“Are we there?” Urulani asked the young man.
“No,” Ishander answered. “We wait.”
“Wait for what?” Ethis asked, but the boy gave no answer.
Time passed as slowly as the river drifting past them. Drakis had long since exhausted speculation and was never very good at small talk. The boy kept his staff lodged against the stone, holding them in this position, shifting only occasionally to keep his balance.
The sun was nearly setting by the time he spoke again.
“We have been welcomed by the clan,” Ishander announced. “You may let go of the stone, lady.”
Urulani raised her eyebrow slightly. Drakis could not be certain whether she was surprised or affronted by the remark but she let go of her hold, her dark arms falling to her sides, shaking them to relieve the aching.
“Did you see any signal?” Drakis whispered to Ethis.
“No,” the chimerian answered quietly, “but not seeing one does not mean there was none. We must be close.”
The boats drifted around the bend, running down a straight section of the river that moved swiftly before slowing again as it turned to their left.
“You are the guests of our Clan-mother, Audelai El,” Ishander spoke without preamble. His voice was overly loud and carried a stiff, pompous quality. “As guests, you shall enjoy the privileges of our great city and the protection of its fortress walls. If you are to remain our guests, you will acknowledge the law of the Ambeth Clan as your own, our customs will be your customs and our justice your justice. Do you submit your will to that of the clan?”
“I do,” Mala answered at once.
“And I submit myself even more than she does!” piped in the Lyric.
“Might I ask a question?” Ethis said as he raised one of his four hands.
Ishander looked momentarily troubled, as though someone had sung a wrong note in the expected melody of his song. “You . . . a question?”
“Yes,” Ethis continued. “What if we don’t want to submit our will to the clan?”
Ishander blinked. “What if you . . . what?”
“I mean, we don’t know what the clan expects of us or what its rules are or whether we’re breaking them or not,” Ethis continued. “So what if we don’t agree to this will of the clan?”
Urulani turned to cast a look of gentle warning in the direction of the chimerian.
Ishander stuttered for a moment before recovering, indignation blossoming in his features. “Well . . . you . . . you would . . . you would be horribly executed as cowards and enemies of the clan!”
“Oh, well, then!” Ethis said with an exaggerated shrug. “I guess we do submit to the will of the clan.”
“What about the short one?” Ishander asked, pointing his pinkie finger at the second boat.
Mala reached under the covering tarpaulin at once and raised Jugar’s limp hand. “So does the dwarf!”
“We all do, Ishander,” Urulani said, her dark eyes fixed on the young man. “But will you teach us the ways of your people? We do not wish to offend your Clan-mother.”
The young man smiled. “Of course! I am a Far-runner and I know the ways of many places and peoples—but I have never met anyone like you. Were you a Clan-mother where you come from?”
“Something like that,” Urulani said. “I was the captain of a ship—like you—only my ship was larger and held all my clan.”
The boy’s eyes grew wide with wonder, but he managed to recover his composure and regain his studied, stoic expression.
“You gave your speech very well, Ishander,” Ethis said. “Is giving that speech also part of the clan’s law?”
“Yes,” Ishander answered. “We Far-runners must learn it before we may leave our clan strongholds. It is to be given to all those the Far-runners bring from the outside into our city.”
“And how often have you given this speech yourself?” Drakis asked.
The boy glanced at Drakis and then fixed his eyes back on the river. “Once.”
“And that was to us?” Drakis continued.
Ishander ignored the remark, launching once again into his recitation. “Tremble before the wonder that is Ambeth! Clanhold of the Ambeth people and symbol of its might and glory! Look upon our wondrous works and despair!”
Drakis turned to look forward where the river again twisted, this time to the right, and caught his first sight of Ambeth.
His first thought was that the young man was making fun of him.
“Ah,” Ethis said from behind him. “So this is what has become of the mighty human empires of the north.”
As they came to the bend in the river, Ambeth appeared not so much a fortress as a stockade. Vertical logs had been driven into the ground to form a defensive wall. An attempt had been made to keep the jungle cleared outside the wall far enough from the stockade so that its defenders might see trouble coming before it was upon them, but the jungle was uncooperatively encroaching on the space. There were stockade towers erected on either side of the river and at intervals down the wall but these were barely twenty feet tall—not even as tall as the subatria wall that had surrounded House Timuran and that had been considered only for show.
Drakis craned his head, trying to see beyond the gap in the wall where the river ran between two of the watchtowers and was dismayed.
Ambeth was little more than a collection of low, thatched-roof huts scattered over a spit of land that formed a long, slow curve in the river. Here and there among the huts, the crumbling walls of what may have been a former settlement jutted upward in jagged defiance toward the sky but were generally ignored by the surrounding architecture of the hovels. There was a “Keep” of sorts—a second stockade wall atop the rise looking over the river that surrounded a single tower. Even that structure was a sad one, cobbled around the remains of a former stone tower now patched together with wood framing.
As they passed slowly between the watchtowers, Drakis took in the totality of the village of which Ishander had so generously boasted. On their right, the stockade wall ran a short distance up from the shore and then angled back toward the river at a watchtower. There, barely past the river’s edge, the stockade wall abruptly ended, as though the river would protect the village and further extension was not required. To his left, the land rose gently from the river, creating a shallow beach toward which Ishander steered them. There were many boats on the beach and small homes beyond. Smoke rose from numerous chimneys and hung in a layer just above the village, turning blue and gray in the deepening sunset.
His warrior mind instantly conceived of a dozen different plans by which he could overwhelm the defenses of this village—the place where they staked their survival.
But it was the sound, at last, that attracted his attention.
The sound of children laughing.
Human children.
Drakis stared in wonder at the beach ahead of them. From the hovels and the homes, the dirt streets and alleyways, the broken ruins and the thick bushes and plants they came: humans. Young, old, men, women, warriors, and artisans, they came toward the beach.
The wonders he had seen, Drakis realized, the ruins of greatness and power that they had witnessed in Pythar were the legacy of these people. Their ancestors had built these ruins. They had been a great people—a people who had challenged the Rhonas Empire itself.
One question kept nagging at him as they pushed toward the shore and the line of guards quickly gathering there.
What happened that they should have fallen so far?
“All kneel before the Clan-mother of the Ambeth!” thundered the broad-shouldered human who stood a full head taller than Drakis.
Drakis had been considering what it might take for him to disarm the warrior and, on reflection, believed he could do it. Still, it would not be proper to insult the only hosts they knew within a thousand leagues who could supply them with food and water.
Drakis knelt along with Ethis and Urulani. Mala and the Lyric were behind the
m. The dwarf had, for good or ill, regained consciousness and lay again on his makeshift litter struggling to sit up.
“Where are we?” Jugar demanded.
Drakis pushed him back flat on the litter. “We’re in Ambeth. Hold still.”
“Ambeth?” the dwarf responded with a quizzical look on his face. “Where or what is an Ambeth?”
Drakis pushed Jugar back flat once again. “Hold still and listen . . . then perhaps we can all find out.”
The Keep of Ambeth was, as Drakis first believed, little more than a shored-up repair of a tower that had existed here long before Clan Ambeth claimed it as their own. A lodge-hall had been added to the original broken foundation that joined with the tower walls. The tower itself had framing around it. Drakis was uncertain as to whether the ancient tower walls were holding up the framing or the other way around. Drakis and his companions had all been marched up from the shore through the town and directly across a wide square into the large room attached to the tower. The flanking soldiers did not seem interested in conversation although the streets were lined with the curious townspeople, all of whom were gawking, laughing, pointing, and chattering with each other as though the newcomers were exotic animals on their way to the forum for a match. The soldiers had positioned them in front of a large fire pit near the center of the lodge with the tower base on the far side.
A figure emerged from the shadows at the base of the tower. It was a woman of uncertain age. There were lines at the corners of her eyes, but her skin and her cheeks were otherwise smooth as was her high forehead. Her hair was long and cascaded down around her shoulders but there were streaks of gray in the rich black strands. Her eyes were a striking violet, bright and intense. She had a wide, generous mouth although one of her front teeth was slightly crooked. She wore a long robe whose colors were indistinct and faded while around her neck hung an eclectic assortment of so much different jewelry that Drakis wondered how she was managing to hold it all upright.
“I am Audelai El, Clan-mother of all the Ambeth!” the woman intoned in a deep, rich voice. She looked up toward the sky and brought her palms together in front of her. “Have the strangers accepted our ways?”
“The strangers have accepted the ways of the Ambeth, Clan-mother,” Ishander said, his voice breaking slightly in his enthusiasm.
The Clan-mother raised her hands high above her head and spoke toward the ceiling. “Then the protection and hospitality of the Ambeth shall be with our guests and the laws of the clan shall be their laws until the fall of the sky!”
“The Ambeth are One!” shouted the warriors in the hall followed closely by Ishander.
The Clan-mother then lowered her hands and looked at Drakis. Suddenly, she smiled and winked, then started clapping her hands together in glee. Audelai El ran quickly around the fire pit and clasped Urulani by both hands, helping her to her feet. She moved among them, reaching down and helping them up as she chattered along. “Oh, this is too marvelous to have you here with us, really, it is! To think of it! Outsiders who have come to us from foreign lands and bringing knowledge of places that we have only considered in our dreams. I cannot tell you how excited I am personally to see you. Anything that I can do for you, anything at all, I’ll do if it is within my power to make it happen. I can only assume that you are on a great mission of some importance for we have heard of stirrings among the dragons of the Surgani Mountains and that danger is passing northward through the land, bringing change to the world.”
Drakis stood as she took his hands. “Clan-mother, We are only . . .”
“Great people of destiny, you may bring the salvation of our people at last, restore the greatness of our land, and challenge the treachery of all dragons that was our doom,” Audelai El said, smiling into Drakis’ face. “You honor us by coming to our clan! There is always profit to be had in change, you know—all one needs to know is how.”
Drakis was stunned. “Well, thank you, we . . .”
“How soon will you be leaving?” Audelai El concluded through her charming smile.
CHAPTER 19
Dark Wells
THE DWARF ROLLED BENEATH a particularly dense fern and held perfectly still despite the pain shooting up his leg.
Mardosh staggered as he came up the dirt path the locals grandly called Jurusta Road. Mardosh was his “clan-law escort”—a warrior stooge assigned to him by the ever-loving Clan-mother to go with him wherever he went in Ambeth and “assist” him with “advice” regarding what was permitted under clan-law. This apparently also extended to who he could talk to, what he could talk about, and which parts of the town he was allowed to visit. Jugar had no doubts that Mardosh’s duties also extended to reporting to the Clan-mother fully about all the locations he visited and the details of every conversation he had. The fact that everyone in their group was assigned a clan-law escort when they left their quarters in the Keep only deepened the dwarf’s suspicions. They were captives in a prison without locks.
Worse, for Jugar, was the loss of the Heart of Aer. The very thought that he had lost the stone both sickened and enraged him. Without it, he was largely powerless, almost bereft of magic. The stone had been drawing upon Dunaea, the soul at the heart of the world, absorbing its power from the surrounding stone. Jugar had hoped to use some of that Aer to heal his leg though he had not decided whether to tell his companions about the mending. He rather enjoyed being hauled around by these humans. But then the stone was stolen by that Ishander whelp before he could magically mend the leg. He could feel it calling to him somewhere nearby and he was desperate to get it back.
But first he had to find it.
Jugar’s frustrations were soon alleviated, however, when he discovered that he could easily outlast Mardosh in any drinking contest and that Mardosh was more than willing to let him try. So each afternoon, Jugar would grab his crutch, slowly and painfully lead his escort down Tyra Road to a ramshackle tavern at the intersection with Elucia Road and invite the hulking warrior to join him in a drink or two or three or however many were required. Then, when the time was right, the dwarf would slip out of the back of the tavern and make his way through the back alleys and narrow gaps between the shacks that comprised the town. His leg was still a problem but far better healed than he let on to anyone. He soon discovered that he could make good time up the roads, and that most of the locals were indifferent to his passage. So long as he avoided the notice of the occasional warrior—who seemed more interested in keeping order in the town than conducting warfare—he could move about freely. Then, after a few hours, the dwarf would dutifully find Mardosh, often exactly where he had left him and convince him that they had been together this entire time. Then the dwarf promised not to tell his masters about Mardosh passing out. But today Jugar had been impatient and Mardosh was trying to follow him, although his escort had a hard time catching Jugar as he made his hobbling dash up Elucia Road and onto Jurusta Road.
As if these human fools knew anything about building a proper road let alone who Jurusta—their own ancient goddess of spring, passion, and art—even was, Jugar thought as he lay beneath the fern. To them, it was just another name for the wandering breaks between the thatch-roofed hovels packed in some cases wall against wall in the tight space of the stockade enclosure. These may have once been true roads, Jugar knew, by the few patches of fitted stone roadway that remained, and perhaps these names that had passed down the generations once had meaning to the inhabitants of this place. But the great buildings had all fallen, and all that remained of the footfalls that once trod these spaces with such purpose were meaningless names of forgotten gods.
Jugar watched as Mardosh, bleary-eyed, stood uncertainly on the road looking back and forth and finding it impossible to make up what remained of his mind regarding a direction to take. Jugar decided to make up his escort’s mind for him by pulling himself farther back into the brush and moving between the huts away from the road. He stood up slowly, picking up the carved stick he used for a crutch. He s
till favored the leg and it gave him considerable pain which the crutch alleviated most of the time. He could move quickly on it when occasion called for it, but a slower pace was more comfortable. He had decided to explore the north side of the town and try to discover where this Ishander made his home and get back his stone.
Jugar scowled as he pushed through the thick fronds of dense undergrowth. All these plants! He was a dwarf of the mountain and of stone. Plants in their place were fine, but he found their touch unnerving in this climate, wet and slimy. He caught a glimpse of one of the watchtowers through the leaves overhead and decided that it was as good a direction to take as any.
He was losing sight of the thatched buildings around him when the jungle opened up onto the broken stones of a circular courtyard. One curved wall remained standing, supported by three pillars on the far side, sheltering the statue of one of the human goddesses. The broken bases of several more pillars were set about the courtyard while the debris from the structure’s collapse jutted out beyond the perimeter from the surrounding thick undergrowth. Jugar took all this in but pushed it aside as his mind fixed on the object around which the stones of the courtyard were symmetrically arranged.
It was an Aether Well.
And yet, it was not, Jugar thought as he examined it from beyond the rim of broken cobblestones. The stone was shaped like an Aether Well, but the material in it was a smoky gray color, dark and with unusual striations in the crystal structure. The stone jutted upward out of the ground as Jugar had seen in the Aether Wells of the elves, but the shape of the stone itself was different; more of a jewel-faceted dome than a dagger driven into the face of the world.
Citadels of the Lost Page 14