Blood of the Emperor (5 page)

Upside Down

U
RULANI STRODE THROUGH THE SOUTHEAST Goblin Gate of Port Glorious as the morning sun rose behind her with salmon hues. Her appearance was acknowledged by the manticorian and chimerian warriors working to clear the gate marketplace of the dead and debris with bows and silent salutes. Urulani was grateful for this change. When they had first returned with the dragons to find the Army of the Prophet and the pilgrim refugees on the shores of Willow Vale any sight of Drakis or any of those who had returned with him was enough to elicit wild cheers and thunderous acclamations. She had managed with considerable difficulty and the assistance of the Council of the Prophet to dissuade the warriors in the army from the practice of dropping everything to honor any of the “Drakis Chosen” as they had come to be called in favor of the quieter and subtler salute.

Yet they still looked at her with those same eyes. She could see the adoration and the hope behind them. It was a look the raider captain could not tolerate for any long period of time.

Now this dark-skinned captain of the Sondau Clan had been reduced to an all-too-glorified messenger. Ethis had come to her after the council disbanded the previous evening, begging her to present a message to Drakis on his behalf. He had rebuffed her suggestion that he run his own errands, claiming that Drakis would not see him but that he might see Urulani. She had tried that night to approach Drakis
in his tent, believing it the best time to find him there but the manticorian guards had established a perimeter around his lodgings and had orders to let no one pass. She had attempted again at first light this morning and had been admitted—only to find not Drakis but a messenger with an urgent request from the Aether Master Braun that Drakis be brought to him at once. Urulani had dismissed the messenger, promising to fulfill the charge of the grateful man. She had been engaged in an increasingly frustrating search for Drakis ever since, discovering a number of warriors who claimed to have seen him but somehow their directions never seemed to get her any closer to finding him. The last had brought her through the southeastern gate of the town wall and into the carnage that lay before her.

It occurred to her to try another tactic. If Braun was looking for Drakis then perhaps all she really needed to do was to find Braun.

The destruction here near the former docks was bad enough but she knew that the plaza beyond the wreckage was much worse. There, the manticores had been working throughout much of the day to clear the slaughtered elven warriors from the charred square. That had been the place of greatest carnage, the dragon’s breath descending like a deadly avalanche of flame on the tightly packed ranks of elven Octia. These warriors had been destroyed utterly before they had a chance to be deployed. The forward elements of the Army of the Prophet had breached three of the five city gates quickly which had allowed them opportunity to get the fires in the center of the town under control before the entire village—and its precious food stores—had been utterly destroyed.

The town and its buildings were unimportant. The food stores were everything in this raid.

However, Urulani found it difficult to think of food’s importance at this moment. She had been a Captain of the Forgotten and as such had been a seasoned participant of many raids along the shores of Thetis Bay. Death had always been a part of her world but the stench from the still smoldering corpses in the plaza was almost overwhelming, even for her.

She spotted a human male hovering at the edge of the charred ruins, reluctant to help with the dreadful work at hand. His face seemed unusually pale even in the evening light.

Urulani approached him. “Pardon my question…”

The man turned, his scowl shifting at once into surprise. He fell to the ground in front of her, his arms stretched out before him as his face pressed toward the ground. “My Great Lady of the Dragon! Speak that I may serve you!”

“Oh, get up,” Urulani urged, gripping the man by his arms and dragging him to his feet.

“Yes, My Great Lady of the Dragon,” the man sputtered.

“What is your name?” she asked.

“Bartolem, my Lady,” the man blurted out.

“I’m looking for Braun.” Urulani dispensed with pleasantries. She knew diplomacy was not entirely her strong suit and when confronted with anything that made her feel awkward, she often reverted to being the commanding captain.

The man stared blankly at her.

“The Aether Master,” Urulani insisted.

“The human wizard?” Bartolem asked.

“Yes! He asked to see me.” That part was not entirely true. Braun had asked for Drakis but he was nowhere to be found so she had come in his stead. “Where is he?”

Bartolem gestured to his left. “This way, my Lady. I saw him on the fold platform by the eastern gate.”

“The fold platform?” Urulani said with surprise as she eyed the narrow street to the north the man had indicated. “I thought Port Glorious had no folds.”

“It doesn’t,” Bartolem confirmed, gesturing again to the narrow street. “Here, let me show you.”

Urulani followed Bartolem as he made his way up the narrow, winding street, lined with watchful troops. Each saluted as she passed, their expressions conveying their pride and their support for her.

It’s embarrassing,
she thought grimly.

She followed the man between the buildings and across a small courtyard with a broken, dry fountain in its center. There were several exiting alleyways and Urulani hesitated for a moment but Bartolem urged her quietly to follow him into an alley on the opposite side. Within less than a dozen steps the narrow, winding canyon between the buildings on either hand opened onto the corner of what had been
the main market square. The stalls were gone, replaced by a number of tents occupied by the field commanders of the army. There was a constant bustling through this area of manticores, humans, gnomes, and goblins relaying commands and results from the various units now operating throughout the occupied town. On her right hand rose what remained of the Emperor’s Gate, its shattered doors laid askew. Gnome workmen were already busy rebuilding and shoring up the gates despite Belag’s admonition not to bother with it. The army would not be here long enough to complete the job, let alone make use of the completed gates.

On the northern side rose a rectangular temple, which ran the length of the marketplace from east to west. Rows of statues stood along the outer temple wall.

“Elven gods?” Urulani asked.

“Yes, dedicated originally to Kiris,” Bartolem mused aloud.

Urulani raised her eyebrows at the human.

“My former master in Blackbay was most devout and insisted everyone in his household learn and worship the Rhonas pantheon,” Bartolem explained in haste. “See that row of statues lining the side of the building. Each of the statues depicted another aspect of the eye of the sun traversing the sky and the trickster moon dancing in chase. Kiris is the goddess of light and dark—she who sees the seen and the unseen.”

“Let’s hope she isn’t watching now,” Urulani muttered. “So where is Braun?”

“I saw the wizard down on the left, toward the Governor’s old home.”

Urulani nodded and started through the tents, leaving Bartolem in her wake. Creatures and humans stumbled over themselves to get out of the way and honor Urulani all at the same time. Ahead of her, to the west, she could see the subatria that had supported the Governor’s House. The avatria no longer pierced the sky, but lay in a heap at the far side of its foundation.

Then, through the tents on her left, she saw it.

It was a low stone platform of the same design which, according to Braun, commonly supported nearly every elven fold throughout the Rhonas Empire and well into its provinces. In this case, however, it
was incomplete as there was no fold established above it for the platform to support.

It was, however, supporting Braun and a rather agitated Jugar.

Urulani frowned. Having the dwarf and human wizards in any kind of proximity had become increasingly volatile and even dangerous over the weeks since the two had met.

Braun was still as insane as Drakis had described him but somehow knew more about Aether magic than even the mysterious dwarf Jugar. He had proved himself invaluable so far in the campaign and, if Belag were to be believed, had even proved adept at opening gateway folds more spectacularly than anyone—elf or human—of whom she had ever heard. Braun had even begun teaching some of the humans among the warriors the arts of drawing on the Aether and putting it to use in warfare. Yet despite these considerable skills to his credit, he still made Urulani uneasy.

“Air Mistress!” shouted Braun, waving from atop the platform. Fortunately, no one began a chanting chorus at the sound of her title.

Braun’s face broke into a wide smile. He was a short man with a stocky build and a large, hooked nose. Dark hair streaked with gray had emerged from his head, still raggedly short, as it had not been growing long. His original Sinque mark still showed through its bristles, reminding Urulani that this man had once been enslaved by the elves.

Urulani climbed the stairs up the side of the fold platform and was immediately confronted by the dwarf.

“Well, it’s about time someone came capable of talking sense!” exclaimed the gruff voice from farther back on the level stone stage. “Where’s Drakis?”

Where indeed,
Urulani thought, but she chose other words to speak aloud. “He is delayed. He asked me to come and find out why you called for him so urgently.”

Jugar planted both his fists on his hips. “I’ve had to listen to this windbag bellow pointless noises for the last hour and, despite my most diplomatic efforts, I assure you, I’ve made
no headway
against his nonsense!”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Braun countered.

“That’s beside the point!” the dwarf sputtered.

Urulani looked at the dwarf and sighed. Jugar appeared to be in rather high dudgeon. He wore a padded leather coat that he had cut off at the arms and to a length to better fit him. The canvas trousers and linen shirt were a far cry from the original garish clothing that Drakis had first found him wearing as he emerged from the hiding place beneath the king’s throne. Urulani had to admit that she missed the colorful costume although the dwarf had managed to retain his wide brimmed hat. “Jugar, what
is
the point?”

“The point is that this human charlatan shouldn’t be practicing magic without a license!” the dwarf sputtered as the thumb of his left hand gestured toward Braun.

“There’s no qualified authority to issue such a permit,” Braun shrugged.

“Well, if there
were
such an authority, I would see to it that your license was revoked forthwith!” the dwarf spat back. “You’re reckless—playing with all our lives!”

“We’ll never learn anything if we don’t experiment,” Braun replied. “We need to grow. See a bit farther over the horizon than we have…”

“Are you casting aspersions upon my height?” Jugar grumbled, his fingers playing on the handle of his ubiquitous ax.

“Jugar! Please!” Urulani said, trying to remain patient. She was tired and the bickering was not helping her disposition. “What did he do?”

“What did he
do
?” Jugar exclaimed. “What
didn’t
he do, more like! Did you know that this human charlatan leaped down from the dragon ahead of me? A feat in itself considering how anxious I was to get off that fell beasty!”

The titles that the Council of the Prophet had bestowed upon several of its members were supposed to help define the boundaries of authority between each but sometimes they were more of a nuisance than a help. Jugar was appointed “Master of Aer” while Braun was titled “Master of Aether” although he protested that Aether was what the elves called their magic and that “Anti-Aether” might be a better term. No one else understood the distinction and thus Braun became the “Master of Aether” anyway. All of this was of great distinction between the two of them but of little help to the rest of the army as the difference was completely lost upon the common warrior.
It was all just “magic” to the army and whatever they called it was firmly in the province of the two “wizards” who were its masters. This left the two to bicker over the details between themselves with an animosity that had been building steadily ever since they were first introduced to one another. The War Council had decided it would be a good idea to have Jugar and Braun dropped into the subatria of the Governor’s home in Port Glorious ahead of the ground-bound army to remove the Aether Well before the garrison of elven warriors could counter their attack. This, apparently, had ignited yet another argument.

“You were both assigned to assault the Aether Well,” Urulani shrugged. Her head was beginning to hurt again. “He was just doing his job…”

“He was doing
my
job,” Jugar interrupted indignantly. “More than that, he did it
wrong
!”

“Wrong?” Urulani chuckled. “It worked rather well for a mistake.”

“No mistake that,” Jugar sputtered. “He deliberately reversed the Well!”

Urulani shook her head, not understanding. “What?”

“I reversed the Aether Well,” Braun said again with his cockeyed smile. “I listened carefully to the stories Jugar told upon your return. He is quite in love with the sound of his own voice and so wasted no time in regaling everyone with ears as to the details of your marvelous quest among the ruins of Drakosia. I was particularly interested in that part of the story where Drakis was in the Citadel of Light and how he opened the Aether Well.”

I was there. I tried to help Mala—only Mala found her own way to die and I could not stop her. Mala said she was going home and then the dragon Pharis ended her life. I fled through the resurrecting ruins of the ancient city, walls suspended in midair as they tried to reassemble themselves into the city that had died so long ago. How could I explain to Drakis what had happened to her? How could he ever forgive me for allowing it to happen at all…?

“Did you understand?” Braun concluded.