s campaign but possibly not by more than a day or two. Was that enough to matter? It all depended on how Gaedynn, Aoth, Khouryn, and the others were faring, and she had no way of knowing that.
She sighed. As much as she felt ill equipped to deal with all the subterfuge and intrigue, in one respect, the game she and her comrades were playing was like the sort of war to which she was accustomed. A soldier focused on his own particular task, often with no knowledge whatsoever of how a battle or campaign was progressing overall. He just had to hope that everybody’s efforts would add up to victory in the end.
In her imagination, Gaedynn smiled crookedly and responded to her thought: Right you are, Buttercup. It’s chaos and mass confusion every time. But don’t tell anybody, or how will Aoth peddle our alleged expertise?
You have my word, she thought, smiling, missing him. Then she felt a light tactile sensation like the brush of a hanging leaf, although it was almost lost amid the cold, wet drumming of the rain.
It startled her, and it took her a moment to figure out what had happened. Because of the magic she’d worked to destroy the supplies, she still had some residual connection to all the currents of air at play in her vicinity, some ability to sense what they were sensing. She hadn’t been conscious of it while it was simply validating what she perceived with her natural senses, but it was alerting her to something she hadn’t noticed.
She rattled off a rhyme to strengthen the bond, then reached out as if she had a hundred invisible hands attached to arms dozens of yards long. And so she found the creature.
It was flying some distance behind her, its leathery wings bouncing raindrops back up into the air with every beat. Like many creatures of the netherworld, it was somewhat manlike but possessed of an elongated, half-bestial head, clawed, four-fingered hands, and spines growing over most of its hide like a porcupine’s, although not so thickly as to obscure the essential gauntness of its frame.
It was a spined devil. Jhesrhi had encountered them on the battlefield when some enemy sorcerer or priest summoned them. But she’d never run into one that could make itself invisible, and she had no idea why one was shadowing her.