Slave in the City of Dragons (Dinosaurs and Gladiators Book 1)

by Angela Angelwolf

  The monstrous leatherback’s head was hewn from the stone of the mountain. The door was made of some kind of metal, and inscribed with markings, perhaps a language, that Pashera couldn’t read.

  Considering that the strange helmet at the bone-white tower in the jungle had taught her to read Tol’zen’s language in a matter of moments, this puzzled her greatly.

  The door was reddish-gray, and it seemed to fit one of the new words in Pashera’s head, “metal”. Black markings covered it, and seemed to dance in the fading afternoon light. The markings were worn down to almost nothing in spots across the reddish-gray.

  Looking at it more closely, Pashera could see scars ran across it in every direction. The surface was pitted, but also marred by deep grooves and craters. There was one prevailing design – a multi-layer cross made of smaller, interlocking and intricate designs. But this had been worn down and covered in areas by other designs. At least one was a set of pyramids. Another showed a saurian head wearing some sort of crown or helmet, but this in turn was defaced by other designs. Wings or winged creatures were a third motif hammered into the engraving, then erased by battle-scars, or perhaps time itself.

  The metal was reddish brown from the ground to at least halfway up the door. But then it darkened, as moss and lichens grew in intricate patterns which perhaps mimicked other designs underneath the growths in the metal itself. The top of the door was lost in the shade of the yawning mouth of the giant leatherback, but it appeared black and encrusted with a thick layer of fungus. Pashera wondered if the great door could even open.

  Tol’zen left Pashera at the lip of the monster’s stone mouth, and strode purposefully in to touch the door. He grasped a knocker fashioned after the head of some fantastic beast and rapped three times. The sound was huge and rang with a metallic, hollow sound that lingered. It echoed down the canyon. Then he walked back out of the mouth, stood by Pashera, and looked up toward the top of the stone head expectantly,

  Far above, Pashera saw figures move along a structure built right along the top of the head. A head popped out of one of the head’s giant, hollow eyes.

  “Who goes there?” A bellicose baritone called down from far away.

  “Tol’zen, son of Tol’karion,” her companion said. “And a slave. Open the door you great lump!”

  The head disappeared. After a wait, a slit appeared in the great door. It was right at the height of Tol’zen’s eyes.

  “Tol’zen?” a male’s voice asked.

  “Who else would it be?” Tol’zen said. “Now hurry up and open the door. The sky pirates grow bolder.”

  “We have to be sure,” the voice apologized. The slit closed. Then a small door, set into the larger one, cracked open. Until it swung inward, Pashera had no idea there was another door there. It was concealed inside the intricate pattern of the great door.

  “Welcome home, cousin,” said the other saurian. Clad in a blue-black breastplate, greaves and gauntlets, and opaque white-and-yellow helmet, he seemed oddly overdressed now that Pashera had spent days running near-naked through the jungle. He wore leather boots shaped to the saurian’s bird-like feet. Red numbers and letters danced across a display on one of his greaves. A sphere orbited him at a respectful distance. The sphere left the saurian’s orbit and maneuvered around Tol’zen and Pashera, as if to size them up.

  “It’s good to see you, Gu’arn,” Tol’zen said, somewhat formally.

  “A slave,” Gu’arn said, looking Pashera over. She shrank from his probing gaze. “The king will be pleased.”

  “She’s not for him,” Tol’zen growled.

  “Ah-ha, well, I’ll let you take that up with the king,” Gu'arn said. “And your quest? Did you track the long-horns?”

  Tol’zen tapped the bag slung around his shoulder. “All that’s left.”

  “Well,” Gu’arn said, after a pause. “I’ll let you take that up with the king, too.”

  Other warriors came to check out the newcomers. They all wore variations on Gu’arn’s kit. While they were all similar, none were quite the same. Many carried weapons that the new words in Pashera’s head told her were slug-throwers. But a few carried spears like Tol’zen, and swords as well.

  Most but not all were black; others varied in shade from dark brown to a light tan. Their ears especially were different. Tol’zen had ears that Pashera considered small for his head, though human-looking enough. Some of the saurian warriors had ears that spread out into large frills. Many had markings on their ears that the old Pashera would have taken for paint, but she now knew were tattoos.

  The warriors pressed Tol’zen with questions. He waved them all off, insisting that he had to get to the palace and make his report. Still, the warriors milled about, not letting them pass. Finally, a group of three saurians came forward, and the crowd parted.

  These were older. Two of them wore the full kit Gu’arn sported, plus extra bulges that Pashera suspected were energy weapons, and discs of rank on their arms. A third, the oldest, carried instruments.

  “Lord Tol’zen, welcome back,” said the tallest of the three.

  “Greetings, Commander,” Tol’zen said. “Will you please ask your men to let us pass?”

  “Your eagerness to report is commendable,” the commander said. “But the physician must examine you to make sure you aren’t bringing back anything unfortunate.”

  “It won’t take too long,” said the old saurian with the instruments. His voice was gruff, but not unkind. “Anyway, I can see you’re banged up. Those wounds needs some looking-to.”

  “Come inside,” the commander pointed to a door. “I’ll have food brought for you. You can eat and rest while the physician checks you out. ”

  “And food for my slave,” Tol’zen said.

  “And your slave,” the commander nodded agreeably. “Of course.”

  The commander’s station – indeed, the entire guard complex – seemed built into the massive wall that was also the rim of the valley. Inside, in a clean white room that was cooled by air that blew out of the ceiling, Tol’zen half-sat, half collapsed on a long, low bench, and the doctor busied himself with instruments.

  Pashera sat on a stool in the corner. She watched Tol’zen like a hawk. She didn’t like these other saurians, nor did she trust them. In the experience of her tribe, strangers were never trustworthy until proven otherwise.

  The commander, whose name was Dal’ger, sat on a stool closer to the bench, but he stayed out of the way of the doctor. He kept up a running patter of conversation with Tol’zen, prying his story out of him.

  The physician didn’t give his name. He spent long minutes poking and prodding Tol’zen with a series of instruments. He examined the wounds that peppered Tol’zen’s body. When he stopped to finger the bump on the side of Tol’zen’s head where Pashera had brained him – by the Devouring God, that seemed a lifetime ago – the physician clucked and poked at it until Tol’zen finally flinched away.

  “Oh, you can still feel pain?” the physician said light-heartedly. “Judging from the number of wounds on your body, I thought maybe you couldn’t tell when someone was hitting you. That wound on your shoulder, tsk, tsk.”

  “That was a bite from a night ape, a big one,” Tol’zen said, and his conversation with Commander Dal’ger shifted to that part of the story.

  Warriors arrived with food and drink. Pashera didn’t recognize any of it. Savory smells saturated the air. The saurian who gave her the bowl talked to her.

  “Can you understand me?” he asked. She nodded vigorously. She wanted him to let go of the bowl.

  “Eat slowly,” the warrior said sternly. “If you don’t like the taste of something, spit it into this bucket,” he nudged a container on the floor forward with his boot.

  With that, he let the bowl go.

  The food was mostly cubes of different colors, but there was also fruit. Pashera tried one of the cubes. Its surface was waxy. Strange flavor exploded in her mouth. It was so intense, so strange, she al
most cried out. It was delicious! Its texture was midway between fruit and meat.

  Greedily she ate the rest. The cubes’ textures and flavors varied with their color. Some were definitely meat; others she couldn’t say. There was only one more of the extraordinarily delicious cubes. The fruit seemed dull in comparison to the marvelously flavored cubes. The conversation at the bench had progressed. Tol’zen impressed the physician with how Pashera had treated his wounds.

  “Very well done,” the physician turned to Pashera and favored her with a nod. “I might learn a thing or two about battlefield medicine from you.”

  He turned back to Tol’zen. “When the king tires of her, ask him to send her to me. I can use a slave with talent and brains.”

  Heat flashed in Tol’zen’s eyes. “She isn’t for the king. She’s mine.”

  “Ah, as you say,” the physician said.

  He finished treating Tol’zen and left him to eat his meal. The physician stumped over to inspect Pashera. She shrank from his touch, but he was gentle enough. He put some cream on the gash in her shoulder and ran an instrument over it. As she watched, the wound started to close up.

  “By the gods!” she exclaimed.

  “No, by a physician,” the older saurian said with a twinkle in his eye. “How’d you get that anyway?”

  She told him the story of her encounter with the sky pirate. She emphasized how Tol’zen had saved her. She figured it couldn’t hurt to butter him up.

  All the while, the physician poked and prodded her, and ran more instruments over her. He had her take her skirt off, and he looked up inside her. She tried to squirm away, but his manner was very firm. Since there were warriors in the room, she let him continue.

  “She seems very fit, she carries no known diseases, and she obviously took to the learning treatment well,” the physician said, as Pashera hastily re-wrapped her skirt. “Half-starved, but she’ll fatten up soon enough; they all do. She is of breeding age, and a virgin. I’m sure they’ll approve of her at the palace.”

  This seemed to put fire back in Tol’zen’s eyes. “We must be going,” he told Commander Dal’ger.

  “Are you sure you don’t want a bath first?” the physician asked. “You’re both filthy.”

  “Other than the dirt, you give them a clean bill of health?” the commander asked.

  “Oh yes, they’re fine.”

  Commander Dal’ger nodded to Tol’zen, who rose up off the bench seemingly in much better health than when he lay down on it. The warriors escorted Tol’zen and Pashera outside where a cart waited.

  Hitched to the cart was a leatherback of a type Pashera had never seen before. She startled at the sight of it, but Tol’zen laid a calming hand on her arm.

  “Sorry I don’t have better transport for you,” Commander Dal’ger apologized. “But this cart is the next thing going back, and I thought you wouldn’t want any more delays.”

  “You thought right,” Tol’zen said. “I appreciate the lift. You’ve been very kind.”

  They clasped arms in farewell.

  The warriors helped them up to the top of the cart’s superstructure. It was a cage that apparently held some kind of cargo usually, but was empty now. On the top of the cage was a platform, and a bench was positioned at the front of the platform.

  The driver of the cart welcomed Tol’zen to sit beside him. Pashera sat behind them. The driver called Tol’zen “Lord.” Pashera’s people had no equivalent word for that, but the new words in her head finally clicked in; she became aware that Tol’zen was of high rank.

  “Hold on,” the driver said to her gruffly. “It gets bumpy.”

  With that he cracked a whip and the leatherback lurched forward in its harness. Pashera was so startled she almost tumbled off the back of the platform. She righted herself and held on to the ropes for dear life.

  The cart took them on a gently winding path through large stretches of farmland. It seemed to Pashera that this valley, right at the foot of the mountain of the Devouring God, was cultivated from one side to the other. But then crops gave way to fields where large leatherbacks grazed. Saurians in the fields turned to wave at the cart and its passengers. Pashera felt their curious eyes on her. She lay down on the platform, hugged the rope, and closed her eyes.

  Still, the cart bumped on. The cart driver wanted to hear about Tol’zen’s adventure beyond the wall. For his part, he grilled the driver on the latest gossip from the palace. One part of that conversation – Tol’zen’s tale -- was a living nightmare that Pashera would rather forget. The other part of the chat – palace politics – was beyond her comprehension.

  Night fell as the cart rumbled on. Low lights appeared on the sides of the road, just visible through Pashera’s slitted eyes as she lay on the platform. Pashera reasoned that these were like the lights in the pylon and on the bridge. What she once would have taken for marvels were now nothing unusual.

  The moon rose, low in the sky. And then, as the cart crested another in a long series of hills Tol’zen told the driver to stop. “Pashera, look up here,” he called back to her.

  Since the cart was stopped, Pashera dared to lift her head, stand up, and walk up to Tol’zen. He stood up on the platform as well. He gestured ahead.

  There, in front of them, was a city. A city of tall, impossibly slender towers and swelling domes. The city was built in stone that glistened in the moonlight, silver veined faintly with gold.

  But this was not a dead city like Tartessos at the bridge. This city shone with light. The light burst out of windows, and streamed up from open spaces in the city’s interior. All the lights were like a chorus of civilization shouting back the primordial night. Pashera gasped at the sight. It was more majestic than anything she’d ever seen in her life.

  “Welcome,” Tol’zen said, “to Guadalquivir, the City of Dragons. Welcome to your new home.”

  Chapter 6. The Court of the Saurian King

  Walls six times the height of a man circled the city. Bright towers reared up; colored lights moved up and down their columns. Some towers seemed to be composed of nothing but light.

  The city of lights stood on a plateau. Beyond it, the slopes of the Holy Mountain reared up suddenly and sharply. The top of the Home of the Devouring God was still far away, now a jagged silhouette against the rising moon. There seemed to be another city, unlit and shrouded in shadows, on the slopes of the mountain behind Guadalquivir, but it was too dark for Pashera to make out clearly.

  As they got closer, Pashera could see, even in the darkness, that the gates of the city crumbled with age. Vines grew all over them, threatening to pull down more of the masonry. Odd towers projected from the wall. Some of these ended in abrupt breaks. Others leaned precariously. The walls ran the height of six men except where cracks split the ramparts, and there were many of those.

  Buildings clustered at the base of the wall. Elsewhere, odd hills rose up below the cracks, showing where masonry had fallen, clumped, and lain there long enough to cover with dirt and grow foliage.

  The gates were open. The casement around the entranceway was a pictogram of beasts ancient and unimaginable. Soldiers met them at the gates, but a fat warrior who seemed in charge of the others waved the cart through.

  As Tol’zen’s name was announced, more saurians ran to the gate to greet him, or at least goggle at him. The cart rolled on past the gates into a broad bricked street lined with lights. Some of the lights flickered only dimly, and some didn’t glow at all, but most were bright. The whole scene was certainly more well-lit than any night-time event Pashera had ever experienced.

  Tol’zen jumped down into the path to try and clear a way for the cart.

  One saurian stepped forward and embraced Tol’zen. Pashera could not hear the conversation. It was light enough that she could see a definite similarity between the newcomer and Tol’zen. The newcomer wore a smock over his kilt, one with many pockets. He was the same height as Tol’zen, but of slighter build.

  Their talk was int
ense but brief, perhaps because other saurians clustered around them. Tol’zen got some help from the guards at the wall to move the crowd back, and the cart finally rolled again. Tol’zen grabbed the big leatherback by the harness and led the beast and its cart – and Pashera – deeper into the city.

  They passed along broad avenues and mighty forums and slim columns that faded into shadow. The first thing to hit Pashera was the smell. Guadalquivir smelled like a city of lizards, as well an underlying aroma of piss, shit and animals of all sorts.

  Upon closer inspection, the buildings of the city were a wild mix of architectural styles. Some stone buildings sported fresh frescoes of saurians or beasts. Others were unpainted, and some so worn down it was impossible to tell what the decorations were meant to be.

  Nine out of 10 of the buildings were stone or brick. Yet they were a riotous mix of old and new, towers and squat, square structures, domes and pointed roofs, elaborate facades and plain construction. Here and there, wooden buildings shouldered into the mix like interlopers.

  The road was paved with smooth stone, but the stones of such a combination of colors that Pashera wasn’t sure what the original color was. Twin wheel ruts, the mark of the passage of untold number of carts, grooved the street. Here and there, jagged cracks split the stones, and sometimes the buildings beyond. These cracks were usually patched. But three times, they came to gaps that had to be bridged by other construction.

  Still, the cart lumbered on its way.

  The main avenue was straight. Side streets led off in either direction, and seemed to disappear into a maze of buildings, but they stuck to the main road. Multi-story buildings lined each side of the street. Occasionally, doors or window would open as occupants peered out curiously at the procession. Some stepped out to hail Tol’zen. He waved back.