“The Pythar are coming and we have to take the Living Road before death finds us!”
“The dwarf said this place was called Pythar,” Urulani frowned. “What is she raving about? The living road? What living road?”
Drakis could not remember how long it had been since the recently sullen Mala had shown much of an interest in anything, and her sudden fervor inclined him to believe her. The unexpected existence of a back entrance to the shop rooms they had previously felt were so secure gave both credence to her strange tale and concern for the safety of their cliff-face warren, heightened by the disappearance of both Mala and the Lyric. But now, with the gray light of dawn, and having found both women not only alive but apparently only having wandered off on their own, Drakis’ fears were damped down. The rush to action was slowly ebbing into a desire for rest and, he thought, perhaps more lengthy and reflective deliberations.
Drakis stood up, dragging Mala to her feet with him.
“All right, Mala. Let’s get back with the others, and we’ll talk about what to do.”
“Talk?” Mala was indignant. “There’s no time to talk! We have to leave—right now! Our lives are . . .”
The bellowing sound of a dwarf and the distant clash of steel came from the curving hallway they had just left.
“Maybe she’s right,” Urulani said, shrugging her shoulders as Drakis, Mala’s hand gripped firmly in his own, rushed back into the corridor and toward the shop.
“I’ll have that back, you black-hearted scoundrel, if I have to cut it out of your rubber hide!” Jugar roared. The dwarf was leaning heavily on his good leg but still standing, his short-handled battle ax held in both hands as he spun unevenly around on his good leg. “Give it back now or I’ll cleave you in twain!”
Drakis rushed through the previously hidden doorway, his sword at the ready but then stopped short.
The hobbling dwarf appeared to be chasing Ethis about the small room with his war ax.
Urulani slid to a stop behind Drakis. “Chimerian! What’s the meaning of this?”
“Theft and thievery, that’s the meaning!” the red-faced dwarf howled. “Piracy, by Thorgrin’s beard, coldly calculated and expertly performed!”
“I regret to inform you that the dwarf appears to have gone insane,” Ethis replied, dodging a strong slash across the center of his body.
“What happened,” Drakis said wearily.
“I was on the concourse—on watch,” Ethis replied. The dwarf was taking another lunge at him, but the chimerian managed to extend his arm, grasping the dwarf’s head and holding him far enough away to avoid the blade. “I must admit that the architecture interested me considerably and may have distracted me—but not for long.”
The dwarf howled, and Ethis quickly withdrew his arm before Jugar could cut it off.
“Now he claims I stole his precious rock from him,” Ethis concluded, jumping deftly out of the way as the dwarf charged forward, stumbled, and fell flat against the stone floor.
“It was absorbing the Aer through the stones,” the dwarf wailed. “Drawing it out of the ground in ways you cannot possibly understand!”
“You have no magic at all without the stone?” Drakis asked.
“Aye . . . all living things are imbued with Aer,” Jugar said, rolling painfully to sit up, “but it’s like comparing a trickle with a river. I would have had my leg healed in days with that stone. Now it will take me weeks!”
“He’s convinced I took it,” Ethis said. “However, before he became belligerent, he insisted on searching everyone’s packs.”
“Everyone’s packs?” Mala was indignant.
They had been so intent on the battle between Ethis and Jugar that none of them had noticed the contents of their packs spilled across the floor.
Jugar painfully tried to pull himself into a better position.
Urulani pushed her way past Mala and the Lyric who were crowding in the doorway at the back of the shop, raising her elegant head slightly as she stepped around Drakis. “Jugar is not just being unreasonable. It appears we’ve all got something missing.”
The chimerian frowned then fell forward, catching the ground with all four of his hands spread out before him at once. His body contracted slightly and he looked more like a spider as he lowered himself close to the ground. Even the heavy-breathing dwarf stopped his rage at the sight. Ethis moved quickly along the ground and then rose upright, extending his torso into the more familiar form to which they were all accustomed.
Ethis placed two of his fists firmly on where his hips would have been. “It was a human . . .”
“See!” Jugar shouted. “I told you . . .”
“But it wasn’t one of us,” Ethis concluded.
“What do you mean?” Drakis asked, returning his blade to its scabbard.
“The markings are not obvious, but they are there,” Ethis continued speaking with a distracted air as much to himself as to those around him. “There are footprints all through here. Most of them are obscured by the unfortunate ravings of the dwarf, but there are enough remaining for me to be sure. It was a human . . . barefooted, too . . . a male of your kind of approximately fourteen years or female of fifteen. It’s difficult to tell from what remains.”
“Could it be one of the monstrous predators that dragged Kwarae off?” Drakis asked.
“No, there’s no heel spur like the ones we saw before, and the toes are not long enough,” Ethis shook his head, looking out the front door of the ancient room into the gray mists beyond. He came in and left through that front opening, too. An amazing feat considering I was standing not thirty feet from the opening.”
“Then we’ve got to be finding him at once!” Jugar demanded. “He’s got my Heart!”
“One cannot steal what was never there,” Ethis sniffed.
“You’ll answer for that one day, bendy,” Jugar snarled. “Although I would be willing to forgo the matter entirely, if you’ll just move your rubbery cheeks and track down this thief and recover my property no matter what his age!”
Drakis moved to his own field pack and quickly undid the toggles securing the top flap. “Well, I’ve a dagger missing. Do you suppose everyone else has something gone as well?”
“Certainly,” Ethis agreed, “although it seems the thief didn’t discriminate in what he or she took. Value didn’t seem to be the motive behind the theft.”
“Well he took something of inestimable value from me,” the dwarf shouted as he struggled to stand on his good leg. “We’ve got to get it back!”
“The dwarf is right,” Drakis said. “It’s the source of the dwarf’s magic and it may be our best chance at getting out of this nightmare. Can you track this person?”
“Yes,” Ethis answered. “Now that I know what to look for, I can track him, but we’ll have to hurry.”
“Why?”
“Because we need to find this thief for a better reason than the dwarf’s magic stone,” Ethis said, gazing out from the front opening beyond the concourse to the gray mists beyond. “We have limited food in a land where we do not know what is edible for foraging. If there is a human surviving here, then we need to find him and learn from him how to survive here as he does. And there is another compelling reason for us to leave whether we find the thief or not.”
Drakis finished securing his field pack. “And that would be?”
“Because I’ve also found other tracks all over the concourse,” Ethis said. “Whatever hunted us yesterday has been in here before and, I suspect when the rain stops, they’ll be coming for us.”
Drakis thrust out his lower lip in thought. “Mala said we had to leave . . .”
“It would seem she is right,” Ethis nodded.
“And you can track this person?” Drakis asked again.
“If we hurry,” Ethis repeated.
“So you’re a tracker, eh?” Drakis said cautiously. “Odd you never mentioned this before. You seem to be a man of inestimable hidden talents, Ethis. Anythi
ng else about yourself you’d care to share with us?”
“Not at the moment,” Ethis said. “We’ve not the time.”
CHAPTER 9
Death’s Shadow
“THIS IS MADNESS,”Urulani huffed.
“And to what particular aspect of this madness are you referring?” Drakis responded. The air weighed down on him, laden with the moisture from the night’s rain. He was sweating profusely and having trouble keeping the salty liquid out of his eyes. The clouds had cleared with the rising sun but the warmth only served to increase his discomfort. “The fact that we are here at all? Or perhaps that we actually believe we can survive a thousand leagues from any help? I can think of a number of different ways that our situation would qualify as insane.”
“Did you include the fact that we’re following a chimerian into ruins which we know to be deadly,” the captain said, sweat beading on her dark forehead, “in order to give a dwarf back a piece of rock? How about that we have happily left our stronghold because a proven traitor among us tells us some goddess none of us have ever heard of told her so? Was that on your list?”
“Well, we’re apparently not all happy about that,” Drakis answered, pushing aside a massive fern frond, trying to keep Ethis and Mala, both of whom were ahead of him, in sight. “And I’ll even admit that it was on my list.”
“She cannot be trusted, Drakis,” Urulani said as she followed at his heels. “Even the Lyric thinks she is insane.”
“This isn’t the time, Captain.”
“We may not have another time,” Urulani snapped back. “I’m beginning to wonder if all you southlands humans are lunatics.”
What a horrible place, he thought, as he made his way around a fallen pillar jutting out of the shattered stones of the nearly obliterated roadway. Who in their right mind would want to live here? Who out of their right mind would want to live here either?
A quick smile flashed across his face. There were certainly enough people here to ask that question and get an answer with authority. The Lyric had not been in her right mind since House Timuran fell and it was beginning to look as though Mala had joined that particular tribe as well. Mala’s new obsession with having seen a goddess and fleeing back into the jungle ruins looking for some “living road” made just about as much sense as the Lyric. Maybe they were all destined to that fate, he thought as he struggled to keep his footing over a pile of loose stones between a row of bushes with thorns nearly as long as his hand. Perhaps it was an inevitable result of breaking the magical bonds that had held him in a blissful state—innocent of the true horror of his life as a slave. What had his freedom won him except misery, suspicion, and a journey that had brought him to die in a land far from anything that he had ever known? All this because his name happened to be the same as the one mentioned by some long-dead poet and because everyone else, it seemed, wanted the story to be true.
“Well, if I am insane,” Drakis said, entering a small section of the road where the cobblestones were fitted so tightly together that they had kept the jungle foliage at bay, “I wish it were in a more pleasant climate. What do you think, Captain? Does the fact that I would rather die in more pleasant surroundings prove me sane or not?”
Urulani smiled slightly. “I think that leaves the entire question open.”
“Well, Ethis must be crazy,” Drakis stated looking ahead of them. “He’s carrying the dwarf.”
Urulani looked up as well, peering through the jumble of broken walls, street, and plants. Jugar was strapped to the back of the chimerian, lashed down like scowling cordwood being hauled to market. “He’s the only one who could shoulder the little fool. The dwarf’s none too happy about it, but his comfort is the least of my concerns.”
“What about the Lyric?” Drakis wiped his brow again but it did not seem to help.
“She’s ahead of us, too,” Urulani reported as she scanned the thick undergrowth around them. “The Lyric seems to be keeping up better than I am. I’m more comfortable with a deck under my feet. Land is hard for me. What about your wondrous goddess-talker?”
“Up ahead,” Drakis replied.
“With Ethis?” Urulani said, raising one dark eyebrow.
“Yes,” Drakis nodded, not wanting to be drawn into that particular argument. “With Ethis.”
The roadway they were following could barely be discerned as having ever lived up to the name. Ferns and thick brush, as well as a number of towering trees, had laid claim to the ancient path. From roots to leaves they had broken up the evidence of man’s ordered mind and handiwork over the centuries, until only scattered pieces remained. If there had once been far-seeing towers, they were now obscured by the enormous trees growing in thick succession. Only jumbled fragments remained. The ruins of Pythar were, to Drakis, a metaphor for madness—like making one’s sad way through the remains of greatness that no longer functioned or even made sense.
They had left the cliff-city as soon as they could gather what remained of their belongings. Ethis asked them to go down by the same stairs they had come up the previous day. Their intruder had apparently come to them some other way, which Ethis believed too dangerous for Mala or the Lyric to traverse. He had gratefully left Urulani off of that list as Drakis was coming to appreciate the captain of the Sondau Clan and knew that any inference of her being weak might well have ended in blows exchanged. Ethis said the trail led downward and that he and the dwarf would meet them at the base of the stairs once he knew where the trail went. Drakis half believed the chimerian would dump the dwarf and disappear altogether, abandoning them, but Ethis arrived as promised. He showed them a passage to the other side of the broken bridge and onto what once had been a wide boulevard, now choked with vegetation.
Ethis, followed closely by the suddenly enthusiastic Mala, led them down the broken avenue. They passed several ruins whose remains made Drakis’ heart ache for their lost and ruined beauty: a partial wall with frieze carvings across its face forming compelling patterns within patterns; a fountain which, though long since nonfunctioning, intermingled its own perfectly crafted stone leaves with those of the surrounding plants; or a staircase, rising to nothing with stone riser posts formed to look like jumping fish. In each case, Drakis felt the ghostly presence of artisans who were long dead. Who carved that frieze, he wondered? What hand held the hammer and the chisel? To whom did they go at the end of their day’s labor? The evidence of their hands was everywhere, and Drakis struggled to comprehend their loss.
Four separate streets intersected the boulevard. Ethis paused for a moment, his head and body rising slightly as he turned around. His voice was lowered when he spoke, “They’re back.”
“Back?” Urulani said. “The hunters, you mean . . . or whatever they’re called?”
“Yes,” Ethis said.
“Can we get back to the cliffs?” Drakis asked at once.
“No,” Ethis said, shaking his head. “They’re coming from the cliffs. The markings lead this way. Come on!”
He dashed down the avenue to his left, weaving across the fitted stones among grass blades that were nearly ten feet tall.
“Where are we going now?” Urulani asked as she adjusted her grip on her sword.
“One foot after the other, Captain,” Drakis said, drawing his own sword. “Anywhere but here.”
They both ran after the others into the opening formed by the remaining stones of the road. It was a ragged course, but Drakis soon realized that it was a path. In places, he noticed, the stones did not fit the pattern of the remaining road. There were large, flat stones laid across the ground that bridged the grass between sections of the old avenue.
A loud rustling sounded behind them. Whatever was following them had plunged into the tall grasses. Either they did not know of the path or they were heedless of it. Drakis glanced back and could see the tops of the grass blades violently shaking behind him and to his left.
He gritted his teeth, concentrating on the path before him and the back of Urulani,
who was running the twisted way in front of him.
With shocking suddenness, they emerged from the grasses into another clear intersection. This area appeared to be burned, as though a fire had passed through a few seasons before. Ahead of them, the Lyric and Mala were running toward a black thicket of brush that looked as though it were spilling from one of the branching alleys. Ethis was standing in front of it, waving them on.
There was an opening in the wall of brush. Mala and the Lyric had already passed into the opening.
Drakis and Urulani ran across the space quickly and ducked into the low opening, passing Ethis. There was an obvious path beaten into the ground, again weaving back and forth deeper into the thick brush.
“Ouch!” Urulani exclaimed quietly.
Drakis looked at her.
Her arm was bleeding near the shoulder. The brush was filled with razor-sharp thorns.
Ethis came in behind Drakis, pulling a woven patch of the same thorny materials behind him and sealing the way behind them. As Ethis turned, the dwarf strapped on his back swung toward Drakis.
“I have never suffered such indignities in my life!” Jugar was almost purple with rage, his spittle flying at Drakis’ face, only a hand’s breadth between them. “Slung to the back of this thieving bendy like I was one of his rubber-bottomed offspring . . .”
“Silence, fool,” Ethis hissed. “We’re not alone.”
Straw-thin rays of sunlight were all that penetrated the thicket, the branches of the thorn-covered brush so thick around them that it was impossible to see anything beyond. Ethis raised one long hand, holding his palm toward Drakis and Urulani.
The thicket shook suddenly with several impacts, each followed immediately by whooping and screeching sounds that they felt as a chill in their bones. Shadows moved across the face of the thicket, blotting out shafts of light back and forth. Ethis turned to Drakis, his expressionless face registering concern for the benefit of his companions. Then he motioned with his hand for them to continue farther into the thicket.
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