Return of the Exile

7 Urudwek’s Funeral

Lightning cracked in the sky over the palace, and thunder rumbled into the hills, but the Tarmaks paid little attention to the approaching storm. They watched as Malawaitha’s body collapsed to the stones. Without a moment’s hesitation to regret her death or mourn her passing, they burst into a wild chorus of warcries, vociferous shouts, and a spate of appreciative applause. The dead woman had failed and was gone. The victor had fought well, with surprising ferocity, and had won her position as the Chosen of the Akkad-Dar. The Emperor rose from his golden throne. He nodded once to Linsha, shouted a command to his people, then moved ponderously into the palace followed by his slaves and the Empress. The Tarmaks shouted with pleasure, and every man and woman carried their goblets, plates, clothing items, musical instruments, and in some cases each other up the stairs and into the large audience hall. Slaves brought the tables, the benches, the lamps, and the wine. The feast, it appeared, was moving indoors.

Linsha did not move. She stood by Malawaitha’s body and stared down at the corpse, her face expressionless. It was all she could do to stay upright.

Afec was the first to reach her through the streams of people moving up the stairs. He touched her arm and looked worriedly into the stormy green eyes that turned to look at him.

“What did you put in that drink?” she demanded.

He looked slightly embarrassed. “I may have given you a larger dose than you needed. In the rush of the moment, I did not take into account your smaller stature.”

Lanther joined them. His blue eyes sparkled with pleasure and pride as he slipped his blue robe over her shoulders and hustled her toward the stairs.

She was too tired to argue. The only thing keeping her on her feet was Afec’s tonic. She had a feeling that when it wore off, she would collapse like a sail in a dead calm. Just once she glanced back and saw Afec kneeling by Malawaitha’s body, his head bowed, while slaves collected her head and gathered her body to be carried off. At that moment, the rain dropped out of the sky in a deluge of pouring water, and Lanther pushed her inside the large double doors of the audience hall.

She hoped he would take her back to the Akeelawasee where she could lie down, have a long drink of water, and have her injuries attended to. The swelling on her left eye was getting so bad she could barely see through the puffy flesh, her throat hurt, and the laceration on her stomach stung like fury under the blue paint.

“We’re going this way,” he said, pushing her in a different direction, away from the festivities.

“Lanther, please,” she contested. “I’ve had enough.”

“We’re going to see the dragon egg.”

He would tell her nothing more in spite of her protests and questions until they had walked through several long corridors and stopped in front of a door.

Linsha fell silent and studied the entrance. While many of the other doors in the palace were lightweight barriers of red-colored woods carved with geometric patterns, this door was massive, dark, stained with age, and decorated only with two iron straps added to the door for strength. Two of the emperor’s guards stood on either side of the door like ponderous statues and looked neither left nor right.

She glanced at Lanther through her one good eye, hut he held his finger to his lips and shook his head. She became aware then that they were not alone with the guards. Other Tarmak warriors were coming silently down the hall carrying torches. They formed a line behind the Akkad-Dar and waited patiently, although for what Linsha had no idea. She hoped they were not here for the dragon egg, for that thought made her very uncomfortable. No good could come of Tarmaks and dragon eggs together. But surely Lanther wouldn’t let any harm come to the egg. He had promised them to her. She had fought for them.

A drumbeat, slow and measured, echoed down the corridor, and the warriors moved quickly to either wall. Clasping their hands in front of them, they bowed low as a procession moved majestically along the hallway toward the gathered warriors. Linsha expected to see the Emperor in front, but as the long line of Keena priests, warriors, and attendants came into her view, the first thing she saw was the casket from the ship’s hold carried on the shoulders of six burly warriors. Beside her, Lanther bowed low.

Linsha’s battered face darkened into a frown of anger. She knew who was in that coffin—Urudwek, the Akkad-Ur, the previous general of the Tarmak armies and the man who had led the invasion of the Missing City, ordered the massacre of the Wadi camp, and murdered her friend, Mariana. The Tarmak should be consigned to the darkest depths of the Abyss, not brought home in honor for some ridiculous burial ceremony.

Lanther grabbed her wrist and pulled her over into a bow. “Do it or they will kill you,” he said in no uncertain terms.

Although her hands clenched into fists and her stomach was tied in knots of anger, Linsha bowed low as the two guards pulled open the massive door and the casket was carried ceremoniously past her into the lighted passage beyond. The priests and attendants followed, and behind them walked the Emperor and his guards. The huge Tarmak inclined his head to Lanther. The Akkad-Dar, keeping a tight grip on Linsha’s arm, fell in behind the Emperor and behind him came the remaining warriors.

The procession moved in time to the beat of a drum—slowly, reverently—along the corridor and down a long flight of stairs to a lower level beneath the palace. From there, they continued downward on another flight of steps that spiraled deeper and deeper below the lowest levels of the building into the native stone of the promontory itself.

Linsha tried to pay attention to where they were going. She was a trained spy and a Solamnic Knight of the highest order who should have been making mental notes and absorbing everything she could see of this new experience. But she was feeling lucky just to stay on her feet as she trudged down the never-ending stairs after Lanther. Her body ached from an unbroken chain of knocks, scrapes, cuts, bruises, and sore muscles from head to foot. That horrible tonic still rumbled in her stomach and fizzed in her head, and the smell of the blue paint and Malawaitha’s blood on her chest made her nauseous. Worse, the smoke and dancing light from the torches left her dizzy and lightheaded. She prayed they would reach the end of the stairs before she fainted or vomited. She wasn’t sure which might happen first.

Thankfully the procession came to the last of the stairs before she lost control of her head or her stomach. They proceeded along a gently sloping course through abroad corridor. The darkness was intense, broken only by the torches carried by the priests and warriors.

Linsha lifted her head and sniffed the air. There was something very reminiscent about this place—a smell, a feeling, a touch of cold, dank air that reminded her of the maze under the Missing City or the caverns under Sanction. She guessed they were in an underground complex in the heart of the promontory. Was this where the Tarmaks buried their honored dead? Were there tombs down here? She groaned and rubbed her throbbing temples.

She plodded onward behind Lanther, concentrating on keeping her feet moving and her body upright. She could hear the Tarmaks talking softly around her, but she paid little heed to what they said. It was too much effort to translate the guttural Tarmakian. They could be talking about the latest crop harvests for all she cared.

“Linsha,” Lanther said quietly. “Look ahead.”

Through her open eye she saw a flickering light curving around a large arched entrance at the end of the passageway. The light was yellowish and danced like firelight. In fact, Linsha realized, there was an odor of smoke on the breeze that wafted up from the archway. Her curiosity stirred. She looked around as the procession walked down the last length of corridor and passed through the archway into the lighted cavern. Linsha’s interest took a sudden leap. They had entered a large, natural cave with a high ceiling and smooth walls. To Linsha, it looked like a sea cave carved out by water, and she wondered how close this place was to the harbor. A stone walkway extended around the walls of the cavern for perhaps twenty feet in either direction before dropping down a long curved ramp to the cavern floor. Torches sat in brackets every few feet along the cave wall, and a row of imperial guards stood stiffly at attention along the gallery wall that overlooked the cavern.

Linsha eyed them curiously and was about to ask Lanther a question about tombs when she caught a familiar sound. Over the sonorous beat of the drum, the shuffling of feet on stone, and the hushed voices of the warriors, she thought she heard the faint sound of something massive breathing. It was an unmistakable sound once she knew what to listen for—the slight brush of scales rubbing together, the bellows-like rush of air through a long neck, the rustle of leathery wings. A dragon! Linsha had spent enough time in the company of Crucible to be able identify his breathing in total darkness. This was not Crucible’s inhalation. Whose was it? She broke away from Lanther, pushed herself between two massive guards and peered over the edge of the wall into the cavern below.

Her breath escaped in an audible gasp. Perhaps fifty feet below lay a dragon curled on abed of sand. It was too dark to see what kind of dragon it was, but enough torchlight reflected off its scales to see it was a metallic. Her fingers tightened on the stone rim of the wall.

“But I didn’t—” she started to say.

A large hand fell heavily on her shoulder. She wheeled, expecting Lanther, and was startled into silence by the stern face of the Emperor looking down at her.

“Drathkin’kela, it is time,” he rumbled in Tarmakian. “Come. There is much to do.”

Feeling stunned, she walked down the ramp to the cavern floor beside the Emperor and came to a halt perhaps twenty feet away from the dragon. In the added light of the new torches, Linsha was able to see the dragon was a brass—a young one from its size. It slept heavily, curled in a tight, protective ball, its head tucked under a wing. She started to walk toward it, but the Emperor took her arm again and called for Lanther. For the sake of selfpreservation she did not yank away from the huge Tarmak, but she could not take her eyes off the dragon. A hundred questions swarmed in her mind, and all she could do was stand and look.

The Akkad-Dar came forward proudly to stand beside Linsha. The warriors gathered in a semicircle around them. Priests bustled back and forth, setting up for a ceremony of sorts Linsha didn’t understand. Urudwek’s coffin was laid on a large, flat stone that bore unmistakable scorch marks. In a moment the activity stopped and the gathering fell quiet. The dragon, Linsha noticed, did not stir.

To her right a Keena priest in a sleeveless black robe began to chant what sounded like a long prayer to some god whose name she didn’t recognize. She listened for a moment or two, then her tired mind lost interest and she studied the dragon instead. What she saw worried her. The brass was obviously not in good health. Linsha had seen Iyesta in the peak of good condition and knew what a healthy brass dragon should look like. It should not look so thin. The dragon’s bones pushed up beneath the scaly skin, and its brass coloration looked more like green patina than polished metal. Scales were missing in large patches around its muzzle and back. Worst of all, Linsha knew, it should not be so deep in sleep that it did not respond to a crowd invading its nest. It was possible the dragon had gone into a dormant sleep for self-defense, but Linsha wondered if there was something else wrong. Young brasses were too gregarious, too curious, too interested in life to shut themselves away deliberately from things going on around them. Were the Tarmak doing something to it?

A sharp pain in her hand stunned her out of her wandering thoughts, and she came back to the ceremony to find the Emperor had cut the palm of her hand with a sharp knife. Blood oozed from the shallow wound and trickled down her wrist.

“Enough!” she cried. “If you want blood, I have plenty leaking out from other places.”

But the Tarmaks and Lanther ignored her. The Emperor cut Lanther’s palm as well, and to Linsha’s disgust he pressed their two hands together to mingle their blood. The warriors cheered their approval. The Emperor appeared stiff and formal, less than pleased, but he made a speech about the skill, prowess, and courage of the Akkad-Dar, how he had made an excellent choice for a mate, and how the Akkad-Dar would further the cause of the Tarmak empire. Linsha swayed on her feet and decided that if she was going to vomit, now would be a good time. The Emperor proclaimed the betrothal between the Akkad-Dar and the Drathkin’kela to be official and threatened a heinous death to anyone who tried to put them asunder. Linsha stifled a yawn.

To her relief, that part of the ceremonies seemed to be over, for Lanther pulled his hand away and the priests turned from them to the coffin on the slab of stone. A young priest carried out an ancient text bound in leather and tied with silk cords. It lay cushioned on a silk pillow and was presented with due reverence to the chief priest. The older Keena carefully opened the vellum pages and began another long series of chanted prayers.

Linsha caught the name of Amarrel and little else. The priest spoke too fast for her to follow. “Oh, please hurry,” Linsha muttered, rubbing her aching temples.

Lanther heard her as he wiped the blood off on a cloth provided by an attendant. He nodded sympathetically. “It will be over soon,” he whispered.

A second attendant approached with something in his hands covered with a red cloth. Lanther uncovered the item and lifted it for Linsha to see. It was the golden mask of the Akkad.

Linsha bit back a cry of dismay at the sight of that metal face. Too many times she had looked into the dark eyeholes and suffered at the hand of its wearer. Too many evil memories were attached to its ornate surface.

Lanther simply smiled and slid the mask over his face. The torchlight gleamed on the polished surface of the mask and flickered on his bare skin as he raised his arms to the coffin of his friend and general and joined in the prayers for the dead.

Feeling sick, Linsha pulled the blue robe tighter around her and eased back out of the way. She did not want any part in any more Tarmak ceremonies. Fortunately, the warriors did not seem to be paying attention to her now that the betrothal ceremony was completed. They were concentrating on the death rites for the old Akkad and on the priests who were chanting prayers and scattering his coffin with some kind of oil and herbs. Linsha slid a few steps back and glanced around again. No one paid her any heed. Dropping the robe to the sandy floor, she moved away from the torches and the gathered warriors and eased slowly around the wall toward the dragon. She stayed in what shadows there were and made no sudden movements to attract attention.

It took her several minutes, but when she finally reached the dragon’s side the priests were still droning and no one had called her away from the beast. In the uncertain light of the torches she took a closer look at the dragon and was stunned by what she saw. Kiri-Jolith, she thought in horror, what had the Tarmaks done to this poor creature? The dragon was not bound by chain or rope, but the scars of some sort of bond clearly marred the dragon’s legs. Its sides were mere slabs of ribs and its neck looked thin and hollow. Even its smell was wrong. Linsha knew from experience that brasses had a distinctive odor similar to hot sand or hot metal. But this one smelled of rotted seaweed and diseased flesh. High on its back, Linsha spotted another wound that looked hideously familiar—a patch of blackened scales about the size of a platter. She had seen a wound like that only on one other dragon—Crucible, and he had nearly died from it. Her anger rose again. How could they? How could anyone treat a dragon like this?

She spotted several scales lying on the sand where they had fallen from the dragon’s body. Keeping her movements slow, she bent down and palmed one before anyone noticed. She wasn’t sure if she would need a scale from this dragon, but taking the scale wouldn’t hurt the animal and she thought maybe she had a use for it. She shot a quick glance over her shoulder and when she saw no one was looking, she placed her hand on the dragon’s foreleg.

Magic was what she needed now. Not much, just enough to boost her flagging energy and draw on her ability to read auras. She had tried not to use magic since she had learned the spirits of the dead, trapped in the world and under the thrall of the Dark Queen Takhisis, drew the powers of magic out of anyone attempting to use it. But it occurred to her now that this was a different land, a land separated from Ansalon by many miles and peopled by tribes that believed in Takhisis. Maybe magic would still work here. With that hope, she closed her mind to everything around her and concentrated on the power that existed naturally inside her. Goldmoon had taught her many years ago how to use the power that she called the Magic of the Heart. Linsha was not good at it, but she had practiced the spells enough to be able to help heal herself, to read the invisible auras of any sentient being, and to communicate with a few receptive minds. Perhaps, with a little luck, she could scan this dragon’s aura and learn a little more about it.

“Drathkin’kela!” The title snapped across the silence in the cavern and startled Linsha out of her thoughts. It was the Emperor’s voice.

Linsha cursed under her breath and drew her hand away from the dragon.

“Linsha!” Lanther called. “Stand back from her. It is time for the cremation.”

Her? So the dragon was female. Frustrated, Linsha held on to that bit of information while she tucked the scale close to her palm and walked back to where she had dropped the robe. There was no easy place to hide the scale in her battle harness or loincloth, so she picked up the robe and in the motions of putting it back on, she slid the scale carefully under the leather supporting her right breast. If no one looked carefully at her in the gloom of the cavern, the scale would be safe enough. She pulled the blue robe tightly around her and shuffled over to the join Lanther. If they were going to cremate the body, maybe that meant the ceremonies were almost over and she could go back to the peace and quiet of the Akeelawasee.

But if the chief priest was planning to set fire to the Akkad-Ur’s coffin, he was not going about it in the usual manner. Instead of using a torch or a flame of some sort and setting alight the oil, he and two attendants walked over to the brass dragon, pulled her head out from under her wing, and stretched out her neck so that her head pointed toward the coffin and the stone slab.

Linsha watched in growing dismay. What were they doing to her?

The priest raised a hand toward the dragon and began a chant that Linsha knew was no prayer. It sounded more like a spell. His attendants picked up a bucket containing a liquid and poured the contents into the dragon’s mouth. They had to lift her head up and clamp her mouth closed to get her to swallow it. In less than a minute she gagged and coughed and sneezed. One large eye slowly cracked open.

Linsha’s eyebrows rose. What was this potion?

“Sirenfal, rise and bow before me!” the head priest shouted to the dragon.

The warriors made sounds of excitement and awe as the dragon slowly lifted her head from the sands.

Linsha wanted to cry. There was no energy, no interest in the dragon’s listless gaze. The flesh of her head was shrunken around the large fluted faceplate that was the distinctive characteristic of brass dragons, and scales were missing from her neck in large patches.

“What is the matter with her?” Linsha asked Lanther.

He shrugged. “It’s not your concern.”

Linsha bit back a retort. The dragon was fully awake now and watching the priest as a cat watches a deadly viper. Her lips were curled back in a silent snarl and her head swayed dizzily from side to side.

The priest snapped a command. The dragon hissed at him and tried to stand on all four feet, but the priest raised his other hand in a gesture the dragon obviously recognized and feared, for she dropped back to the sand and obeyed his command. She took in a deep breath and blew a blast of super-heated air directly at the wooden coffin. The fiery air rolled over the oil-soaked coffin and set it burning in an intense conflagration.

“The Tarmak believe they are honoring their warleader by sending him to the afterlife on the flame of a dragon,” Lanther explained, watching the smoke rise to the ceiling.

“While killing her in the process?” Linsha said. “What is the logic of that?”

He gave a patronizing chuckle and did not answer her. Linsha fumed while she watched the Akkad-Ur burn to ash. The priests were making their prayers when she glanced up and saw the young dragon had regained some of her awareness. Her eyes were more alert, and she was looking around as if searching the cavern for something. Perhaps, Linsha thought, she had caught the scent of someone different. Linsha’s hand slid under the robe and grasped her two scales. Swiftly, before anyone could hinder her, she gathered what energy she had left, drew on the latent power of the scales, and sent a brief thought into the mind of the dragon. It was much harder to do this across a distance, but she had to try.

Eat. Rest. You have a friend here. I will try to help.

The words must have reached the dragon, for Sirenfal’s head swiveled around and she stared directly at Linsha with eyes the color of light amber.

Who are you? The question rang in Linsha’s head.

A friend of Iyesta’s.

As Linsha hoped, Sirenfal recognized the name of the greatest of all brasses, for she made a small involuntary sound of hope. Unfortunately, the sound drew the attention of the chief priest, who glanced suspiciously at the dragon then followed her gaze to Linsha.

Linsha guessed she had only a moment to do what she could. Gathering every memory she could recall of Iyesta and Crucible and the fall of the Missing City, she opened her mind to the dragon and was about to pour it all out when the chief priest shouted a command and tightened his hands into a fist. His attendants drew out a leather bag and dumped a handful of yellowish dust into the dragon’s face.

The brass moaned piteously. She tried to keep her eyes on Linsha, but the priest’s sedative was too much for her. She sneezed once and subsided to the sand. Curling back into her tight ball, she closed her eyes and tucked her head under her wing.

Linsha felt her own strength drain away like water. The last vestiges of Afec’s tonic fizzled away, and the attempt to reach the mind of Sirenfal had taken her last reserves. Her skin broke out in a clammy sweat and the pain in her head began to pound. She wrapped her arms around herself and sagged against Lanther. He caught her and held her tight, his eyes deeply worried.

“Where is it?” she mumbled. “Where is the dragon egg?” Her eyes rolled up in her head, and she passed out in his arms.