Galen tentatively touched the back of his head. There was a rather large knob under his hair that had not been there before. He hoped it was smaller than it felt. His hand came away sticky with his own blood. “I believe my head will remain attached to the rest of me, more is the pity for the pain.”
“Well, at least you’re still here,” Rhea replied, sitting back on her ankles.
Galen lay curled up uncomfortably in the corner where he had apparently been dropped. He struggled for a moment, trying to get to his feet, but the throbbing in his head decided otherwise. He slipped back down and looked around.
The cage was more crowded than it had been in Stoneport. Several of its occupants were once more raving loudly. Others rocked themselves back and forth. One young woman was tearing methodically at her clothing while she sang quietly to herself. Beyond the woven reeds, he could see undulating grasslands drifting quickly past under the long strides of the torusks. He could still smell the sea, but that was quickly giving way to the aromas of earth and sun. It was still morning. By the position of the sun he guessed they were moving roughly south and perhaps a little toward the west. He could not make out the beginning or the end of the line of torusks making their way down the heavily trodden path beneath them. He had absolutely no idea what awaited him down the road that stretched ahead. Galen looked at her. “Yes, I’m here . . . wherever that is.”
Rhea shrugged. “I read some of the signs in town as we were passing through. The port was someplace called ‘Fehran’ somewhere on the northern coast of Hrunard, I think. Have you ever heard of it?”
“No.” Galen shook his head carefully, lest the motion add to the considerable pain he already felt. “I mean, I know about Hrunard and all, but, well . . .”
“I know.” Rhea smiled wearily. “We all know about the Empire of Vasska. We sat in the pews and listened with rapt attention to the legends of this distant land. It was no more real to us than our own dreams and nightmares.”
“Only now we’re here”—Galen sighed—“in the land of dreams.”
“Or nightmares.”
“Yes, nightmares,” Galen agreed.
Rhea moved slightly closer to him. “Do you have dreams, Galen of Benyn?”
He looked up at her sharply.
“Yes, Galen, I have to know.” Rhea’s voice was insistent, quietly demanding. “Do you have nightmares?”
“Sometimes, but everyone has nightmares!”
“But these are special nightmares, aren’t they, Galen? Special dreams?” Rhea’s eyes were bright, desperate. “You see things and go places that you have no knowledge of otherwise. Sometimes you meet people and speak with them in your dreams.”
“Yes . . . no . . .”
“Tell me, did you dream earlier today?” Rhea moved closer to him, her eyes holding his gaze in thrall. “After your desperate flight and the Pir monk dropped you onto the ship’s deck like a sack of wet wheat, did you dream?”
“Yes.” Galen’s voice sounded heavy in his ears.
“And did you meet anyone there?”
“Please.” Galen shook. “Just leave me alone!”
“No. Just tell me.” Rhea’s voice was quiet but would not let him go. “I’m trying to help you. There is a mystery in all this and I think I can help you if you’ll just help me. So tell me: did you speak to anyone in your dream?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Maddoc . . . your husband.”
“Ah, and what did he say to you?”
“Say? It was only a dream . . .”
“Of course, but what did he say?”
“He said . . . he said he was glad to see me there.”
“And what did you say to him?”
“What? Are you insane?”
“That’s supposed to be why I’m here.” Rhea smiled again but an edge remained in her voice. “Humor a crazy woman for a moment. What did you say to him?”
“I don’t . . . I told him that I was trying to understand what was happening to us . . . just as you were trying to understand.”
Rhea looked away thoughtfully. “And what else did he say?”
“He said that he missed you . . . that you were more beautiful than—”
“Than the winged woman?”
Galen blinked. His chest felt heavy and he found it momentarily difficult to breathe. “What? How . . . how do you know about what we said? What do you know about—”
“The winged woman? Dark-skinned, with two blue streaks in her long white hair?”
“By the Claw!” Galen gulped.
“Maddoc,” Rhea said smugly. “He told me.”
“He told you?!”
“He was surprised to see you there, wasn’t he? He’s seen the winged woman, too, although only since meeting you, as nearly as I can tell. You were both on the deck of the ship. The winged woman was above you.”
“Yes,” Galen said. “She was drifting up among the masts and the rigging. And Maddoc did say you were more beautiful than the winged woman.”
Rhea blushed faintly. “Thank you. It’s . . . it’s nice to hear him think of me that way.”
Galen glanced over at Maddoc. He stood swaying slightly, his eyes fixed in a distant stare. He was humming softly to himself. “He really does love you.”
“Yes, I believe he does.” Rhea nodded, her thoughts in a different place and time. Then she returned to the present. “Did you see the hooded monk?”
“What?”
“In the dream. Maddoc told me he saw a hooded monk standing behind you in the dream. Did you see him?”
Tragget sat leaning forward out the front of his litter, the curtains thrown open. His gaze longingly swept southward with the clouds riding the prevailing winds. There, in the distance, he made out the forest-cloaked foothills of the Mithlan Range. Beyond that rose the purpled outline of three towering mountain peaks. They were the Lords of Mithlan, and he smiled to see them. At their base, though he could not see it yet, lay the great city of Vasskhold, still gloriously being purged and purified of its former, ancient blasphemy. It was the center of the Pir Vasska, the heart of his religion and the pinnacle of authority in all things under Vasska’s eye.
It was his home.
The road unwound slowly beneath him. The area was not as familiar to him as the eastern ports and northeastern territories of the Hrunard. He would have expected to have made landfall in either Bayfast or Lankstead Lee as was customary, but finding this vision made flesh dictated a little more urgency in his return.
The thought of Galen made Tragget uncomfortable, but the fact that he had found him demanded a quicker return route home, which was the only good aspect of his present business.
They had traveled westward to Fehran across the trade winds rather than south to the standard ports. Fehran usually handled all the ships ferrying the Elect from the Dragon Teeth Isles and the northwestern edge of the Dragonback. However, it had the advantage of being the shortest land route to Vasskhold, and the quickest way for him to bring a close to this sorry mystery.
By noon the caravan had reached Jonsbridge, a town that was little more than a way station servicing the caravans. Tragget was grateful they did not remain there long. The Lords of Mithlan called him, and he was getting impatient.
The afternoon wound down as the mountains grew larger and larger in the Inquisitor’s eyes. They passed into the Northwatch Wood where the towering trees hid the Lords from his eyes for a time, but he felt no concern. These were the woods in which he had played as a boy. They were familiar to him, and he could feel himself nearly home.
The long caravan of torusks crested a ridge where the trees of Northwatch gave way to a long meadow. Tragget leaned forward, excited once more.
“Stop!” he cried. “Stop at once!”
The guide for his torusk obeyed, touching the great beast gently behind the forelegs. The torusk quickly moved off the flattened dirt road and halted among the tall grasses, out of the way of the continuous caravan be
hind them.
Tragget stepped to the small platform at the front of his litter, stood up, and smiled.
The Lords of Mithlan towered before him: great granite mountains thrust out of the earth, standing spectacularly before him in the setting sun. Brideslace Falls tumbled from a crevasse between the two lesser peaks on the north, cascading down a cliff face. It fed the River Indunae, the lifeblood of his city.
Vasskhold shined in the reddening light of sunset. To the ancients, it had been known as Mithanlas, a city that ruled the northern provinces of the Rhamas Empire with an oppressive hand. It had nearly been destroyed by Vasska in his righteous anger, but instead was spared in Vasska’s mercy to become his throne and footstool. The seven rings of the city walls shone in the dying light of day. At the nexus of the rings, the Temple of Vasska reached skyward with its magnificent towers and central dome larger than any in the known world.
Tragget smiled. Soon he would learn all he needed to know. Soon he would fulfill every wish his mother had demanded of him. Then, when he had done all he promised he would do, Galen’s life would end and Tragget’s could begin. Soon the nightmare would be over.
16
Mithanlas
Galen’s face pressed against the woven reeds of the cage. He had never imagined such a place. The long caravan of torusk beasts lumbered quickly down the ancient highway. The outlying farms gave way to a wide avenue over four cart lengths wide, running straight as an arrow’s flight eastward toward the mountains. Here and there, patches of broken paving stones pushed up through the hard trampled dirt of the roadbed. Those stones, Galen thought with wonder, were probably as old as the ancient Rhamas Empire itself—laid there no doubt by craftsmen over four hundred years dead. First homes, then the commerce shops of guild craftsmen, marketplaces, and tradesmen lined the magnificent avenue. Their architecture shared one common theme despite all its diversity: all the buildings adopted, adapted, and utilized the ancient ruins that remained standing as part of their structure. Galen watched as they passed an obelisk column, its ornate and intricate lettering still vivid after all these centuries, now used to support the corner of the ramshackle cooper’s shop.
“Weep for the spirits of the lost.”
Galen turned toward Rhea. “What?”
“That carved column.” Rhea nodded toward the shop. “The ancients of Rhamas believed that their spirits lived on in the memories of those they left behind. They carved their great deeds into stones so that the memory of the departed spirits would never be lost.” Rhea shook her head as she sighed. “But in the end, the city was lost and most everyone perished. What great deeds did that obelisk once herald, Galen? Are the honored spirits of the dead lost now that their glory is being used to hold up the corner of an apprentice tradesman’s shack?”
Galen looked at her curiously. “You know this place?”
“I am something of a scholar . . . or at least my husband is,” she replied. Then she smiled, pointing ahead of the torusk. “But I dare say even you could recognize that.”
Galen turned to look forward along the length of the torusk’s back.
He caught his breath.
A long curving wall rose above the tops of the buildings. The machicolations of the parapet, an impossible fifty feet above the level of the ground, were broken in most places but still recognizable. The northern part of the wall was fallen completely, its gigantic stones pulled down and crushed into a small mountain of rubble. Farther to the north he could see the rampart rise again just before joining a tall tower. Another curving rampart arched still farther beyond the tower, before it, too, was partially collapsed.
“They came from out of the setting sun.”
Rhea and Galen turned sharply at the sound of Maddoc’s quiet voice. The old man gripped the reeds of their cage fiercely. Tears were streaming down his face.
“Can you not see them, Galen? Are your eyes so closed? Mithanlas stood alone. The Beautiful, some called it . . . others, the City of the Seven Circles. She was the last, however. The last of the ancient cities to stand against the dragons. Rhamas was no more. Her warrior legions were no more.” Maddoc turned suddenly, his eyes focused far off, as though gazing at a different time. He pointed down the avenue toward the walls. “The sun blinded the sentries on watch that evening. The dragons were upon them quickly, but not before the alarm was sounded.”
He looked wildly up and down the avenue. “They screamed and ran for the gates to the inner circles of the walled city, but the gates were already closed. Their homes were already ablaze under the dragons’ breath, the smoke from the ruins extinguishing the sun before it set.”
Galen stared out on the busy street. Merchants made their way past the caravan, never looking up at the faces of the Elect. No one gave any sign of the horror and blood that once ran down this street. If Rhea was right, then the dead had truly been forgotten.
The great wall was much closer now. Galen could see that enormous scaffolding now stood against it. Stone guild craftsmen swarmed over the structure, pulling great stones up out of the rubble beneath and reshaping and fitting them to repair the wall. Even Galen’s untrained eye could see where the old construction ended and the new repairs began. The new work lacked the perfect symmetry and precision of the ancient craft.
The torusks’ progression brought them between the towers flanking Mithanlas’s main outer gate. Immense statues had once stood before each of the towers. They had been pulled down, their parts scattered or carved into other uses. Only the broken legs remained to identify the spot where once they had looked down on the avenue as a symbol of power and dominion.
A dark shadow fell over the travelers as they passed into the tunnel between the towers. The massive gates of the city stood open on either side, their wood black with oil and age.
“Here!” Maddoc pointed at the base of the gates as they passed through. “Right here thousands perished, caught between the conflagration of the dragons and the pitiless guardians of the inner circles.”
Galen shuddered. He could hear the screams of the dead in the shrieking wheels of a passing trader’s cart. There was a damp cold here that seemed to reach into his soul. Death clung to this place.
Red light bathed him as their torusk emerged once more under the evening sky. Rows of kneeling men carved in stone lined the avenue now. Most were shattered to rubble, but those that remained intact seemed to bow toward them in homage. Beyond them, a field of ruins stretched back toward the broken outer wall. Grasses and brush choked the fallen structures. Yet even through the obscuring weeds and rubble, now and then, Galen glimpsed the delicate art of a craftsman now centuries dead.
The ancient streets of Mithanlas were sliding past with every long, deliberate step of the torusk caravan, yet Maddoc’s words summoned a different vision into Galen’s mind. Galen could almost hear the thronging people fleeing back in panic among those labyrinthine roads and see the ancient architecture standing for one last moment before it fell to the dragons’ onslaught.
“The ramparts were of no avail. The dragons would not be denied. For three days they clawed at the wall . . . them and the army they led. In the end the second circle was breached . . . just there”—Maddoc jabbed his finger forward—“and the armies streamed into the open streets beyond.”
Galen shook himself, trying to pull free of the images that Maddoc’s words were calling into his mind. He tried to concentrate on the here and now—on the ramshackle shops and buildings that were encroaching on the devastation of the ruins. The new construction was a sprawling chaos of immediate need, designed for no purpose higher than the next sale, profit, or meal.
“They were the ‘Dragon-Talkers,’ the People of the Dragon as they fashioned themselves, and before them the guardians fell back in panic to the towers of the Seventh Circle. It was too late . . . the city was lost and with it all the ancient ways.” A tear coursed down Maddoc’s cheek. “Mithanlas . . . the Beautiful.”
Galen turned to follow Maddoc’s weepy gaz
e. Down the straight avenue, past the ramshackle buildings and the never-ending torusk caravan, he could now make out the inner wall of the Seventh Circle. Nine towers—towers that he had thought of only as legends when he was growing up—rose shining in the setting sunlight, with a single great tower of the Temple dwarfing them all. They were the glory of the ancient city, captured intact in the siege four centuries before.
“One among the Dragonkings claimed it as his spoils. From that day it became the place from which he ruled. The ‘Pir’—the people—became his subjects, and from that time he has ruled from this place of shame and death.”
“Vasskhold!” Galen breathed, shaken to his soul.
Even as he spoke the word, a great shadow crossed the sun behind him.
Galen looked up . . . and was shattered.
The leathery wings were a reddish blackness against the red-orange brightness of the clouds. They scooped the air in long, sweeping arcs, pulling the huge mass of the creature through the air in pulsing thrusts. It was impossible to tell the size of the behemoth at first, for there was nothing near enough by which to gauge its distance. Yet its wings must have spanned over a hundred feet, judging by the dust from the street and ruins that each downward thrust whirled into the air. The barbed tail was fanned out in its flight, trailing the creature’s body in undulating waves. Its shadow rippled across the ruins of the city.
“Vasska!” Maddoc yelled, shaking his fist at the creature as it passed overhead. “Damn you!”
Instinctively, Galen fell back against the cage. It was Vasska, the holy center of his religion—the dreaded and terrible Dragonking of Hrunard—and the god of his world. The words of the Pir monks had suddenly been made flesh before his eyes.
Galen was too awestruck to speak, too terrified to scream, and too astonished to look away.
Vasska took no notice of such small attentions. The immense dragon soared over the city, pulling itself into a wheeling turn around the central Temple tower. Its horned and bristling head craned around, inspecting the Temple. The spiral of its flight tightened and it rushed upward, its great clawed appendages extended toward the mounts at the top of the Temple tower. There, after a furious beating of its leathery wings, Vasska perched in the failing light of day, surveying the prize city below as it had through countless sunsets for nearly four centuries.
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