Drakis could hear the cascade of the Lace Falls before he saw it, a gentle, quiet roar of water tripping down a rock face. The warrior in him knew that it masked the sound of his approach, and almost without thought he softened his footfalls and stepped more gingerly down the beaten path that wound between the dense undergrowth and the tree canopy above. The stream ran down the slope next to him, its clear, cool water rushing down toward Nothree far below. Before him, the forest was brightening as he neared the clear area around the pool.
He stopped just short of the water’s edge, holding his breath.
Mala.
She stood in the pool beneath the falls, the cascade of white water splashing around her shoulders and masking her body in tantalizing sheets. He could just make out the sweeping curve of her back above the surface of the pool, a hint of her breasts and the profile of her elegant neck as her face turned up into the tumbling water.
Mala turned toward the pool and dove, the momentary sight of her shoulders, waist, hips and legs shining in the morning sun taking his breath once more before the lacy foam on the surface that gave the pool its name hid her from him.
Her head surfaced near the center of the pool. She reached up out of the water with her glistening arms, and pushed the water back from her short hair.
“Hello,” he called gently across the water.
Mala turned suddenly toward him, but her startled, angry stare softened at once. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“If you’ve come for a bath, you’re too late,” she said, her shoulders just above the surface as she moved her arms back and forth through the water. “I claimed this pool, and it is mine by right. I will not share my private little paradise with anyone else—no matter how badly they need bathing—and you, most certainly, are desperately in need of a bath.”
“I didn’t know you could swim,” Drakis said, moving to the shore of the pool and sitting down.
Mala took in a luxurious breath. “Neither did I, but I must have learned at some point. It feels so right . . . and I’ve probably left so much of the road in this pool that it will probably foul the stream for several months. Oh, but it’s good to be clean again! What do you think of my hair?”
Mala turned around. Her red hair was wet, but he could already tell it was shaped differently than he remembered. “That’s a new look for you. When did that happen?”
Mala smiled and turned her head. “Several of the women from Nothree took it upon themselves to trim my ragged mop into this more pleasing form. Do you like it?”
“Yes,” Drakis said as he reached down and removed his sandals, “I like it a great deal.”
“Now, you can stop right there,” Mala said, though there was a smile still playing at the edges of her pout. “I said this is my pool, and brutal warriors are not allowed to share it.”
“I just want to put my feet in,” Drakis complained. “Surely you cannot deny me the opportunity to wash these travel-weary feet?”
“You? Travel weary?” Mala said. “You’ve done nothing but travel, Drakis—and dragged us all along with you.” She affected a serious look on her face, lowering her voice. “We go north! Keep going north! Don’t know where it is . . . but it’s north!”
“Fine, have your laugh,” Drakis said, though he was chuckling as well. He slipped his feet into the water. “But it got us here, Mala . . . and here is not a bad place to be.”
“No,” she said softly. “Here is a good place.”
Drakis paused for a moment and then, reaching up over his shoulders with both arms, grabbed the back of his tunic and pulled it off over his head.
“You can just stop right there, warrior-boy,” Mala said sternly.
“It’s a mess!” Drakis replied holding out the rumpled cloth. “Look at it! Hasn’t been washed in weeks . . . I’ll bet it would move on its own if I left it standing. People won’t talk to me, Mala, for the stench of it. This shirt needs a cleaning . . . it’s just a courtesy.”
Mala giggled. “Those are the worst excuses I have ever heard! Can’t you come up with something more creative?”
“ ‘Warrior-boy?’ ” Drakis smirked.
“Very well, that wasn’t my best either, but you have me at a disadvantage.”
“So you need clothes to think?”
Mala smiled through her pout once more. “I don’t seem to be thinking very clearly without them.”
Drakis laughed again, plunging his shirt deep into the pool. Then he drew the wet cloth up, wrung it out and then stopped, just holding it.
“What is it, Draki?” Mala asked, her lithe arms making eddies in the surface of the pool.
He stopped. “It’s good to hear you call me that again.”
“So what is it?” she urged.
“I am weary of the road, Mala,” he said in a voice that barely carried over the rushing sound of the waterfall. “I’ve been fighting all my life for things that meant nothing to me . . . for masters who thought of me as property and who didn’t care if I lived or died. Now with all this ‘prophecy’ nonsense . . . it feels as though everyone wants me to be something or somebody for them again. I’m tired of living my life for everyone else’s expectations . . . everyone else’s life.”
“What do you want, Draki?” Mala said quietly.
“I want . . .”
Drakis struggled for a moment. It was a new thought for him and he was having trouble even putting it into words.
“I want . . . something of my own.”
“Something of your own?”
“Yes,” Drakis said, his words forming with more conviction around the idea. “I want a place like this, a life that has nothing to do with the Iblisi or the Imperium, or mad dwarves, or prophecies, or this damn song that keeps calling me to a destiny I never asked for and certainly do not want. I want . . . I want this place, a small home in the village, cool water to drink, food to eat. I want children to raise and a life that is my own to share and . . .”
“And?” Mala asked, pushing backward through the water.
“And . . . and I want to know how to swim,” he finished.
Mala laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“The great big warrior afraid of the water!”
“Yes,” he sighed.
“Draki . . .”
“Yes, Mala?”
“You shouldn’t be afraid,” she said softly. “I’m standing on the bottom. It’s not that deep.”
Invisible to them both, Ethis the chimerian stood watching Drakis and Mala from the shore of the pool. His skin blended so perfectly with the foliage that had they known he was there, they would not have been able to see him even were they looking directly at the spot where he stood.
All they might have discerned was the movement of the cloth as he fingered Mala’s gown where she had draped it over a bush.
But they would have had to look quickly . . . for in the next moment, he was gone.
CHAPTER 40
Without Doubts
BELAG CROUCHED DOWN in the lodge of the Elders, peering intently at the pictographs on the walls.
“Hmmm,” he growled in a low voice, his great eyes narrowing as he looked more intently at the images carved into the wall. “They appear to have some of this wrong.”
It was a perfectly reasonable assumption for the manticore—his faith was sure and unshakable.
As cubs pouncing and rolling through the tall grasses of the Chaenandrian borderlands, both he and his brother Karag had lived and breathed the legends, histories, and tales of the loremasters. In the fading light of a spent day, the two of them would gather with the rest of their pride as the stars appeared and listen as the ancient dead and their deeds were brought again to life in their imaginations. Stories of the old ways and the shattering empires of men, the fall of the dragons and the desperate charges of the Chaenandrian Guardians, whose numbers were so great that the earth trembled when they ran into battle.
But of all the le
gends told beneath the fading cobalt of the sky, none impressed his brother Karag more than that of Drakis Aerweaver and the Dragons of Armethia. Both of them would lie spellbound at the sound of the loremaster’s voice as he wove the tale from memory. Belag could still see in his mind’s eye those dragons that flew in their imaginations just beyond reach, weaving in and out between the stars as they appeared. He could almost picture the Northern Lords on their backs, watching over the world far beneath them. Then the loremaster came to the tragic and terrible betrayal where all the world—including many weak and covetous Lords of the Manticorian Prides—conspired in their jealousy to bring low the might of Drakosia and take on its glory for their own. In sorrow at the betrayal, Drakis removed himself from the circles of the world. Then came the mournful song of the dragons as they in turn were brought to a terrible awareness of their own guilt and began the ages-old lament even as the great cities of Drakosia vanished into the mists, never to be found again among mortal lands. The song, the loremaster told them, was still sung today by the dragons of the north country beyond the raging waters of the oceans, calling to the night stars in the hope that Drakis would hear their sorrow, accept their regret, and return once more in might and power to establish justice for all the races of Dunaea who longed once more to be free. This was the great hope of the loremaster for the Khadush Pride; for though they, too, were cursed as all the manticores for the betrayal, they had been among the prides that had broken with the Lords of the Manticorian Clans and would not allow themselves to become toothless puppets of the Rhonas oppression.
By the crackling bonfire around which he and his brother had gathered with the rest of the Khadush Pride, Belag heard the loremaster speak of their glorious destiny: to resist the Rhonas, to free the enslaved prides, and to look for the day when Drakis—the mystical human of divine power from the north—would again take form among mortal men and, having been a slave himself, would lift the curse that held the manticorian nation in chains and awaken the power of the Khadush once more to hunt their true enemies.
Watching the embers from the fire rise up among the stars, Belag saw the firelight shining in Karag’s eyes. His elder brother believed the words of the loremaster with all his heart. In time, Karag had even studied under the loremaster with the thought in mind of becoming his apprentice and one day perhaps even becoming the loremaster to the Khadush Pride. But in the end, Karag discovered that it was not his calling, that recitation of the lore was not enough for him; he had come to believe with unquestioning fervor that Drakis not only would come but that he had come and that the greatest thing he could do would be to leave the pride and journey into the world to find the prophesied liberator and serve him in his coming battle against the Rhonas oppressors. It would require hardship and, in the end, great sacrifice, but the glories of the songs to be sung and the stories to be told of those who served Drakis in his return would last down through the ages.
To Belag, who lived on every word of his elder brother, the dreams and the glories that awaited them in such service were intoxicating, and any sacrifice seemed but a small matter by comparison. His brother believed and so Belag, too, believed. For him, in those early years, it was just that simple.
So when Karag left the pride to search for the promised emancipator of the manticores, Belag went with him without a second thought. They journeyed northward because the legends said that Drakis would one day come from the north. Their track also took them somewhat westward around the northern foothills of the Aerian Mountains as Karag wished at all costs to avoid the bizarre and devious chimera of Ephindria. As they traveled, Belag learned all that his brother knew about Drakis Aerweaver and the Dragons of Armethia, committing each detail to memory. Belag could still remember the smile his brother gave him with each correct recitation or whenever Belag answered his questions correctly.
Then came the day they were ensnared by the Rhonas slave hunters on the verge of the Vestasian Savanna—and with their first enforced Devotions all the memories of their great quest and hopes for their future vanished under an avalanche of lies and false memories.
And so they lived for nearly four years as slaves of the Rhonas, asleep to their true natures and fighting battles for the elves in which they had only artificial loyalty and illusionary allegiance to their master’s Houses. Belag, in hindsight, now considered that time as a trial of his faith and part of the sacrifice by which the gods test their heroes. By then both he and his brother knew a human slave named Drakis, but their memories were so buried beneath the miasma of House Devotional spells that they did not even recognize the object of their quest when they saw it.
Then Karag died in their final battle—died saving this Drakis. Belag believed that somehow Karag must have known, even through the damning House Devotions, that protecting this human was his greatest moment and the culmination of his faith. His brother, Belag now knew without doubt, was a martyr whose death atoned for the curse on the manticores of their pride’s clan.
Then came the Awakening. Drakis utterly destroyed the Aether Well of House Timuran and freed Belag’s mind from the interwoven chains of lies, deceptions, and falsehoods that his life had become. In that moment he remembered it all—how the elven hunters had taken both him and his brother and every painful, humiliating day since. Most of all he remembered the legends of Drakis and attached them at once to the Impress Warrior that he knew so well. Especially since his brother had died defending him in the battle of the Ninth Throne.
It was a sign . . . it had to be a sign. It had to be significant. His brother had to die for a greater cause and his death had to be on behalf of his lifelong dream so that his spirit could rest among the honored dead.
In that moment, standing amid the chaos as House Timuran tore itself apart—in that moment, Belag knew the reality of it with his entire soul. His fragile sanity hung suspended by that single, inviolable truth: This human Drakis was the embodiment of his brother’s every hope, and his life gave meaning to his brother’s death.
Belag withdrew his face from its close proximity to the carving on the wall and shook his head, repeating his words. “They have it wrong.”
“They see it differently,” a small voice said casually next to him.
The large lion-man jumped slightly at the sound. Belag had not believed it possible for a human to be able to approach so near a manticore without been heard. “No, they are wrong, Lyric.”
“Not so much wrong as you are both right in a different way,” the Lyric replied, her own gaze fixed on the carvings adorning the wall. Her hair had grown into a wild nimbus of near-white radiating from her head. Its soft strands seemed to float in the air around the crown of her head. “They do not know what you know, Belag—how could they see through your eyes?”
Belag spoke quietly down toward the much shorter human woman. “And whom have I the pleasure of addressing today?”
The Lyric looked up at him, her large eyes shining up from her narrow face. “Of course, you are a manticore and from a far and strange land. I wonder not that you have never encountered my kind before. Fear not, good creature, I am a beneficent spirit and mean you no ill.”
“A spirit?” Belag furrowed his furry brow.
“Aye,” the Lyric responded with a sad smile. “I am the ghost of Musaran the Wanderer. I am most often invisible, but I show myself to those whose stories I wish to take with me . . . and to those whom my stories may help. Every creature of the world has a story, and I am fated to know them all.”
Belag let out a relieved breath. The Lyric changed her persona unpredictably, and more often than not lately she had taken to adopting strange and sometimes dangerous characteristics. Yesterday had been a challenge. She had proclaimed herself Clarinda, the throat-cutting harlot of Chargoth Bay and had everyone more than a little wary of her. A ghost of some wandering story-gatherer sounded like a good deal safer personality for all concerned. “Then you know the legends of Drakis Aerweaver.”
“I do—and a good many m
ore,” the Lyric said with a sad darkness in her voice. “There is one story that interests me most right now, one with which you can help me. I have the beginning and the middle right, but I do not yet have the ending.”
“You need my help with a story?” Belag chuckled.
“It is a story that will interest you, I think,” the Lyric replied, arching her eyebrows.
“Thank you, spirit,” Belag replied, turning back to the carvings on the wall. “I have no need of stories.”
“But this one involves you,” the Lyric replied. “It is the story of RuuKag, the manticore who lost his tale.”
“Lost his tail?” Belag snorted. “He should look behind him!”
“Not his ‘tail,’ Belag, his tale,” the Lyric said with surprising impatience. “His story, his personal legend. Every creature is the hero of his own story but RuuKag lost his. Now I fear he has gone to find it.”
Belag hesitated. “Find it?”
“Yes,” the Lyric replied, shaking her head. “He left yesterday late in the evening. I followed him—invisible as I was—for a long as I could. He crossed over the Cragsway Pass toward the . . . where are you going? The story isn’t finished yet!”
Belag was already throwing open the doors of the Elders’ Lodge, his pace picking up quickly toward the bay.
“Aye, that’s a fine ship, lass,” Jugar said through his wide-toothed grin. “I’ve never seen the like!”
“Then you’ve never encountered the corsairs of Thetis,” Urulani replied, swinging around a backstay to land on the planked deck beneath her feet. “She’s just three hands under thirty cubits in length from stern to stern, and we can pull her at a respectable speed with a crew of twenty—given a good sea. She’s the smallest of our corsairs, but I rather like her.”
“It is a wonder!” The dwarf said, shaking his head as he gazed at the ship where it was moored to the dock. The Cydron, as Urulani called it, was a beautiful craft, its hull tapered fore and aft with such elegant lines that it looked as though it could fly across the waves with barely a feather’s touch. She was not a terribly large ship—completely unlike the large and rather ponderous galleons that the Rhonas employed against their rebellious cousins on the southern borders of the Empire—but was built for grace and speed. Three slightly angled masts gave a powerful rake to her lines. Her main deck was a single level though a raised walkway just above the level of the oarsmen’s heads connected a small enclosed forecastle and a more elevated afterdeck that held the long, ornately carved arm of the rudder. He was a dwarf and his expertise was largely relegated to the realm of stone, but he certainly could appreciate the art involved in such a fine piece of woodcraft. His eyes twinkled as he took in the lines of the ship. “How fast will it sail?”
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