“Dragon?” Ishander asked with sudden interest. “What knowledge did the dragon give?”
“Oh, what was its name,” the Lyric’s smile faded slightly with thought. She stooped as she moved as though her back pained her. “Pharis . . . yes, I believe that was the name you told me.”
“Wait,” Drakis said, “Did you say ‘Pharis’?”
“Who are you of unnamed lands that I should speak to you?” The Lyric turned a suspicious eye on Drakis. “Pellender I know, but you are unnamed to me. Who are you to have come into my sanctuary?”
Drakis drew in a breath, trying to control his frustration. “I am Drakis . . . We all have to leave this . . .”
“DRAKIS!” The Lyric blurted out, her voice breaking, startling Mala and Ishander. The Lyric’s large eyes keenly focused on the Impress Warrior, suddenly overflowing with tears. “Drakis! You’ve come at last! And, Pellender, you have found him! We’ve been waiting for you so long . . . so long . . .”
The Lyric dropped her staff and rushed forward. She reached up with surprising strength, grabbing Drakis by the rim of his leather breastplate and held on tight, her grip like an iron vise. Her eyes shimmered in the firelight. “Is the magic coming back? Did you find the key?”
Drakis pulled at the Lyric’s hands, prying her fingers free of his tunic. “Let go of me!”
The Lyric released her grip so suddenly that Drakis fell backward, sprawling to sit against one of the dragon pillars in the room.
“I’m sorry! Please . . . forgive me, Drakis.” The Lyric staggered backward toward the Aether Well. “We’ve kept it all, Drakis! Just for you! Just for your return! And they said you were coming. We were going out to look for you.”
“Wait,” said Drakis, his eyes narrowing. “Who knew we were coming? How?”
“Lorekeeper Xandos,” the Lyric said, her eyes slowly losing focus as she spoke. “A dragon came to him . . . told him we were to look for your coming. We were to shelter you until the dragon returned. But another dragon came afterward with the drakoneti to stop us from finding you. The Lorekeeper told me to stay here. That I would be safe and . . . I . . . I am not well.”
The Lyric dropped down to her knees.
“What dragon?” Drakis asked, pushing himself forward and crouching next to the Lyric. “Was it the dragon outside?”
“I don’t . . . perhaps,” the Lyric said, her face puzzled, her eyes fixed on a distance only she could see. “Maybe it was another dragon or maybe the first one came back. The dragons are not to be trusted. One offered us hope and another brought the drakoneti and attacked the village. The Lorekeeper told me to stay here, sealing me in the sanctuary. He said I would be safe—that I was to be the Keeper until he returned.”
“He never came back, did he?” Mala asked softly.
“No . . . I waited but no one came until you opened the seal,” the Lyric said to Mala. “But I didn’t know you were Drakis. Forgive me, please.”
“Yes, you’re forgiven,” Drakis said quickly, “but we have to leave this place. It . . . it isn’t safe here.”
“I cannot leave,” the Lyric said simply. “I am the Keeper. I have to stay.”
“You have to . . . what is your name?” Drakis asked.
“I am Rishan,” The Lyric answered. “Last Keeper of the Book.”
Ishander turned his eyes abruptly on the Lyric. “Book? What book?”
“The Book of Memory,” the Lyric smiled. A thin trickle of blood ran down from the corner of her mouth. “The Book of the Before Time. I can go nowhere without the book.”
“My father once spoke of such a book,” Ishander licked his lips. “He said it spoke the secrets of the old ways and of magic.”
“Fine!” Drakis threw up his hands. “Anything to get out of here. Get the book and let’s leave.”
“No,” the Lyric said shaking her head, her eyes focused once more but feverish. “I am the Keeper now! I keep the book for . . .”
“For Drakis,” Ishander said with a smile. “And now he is here. I think you do not know Drakis. You do not know the one of the prophecy!”
Mala groaned, shaking her head. “Don’t, Ishander. She’s sick. Please . . .”
“Everyone knows Drakis!” The Lyric snapped at the youth. “He came from the Citadel after the fall! He wandered out of the burning and the death and the ruin—the end of all glory—and told us the stories of its terrible betrayal and the elven demons’ destruction of our nation!”
“So, this is Drakis, standing before you . . .
“Is this true?”
“He is Drakis,” the Lyric answered fervently.
“Stop it, Ishander,” Drakis said firmly. Only then did he notice the body lying in the shadows on the far side of the Aether Well. It was small and lithe, perhaps a boy or girl not yet fifteen. The stained cloth of the youth’s belted tunic matched that of the robe the Lyric was wearing.
“You lie! Why do you think he is Drakis?” continued Ishander, ignoring Drakis.
“Because he said he would return!” The Lyric answered as though the answer itself was enough explanation. “That has been the task and . . . and promise of the Keepers for the generations of my father and my father’s fathers before him. We were to keep the knowledge of Drakis and his return.”
“Show him,” Ishander chided. “Show him! Show him what you have kept for him!”
The Lyric turned, spun unsteadily in her place and then danced haltingly toward the stairs. She grabbed Drakis’ hand, pulling him to his feet and dragging him toward the base of the nearest dragon statue. Her husky voice echoed into the vaulting space above the circular floor.
Summon the mystery’s well of light.
Summon the light from within.
Hand to the heart,
Here we will start.
The rhythm of the chanting was familiar to him, but he had never heard it spoken aloud—only in his own mind.
The Lyric lifted up Drakis’ hand and pressed it against the chiseled stones of the dragon’s breast just over her head. The stone shifted slightly as he pressed against it.
A tingling pain shot through Drakis like an invisible fire from his hand down through his body and legs. He cried out more in surprise than from the sting, withdrawing his hand from the stone.
“No!” The Lyric grabbed his hand forcefully again. “The whispers of magic are deep. It takes time to call them from below. You must be strong to await the drawing of the world to come!”
The Lyric once again pushed Drakis’ hand against the carved stone representing the dragon’s scales. It shifted slightly at his touch, the tingling pain again coursing uncomfortably through him, but he held his place, throwing his weight into the hand on the statue. Soon, he was aware of a low humming coming from the statue, a single tone of sound that grew with each moment until it filled the sanctuary.
The Lyric, her arms shaking, hurriedly moved to Mala and lifted up her hand, moving toward the second statue. There was desperation to her actions. The Lyric’s movements reminded Drakis of once seeing a sick dog who, in the last moments of his life, rushed to return to its corner of the Timuran household to die.
Hold fast the portal to living light
Open the doorway to might
Never releasing
Our power’s increasing
The Lyric pressed Mala’s hand hard against the dragon’s carved breast scales. She cried out sharply in pain, but the carving shifted inward slightly with a grinding sound.
In moments, a second sound was growing in the arched chamber around the Well, emanating from the statue under Mala’s hand. This tone was higher in pitch, becoming a harmonic to the first tone, matching it to create a dual sound in the room.
The Lyric grabbed Ishander’s hand, pulling him toward the third dragon statue in the hall. The Lyric’s voice was strident now, shouting over the dual tone in the hall and quivering as they moved.
Three human hands to the dragon’s heart
Holding the Kingdom alo
ft
Three press together
The wellsprings forever . . .
The Lyric pressed Ishander’s hand against the breast stone of the final dragon. It, too, shifted. Ishander gritted his teeth against the pain.
Drakis felt his arm going numb. He was unsure as to how much longer he could hold the shifted carving in place.
Ishander’s statue slowly added its own third pitch, growing until it matched the other two. As it did, ripples appeared in the air from each of the statues, converging at a place above the dark Aether Well. The air twisted around itself.
Drakis shouted in wonder over the sound. “A fold!”
Slow as a feather, a darkly stained book drifted downward out of the fold. The thick cover was bound in tarnished metal over crackled leather, the binding warped. There was a luster, however, to the edge of the pages. The Lyric climbed up the darkened face of the dead Aether Well and reached up, just as the book settled into her arms.
The Lyric collapsed atop the Aether crystal, her arms still wrapped around the book.
Drakis pushed away from the dragon statue, rushing to catch the Lyric before she fell. As he released pressure on the plate the fold above the stone collapsed. The sound from each of the statues fell suddenly silent as Mala and Ishander gratefully pulled their hands free.
The Lyric’s eyes flickered open, gazing up into the face of Drakis. She drew in a rattling breath.
“I knew you would come, Drakis,” the Lyric said in a rasping voice. “I am the last of the Keepers. Did I do it right? Did I keep my promise?”
“You did it right,” Drakis said softly. “You were a great Keeper. Your fathers and their fathers before them will be proud and honor you.”
The Lyric smiled through her bloody teeth. Her eyes fixed on Drakis and then her chest stopped moving.
Drakis bowed his head and drew in a deep breath.
Something pulled at his arms and Drakis looked up. The Far-runner had both his hands around the book and was tugging at it with all his might. The book suddenly broke free from the grip of the Lyric and Ishander wrapped both his arms around it.
“Ishander!” Drakis said sharply. “What do you think you are doing?”
“The book is mine!” Ishander declared. “It is my right!”
“You must respect the dead,” Mala said quietly. “Their souls are not far . . . they are listening.”
“The woman is dead!” Ishander shot back. “She has no use for a book! We are alive. My father told the story of such a book among the Fordrim—a book that held the secrets of the old ways. He said it revealed where the Key of Magic could be found. We have our lives to live and darker waters of river ahead of us. Your dwarf reads the old ways. I have watched him from when first you were in Pythar. This book will lead us to the keys of Chelestra but it is nothing to dead eyes. Tears for the dead are nothing!”
Drakis looked at the young Far-runner for a moment as though he had never seen him before.
“You were right before, Drakis,” Mala said, “We’ve stayed too long.”
Drakis nodded. He lowered the body of the Lyric back atop the Aether Well crystal, folded her arms across her chest, and then stepped back.
“You did well, Keeper,” he murmured. “You did well.”
“Did I?” the Lyric said, opening one eye. “What did I do?”
Drakis gaped.
“Everyone back to the boats, right now!” the Lyric commanded as she jumped up to her feet, tossing the robe casually toward the young corpse on the ground behind the well and striding toward the stairs, her jaw set as she spoke. “You’ve got what these people died protecting, Drakis. Now find a way home with it.”
CHAPTER 32
Koram Devnet
“GREAT TREASURE OF the Fordrim . . . my dwarven ax!”
Drakis turned a grim face toward the dwarf. The rain had been unrelenting for the last three days since they’d left the desolation of the Fordrim. Ishander stood at the back of the Ambeth boat at his long oar, guiding the boat down the river, his wet hair plastered flat around his head. The youth mostly glowered at the dwarf and his increasingly disparaging pronouncements from under the oiled tarpaulin that sheltered both the dwarf and the Fordrim book—and which subsequently left everyone else on both of the remaining boats exposed to the rain. Urulani stood next to him at the back of the second boat. The river was moving so slowly that they had tied the boats together side by side which allowed everyone to enjoy the slow escalation of the dwarf’s frustration with the book in which they had held such hope.
“What is it now, Jugar?” Ethis asked wearily from the bow. The river had passed into a towering forest on either side of its slow, winding passage and the chimerian would even welcome the complaints of the dwarf to relieve him of the boredom of his watch.
“Three days,” Jugar responded, angrily jabbing his thick index finger at the open book that lay across his lap. “Three days I’ve been poring over this wandering, pompous, disorganized drivel.”
“There has to be something in there,” Mala said, her own frustration mounting. “An entire village died protecting it.”
“Well, then they struck a very poor bargain, if I may be permitted to say so,” Jugar huffed. He rifled through several pages and then stopped, jabbing his finger down onto the vellum page. “Here! A list of the genealogical line of the priests who watched over the dead Aether Well including, may I add, those who stood watch over it after it had died and there was no longer anything to watch for. There’s a great deal of repetitive text about who was entitled to activate the Aether Wells—which they call ‘Fonts’ by the way—but there is nothing at all about how to activate them or what might have caused them to stop functioning in the first place. Or perhaps their prize was this section back here which contains detailed and explicit instructions on all the ways it is wrong to use a woman, a man, a child, aunts, uncles, cousins, and several kinds of beasts that I have never even heard of before. That section, at least, was amusing and—if I ever find a worthy dwarven woman—might have come in handy. There is even a section here which, so far as I can tell, contains cooking recipes that use the Aether magic as part of its preparation. Everything I’ve read thus far is about how to use the Aether that is already flowing from the Fonts—and absolutely nothing about how to restore its flow should it stop.”
“There must be something in there about the fall of magic,” Drakis said in frustration.
“The most promising section,” the dwarf said, gazing with some distaste down at the open book, “is this passage entitled “Lamentation of Twilight.” It is an epic poem or song or free verse or some such nonsense about the fall of Chelestra—the Citadel of Light—and the end of magic. It even talks about you, Drakis.”
“Not me,” the warrior said with a heavy sigh.
“Well, then a Drakis,” the dwarf huffed. “He’s a hero figure who came out of the destruction of the Citadels and told the story of the fall of the Citadel of Light. It also talks a good deal about the betrayal of dragons causing the Citadel to fall, the Keepers of the Citadel hiding the key to the Font of Aether to keep it safe from these scheming dragons, the subsequent collapse of the Fonts and the utter destruction of the cities in a rather depressing fashion reminiscent of stale dwarven opera. There are entire rapturous passages about this key—which go on and on seemingly without end of repetition—but absolutely nothing about where they hid it or how to use it even if one could dig up the old thing.”
“But we got that Aether Well to work back in . . .”
“It’s called a Font,” the dwarf corrected.
“Right . . . so we got that ‘Font’ to work back in the ruin of the Fordrim,” Drakis finished.
“Well, you didn’t exactly get it to work . . .”
“Really?” Drakis said. This learned discussion was testing his patience. “It seemed to work when I was there.”
“You did trigger the fold above the Font,” Jugar acknowledged, “but you did so by channeling your o
wn Aer energy into the Font.”
“My own Aer energy,” Drakis shook his head. “Now what are you talking about?”
“All living things have some modicum of Aer generated within them as part of their life-force,” the dwarf explained. “By connecting yourself with the Font, you were able to channel some of the Aer within you into the Font. This allowed you to draw some pooled Aether deep within the Font up to the surface to trigger the fold but not enough to get the Aether flowing. As long as you were connected to the Font, you could hold it open and whatever was left below was pulled up. Of course, the Font closed again as soon as you let go—there being no flow from the central Font to sustain it. Ultimately, I suppose, when we find this great Font at the heart of Chelestra, we’ll be forced to do something similar to get it flowing again—although that Font would be enormously larger and built to supply Aether to an entire continent. That’s where this key comes in—once the Aether is flowing again, we would need it to hold open the Font permanently, unless you plan on standing there forever and holding the Font open.”
“So that’s what this key is about?”
“Whoever holds that key holds the power of an entire continent,” Mala said. “The dragons desire it most of all . . . and fear it as well.”
Drakis glanced quizzically at Mala. “Could that be true? Why would the dragons care?”
“Some might want it to bring the magic back and restore the old kingdoms or enthrone themselves as the masters of Aether,” Mala shrugged. “Others may want to bury it forever. If this book can be used to find this key then . . .”
“But it can’t! There’s nothing in it about the location of the key.” The dwarf slammed the book shut.
“So it’s pointless?”
“It’s a waste of time, Drakis,” the dwarf declared, frowning as he looked over the side of the boat toward the rain-veiled shore. “A waste of lives.”
Drakis pressed his eyes closed for a moment, wiping the rain from them as he considered. “Well, we’re really no worse off than we were before. We still have to find this original Aether Well . . .”
Citadels of the Lost Page 25