85: A RIDDLE FOR BAELOSH
(Kihrin’s story)
I found Thurvishar the morning after we’d finished burning the bodies and left the monastery.1 “What are we doing here?” I asked rhetorically. Mostly.
He was crouched down, staring at that yellow-green stone. I thought he was ignoring me and then realized why. He was magically warping a gold coin, spinning off fine filaments of metal, which he was weaving into a mesh net so he could drop the stone into it and wear it around his neck. He finished and did so, hanging the result off a piece of wire he’d shaped into a loop. “Keeping our word. If it’s any consolation, I suspect we’d be in just as much danger exploring brothels. Hopefully, we have to do less slumming through the worst parts of Bahl-Nimian this way.” Thurvishar put the Cornerstone around his neck.
My attention was now focused on Wildheart. “I’ve always heard that it’s impossible to steal a Cornerstone, but I don’t see how that could possibly be true.”
“Try it.” He pointed to the necklace.
I reached for the hook on the back of the wire. And then felt my hand fall way. I frowned and tried again. This time, I actually managed to touch the metal wire before I stopped. I paused. “Oh.”
I’d once tried to remove the Stone of Shackles from my own neck, under duress, to hand over to Thurvishar. I hadn’t been able to. This felt the same.
“And if, for example, Senera dropped the Name of All Things accidentally, she might very well find that it had mysteriously appeared back on her person.”
“So how’s it feel? My Cornerstone was sort of … passive … in a lot of ways. I never had to actively control it.”2
“Disturbingly nice. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying it.” Thurvishar made a face. “I can see why people don’t want to give these up, which I may have to do. This may not work on Baelosh the way we think. Or if it does … I’m honestly not sure how effective a gaesh will be separated by the sort of distance we’re talking about. Even if we can send Baelosh away, can we keep him away?”
“What happens if we give a dragon their own Cornerstone? I mean, that basically makes him unkillable, right?”
“Does it? I’m not so certain.” Thurvishar sighed, dusted himself off, and stood. “I think it might have the opposite effect unless they go to great lengths to hide the Cornerstone. And hope Senera never has reason to ask where it’s hidden.”
I chuckled, but it was dry and distant and a bit hollow. Truthfully, I was feeling a sense of ennui I couldn’t quite explain. I don’t think it was just because we were less than a day away from a place where we might well have to fight one of the most dangerous creatures in the whole world. I suppose I was just being given a bit too much time with my own thoughts, and these days, those tended to hover around my hopes and my fears and the very real possibility that the latter would keep me from ever obtaining the former.
Vol Karoth waited for me, and no matter how much faith the others were putting in the Ritual of Night, I knew in my soul that this time it wouldn’t be enough to stop him.
Honestly, dragons seemed like such a minor problem by comparison.
We knew we were in Baelosh’s territory long before we saw Baelosh himself. The desert had given way entirely, replaced by verdant growth that belonged to no single climate and that was all in theory entirely alien to their present surroundings. This wasn’t just jungle, or rain forest, or woods, but all of them, all mingled together in impossible combinations. And in all cases, there was a kind of predatory violence to the plant life. Any animals who made the mistake of crossing into that land never left again.
I didn’t have to ask where Baelosh kept his hoard. It was all around us—gems hanging from tree branches, sparkling from the cups of wild orchid flowers, embedded in bark, and tossed around the ground like the most valuable and shining of pebbles. The trees wore necklaces, the vines showed off their rings. The part of me that remembered being a thief named Rook desperately wanted to help myself to handfuls, but I pushed back against the temptation; I suspected Baelosh would somehow know if we’d stolen from his hoard.
The worst part was that so many of the gems were not gems. They were tsali stones, slowly leaking away the tenyé of the souls they held trapped, until eventually the tsali gem would be a hollow, empty shell. The trapped souls here would never go to the Afterlife. They would never be reincarnated. They would simply fade.
Senera stopped complaining about the wisdom of retrieving Wildheart as it became increasingly obvious that none of us would have survived a hundred feet into Baelosh’s territory without it. Only Thurvishar’s direct intervention using the Cornerstone kept us safe from animated vines, poisoned thorns, and aggressive spore clouds. Which made me more than a little nervous about the idea of trading away Wildheart in order to convince Baelosh to give up Suless.
Even knowing we were in the dragon’s territory, we had no warning at all when he struck.
The trees near us gave the briefest shiver, and then a giant shape rose up from the underbrush and vines. Or rather, the vines and underbrush rose up and revealed that it had never been simple plant matter at all.
“Visitors? It’s been a long time since I’ve had visitors,” Baelosh said. “And now I have so many. So what have you come to offer me?”
The dragon was massive and green, and although he was not quite the same as Morios—not made from plants the same way Morios was made from swords—flowers grew from the cracks in his scales, and lichen had made a home along his stomach and the underside of his forearms. Indeed, even as Baelosh dislodged plants and trees from the ground, more were growing to take their place, an endless regeneration of ridiculous flora. The dragon’s eyes were bright, glittering green—the same color, I noticed, as his matching Cornerstone.
If the horses didn’t freak out, it was only because we’d stopped that morning to give Senera and Thurvishar a chance to cast spells to stop the animals from seeing either dragons or the surrounding plant life. We’d all agreed that this was prudent, given the likelihood that, one, there would definitely be more dragon encounters, and two, Baelosh’s plants would probably kill the horses if they bolted away from Thurvishar’s ability to protect them.
So the horses just stood there, clearly a little curious why we’d stopped and even more curious if any of us planned to feed them.
Rebel didn’t bark,3 but the way her head went down suggested she both could see Baelosh and wasn’t at all happy about it.
Thurvishar dismounted his horse and walked forward. “Greetings, Baelosh. Yes, we have a gift for you.” He pulled a bag from his belt and overturned it into his hand, revealing green stones that I suspected were probably emeralds. They weren’t tsalis.
I had no idea where Thurvishar had gotten a handful of emeralds from, mind you, but I didn’t think they’d be fake. It was too easy to check.4
“There’s more for you, Baelosh,” Thurvishar added, “but only if you win my contest.”
Senera looked over at him and mouthed the word, “Contest?”
Baelosh’s eyes narrowed. “Contest? What sort of contest?”
“A riddle contest, of course,” Thurvishar said. “I believe that’s traditional, yes? If you win, I’ll give you the rest of the gems, and if I win, then all I ask is you hand over Suless and everyone she has with her.”
“Who?”
Thurvishar cocked his head. “You know who I mean. You know who Suless is.”
The dragon didn’t immediately answer. Then Baelosh asked, “How many gems?”
“I have five more bags full.”
The dragon pulled himself up to full height. “Then begin.”
Thurvishar had clearly prepared for this. “I live in a house where all who enter it are blind and all who pass out its doors can see. Where do I live?”
The dragon’s nostrils flared. “A school. Was this meant to be a difficult contest?” The dragon cocked his head. “While traveling to Karolaen, I met a woman. The woman had eight children, and the eight children carried eight snakes, and each snake clutched a mouse. How many traveled to Karolaen?”
“Just the one, yourself,” Thurvishar said. “That which you used to gain me becomes useless once you hold me. Once you possess me, only dull violence will make you lose me. What am I?”
“Why that’s—” The dragon paused. “That’s Urthaenriel, but I’ve heard that riddle before.” Baelosh leaned forward, eyes narrowed. The dragon reached forward until his nose almost touched the front of Thurvishar’s horse, Dust Dancer.
The horse blew air out its nose.
I leaned over toward Talea. “We might want to be ready to run.” I couldn’t see Suless, anyway—I had no idea where Baelosh might have hidden her. Truthfully, she might have been watching even at that very moment, but it certainly wasn’t in her best interests to reveal herself.
I slipped my vision past the Veil and started searching, anyway. Everything around us not dragon would be plant—living humans should stand out like blood against snow.
“I know you,” Baelosh said. “I’ve met you before.”
“Not in this lifetime,” Thurvishar said.
“Thurvishar—” Senera’s voice was thick with warning.
The dragon tilted his head so he could stare at Thurvishar with one eye (there was simply no way he could focus both eyes at that distance). “Simillion?”
“Thurvishar,” the wizard corrected.
I exhaled. Much as I didn’t want Thurvishar to come to harm, I had been rather worried that the dragon would immediately home in on the fact that Thurvishar carried Wildheart, or even worse, that I was standing right behind him. But no, just as Senera had predicted, Baelosh was much more interested in the one who got away.
There. I saw a bright flash of tenyé resonating behind Baelosh. It was hard to see because the dragon distorted everything around him. Had Suless been a normal human woman, I’m sure I’d never have noticed. But she wasn’t, so I did. That tenyé flare had to be a spell.
“Found her,” I said. “She’s trying something—”
Baelosh pulled back his long neck. “Simillion!” He sounded gleeful.
Thurvishar’s lips pressed together. “You agreed to the rules.”
“Thurvishar,” I whispered, “she’s about five hundred feet behind him. Look, why don’t—”
What I did next was tricky, and I wasn’t sure if it would work, but I thought at Thurvishar as hard as I could. Come on, Thurvy. You’re not going to win with a classic riddle. It needs to be something he can’t answer because he doesn’t understand the context. Use context against him.
Thurvishar blinked at me and then turned back to the dragon. He pursed his lips, exhaled slowly, and then said, “I am a table with twelve settings for a feast that never ends. Many serve me, but only those uninvited can ever rule me. Who am I?”5
Baelosh blinked. “What?”
“Is that your answer?”
I saw Suless’s tenyé move. She must have had some idea what was happening—and was beginning to flee. But there was no chance to get to her while Baelosh was in the way.
Baelosh’s lip curled. “No. Give me a minute.” The dragon stood very still, eyes almost closed, concentrating intensely. Nothing in the overgrown foliage made a sound, except perhaps for the wind rustling through tree leaves and a faint whistling. It was all I could do to stand still. The others didn’t realize what was happening with Suless. That she was just seconds from getting away.
The whistling grew louder. The ground began to shake.
“What?” As everyone else searched around us, I looked up.
Just in time to see Sharanakal slam into Baelosh.6
I ducked as half a tree crashed into the ground next to me. The earth erupted up ahead, sending a wall of red-hot lava soaring up into the air. A blast wave of heat collided with us as the nearby plants went up in flames.
The horses hadn’t been enchanted not to see fire. They reacted quite predictably: by running. Except for Thurvishar’s horse, who seemed seconds from attacking the fire and giving it a piece of his mind.7
I was hanging on for dear life as my horse ran and tried to dodge around the churning earth and flying plant matter. “The other side!” I screamed. “Suless is on the other side!”
Xivan nodded in my direction, wheeled her horse around, and began galloping—in between the two dragons.
“Shit.” I moved to follow her. I think the only reason I was successful was because my horse was so panicked, he had no idea where “safe” was anymore. In between two dragons? Sure, why not. The others were galloping too, trying to stay together. I heard Senera’s voice, knew she was casting a spell. Thurvishar’s voice joined hers a second later.
A huge section of land up behind us melted as Sharanakal breathed superhot ash and fire in a line, presumably the culmination of some long-standing feud with Baelosh. The good news was that I didn’t think either of the dragons had any idea I was nearby.
The bad news was that didn’t make me safe.
As the dragons fought above us, soon running toward Suless meant running away from the fight, and this made the horses considerably more cooperative. I couldn’t fault their instinct to escape fire.
“Suless!” Xivan screamed.
I saw the old woman ahead of us, leading a young woman holding a package—almost certainly a baby—out of a hillside cave. Xivan headed in their direction at once, with the rest of us close behind.
As Suless tried to flee, a crack opened up in the ground ahead of her, and a giant welling of lava came pouring out, blocking her path. The young woman with her screamed. The baby began to wail.
Suless gestured. A giant pool of the magma rose up in the air and crashed down straight at Xivan. The woman simply swung out Godslayer in front of her. The magma split, sizzled, and fell to each side of her, leaving Xivan unharmed. Several more spells followed that one in rapid succession, but Xivan either parried them with Urthaenriel or they were blocked by one of the wizards, Thurvishar or Senera.
A gigantic roar caught my attention. I looked around in time to see the Old Man—Sharanakal—take a bite from Baelosh’s side. Baelosh twisted around and opened his mouth, spitting out a stream of green sap-like material moving at terrific speeds.
I didn’t think it was going to do much against the fire dragon, honestly, but then I realized that wasn’t the problem. Suless cackled as she pulled up a huge chunk of ground, deflecting the draconic blast and sending it streaming in a new direction. Straight at us.
“Duck!” I screamed.
The horses didn’t see the danger. The horses couldn’t see the danger. Thin sticky ribbons of toxic green sap rained down in front of us, sending up clouds of spores as they impacted the earth.
Most of us managed to pull our horses up in time, to change course. But not Xivan.
And not Talea.
I didn’t see what happened to their horses, although it seemed a pretty safe assumption that they hadn’t survived being in the path of that deadly blast. I heard a scream from another direction. I turned back in time to see that Thurvishar hadn’t used Wildheart to save Xivan and Talea, because he’d been using the stone to save Veixizhau and her baby. Senera scooped the baby up into her arms while Thurvishar grabbed the mother.
Baelosh’s breath continued in a straight line, right across the Old Man and over Suless’s path. I didn’t hear her scream, but I made assumptions.
For a terrifying split second, I thought the same fate must have befallen Xivan and Talea, but then Xivan came staggering out of the spore cloud. Tiny shoots of greenery kept trying to gain purchase in her dead flesh and failed, withering almost immediately—likely because of Urthaenriel. Talea, however, wasn’t so lucky. Half her side was nothing but a mass of flowers.
Beautiful—and fatal.
“This way!” I screamed and pointed toward the lee of a cliff that seemed far enough from the battle to offer at least the illusion of protection from the dragons. Senera and Thurvishar reached the spot first, bringing the living mother and child with them. The two wizards immediately began setting up wards and protections, what magical defenses they could devise to keep from being caught in any more stray collateral damage from the dragon battle.
“Don’t stop for us,” Xivan ordered me. “I have her.”
“No! Give her Urthaenriel!” I screamed at Xivan. I jumped off the horse (dismounting was the wrong word for it) and ran over to the two women. “It’ll slow the spread.”
Xivan pulled the sword out and lay the blade against Talea so the length of it was pressed against her. Urthaenriel had no real complaint about this, although I could tell that the sword knew I was right there. I ignored the sword’s whispers suggesting I should reclaim her.
As we ran toward the magical shelter, I heard a mighty screech behind me. I turned to see the ball of twisting plants and fire separate. Baelosh—a very singed and burned-looking Baelosh—flew up into the air, heading north with all the speed of a lightning flash.
Sharanakal followed. That quickly, they were gone.
Xivan placed Talea down on the ground, setting Urthaenriel to the side in the process. Her lieutenant didn’t look great. Several of the wounds in Talea’s side had turned an ugly dark green, and veins of that color were spiking off the wounds like spreading rot. Urthaenriel had helped, but much of the damage was already done.
Veixizhau stood immediately and rushed over to Xivan.
“My lady! Please, you don’t know—”
Xivan stood up and put her hands on the woman’s cheeks. “Shhh.”
Veixizhau closed her mouth.
Xivan turned back to Talea and didn’t say another word to her daughter-in-law.
Much as it killed me to do it, I picked up Urthaenriel and handed the sword back to Xivan. “You dropped this.”
I don’t think Xivan even realized what I’d just done. She was too much in shock about what had just happened to her lieutenant to pay any attention to the fact that I’d picked up Godslayer and simply given it back to her.
To be fair, I wouldn’t realize until later that Xivan had given me an order while holding the sword, and I’d refused it. That neatly eviscerated my worry that Vol Karoth’s gaesh was also my gaesh.
I forced myself to focus on healing, but ran into a problem immediately. Any tenyé I poured into Talea was going to feed the spreading floral infection as well, make it worse. And so much of her was already infected … if I tried amputating limbs, I was going to kill her outright.
I had no idea what to do. Maybe Thurvishar could use Wildheart? “Thurvishar, can you—”
Talea opened her eyes. “I’m sorry,” Talea whispered. She was very pale, and her voice was very soft. She wasn’t looking at me. Her attention was fixed on Xivan.
“Shut up,” Xivan said. “Don’t apologize. This isn’t your fault.”
Thurvishar started to say something, but Senera put a hand on his chest and shook her head. He stopped.
“I just wanted you—” Talea started coughing, wincing. “There’s something I need to tell you—”
“What is it?” Xivan bent down close. She pulled the agolé off her shoulders and used it to cover Talea’s body, tucking the fabric around the other woman like it was a blanket.
Talea’s gaze flickered over to me, and I felt my heart tighten in my chest. Then Talea looked up at Xivan, reached up with her good hand to touch the woman’s face. “I love you, Xivan. I love you so much. I’m sorry. I should have said something.”
Xivan’s mouth dropped open. “You—what?”
Talea smiled weakly. “I’m sorry.”
“You—” Xivan didn’t even try to conceal her shock. “Talea, I’m dead. I’m not … You can’t love me. That’s impossible.”
“Don’t care,” Talea said. “I’ve been in love with you for years.”
Thurvishar made a low noise and turned away.
Xivan started to cry. She couldn’t cry—no tears came from her eyes—but I saw her throat work and a deep guttural sob come from her chest. “Damn it, why didn’t you say anything?” she whispered.
Senera rolled her eyes as she called Rebel back over to stand next to her.
Talea’s hand lingered on the side of Xivan’s face. “You had Azhen. You had your family. You didn’t need me.”
“Need doesn’t have anything to do with it! He had fifty wives! He didn’t get to say a damn thing about who I love. Of course I love you. What idiot wouldn’t love you?” Xivan looked fond and furious simultaneously.
Talea started smiling. “I can die happy, knowing that.”
“I don’t want you to die at all!”
Talea’s hand dropped back to her chest. “It’s okay. It doesn’t even hurt anymore.”
Senera crossed her arms over her chest as she let out an exasperated sigh. “It doesn’t hurt anymore because Thurvishar’s already healed you, Talea. You’re going to be fine.”
Thurvishar cleared his throat and nodded in agreement.
The stillness was so total, it was as if time itself had stopped.
I covered my mouth as I fought back laughter. Xivan and Talea both just turned their heads and stared blankly at the two wizards.
No one said a word. Xivan pulled the cloth away from Talea so we could all see that her flesh was fine. No wounds. No spreading green poison. No flowers. An uncomfortable, comedic silence settled over us. Bird cries sounded in the distance as some bright hawk realized there was no longer a dragon in the vicinity and it was safe to hunt for rabbits again.
“Well.” I stood up. “You two have a lot to talk about, and Senera needs to answer a question for Thurvishar and me as payment for a job well done, so why don’t the three of us leave you two alone?”
I turned around and grinned at Senera and Thurvishar. “Nicely done, both of you.” Thurvishar might have healed Talea, but Senera was the one who’d made sure Talea’d had enough time to confess her feelings. Which was—from Senera, anyway—almost shockingly romantic.
Senera returned my expression with a haughty shrug, but didn’t do nearly a good enough job of hiding her smile.8
Thurvishar smiled happily before schooling his expression into something more serious. “Why don’t we talk? And then perhaps see if we can find Suless’s body in this mess.”