Song of the Dragon

Book 1: THE JESTER
CHAPTER 1

The song would not leave him.

Nine notes. . Seven notes. . Nine notes. . Seven notes. . Five notes. . Five notes. .

Circles in circles, endlessly spinning through his mind, filling its space with an endless melodic wheel. It pulls at him, calls to him, drawing him into a whirling vortex of music that engulfs his thoughts, his actions. .

“Drakis! Wake up!”

Drakis, Impress Warrior of the House of Timuran and Leader of the First Octian, shook his head and tried frantically to focus his eyes in the stark light.

The enormous, broad face of ChuKang, Captain of the Timuran Warriors, swam in front of him. ChuKang was a manticore-a lion-man from the Chaenandrian Steppes-and was therefore forced to bend his towering, eight-foot tall form down to face the human. ChuKang’s lips curled back on his flat, fur-covered face as he spoke, exposing his sharp fangs. “Drakis! Do you have the count or not?”

Nine notes. . Seven notes. .

Drakis found it hard to catch his breath in the stifling heat of the narrow corridor. The stone hall was barely twenty feet wide and packed shoulder to shoulder and wall to wall with his brother warriors as far as he could see in both directions. Their faces stared back at him, cast in the stark and unnaturally cold light of a number of globe-torches distributed among them. They were mostly made up of towering manticores mixed with nearly an equal number of four-armed chimera and the occasionally emerging face of an impatient Mestophian goblin. Each of their heads-shaved from the top of their foreheads running back to the base of their necks-was marked with the sinque tattoo branding every one of them as the property of House Timuran.

Each warrior-slave knew his place-just as Drakis well knew his own. He was the third of eight warriors that made up the First Octian, first of the ten Octia that made up House Timuran’s eighty-warrior Centurai. Timuran’s Centurai had been attached to five more from neighboring Houses on the Imperial Frontier to form the Second Cohort of the Western Provinces-just short of five hundred warriors-which in turn was united with seven other Impress Cohorts, an additional War-mage Cohort, plus a Warlord Cohort creating the four thousand and eight hundred strong Legion of the West. Three such Legions made up the army grandly named ”Blade of the West,” which was then joined with two other such armies-“Emperor’s Blade” and “Blade of the Marches”-to fill out the enormous Imperial Army of Conquest.

Over forty-three thousand Impress Warriors bringing their bright-edged steel against the last bastion of Dwarven Mighty-and Drakis was but one among them.

Nine notes spun through his mind, sounding hollow as they fell into a vast, surging sea of blood. . Five notes singing of his insignificance drowned out by the nine notes that dragged him downward into an abyss of sound. His dying breath made no impression on anyone else at all. .

“Drakis!” ChuKang roared.

“Captain! I have the count!” Drakis blurted out, his eyes focusing on the captain. “First Octian through Fourth Octian are at full strength with eight warriors each. Seventh Octian has combined with the Sixth and are now reporting seven warriors strong. Eighth and Ninth Octia are also at full strength of eight warriors each. Archers of Octian Dista are answering with four.”

“What about Fifth Octian?” KriChan growled. He was a fierce-looking manticore with a long scar running from just above his right eye across his face-and also second-in-command of the House Timuran Centurai after ChuKang.

“Fifth Octian does not report,” Drakis answered. He was sweating profusely now. “I think we lost them just before the last fold.”

“Lord Timuran will not be pleased,” KriChan said quietly. “Committing the entire Centurai in this campaign was more of a gamble than an investment. . and we’ve yet to garner a single prize.”

ChuKang gave a warning glance at his Second. “Without a prize of honor it might be better if we all came back on our shields. We need to get into the fight. Braun! What’s taking so long?”

They all turned to the only other human present, the sole Proxi for the remaining warriors of House Timuran’s Centurai. He was a short man with a stocky build, easily distinguishable by his large, hooked nose and piercing, dark eyes. Like most of the Timuran warriors, he wore a hodgepodge of protective armor, but instead of a weapon he carried the Proxi staff of the Timuran Centurai-a tall wooden shaft with an onyx claw headpiece gripping an Aether crystal at its top. As the Proxi, he was the connection between the elven Tribunes who ran the battle from their hilltop thousands of feet above and many leagues distant from the combat underground. The Tribunes experienced the war from a command tent filled with the breezes of an open sky, their bodies far removed from the blades of the enemy. Bound by the power of Aether magic, the Proxi was the projected presence of the War-mage Tribunes at the battlefront. What Braun saw, his Tribune saw. What Braun heard; his Tribune heard as well. More important still, Braun and all other Proxi were an extension of the Tribunes’ magical powers wrought from the Aether, the conduit for the Tribunes’ spells. Thus their elven masters leagues away could experience and contribute to the battle through the Proxi in nearly every aspect except one: In agony and death a Proxi was always alone.

Braun cocked his head to one side, as though he were listening to the rocks overhead. He flashed a crooked smile, but his eyes were fixed on a scene far beyond the close walls around them. “Can’t you hear it? Don’t you see? The dancers and the puppets are all moving across the stage, each one playing his little part, just as we are-our own little part! And now we’re coming to the great finale-the headlong rush into death itself. It’s all going exactly as the masters have promised it would be. Death, blood, and glory all threshed like fall wheat with our deaths and our blood as dross and the glory all neatly gleaned for House Timuran. Smell the applause!”

“What in the name of all the gods. .” KriChan began.

Five notes. . Five notes. .

Drakis drew in a deep breath. “Captain ChuKang, Braun is not-Captain, it’s been three days since his last Field Devotion.”

It’s been three days since my own devotions, Drakis thought. Three days of this song rolling through my head. .

“Three days for any of us,” ChuKang snapped. “What of it? Is that a problem, hoo-mani?”

KriChan’s eyes narrowed as he stared first at Braun and then back at Drakis.

“He’ll do fine, Captain,” Drakis said, his own eyes focusing on the scowling face of ChuKang. “I’ll see to him.”

“You had better see that he doesn’t break, Drakis,” the Centurai commander grumbled while shooting a glance at KriChan. “His folds got us into this and, by the gods, his folds had better get us out! Proxi’s minds always break first in battle. We’re too deep under this mountain to have our Proxi snap like some dry twig.”

“Deep?” Braun said, crouching on the fitted stones that formed the floor of the corridor. He reached down to the paving stones at his feet, his fingers brushing against a pattern of interlocking rings etched into the stone. The symbol glowed faintly at his touch. “Yes, we are deep and far from home. See the gate symbol here? They have been growing weaker with every fold farther from the Aether Well of House Timuran. What shall save us if the way is shut? The cords that bind us to the House of our master unravel, and does not our future unravel along with our past?”

KriChan opened his mouth to speak, anger flashing in his eyes.

“Yes, Captain,” Drakis inserted quickly before the manticore could speak or, worse, act. “I’ll take care of him.”

Nine notes of the dwarven kings laughing in the darkness. . Seven notes in his screaming as his world falls in glittering shards five notes at a time to the ground. .

I’ll take care of him, Drakis thought, if I don’t unravel first.

Drakis drew in a deep, shuddering breath and tried to breathe slower. The armor he wore was mismatched and pinched him. He fought the panicked urge to tear at the straps and cast off the torturous steel tomb-and tomb it was, his mind screamed at him-and run blindly away to anywhere but here in the darkest heart buried far beneath the Aeria peaks. He considered praying to the gods of the House but then stopped.

There was nothing special in him that the gods might want to save, he thought. He was a human-a defeated and moderately rare race-talented with a sword, perhaps, but otherwise unremarkable. He was of only average height for his kind. Broad shoulders and a strong body, perhaps, but the skin of his face was pocked, and a small scar at the corner of his lips gave him the affectation of a crooked frown; not handsome in the way of the gods but of average looks for a warrior of his race. The campaign had done nothing to improve his appearance either, as the tattoo brands on his scalp-usually shaved cleanly bald before the daily Devotions of House Timuran-were now slightly obscured by a fuzz of dark brown hair that had pushed its way through his scalp over the last three days. No, he realized, there was nothing remarkable enough about him to command the attention of the gods. All he had was himself and his brother warriors from his Octian to keep him alive for one more day.

Drakis squeezed his wide-bladed short sword tighter, desperately willing the strength of his hand to overcome the sweat and dark dwarven blood that coated the grip. He did not dare close his eyes, tempting as it was to banish the walls closing in around him.

He had won victory in many battles, slain many enemies in the service of the Rhonas Empire-may his allegiance and loyalty to his elven masters ever be on his lips-and the glorious House of which he longed to be a part.

He was only a warrior-slave of House Timuran-as he had always been, as the gods had made him.

Nine notes rolled around Drakis on shattered shields, a chorus of screaming slaves all singing in madness. . Seven notes drew him back, running from the flames burning down his life. .

“It’s here! The last judgment of the gods!” Braun shouted. The Proxi suddenly knelt down in the corridor, planting the steel-spiked base of his staff against the glowing symbols in the paving stones and leaning forward. A blue glow grew within the crystal fixed in the staff’s headpiece.

“This is it!” ChuKang shouted. “Drakis! First Octian stand to the sides of the fold! Jerakh! Murthas! Second Octian leads those on the right! Third Octian leads the rest on the left”

Drakis tried to ignore the notes turning through his mind in an unending circle as he stepped back, pushing his back against the corridor wall. Nine notes. . Seven notes. . Five. . Five. . It was his sanity that rotated on a melodic wheel careening across an endless plain toward a dark tower atop a pillar of stone. .

The Proxi staff’s crystal flared with brilliant light. The air in the corridor before the Proxi twisted, flattening into a vertical disk that cut across the width of the corridor. Space itself contorted, collapsed, and compressed. Dark hallway, rock, stone, passages, walls, lit rooms, dark halls-all rushed forward inside the magical oval whose edges writhed with arcing light. Just as quickly the rushing motion stopped. The sounds of battle rang out through the magical fold, and Drakis could see clearly a huge underground plaza lit by hundreds of burning torches. An enormous statue filled a rotunda just beyond the plaza around which a line of screaming, enraged dwarven warriors were charging toward them.

“For the glory of House Timuran!” ChuKang roared as he and the rest of the First Octian stood aside, pressing their backs against the walls. They would be the last to enter the battle.

“For the glory of the Emperor!” Drakis shouted in chorus with the rest of the Centurai around him.

Second and Third Octia rushed forward as though charging to collide where the glowing oval from Braun’s staff bisected the wall between them. Drakis felt the brush of armor and whiffed the stench of drying blood as the Second Octian rushed past him, followed immediately by the Fourth and Sixth.

“Keep moving, you slave bastards!” ChuKang shouted. “Win me enough room to kill some dwarves!”

KriChan continued to roar. “For the Emperor and his Imperial Will!”

The ranks of warriors surged forward like a confluence of rivers, leaping into the vertical glowing disk on both sides as though in collision. . but the folded space of the elven war-mages and their Proxi obeyed a reality that was uniquely dictated by the power of Aether magic. Drakis watched as the converging warriors dashed headlong into the magically wrenched space, and, from where he stood, he could see that those entering from his side were rushing into the distant illuminated plaza and engaging the charging dwarves. He knew from experience that those warriors charging in the opposite direction were rushing from the opposite side of the fold into that same plaza.

The screaming Impress Warriors of Timuran continued their charge through the blazing mystic portal until the four remaining members of the Octian Dista-all of them goblin archers-leaped through to the other side.

All that remained were the warriors of the First Octian-Drakis’ brothers in combat for as long as he could remember. ChuKang, the Captain of the entire Timuran Centurai, was at the heels of the goblin archers, roaring in battle rage, a massive sword in each hand as he turned and pushed through the portal. Ethis-a four-armed chimerian with the wonderfully durable physical structure of his kind-leaped through. He was followed by TsuRag and GriChag, both manticores from the Southern Steppes of Chaenandria as were ChuKang and KriChan. Behind them came Megri, the goblin with quick eyes and quicker fingers. He flashed a bright, sharp-toothed smile at Drakis before hopping through the fold.

KriChan hung back a moment, turning his narrowed eyes on Drakis. “Is the Proxi still good?”

Nine notes singing of the Dwarven Thrones. . Seven notes ringing of the Octia losing one. .

Drakis’ head hurt, and he was not sure he heard the manticore correctly. “Master?”

KriChan wrapped his massive paw around the back of Drakis’ neck. The human could feel the sting of the great warrior’s claws pushing against his skin, and KriChan drew him closer. “I have no time or patience to waste on you, Drakis! You are hoo-mani. . Braun is hoo-mani. Tell me now! Is the Proxi broken?”

Braun knelt next to them, watching them both with bemused interest even as he still held the fold open with sweat pouring down his face from the effort. “Tell him, Drakis! Tell the big, pet cat that he need not get his fur up. I’ve never felt better in my life, Drakis! I’ve never seen the world so clearly! Layers of cloth have been unwinding from my eyes, and for the first time, I’m beginning to see just what a lie we’re all living.”

KriChan growled as he suddenly turned on the Proxi, baring his teeth menacingly.

Braun’s blissful smile fell only slightly, his eyes suddenly focusing and his words tinted with menace. “Of course, if you kill your Proxi, who will extract your hide from this farce of a battle then, eh?”

KriChan shook violently but knew better than to harm the Proxi. He turned his wrath on Drakis instead. “He is your Proxi, Drakis! You keep him doing right by his brothers or I’ll see that you pay for his insolence!”

The manticore leaped through the fold, his weapon raised to strike.

The sounds of terrible battle flowed out of the fold, filling the now empty corridor. Devoid of the globe-torches, pitch darkness had once again reclaimed the cold, stone emptiness, except for the bright light coming from the fold that illuminated the two humans that remained.

“I don’t think he likes me,” Braun said through a smile to Drakis.

Drakis grabbed the Proxi by the elbow and dragged Braun’s shaking form to his feet. “I’m beginning to wonder if I do either.”

“Oh, I think you’ll know soon enough,” Braun said, giving Drakis a shove through the fold portal. Then Braun’s smile took on a darker, more vicious aspect. “I think we may all know soon enough.”

With that, the Proxi stepped through the fold portal with his staff. The fold collapsus at once. . choking off the light from the distant plaza and plunging the abandoned hall into utter darkness.