The Killing Song: The Dragon Below Book III

by Don Bassingthwaite

  The hatch opened into a small hold. The only light was the fiery glow that fell through the hatch from the elemental ring. In the dimness, Singe could make out some crates, a few barrels—and a number of silent, unmoving figures. Standing, sitting, or lying in whatever position they had been placed, Dah’mir’s kalashtar captives stared at him with unblinking eyes before—one by one—looking away beyond him and back toward the presence that held their minds prisoner.

  There was no use trying to free them. Singe had seen Dandra in this state. The kalashtar would do nothing of their own volition until Dah’mir released them. Moving cautiously, he stepped further into the hold. He couldn’t see any sign of Vennet, but there were passages leading fore and aft, rectangles of deeper darkness amid the shadows.

  Then from the passage leading fore came noise. An exclamation in Goblin, cut short by the rending of flesh. A body falling. Vennet’s voice, softly. “Storm at dawn, didn’t I tell you not to wander around on board?”

  Quick footsteps moved back aft along the passage. Singe darted to the farthest side of the hold and crouched down among the unmoving kalashtar. Vennet reappeared, his cutlass and ruined shirt dripping new blood.

  A spell rose in Singe’s mind, and he lifted his hand, tracking the mad half-elf. He would only have one chance to catch him. He didn’t relish the idea of hand-to-hand fighting in the hold, and the spell had to be precise or he’d risk harming the kalashtar. He focused his concentration, pointed his fingers—then held back the spell at the last moment as sudden shouts of alarm erupted from outside the ship and Vennet leaped to throw a lever beside the hatch. With a groan of steel and wood, the loading ramp began to fold itself back into the ship and somewhere a bell rang. Singe felt a tremor pass through the airship, a surge of power from the elemental that drove it, and caught his breath. They were moving!

  But he could still stop this. Vennet was still leaning against the frame of the slowly closing hatch, watching whatever was happening outside. His body was a perfect silhouette. Singe focused his concentration again …

  “Aahyi-ksiksiksi-kladakla—”

  The killing song was right in his ear. Singe sucked in his breath and jerked his head around. A hand shot up. Cold fingers grabbed his. Moon’s face looked back at him in the dim light—but the intelligence behind the pin-prick eyes was like nothing human or kalashtar Singe had ever seen.

  “When the blue moon is full and bright, the servants will come to the master,” whispered Virikhad. “Dah’mir must succeed.”

  Silver-white light flared around Moon’s fingers and agony tore through Singe’s hand. He yelled—he couldn’t have held it back—and against the glare of the light he saw Vennet spin around in surprise just as the hatch slammed shut. For a moment, the hold was in darkness. Moon’s hand fell away.

  Then another light blossomed, an everbright lantern carelessly torn open in passing, and Vennet was rushing at him. “You!” he screamed. “Storm at dawn, how?”

  Singe tried to lift his rapier but Moon’s weight had shifted on top of it. He tried to cast the spell that had been on his tongue only moments before, but his injured fingers couldn’t form the gestures. Vennet pounced on him, one hand squeezing around his throat before he could try to speak another. “Treachery! Murder!”

  The other man’s weight bore Singe backward. His skull cracked against something—a crate, a barrel, the wall—and sparks flashed inside his head. A fist or maybe a foot drove into his belly, then Vennet straddled him, pinning one of Singe’s hands to the floor under his knee as he slammed his head back again, screaming all the while. “Mutiny! Mutiny, Singe! I know you did it! I know you turned my crew against me. When did you start? Was it back in Yrlag? I should have left you on the dock. But I was greedy, wasn’t I? Greedy!”

  Singe tried to strike Vennet with his free hand. He punched. He clawed. He tore at Vennet’s pointed ear. Vennet just jerked his head away and punched him hard in the shoulder. Singe’s arm fell, numbed. He bucked at Vennet’s weight. The half-elf slammed his head back a third time, even harder. Sparks gave way to shadows as Singe’s vision swam from the impact and the madman’s grip around his throat.

  “You’ve got no respect for authority, Singe. No respect for power. You think you’re clever, don’t you?” Vennet’s voice rose and broke into a screech. “I don’t have a Siberys mark? I’m blind and insane?”

  A knee crushed into Singe’s chest. A hand slapped against his forehead and forced his head back. The hand that had been around his throat withdrew. Air rushed into Singe’s lungs. The shadows cleared from his vision—

  —just as Vennet’s fingers dug into his face. Fire burned in his left eye and even though he howled at the pain, he could still hear a terrible wet, ripping noise. He sank back into shadows, although somehow he was dimly aware of Vennet staggering away from him and flinging something across the hold.

  “Who’s blind, Singe?” Vennet demanded. “Who’s blind?”

  He had a sensation of fingers twined in his hair dragging him to his feet, of being forced to walk, of tripping on stairs, of a sudden burst of cool air and wind. A woman’s shout of surprise. Dah’mir’s oil-smooth voice. Then someone pushed him and he was falling—

  Biish roared again. The sword swept around in a flat arc, forcing both Natrac and Dandra back a pace. Dandra tried to slide forward again behind that swing, but Biish turned the blow around faster than she would have thought possible and she had to drop to avoid it. There was no parrying that heavy blade—it would shear right through her spear shaft!

  Her move gave Natrac an opening, and he jumped in to slash at Biish’s side with his knife-hand. Biish grunted at the blow, but the knife just scraped on metal. Through the gash that it opened in Biish’s coat, Dandra caught the flash of a mail shirt. Biish punched out with his off-hand. Natrac dodged back, but another swing of Biish’s sword forced him back even further. For a moment, the hobgoblin’s back was to her. Natrac’s knife might not have been able to penetrate Biish’s mail shirt, but her spear could.

  Before she could rise to strike, though, hands grabbed for her. She kicked, felt her boot strike something soft. The hold on her fell away, but the opportunity was lost—Biish and Natrac had turned in their deadly dance. More of the hobgoblin’s thugs closed around her. She swung her spear desperately, striking with point and shaft wherever she could. Closely pressed, there was no room for her dodge and no opportunity for her to concentrate even for the moment it would take to bring her powers to bear. For every goblin she struck down, two more seemed to appear. All she could do was fight and shout. “Adar! Adar!”

  “Bhintava Adarani!” Suddenly two forms fought with her—the two Adaran humans she had rescued earlier! They carved through her attackers with hard precise blows, one wielding a pair of short curved blades, the other striking only with stiffened fingers. One of them met her eyes for an instant and grinned at her with a mouth bloodied by some earlier blow. Dandra clenched her teeth, shortened her grip on her spear, and renewed her attack, using the unexpected aid to fight her way closer to Natrac.

  The half-orc and Biish still looked like they were dancing. Biish’s sword swung. Natrac dodged back, then slipped inside Biish’s guard to strike quickly, before darting away once more. The hobgoblin’s arms showed half a dozen nicks, but nothing that slowed him—it would take a lucky blow from Natrac’s knife-hand to pierce the chain shirt.

  But only a single connecting strike from Biish’s heavy blade would bring Natrac down. And Natrac was tiring. He stumbled as he stepped back away from Biish. The ganglord saw his opening and let out another roar, raising his sword over his old rival. “Die, taat!”

  “No!” cried Dandra. She thrust back a goblin’s feeble strike then drew in her will, focusing her power into a single thread of vayhatana to snatch the sword from Biish’s grasp before it could fall, even though in her gut, she knew it would be too late.

  And it was—for Biish.

  Natrac uncoiled from his feigned weakness like a ben
t sapling springing straight. With all the strength of his arm and shoulder behind it, his knife-hand punched up under Biish’s jaw. The blow snapped his toothy mouth closed, pinning lower jaw to upper. Biish’s eyes opened wide. His body stiffened.

  Natrac planted his hand against the hobgoblin’s stunned face and jerked the knife free. A spasm shook Biish and he collapsed backward. His sword, untouched by Dandra’s power, fell from his grip to ring on the stones of the courtyard.

  For a moment, the goblins and hobgoblins fighting around them froze in shocked disbelief. Then a hobgoblin who had been moving to attack Dandra shouted and fell back. More shouts rose on the air as panic spread through the courtyard, and suddenly, the gang members who had been fighting to breaking into the Gathering Light were fighting to escape.

  A hiss like a steaming kettle, as loud as if the ocean itself were boiling, broke from the peak of the hall’s roof. Dandra twisted around to look up at Dah’mir. His thin, feathered form was shaking and his acid-green eyes flashed as he stared down at her and Natrac. Dandra’s belly tightened with fear at the prospect of the dragon’s rage—then tightened even more as she realized that he was laughing. Dark wings spread, and Dah’mir sprang from the roof to arc high over the courtyard. A new cry from the Adarans broke through her fear.

  She spun around to see the loading ramp of Mayret’s Envy slam closed, and the ship start to rise, gathering speed with every moment. Still laughing, Dah’mir settled onto the rail. His hiss turned into a mocking call that drifted down from above. “Too late! Too late!”

  But the cry that truly cut into Dandra’s soul was Ashi’s desperate shout from across the courtyard.

  “Dandra! Dandra, Singe is on the ship!”

  Groggy voices woke to a confused chorus around Dandra—kalashtar released from Dah’mir’s power as the rising airship bore the dragon away. She heard Nevchaned close at hand, heard Natrac babbling some kind of explanation at him, heard Ashi shouting. The voices just slipped away. Dandra’s eyes were on the airship as the vessel soared up. Her mind was flung out in kesh, groping desperately.

  Singe? Singe? Answer me, Singe!

  Then something fell over the side of the airship. A body. The light of the elemental ring flashed on blond hair. “Singe!” Dandra screamed.

  She wove vayhatana almost without willing it, and a skein of light she saw only inside her mind stretched up into the sky—stretched and stretched, but still didn’t quite reach the falling wizard. Dandra thrust against the ground, pushing herself up as high as she could to meet him, as if an extra pace’s distance could make a difference. It couldn’t. It didn’t. Singe plummeted down.

  Then suddenly she wasn’t alone. Other minds reached out to hers. It was less than kesh, but also more. She recognized minds—Hanamelk, Nevchaned, Selkatari, and others—and it seemed as if their psionic strength flowed into her. She glanced down from the sky for an instant.

  Hanamelk, looking tired and disheveled, stood with his hand on the statue that stood in the center of the courtyard. The statue’s crystal eyes glowed a thin, haunting blue. A misty tendril of the same color leaped from Hanamelk to Nevchaned—and from Nevchaned to Selkatari at the doors of the Gathering Light, and from Selkatari to a man Dandra didn’t know but who stood with his eyes on her, and from him to another kalashtar, and from her to yet another.

  And from all of them, tendrils reached out to her.

  Hanamelk’s voice echoed in her mind, words spoken at the speed of thought. We know what you did for us. Use our strength as your own.

  Glance, recognition, and words took less than a moment. Dandra lifted herself, looked up again—and this time reached out to Singe with ease. Vayhatana wrapped his body. His fall slowed and stopped. For a moment, he floated in the sky, midway between the towers of Sharn and the Thronehold spectacle still unfolding high above, then Dandra drew him carefully down to the courtyard before the Gathering Light.

  As his body came closer, the strength lent to her by the other kalashtar faded, until it was her power alone that supported him. The loss of their strength left her feeling as weak as she had ever felt, but the joy that filled her made up for it. Singe lay stiff within the cocoon of vayhatana, but she could sense his movements. He was alive—but it wasn’t until he drifted down into the light that spilled from the Gathering Light that she realized something was wrong.

  The hair that fell into the light was blond, but touched with red. The clothes were none she had ever seen before. And the face—pale with terror—that came into view wasn’t that of a human man, but of a half-elf woman!

  Natrac’s eyes opened wide and he choked out, “Benti?”

  The carefully spun vayhatana vanished, spilling the woman the last few paces onto the stone of the courtyard. Dandra lifted her face to the sky, desperately seeking the rising spark that was Mayret’s Envy.

  But the night was full of sparks as the final spectacle of Thronehold burst into a colorful rain of fire. Across Sharn cheers and applause rose like the wings of a hundred thousand birds.

  In Fan Adar, one voice rose in a wail of loss and fury.

  CHAPTER

  19

  Thin lines of smoke rose in the south. Dusk was approaching and the sinking sun’s light rendered the smoke pale, turning the lines into bright scratches against the southern sky. Geth thought that if he strained his eyes, he could even make out the dying fires that gave rise to the nearest lines of smoke and the dark forms that lay scattered around them. He knew that was his imagination. The flat places of the Shadow Marches were deceiving. It was too easy to see what he wanted to see and too tempting to believe it, almost as if some vast impersonal force lurked just beneath the waterlogged ground, ready to trick the unwary traveler.

  He twisted and looked to the east. The blue moon of Rhaan was already a handspan above the horizon. Its changing face was still a few slivers short of a perfect circle. Two more nights, he thought. Two more nights and on the following day, Rhaan would rise full, cresting the horizon just as the sun sank.

  He ducked his head. The sky vanished, replaced by the thick leaves and branches of the tree he had climbed—the highest point for any distance around. He crawled carefully back to the gnarled trunk, then half-clambered, half-slid out of the canopy and down to the ground. “Less than a night’s travel behind us,” he said.

  “Khaavolaar.” Ekhaas’s ears pressed back as she kicked dirt over the remains of their own tiny fire. “They’re still gaining on us. This is madness.”

  “If anyone knows madness, it’s Medala. She’s probably driving the horde faster than they’d normally run. The Gatekeepers are likely using their magic too.”

  Geth picked up his sword belt and buckled Wrath around his waist, then swung what passed for his pack—a waterskin bundled inside a blanket, all of the gear that he had carried when they fled the Sharvat Vvaraak—over his shoulder.

  Neither of them spoke the words that Geth knew both of them were thinking: if the horde of Angry Eyes was less than a night’s travel behind them and gaining ground, this might be the last night they ran ahead of the orcs.

  After six nights of running, of rising before dusk and stumbling to a stop well after dawn, of enduring whatever obstacles the Shadow Marches had thrown into their path, a small part of him was almost ready to turn and face the horde. He wouldn’t have a chance, but he’d go down with a fight, sword and gauntlet taking as many orcs as he could with him.

  And who would those orcs be? Allies against the Master of Silence. Gatekeepers. Friends like Orshok and Batul—like Kobus and Pog.

  They weren’t his enemies. He couldn’t fight them. But if he and Ekhaas could reach the Bonetree mound before them, maybe they could figure out what Medala wanted with the horde and find a way to free them.

  Two more nights of running. They only needed to stay ahead of the horde. He grunted and raised his head.

  Ekhaas was looking at him, her amber eyes steady. “Tonight I’ll sing you the story of Mazaan Kuun and the Hundred Elves.
You’ll find inspiration in it.”

  Geth groaned. “Does Wrath figure in this story too?”

  “It is a story of the name of Kuun,” said Ekhaas as if there could be no other answer.

  “Does Mazaan Kuun die?”

  “No, but the elves do.”

  “Well, that’s something at least.” Geth stalked ahead of her into the tall clumps of stiff grass that had surrounded their day’s resting place.

  He didn’t need to check their path—he saw it stretched out ahead of them, though not so much in his head as in his heart, placed there by the Gatekeeper amulet Batul had entrusted to him. As the old druid had instructed him, he’d lain on the ground every morning at dawn and the amulet had shown him the way they needed to go. The closer they got to the Bonetree mound, the more landmarks Geth thought he recognized in the distance from his first visit there, but he continued to use the amulet. Its guidance was so vivid and reliable that Geth had taken to placing snares along the route ahead each morning before returning to their chosen campsite. For four of the last five nights, that strategy had earned them their next day’s food without costing them any time spent hunting.

  That night, the first snare was empty. Geth stooped to retrieve the braided grass cord he’d used to fashion the snare—and paused, taking a closer look at it. There was blood, still moist and sticky, on the cord. He straightened up with a hiss. “Grandfather Rat. This snare’s been stripped.”

  “You mean whatever it caught escaped?” asked Ekhaas, peering over his shoulder.

  “I mean it’s been stripped. Whatever it caught has been taken, and animals don’t reset snares.” He tore the cord free and flung it away into the grass.

  The second snare he’d set had also been stripped. He studied it and the ground around it for several long moments before rising. “I don’t like this,” he said. “Whoever was here left no tracks behind. If they’re that good, they must know we’re here.”