The Rage (43 page)

Sure enough, Jivex shot out of the kitchen doorway, streaking as fast as he’d flown to avoid the dracolich’s jaws. Plump little Olpara scrambled after him, upraised broom in hand. Outdistancing her, the reptile hurtled up the stairs to the second floor. The halfling with her white curls stamped her

foot in seeming exasperation, but she had a hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. She turned to resume the cooking that suffused the air with an enticing, spicy aroma.

Corkaury looked across the low table at his guest and said, “Go on with your story.”

“As you wish,” Taegan said. “I was just coming to the important part. Naturally, it had occurred to me that once we won the battle, the Warswords might try to confiscate all the cultists’ wealth to fill Sambryl’s coffers or to return stolen articles to their original owners, so I made a point of finding a treasure chest or two in advance of my human comrades.” He shifted a white porcelain vase of scarlet tulips—Olpara had set out flowers in every room in observance of the spring festival—to clear the center of the table. He picked up a saddlebag from the rug beneath his boots and dumped out the sparkling, clattering contents.

Corkaury stared at the plenitude of star sapphires, emeralds, clear king’s tears, red pieces of tomb jade, and other gems.

“It seems you’ve solved your financial troubles,” said the

“One would hope.”

And are you more comfortable in your own skin now?” Taegan cocked his head and replied, “What a curious question.”

“I suppose. I don’t even know why it occurred to me, I just thought… I mean, you said that the city the gray trees showed you was grand.”

“So it was, but it died a long time ago, and in any case, avariels didn’t build it. Or anything else, ever, as best I can determine. So I believe I’ll continue thinking of myself simply as a loyal subject of Impiltur. I assure you, I’m blissfully happy that way.”

“That’s good. didn’t mean to suggest you shouldn’t be. With this wealth, we can start tomorrow, settling your debts and rebuilding the sane.”

“Hold off on that for a while.”

“Why?”

“As long as the Rage continues,” Taegan said, “Impiltur is still in danger. People everywhere are in danger. It sounds preposterous, doesn’t it, like a declaration from some windy old saga, but it’s true, and I have this nagging itch to continue trying to improve the situation. I can’t say why, but it’s so.”

“Then you’re going to join Her Majesty’s army in the east?”

Taegan shook his head and replied, “They have a vital job to do. So do the messengers the lords are sending to other lands to urge the rulers there to find and destroy the rest of the cult enclaves, before the lunatics can churn out hordes of dracoliches. But chance, in the person of poor Gorstag, chose to plunge me into the secret heart of this affair, and I intend to continue mucking about there. Which is to say I’m going to seek out Dorn, Kara, and their comrades in the north, and aid them in their endeavors. ‘Until I return, I see no point in squandering this wealth on my creditors, or on building a school either. Keep it safe for me, and if I don’t come back, it’s yours.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t get too excited. I do intend to survive.”

“Do you think you can even find your friends?” asked the

“One nice thing about flying is you can cover a lot of ground.”

“But according to you, the skies will be full of mad dragons attacking anyone they see.”

Taegan grinned and said, “That should make it interesting.”

It was ghastly to behold the inert spill of shattered bone and scraps of corruption divided by the fortress wall. It was infinitely worse to scramble down into the crypts, find the vault plundered, the phylactery missing, and know that the

dracolich, magnificent above all other creatures, as splendid and as terrible as a god, could never be reborn.

Sammaster clenched his skeletal hands and wailed with grief. His desiccated eyes ached and would have streamed tears if they could.

The undead green, slain. His faithful followers likewise slaughtered, their supposedly secret stronghold discovered and overthrown. It was one more debacle in an endless chain. His failure to win Mystra’s love or Alustriel’s. His accidental massacre of the innocents he’d tried to rescue. The stripping-away of the powers he’d wielded as one of the Chosen. Humiliation on humiliation. Defeat on defeat. He pummeled his own head and clawed at his own withered face in a frenzy of self-loathing.

He might have continued that way for a long while, had it not abruptly occurred to him that if enemies had found his outpost, they’d likely learned of the catacombs in Lyrabar as well. He rattled off words of power, and between one instant and the next, the magic transported him to his study in the tunnels beneath the royal city. It only took another moment to confirm the worst. His notes, which he’d carelessly left there simply to save himself the bother of toting them about, were missing.

Once again, self-hatred, that feeling of being utterly despicable and unworthy, threatened to overwhelm him, but he found the strength to quash it. For after all, he wasn’t really to blame for any of the tragedies and misfortunes of his long existence. Jealous, spiteful, deceitful Mystra was—the Lady of Mysteries and her countless groveling lackeys, and they couldn’t truly hurt or thwart him any longer, because he finally understood his destiny. If only he could quell his seething emotions and think clearly, he’d see that all that had happened in Impiltur amounted to nothing more than a petty setback.

He reminded himself that he had other servants, other spellcasters laboring in secret to create dracoliches.

And no one could decipher his journal.

Even so, he wished he’d destroyed the artifacts he’d discovered in the course of his investigations. But like all true wizards, he was a scholar, with a respect for archival lore and antiquities. Such a desecration would have troubled him, particularly since he’d believed no one else would ever even try to unravel the puzzle.

And surely that was still true. Certainly no one could do it in time to spoil his grand design.

But perhaps he should hunt down the thieves, slaughter them, and take his papers back, if only to punish them for their effrontery.

Unfortunately, that could take time, and his time was infinitely precious. Only he could rush about Faerűn, temporarily quelling the frenzy in the minds of chromatic dragons, convincing them to accept their eventual transformations into liches and to perform the essential tasks they must perform in the meantime.

So he’d let the thieves live for a while. They couldn’t follow where he’d gone, and even if they did, the traps he’d sown in his wake, like the Styx dragon and skeletal wyrms in Northkeep, would account for them. Or the other dangers the meddlers would encounter along the way. Even without knowing who they were, he could make sure there were plenty of those. He’d planned to do it all along, simply because the lands to the north were the gateway to the heart of the power, and thus it seemed a sensible precaution to throw them into chaos.

Finally, suppose that, by some miracle, the thieves did manage to follow the trail all the way to the end. It would simply mean they’d stumble into the grip of Sammaster himself, for that at least was absolutely inevitable.

Though it was both profoundly unlikely and utterly unimportant in the greater scheme of things, he almost hoped they would deliver themselves up for his personal vengeance. Smiling, at peace with himself once more, he straightened his cloak then recited another spell of translocation.

THE YEAR OF ROGUE DRAGONS00THE RAGE

136