Song of the Dragon

CHAPTER 24

The grasslands rose steadily before them as they moved northward, making the going more difficult. A growing black belt of trees-the fringes of the Hyperian Forest-split the horizon to the northwest, a dark line growing wider with each step. Yet it was not so much the hope beckoning before them as the fear at their backs that drove Drakis and his companions on.

It was an hour past sunset when they reached the steep banks of the River Galaran that Ethis had promised would guide them. Belag bounded down the ten-foot embankment, reaching the riverbed first, his keen eyes reconnoitering both up and down the length of the dark, murmuring water before him.

“You call this a river?” Drakis said to Ethis, his voice hoarse with exertion as he hurriedly made his way down the precarious slope, struggling to steady both himself and Mala at the same time. He had seen many of the great rivers in his time-including, he suddenly recalled, the majestic Jolnar, which ran through the heart of the Empire-but this shallow bed only twenty to thirty feet in width barely qualified as a stream by those standards. “A child could cross it! What good is it for defense?”

“It isn’t a fortress, Master Drakis-it’s our road,” the Lyric replied, her nose lifted in haughty displeasure as she stepped quickly across the smooth rocks and knelt next to the stream, the long fingers of her left hand scooping up the water and letting it run through her fingers. “This is the lifeblood of our nation that you so casually dismiss. You would be wise to remember that and be grateful for our largesse.”

“How much farther,” RuuKag groaned, rolling his wide head as he rubbed his neck.

“Not far,” Ethis said, “Seven, maybe eight leagues.”

“Eight leagues!” RuuKag bellowed.

Belag hung his head, shaking his growing mane.

Jugar coughed. “May I suggest that we take a different course? We must head north at once! This western track will plunge us into dangerous lands that can only. .”

“We follow the river,” Ethis asserted as though to a child. “That is the plan.”

“You follow the river, chimerian,” RuuKag snarled, his large, furry hand sweeping in a dismissive gesture before him. “It’s all well and good for you grand warriors! You’re no doubt used to walking your feet off crossing the length and breadth of the Empire and all its conquests, but some of us are House slaves! By the gods, look around you; you’re wearing campaign sandals of the Legions and we’ve been crossing open country in these household sandals. Have you even taken time to notice that Mala’s feet are blistered-that she’s had to repair her sandals every day for the last three days and wrap her feet in whatever cloth she can tear from the hem of her wrap? No. . you’ve been too busy looking to the sunset to see what’s at your own feet. Well, that may be your life, warrior, but it isn’t mine, and I’m not taking another step until. .”

Drakis turned from Mala, his short sword ringing slightly as he deftly pulled it from the scabbard at his side. In two quick steps he closed the distance between himself and RuuKag. With his left hand, he reached up and, before RuuKag could react, closed his fingers in an iron grip on the manticore’s right ear.

RuuKag howled in pain, rearing back, but Drakis, jaw set, held fast and twisted the manticore’s ear farther backward. RuuKag’s head moved involuntarily back with it, trying desperately to relieve the pressure and the pain that so suddenly overwhelmed him.

Drakis pressed forward, the sword pointing upward between the two of them, its tip centered on the exposed throat of the lion-man still in his grip. RuuKag staggered backward, falling at last against the wall of the embankment. RuuKag clawed at Drakis, but the warrior responded at once by twisting the ear harder and sliding the tip of his sword up to rest against the manticore’s throat.

RuuKag suddenly held very still.

“That may have been your life, RuuKag, but not any more!” Drakis said in as definite tones as his raw throat could muster. “Yours was a proud race who ran as such a tide across the Chaenandrian Plains that their war cries and footfalls brought fear to the thunder itself-but you, you’ve become a pet of the elves, tamed and groomed, fed and obedient so that you might be patted on your shaved head by your masters. Well, not any more, RuuKag! That may have been your life before, but you’re in my life now! No one is going to carry you, coax you, coddle you, or drag you-least of all me. So, you’ve got just two choices: die right here and now by my hand or say ‘Yes, sire,’ and move.”

“I swear, hoo-mani, one day I’ll. .”

Drakis tensed, the sword tip cutting slightly into the soft throat before him.

“Yes. . sire,” RuuKag said.

Drakis shot a steel-cold glance at the dwarf. “And you?”

Jugar looked down intently at the ground.

Drakis relaxed slightly, stepping back. He extended his hand to Mala. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she took his hand and stood painfully.

“Let’s go,” Drakis said.

He kept his sword drawn.

Three robed figures stood next to the River Galaran looking on as a fourth knelt inspecting the riverbank.

“How long?” Jukung asked.

“One hour, certainly no longer,” Soen said as he stood. “So, they’re following the river. They are impatient and prone to mistakes. We must trap our prey while we can.”

“Surely they cannot escape us,” Jukung boasted. “The glory of their capture shall be ours.”

“We are far indeed from the Imperial Majesty where such glory is tallied, Assesia,” Soen observed in dry tones. “There is a border not far from here which few of our Order have trod and fewer still have returned to report. The faeries occupy that forest. Our prey has no doubt decided it is better to hope for life in a place from which no soul has ever returned than to face our justice. We must take them before they can find such dubious sanctuary.”

“Then we shall return to the Keeper, as agreed,” Jukung said with an oily arrogance that he no longer bothered to disguise. “You have much to answer for, Inquisitor.”

Phang cleared his throat.

“Indeed,” Soen replied with serenity. This boy was a fool after all, he thought. Soen knew with calm surety that he could plant this boy’s cold body just about anywhere in this wilderness and live the rest of his life in absolute confidence that Jukung would never be found. Still, there was something about the youth’s overconfidence coupled with so little prudence that he found entertaining in a sad, tragic way. Perhaps that was why he let him live; it amused him to do so. “Perhaps, I could answer for it now and save you the trouble later.”

“This is not the appropriate time or place to. .”

“Oh, but I think it is,” Soen said through a sharp-toothed smile. He started pacing in a circle around the Assesia as he spoke. “Let me anticipate you, young Jukung. You would ask before the Council of the Iblisi Disciplines why I broke up the Quorum. Answer: It was necessary-in order to secure the Timuran household-to assign most of the Assesia of the Quorum to continue the work in the Western Provinces while the remainder of the Quorum pressed the pursuit of the bolters who caused the fall of the Aether Well. No, you assert; you meant why did I break up the Quorum at the Field of the Dead and send each of us through separate folds? Because, as I said at the time, we needed to pursue all four directions at once. But, you will counter, I did not return. Of course, I will reply; I found evidence that our bolters were fleeing our justice, could not risk losing their trail, and knew that the rest of my Quorum would follow. And I will point out that I did leave a trail of fold glyphs that brought you all to my location when the prey were cornered at last. . saving you, my little Assesia, the trouble of having to walk for weeks across the Hyperian wilderness.”

Soen stopped his circular stroll in front of Jukung, his face barely a handbreadth away from the Assesia’s. “I can’t wait for the Tribunal. Let me know when it starts.”

“Yes, Master Inquisitor,” Jukung answered as he turned his head away.

“Qinsei and Phang,” Soen said. “You will take opposite sides of the riverbank. Stay on the high ground and get ahead of our prey. When you find a suitable site for an ambush, mark it and position yourselves on the far side. Our young Assesia-now so eager to learn-will come with me up the riverbed. We’ll drive the prey to you, and then you take them. There aren’t enough of us to do this properly, so Jukung and I will have to kill the manticores and the chimerian and dwarf outright. You capture the human male. Once he’s secure, kill the females.”

“Why keep the male alive?” Phang asked.

“I have my reasons,” Soen answered. “Do not disappoint me.”

When no further explanation was offered, Phang nodded then set out.

Qinsei and Phang, with quick and silent footfalls, outdistanced their squabbling quarry with little trouble. Qinsei followed the left bank with Phang on the right. They had worked together often down the uncounted years, and this part of their job had become a matter of routine. Their target was in sight-all that remained was to answer the questions of where and when the trap would be sprung.

Wordlessly, the two Codexia closed again on the river. Their prey was now behind them, coming in their direction. They remained on the high ground of the steep, sheer banks, following its curves and undulations farther, Qinsei thought, than she would have preferred. But it was Soen who was their Inquisitor, and Qinsei wanted to find the perfect place for them to bring this sorry business to its inevitable close.

“Ah,” Qinsei sighed with satisfaction as she stopped at the crest of the bank where the river turned sharply. “Soen will be pleased.”

It was a steep banked bowl surrounding a pool at the base of a waterfall. The river had cut a narrow passage that was the only way in or out. It would be slow climbing out of such a bowl. Qinsei saw it all in her mind: their prey walking into the bowl, Soen and Jukung closing off their only escape out of it, while she and Phang stood atop the edge of the bowl, capturing them all before their prey was even aware they were caught.

Qinsei reached over next to her. She grabbed a branch and deftly twisted it back, locking it among the other branches in an awkward bend. The sign set, she looked across the ravine to Phang and made hand signs to him as to her instructions. He responded silently with signs of his own that he would do as she suggested, circle the top of the bowl to the northern quarter and prepare to spring the trap.

Qinsei moved around the southern edge of the bowl. All that was left for them to do would be to wait until. .

Sobbing.

Qinsei froze at once, her Matei staff readied.

She could hear quiet sobbing just through the trees to the south.

Qinsei frowned. It would not do to have someone unknown at her back. She stepped cautiously through the trees, weaving a careful path to be as silent and unseen as possible. She halted at the tree line, her breath carefully slow and her black eyes dappled by the afternoon light through the shifting leaves of the trees.

A long clearing ran up a slope between the trees on either side. The clearing itself remained in the shadow of the surrounding trees under a bright sky. Qinsei waited patiently for a moment, her eyes searching the trees and the tall grasses for a time before her gaze fixed on the small head whose back was turned toward her just past the crest of the hillside meadow.

A child-an elven child sat at the crest of the hill weeping in this lost and forsaken wilderness.

Qinsei frowned. She was more puzzled than concerned. There were no Rhonas settlements this far west-certainly none so near the Murialis Woods. It might be rebel elves out of Museria somehow come this far north. Whoever they were, her maternal instincts were not aroused; she meant to question this elf child and get answers quickly regardless of the cost.

Qinsei stepped into the tall grass and smiled. The ground was soft and spongelike beneath her feet. Her footfalls would go unheard.

She remained unaware of the long line of stones that she had stepped over as she crossed into the meadow.

Phang’s eyes searched quickly along the northern rim of the pool’s box canyon for the best point where he might lie in wait until Soen came and sprang their trap. This was his favorite part of the hunt; the prey were coming toward him, their fate irrevocably fixed and held in his hands and those of his fellow Iblisi. There was something about watching their approach-seeing their faces completely unaware of the doom that he knew was about to descend upon them. He relished their lives in that moment-that they were still dreaming of another tomorrow and making plans that would never be. Such a moment deserved a well-chosen position from which to view the show.

He soon saw the perfect spot from which to observe the last moments of his prey’s freedom. It was a collection of large boulders at the top edge of the steep northern slope overlooking the waterfall and the pool. He could see and not be seen there. He smiled and was about to move up to the rim of the canyon. .

Then he heard the piercing scream.

Qinsei, he thought at once. He raised his Matei staff and, drawing from its Aether, leaped twenty feet to the top of the river’s steep southern bank. The scream had come from the south where his Codexia companion had just gone. He saw the careful, subtle marks of her passage-marks only another Codexia could follow-as he moved with swift yet silent steps among the trees.

The trees ended at the edge of a meadow running up the hillside between the trees. He could see Qinsei kneeling at the top of the ridge, her hooded head bent over as though she were examining something in the grass before her. Phang watched for a moment but was satisfied; whatever had happened to her, Qinsei had the problem well in hand. It would be best if he returned to the northern ridge and took up his position among the boulders, he thought and was turning to do so when some movement caught his eye.

It was Qinsei. She was motioning for him to come and join her on the ridge.

Phang grasped his Matei staff in both hands and ran easily up the slope. The ground under his feet was soft and had a spring to it that he found pleasant. The grasses around him were nearly up to his knees. He would not mind staying here to rest a while once the butcher-business of their calling was finished.

“Qinsei,” Phang called as he approached. “We must be in position soon. What is so urgent that. .”

Phang stopped at the sight of Qinsei’s face, raising his Matei staff at once.

Qinsei gazed up at him with the dull eyes that were shared by all elven dead. Thin green vines riddled her face, neck, and hands, shifting and writhing just beneath the surface of her skin.

Phang commanded the Aether of the staff to discharge at once into the hideous apparition that had been his companion, but the Matei staff did not respond at all, its powers vanished. Instead, the wood of the staff came alive, coiling like a snake around Phang’s arm as it slithered toward his head.

Tendrils running through the grass wound their way up Phang’s legs, but it was Qinsei’s dead face that fixed Phang’s vision. The vines in her lifeless muscles contracted and forced the dead Codexia’s features to smile.

The winding course of the stream had cut down into the sloping plain, leaving banks on either side of its curves sometimes as low as three feet, occasionally rising as high as twenty. Soen envied Phang and Qinsei; they were making good time across the open ground, paralleling the river, while the Inquisitor was forced to make his way along the meandering streambed with the sulking Jukung at his side. He could not afford the luxury of speed, for he was closing on his prey and dared not lose their track should they for any reason decide to defy his expectations and leave the watercourse. Still, he took satisfaction that with each twist of the River Galaran, his two Codexia were getting farther ahead, better positioning themselves to spring their trap on the bolters.

Jukung had crossed the river at a shallow ford nearly half a league downstream and remained on the opposite side. It was just as well, Soen mused. The young Assesia had been something of a concern early on, but Soen was convinced now that Jukung was only a pawn of the Keeper, a much easier problem than Soen had thought he was facing. The Inquisitor had been concerned that Jukung was working for one of the myriad other Orders, Houses or lords who were constantly scheming against the Iblisi, but the youth’s actions had dispelled most of Soen’s apprehensions. The youth was still dangerous-both to the Inquisitor and to himself-but apparently not with any darker purpose than his own aggrandizement.

A power-hungry youth was something Soen could manage.

They moved quickly, their Matei staffs held either across their bodies or parallel to the ground in their hands. Their soft boots pushed them soundlessly up the crooked path of the riverbed. He knew their tracks by heart, having followed them across the Hyperian plain when few others could have made out their mark. Now, fresh and deep, he had no trouble making them out even in the predawn light: two sets heavy and wide of the manticores, one lighter and longer of the chimerian, the heavy footfalls of a dwarf, and the three humans-two females and the male. One of the female tracks wandered slightly along the river’s edge.

Soen smiled, baring his sharp teeth. The woman is tired. She slows them down.

The banks of the river were steep now and tall, vertical precipices on either side. Just above their edge, Soen could see the tops of trees.

The Inquisitor continued his silent run, but he was troubled. They should have caught up to the bolters by now-or at least the Codexia should have stopped them before they reached the sanctuary of the woods. There were foul things lurking in those trees, for it was the realm of Murialis, Queen of the Woodland Nymphs and Dryads. All elves hated the woods but especially the forbidding trees of the dryad realm.

Soen was about to quicken his pace when he heard them: voices arguing around the turn of the gully.

The elf slowed his pace and saw what he had been looking for high on the riverbank. The twisted branch pinned back against the trunk of the tree. Qinsei and Phang had marked the spot as just around the bend in the river.

The prey were already in the trap.

Soen signaled to Jukung with his Matei staff to stop. The young Assesia obeyed at once from the opposite side of the river, his black eyes narrowing as he strained to look beyond the angled slope.

Soen crept forward, his Matei staff held firmly across him with both his long hands. He slid with gliding step behind a large boulder that had, in some age long past, tumbled down the slope just, he fancied, to provide him cover right now.

Such was the way of the gods.

Soen peered around the edge of the stone.

The steep “V” of the gully opened just a few yards beyond onto the wide oval of a pool. The waters of the river cascaded down a rock face into the pool on the far side. Soen could see the tree line of the woods running just atop the crest of the rise at the other side of the pool.

Soen frowned. Qinsei and Phang seemed to be cutting this a bit close. The location was ideal for their ambush, but there were several other locations farther downstream that would have served just as well. His concerns, however, were drowned out almost at once by the arguing voices on the left side of the pool.

“. . just leave him here!” one of the manticores was saying. “If he’s so upset by these woods, then he doesn’t have to enter them!”

“We can’t leave him here,” the human male shouted. Drakis, Soen realized with a shiver. “The Iblisi are on our heels. The gods alone can conceive of what they would do to him!”

“All the more reason to leave him behind,” the manticore roared back. “If we toss them a morsel, then maybe the rest of us will have a chance. He’s not coming unless we hit him over the head with a rock, and he’s slowing us down more than that woman of yours.”

Five separate voices erupted at once, arguing among themselves by the side of the idyllic pool without a thought of the black eyes watching them from the shadows.

All too easy, Soen thought.

He frowned again.

It was too easy, he realized, and the hair at the back of his elongated skull stood on end. Something inside told him that there was something wrong with what he was seeing-that his eyes were being fooled in dangerous ways. It was a sense that he had, an unexplained inner knowledge that seldom failed him and that had saved his life more times than he cared to remember. It was never the danger you anticipated that bit you, he remembered, but always something you didn’t see coming and could not have anticipated.

He glanced across the river. Jukung was moving forward, a vicious smile curling his lips back from his sharp teeth. His eyes were on the prey, the predator about to spring.

His eyes were fixed on the prey.

Soen’s eyes shifted around him. The walls of the gully they were in. . the waters rushing past him. . the stones of the riverbank.

The Inquisitor’s black eyes widened.

The stones under the water formed a pattern. Nature had not placed them there, rather the hand of design, thought, and intention. It was subtle and would have escaped the most casual glance, but now his mind was fixed on it. His eyes followed it up the near side of the river where it wound purposefully into the placement of the stones and boulders just in front of him. It wove its pattern up the embankment, disappearing over its crest. It was formed of stones, pebbles, roots, and dirt, but it was unmistakable. He turned quickly, his eyes following its line beneath the waters of the river to where it emerged on the other side among the boulders where Jukung was carefully moving forward.

“No!” Soen whispered as loudly as he dared. “Jukung, stop!”

Whether the Assesia heard him or not, Jukung continued forward, intent on garnering his prize and honor to his name. The Matei staff shifted in his hands. Jukung stopped just short of the line and pointed toward the crest of the ridge on the other side of the pool.

Soen turned and gaped. Two robed figures-Qin and Phang-rose up along the crest on the far side of the pool and began moving toward the rock face, their own Matei staffs swinging unnaturally before them-as though they were marionettes whose strings were being badly pulled.

“NO!” Soen shouted, springing out from behind the boulder, running toward Jukung.

The bolters at the edge of the pool leaped back in alarm. The human woman screamed, her shrill voice echoing off the rocks of the cascade.

Jukung leaped toward his prey, his Matei staff thrust in front of him, its crystal flaring with power. “By the Will of the Emperor, I command you to. .”

Jukung stepped across the line before Soen could reach him.

The waters of the river exploded upward with a crashing like ocean waves, but the water did not fall back into the riverbed; instead, it shifted and broke into hands, arms, fingers, and bodies. Hair of froth cascaded off of heads of incredible beauty whose transparency gelled more solidly by the moment.

Jukung stepped back, turning toward the monstrous multitude rising from the water at his side. The Matei stick flared, pulsing in waves at the onrushing tide of horror. The figures were battered by its force, twisted, wrenched, and shattered, only to re-form.

Soen stopped at the edge of the patterned line, his own Matei staff held uselessly in front of him.

The bolters backed away into the pool. They, too, could see the robes of the Codexia on either side of the waterfall’s crest. The human male held his sword at the ready, but even from here Soen could sense the panic of the surrounded and cornered prey.

Soen opened his mouth and raged in anger, his howl tearing through the air around the pool. There was nothing he could do. Too late he had seen the faery line-the pattern in the ground demarking the unquestioned realm of the fae and their power. Murialis had been busy on the frontier and had claimed more land than the Emperor had taken notice of.

Jukung screamed. The water nymphs had reached him at last, tearing the Matei staff from his hands. They pulled him over the pool, clawing at his robes, his hair, his flesh. They twisted him back and forth as though he were being tossed upon the waves of some unseen storm at sea.

The Assesia tumbled through the air. Tossed by the water nymphs, he slammed back-first against the ragged stones that formed the wall of the ravine. His body fell heavily to the ground. Jukung lay screaming incoherently just at the edge of the faery line.

For a moment, Soen moved to stretch his own Matei staff in to where Jukung lay but, cursing, stopped himself. The faery line would almost certainly discharge his staff the moment he pushed it across the line just as it had rendered Jukung’s staff useless.

Soen gazed down at the screaming Assesia. He could see terrible welts ballooning on Jukung’s tortured face: acid burns from the touch of the angered nymphs. Unchecked, it would literally melt the face from the Iblisi.

Soen frantically looked about him and then saw it: a thick branch jutting out from the tree growing at the upper edge of the ravine. At once, he pointed his Matei staff upward and uttered the words. A column of brilliant light flared upward, severing the branch. It crashed downward, nearly knocking the Inquisitor off his feet.

The nymphs had regrouped in the water and were surging again toward where Jukung lay.

Soen wrapped his arms around the thick branch, thrusting it past the faery line as he yelled. “Jukung! Take it! Hold on!”

The Assesia felt the hands of the nymphs wrap around his feet and ankles. His hands flailed in panic, falling on the branch and gripping it fiercely.

Soen braced his feet where he squatted and then in a single motion used his legs to push away from the faery line, applying all the strength he had to pull Jukung free.

The nymphs were not prepared. Their prey slipped from their grasp in a single lurch, tumbling back over the faery line and falling atop the now prone Inquisitor. Soen rolled the elf off of him, the cloying smell of sizzling flesh filling his nostrils. He quickly picked up his staff and pointed it at the Assesia.

The agonized Iblisi fell with sudden silence into a deep and gratefully dreamless sleep.

Soen lowered his staff and stood upright just short of the faery line, turning to stare at the man he knew was called Drakis.

The human stared back at the elven Inquisitor as he crouched uncertainly with his sword in hand and a human woman behind him. He protects her, Soen observed. He has something to fight for.

At the top of the falls, the bodies of Qinsei and Phang tumbled forward, rebounding off the stone face of the falls before falling among the wet rocks. Neither moved. Soen had no doubt that they had been dead since before he arrived at the pool.

The manticore and the chimerian fled first up the far slope. The two women followed them, urged on at last by the dwarf as all disappeared among the dark trees of the Murialis Woods. Only the tall manticore remained, pulling at the human to follow.

“Drakis,” Soen called as cold and still as death. “Wait.”

The human stopped in shock and turned.

Soen spoke in a calm voice that carried across the waters.

“Do you still hear the song. . the song in your mind?” the elf asked casually.

Drakis blinked. “How did you know?”

But then the tall manticore pulled forcefully at the human, and they both fled into the woods.

Soen, standing at the edge of the faery realm, took in a deep breath under his dark glare, turned, and picked up the tortured form of the Assesia called Jukung and made his way back down the stream.