The Sellsword (29 page)

He was talking to the ghosts!

“She figured you and I should have a little parley!” Vanderjack said, holding up his hands. A memory of the Balladeer’s voice came to him, and he ran with it: “But I thought, why tease you with big words you don’t understand?”

The kender race produced the most accomplished insulters and taunters in all of Ansalon. Vanderjack was no kender. But his sarcasm seemed to have struck some nerve. The wizard completed whatever spell he was casting, and a streak of black lightning arced from his fingertips to a spot just to the left of the sellsword. Where it struck, chunks of rock exploded upward, catching Vanderjack across his side and along his upper arm.

“She sent you after me, did she? Madness! You haven’t a chance against my magic, sellsword. Give me the painting, or I will wipe you off the face of Krynn!”

Vanderjack took a quick look around. “Or I’ll give you the painting and then you’ll wipe me off the face of Krynn! See what I mean? All you’ve got is fakery
and grandstanding and simple words of one or two syllables. It’s really kind of embarrassing.” In his mind the memory-voice of the Hunter was telling him to watch his flanks. Sure enough, the sellsword spotted two kapak draconians clinging to the battlements on either side of him, crouching, unmoving.

The sellsword hoped Theo had moved the painting or was at least making his way to the stairs. He couldn’t see him anywhere; the collateral damage from the mage’s destructive magic had stirred up so much dust and smoke.

“The painting, sellsword!” said Cazuvel, emerging from the nearest bank of smoke. Vanderjack had no weapon and still couldn’t see Gredchen. Had one of the kapaks grabbed her?

“Painting?” Vanderjack said. “Now where did I put that thing …?”

Cazuvel snarled and started to frame another spell. Vanderjack wondered what the Conjuror would say about that. Maybe …

Vanderjack dropped to his left, somersaulting out of the way just as a chilling blast of frost sprayed the spot he just left. When he came up, he knew he needed to take the initiative and just grab the wizard. With luck, he’d take the sword from him and it would all be over.

Vanderjack dived at Cazuvel, aiming for his midsection. The wizard brought his knee up, hoping to catch the sellsword under the chin, but was a fraction of a second too late. Vanderjack knocked the wizard backward into another low wall, one hand up to grab the wizard around the throat with the other reaching for his sword.

His fingers wrapped around the hilt, and in that instant Vanderjack spied the ghosts arrayed around
them both—the Cavalier, the Hunter, the Apothecary, the Aristocrat, the Conjurer, the Philosopher, and the Balladeer. And there, in front of them all, stood the Cook.

“Etharion?” said Vanderjack.

“Get back!” they all shouted in unison.

Cazuvel brought the heel of his palm up against Vanderjack’s nose. The sellsword felt his nose break, the blinding pain lancing all the way to the back of his head. He let go of the sword, and the ghosts vanished from his sight. Then something even worse happened.

Cazuvel triggered a spell, obviously connected to the act of making physical contact with his opponent. A sudden wave of nausea and muscle cramps struck the sellsword only a heartbeat after his nose was broken. He slumped to the side. The wizard leaped to his feet, and Vanderjack felt a hard kick in the ribs from a hobnail boot.

“Aaaargh!” he screamed, clutching his injury.

Cazuvel looked off to the side. A smile crept across his face, and he looked back down again at Vanderjack. “I have what I came for!” he said, triumphant, and dashed away.

Vanderjack struggled to get up. Blood was streaming from his nose, and his chest felt as if a lance had pierced it. He looked around, desperate, unable to see Theodenes, the painting, Gredchen, or anything except flashes of color in his left eye and smoke everywhere.

Then, as if it could get any worse, there was a high-pitched screech as the kapaks leaped out of the darkness toward him. Vanderjack braced for their impact.

A deafening roar split the night, knocking the two kapaks out of the air with the force. The smoke was blown clear. Vanderjack rolled onto his belly and
pushed himself up onto his elbows to see the welcome sight of Star rising up above the battlements, Theodenes straddling his back.

“The wizard!” Vanderjack coughed, pointing in the general direction of where Cazuvel had gone.

“Too late for that now,” said Theodenes. “He has the painting and Gredchen and he’s teleported both away from here.”

Vanderjack felt the world around him spin, and he had to steady himself against one of the crenellations. “Then we’ve lost. We’ve lost everything. Ackal’s Teeth, what do we do now?”

“A rescue mission, of course! We leave immediately for Wulfgar,” said Theodenes.

“How could you possibly know that’s where Cazuvel is going?”

“Because,” said Star, his resonant feline voice dispelling the fog in Vanderjack’s head. “Your ghosts are telling me.”

Vanderjack managed a smile. Now
that
was more like it.

Rivven Cairn instructed Cear to land in the courtyard behind the khan’s palace in Wulfgar.

“All of this traveling back and forth is distracting me from what I need to be doing, Cear,” she said, patting him on the snout as she dismounted. “Stick around, though. The chariot racing starts tomorrow. I know how much you like that.”

“I like it more at night,” said the dragon, his jaws dropping with thick, sulfurous spittle. “When everything’s on fire.”

Rivven smiled. “That’s only when you get carried away, Cear,” she said and walked away from him. Cear
was as much in love with fire as she was, but then, he had an excuse. She was the perfect partner for one of the mighty, inflammatory reds.

Rivven had no doubt that Vanderjack would probably find Cazuvel at some stage. She didn’t believe he’d have any luck taking him on, however. Since Rivven knew he wasn’t truly Cazuvel, she had dedicated some of her time on the flight back from Castle Glayward to figuring out what he was.

She had come to the conclusion it had something to do with Cazuvel’s field of expertise—summoning, binding, and trafficking with dark forces. The real Cazuvel had been almost as ambitious as Rivven herself, although his reach frequently exceeded his grasp. Early in their career together, Rivven had come to the mage with a task that would have gotten him thrown out of the order of High Sorcery; she had asked him to develop a means to keep the emperor of dragons alive.

It was five years after she had been recruited to serve under Dragon Highlord Phair Caron. The brutal highlord, handpicked by Ariakas, desired only female highmasters to fly alongside her. Rumors of her romantic preferences were rife, but Rivven paid no attention to them. The half-elf was there because of Ariakas, not Phair Caron.

In the three hundred forty-seventh year after the Cataclysm, prior to the dragonarmies’ invasion of Ansalon, the cabal of lesser wizards and priests surrounding Ariakas had determined that a safeguard against assassination was needed. Rivven, as a student of Ariakas and a mage in her own right, was among those chosen to produce a solution. Although it wasn’t her field, Rivven knew somebody who might be able to help her.

Recruiting Cazuvel, Rivven had charged him with the task of developing a contingency plan should a rival or an enemy kill Ariakas. She knew the Queen of Darkness would not simply resurrect Ariakas, even though he was foremost among her highlords. That would imply weakness, and she could not abide weakness. The goddess liked her highlords to take care of themselves. Thus, Rivven intended to give Ariakas a means to return from the dead independent of Takhisis, and to do that, Cazuvel would need to delve into the darkest of magic.

Cazuvel initially had presented Rivven with the idea of keeping the emperor’s soul safe in a phylactery, but Rivven said no. That was the basis of lichdom, a path that Ariakas would never accept. Even if it meant living forever, Ariakas would not agree to become one of the undead. No, Cazuvel would need to accomplish something similar without necromancy, and therefore, he came up with the idea of the painting.

It was, in a way, sympathetic magic. Essentially, a painting of Ariakas could be created, as exact a likeness as possible. A powerful link would exist between the painting and the subject of the portrait, one that defied death. In the event of his untimely end, the painting would serve as the means of bringing him back, the template for his resurrection.

The accuracy of the image was crucial, but the composition of the oils, the tinctures, even the canvas and frame were also critical. Ariakas would need to surrender some of his blood, and at least pose for the portrait. Painting him from memory would never work. Rivven thought she could arrange all of that, but she wanted Cazuvel to test the process first.

Rivven needed a test subject, somebody to be painted,
somebody for whom the possibility of death was imminent. She could simply have chosen some peasant or minor soldier from the Red Wing, but she had a much better idea.

In the weeks before the initial invasion of Nordmaar, the first region to experience the true power of the newly organized dragonarmies, Phair Caron had held numerous strategic meetings with her highmasters, with her fellow highlords, and with Ariakas himself. Nordmaar was ideal because it was close enough to Neraka and Kern, where the armies were based, and it represented the nearest free, independent kingdom. Success in Nordmaar meant success elsewhere in Krynn. In a way, Nordmaar was the prototype for the rest of the war.

The half-elf approached Phair Caron with a plan. Rivven knew an important nobleman in the region, a man with the ear of the king. He was a Solamnic exile, and he kept many secrets. If she could get to him, he could provide valuable information that would benefit the invasion. The highlord agreed to her plan, and the red dragonarmy sat poised to overwhelm Nordmaar’s borders, contingent on Rivven’s intrigues.

Rivven knew at the time that the nobleman, Baron Gilbert Glayward, had a daughter who was stricken with a fatal malady. She told him she had a means of saving the girl’s life, but it would require his cooperation. The daughter was a natural beauty, his only child; convincing him to betray the king proved easier than she had thought.

Unfortunately, the experiment failed. The daughter died prematurely, and the painting …

Pushing away those thoughts of the past, Rivven rushed through the tall, arched doors into the
administration wing within the khan’s palace. Servants ran back and forth, mostly getting out of the high-master’s way. She passed a series of open doors, each leading into a room full of scribes, factors, and bureaucrats keeping track of her finances, her taxes, and more. Her destination was the large and opulent chamber at the rear of the wing.

“Aubec,” she said, nodding at her aide-de-camp. He stood, waiting, beside the enormous table covered in maps and plans. “What news?”

“All is in readiness for the chariot races tomorrow, Excellency,” the aide said, bowing. “Local warlords, all of whom have paid their taxes in the last week, have their retinues and are on the way. The people of Wulfgar are ablaze with gossip over their favorites in the arena. Your masters of horse and your marshals of arms have selected the best of the best, and—”

Rivven waved her hand. “It all sounds good,” she said. “Cear and I are looking forward to it.”

Aubec bowed again and cleared his throat.

Rivven looked up from the table, absentmindedly shuffling papers about. “Yes?”

“Forgive my impertinent observation, but you seem more than a little preoccupied, my lady.”

“Oh, yes. Well. It’s Cazuvel.”

“The Black Robe?”

“Yes. Or whoever he is, yes.”

Aubec hesitated as a scribe ran in, handed something to him, and ran out. He made a notation on his tablet and looked up again at the highmaster.

“You suspect he might be some kind of imposter, my lady?”

“I
know
he is an imposter. And it makes me wonder what else has been going on behind my back while I’ve
been so preoccupied with the bloody sellsword and with the baron’s efforts to strain our relationship.”

“I can assure you, Excellency, Nordmaar is securely in your hands, even now.”

“That’s what it looks like. But I have mercenaries flying in behind enemy lines on the backs of mythical beasts, fake wizards conjuring up who knows what, and gnomes acting very ungnomelike. Even the baron’s ugly servant is causing problems when she knows better.”

Aubec shrugged. “I regret I can do no more to help.”

Rivven exhaled. “At least you’re doing what I ask you to do. Thank you, Aubec. You’re dismissed.”

The aide-de-camp slipped out of the room, closing the door behind himself. Rivven snapped her fingers and the many lamps and braziers that lit the room burned down to a low smolder, leaving only a single bright candle burning nearby.

Rivven lifted a large dish full of water onto the table and began reciting the necessary incantations to still the water’s surface and send forth a summons of communication. She wasn’t sure she would get an answer and was, therefore, surprised when the wizard Cazuvel’s face—the imposter’s face—appeared in the water.