Song of the Dragon (61 page)

“Please, my boy,” Jugar tugged at the human's belt. “Enough of this.”

“Enough?” Drakis' laugh had a hysterical edge. “This weak, windy song? Let's make a decent noise of it! Let's call the whole world up here to see just how hollow this legend of yours is!”

Drakis turned back to the dragon's head, drew in a deep breath and blew as hard as he could through the hole.

A thunderous blast of sound shook the ground, raising a pall of dust two feet high. Drakis staggered back from the statue, his hands clasped to his ears.

Mala stood up, her jaw dropping in wonder.

The crystals under the statue's talons flared suddenly to life, brilliant light radiating outward, then curving back in on itself, forming a ball on the platform directly beneath the statue.

Ethis turned, his eye widening.

All down the range the other statues were answering in kind. Ethis watched as the bases of each, as far as he could see, were being illuminated by crystals as well.

Jugar's cheers were entirely engulfed in the sound.

The progression of the song began, note after overwhelming note—
Nine notes . . . Seven notes . . .
shaping the globe beneath the dragon statue until it flashed once and stabilized.

The Lyric smiled.

Drakis staggered back off the platform just as the song concluded, its final chords echoing off the sunset-glowing mountain peaks to the north.

He took his hands from his ears.

The song had stopped . . . it was gone from his mind.

“It's a fold!” Ethis shouted.

The sphere of light beneath the dragon had become a portal. It was ancient—certainly older than any known in Rhonas. Beyond it was a land of dense green forests and bright towers in the distance.

Mala screamed.

Drakis looked up.

The peaks of the God's Wall range suddenly began to move.

Drakis' legs lost their strength.

As far as he could see, from every crag and mountaintop, dragons had awakened . . . and were filling the skies.

They answered the call.

They were coming for him.

T
HE OLD ELVEN WOMAN had all the credentials of a Court Adjudicator of the Ministry of Occupation—a wizened post well suited to her age. If anyone looked more closely as she traveled the Northmarch Folds, they might discover that she bore the name of Liu Tsi-Feing, Third Court Adjudicator of the Arikasi Tjen-soi Prefecture and a Sight-maiden of the Paktan Order. Liu would tell you that she was a devout follower of Kiris, the elven Goddess of Light and Dark and that her mission on behalf of her master Arikasi dealt with trade disputes in the northern territories.

All of it was perfectly correct.

None of it was true.

The elven woman stepped uncertainly from the fold portal, gripping her walking stick tightly. The fold itself was guarded on both sides by rather impressive Warriors of the Nekara Order with a single Occuran Foldmaster sitting with his feet over the edge of the platform.

Young,
the old woman thought,
on his first posting for the Order and wondering if there was any part of the Empire more distant from all he wanted than this one.

The woman struggled forward, her staff dragging against the stone of the platform. The day was pleasantly cool. She could smell the breeze coming off the bay beyond the mud and stone walls of the town below. There was music rolling over the walls, and she could hear happy shouts and laughter punctuating the music drifting up the slope.

The Occuran Foldmaster did not bother to stand. He only turned to see who had come through and, seeing no one of importance, turned back to his idle consideration of his own importance.

The old woman would not be put off, however.

“Young Foldmaster,” she said in a quavering voice. “What town is this?”

“Yurani Keep,” the youth replied, though the effort seemed to pain him. “That stack of mud buildings is the capital city of this region.”

“They seem to be celebrating,” the woman noted. “Do you know the cause? Is it a holiday?”

“I do
not
know the cause . . . nor do I care.” The youth stretched at the aching in his limbs. “They have given us three days of rest and peace from their constant trafficking of their wares through this fold, and that is as good a cause as any to celebrate so far as I am concerned.”

The old woman smiled and nodded as she hobbled down off the platform and wound her way toward the city gates. The Foldmaster was typical of elven youth: spoiled, proud, lazy, whining, and lost in his self-importance.

She silently put him on her list.

In time she arrived at the gates through the city walls, finding them both open and unattended. The narrow, winding avenues with their cobblestone streets were filled with short, rust-brown gnome men, women, and children laughing and chattering at one another. Wherever there were small bands of drummers, lute players, trumpeters or other musicians playing together, they were surrounded by other gnomes who were invariably dancing and cavorting through the streets.

She came at last to the large, paved plaza of the city and climbed with stiff and pained strides the wide stairs up to the Great House Hall of the Caliphate of the Dje'kaarin. Several gnome guards stood before the great doorway that led into the hall. The Captain of the Guard stepped out from their number and held his hand up.

“Stop!”

“Yes?” the woman asked weakly.

“You wish to see the Caliph?”

“That is why I have come.”

The captain's hand flipped palm up. “Ten Imperial decella for ten minutes. Hard coin only—no paper!”

“Could the Captain of the Guard manage to give me a private audience . . . undisturbed . . . for, say, twenty decella?”

The captain considered for a moment, then nodded. “He's all yours . . . for twenty.”

The woman sighed, then produced the coins for the captain. He stepped aside and motioned the rest of the guards to do likewise. She passed through the large doors and turned her stooped form back to close the doors behind her.

As the doors rang shut, the old elf woman turned, gripping her staff firmly with both her hands. She took in the disgusting room with practiced eyes. Bent over and with shuffling steps, she moved slowly toward the throne of the Caliph.

Ch'drei was in no hurry; she knew how to play a part well.

Few alive remembered that the Keeper had been a great Inquisitor in her day. Down the years of her rise to the highest position in her Order, she had increasingly affected the roll of a withered elven matron. While it was true that her skills had diminished over time, it was not nearly to the extent that even her closest associates in the Order thought. She held them against those times when it was necessary that she travel alone.

This had become one of those times.

It had all gone wrong. She first knew it when reports came back of entire gnome cities being massacred by Iblisi Quorums in the Vestasian wasteland. Jukung had been her choice to quietly contain the problem; he became her mistake, and she could see that now. She thought his passion would give him strength to do the job; instead it consumed him to the point where he forgot what the mission was about. The surviving members of Jukung's Quorums whom she questioned confirmed her worst fears. He had substituted his own orders for hers. Now Jukung was dead, and all the Empire, it seemed, was talking about how the Iblisi had been hunting a human named Drakis . . . and succeeded only in killing everyone they met
except
him.

This disaster was bad enough—but not enough to bring her out of her lair. Ch'drei had come north for her own reasons: One of the Assesia she interviewed had given her a message from the one person she had no wish to hear from.

Soen.

He seemed to have vanished almost the moment after he had killed Jukung in some obscure human coastal village. The Codexia could not say where he had gone. They had followed rumors of an elven Iblisi tracking a manticore eastward along the Thetis Coast; there were other reports of him among the mud gnome cities, or passing east into Ephindria, or bartering for a ship in Menninos. None of it could be confirmed. All that remained was the message given her by the Codexia.

She stopped and looked up at the foot of the throne.

At the sight, Ch'drei straightened at once, tossing back the hood from her head.

The Keeper of the Iblisi stood staring at the form of Argos Helm, the former Caliph of the Dje'kaarin and now a rapidly rotting corpse impaled on the top of his own throne.

“You always were a clever boy,” Ch'drei breathed through clenched teeth.

No wonder the town was celebrating. Argos Helm was a despot of the worst kind, but he had been a despot the elves could easily control. Now it would be only a matter of time—days perhaps—before the warlords of the Dje'kaarin threw the region into an uproar over which of them would be dominant. The guards outside were undoubtedly making their coin letting the jubilant citizens in for a peak at this freak show that . . .

A mark on the frame of the throne caught her eye. It would have been invisible to anyone else, but those trained in her Order had it so ingrained into them that it would call their attention even without an active search.

Ch'drei moved quickly around the throne. The blood of Argos Helm had dried down the back of the throne, but she paid no attention to it or the rotting corpse. She pried at the back board. It came away in one piece exposing a hollow space.

Within lay a vellum scroll tied with a brightly colored ribbon.

Ch'drei snatched it from its place, pulled the ribbon free, and unrolled the vellum. The writing on it was in an ancient script known now only among the Iblisi and used generally for messages intended for their ranks alone. She recognized the concise and careful hand that wrote it at once.

Ch'drei looked up at the broken form of the gnome Caliph. The sounds of laughter and music, muffled and distant, filtered into the hall.

“So it's begun, Soen, you fool” she murmured to the empty hall. “And you do not know how terribly it will end for us all.”

THE END OF BOOK ONE

 

T
HE THROATS OF A THOUSAND DRAGONS answered the call.

Drakis took several steps back from the towering statue, awestruck by the shapes rising from the craggy peaks beyond. He glanced back at the statue, the craning neck with the ridge of scales curving down to the horn-spiked head with bladelike long teeth onto the ancient marble base, the enormous stone wings rising straight up over a hundred feet, and the gigantic claws gripping the glowing crystal globes. His gaze jumped back to the mountaintops and the shadows pulling their way closer to him through the evening sky. Dragons . . . real dragons! Even from this distance of several leagues he could make out some details of the enormous monsters, their great wings sweeping forward and scooping the air down and back with every stroke. The sound of their shrieking calls rolled down the mountainside and shook the wide pedestal on which he stood, carrying away with it every other sensation. It encompassed him, shot through him and drowned out everything else. Somewhere nearby the muffled voice of Urulani shouted through the noise, calling her men to gather closer around the statue and ready their weapons. What were their names, he vaguely thought. The dwarf, he knew, was also shouting nearby but his voice sounded more distant than the dragon calls and his movements were somehow slow. Ethis was pulling at the dwarf, dragging him back on to the pedestal and closer to the fold—the magical portal sphere of radiant blue light that had opened at the base of the statue. Beyond the portal fold and through its shining blue haze he could see a land of dense foliage and distant towers but it seemed so very far away. Mala lay sobbing hysterically at his feet. . . .

Mala, his Mala . . . the Mala that had betrayed them all because he had heard the song of these dragons and brought them here.

Drakis grabbed her arm, dragging her to her feet. The muffled, confused sounds filling his ears suddenly cleared and he was at once keenly aware of his surroundings. He had been a warrior not so many months ago in a different lifetime; his training acted for him. He reached for his sword, pulling it from its scabbard and finding comfort in the sound of the steel blade as it cleared the leather.

“Urulani! Get everyone back to the ship!” Drakis shouted.

“We can't outrun that!” Kendai yelled.

“It's coming here,” Drakis snapped. “It's coming for me. I'll stay here—cut back and forth through the fold—and keep them at bay until you can get to the ship and think of some way to get me out of this.”

“I'm staying,” Ethis said.

“We'll take them together,” growled the dwarf.

Urulani opened her mouth but Drakis spoke first. “You have to get the rest out of here,” Drakis said in the firm voice of command that he had heard so often before from his commanders and which he, in turn, learned to use on those under his leadership. It was a voice that carried its own authority. “You're the captain. You're the only one who can. Take Mala and the Lyric with your crew and get help!”