Song of the Dragon

CHAPTER 41

The manticore stood silhouetted against the bright backdrop of the stars in a cloudless night. He was hunched over, his massive head turning furtively from side to side. The tall grasses of the savanna stretched to the south, west, and east under the starlight. To the north, the dark towers of the Sentinel Peaks stood as a great, jagged wall blotting out the stars. But here, almost exactly beneath his padded feet, two widely trampled roads came to an intersection. One curved down from the mud gnome’s city to the northwest and plunged deep into the Vestasian Savanna to the southeast. The other carved a wide path from the Tempest Bay colonies of the Dje’Kaarin gnomes to the east and wound its way to other more southern mud gnome cities to the southwest. Both roads were formed by the passage of gnomes who were in too great a hurry to stop at this singular place and who, in the depths of the night, had left the manticore entirely alone.

The creature continue to shift nervously under the stars, first on one foot and then the other, turning from time to time to look behind him. All the while he held a small stone gingerly between the thick fingers of his right paw, tapping it nervously onto similar stones he held cupped in his right paw.

The manticore stopped for a moment, holding perfectly still in the night, his head straining upward. He shivered abruptly though the night was far from cold, the hairs on his growing mane shaking momentarily. Then he resumed striking the small stones together once more.

“So it is you,” a voice said from the darkness.

The manticore wheeled around, dropping to a crouch, his legs contracted and prepared to spring.

“Peace, friend,” the voice said, seeming to come from every direction at once around the startled manticore.

The manticore relaxed slightly, his eyes straining at the darkness. He spoke quietly into the night. “I am a servant of the Empire!”

“And you have done well,” came the voice in reply from a shadow that appeared out of nowhere before the eyes of the manticore.

“Have we met, Master?”

“Not before tonight,” the shadow responded. Its shape was more defined now against the stars: lithe and tall after the form of the elves. Its head was cloaked in a great hood, and in its right hand it held a long ornate staff. “Although I have followed you for some time. By what name are you known?”

“RuuKag, Master,” the manticore answered, bowing down before the robed elf. “I was a servant in the House of Timuran and the Beacon of that House.”

“You have done well, RuuKag,” the shadow answered. “Are the others near?”

“No, my Master.”

The elven silhouette stopped. “Then why have you called me, Beacon of Timuran?”

“The stones, my Master,” RuuKag replied with evident pain in his voice. “The dwarf has discovered them. He stole most of them from me as I slept and doubtless plans to use them to confuse you, my Master. He will send them away with someone else and instruct them to mislead you-to take you farther from me. I would be lost to you, my Master. I would be. . lost. .”

The manticore fell to the ground, burying his head under his forepaws.

“Peace, friend,” the hooded elf said once more, his staff lowering slightly until the glowing blue gem fixed in its head shone down on the manticore.

The groveling creature relaxed slightly and looked up. “Please, Master! Please take me back! I want to forget. I want to go back and forget everything I ever was or did. I had no part in this rebellion, I swear it! Please. . I don’t want to remember any more!”

“In time,” the elf replied calmly. “When you have finished your task.”

“My task?” RuuKag asked as he pushed himself up. Even kneeling his head was still nearly level with the elf’s chest. “But, Master, I have done all that was expected! I have led you to me. You have found me!”

“You are not the one I seek,” the elf said softly. “Until I have taken him, you will not have peace.”

RuuKag stood suddenly.

The elf’s staff shifted menacingly.

“But. . Master!” RuuKag grumbled. “I’ve done all you asked of me! I stayed with the rebels, dropped the beacon stones as I promised. .”

“And where are they now?” the elf demanded. “I could have taken you any time I wished. . but just getting recaptured wasn’t your task, was it? You were supposed to lead me to the rest of the bolters. . not just you! The entire point of having beacons planted among the slaves is so that you will lead us to all the other escaped slaves, not just yourself.”

“Please, Master,” the manticore said, wringing his large, fur-covered hands. “I just want to go home.”

“Home?” the elf spat. “You have no home, RuuKag. . it’s burned to the ground, its walls caving in on itself as a ruin because your companions wrecked it all. If you’re going to have any home at all, it will only be after you finish your task by leading me to the bolters with whom you’ve been traveling.”

“I don’t know where they are!”

“What?”

“They. . they moved on,” RuuKag said. “That Drakis human said something about going east-maybe finding a ship or something. They’ve probably left by now. .”

“Then find them!” the elf insisted. “By the gods, you’re a manticore!”

“But, Master,” RuuKag asked with uncertainty in his voice. “I know you are powerful, but they have magic of their own. . powerful and deadly. How many of your brothers are with you?”

“It’s just me,” the elf replied. “And it will go a lot better for all of us if it remains just me.”

“I don’t understand,” RuuKag said, shaking his head.

“Listen to me, manticore!” the elf was losing patience. “There are three-maybe four full Quorums of Iblisi on the plains who are trying to keep up with me. They are hunting me in order that they may be led to you. When they find us-should they find us-then I can promise you as certainly as the sun will arise in the morning, things will go much worse for all of us-you included-if you do not get me to this Drakis friend of yours first.”

“I don’t. . please, Master, I’ve got to think. .”

“Think!”

The manticore flinched at the elf’s shouted word.

“You don’t have to think about anything! Thinking is what made you a coward!”

RuuKag whined, his ears flattening back against his wide head.

“I may not have Timuran’s Impress Scrolls, but I did read the Devotion Ledger-especially of certain bolters,” the elf said, stepping closer. “RuuKag, once of the Shakash Pride was supposed to be a warrior-supposed to rush into battle-but he thought too much, felt too much. So he came home. . just walked back to his pridelands because the thought of battle and death and pain frightened him. The frightened manticore! A freak and an embarrassment to his father and mother and brothers and everything his Shakash Pride had stood for and taught since the rise of Chaenandria. You were useless, so they banished you to the Vestasian Savanna.”

RuuKag shrank back.

The elf pressed his face so near the manticore that his scent was overwhelming. “How was that for you, RuuKag? Too afraid to fight and your own family not understanding why? They still loved you, still cared for you, but in one way or another they all turned their backs on you and banished you from the pride. You might still be among them, but you could never again be one of them. So you banished yourself, making the long way to the cursed lands of the Vestasian Savanna, nursing the wounds in your heart. How was that for you, RuuKag of Shakash. . oh, pardon me, RuuKag of no pride at all. . to come again just weeks ago back to the old lands of your punishment? Did even the mud gnomes remember the story of the manticore with no pride?”

“No,” whispered RuuKag. “Not even that.”

“No, you were forgotten-not even important enough for the mud gnomes to remember your story,” the elf sneered. “No wonder you prefer to forget.”

RuuKag closed his eyes. Great tears fell down his fur-covered cheeks, glinting in the moonlight.

“Now, I’m the one who knows your story, RuuKag,” the elf continued. “You could try to take me, I suppose, try to summon that famously vicious warrior heart, and we could do battle right here. Or you could do as you were told to do: lead me to Drakis and his companions, serve the Imperial Will and, as your reward, I will see to it that you never remember again who you were and the shame you brought on your family and pride.”

RuuKag’s breath was ragged. He held very still.

“Take me to Drakis,” the elf whispered. “And RuuKag can be completely forgotten. No one will remember that name. . not even you.”

RuuKag opened his eyes and stared into the blackness that was encompassed by the elf’s hood.

“I will, Master,” the manticore said.

The elf smiled, his sharp teeth shining in the starlight.

“But I will need a new set of beacon stones,” RuuKag continued. “They’re going to use the old ones to take you in the wrong direction.”

“Here,” the elf said, reaching into the folds of his cloak and pulling out a small, plain pouch. “These are my own-made by my hand. They will answer to my staff only.”

“Thank you, Master,” the manticore said. He took a few steps up the northwestern road and then stopped. “Master, is it true that you do not wish to harm this Drakis-human?”

The elf chuckled. “RuuKag, I may be the only one I know who does not want him dead.”

“But,” RuuKag persisted, “why do you wish him alive?”

“I have my own reasons,” the elf replied.

“Surely such things are beyond my understanding,” RuuKag said, his eyes gazing once more upward toward the stars, “but it is a wonder that an elf should cross all of Chaenandria, concern himself with the obscure backgrounds of a handful of freed slaves, and cross the length and breadth of the Vestasian Plain just to meet this Drakis.”

The elf paused. “You’re thinking again, RuuKag.”

“Sorry, Master,” the manticore said, lowering his head.

“Just don’t let it happen again.”

“Yes, Master.”

The manticore turned once more to face the elf. “They will have questions, Master-about my absence, especially since they discovered the stones. What do I tell them?”

“Tell them. .” The elf thought for a moment before he continued with a bright lilt in his voice. “Tell them that you were their traitor.”

“They would kill me,” RuuKag said. “You cannot be serious!”

“On the contrary, I am most serious,” the elf continued. “They wouldn’t believe you if you lie. Tell them that you have been dropping these stones so that they could be tracked and followed and that the Iblisi are searching for them. Then tell them that after getting to know them you have changed your mind and want to help them instead.”

“They will believe this?”

“Absolutely,” the elf said, folding his arms across his chest, his staff casually crooked in his arms. “Any lie is far more easily swallowed when it is mixed with a liberal amount of the truth. Besides, from what I know of this Drakis, he would be more willing to forgive a penitent traitor than a professed friend. Most humans are.”

RuuKag nodded. “Then I shall do your bidding. . but, Master, by what name shall I speak of you?”

“Soen,” the elf replied. “Just Soen.”