Dragonlance 08 - Dragons of the Highlord Skies Read Free Page B

on his behalf. The Nightlord spent much of his time working to undermine Ariakas and end his reign.
    Ariakas had therefore ordered Grag to meet him in the Blue Quarter, where the Blue Wing of the dragonarmy resided when they were in the city. Currently, the Blue Wing was in the west, preparing for the invasion of Solamnia in the spring. Their commander, a Dragon Highlord known as the Blue Lady, had also been ordered to Neraka to meet with Commander Grag.
    With the Blue Wing in Solamnia, their quarters had been commandeered by Ariakas, who had brought with him his staff and his bodyguards. An aide found Grag wandering about lost and escorted him to the short, squat, and unprepossessing building in which Ariakas lived and worked.
    Two of the largest ogres Grag had ever seen stood guard outside the door. The ogres were clad in plate and chain mail armor and were heavily armed. The draconian detested ogres as being thick-skulled and brutish, and the feeling was mutual, for ogres considered draconians arrogant upstarts and interlopers. Grag tensed, expecting trouble, but the two ogres were members of Ariakas’s own personal bodyguard and they went about their business in a professional manner.
    “Weapons,” growled one, and held out a huge, hairy hand.
    No one entered the presence of the emperor armed. Grag knew that, yet he had worn a sword from practically the moment he’d been able to shake the eggshell out of his eyes, and he felt naked and vulnerable without it.
    The ogre’s yellow eyes narrowed at Grag’s hesitation. Grag unbuckled his sword belt and handed it to the ogre, also turning over a long-bladed knife. He was not completely defenseless. He had his magic after all.
    One ogre kept an eye on Grag while the other went in to report to Ariakas that the bozak he was expecting had arrived. Grag paced nervously outside the door. From inside came a human male’s booming laughter and a human female’s voice, not quite as deep as the man’s, but deeper than that of most women, rich and husky.
    The ogre returned and jerked a sausage-like thumb, indicating Grag was to enter. He had a feeling this interview was not going to go well when he saw the gleam in the ogre’s squinty yellow eyes and saw the ogre’s comrade show all his rotting teeth in a wide grin.
    Bracing himself, folding his wings as tightly as possible, his bronze-colored scales twitching, his clawed hands flexing nervously, Grag entered the presence of the most powerful and most dangerous man in all of Ansalon.
    Ariakas was a large and imposing human male, with long black hair and, though clean-shaven, the dark stubble of a black beard. He was somewhere near the age of forty, which made him middle-aged among humans, but he was in superb condition. Stories about his legendary physical prowess circulated among the ranks of his men, the most famous being that he had once hurled a spear clean through a man’s body.
    Ariakas was wearing a fur-lined cloak, tossed casually over one broad shoulder, revealing a hand-tooled, heavy leather vest beneath. The vest was intended to protect against a knife in the back, for even in Neraka there were those who be glad to see Ariakas relieved of both his command and his life. A sword hung from a belt around his waist. Bags of spell components and a scroll case were also suspended from his sword belt, something remarkable, for most wizards were prohibited by their gods from wearing armor or carrying steel weapons.
    Ariakas had no care for the laws of the gods of magic. He received his spells directly from the Dark Queen herself, and in this he and Grag shared something in common. It had not occurred to Grag until this moment that Ariakas actually made use of his spellcasting abilities, but the fact that he carried magical paraphernalia alongside his weapons proved he was as comfortable with magic as with steel.
    Ariakas had his back to Grag. The man merely glanced at the draconian over his shoulder, then turned back to his