Drakis lowered his sword.
“No, lad!” the dwarf croaked. “Don’t do it!”
“It’s over, Jugar,” Drakis sighed. It had all been a horrible bad joke. So many sacrificed—Mala, Urulani, the Lyric—so many gone—and for what? All because they wanted him to be someone he was not.
The creature shrugged its shoulders, its jaw working again, a guttural rumble now emerging from its throat.
Drakis slid his sword back into its scabbard.
“No! Drakis, listen to me!” Jugar shouted in desperation.
The one-eyed drakonet raised its head.
“No, Jugar,” Drakis said, transferring the key to his right hand. He held it up in front of him, gazing at it. “No more words.”
He stepped forward, stopping in front of the huge dragon-man towering nearly a foot and a half over him. The monstrous creature was staring down at him with its vibrant blue eye, its wide jaws working as it muttered.
Drakis held the key out in front of him for the creature to take.
The rotunda fell into shadow.
The one-eyed drakonet looked up. Drakis followed its gaze.
Dragons were settling on the edge of the opening at the top of the dome, their shapes blocking out the sky beyond. There were five crowding the opening of various shapes, colors, and markings, all illuminated by the column of light above the Font. One was more striking than the rest, its scales a polished, golden hue burnished to a bright shine.
Pharis looked up as well, his neck recoiling as he hissed at the dragons perched above him.
The drakonet spoke.
Drakis turned to face the creature in front of him. For a moment, Drakis was not sure what it said but his eyes widened in astonishment as the word became clear in his mind.
“DRA’AKISSSSSSS . . .”
The human’s eyes went wide in astonishment.
In that moment, the drakonet reached forward. Its open hand plunged past the key and instead grasped Drakis’ arm.
Drakis cried out in pain.
The world shifted. The rotunda was suddenly whole and restored: a beautiful vision of perfection. The arched buttresses rose to the complete dome, the columns stood in symmetry beneath the arches of the colonnade circling about the Font where the light of its Aether shot up through the opening like a beacon of hope.
Gazing down from above, the silver-burnished dragon spoke, its head arched down and facing Pharis as it spoke.
And Drakis understood.
“. . . discovered what you have done, Pharis! Since the time the Darkness Fell you have told the lie of humanity betraying dragonkind. You were the Guardian of the Font. Yours was the charge to protect the Aether and our oath with humankind!”“
“My loyalty was to dragonkind, Hestia!” Pharis roared. “It is a loyalty and a duty lost among many of us!”
“We swore an oath!” Hestia answered from her perch above.
“An oath of servitude!” Pharis snapped. The dragon circled the Font. “An oath that sold the birthright of dragons to the soft life of human pets! Listen to me! We had a destiny! We could have been a great and noble race that ruled the sky and land! We were the embodiment of Aer—the magic of the land. It welled up through the stones of our lairs and into our bones. We were one with the Aer! But the humans offered us an easy path, a seductive path! The Aether made us soft, complacent, and weak. We traded our eminence for soft rest and easy feasts. We forgot the wild sky and the touch of hard stone. Humanity made us tame and servile! They stood between us and our better selves!”
“And so you rid us of them?” Hestia asked in a hissing voice. “Thinking higher thoughts than the Ring of Five, higher still than all the oaths of the Dragon Elders who vouched for each clutch, you alone determined to break the oath, to sunder the magic and pull the darkness down upon us all?”
“I said nothing of the Dark Fall,” Pharis replied. “The humans brought this on themselves.”
“And yet when the human Drakis came—presented himself at our borders,” said Marush, the green-and-yellow dragon that perched next to Hestia on the rim of the dome, “you kept him hidden from the eyes of our Queen—even as she heard word of him and searched the wildland for him.”
“Not true,” Pharis hissed back, circling the Font. “Marush, what have you to gain by lying so? Do you covet my title so that you would lie to our Queen?”
“Where is this Drakis?” Queen Hestia trumpeted.
“Here, Great Queen!”
Drakis turned to look at the drakonet gripping his arm who had just called to the Queen. He was astonished. The massive drakonet had been transformed in his eyes. The worn and broken horns of his head were complete and perfect. His bony face had taken on an indefinable elegance in nobler, smoother lines. The barbs on the tail were rounded and the creature wore a striking robe of crimson trimmed in gold brocade. His blind eye now matched the blue of the other, both giving a softer look to the face.
“Speak, Theodris,” Hestia commanded. “Too long you have been without a voice.”
“Too long since the Dark Fall,” Theodris answered. “Too long since our adoption to dragonkind by the power of Aether and the long night of our dimmed minds and barbaric half-thoughts. We were immortals condemned to roam the world as little more than animals when the Aether fell. We have lived a waking nightmare these long years.”
“And found you Drakis?” Hestia said.
“This is Drakis, Queen Hestia,” Theodris said, still gripping the human’s arm.
“The Drakis of old?” Hestia replied, her eyes narrowing.
“I cannot say, Queen Hestia,” Theodris answered. “But he restored the Font and fulfilled the oath of humankind.”
“And what say you of Pharis?” Hestia asked.
Theodris spoke clearly into the hall. “He enslaved us, bade us first that we might kill this Drakis before you had discovered him. When this failed, he turned us to a new purpose—to seize him in the wilderness. He wanted him taken but for himself alone and in a place far from the eyes of Your Majesty’s loyal friends. At last he determined as he had done before to follow them to this fallen place and attempt to retrieve the Key of the Font.”
“For what purpose?” asked the purple-hued dragon in a high, fluting voice.
“That he might recover the Key of the Font—and hide it from Your Majesty . . . and the world.” Theodris answered.
“Not true!” Pharis shouted. “A conspiracy of lies!”
“Pharis,” Hestia intoned. “We are beings of the Aer and so we existed before the human Aether . . . and so we have existed since. By the power of the Aer we breathed our fiery breath. By the power of Aer we could lift ourselves into the sky. Now the darkness is lifted by the hand of a human and powers that once were mine are mine again.”
Pharis coiled back.
“As you had taken the Aether from us,” Hestia declared, “now we take the Aer from you . . . and leave you to the justice of humanity’s heirs here among us; the drakoneti.”
Theodris released Drakis’ arm. The perfect form of the rotunda vanished at once, replaced by the strange incompleteness of the suspended ruins. Theodris once more assumed his monstrous visage
Pharis leaped upward, his wings extending as Hestia and the four dragons with her drew in their breath. Pharis beat his wings once, twice . . . pushing frantically to get through the opening of the dome, but it was too late. Hestia’s breath and the breath of the dragons about her spewed from their gaping maws, encompassing the rust-red dragon in a gray mist as he rose into the dome. Pharis beat his wings again, trying to push past them through the opening but the mist remained behind, holding the dragon’s form in the air for a moment behind him. Pharis faltered in the air, wings flailing, desperate to support his weight, but the power of Aer had been pulled from him.
“Out of the way!” Jugar shouted, pushing at Ishander. Ethis managed to stand, staggering toward Drakis.
The dragon fell out of the ceiling, crashing down atop the Font. Pharis
scrambled to get his footing on the stones, clawing at the dragon statues to find a purchase but the drakoneti were already swarming toward him. The dragon-men rushed from the surrounding walls, leaping upon the dragon, clawing at the membrane of his wings, tearing at his scales.
Pharis howled in pain, thrashing his great claws about, but the drakoneti would not be denied. The crippled dragon managed to roll onto his feet, charging between the suspended columns of what had once been the entrance hall. The drakoneti cheered and abandoned the rotunda, streaming out in pursuit of the fallen Pharis.
The din of the mob receded and silence again filled the hall. Four of the dragons had left their perches atop the dome to witness the end of Pharis—inevitable now that he could no longer fly or breathe magic—but Hestia remained, looking down from above. Theodris, too, had remained, standing near Drakis as though waiting for something.
“Drakis?” Jugar said quietly. “What’s all this about? Where did all those monstrosities rush to in such a hurry? Are we going to be eaten or worse?”
Drakis was gazing blankly at the Key of the Font still in his hands. His voice sounded far away in his own ears. “No, Jugar. I’ve spoken to them. They won’t harm us.”
“Drakis, lad, you’ve done it!” Jugar’s shout echoed among the ruins, his voice startling in the silence. The dwarf brandished his ax. “Now if these beasties don’t mind, we can get to those fold gates! Maybe now we can go home, eh?”
Home. The word rang in Drakis’ mind. House Timuran had been home but it was lost. Urulani’s village could have been home before the Iblisi had destroyed it looking for him. Home was where Mala wanted him to take her . . . where he had promised to take her.
But he knew now that home was Mala.
“Drakis!”
Drakis raised his head sharply at the sound. A woman’s voice echoed down the entrance hall. He could see her running toward him, holding another woman in her arms. His eyes brightened, widened, hoping . . .
“You wish home?” the drakonet said with a heavily slurred tongue.
Jugar looked up at the enormous beast in surprise. “Why . . . yes . . . yes! Can you assist us in getting back to our native soil?”
Drakis stepped toward the hall in anticipation. The women were drawing nearer.
“Hestia say dragons honor still ancient oath to humankind,” the dragon-man said. “Come to aid and defend as oath to fulfill. With Aether their strength is new. No gates or fold. Dragons carry you home to southlands.”
Home. He had promised to take her . . .
Urulani rushed into the hall carrying the Lyric, whose arms were wrapped around her neck. “There’s something wrong with her, she’s . . .”
Drakis’ face fell in anguish.
“Mala?” he asked.
Urulani shook her head . . . could not meet his gaze.
Drakis’ comprehension of Urulani’s simple motion drove him to his knees, the Key of the Font rolling from his open hands.
“Can you believe it?” Jugar shouted joyously. “We’re going home!”
Drakis threw his head back and released a cry of anguish that came from the great emptiness within him. It came again, the sound of his overwhelming loss ringing beneath the broken dome above.
And again . . .
And again . . .
And he knew that the sound of it would echo endlessly in his gutted soul.
CHAPTER 43
Recompense
VENDIS SAT ON THE FLOOR of his cage, the fingers of both pairs of his hands intertwined in front of him, his face a blank as he looked back at the Council of the Grahn Aur arrayed about him in Belag’s tent.
Belag sat in front of the caged Vendis on an ornate throne of silver inlaid with jewels, liberated, it was said, from the command tent of the Rhonas Legions—the same Legions that had been trampled into the bloodied ground of Willow Vale. It had been presented to him by the Pajak of Krishu as a gift of honor, the rightful spoils the Pajak had taken from his victorious obliteration of the fleeing Cohorts of the Legion command.
The Pajak himself sat on his own throne to the right of the Grahn Aur. A number of jewels—also liberated from the seized elven possessions—had been hastily added to the gold embossing of the Pajak’s throne by the goblin smithies so that it might shine more gloriously than that of the Grahn Aur. There had been some concern earlier in the day that the Pajak would, by nature of his fourfoot stature, have his head lower than that of the towering manticore Prophet of Drakis. The quick application of several soft pillows to the throne and four hastily carved blocks of wood set beneath the Pajak’s throne had solved the crisis of diplomacy. Now the Pajak leaned forward, his long hands knitting together and his large eyes narrowed in anticipation of the traitor’s judgment on the word of the elf, Soen Tjen-rei.
Soen himself stood casually to the left of the Grahn Aur, his arms folded across his chest. The rogue Iblisi’s black eyes were fixed on the prisoner and impossible to read. Some who were in the tent would later describe it as malice, while others thought it more like amusement or satisfaction. Most, however, were correct in believing that Soen’s look was a careful and deliberate study in conveying nothing at all. Soen again wore the robe of an Iblisi as everyone present—indeed, in the entire encampment—now knew that he was once of that Order. It was an awkward and uncomfortable position for Soen, who preferred to remain as anonymous as possible. He had hated being known at the Imperial Court and now he found himself in the same position in the court of the rebellion. Soen knew that fame brought with it many problems in his work but that it could also be used to his advantage . . . as it was at the present moment.
Braun, the human Proxi turned wizard, stood to the right of the Pajak. He now wore a robe that looked as though it had once belonged to an elven war-mage. Soen could still see the faint outlines of the original owner’s House markings in the fabric from which they had been removed. He also held a Proxi staff in his hands, the steel point at its base polished to a bright shine for the occasion. The crystal in the staff’s headpiece held a strange purple glow that Soen had never seen before. It was a color difficult to look upon.
Next to Braun stood Gradek, the manticore warrior now made Commander of the Armies. He had been a believer before the Battle of the Willow Vale but it was not until now that he had any real hope for their future. He held his head high with the pride of one who has passed beyond belief to conviction.
Seated beyond Gradek was Tsojai Acheran, the frail and nervous elf who had been brought to the council to represent the small elven contingent of converts and had been saddled with the responsibility of correspondence and intelligence. Soen believed Tsojai had no capabilities for either function. Tsojai had a deep-seated distrust of the renegade Iblisi that had not been diminished by presenting Vendis as a traitor. As far as Tsojai was concerned, they should both be in the cage. He sat as far from Soen as possible, while still being considered one of the council.
Neblik, the Hak’kaarin gnome, sat on his small rug to the left of Soen, taking in everything that was said and done. He would be spreading the story of this council to the rest of the encampment through his fellow gnomes as soon as the proceedings were finished. The goblin Doroganda sat beside the gnome, prepared as soon as the opportunity presented itself to condemn the chimerian to a number of different deaths she had devised for him.
Hegral stood guard behind the cage. He was a manticore of tremendous strength and courage but he also benefited from an important skill: Soen had taught him how to stun a chimerian long enough to kill him properly.
Beyond Hegral the tent was packed with representatives from as many of the different camps as could fit inside, and many more were gathered just outside. The question of how to deal with Vendis—or anyone who had betrayed the cause of Drakis—was of some debate among the members of the encampment. Some believed that faith in Drakis was a personal choice and that those who no longer believed should simply be banished from the community. Others believed that a rejection of Drak
is was an attack on the faith and should be met with punishment. Betrayal of the faith to an enemy, they believed, should exact a swift and final punishment.
Everyone looked to the Grahn Aur’s judgment of Vendis as a guide for their future.
And, at that moment, the Grahn Aur was looking at the caged Vendis.
The cage itself had been built to Soen’s specifications. It was wrought of a woven lattice of iron rods with no opening between them more than three inches wide. These formed a large cube seven feet on a side with rings mounted to the exterior through which carrying rods could be inserted to transport both the cage and the prisoner inside. But it was the second cage built within the outer cage and suspended by rods at the corners to be positioned exactly one foot away from all the outer cage walls that secured the chimerian. This iron-woven box within a box was five feet on a side. To the humans it looked as though it would be an inhumanely cramped space, but Soen explained that the unusual physiology of the chimerian would allow him to contract with reasonable, if far from luxurious, comfort. Soen had further explained that the particular spacing of the bars and the one-foot interval between the outer and the inner box combined with the spacing of the woven sides would make it impossible for the chimerian to use his bendable talents to escape. A matching set of locked doors—also constructed of the same woven bars—allowed access from the outside through the outer cage into the inner cage. In all, the arrangement allowed for Vendis to see out of his cage and, more importantly, for those outside to keep an eye on Vendis within.
“Vendis, you have heard the statements given before this council,” Belag said in a voice that carried beyond the confines of the tent. Belag wore the ceremonial robes of his office as Grahn Aur. “Charges have been made against you—that you secretly aided the enemies of Drakis. That you aided the Legions of the Northern Fist and the Empire of Rhonas in following the course of our pilgrims through the wilderness, and that you colluded with them in an attempt to capture Drakis and deliver him to the Rhonas Empire as well as assisting them in their attempted destruction of the believers’ armies and families. That you willfully detained a member of our followers . . .”
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