Flight of the Fallen

4 Into the Labyrinth

The prisoner huddled against the wall of the stone cell. There were only three holding cells in the Post, all carved into the rock wall of the canyon and all large enough to hold at least five large men. The prisoner, the sole occupant of his cell, looked small and pathetic on the floor, like a pale pile of bloody rags.

Linsha eyed him critically. “Another one?” she said with some disapproval.

Lanther was not known for his ability to treat enemy prisoners with kid gloves. He was usually a patient and deliberate man, but almost two years ago he had spent too many days in the hands of Sable’s guards after they caught him in the swamp. He still bore the limp and the scars to prove it. Since that time he had little patience or mercy left to offer uncooperative enemy prisoners.

He shrugged at her question. “In truth, we found him like this. I think the mercenaries left him out in the Rough to die.”

The Rough, the rock-strewn, scrubby grasslands on the outskirts of the Missing City certainly would have finished off a wounded man-if the wild dogs, the lions, or the ants did not find him first.

Linsha looked closer at the prisoner and realized the tatters and rags she had taken for his clothes were just an undertunic and some leggings. There was no sign of boots, cloak, outer tunic, vest, jerkin, or even armor. The man had been stripped of everything but his undergarments.

“Did your men take-?”

“We would have if he’d had any, but he was left the way you see him. I think he irritated someone.” He pulled the rough wooden door open further, lifted a torch from its bracket, and thrust it into the gloom.

The two stepped inside. Varia dropped from Linsha’s shoulder and glided into the darkness of the cell. Extending her taloned feet, she landed gently on the wounded man’s back. The prisoner did not move. The owl craned her neck to study the man’s face half-hidden by his out-flung arm.

“This one is dead,” Varia hooted softly. She hopped to the ground close to his head.

Lanther swore and hurried over. Rolling the man over, he held the torch over the slack, battered face.

A stink of urine, sweat, and old blood rose from the body. The corpse’s face stared glassily through half-closed lids. He was a young man, Linsha noticed, too short to be a Tarmak and too well fed and heavily muscled to be one of the townsfolk still living in the city. A mercenary, probably. He had been viciously beaten on his head and torso and whipped across his back. She also noticed some odd burn marks on his temples. What had he done to deserve such treatment?

She knelt beside the body and closed the bruised eyelids. “Leonidas mentioned the eggs?”

Lanther irritably pushed a hank of dark hair out of his eyes and glared down at the corpse. “Gods blast it. I wanted you to hear this man’s story from his own lips.”

“Does it matter? Did you think I wouldn’t trust you? Since he can’t, you tell me.”

With an abruptness marked with annoyance, Lanther rolled the body back onto its stomach. “He claimed the Tarmaks have moved the dragon eggs back into the labyrinth. He didn’t know why, and he was hazy about where. Apparently he wasn’t supposed to be down in the tunnels—none of them are because some of Iyesta’s guardians are still loose down there. But he said they—meaning the mercenaries—went down there often through Iyesta’s throne room to look for more treasure.”

“I can believe that. They were not happy when the Tarmaks cleared out the treasure during our attack.”

“No,” Lanther agreed.

“So he stumbled on the nest?”

“No. He overheard a large party of Tarmaks moving through the tunnels. He told me he followed them for a short way because they were carrying large baskets.”

Linsha lifted the owl back to her shoulder and walked with Lanther out of the cell. “How did he know they had the eggs?” she questioned, continuing their conversation as he left the door open and replaced the torch in its bracket.

“He wanted to get close enough to see if they were carrying treasure, but when he heard them discussing eggs, he hightailed it out of there.”

“So who beat him?”

They walked into a small adjoining room.

“His captain,” Lanther answered. “He didn’t say why.”

Her arms crossed, Linsha gazed silently at the wall of the small guardroom that served the men who kept watch on the cells. It was empty at that moment and very quiet. The news of the eggs rolled around and around her head. As questionable as it was, this was the first clue she had of the eggs that was more solid than the hints, hopes, and rumors she had heard before. Was it worth checking?

“You’re not thinking of going, are you?” Lanther said with no sign of alarm. He poured a cup of weak wine from a small supply that had been set aside for the officers. He gave it to her.

She pulled her mouth into a wry grin and lifted the cup in a mock salute. “You knew I would. You wouldn’t have told me any of this if you had been deeply concerned about the truth of the matter. You would have let him die in silence.”

“True.” He poured another cup of wine and saluted her in turn. “Your sense of honor is something I admire and can depend on.”

“Will you go with me?” she asked, knowing he would. His sense of honor was equally as predictable, and despite his limp, he was an excellent companion to have on a clandestine quest.

“Of course.”

“This could be a trap. The Tarmaks know we want the eggs. They could have planted that man out in the Rough for us to find.”

“Agreed. We should take some centaurs with us in case we find the eggs. If we find them, we can bring them back here.”

“Good idea. Leonidas wouldn’t want to be left out.”

Linsha felt that old feeling of subdued excitement steal back into her thoughts. It was a tense, exhilarating anticipation that she used to feel often when she was faced with a mission that would test her wits, skills, and courage. It was a feeling she had been too tired to experience lately.

“Nor do I,” Varia spoke up again. Although she did not like to talk around other people, she had talked to Lanther before and included him in her small circle of acceptable humans. “How do you plan to get inside the labyrinth? The mercenaries found your door in the garden and guard it day and night.”

“They didn’t find the pool entrance,” Linsha suggested.

Lanther abruptly scowled and set his cup rather heavily on a table. “Isn’t that the one with the water weird guarding the stairs?”

Linsha smothered a smile. Lanther and the water weird Iyesta had placed to guard the pool stairs had not met in the friendliest circumstances. The odd water creature had tried to attack the man before Crucible called her off.

“Yes, but the entrance is unguarded outside, and it is out of sight of the palace. All we’d have to do is avoid patrols and slip in after dark.”

“What about the weird? How do we get past her?”

Linsha’s hand started to reach for the chain and the scales around her neck, then she changed her mind and resisted the temptation to show him. She moved her hand up instead to scratch her chin. Lanther had seen them once, but she preferred not to flash them about. They were a secret, a pact of friendship between herself and the dragons, and something she wasn’t ready to share. They were also a safeguard from some of Iyesta’s guardian creatures.

“I’ll think of something,” she said.

He gestured to the doorway. “Then let’s not wait. We’ll broach this to Falaius and go tonight.”

Falaius proved easier to convince than General Dockett or even Sir Remmik. The Legion commander trusted Lanther to be a good judge of his own information and a competent leader of missions. He also respected Linsha’s abilities, and if the two of them chose to go into the labyrinth again to look for Iyesta’s eggs, he agreed to help. When he asked for volunteers among the sentries and guards coming off duty, seven Legionnaires stepped forward. It was something they all owed to the memory of Iyesta.

General Dockett had some worries about the validity of the information, but in the end he agreed with Falaius and assigned a patrol of eight centaurs and Leonidas to accompany them.

The centaurs, all of them grays or dark browns, looked pleased to be chosen for such an assignment. They hurried off to find baskets large enough to carry dragon eggs but not so large as to interfere with their movements in the tunnels.

Only Sir Remmik voiced strong objections to the “ridiculous and dangerous scheme based on the words of a dead man.” He didn’t argue for Linsha’s sake. She suspected he’d be quite pleased if she got herself killed. But he hated to endanger eight perfectly healthy centaurs and the Legionnaires who could be put to better use. At last he threw up his hands and stalked off to check the guard changes at the posts around the canyon.

Falaius watched him go, a wry look on his weathered face. “It’s a shame such a talented Knight has so many burrs stuck up his armor.”

By the time a late half moon lifted above the eastern hills, the party was ready to go. The centaurs slipped out of the Wadi in a single file, each one carrying one of the humans and a set of panniers strapped to their sides. They broke into a smooth, ground-eating jog and headed south and east toward the faint glow of the city eight miles away.

The land slept silently around them. The night was too cold for insects, and the small rodents, birds, and reptiles that lived in the sparse grass and scrub stayed snug in their holes and nests. Even the wind was still. Only the faint howl of a distant wild dog broke the silence. Overhead, against the frosty stars, Varia the owl flew on silent wings. Almost as soundless, the centaurs moved like shadows through the darkness. They had padded their harnesses and weapons, so the only sounds that gave them away were the click of hooves on rocks and the dry rustle of disturbed grass.

They were nearing the edge of the known limit of the mercenary patrols when Linsha saw the leading centaur raise his hand and make a motion in a noiseless signal. Every centaur slowed to a walk and spread out in a line across the faint path.

“What is it?” Linsha whispered to Leonidas.

The buckskin, the lightest-coated centaur in the patrol, shifted over to a bare patch of sand and windswept rock where he would not be as noticeable. “There is someone up ahead,” he answered softly.

The eerie cry of a hunting owl floated overhead. Wings braked softly by Linsha’s head, and she heard Varia say, “It is Mariana.”

Leonidas heard her, too, and quickly trotted forward. “Tanefer,” he called to the black stallion who served as the leader. “It is the captain’s patrol.”

There were a few other officers in the dragonlord’s militia who held the rank of captain, but only the half-elf Mariana Calanbriar was referred to as “the captain” with automatic recognition and full respect. She materialized out of the darkness, three militia fighters behind her, and trod softly across the grass to meet the centaurs. Seeing Leonidas and Linsha, she raised a slim hand and laughed. “Of course, you are here. Nine centaurs with baskets, in the middle of the night, and the Rose Knight is with them. Are you off to collect berries?”

“No,” Linsha said. “Eggs.”

Mariana’s humor vanished. She and Linsha had been the ones who found Iyesta’s body in the great chambers under the palace. She despised the Tarmaks with all her heart for their part in the death of her overlord and had vowed to do anything within her means to help retrieve the brass eggs.

“You found the eggs?” she asked.

“There is a possibility the Tarmaks have moved the eggs back into the labyrinth,” Lanther said from Tanefer’s back.

A flash of paler white on Mariana’s oval face revealed a quick smile. “Good. Then you are probably going in through the pool entrance. I’d like to come with you, but we have three more outposts to check. One of them,” she added, her voice grim in the darkness, “was wiped out.”

Lanther swore something under his breath. The centaurs and their riders stirred, muttering angrily to each other.

“That is the third watchers’ post we’ve lost,” Linsha said. “It makes me wonder if someone is telling the Brutes where they are.”

The half-elf made a slight shrug. “Maybe. Or maybe they just have an excellent tracker.”

“Have you seen any activity along the ruin’s edge?”

“We were there along the outskirts and we saw no sign of the Tarmaks. There are a few mercenary patrols out, but they are slow and not particularly determined.

If you slip in quickly along that low line of hills, you shouldn’t be spotted. Good luck!”

She waved to her men, and they moved on, shadows casting shadows on the ground. In a moment, they were gone.

Linsha tossed a salute in the direction of her friend. “Be safe,” she murmured.

The centaurs continued at a walk, moving carefully and as noiselessly as possible. They angled down along the slope of hills Mariana pointed out and followed the western foot of the rising land where their tall profiles could not be silhouetted against the night sky.

The small moon was nearly to its zenith when the party came to the farthest flung edges of the ancient city. The humans dismounted. With a signal to Tanefer, Lanther and Linsha crept forward to the brow of a small rise and looked down on Missing City.

Five hundred years ago, the land they looked upon had been vastly different. Instead of desert, large estates and magnificent gardens had filled the desolate land with beauty and provided the region with bountiful harvests. Sparkling fountains, pools, and delightful streams watered the gardens and lawns and provided tranquil settings for the Silvanesti elves who’d built the city and labored for its well-being. Beyond the estates to the south lay the vast gardens and palace of an elf prince, and bordering it were the four districts of the ancient port city of Gal Tra’kalas.

Once a thriving urban center on the southern Courrain Ocean, the fair elven city had prospered until the First Cataclysm shook the world with catastrophic changes. At some time during the shattering event, the city of Gal Tra’kalas was utterly destroyed from the breakwater that stood in the harbor to the last lovely outlying estate, leaving nothing but a barren plain of crumbling ruins. Yet the city and its inhabitants did not disappear completely. Strangely, Gal Tra’kalas remained as a phantom image, inhabited by spectral figures who continued to live their lives totally unaware of the monumental change in the world around them.

Griffin-riding elves from Silvanesti who flew over the ghostly city were appalled and reported that Gal Tra’kalas was cast down and inhabited by fiends. The elves immediately abandoned the ruin. Over the years the site came to be called the Missing City, and for centuries it hung only as an empty mirage on the edge of forgotten tales. It wasn’t until nearly four hundred years later that a Second Cataclysm occurred that once again changed the destiny of the city. Out of the empty reaches of the Plains of Dust came the Legion of Steel, who saw the potential of a shadow city, and swiftly on their heels flew a magnificent brass dragon with the strength and the desire to shape a new realm on the ruins of an ancient one. Together the Legion and the dragonlord Iyesta dwelt among the images of Gal Tra’kalas and rebuilt the city into a detailed copy of the mirage, and for years the people who flocked to the Missing City lived in peace with their ghostly neighbors.

Until nearly three months ago. On the eve of midsummer, an odd storm of ferocious intensity swept over the Missing City. When the sun rose the next day, the spectral city of the elves had vanished, obliterated once and for all. Since then, nothing had remained the same.

On this frosty night months after the storm, the old city still looked strangely forlorn and vulnerable to Linsha. In the distance, she could see the dark clusters of the real buildings that comprised the rebuilt districts and the new port. A faint light from a few torches and lamps glowed like a chain of dying embers in the darkness.

In her immediate vicinity there was nothing but sand, scrub, a few cold-hardy cacti, and some eroded piles of rock that hunkered down in the pale moonlight. One large mass of rock in particular held her interest. She concentrated on the area around the rocks but saw nothing that moved, human or otherwise.

Pursing her lips, she blew the soft cry of a night shrike, a small bird that inhabited the grassland.

Varia swooped overhead. “The way is clear,” she called in a whispery voice that only Linsha and Lanther could hear.

Lanther gestured to the others, and they hurried forward to the large heap of rock. In the dark the tall heap looked like an outcropping or a natural part of the landscape. It wasn’t until a closer inspection was made that the pile proved to be a collapsed heap of quarried stone so weathered and worn it seemed to be melded together.

“What is this?” Tanefer said sharply, for he had no experience with the labyrinth or its hidden entrances.

“Centuries ago it used to be a well until someone got the idea to turn it into a bath house,” Linsha said as she peered closely at the cracks and crannies in the rocks. She walked slowly around the old ruin. The entrance was here somewhere.

Then she remembered. The old door faced the west and was hidden behind a large rock that looked like a collapsed lintel stone. “Here,” she said and pointed to the wall.

It took three of the strongest centaurs to shove aside the slab of rock that Iyesta had once moved effortlessly. When it was done, the three stood aside, panting and sweating in the chilly air. They all looked into the black entrance that yawned before them.

“There is a short flight of stairs leading down,” Linsha told them. “It’s broad, but it’s in bad shape, so be careful. Don’t light the torches until you’ve moved the stone back.”

“Where are you going?” Lanther demanded.

“To talk to the water weird.”

The centaurs froze. “Wait,” Tanefer said. “No one said anything about a water elementalkin. Where did it come from?”

“Iyesta summoned it to protect this entrance. But I think we can get past it. Just give me a minute.”

Linsha ignored Lanther’s sharp stare and settled Varia once more on her shoulder. Moving out of the way of the group, she felt her way down the stairs to the chamber that had once been a bathing room. Behind her she heard thumps and grinding noises, the sounds of hooves on stone, and low voices muttering in annoyance. Putting the stone back in place was not as easy as moving it aside. She reached the last step and pressed back against the wall to stay out of the reach of the water weird.

“She’s not here,” Varia whispered.

Linsha blinked. “What?”

“She’s gone. The pool is empty.”

Linsha strained to see in the intense darkness, but there wasn’t even a beam of moonlight leaking through a crack to lessen her blindness. Frustrated, she pulled from a small pack a tiny lamp and the clay pot that held a precious coal. Breathing gently on the faint orange glow, she was able to light her lamp and cast just enough light in the chamber to see the pool.

Varia was right. The pool had once brimmed with clear water deep enough to swim in. Now it lay still and lifeless. Much of its water had drained or evaporated away, and what was left was muddy and covered with a stagnant scum of dust, dead insects, and old algae. The ancient floor tiles she remembered seeing on her first visit were now covered with dirt and piles of rock that had fallen from the ceiling.

The voices grew louder and hooves clattered down the stairs. The centaurs and the Legionnaires crowded into the chamber with Linsha. They stared at the pool.

“Is it here?” Lanther breathed near her ear.

“She’s gone. Probably back to her own elemental plane.”

“Really?” He sounded skeptical.

“Iyesta commanded her here. Perhaps when the dragon died, her hold over the water weird disappeared, allowing her to escape.”

“Good. Then let’s not dawdle.”

“Sir!” one of the Legionnaires called to Lanther. “Look here. Someone has been in here before us.”

He pointed to the edge of the pool and toward the ground at the furthest reaches of the small lamp. Several sets of tracks were barely visible in the dirt.

Linsha looked and recognized them. She chuckled, with slight undertone of sadness. “Those are our tracks from three months ago. Iyesta’s and mine, then mine and several other groups. We brought some of the militia out this way when the city fell.”

She led the way past the pool and down another set of stone stairs to a chamber on a lower level. Once there, underground where lights could not be seen above, they brought out torches and lit them from Linsha’s lamp. Holding their torches to light the way, the party tramped down another, longer, flight of stairs and moved into a high corridor.

The labyrinth beneath Missing City was as old as Gal Tra’kalas itself. Deep beneath the city it formed a massive maze of chambers, interconnecting corridors, and puzzling dead ends. Its purpose was long forgotten, but its lofty tunnels still bore evidence of the skill and aesthetic taste of its creators. The tunnels were arched, and in many places the graceful lines of fan vaulting helped retain the strength and beauty of ceilings that were centuries old. At the intersections of major corridors, the lintels were carved to resemble tree trunks that rose and burst into leaf in stone relief over the doors.

Only Lanther, Linsha, and a few of the Legionnaires had been in the tunnels before. Anxious for the eggs, they pressed on, following their own faint trail. Whenever they came to a turn or an intersection that gave them doubts, Varia whispered directions in Linsha’s ear. The owl had a phenomenal memory for dark places.

The rest of the Legionnaires and centaurs hurried behind, their eyes wide with wonder and surprise. They had heard of Iyesta’s death in the labyrinth near her palace, of the midnight escape of a few trapped pockets of militia and Legionnaires out of the city through the tunnels, and of the battle with Thunder in the egg chamber. But they never imagined anything as spacious and well-crafted as these tunnels, nor a space so well preserved after hundreds years of neglect and abandonment.

In silence the party walked deeper and deeper into the maze, making turns to the left and right that Linsha never would have remembered on her own. As they penetrated farther into the labyrinth, they began to pay less attention to the walls around them and more to the floor and to the heavy darkness that pressed close. They were far in now and had seen only the traces of the earlier small groups. If the Tarmaks had truly carried the eggs into the great chamber in the center of the maze, there should have been some evidence of their passing.

True, Linsha thought, there were other entrances to the labyrinth and other tunnels that led toward the chamber, but she worried nonetheless and kept a close eye on the dusty floors of each tunnel they passed or entered.

She was so busy looking for tracks that she did not realize they were nearing the chamber until she heard someone behind her whisper, “What is that light?”

Linsha’s head jerked up. A pale gold light glowed through the pitch darkness from a turn in the tunnel ahead. It was still there!

But it looked different, and something else was gone. When she came the first time to the cave with Iyesta, she’d found the air in the egg chamber was rich and moist like the air in the woods around Solace. Now it was like the rest of the labyrinth—cool and dry and smelling just slightly of decay. The hair on her neck rose, and a warning went off in her head.

“They’re not there.” She said it so sharply that the centaurs jerked to a stop.

Linsha ran forward, nearly unseating the owl on her shoulder. She ignored the pain of Varia’s talons on her skin. She ignored Lanther’s shout of warning and the exclamations of the others. She charged toward the light with her heart in her throat. At the turn of the tunnel she raced into a chamber as grand and enormous as befitting a nest of dragon eggs, and she came to a skidding halt.

Her eyes took it all in—the withered corpse of the mother brass dragon against the far wall, the mound where they had buried Azurale, the decayed, beetle-chewed carcass of the blue dragonlord, Thunder, and finally, the ruined, trampled nest of sand where the egg had once lain. Varia flew from her shoulder and flapped in a circle over the nest, her voice sadly keening.

Linsha’s body stilled. Her nostrils flared. The warning in her head turned into a klaxon, and she knew without a doubt. Linsha wheeled.

“Go back!” she shouted to the others coming up behind her. “We’ve got to get out! It’s a trap!”