Blood of the Emperor (17 page)

Soen bowed slightly toward Drakis and then again to Braun. He turned, still holding his Matei staff and stepped through the southern portal.

In a moment both folds collapsed.

Drakis and Braun were suddenly alone on the hilltop.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Braun said before Drakis could speak. “But this really could advance our understanding of magic—of
conjuration
, that is—in ways that would take us years to stumble upon on our own.”

“I don’t trust him and you shouldn’t trust him either,” Drakis replied, biting at his lower lip as he considered the problem.

“But that’s not really the question, is it?” Braun argued. “The question is whether we can get what we need from him before he gets what he is after from us. That is why I sent for him.”

“
You
sent for him?”

“Certainly!” Braun smiled. “I need to know what he knows. You asked for magic that could move the camp. Soen can show me how. If you want any hope of moving the encampment in time, then Soen holds the key.”

“This was your idea, Braun,” Drakis said. “I don’t like it. He’s dangerous. We’ve managed to deny him elven magic—and now you’re talking about giving him our own magic: the one advantage we have over the elves.”

“Oh, you can leave Soen to me,” Braun said with a confident grin.

“Why should I do that?”

“Because I’ll be the one teaching him,” Braun replied. “And what I don’t tell him, can’t hurt us.”

Drakis turned again, his eyes on the encampment and the more than one hundred thousand inhabitants that depended on this gamble.

“Just make sure he doesn’t learn too much,” Drakis said.

Due Haste

E
THIS SHOOK HIMSELF AWAKE.

He blinked the eyes of his featureless face. He was for a moment confused, uncertain as to how much time had passed in his sleep. The sky was still dark but he could see the faint brightening on the eastern horizon. Dawn would soon assert itself. He had flattened his body as much as he could against the back of the dragon’s neck in an effort to increase the creature’s velocity through the sky but speed had not been their enemy so much as the illusive nature of their destination.

And he knew that his time was running out.

Together, the chimerian and the dragon had pressed southward from Port Glorious along the shores of Mistral Bay. They left the coast at Markrethold where the shores turned more toward the west, driving hard through the clouds above the rolling hills below. As the sun rose toward its zenith, Ethis set their course toward the eastern slopes of the Mournful Mountains whose dark, vague outlines grew more distinct with each beat of the dragon’s wings. Ethis made sure that Wanrah kept well to the east of the range and when he could see that the village of Willow Reaches—a goblin trading post at the northern tip of the Mournful Mountains—was almost directly to the right of their course, Ethis pointed the dragon in a more southeasterly direction and over the carpet of forest canopy that was Ephindria.

The sameness of the treetops rushing by below him confused Ethis. Territory that he knew intimately from the ground was foreign to him when viewed from the unexpected perspective of the sky. Those rare occasions when he managed to get his bearings by spotting a clearing, lake, or waterfall he recognized were only of fleeting comfort as more often than not such locations flashed past too quickly for him to properly identify. As the sun began to set on that first, frustrating day, Ethis finally asked Wanrah to descend into a large clearing with a ruined tower so that he might get some feeling for where they were in his nation. The ancient bone tower was derelict and abandoned and, after instructing the dragon to wait for him there, Ethis moved on foot into the thick woodland. It was some time before he was able to discover any chimerians—most of whom had fled in terror at the dragon’s approach. Even then it took him the better part of two hours to approach them—for if Ethis knew anything for certain in the Ever-changing Realm it was that you could never be certain of anyone.

In the end the local chimerians had fortunately proved to be part of the Chythal Family on the western reaches of their family lands near the Malethic River. They had heard that the Queen in Exile had taken her court northward into Klendel lands and cautioned Ethis about Shalashei and Pashorei Enforcers rumored to be raiding as far north as the Whitescar Canyon.

Ethis was surprised and chagrined; he had flown too far south and had come dangerously close to the lands being held by the Families of the Opposition. He hurried back to Wanrah, climbing up the harness and urging the dragon into the air before he had even settled into place.

For two days and nights, Wanrah crossed here and there over the tree canopy of Ephindria, repeating the process again and again. They would land, get their bearings and Ethis would again move into the woodland, seeking out the panicked chimerians and approaching them with caution. Twice along the borders of Dhuresh he encountered agents of the Opposition, barely escaping their snares and on one occasion even calling on Wanrah to come to his aid. Still, Ethis urged Wanrah back into the sky despite the aching in his four arms, the weakness in his legs and the lethargy that called him every more insistently
to sleep. Wanrah could fly without rest for days on end but had asked repeatedly if his rider wished to stop. Ethis had spurred him on without stopping.

He had to find her. She had to listen to him.

Ethis gazed at the brightening horizon. Was the dawn approaching him or was he approaching the dawn, he wondered idly. At last his eyes were fixed on his next destination that he could make out only as a dark shadow against the surrounding deep green. It was in the northern reaches of Nurthei lands which, by all accounts, were still loyal to the Queen.

Emaro Nol,
Ethis recalled.
City of Steel.

Ethis looked for a place where he might ask the dragon to make its landfall. He knew from experience that it was better to leave the dragon some distance from where he expected to find anyone. Taking the creature anywhere near a chimerian city wall would be more than cause for panic, and he was looking for cooperation, not fear. Besides, stealth was his business and the fewer chimerians who know what it was that he was trying to achieve the better it would be for everyone. He asked Wanrah to land in a clearing several miles down the ridge and then wearily descended the creature’s neck until his feet at last found the ground.

Ethis placed his hand against the dragon’s neck now lowered to the ground. He was leaning on it more heavily than he had intended. “Wanrah…”

The trees vanished around him as the landscape was replaced. The ridgeline remained but its trees had suddenly transformed into soft, grass-covered slopes. The towers of Emaro Nol remained visible, however, at the far northern end of the ridge. For a moment, Ethis wondered how it was that those towers should extend themselves into the dragon’s reality. Was it that the dragons created this place from their own observations of the world or was this a more true representation of the world of their experience? He promised himself to ask Wanrah the next time he had the opportunity.

If there was an opportunity,
he thought wearily.

“Wanrah,” Ethis said to the dragon, “If I don’t return by the time the sun sets on the second day…”

“Each time we land you tell me the same thing,” Wanrah responded,
a deep, resonant chuckle in his voice. “If you do not return to me in the time you set then I am to leave you and find a chimerian among the Drakis pilgrims of the encampment. I am to tell them through one of the other dragon-riders that they are ‘charged to the whispered conveyance’…whatever that means.”

“And,” Ethis allowed his heavy eyelids to close.

“And to give them this message,” the dragon continued. “That ‘the sixth son of Chythal delivered her words but regrets he cannot attend. A new light shines in Drakosia where her grace should also shine.’ And I am to use those words precisely as you have given them to me…on multiple occasions might I add.”

“Thank you, Wanrah,” Ethis nodded, too tired to form his face into any shape beyond its neutral blankness.

“You need rest, Ethis Windrider,” the dragon rumbled.

“We will all rest soon, my friend.” The chimerian could not even smile though he wished it with his heart.

Ethis pulled his hand off the neck scales of the dragon. The other world vanished at once and the trees sprang back into existence around the clearing just as he remembered them from a few moments before. He turned then and moved toward the edge of the clearing. A well-trodden path led from the tall grasses in the clearing and up the slope through the trees. His legs felt heavy beneath him as he moved, the slope a tortuous ascent.

The narrow path soon joined another, wider path and then a road where three chimerian women were walking toward the city. Each supported a basket atop her head with all four arms and all were engaged in animated conversation. Ethis strained to hear what they were talking about but was having difficulty concentrating. He could see the brilliant gleam of the sunrise glinting off the graceful curve of the steel towers to the north.

“Sisters!” he called out.

All three chimerian women turned with a start. One of them dropped several
manis
fruit from the basket in her haste.

“Please,” Ethis said, his arms splayed open before him. It took concentration to hold them up; they felt so heavy. “I…I am a sixth son of Chythal and I charge you with…with the whispered…”

Ethis collapsed unconscious to the ground.

“You are a damned difficult chimerian to catch,” purred the voice above him.

Ethis awoke with a start.

Four hands held him down—two at his shoulders and two on his chest. He tried to reach out, find some leverage so that he could gain an advantage against whoever it was holding him down.

“Relax, Ethis,” the voice continued. “You’ve come home.”

Ethis suddenly stopped struggling, his eyes focusing on the blank face above him.

To all other races, chimerians appear to be identical. It is nearly impossible for non-chimerians to know the difference between the males and females of their species just by their appearance, let alone to tell an individual chimerian from another without them either wearing some identifying article of some type or the chimerian volunteering a name. The differences were in the details which, of course, chimerians easily recognized on sight.

Ethis had no doubt who was looking down at him from the bedside even though to most people from beyond the borders of his nation the two of them would have looked identical.

“My Queen,” Ethis said simply.

“My son,” Chythal replied with pleasure.

Ethis relaxed back into the comfortable bed. The mattress was sculpted to his form, an extraordinary extravagance among the chimerians. The room was spacious and well appointed after the chimerian fashion at court. Wrought iron frames were set in polished walls of fitted stone veined through with polished steel. Chimerians, themselves so flexible, had a love of things that spoke of permanence.

Chythal tilted her head to once side, considering. “So you have decided to return to me at last?”

“My Queen, I…” Ethis tried to sit up but Chythal continued to hold him down.

“I am much vexed with you,” the Queen said, the troubling sound of distant thunder intruding into her words. “You seem to have acquired a bad habit in your absence of distressing your Queen with the
repeated reports of your death. First we heard of your distressing enslavement among our elven enemies…”

“A misstep on my part, Your Majesty,” Ethis acknowledged. “The traitor was dealt with and shall trouble no dreams of the Queen’s family any longer.”

“All that is well and good, yet we were all prepared to mourn your loss,” the Queen continued, “Then it was reported that you were gallivanting across the Vestasian wastelands in the company of humans, manticores, and, of all things, a dwarf. We wondered how it was that so loyal a son of the Queen, one of the D’reth, should not return to her side and report the gladsome news of his escape and the glorious completion of his task? Then we heard reports of you vanishing once again…and would have mourned you once more but for the reports that you had suddenly returned again from your presumptive death and this time upon the back of a tamed dragon.”