Azure Bonds Read online

  They could have ridden into Yulash before sunset if it had been a more peaceful season. Instead, they camped a quarter mile away, using an overturned wagon to shelter them from view of the forces defending and attacking the town’s main citadel. Even if they could get closer without being hit by a stray arrow or magic spell, they could be caught by an army and executed as spies.

  They were close enough to hear metal clashing on metal as some of the combatants met in swordplay, commands barked out by captains, cheers from men who’d just managed to kill someone or something, and cries of horror from men who had seen their last battle.

  After dark, a great, glowing whirlwind spun around the top of the mound, igniting members of the attacking force. As their bodies scattered down the slope, they looked to Alias, from a distance, like sparkling seeds falling away from a flaming dandelion.

  “Well, it certainly is more amusing to watch than your standard campfire,” Olive commented. “Though it lacks a certain warmth.”

  They hadn’t dared light their own campfire for fear of being discovered by a foraging patrol, so after a cold dinner, the four adventurers sat huddled against the overturned wagon as the night air grew more and more chill. Olive shivered, wrapped beneath her own cloak and two of Akabar’s. The mage affected a pose of calm unconcern, but Alias caught him blowing into his cupped hands, trying to keep them warm. Dragonbait kept peering around the side of the wagon, fascinated by Yulash mound. The horses, tethered nearby behind the one remaining wall of an ancient farmer’s cottage, whickered uncomfortably. Dragonbait echoed the sound, though whether he was trying to comfort them or agreeing with them Alias could not tell.

  In the soft glow of the finder’s stone, Alias could not escape the halfling’s accusatory stare or Akabar’s expectant one. “When I led us up here, I had no idea the area would be so unsettled.” Each intermittent flash from the city’s ruins drew her attention. I feel like a moth, she thought, trying to get into a lantern, beating against the glass. Somewhere in that maze of ruins lies the answer to my curse—I’m sure of it.

  “I had assumed the city would be firmly in the hands of one side or the other. Then we could use the same trick we used in the dragon’s lair. Akabar would scout ahead with his wizard eye trick, Olive would accompany me to help with locks, traps, and other tricky parts, and Dragonbait would remain behind with the gear.”

  Olive muttered something about “thief’s tricks,” and Dragonbait scowled, but Alias ignored them both. “However,” she continued, “that was all assuming we only had to elude a sleepy city guard. With two active forces looking for enemy troops, our chances of sneaking in unnoticed are …” she hesitated, trying not to sound falsely optimistic.

  “Slim,” Akabar suggested.

  “Try nil,” Olive retorted. “Humans. Always fighting over who gets the better view.”

  “They don’t battle over it just because it’s the only major terrain between the forest and the river,” Akabar lectured. “Remember, it sits on the route south from Zhentil Keep. If Hillsfar should take and hold the city, they would effectively blockade Zhentil Keep’s bulk trade.”

  “And there’s probably more gold and treasure left in the wreckage, in hidden cellars and dungeons, than in the active mines of the dwarves,” Alias added.

  Olive perked up a little, cheered by the thought of treasure. Dragonbait stood and walked over to the horses to stroke Lightning. All the while the lizard’s eyes remained fixed on the glowing hill.

  Akabar followed the lizard.

  “Where are you going?” Alias called to him.

  “To help Dragonbait with the horses.”

  “You’ve been fussing over him ever since we left Shadowdale,” the warrior noted. “Helping him fetch wood, keeping watch with him. He can take care of himself.” She tugged on the mage’s robes until he was forced to sit back down beside her. “Now, what do you think our chances would be if we contacted one side or the other to make a deal?”

  Trying not to appear too distracted with keeping an eye on Dragonbait, Akabar said, “If you do, contact Hillsfar. Their ruler, I’ve heard, is a merchant-mage like myself. His name is Maalthir. If one of these forces is indeed his, it will include a company of his prize mercenaries, the Red Plumes. We need only look for their banner.”

  “Yes, then we’ll have found the Red Death,” Olive growled. “That’s what Maalthir’s mercenaries are called among my people. Under his orders, they carried out a campaign to purge Hillsfar of thieves. Human thieves could hide, but all halflings were thieves, as far as Maalthir’s Red Death was concerned. They drove every halfling from the city in the middle of the night, forced them to leave their valuables behind, didn’t even give them a chance to sell the land or shops they owned.

  “As distasteful as Hillsfar’s policies might be, you can hardly expect us to deal with the baby-slaying Keepers. I’ve heard that they plight their troth with succubi, eat the brains of elves, and worship gods so black they make Moander seem nice. Their names are feared as far south as my native land. And the council who rules them, the Zhentarim, are twice as dark as the Keepers.”

  “I didn’t suggest we deal with the Keepers,” Olive replied. “I was only reporting on the firsthand news I have about the Hillsfar government. I have no reason to expect better of the Zhentil Keep soldiery. They’re all human, too, at least mostly, I’m told. You must realize, though, that all the accusations you’ve made against Zhentil Keep are the standard lies told about any successful city by its jealous enemies.”

  “There are too many stories told of the Zhentarim for them all to be lies. As a bard you must know stories of their methods—how they secretly support orcs so they will attack any who oppose the Zhentarim’s will.”

  “And as a bard,” Olive said, “I have the ability to separate the grain from the dross.”

  “Gold,” corrected Akabar. “Gold from dross. Grain from chaff.”

  Alias sighed and stood up. The mage and the bard could argue until Yulash was dust. She strode over to watch the battle with Dragonbait. As the finder’s stone illuminated their mounts, she could see the beasts stood alone. She poked her head around the wall, but the lizard was not there. She went back to the wagon and peeked around that, but he wasn’t there either.

  Olive was continuing her testimony on the cruelty of the Hillsfar people, while Akabar was trying to interrupt her with some point about the evil of the Zhentarim.

  Made impatient with a sudden attack of anxiety, Alias snapped at both of them. “Listen to yourselves. You’re not disagreeing with each other, you’re just arguing for the sake of arguing. Can’t you see something’s wrong?”

  “What is it?” Akabar asked.

  “Dragonbait’s gone,” she whispered.

  “Gone where?” Akabar asked, glancing around their campsite while cursing himself for not keeping an eye on the potentially treacherous lizard.

  “Just gone,” Alias said. A particularly bright flash filled the sky, and thunder rumbled all about them. The swordswoman peered across the momentarily illuminated open fields, but she could not pick out the lizard’s figure.

  “Perhaps you better stay down,” Akabar suggested.

  “He’s disappeared,” Alias whispered, still standing.

  “He’s probably only out looking for firewood or something,” Olive suggested.

  “We haven’t got a fire,” Akabar growled.

  “Maybe he decided we should have one,” Olive retorted.

  If I hadn’t been such a fool, Akabar berated himself, arguing with the halfling and allowing myself to be distracted from watching the lizard, this wouldn’t have happened. Who knows what sort of betrayal I’ve let us in for now?

  “Or he could be out filching us a nice, hot, ten-course meal, with wine,” Olive continued brightly.

  Alias scowled. She noticed Akabar frowning as well. She hadn’t realized he cared for Dragonbait as much as she.

  Should I tell her about the lizard’s brands, Akabar debated. I
can’t prove it now, and it still might not make her doubt him. No, better just to watch for him.

  Alias stared at the city. The crackling of the fires and magics burning there pulled at her like a siren’s call. Olive could be right. But suppose he’s scouting out the territory to prove he should not be left behind? It was one thing to leave him guarding the equipment or even to have him fighting at her side, but imagining him out there, alone, unable to call for help, not even if he were injured.… Alias moaned softly, feeling suddenly miserable.

  “He’ll come back,” Olive said again. “He always does.”

  The night grew even colder, and eventually, as the combatants on the hill wearied and let their fires and magics die out, it grew darker, too. Olive was a snoring lump in a bundle of furs, Akabar a motionless mannequin in his colored robes and one blanket. Alias shivered in her only cloak, but she could not stay wrapped in her blankets. She spent her watch pacing and staring into the darkness, waiting for Dragonbait to return. She did not bother to wake Olive, but continued to watch past her turn.

  But Dragonbait still did not return.

  A few pins of light from watchfires in the city pricked at Alias’s eyes. He’s there, was all she could think. He went into the city without me.

  Like I planned to do to him, she added. Again she felt the draw of the city, an ache to learn the mystery within.

  Her heart prompted her to look in Yulash, but her head insisted she had no proof that he was there. He could be anywhere. He might have been captured by the Keepers or the Red Plumes. That thought made her more anxious. As far as she knew, both Akabar and Olive had been right in their claims of Hillsfar and Zhentil Keep atrocities.

  Actually, Alias couldn’t think of any army that would let a creature as blatantly non-human as Dragonbait pass unchallenged. They’d try to capture or kill him immediately. Probably kill, Alias admitted, because he’d put up a fight.

  She was ready to wake the mage and bard and set out immediately when another thought made her hesitate. If he’s wandering out on the plains, lost, but finds his way back to an empty camp, he’ll think we’ve been captured. Someone has to stay, she decided. But Akabar looked so concerned by the lizard’s disappearance, Alias knew he would insist on accompanying her, and Olive would not stand for being left behind, believing there was treasure to be had in the city.

  She hovered uncertainly over the two sleeping forms for several moments, trying to make up her mind. Going alone would only perpetuate the lizard’s folly, but she could not help herself. She bent down over Akabar’s pack and dug out a stick of charcoal and his map. On the back she wrote: “Looking for D. Wait here.”

  She lay the parchment by Akabar’s head. Then, after slipping the finder’s stone in her boot, she picked up her shield and sword and walked away. Her steps drew her toward the great mound city.

  * * * * *

  Akabar’s eyes snapped open the moment Alias opened his pack.

  The mage had cast a magic mouth enchantment on his earring to tell him if Dragonbait returned, and at first he thought that was what had awakened him, but when the piece of jewelry repeated its magical warning, whispering, “Someone’s in your pack,” he realized his mistake.

  After the earlier disappearance of his magical tome, back when the halfling had joined his caravan, the mage had decided that it would not be squandering his power to use it to protect his property, even from a fellow traveler. Still, he wondered at Ruskettle’s nerve and dishonor.

  He lay perfectly still, focusing on his baggage through the slits of his eyelids, but the figure rooting through his belongings was too big to be Ruskettle. It couldn’t be Dragonbait; his other magic mouth spell would have warned him.

  When the figure straightened, Akabar nearly gasped and sat up in surprise. It was Alias. She scrawled something hastily on his map and then took a step toward him.

  Akabar closed his eyes. He almost held his breath, but caught himself in time and began feigning the shallow breathing of a sleeper. Through his eyelids, he could sense the stone’s light on his face and then sense it move away. He peeked through one eye. Alias took up her sword and shield and left the camp.

  Slowly, Akabar rose and looked out across the plains. He caught a flash of moonlight glinting off of Alias’s polished shoulder-plates. She was headed toward Yulash.

  He spied the map. He picked it up and tilted it until the letters could be read by Selune’s light.

  Wait here, indeed! thought the mage, tossing the map onto his sleeping blanket with a deep frown. She lugs us all the way up here and when things get really dangerous, when she could use our help, she abandons us to chase after that lizard—who’s probably reporting us to his hidden masters, setting up a trap for her to walk into.

  His first impulse was to chase after the warrior woman and convince her to return, use force if necessary to keep her from marching into Yulash. He would tell her it was smarter to wait for daylight. But he knew in his heart that once the sun had risen, he would only try to convince her that the nightfall might be a better time after all.

  She would never hesitate to go searching for the creature she thinks is a friend, while I, Akabar Bel Akash, mage of no small water, cower behind an overturned merchant’s wagon. I am more greengrocer than master mage, the Turmishman thought, ashamed of his fear.

  He could wake the halfling, and they could follow Alias together. Olive would have no trouble making up her mind what to do, Akabar realized. You could call her anything except late to looting. Still, taking the halfling did not seem particularly wise. As the old Amnite saying went, when matters are bad, think how much worse they could get if halflings were involved. Akabar didn’t want to put her in any risk of running into the Red Plumes.

  Standing with his face toward the waning moon, Akabar began to intone a spell. The deep, rich words rolled off his tongue as his right hand sliced through the air. In it, he held a bit of his own eyelash embedded in a resin of tree gum. At the end of the evocation, his left hand came down hard on the tree gum. The sticky pellet flared a bright blue, consumed by mystical energy.

  Akabar held his hands up in the moonlight and watched them go transparent, as though they were sculptures of ice. Then they vanished completely. His vision blurred for a moment, then the world refocused for him. He could see normally, save that when he looked down at himself there was nothing to see but a pair of depressions in the grass.

  The parchment map rose from the ground, hovered for a moment, then settled next to the sleeping halfling. What Alias had written could apply to both of them.

  Then he used his long legs to stride toward Yulash in the wake of the swordswoman. Nothing but a wave of bent grass blades marked his invisible passing.

  Yulash

  A fog began to roll in across the plains minutes after Alias left the campsite. The swordswoman was uncertain whether she should thank Tymora for the weather or not. On one hand, it would make spotting Dragonbait more difficult, but on the other hand, it would cover her approach to the mound. The soft glow of her tattoo was enough illumination to see the ground beneath her feet.

  Their camp had only been a quarter of a mile to the base of the hill, but it was another quarter mile climb up to the wall. Alias avoided the roads into the city; there were plenty of footpaths up the slope, and she knew they’d be less patrolled. Twice she thought she heard someone following her and she waited on the path, hoping maybe it was Dragonbait tracking her scent, but no one appeared. The third time she backtracked quickly, thinking perhaps she was being stalked by a sentry, but still she discovered no one.

  Halfway up the hill, Alias emerged from the fog. She turned to survey the plains. There was nothing to see though; all below her was whiteness. Yulash was an island in the clouds. She climbed farther up the slope.

  The great walls that once ringed the cities were breached in more than a dozen places. She avoided the larger, more easily navigated breaks on the assumption that they would be guarded. She chose a hole that afforded
her shoulder plates enough space to slip through.

  The wreckage of the town spread out before her in all directions. Occasionally a section of wall remained braced by a door or corner, but there wasn’t a rooftop to be seen on any of the old buildings. Ahead and a little to the east stood the fortifications of the old citadel, rebuilt by the Zhentil Keep soldiers trying to hold the region. A campfire blazed in that direction, so Alias moved off to the western section of the city.

  A scraping noise came from back by the hole she had used to enter the city. She whirled around, blade ready, expecting some assassin, wishing it were Dragonbait, but there was no one there. Just loose rubble, she thought, disgusted with her nervousness. She continued west.

  Rather than walk in the streets, Alias picked her way over the razed walls. Anything that might have survived the dragon invasions, human armies, and looters had been carried off long ago. If there was treasure to be found in the city, it was well-hidden.

  There was a jiggling of horse-rigging in the streets, and Alias crouched behind the wall. A single rider approached. He held his reins in one hand and a hooded lantern in the other. Enough light leaked from his lantern that Alias could see he wore a scarlet cloak and a silver helmet with a single plume jutting from the top, also scarlet.

  As she watched the rider pass, something across the street caught Alias’s eye. Reflecting the rider’s lantern light, lying in the rubble, was a familiar symbol—a fanged mouth gaping in the palm of a hand.

  Moander, at last, Alias thought with glee. A third stroke of luck. Tymora must be favoring her. She crept out from behind the wall, ready to dodge back into the shadows if the horse so much as nickered. The horse and rider continued down the street, eyes forward, oblivious to her presence.

  Alias scurried across the street, but when she reached the broken stone there was nothing there. Was her mind playing tricks on her? A mossy smell assailed her nostrils. She peered into the darkness, searching for its source.