“There’s no time,” Mala responded as she raced around the southern side of the dark and foul-smelling pools surrounding the broken folds. “They are coming! He is coming!”
“Who?” Urulani called after Mala. “Who is coming?”
Mala gave no reply as she continued past the far end of the fold plaza and dashed down the broad, rubble-choked avenue beyond. It was more difficult for Urulani to see her through the jumble of stones. The street rose gently toward the distant hill that seemed to get no closer. Still she ran, frustrated that her long strides were bringing her no closer to Mala. Her own breath was becoming labored with effort. What was driving Mala, she wondered, that she should run with wings of the wind?
Glimpses of auburn hair continued to taunt her, driving her through the ruins. The way was growing steeper now, the streets narrower, and the way more confused. They were drawing higher above the city with every step toward the crest of the hill. The hilltop was near now—perhaps less than three hundred good strides—and she could clearly see the winding road that led to the ruin at its summit.
Urulani’s eyes widened as the rubble opened again onto a wide plaza of perfectly fitted stones.
In the center of the plaza stood the feet and legs of a great colossus. Their form was breathtaking in its perfection but it was the head, torso and left hand that lay at the feet of the statue that captured her awed attention.
The face was stern yet passive, with a squared, dimpled chin and a narrow jaw. The bowed lips were small and supple and the brow furrowed over perfect eyes set looking to the left. The hair was curled and substantive, framing the face elegantly. The neck, shoulders, and arm were bare and the single arm was raised with an open palm bent away from the wrist, the fingers splayed as though the figure were either asking a question or beckoning. Urulani had seen sculptures before—the Hak’kaarin were often carting them from place to place across the plains and telling stories about them, but there was something so perfect about this statue that the raider captain found it was beyond definition by mere words or thought. It was the most beautiful thing that Urulani had ever seen—now lying amid the crumbling stones of the dead empire of humanity.
She stopped in her tracks. Tears welled up in her eyes. She bent over as the weight of the lost past settled on her shoulders—her own lost past reflected in the dead eyes of the fallen statue.
“Go back, Urulani,” Mala said. She stood next to the statue’s head, stepping up toward the raider captain. “Drakis needs you and they are coming!”
“No,” Urulani said with a rough voice. She found it difficult to take her eyes away from the fallen colossus. “I’m coming with you.”
“You can’t,” Mala said, her soft voice rolling across the silence of the plaza. “I have to go alone.”
Mala reached out, taking the long, brilliant red sash of the dwarf from Urulani’s hands. Mala carefully rolled up the sash in her hands, cradling it in her arms like a child as she walked around the statue toward the opposite side of the clearing.
Urulani at last took her eyes from the stern, sad face of the statue, gazing across its ruin to Mala on the far side. “She is up there, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Mala said through a sad smile, her eyes fixed on the rolled, red sash. “And she is taking me home.”
“We’re going together,” Urulani said, drawing herself upright.
Mala shook her head slowly, her eyes fixed on the sash cradled in her arms.
Anger welled up suddenly from deep within Urulani. “I am . . . I am the captain of this expedition! You will do what I say! I am . . . I am in command . . . I command . . .”
Mala shook her head again, looking up with her sad smile. “I have always been a slave, Urulani. You have run the open plains and conquered the winds and the sea—your life is as far from mine as the stars from the ground. All my life—what I have managed to remember of it—I have been a slave to other people’s will, other people’s choices. The elves enslaved me the day I came from my mother’s womb. They stole my choices from me and made them for me. Then I thought I was given back my choice when the Well failed a lifetime ago in House Timuran. I didn’t want the gift—I wanted other people to make my choices for me. And they were still making them for me because they had broken my mind years ago and made me a slave to my own confused thoughts and memories. Fear made my choices for me then—fear of the elves, fear of freedom, fear of having no one take care of me, fear of having to choose. Now you want to make me your slave by commanding me. Drakis wants to make me his slave by taking me back to the south and helping me forget. He thinks it would be a kindness but it would just be another form of slavery and—benevolent as his intentions would begin, it would destroy us both.”
Mala drew in a breath.
“Now I choose for myself,” she said. She nodded back down the ruined road behind Urulani. “Run back to him. He will fail without you. When the key is found, then I will go home. We will all go home.”
Urulani turned to look back down the road behind her. From their height, she could more easily discern the layout of the city as it must have once been; the broad avenues in spiderweb lines that converged first at the fold platforms and then at a large structure behind that must have been the palace of the draconic lords. Farther past the fold plaza, forming the third apex of the triangle, was the ruin of the Citadel of Light where Drakis and the rest were awaiting their signal.
Urulani’s large, dark eyes narrowed.
Something was moving across the dead city, like a slow tide from the southern edges of the ruins. Its flow had shifted to the left and right as it converged toward the ruined Citadel of Light.
“Drakoneti!” Urulani growled turning back to face Mala. “You knew they were . . .”
Mala was gone.
Urulani turned back to face the south, frantically gazing down on the ruined city spread below her. What had Mala said? “They” were coming. “He” was coming.
The drakoneti were flooding into the city by the thousands, moving to encircle the ruined Citadel. Over the river to her right she now could see the dark shape of a dragon, its wings barely visible in the sunlight as it flew directly toward Urulani . . . and the ruined temple behind her at the top of the hill.
Urulani roared in anger and fear.
In that moment, Urulani knew that Mala had betrayed them all, had led the dragon to them and would, she had no doubt, hand over the key to the dragon to save her own worthless skin at the cost of all their lives.
“Not if I can stop her,” Urulani vowed, drawing her sword as she rushed past the fallen colossus and charged up the winding road toward the ruined temple.
She was halfway to the top when she saw the red banner of the dwarf’s sash unfurl from a stone peak of a fallen tower near the crest of the hill.
“That’s it!” the dwarf yelled. “That’s the signal!”
“Now what?” Drakis shouted over the low hum filling the air around the Citadel courtyard. The pain in his arm was unbearable. He had been holding the plate stone of the dragon statue in place for what seemed an eternity. The stone pressed back with increasing force, vibrating under his hand. The glow in the ancient statue’s eye had steadily increased but the pressure needed to keep his hand against the carved scale was unendurable. Still, he could not remove it until all of the dragons had been made active and, according to the dwarf, Mala and Urulani returned with the key. Letting go would mean starting over from the beginning and he did not think he had the strength for it.
“Now we activate the last dragon,” Jugar yelled. “Then Mala receives the key.”
Drakis gritted his teeth. Ishander was pressing against the second dragon, which left one remaining. “Then do it!”
The dwarf stepped over to the final statue. It was a reach for him but he stretched up and pressed his wide hand to the carved scales of the dragon statue.
Nothing happened.
The dwarf pushed harder.
Nothing.
“What’
s wrong?” Drakis shouted.
“It isn’t working,” the dwarf frowned.
“I can see that!” Drakis yelled.
Ethis stepped forward quickly, pressing one of his own four hands against the stone.
No change.
“I don’t understand,” the dwarf whined. “We used your hand on each of these statues before we started and this one was working just fine then! And it’s working fine for Ishander.”
“Human magic,” Ethis said. “Perhaps it requires humans.”
“Of course,” the dwarf said. “Safe magic. All we need is one of the other humans . . .”
“Which other humans?” Ethis asked at once.
“Well any of the other . . . say, where is the Lyric?”
Drakis looked around frantically.
The Lyric was gone.
“We have three statues and two humans to activate them,” Drakis shouted. “NOW what do we do?”
Belag roared in frustration.
The battle commanders of the Army of the Prophet were trying to fall back before the onslaught of the Legions of the Northern Fist. Each time they would re-form the line, reengage the enemy, and inflict losses on their attackers. Then the attackers would retreat. The manticores would pursue the enemy only to find themselves flanked by more Legion Impress Warriors pouring through folds established behind their lines. The manticores, gnomes, humans, chimerians, and even elven elements of the Army of the Prophet would then regroup with more losses, falling back behind their original lines and reforming the battle line once more. It was an attempt by the manticorian captains to address the traditional tactics of the elves and was far more successful than the usual manticorian charge that tradition dictated in the lion-men’s tactics of battle. But the result was equally catastrophic: the back and forth of the battlefield resulted in a slow but continuous loss of ground for the Army of the Prophet and was a grinding mill of death on both sides of the line.
Belag damned the elven magic for the horrors it had unleashed on the world and on his pilgrims in particular.
And where was Soen and his magic when Belag needed it most?
“Retreat!” Belag bellowed as a new fold opened up behind him and more Impress Warrior troops of the Legions poured from it. Belag had been one of them not that many months before and knew how effective they could be. Yet he had no choice but to keep fighting even as he watched his army being ground down into the blood-soaked earth around him along with his dreams for his beloved Drakis and the promised freedom of the prophecy.
“Retreat and regroup!”
Urulani charged up the broken stairs curving toward the fallen cupola, her sword in hand and tears streaming down the smooth, dark skin of her face. She had allowed herself to believe. She had allowed herself to be weak. She had allowed herself to have a hope in the gods that her clan had honored from a dead and legendary past. Her heart had been betrayed, and Mala would pay for that treachery.
But not before she got what Drakis had come for; not before she obtained the key to the Font. She would deprive Mala of that prize.
The cupola stood atop a dome that had fallen with the collapsing wall and now sat like a broken eggshell at the edge of the temple rubble. The small circular structure had somehow survived the collapse and remained largely intact, the seven pillars still supporting a small cone that formed its roof. Even in ruin, the hilltop provided a panoramic view of the ruined city and the blanket of jungle forest stretching to the hazy horizon.
Urulani’s eyes were fixed on the figure of Mala standing between the pillars, her arms folded across her chest, the dwarf’s sash streaming from her grip down over the edge and draping on to the broken dome at her feet.
“Urulani,” said a quiet voice behind her.
Startled, Urulani turned, sword across her body ready to strike.
It was the Lyric.
The dark woman shifted the sword, its tip pointing threateningly at the madwoman. “Stand aside! I’m taking the key.”
The Lyric smiled. “It’s not here . . . and you should not be either, Li-Li.”
“Don’t call me that!” Urulani growled.
“You have to run now,” the Lyric said, gripping the blade of the sword with her right hand and gently pushing it aside. The blade slid through her palm as she did so, cutting it deeply with both edges. Her blood ran down the sword but the expression on her face did not change. “You have to take this fragile woman you call the Lyric with you. You are in great danger here.”
Urulani felt a shiver run through her. “Who are you?”
“You know me, Li-Li,” the Lyric said, blood dripping from her cut hand. “You have just forgotten me is all. I must go now but I won’t be far from you . . . and you will remember me again. But for now—you might want to hide.”
The Lyric gave a final smile . . . and collapsed onto Urulani.
The raider captain dropped her sword, catching the Lyric in her arms. The Lyric’s head lolled back and then the woman screamed in pain and fear.
“Who are you?” the Lyric cried out.
“I’m Urulani,” the captain responded as she always did to such requests from the Lyric. “And who are you today?”
The Lyric stared at Urulani in wild-eyed panic. “I don’t know!”
Urulani blinked. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“Please help me!” the Lyric cried out as she stared at her bleeding hand. “I’m . . . I’m hurt . . . and I don’t know who I am! Please . . . please help me . . .”
Urulani heard another shrieking sound behind her. She turned.
The wings of the rust-colored dragon were beating the air as it approached the cupola at the top of the broken dome.
Urulani picked up the quivering Lyric in her strong arms and dashed behind a broken fragment of wall. She set the Lyric down, peering around the corner.
Urulani could see the red sash of the dwarf flailing in the wind created by the dragon’s wings.
She could not see Mala.
CHAPTER 40
Shaken Foundations
“WHAT CANWE DO?”the dwarf shouted back.
Drakis grimaced. The throbbing in his arm was excruciating, the thunderous rumble coming from the dragon statue next to his hand overwhelming.
Ishander raised his chin from where he stood, his hand pushing painfully against the carved scale set in the dragon statue’s chest. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Ethis asked.
Ishander’s eyes widened. “The drakoneti! They are coming!”
“Drakoneti?” Drakis yelled. The noise was making it difficult to hear. “How many?”
“I’ve never heard so many!” Ishander answered through clenched teeth.
Drakis shifted his stance, but a glance at the dwarf made him stop.
“Don’t move!” the dwarf bellowed, both his hands held up in front of him. “The Font is nearly open! If you release that statue now, we may never have another chance at this!”
“So we just stand here until the drakoneti come and eat us?” Drakis demanded.
“It’s just one more!” Jugar bellowed in frustration. “We’ve been shoulder-deep in humans for weeks and now we can’t find one more?”
Ethis turned from where he stood near the dwarf and strode at once toward the third statue. He raised one of his four arms.
“But you’re not human,” Jugar called after him.
“Not yet,” Ethis answered.
Before their eyes, the chimerian’s form began to change. His two lower arms withdrew slowly inward, vanishing at last into the ripples of the shapeshifter’s form. The long legs contracted and the body shortened. The surface of Ethis’ body shifted colors, the folds shifting in the air like clothing. Parts of it hardened into the likeness of a leather cuirass. The ears, the ragged dark hair, the jawline of the face . . . everything molded quickly until the rough figure of Drakis appeared to be standing at the base of the third statue.
Ethis’ eyes concentrated on his outs
tretched remaining right hand. The pigment, the form, the hairs on the back of the hand were all rendered in detail. He reached out for the breast scale of the final dragon statue, then pushed hard against it.
The duplicate figure of Drakis quivered, partially losing its shape as Ethis threw back his head and screamed.
The eye of the third dragon began to glow, the rumble from beneath their feet increasing with every passing second.
Ethis shifted his head to face the hand pressed against the stone. The duplicated features rippled, re-formed and then sagged again.
“It’s working!” shouted the dwarf. “Drakis! Can you see Mala?”
Drakis turned, facing north and west across the ruins. He could see the distant hill, the long red cloth of the dwarf’s sash flicking at a sudden wind. “No but I see the sign. She’s ready as soon as . . . NO!”
A rust-colored blur soared through the achingly blue sky. Enormous leathery wings locked stiff in the air, wheeling the banking dragon in a spiraling circle around the distant hilltop.
Mala’s hilltop.
“We have to do something!” Drakis cried in anger and frustration.
“We are doing something,” Ethis called in response, his words slurred as he was having difficulty maintaining the shape of his mouth.
“All of this will be for nothing unless we get the key,” Jugar said. “Keep going! We’re almost . . . !”
Light flared out from the eyes of the dragon statues; brilliant beams that nearly blinded Drakis before he could turn his head away, slamming closed his eyes. Squinting against the brilliant light, Drakis turned to look over the great crystal stone of the Font to where the beams converged.
The air shifted, twisting on itself.
“It can’t be!” screamed Drakis.
A long shard of crystal floated slowly down out of the fold. A silver handle was fixed around the end of the shard, gleaming brightly in the rays from the dragons’ eyes.
“The key!” Jugar shouted. “It was here all along! Everyone stay where you are! I’ve got to get that key placed in the top of the Font stone!”
Citadels of the Lost Page 32