Citadels of the Lost

by Tracy Hickman

  The first evening brought them to a broad spit of sand at the turn of the river. There they made their encampment under a clearer sky and warm, moisture-laden air. There was only sporadic conversation—stopping and starting in fits—as everyone was occupied with his or her own thoughts. The dwarf grounded his mystical stone in the sands and managed to draw from the earth some modicum of its energy. He further healed his leg that night—announcing that there was no magic in the air after his examinations—other than Mala’s irritating Aether trinket—and that if there were a city of magic, it was too far off for him to feel it.

  The second day was long, muggy, and offered slowly mounting consternation. The lush jungle growth to either side of the river slowly evolved into sickly, yellowish foliage, and the trees were far shorter than those they had encountered the first day out from Koram Devnet. Moreover, the nearly constant chattering, croaking, and cawing that had emanated from the jungle till now had suddenly stopped completely. The silence that enveloped them now was unnerving. Jugar started telling tales of the dwarven kings just to fill the air with the sound of his own voice. So anxious were his companions that they hung on his words—except for the Lyric who offered a running commentary and critique on each of the tales as Jugar told them.

  Mala spent her time gazing down the river, a look of anticipation on her face. Drakis could not guess what motivated her to do so and, when he asked her what she was looking for, she only smiled and turned away.

  Urulani, on the other hand, maintained a profoundly angry silence at the tiller of the second boat. She occasionally would work the tilleroar and push her boat with the dwarf and the Lyric aboard ahead of Drakis’ own craft, expending her energy through the small ship and, it seemed, feeling the better for it afterward, at least for a time.

  Ethis continued to peer forward from the bow of Drakis’ boat as though searching for something. Never one to waste words, he found no discomfort in the silence except, it seemed to Drakis, for the ominous change that it seemed to portend.

  Ishander stood at the tiller of Drakis’ boat, lost in his own thoughts. He, too, peered over the bow in search of what was to come and kept strictly to his own council.

  The quiet was beginning to make Drakis itch.

  At the close of the second day, they beached the boats on the left bank. A flood some years before had cleared the trees, leaving behind a patch of open ground. There, near the boats, they made their encampment for the night.

  The next morning, Jugar shouted in triumph.

  Holding the Heart of the Aer in his left hand and his right hand above his head, he proudly proclaimed that there was magic downstream. It was barely discernible but it was there nonetheless.

  He was confident that they would reach it by noon.

  It appeared almost all at once.

  “By the gods!” Drakis murmured. “Is that . . .”

  “Chelestra,” Ethis nodded, his own voice quieted with awe. “The Lost Citadel of Humanity.”

  The river widened as they cleared the bend. There stood the angled walls of the city, jutting out into the river, the stones from their crumbled tops fallen in great piles at the water’s edge. The vertical stone mountings of a water gate rose up to the broken tops, each set across from the other over three hundred feet apart. The gates and their mountings had long vanished, but the cuts in the stones where they had been attached were still visible—speaking to the incredible size of both gates and the enormous effort that must have been expended in opening them into the river.

  “Jugar!” Drakis called. “Where do we go now?”

  “Through those gates, lad!” the dwarf called back. The Heart of Aer was in his left hand once more as his right hand guided them. “It’s through there!”

  The two river boats of the Ambeth seemed smaller still as they passed between the towering, broken pillars. The world was silent as they moved across the still waters, the slap of a small wave against the boats’ hulls the only sound.

  Spread around them in an oval was a wharf nearly a mile long on either side constructed of white stone with hundreds of berths built out into the bay. The stone was stained, and moss encroached upon the base of the wharf stones from the river but declined to climb much higher than an arm’s length above the waterline. The ruins of diverse buildings—what Drakis did not doubt had been warehouses, pubs, inns, trade businesses, and perhaps homes—littered the top of the quay. Many of the berths were tall, but toward the far end, Drakis could see several stone staircases leading down from the level of the buildings to smaller landings much closer to the water’s edge.

  “There,” Jugar pointed with his right arm, his voice hushed yet sounding loud in the silence. “That landing is the one.”

  Ishander urged the boat forward with his long-bladed tiller. The prow connected with the ancient stone quay with a resounding thump, scraping momentarily along the side until Ethis managed to pull the hull parallel to the dock with all four of his arms.

  Ishander leaped off at once, proclaiming, “I am the first! You all are witness to my being first!”

  Drakis shook his head as he stepped over the side of the boat and onto the landing. The sun was high overhead and the air was still. The air was oppressive. Drakis moved quickly to the prow of the boat, pulled the mooring rope, and looped it around one of the short stone pillars that stood at intervals along the landing. As he made another loop, he stopped, staring down into the water.

  Urulani, maneuvering her own boat toward the landing saw his look. “What is it, Drakis?”

  “Nothing,” he replied. “Come in and I’ll catch the bow.”

  Urulani nodded, shifting the long oar with a twist that pushed the boat forward. Drakis caught the leading edge of the craft and then walked it down the landing until there was enough room to swing the side of the ship against the dock. Then he fastened the bow to one of the pillars as he had done with the first boat and helped Mala onto the dock. He offered Urulani his hand as well, but she ignored him, jumping from the upturned aft end of the boat directly onto the dock, her sword already drawn.

  The dwarf jumped out on his own, the ancient book held tightly against his chest. Once on the ground, he slipped the large book into his pack before shouldering it.

  Ishander was already running up the stone stairs to the promenade at the top.

  “Stay with us, Ishander,” Drakis called up.

  “I am a Far-runner!” called down the young man, his chin raised. “I must find a prize to claim my honor!”

  “You are our guide,” Drakis said in reply. “That, too, is part of your honor.”

  Ishander shrugged but remained at the top of the stairs.

  “What was that about?” Ethis asked as he helped the Lyric from the boat.

  “I want him to stay close,” Drakis replied in a quiet voice, turning his back to Ishander as he spoke. “I am concerned about what we will find and how he will react.”

  Drakis nodded down over the edge of the dock.

  Just visible several feet beneath the surface could be seen the sunken outline shape of a third Ambeth boat.

  CHAPTER 36

  The Altar

  THE STREETS LEADING AWAY from the oval-shaped harbor were largely choked with rubble from the collapsed buildings on either side. There was a devastating sameness to the landscape, the undulations of five low hilltops surrounding the city apparently also carpeted with the same coarse jumble of ruins. What few walls remained were seldom higher than the level of Drakis’ eyes. Here and there a corner of a building reached upward as much as twenty feet but these were a rarity. It appeared as though every effort had been made to flatten the stonework of the city back into the ground on which it had been built.

  “Am I mad, or is it even quieter here than on the river?” Drakis asked, his voice hushed and yet still carrying through the silence around them.

  “I cannot speak to anyone’s sanity here,” Ethis replied, his own words hushed. “But not even insects appear to want to visit thi
s place. And, here, look at these cobblestones in the roadway.”

  “What about them?” Drakis asked.

  “There isn’t so much as a blade of grass coming up between them,” Ethis answered quietly. “In the midst of all this jungle—with the flora of the surrounding lands teeming with life—none of the plants have encroached upon these ruins. In Ambeth, it was all they could do to keep the growth outside the walls and that was with concerted effort. Here, however, these ruins have remained undisturbed for centuries, without the encroachment of either plant or animal.”

  “Just us,” Drakis observed.

  “Indeed, just us,” Ethis acknowledged.

  “We’re close!” Jugar called out, his voice sounding harsh and loud among the ruins. “This way!”

  The dwarf led them down a broad avenue to the right-hand side at the end of the bay. The white-and-gray shattered marble lay in jumbled piles across the roadway, making their passage difficult. Drakis and Ethis followed the dwarf but not nearly as closely as their guide. Ishander looked like an anxious puppy, scampering here and there, peering into the ruins and then dashing back to the other side of the shattered street, climbing up a low pile of stones and staring into the acres of crumbled walls beyond. Urulani remained as their rear guard, shepherding the Lyric and Mala along as they moved away from the harbor.

  “How will we find anything in this desolate place?” Urulani asked.

  “I’m just following the dwarf,” Drakis replied, finding it impossible to locate a bare patch of cobblestone in his path. He was forced to climb over a three-foot stone block. “Jugar, what is it?”

  “An obelisk,” the dwarf called back. “There’s a clearing at the end of the street—an old park or square, perhaps. There appears to be a marker stone in the middle of it. There’s very strong magic there.”

  Drakis peered over the rubble. He could see the towering stone, its top apparently sheared off, pointing toward the sky from a clearing ahead of them.

  Ishander scampered ahead down the street, scrambling over the piles of stone and disappearing over the other side.

  Ethis turned toward Drakis as they made their way down the remains of the avenue. “It is hard to even recognize any of the structures ; the destruction is so complete.”

  “It was a war,” Drakis said, his eyes scanning the jumble of stone around them. The quiet had left him nervous once more. “What would you expect?”

  “Not like this,” Ethis continued. “This is not the ruin of an army trying to conquer a city or even the destruction that one might expect of a siege. This was a determined effort to make the memory of the place vanish—to erase the city and everything that it . . .”

  A horrific howling cry shattered the still air.

  Drakis jumped at the sound, the shock of it surging through his body, his senses suddenly alert. Ethis tensed beside him. Both of them broke into a run, their swords drawn as they rushed over the rubble toward the wailing sound that continued unabated from the clearing in front of them.

  “Mala! Urulani!” Drakis called out as he dashed forward. “Stay close!”

  The center of the circular plaza was nearly devoid of broken stones and debris. As Drakis ran across the open space, the fitted stones underfoot gave way to dried and matted dead grass. He could see that it was not just the top of the obelisk that was broken; the stone was shattered, cracks radiating from a single impact point near the base. Ishander lay on the far side of the stone, fallen to the ground, facedown, as his howling cries continued. The dwarf was ahead of them, making his way toward the obelisk as quickly as he could, but his leg was still giving him pain, and both Ethis and Drakis quickly passed him in their rush.

  Ethis and Drakis rounded the stone, their swords at the ready. Both froze.

  The impact hole on the far side of the obelisk was far larger than evidenced on the side facing the harbor—a curved puncture nearly a foot wide plunging into the stone. But it was what lay at the base of the column that caught their attention.

  The remains had barely held together. Most of the flesh had long since vanished, and only the tatters of the leather loincloth and vest remained. The bones of the rib cage were broken and splayed both in the chest and just to the right of the spine. A short-bladed sword lay rusting on the ground near the figure’s right hand.

  Ishander lay on the ground before the skeletal form, his knees drawn up under him as he wailed his grief into the dried grass beneath him.

  Drakis’ gaze settled on the tarnished medallion that hung around the neck of the corpse. Twin dragon heads intertwined against a pair of dragon wings surrounding a single green gemstone.

  Urulani arrived with Mala and the Lyric at her heels.

  He turned to face Mala. She stood staring at the medallion, fingering the matching talisman hanging around her own neck.

  Jugar limped quickly around to join them and then gasped. “By the gods! What is this?” he murmured.

  “So ends Pellender . . . father of Ishander and the son of Koben Dakan,” Drakis sighed. “He runs no more.”

  Urulani whispered. “What happened?”

  “A dragon, by the looks of it,” Ethis said kneeling down to examine the remains more closely. He pointed toward the broken bones in the rib cage. “See this and through the back. Given his stature, he would have been standing in front of this stone—back to it as the claw pierced both him and the stone behind him. Here he died. Here he fell.”

  “There’s your magic, Drakis,” Jugar said, lowering his hand. “That’s what I’ve been following.”

  “So it was Pellender’s medallion you’ve been reading,” Drakis said standing upright.

  “No, actually. Strange enchantment that,” Jugar said, moving closer to examine the medallion. “You would think that the medallion would contain the magic—and it probably did once—but it seems the device has transferred its powers into the bones of poor Pellender.”

  “You mean you’ve been following the bones?” Drakis asked.

  “Will you have a little compassion?” Urulani shouted, kneeling down next to the sobbing Ishander, her arms around his back trying to comfort him. “This was the boy’s father!”

  Drakis let out a long breath. “I . . . I’m sorry, Ishander. Ethis, Jugar come with me. We should . . . I mean . . . Urulani, if you’ll take care of Ishander for us?”

  She glared back at Drakis, but nodded.

  Drakis walked away from the pillar, leading the dwarf and the chimerian to the edge of the dried grasses and back onto the cobblestones of the plaza. They stood in a tight circle.

  “We may have a problem . . .” Drakis began.

  Mala stood staring at the medallion around the dead man’s neck.

  As she stood there, the obelisk, the dead Far-runner, Urulani comforting Ishander, and the vast ruins surrounding her all vanished, falling away from her eyes. She was standing once again in the obscuring, warm rain of the Fordrim village, the purple-hued dead all around her, the palm of her hand once again resting on the horn of the dead dragon as it had four days before.

  “He is not yet dead,” said the Lyric. She stood beside Mala in the rain, her white hair soaked and laying flat against the delicate, narrow features of her face.

  “No,” Mala replied. “Not yet . . . but soon.”

  “What did he show you,” the Lyric asked.

  Mala drew in a deep, sad breath. “A beautiful land of shining towers and contented creatures. Families gathered in the sunshine. Children at play. Dragons filled the skies, and the sky was at peace.”

  “They are all dead now,” the Lyric said as softly as the rain. She took Mala’s hand.

  “Yes,” Mala replied with infinite sadness. “Dead and gone.”

  “Why are they gone?” The Lyric asked.

  “Because the magic fell and their world was at an end.”

  The Lyric looked around. “The world is at an end for this village, too. Did the dragon know why these people had to die?”

  Mala drew in a
halting breath.

  “Because of us,” she said at last, the rain falling around her from the weeping sky. “Abream knew we were coming here . . . and that the Fordrim had instructions from the Dragon Queen Hestia to hold us until she returned. Pharis could not allow us to fall into the claws of Hestia—and so he sent Abream to make certain we would not be captured. He had not intended to destroy these people, but neither could he fail Pharis—and the drakoneti proved too difficult to control. In the end he could not stop what he had begun—and died with his regrets.”

  “And all these died,” the Lyric said as she gazed into the torrential rain, “the Fordrim families, young and old, the dragon Abream and these drakoneti as well, just so that you might come to Chelestra on the promise of home. So that you could come to a place so far removed from all eyes that no one would know if you lived or died— especially, where no one would know who granted you mercy or who did the killing.”

  Mala turned toward the Lyric.

  The Lyric pointed to the Akumau hanging around her neck. “The hunt is always easier when you know exactly where your prey is to be found.”

  “I don’t know what you mean . . .”

  “That medallion around what remains of Pellender’s neck is the twin of your own medallion,” the Lyric replied with a gentle smile. “It was given to him by the Clan-mother of the Ambeth. But no one asked where the Clan-mother got it or why . . . least of all Pellender. And now you have one just like it from the same Clan-mother and now you are asking why and, I should think, the three warriors now in conference are asking why as well. But you, of all people here know why, don’t you, Seinar?”

  Mala’s eyes widened. The music that had filled her mind beneath the dragon’s wings at the foot of the cascades filled her mind again.