“Why should we trust you?” Drakis asked.
“Don’t, if you’d rather not,” Urulani said with a tilt of her head. “I just happen to be the first to find you. If you like, you’re welcome to refuse my help and wait for some bounty-crazed fool or an Iblisi to find you, although I suggest that they might not present terms quite as good as I have to offer.”
Drakis shook his head and smiled. “And, uh, just what are your terms?”
Urulani took a step back and folded her arms across her chest. “Drakis. . I don’t believe in you. I was raised on the stories and the legends, and I gave up on believing in them years ago. No human is going to rise up and free us from the Rhonas oppression with a wave of his mystical fingers. The only freedom we’ll ever have will be what we take for ourselves.” Urulani shrugged. “But. .”
“But?”
“But the Clan Elders do still believe,” Urulani continued. “They sent me here to find you, hide you from the eyes of the Rhonas hunters, and bring you before the Elders to answer their questions about you.”
Drakis nodded, his hand slipping slowly from the hilt of his sword. “And if they don’t like my answers?”
Urulani looked up at the ceiling as she spoke. “You know, it’s a hard thing when you’re confronted with a legend and you discover that he’s only a man after all. The faithful who are disappointed in their gods can be so unpredictable in how they will react.”
“No,” Drakis said. “I disagree. They are entirely too predictable. Very well, but you have to. .”
“Drakis!” Mala said turning toward him. “You aren’t actually considering going with this. .”
Drakis ignored her. “But you have to take all of us. You must promise to extend your protection to all of our group, or we’ll just continue on our own way.”
Urulani nodded. “Done. Anything else?”
“One last thing.”
“Yes?”
“Tell me that your clan is to the north.”
CHAPTER 36
RuuKag
The mud city of the Hak’kaarin usually bustled with activity regardless of the time of day. The only exception was on the night of arrival, when most of the mud gnomes, exhausted from the day’s journey, retired to their newly occupied warrens and slept through the night, leaving only a few hundred or so of their number to keep watch over the city and keep the fires stoked until the mound could properly be brought back to exuberant life the next morning.
The enormous central space of the city was, therefore, nearly deserted as RuuKag moved with contemplative, heavy steps onto the main floor space. His great head hung down from his hunched shoulders. The field pack-completely provisioned once more-did not weigh him down nearly as much as the burdens of his soul.
The manticore looked up. The open dome of the mud city was lined with the cavelike warrens of the gnomes almost to its very summit, lit now only dimly by the flickering flames in the great central pit that had earlier been a roaring bonfire. The curling smoke rose up to the full height of the chamber, escaping through the large hole in the ceiling.
RuuKag watched the smoke for a time. The hole through which it escaped the mud city was called the Oculei by the Hak’kaarin-the Eye of God. It watched over the mud gnomes in their pursuits and, for the most part, brought light into their lives.
RuuKag chortled to himself. The Hak’kaarin repaid their god by blowing smoke into its eye. Perhaps, he mused, that was why god’s eye seemed so blind to the problems of the mortals in their care.
But then another thought came to RuuKag. The blaze of the great fire pit in the center of the mud city consumed the solid wood and sent it up to the gods. Through the Oculei he could see the stars of the night sky beyond-the very realm of the gods-welcoming the smoke and freeing it from the cares of the world.
“RuuKag-ki?”
The manticore, startled from his reveries, looked down into the face of a young gnome. By his reckoning the creature could not have seen more than twelve years in this world. “What do you want, gnome?”
The large, liquid eyes of the youth gazed up at him. “Your story, RuuKag-ki! I want to hear your story.”
The manticore shrugged his field pack higher on his shoulders. “I have business to attend! Go away.”
“You are leaving us, then?”
“Yes,” RuuKag said at once. “I mean, no! I’ve just got to go outside for a while. . I’ve just got something I have to do.”
“Not with a field pack,” the gnome replied, pointing up at the manticore’s back. “You’re leaving forever.”
“I’ve business to attend to, boy!” RuuKag said, pushing past the small gnome.
“But you have to tell me your story!” the gnome said, the urgency in his voice making it louder.
RuuKag turned in frustration. “Quiet! You want to wake the entire city!”
“Just tell me your story,” the young gnome urged. “Look! We’re right next to the storytelling cavern, and there’s no one there now.”
“I don’t want to tell you my story!” RuuKag growled.
“But you’ll be lost!” the gnome wailed.
“Quiet!” RuuKag said quickly. “What are you bellowing about?”
“Your story,” the gnome replied, his eyes tearing up. “If you don’t tell someone your story, you’ll be forgotten. No one will remember that you passed through the world. Your story will be lost, and your soul will not be recognized by the other souls in the sky!”
RuuKag looked up through the Oculei once more. The stars were looking back down on him. He felt their disapproval. “No one wants to hear my story,” he said at last.
“I do,” replied the gnome.
RuuKag sighed. He needed to get out of the mud city, and the last thing he needed was a whimpering, wailing gnome cub calling attention to what was supposed to be an unnoticed departure. “Fine! A short story and then I’ve got to leave.”
“Your story,” the young gnome insisted.
RuuKag sighed again. “Yes, my story. What’s your name little cub?”
“Jith!” the gnome replied.
“Well-Jith-where do we get this sorry tale over with?”
Jith wrapped his small, long-fingered hands around the manticore’s paw as best he could though even both hands failed to encompass it entirely. He tugged at the manticore, who dutifully followed him into a round, side cavern. In its center sat three curved benches that formed a circle. “Here, RuuKag-ki! This is the storytelling place. Sit!. . Sit! Sit! Sit!”
The manticore squatted down on one of the benches most definitely not built for someone of his size. “Just a few minutes, Jith. I’m very busy!”
“Yes, of course, very busy,” Jith nodded as he scampered over to one of the opposite benches and clambered onto it. He turned around, his own feet dangling from the edge of the bench and not quite reaching the floor. The young gnome leaned forward in anticipation. “But first you tell your story.”
Yes,” RuuKag said. “Well, once between a moon long ago there was a manticore named RuuKag. .”
“No, that’s no way to start a story!” Jith interrupted. “You start with, ‘I, RuuKag.’ ”
The gnome milled his hands through the air, urging RuuKag to continue.
The manticore bared his canine teeth in frustration. “Very well then. . ‘I, RuuKag’. . and then what?”
“Tell me about your family!” Jith suggested.
RuuKag closed his eyes. “I have no family.”
Jith caught his breath in surprise and excitement. “What a wonderful beginning! ‘I, RuuKag, have no family.’ Why?”
“Why. . why what?”
“Why do you have no family?” Jith asked. “You must have had one sometime-did you lose them?”
“No,” RuuKag replied, looking at the wall. “They. . well, my father threw me out of my clan. He proclaimed me dead and banished me into the savanna-the eastern edge of this same savanna, as a matter of fact.”
“Banished!” Jith drew in a
long breath. “How terrible for you!”
“It was. . I was heartbroken at the time,” RuuKag replied. “My father was a proud warrior who had joined the rebellion against the elven occupation, leading our clan out of our traditional lands and into the wilderness of the Northern Steppes. His name was KraChak, and his armor was ten generations old-very prestigious among our clans. He was the result of a long line of brave warriors with their own tales of bravery in battle and honors in their warfare. He taught me the use of the spear and the blade at an age when other cubs were still wrestling across the green. My mother-her name was Lyurna of Clan Khadush-was so upset with our father that day that he had to call a clan council just to get away from her for a few days! They were both proud manticores who were in a lot of pain now that I look back on it. They had lost everything in the Rhonas occupation-everything but their prideful resentment. My father had lost his ancestral lands, and that was a terrible thing for him to bear. My parents could not give up the life that they once had-maybe they didn’t know how to live any other life. .”
There was something about talking to this little gnome that felt good to RuuKag. He had been carrying the words around inside himself for so long, never daring to tell them to anyone. He had forgotten them entirely while under the elven Devotional enslavement magic, but their burden had returned to him in force with the fall of House Timuran. He wanted desperately to return to the mindless bliss of his enslavement and to rid himself of the weight of his own decisions and consequences. But here and now, in the quiet of the night of a far-off land, he could tell those bitter words to this little gnome and somehow be rid of them.
Soon the words started coming unbidden and in a rush, as though the story had been there all along waiting for him to tell it and be rid of it. He told of his life growing up in a clan exiled from their own nation. He spoke of the customs of the manticores and how disputes were most often settled in combat. He told of the wonders of getting up at dawn on the Northern Steppes and hunting at his father’s side. He talked of lying under the canopy of the night and listening as his mother explained the lights in the sky and how they were his ancestors looking down on his honor from above.
As he spoke, another gnome happened by and stopped for a time. Then a third and a fourth came and sat down. RuuKag took little notice as he spoke, for he seemed lost in the telling of his tale to the large eyes of the enraptured Jith.
“All these wonders. . all these beautiful stories,” Jith said as RuuKag paused, “and your clan family, they are lost to you? Why?”
“The Battle of the Red Fields,” RuuKag said, his voice breaking as he spoke the words for the first time in decades. “The Rhonas Legions were not satisfied with taking control of the government of Chaenandria, they wished to crush all possibility of rebellion once and for all. With the aid and assurances of the Chaenandrian Council, the elf Legions moved north to challenge our rebel clans directly.”
“A war then?” Jith asked breathlessly.
“Barely even that. It had been a hard winter, and we did not expect them to join us in battle so soon,” RuuKag replied. The hall was now full of gnomes, but he no longer cared. To speak the words unburdened him. “When their Legions were reported, there were few that the rebel clans could field. Everyone who could hold a blade was pressed into service-many of them barely trained youths, and I counted myself among them.”
Jith was in awe. “You joined the battle?”
“What choice did I have?” RuuKag snapped. “I was the son of the Clan Elder-an honored warrior with ancestors covered in glory for a hundred years! I had grown up on stories of fortune in battle. It was all such a fabulous game to me. Here was my chance to add to the name of my clan, to add to the glory of my ancestors, to. . to. .”
“To what?” Jith urged.
“To prove myself to my father,” RuuKag roared. “To show the rest of the clan that I wasn’t just a child of privilege but that I, too, could stand with my ancestors and lay claim to my father’s armor.”
“What happened?” Jith asked.
RuuKag sat back and lifted his head. He could see the field before him as though he were there once more. “We formed a line as we had been taught. None of us were tried in battle-we barely knew how to hold a sword much less use it against a cunning enemy. We were supposed to be in reserve-not to be used in the battle itself-but the lines before us broke. The Legions of Rhonas stormed into the gap, pushing back the lines to either side, trying to flank them. But our leader was an old warrior whose mind had grown brittle and his judgment stale. He saw the gap in the lines and ordered our unit to charge into the bloodiest part of the battle.”
“And what happened?” Jith whispered.
“I. . I couldn’t move,” RuuKag replied in a voice that felt detached for the images in his mind. “I saw the death and the blood and the slaughter in front of me, and I just couldn’t move.”
The room was filled with gnomes now, but only the sound of RuuKag’s quiet voice was heard.
“The line closed again as the manticores fought back,” RuuKag continued. “As it turned out, the charge was in vain; the line would have closed anyway, and all those young manticores who stood next to me and charged died for nothing. Yet there were a number of us who just didn’t heed the call-and we lived. It would have been better for us to have died that day-we were branded as the cowards that we were. We lived-and that was our shame.”
RuuKag paused and looked up. Gnomes filled the story-cavern and were standing at the entrances. Each was facing him in rapt attention, sadness in their eyes.
Sadness for him.
RuuKag was now intent on letting all the words come out. He had forgotten his urgent reasons for departing. He spoke of returning to his father’s clan, his shame of a coward son. He told of his banishment and the tears and howls of his mother echoing in his ears as he departed into the Vestasian Savanna.
He spoke of his longing to die.
His words spilled from him throughout the night in one tale that was many tales: the tale of his enslavement to the Devotions of House Timuran; the tale of Drakis teaching him the pain of knowing the truth and RuuKag’s longing for the peace of not knowing at all; and finally the tale of Belag and Drakis leading them across the savanna and how a dishonored manticore now stood on the edge of a knife trying to decide between the oblivion of the elves and the hope of a life at last.
At last, RuuKag stopped, all his words spent. He looked up into the eyes of the gnomes and settled at last on those of Jith.
The young gnome looked at the manticore with his large, watery eyes. . and gently smiled.
RuuKag looked at the ground.
Jith stepped quickly over to the manticore, moving beneath his face and gazing up as he spoke. “Thank you, RuuKag-ki. Thank you for your story. We understand now.”
RuuKag took in a long, deep breath.
Jith took the manticore’s huge paw with both his small hands. The gnome then touched his forehead to the back of RuuKag’s furry grip.
“Your story begins again,” Jith said. “Now begin with ‘I, RuuKag, of the family Hak’kaarin.’ ”
Then, each in turn, the mud gnomes stepped up to RuuKag and, taking the manticore’s paw, placed their foreheads to the back of his grip.
The gnomes were still doing so when Drakis found him the next morning.
CHAPTER 37
Different Roads
“Keep up!” Urulani growled.
“What is your hurry?” Mala snapped. “You said it was less than half a day’s walk, and the sun has barely risen.”
“It’s dangerous out here in the open, princess.” If anything, Urulani quickened her own pace a little. “And can you see those peaks ahead of us?”
“Those hills?” Mala sniffed. “You call those peaks? I’ve climbed bigger hills just to get a good look at real peaks!”
“Really?” Urulani laughed. “Well, then, you won’t mind climbing those. We call them the Sentinels, and those ‘hills’ have kept o
ur clan free of elven interference since before your entire family was groveling and begging for scraps from the Rhonas table.”
They had left the Hak’kaarin mud city only a short time before, just as the first hint of dawn lightened the eastern horizon. Urulani led them northward on a narrow path that occasionally vanished for long stretches. Still, the dark-skinned woman always picked up the trail again as it ran northward toward the Sentinel Peaks.
It was true, Drakis reflected, that these mountains were not as tall as the Aerian Range that they had left so far behind them to the south, but they were not that much shorter and were of a far more formidable aspect. The peaks looked like sharpened teeth that erupted from the ground at nearly vertical angles. Urulani said they would be crossing them, but from where he walked now on the savanna, even he was skeptical as to how they would manage it.
“Drakis! Did you hear that?” Mala turned to the warrior striding next to her under the early morning glow. “Did you hear what she said to me?”
Drakis drew in a deep breath as he strode next to her under the soft glow of early morning light. “Yes, Mala; I heard.”
“Well?” Mala demanded. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Yes, pray tell,” Urulani snarled. “Just what are you going to do about it?”
Drakis rolled his eyes upward in an appeal to the stars. He was no longer sure that he believed in the gods; the only gods that he knew were those of the Rhonas pantheon, which had been instilled in him by his slave masters, and now he questioned everything that they had taught him. Still, at this moment, he would have preferred some divine answers-or even an inspired lightning bolt or two-to help him find a way to keep Mala out of Urulani’s way.
Thus far this morning, the gods had wisely stayed out of the fight as well.
“Please,” Drakis urged. “We need to get into the safety of those mountains. .”
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