“For my own good,” Drakis found the words distasteful as he spoke them.
“For your own good,” Ethis nodded. “I waited for an opportunity. Then, when we reached Nothree, that day she was bathing at the pool. .”
Drakis shuddered violently, closing his eyes again, but Ethis’ words kept coming at him.
“. . I took some of her beacon stones from the hem of her gown. I went back through the pass to a crossroads on the fringes of the savanna and used the stones to call him. I suspected the Inquisitor did not actually know which of us was helping him. I changed form and appeared to him as RuuKag. He never suspected me. I told him the stones had been compromised by the dwarf, and he gave me an entirely new set of stones. Now that same Inquisitor Soen is chasing the wrong stones instead of us.”
“Who’s dropping these wrong stones then. . and drawing what will soon be a very angry Iblisi after them?”
‘Belag,” Ethis said. “I told him to lead him east, back toward the Dje’kaarin.”
“And he did this for my own good,” Drakis said through clenched teeth.
“Yes,” Ethis nodded. “Everything we’ve done has been for your own good. .”
Drakis’ grip on his sword tightened as he sprang toward Ethis with a terrible yell that started from the darkness of his soul and rushed from his mouth with animal ferocity. He pressed his left forearm against the chimerian’s throat, his weight and momentum pushing Ethis back against the main mast. His body pinned the lighter chimerian, the edge of the blade suddenly biting at Ethis’ throat.
Drakis’ crazed face was within inches of the chimerian’s own face. “For my own good? Everyone seems to be working for my own good! House Timuran fell for my own good, and it brought me memories that are still too painful for me to even think about-it stole my life from me! You took us into the Faery Kingdom for my own good and because Murialis would either be entertained by us or kill us, you cheated me out of my deepest thoughts, hopes, and fears. RuuKag. . RuuKag died for my own good and the gods only know how many others! And now you. . you show me this! You take away from me the one thing I ever wanted. . the one really honest, good thing I ever asked for myself. . you tear out my soul, and you have the gall to tell me it’s for my own good?”
“Drakis, my boy,” Jugar said in a careful voice. “It’s truly a calamitous situation-deplorable and tragic-but a little calm reflection and distance might. .”
“And you!” Drakis wheeled on the dwarf. “You started this all! You and your talk of legends and humanity’s lost greatness. You packaged it and sold it to everyone we’ve met along the way, but it was all a lie!”
“You don’t know that, lad,” Jugar said, holding his hands up. “Those stories that I told are true. .”
“It’s NOT ME!” Drakis wailed at the dwarf. He turned back to Ethis, his sword cutting across the chimerian’s skin just below his jaw. “What did you do to her? How did you make her lie like that?”
“It’s not him, lad,” the dwarf said.
“You then?” Drakis said, his wild eyes fixed on the dwarf as he turned.
“No, my boy,” Jugar said with as much calm as he could muster in the face of the crazed Drakis. “The elves. . they did this to her.”
Drakis stood on the deck glaring at the dwarf. He was vaguely aware of the rest of the crew watching him, of the damning concern in their eyes, and of their pity. He hated them for that, too.
“She’s. . she’s what they call a Seinar-a beacon,” Jugar continued, his eyes fixed on Drakis as he spoke. “It’s an old-fashioned custom that was the tradition in elven households for nearly a century-may Nexog damn them forever for it. The Rhonas elves would take one of their household slaves and ‘train’ them to be a Seinar. But this wasn’t ‘training’ as you know it, my boy. They would take them when they were youths ‘just in their beards’ as we say among the dwarves-both male and female-and afflict them with such terrible horrors-tortures, lad, of mind and body-until they had burned these trained scars into their minds, seared them so deeply that they would never be free of the orders they were given. Then they deviously buried the memory of this training under the Devotion spell so that the slaves themselves would not be aware of it. They were trained to betray their own kind-to run away with any slaves who might somehow break the bonds of their Devotions-just as we did, lad-and lead the Iblisi to them.”
“They did that,” Drakis said, his eyes shifting to where Mala lay bound on the forecastle. “What did they do to her?”
“It wasn’t magic,” Jugar said quietly. “It was not some spell that could be released and make her right. It was her mind they broke-as they did with every other Seinar. Then, in a cruel blessing, they gave them their Devotions in the households and allowed them to forget all the carefully, torturously impressed commands that they had burned into their minds. . leaving them buried there against the unlikely day when the Devotions would fail. . and their precious slaves would escape.”
Drakis dropped his sword, barely aware of it clattering on the deck at his feet. “Then she didn’t choose this. . they made her do it. . they. . they broke her?”
“Aye,” Jugar nodded. “Intentionally, but, aye, they broke her. It is a difficult and costly proposition. Most of the lesser Houses of the Empire no longer go to the expense of what has become such a luxury. But Timuran was just proud enough and just vain enough to want to own a traitor to her own kind.”
Drakis walked slowly up to the forecastle. The two Sondau warriors stood on either side of Mala, who looked pathetically small where she lay on the deck between them. Drakis reached down slowly, pushing back the hair that had fallen over her face.
She looked up at him with the eyes that he had long remembered with such depth of feeling though now they were unfocused and seemed to dart about, unable to fix on any one thing.
“Take me home,” she said to no one in particular. “Please take me home. .”
Drakis stood up and drew in a long, shuddering breath.
“If you like,” Ethis said quietly behind him, “I can take care of this for you.”
Drakis turned. “What did you say?”
“This needs to be taken care of,” Ethis said with a little more emphasis. “She’s a Seinar, Drakis. She’ll do whatever she can to lead the Iblisi to us.”
“She’s Mala,” Drakis said, shaking his head.
“No, she’s not,” Jugar said. “She has betrayed us and, beyond doubt, she will betray us again.”
“No,” Drakis insisted, “She doesn’t want to be this.”
“It isn’t a question of what she wants,” Ethis said with conviction. “She has no control over this any more than you can control whether you breathe or not! She is broken-deep within-and she cannot be fixed.”
“NO!” Drakis shouted. “She was fine before we began this insane quest and she’ll be fine again! If I find a way to put her back under House Devotions, she’ll be. .”
“What? Your slave?” Ethis countered. “Is that what you’re hoping for?”
Drakis wheeled on Ethis, slamming his right fist into his face. He felt the bones of the chimerian’s face flex as was the inherent trait of his kind and his fist give into the soft flesh of the face, but the blow did force Ethis back a few paces and gave Drakis back his focus from the satisfying blow.
“We sail north!” Drakis made the statement as though he dared anyone to contradict him. “We find the Siren Coast and this. . River of Tears or whatever it is. . and see what there is to this damn legend. Until then Mala is mine and under my protection.”
“It’s my ship,” Urulani said. “If she stays, then she stays under guard.”
“You, too, I see,” Drakis replied. “Then take me north, O Great Captain! We have a legend to bury.”
CHAPTER 49
Voice of Dragons
Drakis stood at the tiller that night. He shifted the course of the Cydron five points to starboard and held it there for nearly three days. All Urulani’s arguments were brushed a
side by him as he held that course. . because, he said, the song was calling to him, and this was the course where he heard it the loudest.
By the dawn of the second day the distant shoreline could just be made out on the northern horizon. It took until just before noon for the coast features, such as they were, to become defined: short, gnarled trees and scrub brush painting a dark line above a bright sand shore. Here and there a tumble of rocks could be seen, but for the most part it was the most unremarkable coast Urulani or any of her crew had ever seen.
Drakis leaned hard on the tiller, his red, sleepless eyes struggling to peer over the bow. Despite the lack of landmarks, however, he steered the ship with remarkable precision up one of a dozen channels that flowed over a wide sandy delta. The Cydron was made for shallow-draft river raiding and passed smoothly over the delta waters and into the main channel of what Jugar at once proclaimed to be the River of Tears. Only then did Drakis relinquish the tiller to Urulani. . and he collapsus on the deck just as Urulani called for the sweeps to be set and the oarsmen to start pulling.
Drakis did not awaken again for another day and a half.
“How is your head?” Urulani asked.
“Much worse,” Drakis replied as he stretched. “Where are we?”
“I can report that we are definitely somewhere,” she replied, “And we are making good time.”
“Wonderful news,” Drakis responded, looking around them. The river had cut a meandering course, which Urulani was trying to make her ship follow. “I see that the riverbanks are sand. What’s beyond?”
“More sand,” Urulani replied with a twinkle in her dark eyes.
“Then I think you are wrong,” Drakis said, drawing in a deep breath. “We’ve gone right past somewhere and have definitely reached nowhere.”
The shores of the Sand Sea drifted past them for a time, the silence broken only by the rhythmic stroke of the oars to the drum below.
“How is your Mala?” Urulani asked.
“She is. . she is doing better,” Drakis replied. “She has calmed down and is speaking again. . but she is still undoubtedly broken.”
“Then why keep her with us?” Urulani said to him with surprising softness in her voice. “I do not ask you this to be cruel, Drakis, but what kind of a life can you have together without trust? She is clearly a danger to you and perhaps to us all. What kind of a life can she have beyond the forgetful lie that the elves offer to all their slaves?”
“You make sense, Urulani,” Drakis responded. “In fact, all of you make sense. . even Ethis is starting to make sense to me. I cannot explain it, but I feel responsible for her.”
“You did not break her, Drakis,” the captain said. “It is not your fault that she is how she is.”
“Yes, I know,” he said gazing out over the bow. “But I made promises to her when she was whole-when I thought she was mine-and now that she is no longer whole, I feel that those promises should still mean something. Maybe it wasn’t real for her, but it was for me-or at least as real as I believe anything to be any more.”
“So, are you this Drakis they all want you to be?” Urulani asked through a smile.
“You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll really tell you. . I don’t know.”
“That’s no answer,” Urulani scoffed.
“That’s all the answer I’ve got,” Drakis said, reaching up for one of the back stays and leaning against it. “There’s only one thing that I’m certain of and that is that I need to know-one way or the other-if this is my destiny. So much has happened, so many people have sacrificed so much-even their lives from time to time-that I have to wonder if all of this has some meaning. . some purpose. Belag once told me that he had to believe in me or his brother’s death would have had no meaning. All I’m left with now is that thought and this terrible song in my. . wait! Look ahead, just around this bend!”
The bow was swinging around another turn in the river.
Urulani’s face shifted into a crooked smile.
“Is that a road?” she asked.
“Ethis! Jugar!” Drakis shouted. “Break out the packs and make sure they’re stocked! We’re going on a little trip.”
“Master Ganja, you are in charge,” Urulani said, checking her pack and closing it. “I’ve got six of the crew with me. . the rest are to stay here.”
There was a groan among those left behind. They would have liked the opportunity to see this new land.
“Drakis, are you ready?” she asked as she shouldered her pack.
“We’re all ready,” he replied.
Urulani turned to acknowledge him when she was caught up short. “You’re not serious!”
The captain had expected Ethis and Jugar to be joining the expedition but there, too, was a brightly beaming Lyric and, most surprising of all, Mala holding her pack and looked down at the deck, seemingly avoiding anyone’s eyes.
“There is no way they are coming with us!” she said.
“There is no way they cannot,” Drakis replied.
“I’m not dragging those women across the Sand Sea!”
“You’re not dragging anyone,” Drakis said. “Both the Lyric and Mala need to be watched. . and not out of my sight.”
“You don’t trust my crew?”
“Not with Mala,” he replied.
“Fine!” Urulani shouted. “But if she so much as spits in my direction, I’m going to kill her myself, and I promise you I will not be asking your permission ahead of time, you understand?”
“I understand,” Drakis answered.
Urulani turned on Mala, jabbing her finger at her collarbone. “And do you understand, princess?”
“Yes,” Mala answered, not looking up.
“Well, what a happy crew,” Urulani said though there was nothing happy in her tone at all.
Urulani had beached the Cydron on the riverbank, so they jumped from the bow of the boat onto the sands of the shore. Their feet sank down into the warm sands, causing them to struggle slightly until they managed to clamber up onto the remains of the roadway. There was some concern about the dwarf, who panicked for a time in the sands trying to get his footing, but in the end they managed to pull him onto the path as well.
The road of tightly fitted stones was broken in many places and completely obscured by drifting sand in so many more that Jugar feared they would lose it altogether, but in time they followed it up, at last cresting the sand dune at the edge of the river’s channel.
They were greeted with the sight of a chain of towering mountains that seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon. Purple-blue in the distance and appearing to waver in the heat of day, their peaks were sharp, jagged pinnacles whose crests were still draped in the white of perpetual snow. They looked as though they had been pushed up angrily from below, rising abruptly from the sands at their base in sheer granite crags and towers-the savage teeth of the world.
“The God’s Wall!” Jugar cried and began dancing a strange, dwarven step on the ancient stones.
“How did we miss that?” Ethis blurted out.
“We’ve been in the river channel,” Urulani shrugged. “The dunes must have hidden them from us.”
“That doesn’t prove anything, dwarf,” Drakis said, his eyes narrowing to try to examine the mountains better. He raised his arm and pointed. “What are those?”
“What?” Urulani asked.
“There at the base. . those tall shapes at the base of the range. They’re too evenly spaced to be natural, and they seem to run down the length of the range.”
“They are my brothers,” the Lyric said with pride. “We are home!”
“The Sirens!” Jugar crowed. “Those are dragons, my boy! The dragons of the prophecy calling to you!”
“Is it. . is it possible?” Drakis whispered.
“We came to find out,” Ethis said. “It must be four. . maybe five leagues to the base. We could make it before dark, but we’d have to make camp and re
turn in the morning.”
“You want to make camp. . with dragons?” Urulani asked.
“Do dwarves float?” Drakis asked as he started down the road, which ran straight toward the base of the mountains.
Drakis stared up at the dragon.
The dragon’s dead, stone eyes stared back at him.
Drakis stood on a wide, black marble platform. The surface had been pitted and scarred by the blowing sands over time, scuffed to a dull finish. Fixed to it, the great carving of a dragon rose above him, its neck craning downward until its chin also rested on the pedestal. Enormous wings, also of stone, rose high above them nearly one hundred feet into the sky, brightly cast in the red light of the sunset. The front and back claws clutched enormous crystals in their talons that were embedded into the marble base. The crystals looked dark and common, but the dragon carving was intricate and detailed with pictograms of people now long dead and fallen to dust pursuing great deeds that were now otherwise forgotten.
Drakis considered the statue in silence.
“I. . I’m sorry, my boy,” Jugar said next to him. “More sorry than I can say.”
Drakis started to speak, considered for a moment, and then continued. “It’s hollow. Can you see it? The head cavity all the way up the neck and into the body is entirely hollow.”
“Yes, lad,” Jugar said sadly.
Behind him, the rest of their party stood in the sand or sat on the edge of the pedestal. The Song of the Dragon rose and fell around them, a mournful, hollow sound. As far as they could see down both directions of the range, duplicates of this same statue stood on their own pedestals. Each of them in turn was making the same music across the Sand Sea to the south.
“The wind,” Drakis continued dispassionately, pointing toward the head. “It blows here constantly through that hole in the dragon’s mouth. I saw a musician once who played an instrument by blowing into it. It looked about the same size as that hole. You know, there must be some mechanism in the head that varies the pitch so that the song can be played over, and over, and over, and over. .”
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