Song of the Dragon aod-1

by Tracy Hickman

“The Aether Well?”

  “Yes, the Aether Well. . it, I don’t know, it. . shattered. . outward, away from the center. .”

  Soen leaned back. “It exploded?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Soen shook his head. “You mean it cracked. . it broke.”

  “No, sire,” the chimerian’s large eyes filled with tears. “It was suddenly no more at all. . not a piece of it larger than the smallest finger on your hand, sire.”

  Soen shook his head in disbelief.

  “I think it was that human who did it,” the chimerian moaned. “I think he’s the one that made me sick. Please, sire. . my head is full of bad spirits. . ghosts of the dead. . please, I want to be well again.”

  “Rest easy. I know how to get rid of such ghosts,” Soen said; then he stood and turned again to Gradek. “Check with your Octian Commanders. Find out if any of them saw a human male slave any time since all this began.”

  “Master,” Gradek protested. “We were running through the folds for days. . we’ve probably seen a number of hoo-mani slaves. .”

  “Just ask them!” Soen snapped.

  “Sire! By the Will of the Emperor, I live to serve!”

  Soen considered the young human warrior. Perhaps seventeen years of age, if he was any judge of human growth. The ears seemed to push straight out of the sides of his bald head, but the youth had a strong jaw. The scar across his forehead told the Inquisitor that he had already seen battle, but he was still young.

  “You are an Octian commander?” Soen asked, his black eyes narrowed.

  The boy flushed. “No, sire! That honor is not yet within my grasp. Perhaps one day, sire.”

  “Why, then, am I speaking to you?”

  “Sire! My Octian commander ordered me to report to you on my observations during the time of our approach as we ran through the folds before our approach to House Timuran.”

  Soen smiled slightly as he folded his arms across his chest. They really take themselves seriously at House Megnara. This slave acts as though he were in the Imperial Legions. “And your name is?”

  “Mellis, sire!”

  “Then let us have your report, Warrior Mellis, by all means.”

  “Sire! This was four folds before we arrived at House Timuran. We had exited from the previous fold from the riverbank marshaling field and had arrived at the canyon marshaling field with the objective of surviving the mad warrior onslaught and finding another fold by which we could return to our quarters in House Megnara. We had nearly completed our crossing toward that objective when I realized that I had neglected to secure an important item of my field gear.”

  Soen glanced sideways toward Gradek.

  The manticore leaned over slightly as he explained. “He dropped his sword.”

  Mellis flushed once again.

  “Go on,” Soen urged.

  “I was rapidly approaching the fold from which we had just arrived when I saw several figures approaching outside the line of totems surrounding the marshaling field.”

  “Several figures, Mellis?” Soen leaned forward. “How many are ‘several’?”

  “Three humans, a pair of manticores and a chimerian, sire,” Mellis said, straightening his back at once. “Oh, and a dwarf. . I remember wondering about the dwarf. They passed right between the totems as they were making their way to the fold, sire.”

  “Fold? Which fold?”

  “The fold we had just exited.”

  “You mean they were going toward the chaos?” Soen asked.

  “Yes,” Mellis replied at once. “That’s what caught my attention. Everyone was trying to get away from the mad warriors-and these were trying to go toward them.”

  Bolters, Soen thought with a grimace. Seven of them.

  Dawn broke with agonizing slowness over the eastern horizon. Soen was impatient for its illumination, for he needed to examine the garden of the fallen House Timuran and could not do so properly without the aid of its light.

  At last the sky brightened enough that he dared risk entering the shattered remains of the House itself. The main doors stood slightly open, shadowed from the sun by the remaining bulk of the House. Soen stood there for a time considering them.

  “Master Soen.” The words were soft, deferential.

  “Yes, Assesia Jukung,” Soen responded without looking at the assassin.

  “The remaining slaves are ready for transport.”

  The sound of flies filled the space of a breath.

  “The Centurai of House Megnara has been returned, and a special Devotion has been arranged for each of their warriors. . as you directed. None of them will remember this.”

  “Thank you, Assesia,” Soen said but did not move. “Have you considered these doors, Jukung? The delicate and intricate carvings crafted no doubt in the Imperial City itself by skilled artisans of the Fifth Estate. What must it have cost old Timuran to have them brought to this remote place? Now they look tired to me, as though they feel the weight of what is behind them.”

  “Master,” Jukung urged, an impatient edge to his voice, “Keeper Ch’drei is awaiting our report.”

  “Then we had best give her a complete one,” Soen responded as he stepped quickly through the gap between the main doors. “We do not yet know who this House Timuran is. . or why its fall brought down nearly the entire frontier. But I know where to look for at least some of the answers. Coming?”

  It was the smell that was worst, Soen decided. The sights of the blood and carnage, torn limbs and broken, jutting bones one could analyze from a safer, more objective position of the mind, but the putrid, cloying smell of rotting flesh could never be put at a distance. He choked back his bile and took a single step into the garden.

  Or what little remained of the garden. The avatria had crashed down into it before the structure folded sideways, collapsing into the northeast wall, slicing down through the subatria curtain wall and buildings, burying them in a hopeless pile of unrecognizable rubble. It was there, Soen noted with detachment, that the fire had burned most fiercely, but the off-shore winds of the evening must have kept the flames burning away from the southern and western sections of the subatria.

  “What happened here, Master?” Jukung’s words were heavy, as though he were having difficulty speaking.

  “The House fell. . quite literally it seems. Here it is, Jukung; this is the center-the root. Everything that fell on the frontier-every Well that failed-started with this event.” Soen turned to face Jukung. “The answer is here, Assesia. Have Qinsei and Phang discovered what I sent them to find?”

  “I am only an Assesia, Master. I am not privy to. .”

  “Have they or not?” There was no question in Soen’s voice.

  “Phang reports that the Impress Scrolls are lost-apparently burned and scattered beyond recovery,” Jukung answered though his eyes were fixed anywhere but on Soen.

  “And Qinsei?”

  “She has recovered most of the Devotion Ledger for the last eight months.”

  “Well, that’s something that may prove useful.” Soen began picking his way around the southern edge of the garden wall. Here the debris was minimal although it was also unfortunately easier to pick out individual bodies or their parts. Soen dutifully noted a large concentration of warrior and Guardian bodies choking the hall that led back to the Hall of the Past on the far side of the ruined garden. In his mind, Soen pictured the Guardians gathering for their mutual defense against a suddenly insane and desperate enemy, trying to back into the corridor and find a more defensible position.

  Just before this pile of dead, a glint caught his eye near the base of the curving wall. Soen looked up again at the smoldering mass of the avatria that loomed above him. He could make out only a handful of plates from the underside of the structure; it was unstable to say the least. Soen hoped to the gods that it would hold long enough to satisfy his curiosity.

  Soen moved quickly around the remaining southern wall of the garden. There were more slave bodies
here; some had been crushed under the debris from the collapse while others had died from sword and dagger wounds. Their blood had mixed with the dust in dark, solid stains. Still he kept his eye on his prize, moving as quickly as he dared.

  At last he stopped. He stood under the archway that opened into the Hall of the Past, but that history did not interest him just yet. He reached down and plucked the shining object from the dust.

  It was a crystalline shard-barely more than a sliver-that fit neatly in the palm of his hand.

  “What is it?” Jukung asked in a hoarse voice.

  “That, my young Assesia,” Soen said through a rueful smile, “is part of an Aether Well.”

  “You are mistaken,” Jukung said. “It cannot be.”

  “And yet it is,” Soen replied. “Aether Wells might crack or they might split, but the power of the Aether itself binds the crystals together. It is impossible for them to shatter once they are forged-and yet,” he held the crystal within inches of the young elf’s face, “here is it. In the face of the impossible we find ourselves holding it in our hand.”

  Soen turned and looked up. “And there it is.”

  “What, Master?”

  “The story of the House,” Soen said as he stepped carefully across the debris and strewn bodies into the Hall of the Past. Soen followed the broken wall, reading it for a few moments until he summarized for the young Assesia. “Sha-Timuran was an elf of the Third Estate,” Soen said, mulling his own words. “His name apparently did rank among the noble Houses of the Empire. Two generations before it had been ranked only in the Fourth Estate, but due to a series of favors looked kindly on by the Imperial Eye, House Timuran was allowed to prove itself in the Third Estate by taking up residence in the Western Provinces. And this, it seems, was the result of all his efforts. He had grand hopes of garnering honor through battle. His single little Centurai had participated in nearly every battle against the Nine Dwarven. .”

  Soen suddenly stopped.

  A long stain ran down the length of the Hall of the Past.

  Soen moved quickly, running around the bend of the hall as he pursued the path of the blood on the floor. Within a few strides he could see its source-a single, elven body slumped backward against the wall at the far end of the corridor. The face was bloated and discolored, but Soen recognized at once the uniform of the House Tribune, a patch remaining over his left eye. His blade was broken, but the grip was still in his hand.

  Soen straightened, considering the figure before him.

  “I know this elf,” he murmured in awe.

  Jukung slid to a stop next to the Inquisitor, eyeing the dead Tribune. The smell of rotting flesh was overpowering. “Master, we must be going. .”

  “Pause for a moment, Jukung, and honor a fallen hero,” the Inquisitor said, gesturing toward the dead elf sagging against the wall before him. “This is Se’Djinka-hero of the Benis Isles Campaigns among a dozen others. He was a general back then, and I only personally saw him twice. He lost favor in the Imperial Courts, however, and vanished from the official histories. Now we find him as a dead Tribune in this obscure, ambitious House.”

  “This place is unsafe, Master,” Jukung urged, gagging even as he spoke. “We must hurry. .”

  “Don’t you think this is odd, Jukung?”

  “I. . what, Master?”

  “That the Guardians of the House had all formed together in the entrance to this hall,” Soen said, speaking aloud his thoughts as he considered them, his eyes fixed on the corpse before them. “It doesn’t lead anywhere except to one of the access towers, but the avatria had no doubt fallen by the time they made their defense. This hall would have been a dead end. Yet here we see their Tribune. Why would a Tribune-and especially a successful and brilliant tactician by all accounts-put himself and his force in such a precarious position unless. .”

  Soen reached forward, gripping the Tribune’s armor behind his neck and pulling the body suddenly forward. It made a sticky, ripping sound as it separated from the wall and collapsus to the floor. Soen stepped over the body to the wall, gave it a cursory look, and then pressed against it.

  The flat stonework shifted inward slightly and then swung back toward the elven Inquisitor. At once, Soen stepped back, pulling open the hidden door.

  “Unless he was protecting something,” Soen finished as he stepped into the doorway and then stopped.

  The room was uncomfortably small and completely devoid of decoration or furniture. It had never really been intended for use but had been part of the original plans, and no one had bothered to make the alterations necessary to delete it. Yet the Tribune knew it was there-and so, at last it had served its purpose.

  A single figure stooped shivering in the corner of the room.

  Soen reached his hand out with care.

  “Tsi-Shebin?” he asked softly.

  The elven girl looked up, her black eyes wide, though whether with anger or fear, Soen was not sure. She remained as she was, however, her arms locked around her knees. The room stank of her.

  Soen knelt down with agonizing slowness, then spoke. “Shebin. . my name is Soen. We are here to help you. We will take you away from here. You will be safe again. Do you hear me?”

  The girl jerked her head in two short nods.

  Soen drew in a deep breath, watching her carefully.

  “Who did this, Shebin?” he asked.

  She blinked and then her eyes narrowed. She opened her mouth, and when she spoke, her words came in croaking sounds so harsh that he was unsure he understood her.

  “Did you say a slave?”

  “Yes,” she rasped. “A slave. . a hoo-mani slave! You have to catch him. . bring him back to me. . let me kill him. . I have to kill him.”

  “What slave?” Soen asked. “What is his name?”

  “DRAKIS!” she screamed.

  CHAPTER 20

  Bolters

  “By all the Gods! It’s getting worse!” Belag bellowed, raising his sword instinctively.

  Drakis grimaced, setting his teeth, and pressed forward, gripping his cutlass until the blood fled from his knuckles. The curved blade of the sword was thick and strong, but the edge was already starting to dull.

  He heard Mala moan behind him. She had long since grown weary of her own screaming and had subsided into a shocked daze. She now stayed behind Drakis, trying desperately to avoid any and all weapons with murderous intent that came anywhere near her. Her presence distracted Drakis, who found himself trying not only to maneuver against his attackers but simultaneously to protect her as well. He realized that he had been foolish: Because he had been trained in the arts of combat, he had blithely believed that every other slave had been as well. Now, as they were once again pressed to defend themselves, he felt how ill-prepared they were as a group. Of the six he had brought with him, only two were warriors, not counting the gods-cursed dwarf.

  It didn’t help that they were often fighting warriors of their own former Centurai.

  Every fold they had passed through led to another marshaling field filled with unique forms of horror and chaos. The first had been bad enough-two members of their own Cohort had gone mad when Timuran’s Well was destroyed and the Devotion Spell-or whatever it was called-collapsed. By the time Drakis and his companions passed through the fold, the Myrdin-dai had already abandoned their posts beside the portals and were fleeing the murderous warriors from a host of Houses. The warriors of the Houses who remained enthralled by their own Devotions were slow to take up arms without the direction of their own Tribunes and were scattering as well either to the limits of the totems that contained the herd or through any convenient fold portal that offered escape. The Guardians who remained engaged the newly murderous warriors in direct combat, and the phosphorescent blasts in the center of the carnage were accompanied by the screams of both the rebellious and the loyal caught in the blasts.

  Combat was not Drakis’ objective; flight was. He led his companions around the perimeter of the totems a
nd soon discovered that they were no longer bound by any of them. They quickly circumnavigated the marshaling field, ducked back inside the totem perimeter near the fold portal from which warriors were still passing, and slipped unnoticed through the portal to the next marshaling field.

  Each subsequent passage through the next fold portal brought them farther from their home and deeper into the breaking madness and death. By the sixth portal they passed through, the Tribunes were reacting to the carnage, releasing their warriors against these suddenly dangerous and insane warriors from all across the Western Provinces.

  Now Drakis and his companions had stepped through the eleventh portal only to find themselves at the rear of a defensive circle raggedly set up just a dozen yards from the fold platform onto which they had just stepped. The Tribunes-too few remaining for the number of warriors present, Drakis noted at once-were nearly hoarse with screaming at the Impress Warriors on the line. Beyond them, in the darkness, Drakis could vaguely make out movement, but everyone present could hear all too clearly, and the sound sent a chill up his spine. His insane fallen brothers were wailing and banging their swords together in an increasing tempo.

  “Where are we?” Belag bellowed.

  “This is the third Ibanian marshaling field,” Ethis answered, perhaps a little too quickly for Drakis’ liking. “We’re north of Lake Stellamir. It should look familiar; we were here only two days ago. Is that of any help?”

  “None,” Drakis spat the word sharply. There was something about the chimerian now that made the back of his neck itch. He was a stranger with far too great familiarity. “It doesn’t matter yet where we are. . what matters is where we find the way out!”

  “What? Again?” RuuKag groaned. “You’re supposed to be saving our lives, not leading us from one hopeless, bloody battle to the next hopeless. .”

  “Oh, please spare us yet another chorus of this same old song!” Jugar said in a booming voice as he exaggerated the rolling of his eyes. “Next, if you remain true to form, comes your plea for us to return to the embrace of the Imperial Will-may the gods put his Imperial Will where it would be the most discomforting.”