The Rage (16 page)

“I’ve conjectured,” Nexus said, “that the Rage is an inevitable consequence of our link to the primal forces of the cosmos, to which we are bound more intimately than other forms of life.”

“But you don’t know,” Kara said. “What if you’re wrong? What if we could find a remedy?”

“Even if such a thing is possible,” said the mage, “it’s preposterous to imagine we could accomplish it in the brief period of lucidity that remains to us.”

“Accordingly,” said Lareth, “we won’t try. Not now. It will be difficult enough already, persuading all our kin to submit to the binding. Some will be suspicious of our true motives or in their pride imagine they have the strength to withstand the Rage. Give them the false hope that if they hold out just a little longer, Nexus will produce a cure, and it will make them even more reluctant.”

“What of the reds, blacks, blues, whites, and greens?” Kara said. “They won’t submit to you and the lords, and they’re going to frenzy, too, unless somebody stops it. What about the mayhem they’ll commit?”

“The small folk must withstand them as best they can,” said the king. At least we won’t heighten the threat by running amok alongside them.”

“The humans have weathered the storm before,” Havarlan said.

This will be the worst storm,” Kara said, and it finds them depleted and divided. Some regions have yet to recover from the conflict with the sahuagin. Cormyr just concluded a civil war. Around the Moonsea, where I make my home, the city-states squabble—”

‘Enough!” Lareth thundered, so much flame spewing from his jaws that for a second, Kara believed he was actually attacking her. “I’ve listened patiently to your fancies and exposed the fallacies they contain. Now it’s time for you to heed the wisdom of those older, wiser, and stronger than yourself”

Kara lowered her head in submission and for the rest of the parley said no more.

When the conclave broke up, Chatulio flew southeast, following the Galenas as the mountain range bent itself around the Moonsea. Winging in pursuit, Kara called out to him several times, but he didn’t stop. Perhaps the copper was uncommonly hard of hearing for a dragon, but even so it was discouraging, almost enough to make a bard lose faith in the power of her voice.

Well, if he couldn’t hear her, she’d simply have to overtake him. She flattened her body to split the air more easily, pounded her wings as fast and as powerfully as she was able, and streaked forward.

Before long, she was close enough to make out individual ruddy-brown scales on his back. She called out once more, and still he didn’t so much as glance around. It was inconceivable that he didn’t hear her, so he must have been ignoring her.

If he’d decided he wanted nothing to do with her, it was pointless to pursue him any farther. But his rudeness rankled, particularly after the way Lareth had put her in her place, and anger surged inside her. Her throat tingled, offering to discharge its lightning. Resolved to force Chatulio to acknowledge her existence at the very least, she flew even

faster. She could only manage such a sprint for a brief time, but that was all she needed.

She caught up with the copper and reached out to grab him by the tail. The instant she touched him, his body popped with a sort of juicy rasp. A burst of the appropriate rotten-egg stink accompanied the flatulent sound, and she snatched her snout back from the foulness.

Behind her, someone laughed. She wheeled to see the real Chatulio flashing his gap-toothed leer and sitting atop one of the peaks. How he’d successfully substituted the phantasm for himself, she couldn’t imagine.

She glided back, furled her wings, and lit before him, the snow cold against her feet and tail.

“Do you ever run out of pranks?” she asked.

“I hope not,” Chatulio said. “Hello again, Karasendrieth. What’s on your mind?”

“I want to discuss the council with you.”

“As if we didn’t all drone on long enough.”

“You didn’t,” she said, “but from the things you whispered, I thought you might share my views. If so, you didn’t declare it to the gathering at large.”

He tossed his V-shaped head, the jaws tapered and dainty by dragon standards, a pair of long, segmented horns sweeping back behind.

“When have gold and silver ever heeded copper?” he asked.

“Then you do agree with me.”

“I suppose. I don’t much fancy the idea of letting a gold put me to sleep for as long as it suits him. What if it’s all just a trick to plunder our hoards, and commit obscene violations upon our insensible persons?” He grinned and added, “All right, I admit, I don’t really believe that, but I’m still not convinced. Maybe if His Redundancy had come across as serene and godlike as his legend makes him out to be, but he wasn’t quite what I expected”

“I suppose,” Kara said, “he seemed agitated because of his worry over what’s to come. Perhaps if we were wise,

that would have made him more persuasive, not less. Most of the others seemed to take it that way. Still, you and I are in agreement”

“Which means little, unless you’ve concocted a better scheme. I may not want to submit to Nexus’s enchantments, but I want to kill and devour innocent small folk even less. They give me indigestion”

She eyed him askance for a moment before deciding the comment was just another joke.

As the parley unfolded,” she said, “I took note of those few who appeared the most disgruntled and those who looked as though they might speak out in support of me if, like you, they hadn’t deemed it futile.”

“I marked them, too”

“We could contact them and organize a cabal to study and ultimately cure the Rage”

“A chore even Nexus considers impossible.”

“Has he ever really tried?” Kara asked. “Has anyone bothered, when we generally go for hundreds of years without an outbreak, and up until now we’ve had other ways to keep the fury from forcing us into evil?”

“Maybe not. Still, do you even have an idea of where to begin?”

Not yet,” she admitted, “but we’re wyrms. Each of us has a clever mind and his own store of esoteric knowledge. Surely, if we ponder together, we can come up with a notion or two, in which case, what harm can it do to explore them? If our efforts come to nothing, then when the Rage threatens to overtake us, we’ll simply retreat to the refuges as Lareth bade us”

“While if we actually solve the problem, we’ll make the haughty golds and silver look like dunces,” Chatulio laughed. “I like the way you think, bluebird. Let’s do it.”

14 Hammer, the Year of Rogue Dragons

The last leaves dropped from the branches, and snowstorms whistled out of the north. One year died, another commenced, and through it all, foul hungers and violent urges nibbled at Kara’s mind. It occasionally happened even when she wore human form, which she did except when circumstances demanded otherwise.

Resisting the onset of lunacy as best they could, she and Chatulio recruited wyrms sympathetic to their cause, who then conceived various avenues of investigation. To Kara, some of their hypotheses seemed implausible if not preposterous, symptomatic of the corruption of the originators’ reason. Others had their basis in such obscure lore that

her fellows ceded her the authority, she would have forbidden none of the inquiries that sent them flying

to the far corners of Faerűn. In truth, they knew nothing of the doom that menaced them. What, then, could they do, except grope frantically in the dark?

Frantically and futilely it seemed, for one by one the drakes reported failure. Until late one night, in Melvaunt, a walled settlement of smiths and traders on the Moonsea’s northern shore, Kara felt herself slipping into a bleak mood. Accordingly, she sang, the throbbing notes echoing from the walls of the miniscule but private garret room she’d rented. But for once, even music failed to lift her spirits. She was about to give up, crawl between her thin blankets and sagging straw mattress, and hope for a few hours of oblivion, when the dying embers in the small fieldstone hearth crackled and flared a fiercer red.

Alarmed, she jumped out of her rickety chair, recoiled a step toward the shuttered window, and prepared to recite a defensive spell if necessary. A cloud of gray smoke billowed forth from the fireplace as if it had a wind behind it, even though that couldn’t be. The fumes massed themselves into the vague shape of a dragon’s head, while the sparks inside gathered to form a pair of slanted, luminous eyes. The apparition pivoted to stare at Kara but made no effort to harm her.

“Enough, Chatulio,” she sighed.

Evidently the copper had returned from the steppeland of the Ride sooner than expected, and no matter how frustrating their mission became, his relish for juvenile pranks never flagged.

But the image in the smoke laughed an ugly little laugh and said, “No, Karasendrieth, not this time. Chatulio’s still far away, and in fact, so am I. I conjured this sending to give you something on which to rest your gaze. It’s been my experience that people prefer that to a voice that simply speaks from the air.”

“Who are you?”

“An ally. Call me Brimstone”

She frowned, for it seemed an ill-omened name, suggestive of devils and the tortures of the damned. Though

conceivably a gold or brass, with his ability to breathe flame, might bear it.

“An ally in what battle?” she replied.

Despite the vague inconstancy of his smoky features, Brimstone managed a sneer and said, “Scrying, I watched Lareth’s conclave. I listened to you and Chatulio hatch your plot as well, so it’s no use playing ignorant. I know you and your comrades are trying to stop the Rage, and fortunately for you, I mean to help”

“Then why haven’t you come forward before now?”

As you understand nothing, and your studies lead nowhere, I saw no advantage. Now, however, I require a service of you”

• Kara neither trusted Brimstone nor appreciated his condescension, but her self-imposed task was too important for her to refuse to hear him out.

“What service?” she asked.

“Do you know of the Cult of the Dragon?”

“Of course,” she said.

It was a secret society of lunatics who imagined evil wyrms were destined to become undead entities and ascend to mastery of the world. To hasten the fulfillment of their prophecies, they ingratiated themselves with the chromatic drakes by providing various forms of aid and support and furnished the means of transformation when the objects of their worship opted to avail themselves of them. Apparently they imagined that when the wyrms achieved dominion over Faerűn, they’d reward their longtime helpers with authority over their fellow men.

“I think they have something to do with the Rage,” said the apparition.

“How could that be? The cult has only existed for a few hundred years. The frenzy has afflicted dragonkind since the beginning of time”

“Still, it’s possible they at least know something about it,” Brimstone replied. “I’ve watched the cult for a long time, seeking to foil their schemes whenever practical. Of late, I

became aware that they have a chapter in Lyrabar. Unfortunately, as you probably know, scrying doesn’t always work, especially if you’re trying to view the activities of wizards and priests who’ve warded themselves against it. I gleaned something of their activities, but not enough. For that reason, I resolved to hire a spy to infiltrate the cabal”

“A human spy,” Kara guessed.

“Yes. The problem was, where and how to find him? I’m not like the bronzes who serve Queen Sambryl and live openly in the heart of her city. The small folk know nothing of my presence, and I wish it to remain so. Happily, not far from my lair, a crew of laborers from Lyrabar was digging a drainage canal. I spied on them and found a young man called Gorstag Helder.

“He seemed as if he might be brave and quick-witted enough to do the job,” Brimstone continued. “Just as importantly, he thought himself better than he was. He imagined that somehow, it was only cruel injustice that barred him from the life of ease so many in Lyrabar enjoy. He hated manual labor, and never would have stooped to it had starvation not forced his hand. He intended to earn just enough to keep him alive for a few more tendays, then rush back to the city, where, you may be certain, shame would keep him from admitting to anyone that he’d ever in his life laid hands on a shovel.”

“Except that you approached him first.”

“Yes,” said the phantasm. A bit of the wood smoke was diffusing away from the conjured image to fill the garret with haze. It smelled pleasant enough but stung Kara’s eyes. “I did so cloaked in a semblance of human form. I’d seen in the fool’s mind that he harbored romantic notions about the Harpers, so I led him to believe I was one. Once I accomplished that, he was eager to serve me”

Kara disliked Brimstone’s obvious contempt for his human pawn but supposed that, too, was beside the point.

“Did Helder manage to worm his way into the cult?” she asked.

“Yes, and he told me they were jubilant because some new scheme was underway. I ordered him to find out what it was, but then he stopped sneaking out into the countryside to report, and no matter what magic I employ, I can’t locate him. Nor can I go into Lyrabar to seek him. I can veil myself in illusion to fool others for a time, but I can’t actually assume human shape”

“But a song dragon can,” she said.

“Exactly. You could find Gorstag and fetch him to me. Or bring me his report!’

“It’s likely the actual cultists realized he was a spy and murdered him.”

“But it isn’t certain. Perhaps, for some reason, he simply can’t get away. Even if he is dead, he may conceivably have left notes or some other indication of what he learned”

Kara frowned, deliberating.

Finally she said, “You still haven’t given me any solid reason to believe the cult’s plans and the Rage are connected”

Brimstone sneered and said, “Do you think it mere coincidence that both are occurring at the same time?”

You haven’t told me who you are, either. An unfamiliar name means nothing.”

“It’s all I’m willing to give,” he replied, “so long as we’re talking through the ether. Some other adept might overhear. I’ll reveal myself when you come to me in Impiltur”