“This path is no accident,” Drakis whispered to Urulani.
They emerged from the thicket into an enormous plaza, its grounds also burned to stubble where the grasses were just starting to reestablish themselves. Broken columns on either side lined the area that was nearly fifty feet across and more than three hundred feet in length. At the far end stood a wall nearly three stories high with additional crumbling walls and structures holding it vertical. The remains of buildings lined the great square. The rest of their companions were waiting nervously for them.
The terrible whooping sound came again from the left. Others soon joined it in chorus, beyond the ruins across the square and from the ruins to their right.
“Now where?” Drakis demanded of Ethis.
The chimerian’s head moved in swift jerks as he took in the area around them. “That way,” he said, point to their right. “Down the length of the plaza! Run!”
“Oh, no!” cried the dwarf. “Not RUN!”
Ethis plunged ahead of them, all four of his arms swinging with the effort of his dash, the dwarf roaring now in pain with every step. Drakis had the Lyric by one arm as they both dashed down the center of the plaza together. Mala ran alone, her auburn hair bouncing in the wind behind her.
Ethis suddenly skidded to a halt in the center of the plaza.
Drakis nearly fell over trying to stop short of running into anyone. “What is it?”
“It ends,” Ethis said in blinking astonishment.
“What ends?” Urulani demanded.
“The trail,” Ethis said. “It ends right here!”
“I think you may be right for once, chimerian,” Jugar said after drawing a deep breath. “Look!”
They were swarming over the ruined walls.
They might have been mistaken for humans except for the long, barbed tails. Their legs were different, too, double segmented with both forward and backward knee joints. Their feet had a heel claw and elongated toes with long claws at the end as did the hands at the ends of their immensely powerful arms. The bones of their faces were angular, ending in jutting spiked bones. Their wide mouths were filled with long, sharp teeth.
Their scales shone in the sun as they screamed.
They flowed like a tide over the ruins from all directions at once, surrounding the plaza. They crept forward, crouching down on all four appendages, coiling muscles to strike.
Drakis raised his sword, wondering just how tough the hides of these horrors would prove to be. There would be no time for words. Even if there were, he had nothing to say.
The stone beneath their feet suddenly shifted, tipped, and dropped beneath them. Caught off-balance, they all tumbled into each other, sliding sideways down the stone into the darkness.
The monstrous horrors screamed as one, leaping forward toward their prey, but it was too late.
The stone had already risen back into place.
Their prey had vanished into the earth.
CHAPTER 10
Ishander
DRAKIS ROLLED OVER QUICKLY, his right hand desperately searching for his sword.
“Hey!”
“Sorry,” he said, moving his hand in a different direction across the stone floor.
“Touch me again with that hand and you’ll lose the arm that goes with it!” Urulani snapped.
Drakis’ fingers felt the familiar bite of a cold, steel edge. He lightly followed the side of the blade to the grip and snatched it thankfully. The muffled sounds above him sent a shiver through him. “Now they’re angry.”
Quickly pushing himself up to his feet, Drakis looked around him. A single, bright patch of light lit the vast subterranean room. Massive columns, wider than Drakis’ reach, marched in seemingly endless procession into the darkness. Opposite the light and behind him a great device towered from floor to ceiling. Drakis took it all in at a glance—a hopeless complex of spiked wheels, rods, and cords that the warrior found completely incomprehensible.
A shadow passed over the device, and the light was momentarily blocked near its source.
“Ethis! Urulani!” Drakis shouted. “Get up! There’s someone else down here!”
The screeching above them was getting louder, as was the pounding on the stone above. Sand, shaken loose, fell in thin veils around them. The great device creaked.
“Where do we go?” Mala cried as she scrambled to her feet.
“Toward the light,” he said. “Come on, everyone! Let’s move! Now!”
They started their run toward the square of light at the end of the enormous room. A shadow again flickered against the intense light.
“Did you see that?” Urulani shouted.
“Keep running!” Drakis urged. “Run through it if you must, but don’t stop!”
The rectangle of light was getting closer; Drakis’ eyes were adjusting to the change. There were trees and sky beyond. Fitted stones of a plaza and . . .
They burst into the open stone court beneath a towering city wall behind them. The sounds of the monsters were beyond the wall, but Drakis doubted that it would hold them back once they caught the scent of him and his companions. Yet that was not what astonished him.
The plaza sloped down, forming a quay that jutted into a wide, green river.
More astonishing still, two long boats formed from bundled reeds were tied to the end of the quay. One held a few provisions. The other was nearly empty except for one very interesting occupant.
No longer a child but not yet grown into his beard, a young male human stood at the front of the boat a long pole in his hand. He wore a leather loincloth and vest but little else, his feet being bare. His skin was a deep brown color, but his hair was straw colored, long and pulled back into a thick braid. The pole he held extended down into the water where the youth was holding the boats against the current next to the quay. He stared at them expectantly.
Waiting.
“Ethis, I think we’ve found your thief,” Drakis smiled.
The tied-togther boats drifted down the center of the river. The young man—he looked to be about fourteen years old—piloted the boats with his long staff. When the boy had pulled the staff from the water earlier in the day, Drakis discovered that the pole actually had a flattened, wide end at the bottom that allowed him to use the implement as a pole and as a paddle or rudder, depending on the needs at the time. It proved to be a most effective tool in keeping their course steady down the serpentine convolutions of the river’s passage.
“He doesn’t say much, does he?” Urulani observed from the front of the reed boat. She seemed more relaxed now that they were on the water although Drakis suspected that she was a bit restless over not being in command of the ship. She continued watching the river as they drifted with the current, affecting a pose of being in charge of a craft over which she had no authority or control.
“He may not speak our language,” Ethis said. The chimerian was sitting at the front near where Urulani stood, his back to the direction of travel as he inspected and repacked his gear in his field pack. “It has been more than five hundred years since the Unified Tongue was spoken in these lands. Their language would almost certainly have been corrupted by now. For all we know they may have even lost the ability to speak altogether.”
“Altogether,” the Lyric said.
Ethis glanced up at her. She was sitting in the back of the boat near the silent young man. “What did you say?”
“I said, ‘altogether,’ ” the Lyric replied.
“Why?” Ethis asked.
“Because you wondered if we had lost the ability to speak it,” the Lyric replied.
“I don’t understand,” Ethis said, shaking his head.
Drakis chuckled. “Ethis, may I introduce you to Litaria; a relatively minor character . . .”
“I am not a minor!” huffed the Lyric.
“. . . from the Rivaen Sea Tales. She was renowned for taking everything said literally.”
“Charmed,” Ethis said without enthusiasm.
Following Drakis’ gaze, Urulani looked over at a broken tower foundation around which the river waters swirled. “There will be more ruins along the river than inland. Civilizations tend to follow the course of rivers. They offer water to sustain life and irrigation for crops as well as an easy source of sanitation so long as you don’t give much thought to those who are downstream. They also offer the benefit of easier and faster travel over longer distances. If you are ever lost, a river will always take you somewhere.”
“Well, we certainly are lost,” Drakis said, looking back past the young native boy to the second boat tied behind them. The prow and the stern of each boat curved upward where the reeds were bundled and lashed together. Mala lay sleeping in the front of the second boat, with her head against the raised prow. Jugar was also in the trailing boat, Ethis having rigged what remained of the canvas he had used to haul the dwarf all morning as a shade for him. The dwarf had been knocked cold by the fall through the trapdoor in Pythar and still lay unconscious in the bottom of the boat. Drakis considered Mala for a moment before he spoke again. “It’s a road, isn’t it, Urulani. This river, I mean. This is Mala’s living road.”
“Perhaps,” Urulani replied, turning back to watch the river ahead of them. “Or she may just be crazy. Even the Lyric thinks so.”
“Whether providence, fate, or just luck brought us here is unimportant,” Ethis said. “The question is what do we do next? This river eventually could take us to the sea.”
“Which sea would that be?” Urulani chided.
“Any sea, I would think,” Ethis answered back. “You are supposed to be a renowned captain, are you not? Sail along the coast until we find familiar waters and then head back south from there—back to more familiar lands.”
“What, in these?” Urulani gestured at the reed boats. “I may be a fine example of my craft, chimerian, but not even the gods of the ocean depths would attempt an open-water crossing in one of these reed sponges.”
“Quiet, both of you,” Drakis said. “The most important thing is to find a way to make contact with this native boy’s people and find a way to survive. Then we’ll worry about building ships and crossing oceans.”
“And what makes you think we can trust him?” Ethis asked.
“He could have left us back there,” Drakis said. “Someone made those paths, and as good as he was at sneaking into our camp and taking our things, he was waiting there for us by the quay when we were all but dead. If it hadn’t been for him, we would have been a quick meal for those . . . those . . .”
“Pythars,” the boy said.
“Yes, Pythars, when they . . .”
Drakis stopped speaking.
They all turned to look at the boy, who continued working his oar against the river, shifting them again toward the center.
“You speak our language?” Drakis asked cautiously.
“No,” the Lyric sniffed. “We speak his.”
The boy laughed. “She funny.”
“Just . . . wait,” Drakis said, shaking his head as though it would somehow help him to embrace this new thought. “We’ve been talking here for the last four hours and you’ve understood everything we said?”
“Most,” the boy replied. “You are much entertaining. I learn your secrets—that is the way of my duty, the way of my glory. Save you did I! Hero am I! Far-runner am I!”
“A Far-runner?” Ethis said carefully. “Tell us, what are Far-runners?”
The boy’s face broke into a sneer. “The four-armed man is from a far land, indeed, if you do not know about Far-runners. We leave the Clan, master rivers, run far to the ancient places, and brave the Citadels. We gather our past from the fall of the proud and bring them back for our clan. My father was a Far-runner. My father’s father was a Far-runner. I now am a Far-runner!”
“So you rob the bones of the dead,” Urulani said, recovering from her astonishment at the boy speaking.
“The dead brought down their doom on their own heads,” the boy shrugged. “They have no more use for their things.”
“Why not just live in the Citadels?” Ethis asked with a shrug of all four shoulders.
The boy glared at him. “The four-armed man is a child!”
“Yes,” Ethis said carefully. “I am a child . . . teach me.”
“Citadels are cursed!”
“So you bring back cursed items to your tribe?” Drakis asked incredulously.
“No, foolish man!” the youth spat back heatedly. “Cursed magic we leave to die with the Citadels. Only Far-runners are blessed by the gods to go there and find those things not of the magic. It is our honor. It is our glory.”
“And yet we were there,” Ethis said evenly. “We, too, braved the cursed Citadels.”
The boy’s lips curled in disgust. “You were lost! You would have been eaten by the Pythar if I had not led you to the river. You are children fallen in a pit of dragons crying for help.”
“And you are most brave,” Ethis continued. “So brave that you stole our things from us.”
“Yes! I took your things!” the boy said proudly. “It was to my honor and your shame!”
“Yes, you are brave,” Drakis said. The boy was in this way over his head, no matter what his boasts might say. The boy was quick, certainly, and dangerous, but any one of them would be able to take him in combat, let alone all of them at once. “We are shamed before you. We would like our things back now.”
“They are mine!” the boy said, thrusting out his jaw. “I have taken them as is the Far-runner’s right!”
“Yes, they are,” Ethis took up Drakis’ thought. “But I am surprised that you would bring a great magic thing back to your clan.”
“You are talking foolish again,” the boy said dubiously.
“No,” Ethis continued. “You took a stone from the dwarf—a black stone. It is great and terrible magic in disguise . . . and you have brought it back with you.”
The boy’s eyes went wide. He suddenly tossed his long pole at Drakis who barely had the reflexes to catch it. The boy jumped down, shoving the Lyric aside so violently that she nearly fell out of the boat. Frantically, the boy pawed through his sack and pulled out a black, faceted stone.
He drew back his arm as though to pitch it with all his might into the river.
Ethis lunged forward, snatching the stone out of the boy’s hand before he could let loose his throw.
“Do not worry, friend Far-runner,” Ethis said, steadying the boat as he sat back down. “Four-armed men are immune to the curse. I will take care of it for you and protect you and your clan from its effects.”
The boy blinked, uncertainty in his face for the first time. His lower lip quivered slightly.
“The honor is still yours, Far-runner,” Drakis said quietly. “I am Drakis. This is Ethis. The woman at the prow is Urulani and this woman we call the Lyric. We are your prize and we will not trouble you. May we ask you your name?”
“Ishander,” the boy said. “I am Ishander.”
“Then, Ishander,” Drakis said, handing back the long pole. “We are trying to find our way back home. Where are you taking us?”
“Home,” Ishander answered. “My home. But your people . . . if you are lost, will they not come looking for you?”
“No, Ishander,” Drakis said with a sigh. “No one is looking for us at all.”
CHAPTER 11
Hunter and Hunted
SOEN TJEN-REI THE RENEGADE, elven Inquisitor whose capture and death was decreed by Imperial Will throughout the Rhonas Empire that he had faithfully served, sat wearily down at the crest of a small knoll, leaning his back against the sloping broad trunk of a tree as he gazed back down at the length of road he had just taken.
Looking behind him had become a necessary habit. He was verging on the far northern reach
es of the Empire as far from the Imperial City of Rhonas as possible . . . and he knew that it was not far enough.
The Scheliss Field Road wound its way among the gently rolling mounds of the Northmarch, an unhurried path for traders who came eastward from River Town. At that walled village the road split, the Coast Road following the river to the ports of the Shadow Coast to the west. Gnomish goods from Cape Tjakar on Manticus Bay traveled this road as well as goblin spices from Nordesia’s Gorgantia Bay far up the coast. He knew this because he had journeyed with those cargoes, quietly working his passage on a gnomish galley and helping shift their jars in Shellsea to the transport wagons. Shellsea was an elven settlement requiring that Soen take more care to not be recognized for either whom he now was or who he had once been. He had covered many leagues since discarding the robes that once heralded him as an Inquisitor of the Iblisi, taking instead the more common robes of a Fourth Estate merchant as he reinvented himself and his false past. His Matei staff—powerful symbol of his former calling—he disguised as best he could from the eyes that occasionally might be cast in his direction. He never considered discarding it though its discovery in his hands would certainly expose him; it was too powerful a weapon to be without.
In his mind, Soen saw the farther reaches of the road branching south from River Town to become the main trade route down through the Northmarch connecting with the Imperial Folds—the magical transportation portals that were the backbone of Rhonas commerce, communication, and might—just outside an otherwise inconsequential village called Char. Through those portals he had passed freely only a week before—a master on a mission sanctioned by the Imperial Will and blessed by Ch’drei, the matriarchal head of the Iblisi Order that he faithfully served.
What a difference a few weeks can make, he thought.
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