Return of the Exile l-3

by Mary H. Herbert

  Lanther raised the skull in a salute. “Hail to the godson, Amarrel, Keeper of Dragons, Champion of the White Flame and beloved of the goddess, and hail to the Dark Queen, mistress of the world and ruler of the dead!” With a bow he passed the skull to the Emperor who drank the contents in a single swallow.

  Lanther and the Tarmaks roared their approval. As the warriors pushed forward for their taste of the potion, Linsha felt the grip on her arms loosen. Her two guards, eager for their own share, released her and pushed her back and out of the way. Linsha staggered several steps, bent over, and vomited on the sand. Her legs trembled beneath her; her head throbbed with pain. She wanted no part of this savage ceremony, but she did not have the strength left to climb the stairs back to the upper levels of the palace. She had to lie down and she had to do it now. Wiping her mouth, she looked up and saw the dragon curled up in its induced state of sleep. The dragon was a stranger. But Linsha was a prisoner, too, and in the brief moment of mental joining, Linsha had sensed a desperate loneliness and fear in Sirenfal that matched her own. She felt drawn to the dragon and empathetic to her plight and hoped that Sirenfal wouldn’t mind a little company.

  Growing weaker by the moment, Linsha forced her legs to walk to Sirenfal’s sandy nest. She felt the heat of the brass dragon radiate outward like a warm oven, and gratefully she fell to her hands and knees and crawled until she could sit up against the dragon’s bent leg. In spite of the shouts of the Tarmaks and the beating of the drum, she was asleep before her head settled against the brass scales.

  She came to a state of awareness in a chamber of pale shadows. Looking around, she thought perhaps she was still in the dragon’s cave. The air was damp and smelled of stone and saltwater; the spaces echoed around her. But if that was where she was, some time had passed, for the Tarmaks were gone and the cave was silent and empty. There was no sign of Sirenfal. Light filtered in from somewhere overhead and reflected on a pale mist that swirled in from an opening she sensed but could not see.

  Who are you? The voice, light and feminine, spoke directly into her mind.

  Linsha peered into the dim fog around her and saw only more shadows. “I told you. I am a friend.”

  So you say. But you wear the paint of a Tarmak warrior and you attend their ceremonies.

  Linsha studied her skin, which was indeed still blue. Only the pain, the tingling, the cuts, and the bruises were gone. “I am a Knight of the Rose of the Solamnic Order and a friend of Iyesta. I was captured and brought here because of a debt of honor.”

  It must he an important debt.

  “Iyesta asked me to protect a clutch of eggs.”

  A sharp intake of breath somewhere close by cut across her words. She paused, staring harder into the mist.

  “I have not been very successful so far,” she added.

  Sirenfal’s thought came back heavy with sadness. If there is even one left, you have been more fortunate than I. The Tarmaks destroyed my entire clutch.

  Linsha climbed slowly to her feet. Her pain and nausea were gone. In fact she felt nothing, not even the chill of the mist gently wafting around her. “How long have you been here?”

  A lifetime. The answer came sighing back. About eight years, I think. Their priests and that dreadful man captured me with spells and stole my eggs. I think they killed my mate.

  Linsha was horrified. “How could they keep you imprisoned?”

  Because I am a dragon? There was a soft earthy chuckle, and a petite, delicate woman stepped out of the mist and stood in front of Linsha. Her light brown eyes bored into Linsha’s jewel green ones. Even dragons can be vulnerable.

  “Sirenfal.”

  The woman nodded. She was as beautiful as an elf maiden with honey-gold hair that swept around her shoulders and fine-boned features that looked like porcelain.

  Linsha was not surprised. Some dragons could easily shapeshift and often did so for a variety of reasons. Bronzes in particular liked to shift their forms and many spent years disguised as humans-a fact Linsha knew all too well. She met Sirenfal’s sad gaze without judgment or fear, only curiosity. The dragon woman did not look well. Her gold hair hung limp around her thin face, and her skin was pale and drawn. She had none of the vivid life and vivacious quality of Iyesta in her human form. She seemed more of a wraith, a thin shadow of her younger self.

  The man called Lanther has taught these Keena priests how to use spells created by the Dark Mystics. They in turn have taught him some of the secret potions of the Keena. They keep me sedated and under thrall while they experiment on me, harvest my scales, and leech my magic. They killed my eggs in those horrible ceremonies.

  Linsha listened, appalled by the dragon’s misery. A terrible suspicion crept into her mind, prompted by the memory of the discolored wound on the dragon’s back. “Do you know of the Abyssal Lance?”

  Sirenfal’s slender frame shuddered. “They experimented on me,” she whispered, using her own voice as though too afraid to share her thoughts.

  “Linsha!” A voice harsh and loud boomed in the cavern. Sirenfal started in fear, took a step back from Linsha. Her form began to fade.

  I must go. Must not let him know. The mist swirled around her.

  Instinctively Linsha held out a hand in comfort and farewell, but she did not speak for fear of drawing the hated voice to the dragon.

  “Linsha! Wake up! It’s time to go.” Lanther’s words cut through the gloom and shadows, and suddenly Linsha snapped awake.

  She was back in the cavern at night with the Tarmak warriors, the torches, the smell of smoke and the stink of the potion. She was back with Lanther. Blinking in the torchlight, she looked up at his face hidden behind the golden mask and stifled a surge of loathing. The presence of the dragon was gone, but the intensity of her sadness and the injustice of her plight filled Linsha’s mind and heart, kindling a new hatred for Lanther. How could he have done something like that to a dragon? Any dragon? Is that what he had had in mind for Crucible? Experimentation. Study. Harvesting. Leeching. The words sat like curses in her thoughts. When he held out a hand to help her to her feet, all she could do was stare at it. She hadn’t really noticed before how scarred and blunted his hands had become from years of fighting, hostile weather, and incidents with thorns, knives, dragon scales, and the gods knew what else. These were the hands that tortured and killed dragons, murdered her friends, and wielded a magic she could not understand. It was all she could do to force her fingers to touch his and accept his aid to climb to her feet.

  As soon as she was upright, she snatched her hand away and stepped back from him as if avoiding a plague carrier. She was still weak and unsteady on her feet, and the pain was back. But she felt a little stronger after her short nap, and the nausea was gone. With luck and determination, she should be able to make it back to the Akeelawasee without Lanther’s assistance.

  She glanced back at the sleeping dragon and felt something stir in the back of her mind that she hadn’t felt in a while-compassion. For the first time in days the black depression that had oppressed her lifted slightly, like a pall of smoke stirred by a fresh wind. Although she realized she had been dreaming, she did not doubt for an instant the validity of her conversation with Sirenfal. She had dreamed with dragons before and found the results to be quite interesting. Like Crucible before her, Sirenfal had chosen this private way to communicate with her in the hope that she would understand.

  Fortunately Linsha had. She had an affinity with dragons that she did not fully comprehend, an affinity that was stronger and more powerful than most humans possessed. Where it came from, she didn’t know, but for as long as she could remember she always felt comfortable in the presence of most dragons, and they responded to her in kind. Even Sara Dunstan’s aloof blue companion, Cobalt, had allowed her privileges he would have seared other children for if they had dared try. Sirenfal, Linsha knew, had taken a huge risk to communicate with someone who was still an unknown stranger, but perhaps she, too, sensed the sincerity of Linsha�
�s attempt to reach out to her. Linsha vowed to herself that Sirenfal’s trust would not go to waste. The dragon was wounded, ill, and in desperate need of help. Surely as the Drathkin’kela, Linsha could find some way to help a dragon.

  She followed in Lanther’s footsteps up the long stairs ahead of the long line of Tarmak warriors. Several times while she trudged up the steps she wanted to stop and rest, to catch her breath and let her aching muscles relax. But the warriors pushed up behind her and she would not show any more weakness before them this night. She forced herself on until her legs burned and her lungs panted and the ache in her head felt like a blacksmith was forging implements on her skull.

  By the time she finally reached the door leading back into the first level of the palace, Linsha was trembling with exhaustion again. The therapeutic effects of her nap and her dream with the dragon had vanished. All she wanted was a bath and a bed. As soon as she entered the hall, she veered away to escape down the hall to her quarters.

  Lanther caught her arm. “Come with me. We must talk.”

  Talking to Lanther was the second-to-the-last thing she wanted to do with him. “Now?” she snapped. She made no effort to hide her antagonism and irritation. “I am tired beyond measure. I had to fight a useless duel, then you dragged me to a cave to watch you torture a dragon, cremate my enemy, and kill a dragonlet you had promised to me. I have nothing to say to you.”

  Ignoring her, he removed his golden mask, handed it to an attendant, then took her elbow and propelled her down the hall and out a small door that opened into a beautifully manicured garden. The storm had passed, leaving the air cool and damp, and the moon spilled milky light over the trees and flowerbeds. All around them, tree frogs croaked an endless chorus in the darkness.

  “I have some things to say to you,” he said and pushed her down onto a stone bench.

  Linsha winced. The cold wet stone made an uncomfortable seat when all one wore was a scrap of loincloth. She pulled her elbow out of his grasp, laid her head in her hands, and groaned. Would this night ever end?

  “You fought well tonight,” he said, pacing slowly in front of her. “It is a shame Malawaitha had to press her suit.”

  Linsha did not bother to reply. She hadn’t had the time or the peace to think about Malawaitha and her needless death.

  He went on. “Fortunately the Emperor is impressed with you. He has finally given me his blessing to marry you, and he made arrangements with the High Priest to hold the ceremony in five days.”

  Linsha sat upright, aghast. Five days. Oh, gods, come back now and blast me where I sit, she thought.

  Lanther stopped pacing and glanced up at the full moon. He took a deep breath. “The ships will be provisioned within the next week,” he said rather hurriedly. “I intend to sail for the Missing City before the next new moon.”

  Linsha froze in a deluge of fear, anger, and disbelief. Had he meant what she thought he had just said? Surely he wouldn’t do that to her. “You said, ‘I.’ You do mean ‘we.’ We’re going back to Ansalon together.” She spoke more in desperate hope than conviction.

  Lanther crossed his arms and continued to stare at the moon. “Take you back to war and deprivation? I think not. No, no. You will stay here where I know you are safe and respected, and where you cannot find a way to slip through my grasp. You will stay here and await my return.”

  It was only with the greatest self-control that Linsha was able to stop herself from leaping off the bench and ripping his eyes out with her dirty fingernails. “I would prefer to go with you,” she forced herself to say rather than give voice to the shriek that banged at the back of her throat.

  “I’m sure you would,” he said.

  “You wanted me to stay by your side, fight with you. You asked me to be the Empress of the Plains. Now you want to leave me here like some second rate concubine?”

  “It would be better,” he agreed.

  “What about the dragon eggs? They are my bridal gift. I want to see them.” There was a note of rising hysteria in her voice that she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t believe what he was saying, couldn’t accept it. To be left here on this island, in this prison of women. Married and possibly pregnant. With no one but Callista to keep her company. She would never see her home again, never see her family. She would never have a chance to find Crucible and Varia.

  “The eggs will be well cared for,” he assured her.

  Linsha’s fragile self-control broke and she sprang to her feet. “Like you cared for the last one?” she yelled through her dry and aching throat. “No! I don’t believe you. I have to go back to the Missing City. You can’t leave me here!”

  “I can and I will. You are my betrothed, and in five days you will be my wife. You will remain on Ithin’carthia to bear my son.” His final words boomed like a death knell in her ears.

  9

  Preparations

  Linsha had to admit the Tarmaks knew how to treat a battered body. No sooner had she returned to the Akeelawasee than she was met by the Empress. Callista hovered in the background, her eyes huge with worry and consternation. Behind her waited Afec, looking cool and inscrutable, and several attendants.

  Uncertain of the Empress’s reaction to Malawaitha’s death, Linsha clasped her hands and bowed low. “I apologize for killing a daughter of the royal family,” she said in a low voice.

  The matriarch snorted indelicately. She looked Linsha over carefully from head to blue toes, nodded a few times, and replied in her difficult Common, “She accepted a challenge and lost. Do not apologize.” With a snap of her fingers, she held out her hand for a glass of dodgagd juice, which a servant swiftly handed to her. She passed it to Linsha. “I am told you marry in five days. You will stay here when Akkad-Dar leave.”

  Linsha heard Callista’s gasp of dismay over the subdued noises in the room. She barely nodded an affirmative and drank the juice. For once its strange taste did not repel her, and the cool liquid was a welcome relief to her sore throat and overworked body.

  The Empress clapped her hands and Linsha found herself surrounded by Callista, Afec, and the two female slaves. The women bustled her to the bathhouse where they scrubbed the blue paint from her body, massaged her aching limbs, and treated her bruises with cool water. Fortunately she remembered the brass dragon scale in time and slipped it out of her leather battle harness before anyone noticed. As soon as they were finished, Afec gave her a cold compress for her swollen eye, washed her superficial wounds with the stinging liquid and rubbed the thick unguent into the cut on her palm and the long laceration on her stomach. Callista brought her more juice and a bowl of soup. Linsha thanked them all, gave Callista an encouraging smile, and returned to the comparative peace of her tiny room. Although she wanted to talk to Callista and Afec, she gave in to the demands of her body and lay down on her pallet. Sleep found her before the blanket settled over her.

  “Would you be able to get your hands on some dark green clothes or fabric in the next day or two? Dark gray would also work.” Linsha lay flat on her pallet, trying to stretch her muscles back into some semblance of working order. She cocked her good eye at the courtesan to see if she caught the significance.

  Callista didn’t. The only subterfuge she knew involved the arts of her profession. Her fair face looked down at Linsha in confusion. “I suppose so. Why do you need such a thing?”

  “An assassin I once knew told me dark green is a better color to wear when you are sneaking around in the dark. It is much harder to see than black, which tends to stand out in shadows.”

  The two women were alone in the sleeping quarters that morning, for the Empress had excused Linsha from the dawn run. It was a good thing she had, Linsha decided, because she wasn’t entirely sure she could stay on her feet. Running was out of the question.

  “Are you planning to sneak somewhere?” Callista asked with a slight smile.

  Although they probably were alone in the sleeping rooms, Linsha lowered her voice to a murmur and told Callista abou
t the dragon in the cavern beneath the palace. “I want to talk to her without a pack of Tarmaks gathering around-and without the High Priest. He and Lanther have a power over her that will be hard to break.”

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “No. But Afec may be able to help me.”

  Callista drew in a breath. “Could this Sirenfal fly us home?”

  Linsha did not reply immediately. The same notion had occurred to her already and sparked a tiny seed of hope in the gloom of her mind. But she remembered the dragon’s obvious weakness and the pallor of her scales. She didn’t know if Sirenfal was in any condition to fly across the bay, let alone all the way to Ansalon. She did not know either how to get the dragon out of the cave, how to slip past the Tarmak guards, how to get out of the Akeelawasee with Callista, or the answers to a host of other questions. She needed first to talk to the brass dragon. “Maybe,” she said at last. “If many things go right.”

  “What about your marriage?” said Callista. “Will you go through with that?”

  A chill shivered down Linsha’s shoulders. “I will do what I must,” she said.

  Unbidden and unexpected came an image of a tall man with broad shoulders, hair the color of dark gold, and eyes that burned with the wisdom of a dragon over a hundred years old. She had seen him fiery with the intensity of passion to save his city, strong with command in an emergency, and silly with the joy of life while playing in a fishpond. He had saved her life several times, and when the need arose, he left his city behind to help her. If only he could help her now. Please, she silently begged the empty firmament. Please let him still be alive.