Invisible is the traitor’s road
Marked with the beacons of old
Smelling of magic
Betrayal tragic . . .
Mala reached up, fingering the medallion around her neck. Deep within her recognition stirred. It was all too familiar . . . she knew that she was being followed. She had again become the Seinar. She had betrayed them all once more.
Find you the temples of ancient might
The key of magic fonts bright
There you’ll be resting
Never confessing . . .
“The dragon knows the scent of its own magic—even when it was forged in ancient times and is all but lost to the world,” the Lyric said sadly as she gazed at Mala. “And now it reeks in your very bones. The dragon will track you, too, as he did before and he will get what he has sent you to retrieve for him. He wants the key of the Font—that is what Pellender promised him and failed to find. Now he has you to find it for him—you and your companions. And when you do, Mala, when you have the key and can deliver it, the dragon will gladly offer you any wish and make any promise you ask so that he might hide his shame and his folly for all time.”
“But I don’t know where it is!” Mala cried out as lightning rolled through the clouds overhead.
Thunder shook the ground around them, but the Lyric did not flinch.
“You already know where it is,” the Lyric grinned. “You have the book.”
“But there’s nothing in the book,” Mala shouted into the rain.
“It’s not what’s in the book,” the Lyric replied. “The secret is the book!”
Mala opened her mouth to speak but then stopped, comprehension crossing her face.
The Lyric looked up into the rain and then back to Mala. “They’re talking about you.”
Mala shuddered. “Who?”
“Drakis, Ethis, and Jugar,” the Lyric said. There was a peaceful serenity on her face. “They are trying to decide what to do about you. But you need not worry, Mala. Though the chimerian and Jugar will both warn against you, Drakis—the ever-devoted lover of the woman who betrayed him—would rather die than make you leave.”
“And it is up to you,” the Lyric whispered into Mala’s ear, “whether he will get his wish.”
The horror of the Fordrim village began at once to dissolve around her, falling apart like a mist blown to shreds in the morning light. Only the Lyric remained, her grin and features the same although her hair was once again the explosion of white chaos that she was accustomed to wearing.
The ruins of Chelestra once again lay in all directions and the sobbing of the Far-runner came into her ears.
“Drakis!” Mala shouted at once, running over to where the warrior stood with the dwarf and chimerian still talking in hushed tones together. She grabbed Drakis by the arm, shaking him for attention.
“Mala! What is it?”
“We have to hurry!” she said, looking into his face in earnest. “We have to find the Font in the Citadel right now. We’re running out of time!”
“Are you sure this is the way?” Drakis said as they scrambled as quickly as they could through the rubble, the frustration clearly underlying his voice.
“As sure as I can be,” Jugar said huffing with exertion, his right hand again raised in the air. “There seems to be magic everywhere, but it is stronger in this direction.”
The plaza was behind them as they raced through the ruins. The road to the east was completely blocked by a fallen tower whose rubble was impossible to pass. At last they found a tortured route around the wreckage and regained some semblance of an avenue, only to come to a cross street. Drakis could see the wheel ruts that had been etched in the cobblestones ages ago. He wondered who those people were who had brought their wagons this way centuries before and what had become of them.
The road led them north, frustrating the dwarf who insisted they needed to find some passageway that would take them farther to the east. But the avenue proved to be a boon as it led them to a large, oval-shaped plaza with numerous streets leading away from it. In the center of the plaza was the remains of a large reflecting pool. In the center of the pool was a wide field of broken mosaics that had once been accessed by seven footpaths, only three of which were still intact.
“Now THAT is a sight that gives me hope!” the dwarf exclaimed with a wide grin.
Arranged on the mosaic field were a number of fold platforms. Each was dark and devoid of any Aether magic, and less than half of them appeared intact.
“Do you think they will work?” Ethis asked the dwarf.
“Aye, I should think that they will once I’m finished with them,” the dwarf grinned. “That, my chimerian companion, is an exchange—a grouping of folds for long-distance conveyance. If there be any place that we could discover to assist us in returning to the lands of our civilized acquaintance—this would certainly be it.”
Drakis drew in a breath and turned to Mala. “There is your way home, Mala. All we need now is . . .”
Mala looked up at Drakis.
It startled him.
Her eyes were soft and sad. The anger and the hatred that always seemed to be caged behind her countenance were somehow gone.
“Mala?” he asked with a hesitant smile.
“I’m happy, Drakis,” Mala said with quiet wonder in her voice. “The ghosts are going to rest after all. I’m going to be at peace. We both will.”
“I promised you,” Drakis said. “I promised to get you home again.”
Mala nodded, then smiled at him the way he always remembered her smiling before the House of Timuran fell and their innocence was lost. “And you are, Drakis. You are going to bring me home very soon.”
“Drakis!” Jugar called out. “I’ve found it! Down this eastern road . . . no more than a half a league!”
“Let’s hurry, Mala,” Drakis said.
“Yes,” she replied. “I only wish we had more time.”
CHAPTER 37
The Battlebox
SHEBIN QUIVERED IN ANTICIPATION.
It was the first time she had returned to the council chamber of the Modalis since her most gratifying initial performance. Since that time, Tsi-Shebin Timuran had been quietly celebrated, circulated on the wings of her tragedy through a cycle of all the most fashionable and powerful families in and around the Imperial capital of Rhonas Chas. Instinctively, she knew her part in the events unfolding behind the doors of the Emperor’s Court and played it with perfect pitch. With every party, dance, gathering, or social event, Tsi-Shebin was the embodiment of the fear at the heart of every elven Estate. She was the heartrending victim of escaped slaves—the personification of the ideals that demanded retribution and the establishment of the Imperial Will now being exacted in the Northern Campaigns. All Rhonas cheered the armies of the north, looked anxiously for their posted reports of conquest and justice imposed by the Emperor and his Legions of Rhonas—and it was all being done in the name of Tsi-Shebin and for the sake of her lost House and stolen innocence. It was not true, but it certainly was good business, Tsi-Shebin often said with a laugh when no one but Sjei was around to hear her, and she took wicked delight in playing the role. Her “peculiarities”—fits of violent temper and often sadistic retribution at the most innocent of slights—were carefully explained away as being, in part, due to trauma from her awful past. Thus, even Shebin’s bad behavior became part of her celebrity and only served to elevate her status in the sympathetic eye of the upper Imperial Estates. She had the hearts of the Third Estate and even the notice of the Second Estate who had only recently begun to include her at social gatherings. She was the martyr of the Western Provinces, the heartrending personification of cruel fate, and her mere entry into a room could evoke sorrowful bows in recognition of her pain and her shame.
Shebin relished all of it.
She had fame, power, and riches being lavished on her far in excess of anything that she had on many occasions expounded upon as her loss. Her father had dr
agged her out into the Western Provinces with the idea of elevating the status of their House; how delightful, Shebin reflected, that in his death he had achieved his objective to a degree that not even he could have imagined. Her mother was a loss and Shebin endeavored every few days to feel sorrow for her passing but was almost immediately comforted in each instance by the thought that Tsi-Timuri would have wanted all this for her only daughter. Even the loss of her home and family wealth was of little consequence. What use did she have for some provincial backwater outpost when the glories of the Imperial City were laid at her feet?
No, there was only one thing in her perfectly delightful life as a victim of tragic fate that kept her nights sleepless and drove her every move.
Drakis.
She was obsessed with his death.
In her more reflective moments—such as they were—she could even acknowledge that her elevated status and current fortunate position might actually be attributed to the human slave that had brought down her House and been the cause of her family’s murder. For that, she might have been grateful except for two sins for which she could never forgive him and for which he must pay before she could have any peace. Of all the evils she had accused him of and for which an entire nation was now moving toward war, these two were known only to her.
First, he knew the truth about what had happened between them. That it was she who had forced herself on him. If that knowledge were to be generally known, it would undo all the power and wealth she had acquired at his expense. Yet even this was not the worst of his offenses in her mind.
He had chosen to leave her behind.
He had walked away from her! After all she had done for him and how she had taken care of him and been good to him and treated him better than any of her other slaves . . . he had just abandoned her there in the middle of nowhere to die as if she were just anybody else. Everyone loved her in the House of Timuran—she had made sure of it and woe to anyone who did not. Yet this human had rejected her and just run away.
No, he had to die and she could not rest until what little remained of his corpse was laid out in front of her. She had to smell the stench of his rotting flesh, longed to see it decaying in front of her and feel the breaking of his dried bones under her feet.
“One corpse at a time,” she reminded herself. She giggled. “Or a thousand is even better.”
“Tsi-Timuran,” came the echoing voice rolling the length of the polished floor of the long corridor.
“My most honorable Ch’dak Vaijan,” Shebin replied with a graceful bow. “I am humbled to be met by so illustrious a member of your council.”
“We are honored in turn by your presence,” Ch’dak responded. “All is nearly made ready, Tsi-Shebin. I should be grateful if you will allow me to escort you to the Battlebox.”
Shebin extended her hand graciously through the offered arm of the Minister of Law. “Battlebox, my lord? Is this something you open like a present or one climbs in like a litter?”
Ch’dak chuckled. “Neither, my lady. It is a chamber beneath the council room here in Majority House. You are, indeed, most privileged, as this is the first time anyone from outside our brotherhood has been allowed access to this special room.”
“Then, by all means, lead on, good Ch’dak,” Shebin cooed. “I long to see something new.”
“Not new, my lady . . . it is very old indeed,” Ch’dak replied. “But I can promise you, it is unique.”
Ch’dak stopped, turning them both to face a section of the corridor wall.
“Please follow in my footsteps and do not tarry too far behind,” Ch’dak cautioned. “The bridge beyond is part of our defense.”
With that, Ch’dak stepped through the wall and vanished.
Shebin drew in a breath and followed. Once the illusionary wall had passed around her, she stood for a moment in the darkness, her featureless black eyes struggling to adjust.
It was an obscene vision. The continuous oval of the walls and ceiling were ribbed like a gullet descending steeply downward. A narrow staircase followed down its curving plunge into the depths. The stair led directly into the gaping maw of an obsidian mouth with jagged teeth both above and below. Two similar mouths lay beyond it, a dull red light glowing from below and silhouetting Ch’dak before her as he descended.
“This way,” the minister admonished her to follow. “Stay close and they won’t bite.”
Shebin’s black eyes narrowed as she proceeded down the steep staircase, her gown sweeping along each tread behind her. The stairs seemed clean enough, she thought—if a bit theatrical. She followed Ch’dak through the first two maws, stopping short of the third where the minister had stopped. He turned to Shebin and indicated the left wall.
“So we turn left before the third set of teeth?” Shebin asked.
“That is correct . . . for today,” Ch’dak answered.
Shebin turned off the stairs and stepped through the wall of the staircase throat.
The Battlebox proved to be a low gallery surrounding a small, square arena filled with sand. Seated in the surrounding gallery were most of the Modalis. Sjei nodded in acknowledgment as she entered the room, as did Kyori and Liau. Arikasi was trying to engage Wejon Rei in conversation but the Fifth High Priest of the Myrdin-dai was too preoccupied with the box of sand to pay any attention to the Minister of Occupation.
“This is the Battlebox,” Ch’dak said, his sharp teeth grinding with satisfaction and pride. “The room derives its name from the recessed sand table in the center.”
“Sand table, my lord?” Shebin was fascinated but did not wish to appear too anxious to the minister. The more innocent she appeared, she believed, the more he would tell her. “What is it for?”
“It is a new development by the Myrdin-dai,” Ch’dak was all too happy to explain. “It is a magical means by which we can oversee battles in distant lands.”
“They look like toys,” Shebin observed. Numerous small figures stood on the undulating contours of the sand. Each was arrayed in military formation similar to those she had seen her father’s Impress Warriors practice in the fields during the summer months. She smiled playfully at the minister next to her, baring her sharp teeth and bowing her elegant, elongated head in his direction. “Do you play games here, Lord Ch’dak Vaijan?”
“The best of games,” Ch’dak replied. “This is a game that will crush the Drakis Rebellion.”
“Indeed?”
“This table—this Battlebox—shows what is happening a thousand leagues distant to the north,” Ch’dak explained. “See those glass beads?”
“Above us? The ones on that brass shaft?”
“Yes, Tsi-Shebin,” Ch’dak nodded in approval. “The white ones on the right tell us how many folds stand between us and the battle in Nordesia.”
“Thirty-seven by my count,” Shebin nodded. “Is that correct?”
“Very good, young woman,” the minister answered. “Now there are also three red ones on the right as well and a number of additional red beads on the left. Those are military folds having to do with tactics during the battle . . . you need not concern yourself with those.”
Shebin had known of the use of military folds in combat since her father pounded the knowledge into her when she was barely old enough to talk. She had understood battle strategies most of her life thanks to the fact that her father had no son and she was therefore the only one to whom old Timuran could display his knowledge of battle. She had resented it at the time, but it had come to serve her well. She could affect an air of female ignorance of combat and apply its lessons on the unsuspecting.
“Then what are all the little men in the sand for?” she asked, batting her black, featureless eyes.
“I’ll not bore you with the details . . .”
“Oh, please do.”
“Well, the Proxis of each Octian are all connected by the power of Aether magic with their war-mage—an elf commander—who issues orders to his warriors through the proxis. The proxy
becomes the eyes and ears of the war-mage on the battlefield. What the Myrdin-dai have managed to do is link all the war-mages with Aether magic to a Battlebox like this one. The contours of the battlefield terrain, its features, and the positions of the warriors of both sides—are then reproduced in miniature on a table for the war-mages so that the entire battle can be observed at once.”
“Ingenious,” Shebin acknowledged, “but how is it . . .”
“That we can see the battle as well?” Ch’dak finished for her.
“Well, yes.”
Ch’dak nodded, inordinately pleased to have Shebin’s attention to himself. “The Myrdin-dai also created a means of linking the magical box through their own folds using message batons. They then run a constant cycle of batons to update our Battlebox here so that we can view the battle as it progresses. There is a delay, of course—it takes five minutes or so for the batons to pass completely through the system—but for all intents it is as close to being there and seeing what is happening as possible.”
“I am most impressed,” Shebin smiled once more. “So you have invited me to watch you play with your toys, then?”
“If I may,” Sjei said, stepping up to where Shebin and Ch’dak stood. “This game may hold a special interest for you, Tsi-Shebin Timuran.”
“Ah,” Shebin smiled warmly. “Sjei Shurian. And how does this game hold a special interest for this humble servant of the Imperial Will?”
“You see the valley running down the center of the sand?” Sjei said, gesturing toward the Battlebox.
“I do.”
“It is a rather obscure place known locally as the ‘Willow Vale.’ It is a depression that runs down to the sea west of a place called Glachold. Those brown-and-yellow figures near the end of the depression represent the armies and people of the Drakis Rebellion.”
Shebin’s nostrils flared at the sound of the name. “Indeed?”
“The rebels and their families are backed against the sea—the waters of the Straits of Erebus,” Sjei continued. “To the east is Glachold which we have now secured with a garrison. To the south, these green figures arrayed at the end of the valley depression represent the Imperial Legion of the Northern Fist who, last night, caught up with the revolutionary forces.”
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