The Killing Song: The Dragon Below Book III

by Don Bassingthwaite

  “Why don’t you come with me now?” Hona suggested. “I’ll introduce you to the other lorespeakers. You should be able to find at least one of us any time later.”

  Ekhaas’s eyebrows rose, and she looked at Geth. “You were listening?” she asked, switching languages. “Should I go?”

  Geth gave her a withering look as he released Wrath. “Would it matter if I said no?”

  “Not really.” She looked up at the sky. “The sun will be down soon. The ceremony will end. I’ll be back before then.”

  She said something to Kobus, then strode off behind Hona. Geth didn’t listen to what she told the warrior or even watch her go. There was a stone close by, and he seated himself on it, rubbing his temples with the fingers of one hand and trying to ignore Kobus’s murmured conversations with the other warriors. He would have killed for a tankard of ale. Even orcish ale. Unfortunately, all of the ale that had survived the growth of the horde would be left behind at the Sharvat when they marched. For the duration of their march, the horde would drink only water or gaeth’ad brewed to restore flagging strength.

  He hoped House Deneith never decided to adopt some of the orcish practices for the Blademarks. It would make an already grim job even worse.

  “Geth?”

  He looked up. The warrior who had been the first to offer him ale in the camp stood before him, nervously exchanging glances with Kobus. Geth had learned his name—he tried to remember it. “Pog?” he said.

  The warrior looked pleased. He stepped closer and, with a stilted accent and a look of concentration that suggested he was repeating words he didn’t really understand, said, “I … message. You … meet Batul. Follow Pog now.” He thumped his chest and gestured toward the rear of the horde. “Follow!” he repeated proudly.

  A meeting with Batul? Geth was on his feet again in an instant. Ekhaas should have been here, but it was too late for that. “Yes! Yes, I’ll follow you!” he said, then repeated himself more slowly as confusion crossed Pog’s face. “Geth follow Pog.”

  Kobus’s voice rumbled at the smaller warrior, and Pog spoke to him quickly in Orc. Geth put his hand on Wrath and listened in. Pog’s reply to Kobus included more detail than his broken instructions to Geth—there was a thick stand of trees just beyond the edge of the horde, and Pog was to take Geth there to meet Batul. It had to be done quickly too, because Batul would need to return to the other Gatekeepers before the sun slipped below the horizon. Kobus’s eyes narrowed. “Then we should go too,” he said.

  Pog shrugged and nodded, then turned back to Geth. “Follow now!” he said.

  Geth would have liked to tell Kobus that he didn’t need the extra company. He was reasonably certain that anything Batul would have to tell him would be for his ears alone. Unfortunately, with Ekhaas absent, he didn’t have any way of telling Kobus that. No matter, Batul would just dismiss the warriors if he didn’t want them close. Geth followed along behind Kobus and Pog as the smaller warrior led the way and the larger cleared a path for Geth and the other would-be followers who accompanied them.

  There were five of them—Kobus ordered the rest to remain among the horde. They spread out to walk beside and behind Geth like an honor guard. Anyone who tried to reach out and touch Geth this time got their arm slapped back. It seemed a bit severe to him, but he was grateful for the peace. He tried to focus as they walked, attempting to remember all of the things he needed to tell Batul, all of the concerns that he had and all of the questions Ekhaas had raised. Maybe, he thought, she should have been there …

  A curse and then a loud grunt of pain brought his head up. They were still wading through the horde, though its edge and the tops of the stand of trees where Batul waited were visible ahead. They were passing a knot of warriors clustered together around one of their number, an orc man holding a freshly broken nose. Geth’s hand still rested on Wrath and he heard one of the warriors shout at the passing group, “What did you do that for? He didn’t do anything!”

  Kobus twisted around to shout back. “He was in the way! If you’ve got anything to say about it, why don’t you come and get in my way too?” He shook his double axe threateningly.

  The angry warrior started forward but one of Geth’s “honor guard” dropped him with a fast punch to the head. Kobus laughed and pushed onward.

  Then they were past the cluster and neither Kobus nor the violent guard seemed to pay any attention to the grumblings behind them. Geth looked back, though, and was surprised to see not only the cluster of warriors but others orcs who had been in their path staring at them and muttering in discontent. People had stopped trying to reach past the guards to touch him—Kobus, he realized, was shoving people out of his way with all the grace of a bad-tempered bull. The massive orc hadn’t been particularly gentle about it before, but now he was actively throwing warriors out of his way as if he didn’t care that he hurt them. Two orcs slammed into each other head first. Both went down.

  Even more strange, Pog had picked up Kobus’s attitude. The two of them were talking in growls, the same tones Kobus had spoken to the other warriors with after Ekhaas had left. The sounds stirred a memory in Geth and he glanced around at the warriors who had taken up positions as his guard. All of them were Kobus’s men, the big warrior’s followers before he had attached himself to Geth.

  Something felt wrong. Casually, Geth picked up his pace, moving just a little bit closer to Kobus and Pog so he could hear what they were saying. It wasn’t difficult. They weren’t trying to be particularly quiet or tactful. In fact, it almost seemed as if they were taking greater care that they weren’t overheard by other orcs more than that they weren’t overheard by him.

  “—don’t understand how it could have happened,” Pog was saying. “Wouldn’t the Gatekeepers have felt the taint?”

  “He came with a Gatekeeper. He’s friends with a Gatekeeper. He must have found a way to disguise it. I can feel it though.” Kobus came close to sneering. “I could see it when he stood before the horde and when he came down from the slope. He’s manipulating us. Him and the hobgoblin. I think I felt it even before they arrived. To think that I painted the horde marks on his face with my own hands.” He spat, then glanced at Pog. “You’ll join us?”

  Pog nodded. “I’ll hold back Batul and keep him from interfering. He needs to see what’s come among us.”

  Geth sucked air through his teeth and struggled to keep a calm face. What was happening? Kobus, his men, Pog—they’d turned on him? How could they have—?

  His hands clenched, one around Wrath’s hilt, the other into a metal-jacketed fist. Medala. He remembered her twisted face when he and Ekhaas had stepped up onto the slope before the senior Gatekeepers. She’d known what they’d come to do—and apparently she wasn’t going to let them have the chance to do it again. Geth had no doubts that Hona’s approaching Ekhaas just before Pog’s appearance had been more than a coincidence. The duur’kala had been deliberately lured away. And would Batul have sent Pog as a messenger? No. He would have sent Orshok or Krepis. Geth had a strong suspicion that Pog would find no one to hold back among the trees. Batul wasn’t going to be waiting.

  Hona’s curiosity had been increased. Pog’s admiration for Geth had left him open for manipulation—there probably had never been a message from Batul. Kobus’s antagonism had been opened like a floodgate. Medala was playing with all their emotions.

  The crowd thinned abruptly. They were past the horde. The stand of trees was just ahead, thick and isolated. Any sounds of violence would be covered by the roars of the horde as the ceremony and the frenzy of the warriors built to a peak. Should he run? Kobus’s men stayed close around him. The horde was too close-packed for him to escape into and the orcs had a good chance of running him down across open ground. Flight was no option.

  “Are you ready?” Kobus asked Pog as they approached the trees.

  “I’m ready.” The orc turned to give Geth a smile that seemed as false and forced as a serpent’s. “Follow now?” he said.


  Geth’s mouth was dry, but he nodded casually. His grip on Wrath tightened. As they passed into the shadows of the trees, he took a deep breath, reached inside himself and shifted. Sudden fire burned through his veins. Time seemed to slow.

  It took only a heartbeat to see that the twilight beneath the trees was empty. No one waited for them. In a second heartbeat, Kobus whirled, whipping his axe up into two-handed grip, and shouted, “Die, traitor!”

  CHAPTER

  13

  I don’t understand,” murmured Ashi, “I thought that whatever or whoever was causing the killing song wanted us dead.”

  Dandra pressed her lips together and replied in a whisper. “That’s what Shelsatori showed me. It’s the impression I got from Erimelk too.”

  “But if Moon has fallen to the killing song, why is he helping us?”

  “I don’t know,” she told Ashi.

  The lift they rode, the one to which Moon had guided them, slowed to a stop on a level of the middle city. The people getting off pushed and jostled Dandra and Ashi, and they had to shift to allow them past. Fortunately, very few new passengers got on. That had been the way at all of the stops the lift had made. People, festively dressed, were waiting in crowds only for the upward bound lifts. Singe had guessed that they were all heading for the upper city in anticipation of the Thronehold celebrations.

  Standing just ahead of Dandra and Ashi, Moon stood firm. His unmoving stance had made it easier for Dandra to slip back away from him, allowing other passengers to come between them, so that she, Ashi, and Singe could speak. She wondered if that had even been necessary. Moon seemed oblivious to his surroundings, ignoring the passengers who bumped into him—but as Dandra’s eyes lingered on him, he turned as if he could feel the weight of her gaze. He looked back at her with an adoring intensity. “Soon,” he said.

  She forced herself to nod casually. The lift glided downward again. Moon looked away once more and began to hum the eerie shifting tune of the killing song. Dandra squirmed the moment his back was turned.

  “Maybe he’s helping us because he’s fallen in love with you,” suggested Ashi, keeping her voice low. “Maybe that’s holding back the violence of the killing song.”

  “He’s only known me since last night! Before that, he would have known Tetkashtai.”

  “We need to work this through rationally,” Singe said from behind them. The wizard had been silent since before they’d stepped onto the lift, but Dandra had known from his posture and the tightening around his mouth and eyes that he’d been thinking hard the whole time. “Hanamelk said that early victims went mad slowly while recent victims went mad more quickly but retained a cunning. I said then that it was as if whoever or whatever was behind the song was trying to find the right pitch. What if the song has found its pitch in Moon?”

  “But he’s not mad,” Dandra said. “He’s not singing like Erimelk.”

  “Hanamelk said Erimelk hid himself for several days before he attacked us. He couldn’t have been singing so loud then, or the kalashtar elders would have found him. If we believe that Moon is only just falling to the killing song, we’re fooling ourselves.”

  Dandra risked another glance at Moon. The young man’s head was nodding in time to his humming. She felt a twinge of sorrow and pity for him. “Il-Yannah. That doesn’t change the question of why he’s still helping us, though.”

  Singe bent a little closer. “He’s not helping us,” he said. “This is a trap. If he’s lying about knowing where Dah’mir is, then he’s leading us into one of the most dangerous districts of the city. If he’s not—”

  “—then he’s leading us to Dah’mir,” Ashi growled. Her hands clenched. “Rond betch! Why are we following him?”

  “Because we need to find Dah’mir. And because I don’t think he’s lying.” Singe patted the hunter on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll be on our guard in case he tries something, and if he does lead us to Dah’mir, we’ll look, and then we’ll run like dwarves for gold. Just be ready to use your dragonmark on Dandra.”

  The lift stopped again and more people got off. What had been late afternoon proceeding into evening in the upper city rapidly became twilight as they dropped toward Malleon’s Gate. When the lift moved again, the only people left on it besides them looked like they’d be right at home in darkness: ragged and unsavory humans, a handful of strangely silent goblins, a tough-looking hobgoblin who flicked his ears and showed a smile full of very large teeth when Dandra glanced at him. She looked away again.

  “I know Dah’mir isn’t behind the killing song, or I would have felt his touch on Erimelk,” she whispered to Singe, “but it’s hard to believe that there isn’t an intelligent mind behind the song. If you’re right and Moon does know where Dah’mir is, it’s too much of a coincidence that he’d be the next person to fall to the killing song.”

  “I agree,” Singe said. “Except I don’t think the killing song came to Moon because he knew where Dah’mir was. I think it came to him because he was someone we’d trust. I think the only reason Moon knows where to find Dah’mir is because whatever intelligence is behind the killing song put that knowledge in his mind, the same way it showed its other victims we’d be coming to Sharn.”

  Dandra turned and looked at him. “But who would know that? Who besides Dah’mir would want to kill us? Who could do this?”

  Singe shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said in frustration, “but I feel like I should. We’re missing something.”

  There was a slight lurch and the lift passed into darkness as the open-sided channel that it followed became a closed shaft through the flaring wall of one of Sharn’s great towers. Added to her tension and fear for Moon, the sudden darkness was a shock and Dandra grabbed for Singe’s hand. Cold fire flared into brilliance in less than an instant, though, and she felt like a child. None of the other passengers on the lift had even moved.

  Except for Moon. The young kalashtar was glaring at her and Singe with a frightening, tight-lipped jealousy, and Dandra didn’t know whether to feel shame at holding Singe’s hand, anger at Moon’s obsession—or sorrow for the madness that had taken hold of him. His obsession couldn’t be natural. She let go of Singe’s hand, and something of the jealousy faded from Moon’s face. His lips relaxed and immediately began to shape silent words once more. Dandra’s belly tightened.

  We’ll stop the song, Moon, she promised him silently. Whatever it takes, we’ll stop it.

  The shaft opened up again, becoming a channel once more, and Malleon’s Gate spread out below them. The district sprawled among and within the roots of Sharn’s great towers, but Dandra had the eerie feeling that she looked out over a town built inside a tomb. Malleon’s Gate was dark, lit only by sporadic fires and sparse everbright lanterns. Some light, thin with dusk but brilliant in comparison to the surrounding gloom, fell in shining streaks through a few gaps among the great towers. By their spare radiance, she could make out stunted lesser towers and sprawling complexes that might once have been mansions or temples in centuries past. Everything was shrouded in a thin, mist-like smoke that caught what little light there was and spread it into a glowing haze.

  A tomb, however, would have been silent. Malleon’s Gate echoed with sound. Shouts, cries, wails, calls, screeches, banging—the hard walls turned it all back onto the streets. A howl rose up to meet them, and Dandra couldn’t have said where it came from, let alone what sort of throat had produced it. One of the ragged humans riding the lift nudged another, though, and exchanged muttered words that produced a rude laugh. Dandra tightened her grip on her spear as the lift glided down into the shadows and finally came to rest at the end of its long run.

  “Where do we go from here, Moon?” asked Singe.

  Moon’s face creased in a smile that made Dandra’s grip tighten even more. “Just follow me,” he said. He strode off along a refuse-strewn street with a swagger.

  Dandra glanced at Singe, then at Ashi. Both of them had their hands on their
weapons.

  Vennet didn’t wait for the gates on the lift he rode to open. He leaped over the rail as soon as it settled. Biish was waiting, leaning against the wall of a building so ancient and decrepit Vennet was surprised it could support him. They’d had to separate. There was no way Vennet could have ridden the same lift as their quarry without being recognized. Every moment of the long ride down from Overlook had grated at him. He’d passed the time imagining the ways he’d deal with Singe and Dandra. Ashi he’d decided on long ago: he wanted to take a long, close look at her dragonmarked skin, preferably while it was mounted to a wall. She couldn’t have a Siberys mark. It had to be false, a fake, some lesser mark at the very most.

  “Well?” he asked the hobgoblin.

  “They went that way,” Biish said.

  He pointed. Vennet’s eyebrows rose. Around him, the cacophony of Malleon’s Gate blended into the whispering voices of the wind. They know where they’re going.

  “I see that,” he said. “Did you carry my warning?”

  The wind gave him no answer, but Biish looked at him strangely. Vennet glowered back at him. “I wasn’t talking to you!”

  Biish’s ears lay back flat, but Vennet met his eyes and held them until the hobgoblin looked away. “Ban. There’s something else, Storm. I was watching the kalashtar boy. I think he’s one of the ones on your list.”

  “So much the better. We’ll take him, and you can cross one off the list. Are they being followed?”

  Biish nodded. “A gang of goblin pups would follow the Keeper to Dolurrh for a crown. They’ll leave members behind to show us the way.”

  “Good.” Vennet had to fight back the broad grin that threatened to take over his entire face. His back itched with a fierce anticipation. “Let’s go. We don’t want to miss this.”

  Biish hesitated. “Storm, it’s almost sunset. I need to get my people together if the plans for tonight are going to come together.”