Blood of the Emperor (42 page)

With the magic fire behind them, Soen saw the Isle of the Gods directly in their path with God’s Bridge on the left.

“Is that the third bridge?” Ethis shouted into the howling wind around them.

“Yes!” Soen shouted back to be heard. “That’s it!”

Wanrah followed Ethis’ command and banked left just as they passed over the tip of the Isle of the Gods. Soen faintly heard the horrified cries of the elves packing the bridge below as the dragon, followed by two more of its kind, wheeled overhead seemingly close enough to touch. Soen cast a glance at the Old Keep as they turned, its squat ramparts on the opposite side of the river from the Isle of the Gods.

“Stay silent, Ch’drei,” Soen wished. “For just a little longer.”

Wanrah began to climb above the scattering, frightened mobs surging
in the Vira Rhonas below them. The avatria towers were a forest around them as they clawed their way higher into the morning sky. The Imperial City passed under them, its familiar maze of streets, alleys, and avenues filled with terrified elves and slaves, all growing smaller in Soen’s eyes as they fought their way higher into the air. They had avoided the war-mages and their Proxis’ expected fire from the walls, but the cost had been in velocity and altitude. Now they fought desperately for both as the dragons beat their colossal wings through the air above the Vira Rhonas toward their goal.

The Cloud Palace of the Emperor, like a mountainous ornament dwarfing all the floating elegance around it, hovered like a prize above the Garden of Kuchen directly before them.

“How far up?” Ethis demanded, all four of his hands gripping the saddle harness so tightly Soen thought the straps might break.

“Do you see the main platform that leads to the towers?” Soen called out.

Ethis nodded.

“Four levels above that you see those petal-shaped balconies? That’s the level of the Emperor’s Devotions,” Soen continued. “That’s where we’ll find the altar and the Well.”

“What about the Cloud Guardians?” Ethis asked. “Won’t they object to our dropping in, so to speak?”

“Most emphatically,” Soen said. The Cloud Palace was growing larger to their eyes by the moment. Soen could already see Guardians rushing out onto the platforms at the various levels. Soen shouted, “Right! Right then left!”

Ethis and Wanrah obeyed. The dragon flipped suddenly to the right, cutting across the face of the Cloud Palace, then reversed itself into a left bank, a gentler turn that permitted Soen an unobstructed view of the balconies surrounding the avatria.

Let it be enough,
Soen thought in a prayer to any gods who might be listening.

He reached out with his left hand.

The Aether in his bones responded.

Marush was flying directly behind Wanrah when the first dragon turned hard to the right. Marush instinctively turned left, desperate to avoid both the Cloud Palace and the other dragon. He swung away from the Cloud Palace, circling back out into the sky, carrying Drakis and Urulani with him.

A brilliant blue wave shot through the Cloud Palace and beyond the far wall, dissipating in the air above the city.

“That’s it!” Drakis shouted. “Now, Marush! Get onto one of the balconies!”

Marush continued his turn. One of the petal-shaped balconies presented itself before the dragon as a likely perch. Marush cupped his wings, caught the air, and slowed.

Drakis unbuckled his harness as they approached. He could see the slumped form of three Cloud Guardians lying on the veranda, a coolly lit hallway leading into the palace beyond them. “Stay close to me, Urulani. Soen knows what he’s doing!”

“Yes, but do we know what Soen’s doing?” Urulani rejoined.

The claws of Marush’s hind legs reaching out to catch the edge of the terrace.

Drakis prepared to jump down from the dragon’s back. “What choice do we have but to…”

An explosion suddenly filled the air around Drakis with dust, smoke, and debris. Drakis jumped toward the opening beyond the platform. He landed hard, rolling into the curved hallway. Choking, he struggled to his feet as the dust cleared.

The balcony was gone. Drakis looked down over the shattered edge. Soen may have taken care of the Guardians on this level but several of their ranks several levels below remained unaffected. A war-mage among them had obliterated the landing from under them just as the dragon came to rest. Suddenly deprived of his expected perch, Marush fell out of the sky with Urulani still attached to the saddle harness, both tumbling down the face of the Cloud Palace along with the shards of the balcony. Drakis stared in horror as the dragon spun, his wings beating frantically at the air as he fell. Fortune favored the dragon, however, as it fell faster and faster down the sheer face of the palace, its wings finding purchase in the air with its renewed speed. Marush suddenly righted himself just above a lower level, skidding
slightly in the air before suddenly soaring outward from the palace and over the city. More bolts from the war-mages below pursued them as they swung around in the sky.

Drakis gritted his teeth. He could not wait for them. It was only a matter of time before the Cloud Guardians from the unaffected lower levels made their way up to the Emperor’s Devotions. They were running out of time and opportunity.

Drakis drew his sword and darted down the curving hall.

The interior was a curving maze of corridors as Soen had instructed them before they took flight. Soen had also said that once they understood where they were on the Devotions level, finding the Emperor’s Devotions would be simple. The problem was that Drakis had no idea which of the terrace entrances he had come in and nothing in the multiple intersecting arched corridors afforded him any recognition of his location.

A voice hissed behind him. “Is the Man of Prophecy lost?”

Drakis wheeled around, weapon readied in his hand.

Soen arrested Drakis’ sword hand in a powerful grip, his wide, sharp-toothed grin frightening. “There’s no time for games. Follow me!”

Soen led Drakis around a long curving corridor, then down a series of shorter corridors. Drakis was suddenly uncertain about the path back. In each successive passage, Cloud Guardians lay slumped to the floor. Several looked almost blissful as they lay in a heap against the walls or sprawled on the polished marble underfoot.

“What did you do to them?” Drakis asked.

“A little something I learned in a most embarrassing manner,” Soen said as they turned into yet another corridor, “from Braun.”

This corridor opened into a wide, curving gallery extending thirty feet above their heads to buttress arches bending toward the inner wall. The gallery looked as though it might form a huge circle in the center of the palace avatria. A number of additional Cloud Guardians lay along the length of the gallery in both directions, mixed with a number of comatose courtiers in different types of dress. Drakis guessed that their outfits must have been highly significant in terms of their official positions in the Imperial Court, but he was completely unfamiliar with what Orders or Ministries they must have represented.

“Here!” came the deep, echoing voice from their left. “This way!”

The dwarf waving his ax was just visible around the curve of the gallery. Soen and Drakis ran quickly toward Jugar, finding him standing next to a pair of ornately carved onyx doors more than three times the height of the dwarf.

“Well, so you’ve finally come! I’ve been waiting here for an unreasonable count of time but your triumph being so near at hand, I wanted to wait until Drakis himself arrived to confront the Emperor and let him feel the just results of his crimes!”

“You mean you could not open the door,” Soen said.

“Oh, and I suppose you can?” Jugar fumed.

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Soen affirmed.

“Right, then,” Jugar snarled. “You open the door, we go in, separate the Imperial head from its Imperial body and end this thing once and for all!”

“No!” Soen said with vehement conviction. “Whatever happens, do nothing to harm the Emperor until I’ve got control of the Devotions altar. It is critical that an elf take control of the altar first.”

The dwarf sputtered. “Why, that’s the biggest nonsense…”

“Remember what happened at the Citadels, Drakis?” Soen asked. “You couldn’t open the Well because you needed
humans
to make it work. This is no different: the Emperor’s Devotions altar was created only to accept elven control. You may not need an elf to invert the Well, Drakis, but you certainly need one to take control of the Devotions.”

“Is that where Braun went wrong?” Drakis demanded. “He couldn’t command the altar in Tjarlas and so
that’s
why Jugar couldn’t save him?”

A roaring sound echoed down the gallery. Drakis felt a sudden flash of heat.

“It’s the dragons,” Soen said. “Trying to keep the Guardians occupied.”

“We’re wasting time!” Jugar urged.

“Very well, Soen,” Drakis said. “Be quick!”

Soen nodded, reached toward the center of the onyx door and pressed the release.

The door slid downward, vanishing into the floor. Soen slipped
quickly through the opening. Drakis and the dwarf both followed him with their weapons in their hands.

Drakis was dashing into a meadow surrounded by towering forests. A sweet, fresh breeze filled the air, blowing across a small pond at the edge of the meadow. Six snow-capped peaks pierced the sky in the distance all around the glade. In the center of the meadow stood a small, grass-covered mound.

Atop the mound, sat the Emperor of Rhonas in serene repose.

“I’ve had about as much of that as I can take!” grumbled the dwarf. He pulled from his pouch his strange, dark stone.

“The Heart of Aer!” Drakis said in surprise. “What are you going to…?”

“See a little more clearly,” the dwarf answered.

As he raised the stone, it seemed to Drakis to emit a pulsing darkness that began to eat away at the beautiful mountain scene. The meadow dissolved into a black stone floor. The lush forests gave way to dark columns of red marble. The pond vanished altogether. The mound was transformed into a raised dais that supported a throne of granite shot through with veins of glowing crystal. The darkness from the dwarf’s stone reached higher into the octagonal hall. The distant mountains became six enormous Aether Well crystals, six feet across at their base where they plunged into the stone floor, each of which converged fifty feet directly over the throne.

“The Well of the Empire,” Soen whispered in awe. He turned back toward the onyx door, once again closed behind them. He pressed a release and the door locks slammed hard into place.

“The Well, yes…but where’s the altar?” Drakis asked.

“
That’s
the altar!” Soen took a hesitant pair of steps forward, eyeing the dais. “The throne is the altar.”

“Well, then,
do
it,” Drakis urged. He gestured toward where the Emperor sat with his eyes closed in quiet repose. “Take control of the Devotions while the Empire sleeps!”

Soen ran his tongue over his pointed teeth, hesitation in his dull, black eyes. “We never anticipated the spell would penetrate this far. We certainly didn’t think it would work here in the Well of the Empire. We need to…consider this for a few minutes…”

“Consider it!” Drakis hissed. “The Guardians will be here at any moment!”

“You’re right,” Soen nodded, looking back toward the sleeping Emperor. “I’ll have to…”

Suddenly Soen’s eyes flew open wide. The elf’s pointed skull snapped backward, his spine arching as he drew in a gasping breath.

“Soen?” Drakis asked in alarm.

The elf pitched forward, falling to the ground.

A dwarven ax was lodged squarely in Soen’s back.

“Jugar!” Drakis cried, stepping back.

The dwarf stepped forward, reaching casually down for the handle of the ax lodged in Soen’s split rib cage.

“I wouldn’t worry about one dead elf,” Jugar said, and then his face broke into a gap-toothed smile. “There’s going to be a lot more of them by nightfall.”

Drakis thought he heard the Emperor stir behind him.

Endgame