For a moment he wondered about that. But the growing fear among the firestormers pushed the thought out of his head. Genasi were shoving and stumbling back from Alasklerbanbastos and grabbing for their weapons. The riding drakes were screeching and hissing. Aoth had to prove he was in control before outright panic erupted.

He walked toward the dragon with no more concern than a master would show before a well-trained dog, or at least that was how he hoped it looked. “Down on your belly,” he said.

Sparks sizzling and popping on his flayed, mangled, charred, and generally ravaged body, reeking of both corruption and the imminence of lightning, Alasklerbanbastos glared… and stayed as he was.

“The sunlady still has your phylactery,” said Aoth. “She’s proved repeatedly that she knows how to use it. Do we really have to punish you again?”

“I wish you would,” Gaedynn said. “I always enjoy seeing it.”

His raw, slimy countenance and glazed, sunken eyes a mask of hatred, the dracolich lowered himself to the ground.

Khouryn clung to Praxasalandos’s back. Every time the dragon took a stride, it jostled him and hurt him but not as much as if he were trying to hobble on his own two feet, assuming that was even possible. Slamming into the wall had bruised him from head to toe and possibly cracked some bones. He hadn’t felt the damage too badly when he was intent on fighting, but he felt it after.

The quicksilver wyrm stepped down into a depression in the granite floor. That gave Khouryn’s body a somewhat harder bump than usual, and despite himself, he hissed as pain stabbed up his back.

Praxasalandos twisted his head around to look at him. The slash in his neck had finally scabbed over, but it still looked like the nasty wound it was. “I am so sorry,” the dragon said. Although he could have sung bass in any dwarf or human chorus, he had a relatively high voice for one of his kind, and the wretchedness suffusing it left no doubt that he truly did feel guilty.

“It’s all right,” Khouryn said. “If we had a true paladin, instead of this charlatan, he could heal us.” To emphasize his point, he manufactured a hacking cough, which then turned into a real one. His lungs, throat, and nose still ached from inhaling a bit of the dragon’s breath, just as his eyes still stung and watered from the touch of the fumes.

Trudging along at Praxasalandos’s side with his dimly glowing sword held aloft, the ropy scales at the back of his head bouncing a little with every step, Medrash snorted. “Torm’s grace works best to comfort the virtuous. That means black-hearted sellswords are pretty much out of luck.”

Khouryn chuckled, then wished he hadn’t, because that hurt too.

As was often the case, Medrash’s levity proved to be a fleeting thing. “You know I’ll help you as soon as my gifts renew themselves,” he said. “Or if we reach our friends first, the healers there can do it.” He turned his head and gave the dragon a scowl. “Assuming they’re capable of it.”

“I swear to you, they’re fine,” Praxasalandos said. “I couldn’t harass them and stalk you at the same time. If they haven’t wandered off the proper path, you’ll be reunited with them soon.”

Medrash grunted.

The wyrm sighed. “You still don’t like me or trust me, do you, paladin?”

“To be fair,” Khouryn said, “up until recently, you were trying to kill us.”

“I know,” said Praxasalandos. “I deserve your doubt and your scorn. But I was under a spell. Sir Medrash, you know that better than anyone since you’re the one who set me free.”

“How did the magic get hold of you?” Khouryn asked.

“It must be woven into Brimstone’s explication of the Great Game,” the quicksilver dragon said, “because as soon as I heard it, I was lost.”

“And without that trick, no one would care?” Medrash asked. The light inside his blade faded to the merest trace of pale phosphorescence.

Praxasalandos hesitated. “I didn’t say that. In its cold and selfish way, xorvintaal is beautiful.” His voice took on a dreamy, faraway quality. “Fascinating. The multiple levels of play. The subtlety. There are many dragons who’d succumb to the allure without any need for coercion. But not me! I pray to Bahamut to blind my eyes and shear my wings if I’m lying.”

“You can prove what you say,” Medrash said. “But with deeds, not words.”

“Just tell me how,” Praxasalandos said.

“First,” said the dragonborn, “guide us to Gestanius.”

“Of course.”

“Second, help us take her by surprise in the most advantageous circumstances possible. As far as she knows, you’re still her faithful guardian. You can lure her to where we need her to be.”

Praxasalandos hesitated again and Khouryn thought he knew why. Gestanius was likely cunning enough to see through many a deception, and stronger than the quicksilver dragon as well. If she realized her supposed helper was trying to betray her, Prax was unlikely to survive.

But after a heartbeat, he said, “Yes. I’ll do that too because I have to atone.”

They hiked on in silence for a while. Despite his pains, or maybe because of them, Khouryn dozed then jerked awake again just in time to see the light of Medrash’s blade go out entirely. Blind, the paladin faltered.

Prax crouched. “I can carry two as easily as one,” he said. “Climb onto my back.”

“Otherwise,” said Khouryn, “it’ll take us forever to join back up with the others.”

Medrash sheathed his sword. “Very well,” he said.

NINE

27 E LEASIS, THE Y EAR OF THE A GELESS O NE

As Jet neared the earthmote, Cera tried not to imagine arrows streaking up out of the dark. She knew her companions were formidable. After all she’d experienced since the day she met the man to whose waist she was currently clinging, she was starting to feel reasonably formidable herself. Still, it took only one lucky shot to kill any human being, windsoul, or even a griffon. Of everyone flying in the vanguard, only Alasklerbanbastos was all but certain to survive any initial attack, and he was a potential threat to the rest of them.

But he wouldn’t be if she stopped fretting and attended to her job. She let go of Aoth with her right hand, slipped it into the pouch on her belt, and gripped the shadow stone.

The contact she so established wasn’t psychic communication like Aoth shared with Jet. It was more raw and primitive than that. But as usual, she felt the dragon’s arrogance, cruelty, and the filthy, unnatural force that sustained his existence, and they grated on her like the rasp of fingernails on a slate. She also felt Alasklerbanbastos’s stab of disgust at her touch and the slavery and indignity it represented.

Jet, Eider, and the dracolich set down on the stony floating island-more or less like a mountaintop with the rest of the mountain scooped out from underneath it-without either of the sentries loosing arrows at them or raising the alarm. Aoth had said he’d chosen a line of approach that neither wyrmkeeper could see well, and darkness and stealth had done the rest.

The six genasi set down too, and the winds that had carried them made Cera’s vestments flap and tousled her curls where they stuck out from under her helmet. She and Aoth swung themselves off Jet’s back, and the familiar immediately lashed his wings and flew away to pick up two more riders. When Gaedynn and Son-liin dismounted, Eider followed.

Gaedynn laid an arrow on his bow then, keeping low, led Son-liin and the windsouls in the direction of the bridge. Their first task was to capture it and keep any wyrmkeepers on the far side from crossing.

Whereas Aoth and Alasklerbanbastos’s job was to slaughter the priests on the near side. They hoped to divest Vairshekellabex of allies before he even realized he was under attack.