Flight of the Fallen

27 The Prisoner

The first thing Linsha became aware of was a deep throbbing pain behind her skull. It was a rhythmic pain as steady as a drumbeat, and it seemed to go on for hours. It took her quite a while to realize that part of the rhythm stuck in her brain was a drumbeat, pounding somewhere outside and accompanied by the noises of what sounded like a joyous celebration. Linsha didn’t care. Drowned in lethargy, she did not have the will to pull herself out. She lay without moving and sought the darkness and solace of sleep.

Someone walked into wherever she was and without a moment’s consideration, rolled her over onto her back.

The movement set off a concert of temple drums in her head. A groan hoisted itself out of her aching body, and she clamped her hands to her throbbing head. For a sickening moment, she thought she was going to vomit.

“Good,” said Lanther’s voice. “You’re awake.”

A hand slipped under her head and lifted it just high enough to push a cup of something to her lips.

“Drink this,” he ordered and punctuated his demand by forcing the contents into her mouth.

She sputtered and tried to spit it out, but he poured more in until she was forced to swallow a mild, almost sweet-tasting liquid that slid like warm wine down her parched throat.

He laid her head back, and she could hear him moving around the… where was she? In a tent? She opened her eyes and was relieved when her head did not shatter from the dim lamplight that lit the tent around her. When she could focus clearly, she looked around and saw that she was indeed in the Akkad-Dar’s tent. Darkness flooded in from the open tent entrance, explaining the necessity of the lamps. Outside, the celebration sounded like it was proceeding well.

“Welcome back,” the Akkad-Dar said. “You almost didn’t survive.”

Linsha did not bother to answer. She swept her eyes over the tent again, and this time she saw Varia sitting on a crude perch near the Akkad-Dar’s black seat. A chain connected a band fastened around the owl’s leg to the perch, and her wings looked like they had been clipped. Varia sat hunched, her feathers fluffed out and her dark eyes vacant. This more than anything else stirred some emotion in Linsha’s numb mind. She frowned. The warm drink had had some surprising effects, and she realized her stomach was not churning any more and her head felt somewhat better. She pushed herself to a sitting position on the pallet. But that was as far as she could go. Her entire body felt as if it had been caught in an avalanche and beaten to a pulp with several thousand tons of rocks.

“What have you done to Varia?” Her voice came out in a croak.

“The same thing I have done to you. Cared for you. Kept you subdued. You are lucky I did not kill you both when I discovered you’d found a way to free the dragon. I had looked forward to killing him myself.”

Linsha swayed slightly in the effort to stay upright. “How long have you kept us like this?” she asked huskily.

He sat down in his chair and lounged back on the fur pads with all the arrogance of the Tarmak. His skin was scrubbed clean now, and his long hair was pulled back behind his head. A shadow of a beard darkened his jaw and outlined the ragged scar down his cheek. He wore a black tunic and pants, which Linsha found an improvement over the blue paint and linen kilt. There was no outward sign of his arrow wound.

“About four days. Long enough to crush the feeble attempt made by the tribes and clans of this land to stop us and to take the towns of Stone Rose and Willik. In a few days we will attack Duntol. They have no chance, but I am hoping they put up a fight.”

“Gods,” she moaned. “Leonidas should have killed you.”

“Thanks to the One God, he did not. Now, I have a proposition for you.” He poured more of the warm, sweet liquid into the cup and brought it to her. Kneeling, he offered it to her with gentleness and the grin she remembered from their time in Missing City. “Drink this. It will make you stronger.”

Linsha looked at him. “What is your proposition, Dark Knight?” she snarled.

The reminder of his erstwhile profession pushed the smile off his face. “I was a Dark Knight only long enough to learn dark mysticism and establish my relationship with Takhisis. After she sent me my Vision, I left the Knighthood and returned to the Isle of the Tarmaks. I am the Akkad-Dar.”

Linsha snorted her disdain. “You are a traitor, an assassin, and a Brute. They deserve you.”

He set the cup down beside her. Swift as a snake, he clamped a hand behind her head and pulled her against him. He kissed her long and hard, then let her fall back on the pallet, panting.

“Urudwek told me I should just take you,” he said, jumping to his feet. “But that is for whores. You have earned my admiration this past year. I would rather offer you a choice. Stay with me. Fight by my side. Bear the children of my new dynasty, and you will have my respect and the power of my name. You will be the empress of these Plains. Stay with me, and I will free your owl and allow your dragon friend to live. However, if you refuse me, I will keep the owl and send you back to the slave pens in Missing City. And when I find Crucible as a dragon, cat, or man, I will sacrifice him to the Dark Queen and present his skull to her in tribute.”

Linsha looked into his vivid blue eyes and thought that once, perhaps before the death of Iyesta, if Lanther had offered his hand to her as a lover and a companion, she might have taken it. Now it was too late. Lanther was dead to her, and this tall, blue-eyed man that stood before her was a stranger who offered her the wages of dishonor and prostitution. There was no decision to be made.

“There was a man before you,” she replied in an almost conversational tone, “who also tried to seduce me. He was a Dark Knight, too. An assassin and a treacherous spy who deceived me and tried to kill me.” She sighed. “He died on the side of a volcano. Where would you like to die?”

The Akkad-Dar’s eyes glinted with cold humor. “I’ll take that as a no.” He snapped an order to a guard just outside the tent and watched as a Tarmak warrior fastened shackles around Linsha’s ankles and wrists and chained her to the heavy center tent pole. “However, I will give you a little time to change your mind.”

He turned on his heel and strode from the tent into the darkness.

Four days later the city of Duntol fell to the Tarmak invaders. Because of its importance as a trade city in the northwest plains, the Tarmaks treated it and its population in a similar manner to Missing City. They massacred all of the members of the government and the city watch, they drove off or killed all the defenders, and they selected many young, able-bodied people to be used for slave labor. They set about repairing much of the damage caused by the battle and swiftly organized a military government to run the city.

There was little organized resistance against them. Most of the fighting men and centaurs of the Plains tribes and clans who survived the Battle of the Red Rose had fled into the desert, and those who had not come in time to fight found themselves without an army to join.

Duntollik was no longer a free realm.

Meanwhile, the Akkad-Dar worked on consolidating the Tarmaks’ hold of the vast realm he had helped conquer. He left a large contingent of warriors in Duntol to hold the city and made a slow march back across the northern stretch of the Run to pacify the region and accept the surrenders of any chiefs willing to save their people from attack. He led his warriors in several skirmishes against reluctant tribes and in a pitched battle against a large force of the Windwalker clan of centaurs. He left their bodies unburied to insure the word would spread across the Plains that the Tarmaks could not he defeated.

True to his word, the Akkad-Dar searched hard for Crucible, sending out trackers and patrols of brigands to hunt down the dragon. But the bronze had disappeared into the wilds of the vast Plains. No one knew of him. No one had seen him. Everyone believed he was dead. Everyone but Linsha. The Akkad-Dar tried several times to force her to talk about the dragon and where he might have gone, but in spite of his strongest mystic spells, she could not tell him. She simply did not know. The Akkad-Dar knew she liked the dragon, but there was something about the bronze that stirred up powerful emotions in Linsha that shut out many things he tried to use against her. He was both impressed and frustrated.

Finally, he put off his desire for revenge and set his mind on other goals. The eastern half of the Plains of Dust and most of the northern grasslands were his, a huge realm of desert, rivers, plains, and grass. But he only had perhaps ten thousand warriors to defend this land and take what more they could. Kharolis to the west was now free of the green dragon, Beryl, and the Silvanesti Forest might be something to consider. The Knights of Neraka were there now, but they did not need all of those woods. He smiled when he looked at his maps and considered the possibilities. To fulfill these grand plans, he would need more warriors. The emperor at home needed to be informed and more warriors sent. There was much to do before winter set in on the Plains.

The Akkad-Dar left most of his remaining warriors behind to control Duntollik and took only five fast-moving ekwul with him back to the Toranth River and the trail to Missing City. He also took the plunder of three towns and a dozen tribes, a large herd of horses, perhaps two hundred slaves captured from the Plains people, and Linsha.

Linsha saw little of the Akkad-Dar during those long days on the trail. The morning after her refusal of his offer, she was locked in the slave cage to ensure she did not escape again. For twenty days she endured the long marches, the hot sun, the cold nights, and the lack of food. She did not see Varia again. At first she was too numb to care what the Tarmaks did to her. Months of fighting, worry, despair, grief, and hardship had taken its toll and finally brought her low. She lay in her cage for days, too sad and weak to move, too worn out to care where they were going.

When the Tarmaks and their caravan finally returned to Missing City, Linsha did not bother to look. What difference did it make? Everyone she knew was either dead or missing. Iyesta, General Dockett, Mariana, Sir Remmik and all but one Solamnic Knight, many of the Legionnaires, most of the militia—they were dead and out of it. The rest, Falaius, Sir Hugh, Crucible, and Leonidas were gone beyond her reach. For all she knew, they were dead, too, killed in the battle by the river. There was nothing left. She didn’t even know where the dragon eggs were.

She could barely stand when the cage door was opened and she was ordered to get out. She climbed slowly out of the wagon and stood swaying in her filthy clothes and matted hair. Her guards gave her a disdainful glare and led her into a building she did not recognize. She knew she was back in the city, in the Port District, perhaps, but beyond that she did not know or care. Thus she was flabbergasted when she was escorted into a room with silk hangings and a large bed decorated with colorful pillows. The heavy scent of perfume hung in the air, and candles burned on every flat surface in spite of the daylight that gleamed through one large window. A guard shouted something to someone, then the door was closed and locked behind her.

She studied the room for a moment with growing suspicion and apprehension. Beside the fire was a large metal tub stood filled with water that gently steamed. A meal of soup, bread, fruit, and cheese sat on a small table beside a ewer of wine. Her apathy of the past few weeks cracked just a little, and she searched the room for anything she could use as a weapon.

Light footsteps padded into the room from another door, and the last person Linsha expected to see stepped lightly toward her.

“Callista,” she whispered.

The blonde courtesan studied her from head to toe and shook her head in pity. “Lady, I never thought I’d see you here like this, but I’ve had instructions to clean you up and feed you, and this seemed the best place to do it.”

“Instructions from whom?” Linsha snapped.

“The Akkad-Dar.” Callista’s fair face clouded with dismay. “I certainly never expected to see Lanther’s face behind that mask. When he took it off, I nearly fainted from shock.”

“Why?” Linsha asked. “Why does he want me bathed now?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. He just told me to do it.” She pointed to the door. “And he said if you didn’t cooperate, the guards would do it instead.”

Linsha eyed the door and then the tub. Although she did want to know what the Akkad-Dar had in mind, she had to admit the thought of a hot hath was almost more than she could refuse. She was filthy and she smelled—Callista kept turning her nose away—and she ached in every joint. The thought of soaking away too many days of sweat, dust, blood, and muck was delightful, a feeling she had not had in months. More cracks appeared in her shell of apathy.

Giving a nod to Callista, she tore off her clothes and stepped into the tub. The hot, scented water engulfed her. Using a sponge and soap Callista gave her, she scrubbed and scrubbed her skin until it looked pink again. She washed her hair in a basin of clean water Callista brought, then washed it again just because she could. Between the washings, she ate the soup, the bread, and the fruit and watched Callista burn her clothes. She rather hoped the courtesan had something else for her to wear that did not include skimpy pants and tight-fitting tops, but she felt so languorous in the tub that she did not really care.

It was twilight when Linsha finally stepped out of the cool water and toweled herself dry. She felt better than she had in days, and a little of her energy returned. She stretched her muscles slowly and carefully and tried a few exercises while she warmed near the fire. Callista watched her in amusement.

A thunderous knock at the door startled both women. Callista threw her a clean blue tunic and a long skirt and stood in front of her while she pulled them on. The door slammed open. A Tarmak officer walked in.

“Pack one small bag. You are to be sent as tribute to the Emperor Khanwhelak. The ship leaves tonight with the tide.”

“What?” both women said in unison. “Who?”

“No!” Callista wailed. “Wait! No one said I was to go anywhere.”

“I just did,” the Tarmak informed her. “Now move.” He closed the door behind him.

“He can’t be serious,” the courtesan cried.

Linsha sighed and sank down in a chair. What were the Tarmaks going to do with her? Some of her lethargy returned. Were they going to send her away on the ship too? To where? The Tarmaks’ homeland? Why? As tribute? What exactly was “tribute” supposed to do? She could understand why they would pick Callista. The girl was beautiful with long blonde hair and eyes like a summer sky. She would be a rarity in a land of dark-haired women. But what were they going to do with a thin, warrior-trained exiled Knight? Had the Akkad-Dar decided this, or did he have something else in mind for her? She closed her eyes, too weary to think about it.

But several loud crashes and wails brought her back to the present. Callista was not adjusting well to the idea of a sea voyage. Linsha stood up. Just to be sure, she looked out the window to see if there was any escape that way. The window opened to a sheer wall that ran its full length on a busy street full of Tarmak warriors. There was nowhere to go that way.

Silently, she opened Callista’s bag and while the courtesan threw in cosmetics, jewels, and bits of clothing, Linsha packed a blanket, the utensils from her meal, a cloak she found in a chest, and a bottle of wine. In a second blanket, she rolled up another cloak, some warm hose, the rest of the cheese and bread she had not eaten, and a small dagger she unearthed in a drawer.

She had just finished tying a carry strap around the rolled up blanket when the guard returned. Behind him entered the Akkad-Dar, looking refreshed and pleased with the proceedings of the evening. He ran his eye over the two women and smiled a cool grimace that did nothing to melt the ice in his eyes.

Both women watched silently as the Akkad-Dar walked to the chair by the table and made himself comfortable. He had the air of a king in his own throne room, Linsha thought, rather than a man visiting a courtesan.

“Callista, you have done well,” he said, pouring himself a goblet of wine. “She has cleaned up nicely.”

The courtesan tilted up her small nose. “I wouldn’t have had so much to do if you had treated her better than a dog,” she snapped.

Linsha’s eyes widened. She hadn’t expected feistiness from this young woman.

The Akkad-Dar chuckled. “The conditions of travel were her choice.” He sipped his wine slowly, savoring every drop.

Linsha knew he was deliberately keeping them waiting, but she didn’t protest. She was dreading his next move. Her jaw set, she stepped around Callista, picked up her own goblet, and refilled it with wine. Without waiting for permission or an invitation, she sat in another chair by the fire and said, “What do you want?”

She already knew. Why else would he have her cleaned up like this? The fleeting moment of peace brought on by the bath and the wine slipped away, and a heavy despair filled her.

He lifted his goblet to her. “You have had a taste of slave life and time to think. I am offering to marry you one last time. This is the last time. If you refuse now, you will be sent to the slave pens for the rest of your life.”

Linsha heard Callista give a small gasp; whether of fright or surprise, she didn’t know. She was startled when the young woman took her hand and pulled her out of the chair to the window, away from the Akkad-Dar’s hearing.

“Lady Linsha,” the courtesan whispered vehemently, “you are going to accept, aren’t you? You must.”

Linsha kept her expression passive. She turned her back to the Akkad-Dar and asked, “Why? I despise the man. You want me to marry him?”

Callista’s beautiful face filled with anger. “I’d rather you shove a knife in him. But if you say no, he’ll send you to the pens.” She clutched Linsha’s arm. “I’ve seen them. You won’t last more than a few days in there.”

“I can handle myself in the slave pens,” Linsha replied, her voice belying the fear she felt.

“Not if the Tarmaks know the Akkad-Dar has removed his protection from you. If the officers don’t take you, the warriors will put you in their war games and fight you until you are killed. Accept his offer.”

Linsha did not answer immediately. Thoughts tangled in her mind with regrets and grief and a loneliness so powerful she ached from it. Marry the Akkad-Dar, the man whom she had once known as Lanther. By the gods, how could she do it? Was death preferable?

As if Callista could see the path of her thoughts, the courtesan squeezed her arm again. “If you chose this way, you chose a chance at life. Just do what you can until your destiny reveals itself.”

Destiny. Linsha snorted. Yet… she did not know where her destiny lay anymore. For years she’d thought her destiny was the Solamnic Knighthood where she would serve with honor until the end of her days. Look where that had brought her! Dishonored, falsely accused, black-listed, abandoned, and now trapped as a captive in a fallen city. There was nothing left but emptiness.

She twisted to look out the open window, and as her body moved she became aware of the slight shift of the dragon scales under her shirt. Although she had deliberately ignored them since the battle on the Red Rose, they had remained hanging on the chain around her neck, warm against her skin.

Her fingers lifted the chain and clutched the scales through the fabric of her tunic. The reminder of the dragons brought such a rush of sadness that she swayed against the window frame.

Callista stared at her worriedly and grasped her elbow to steady her, but she said nothing more, allowing Linsha to reach her own decision.

Lanther was not quite so patient. “The tide is moving, Linsha. I must be away. What is your answer?”

She turned to him, her hand still clutching the scales. “I have a price,” she said. “A bridal gift.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Your life is not enough?”

“No,” she said with an empty voice. “My life is over. Take it if you want it. I don’t care. But if you want me, you must pay my price.”

“What then? What is it you want?”

Far away in the distant memories of a day that seemed so long ago, she remembered the words of a magnificent brass dragon, her friend, standing by the leaves of the ancient Grandfather Tree. The bond formed between a dragon and a human is worth the effort to forge it.

“Oh, Iyesta,” she breathed.

Gathering her courage, Linsha Majere faced the Akkad-Dar.

“I want the dragon eggs.”