The robed figure then stood alone beneath the great smoke-dragon. Its momentary arms drifted upward as though reaching for the beast. The dragon figure, looming above, suddenly collapsed downward, its smoke twisting around the robed figure and dissipating completely at its feet.
Vasska, still shrouded in the darkness below, snorted.
Tragget suddenly realized he was shaking.
“The smoke of dragons never lies,” Edana said simply and quietly.
The dark mass below them slowly unwound from its curled position. Great leathery wings stretched upward into the red light. Tragget could see the scarred holes from past battles sharply illuminated. Higher and higher they rose until Tragget felt sure they would fall forward and crush him.
Then, with agonizing slowness, the long neck craned up into the light. The spiked head of the dragon shook over them. As its mouth yawned wide, Tragget knew that he had been mistaken: Vasska’s maw was much larger than the antechamber cavern.
The Inquisitor could not move.
The dragon twisted its head downward. Its wings beat twice to steady it, whipping a sudden gale across the area of the throne.
Tragget blinked against the sudden storm of dust.
The dragon spoke as quietly as it could, but the cavern shook under its voice.
The sounds were so foreign to human ears that it took training just to recognize them as a form of speech. The sound was not conveyed just from the voice box of the dragon but also from the sounds it made by shifting its scales, the peculiar clacking of its claws, the sucking or blowing sounds of liquid pressed between the tongue and the palate.
Yet it was not just the challenge of the horrific sounds of the dragon speech that made communication so difficult, as only the Dragon-Talkers knew.
Dragons thought in completely different terms than humans. Many of the preoccupations of humanity—life, death, love, and wealth—were completely unfathomable to dragonkind. So different were their lines of thought and reasoning that neither dragons nor humans considered the other to actually be thinking creatures at all—until the Dragon-Talkers found their common ground.
Dragons understood greed, power, survival, and pride.
“Edana! Portend dreamsmoke Vasska now wager Satinka outcome future query?”
The wager! Tragget had understood! Vasska wanted to know about the outcome of his bet with Satinka, the dragon-queen from the west. It was their wager that was to be decided next. The loser would be forced to mate. As dragons only mate when driven to do so, it seemed only reasonable that Vasska would be curious about the outcome.
Edana stood up from the throne; she spoke with difficulty. The human voice box is a remarkable instrument, but some of the sounds were physically beyond her race. Still, she was well practiced, and Vasska had long ago gotten used to her terrible accent.
“Vasska Lord! Portend dreamsmoke tell I. Sighting flight dragons two!” Edana rasped. “Sky single. Field wet-red blood human Conquest Vasska blinded bright . . . dragon Satinka humbled low blinded bright.”
Tragget’s eyes widened. He understood Edana’s words all too well.
Vasska was a Dragonking, descended from the sky, and a creator of the world.
The High Priestess was lying to their god.
18
Demons
The sound of the doors closing behind them was still echoing through the upper gallery when, at last, Tragget spoke. “You lied,” he said simply.
He had kept silent all through Edana’s voluminous recitation of visions and portents to the dragon towering before them. None of it had anything to do with what he had witnessed in the dreamsmoke. When the towering creature seemed at last satisfied with Edana’s depiction, it had settled back down into the darkness. Edana had then turned and gestured for the young Inquisitor to follow. He had maintained his silence during their entire traverse of the cavern, the ride back up in the wicker lift, and throughout their long walk past the naves and into the ceremonial hall.
Now, entering the upper galleries of the Temple and the private domain of the High Priestess, he spoke.
“You lied . . . to the maker of worlds?”
“I most certainly did not.” Edana spoke with mock petulance, amused by the young man’s concern. She turned, walking with confidence down the hall. She assumed the sharp and easy manner of a cat playing with a mouse it has just caught. “I told Vasska a true vision. Indeed, it was a vision interpretation from just the other day. I just did not tell him about this particular vision, is all.”
Tragget followed her, their footfalls echoing across the polished floors, rattling between the long sequences of arched alcoves running down into the distance. The ornate stonework in the frieze carved into the ceiling looked down on them with seeming interest. Tragget almost thought the eyes of the figures were following them down the hall, and not for the first time. Perhaps it was just the nearness of the Aboths that almost certainly were hovering nearby, unseen and unheard. They saw everything. They heard everything.
Tragget’s hands quivered under the long sleeves of his robes as he quietly spoke once more. “But the vision . . . I saw it . . . you saw it . . .”
“Yes, of course I saw it, Tragget!” Edana snapped as they neared the end of the hall. “Master your nerves, will you? You are the Lord Inquisitor of the Pir, not some simpering pilgrim whelp. It’s about time you learned something about your position in the world and the responsibilities that go with it!”
“Yes, Our Lady,” Tragget said quietly. Yet his hands still shook when he reached out to open the large door at the end of the hall.
Edana eyed him critically as he stood holding the door for her, and then she stepped through. Tragget followed, carefully closing the door behind them both.
The sitting room was spacious and ornately decorated. The coffered ceiling overhead was ornamented by a beautiful fresco of the sky. A large fireplace filled nearly the entire opposite wall. The other doorways led to Edana’s private quarters.
Most of the pieces about the room were antique Mithanlas furnishings that had somehow found their way into the High Priestess’s private collection. Here and there, however, were things from more distant lands beyond the boundaries of Hrunard: a dwarven helm said to come from the mountains beyond the west, a pair of ancient, shining tapestries from the south beyond the Desolation, and three charts looted from a derelict Indraholm corsair depicting the coasts of lands that not even the knowledge of all the captains of the Pir merchant fleets could place. Each of these unexplained items Edana had shown to Tragget on countless occasions, telling him how she had come by them and speculating for hours on their meaning and the lands from which they had come. The pieces both frightened and fascinated Tragget, for they spoke of a world beyond the boundaries that caged his life. He longed for the freedom they represented, and feared it even more.
“Sit down, Tragget,” Edana said, gesturing to a large chair opposite her own as she seated herself before the fire. “It is time that you exercised your office.”
“I have always done so, Lady, in whatever task or calling the Pir have required,” Tragget responded as he sat.
“But never in an office with so great a capacity. Never with so much required of you, I think,” Edana returned. She gazed into the fire next to them, its flames reflected in her eyes as she spoke. “I have met with the Pentach Conclave. They have a question which, I believe, you alone can answer for us.”
“The Pentach convened? Why was I not informed?”
“We did not wish to attract attention to ourselves.” Edana shook her head. “Five Dragon-Talkers, each one the voice for a different dragon, all getting together at once? No one knew; especially not the dragons.”
Tragget leaned forward in his chair. “The Pentach has not seen fit to convene since the Council of Harquan. That was over three hundred years ago. Why now?”
Edana turned back to him, her eyes flickering with the firelight. “You know something of the history of the Festival, do you not
?”
Tragget sat up, stiffening in his chair. “Somewhat . . . yes. It is our oldest custom, as old as the Pir itself, I believe.”
“Quite right,” Edana replied, settling back into her own chair. Her elbows lay on the armrests, her hands folded together with the index fingers pressed against each other as though pointing toward the focus of her thought. “The records of that time are fragmentary at best. The land was a chaos of death and anarchy in that time. The five divisions of Hramra—Hrunard, Enlund, Bayway, Dragonisle, and the Forsaken Mountains—these were not settled by the Pentach until the hundred and seventeenth year of the Dragonkings.”
Tragget shrugged. “The Pentach itself did not exist until the fifty-seventh year by any reckoning.”
“Precisely!” Edana emphasized the word by tipping her pressed index fingers toward the Inquisitor. “And yet the Festival, the Election of the Chosen, predates all of these events. Some of the earliest records we have are conflicting and fragmentary. The Election itself was a crude and cruel process, but in the end it was the same. The dragons were honored by it, the price was paid, and peace was purchased for the land for another season.”
“That is the natural order of things. It is how we honor the Dragonkings.” Tragget was sweating now. He could not understand where Edana was going with this line of reasoning.
“Yes, a perfect balance of harmony and peace. Down the centuries we have simply counted its costs, paid its price, and reaped its reward. Each of the Pir from under the five Dragonkings has kept careful records since the Council of Harquan. Each of us has come to the same conclusion. Since our records began, the number of the Elect has increased each year. Since four fifty-three, the number of the Elect has increased at an even greater rate. The price has been going up and it is getting steeper each year. The reasons for the ceremony were lost to us, but the process specifically elected those who suffered from the madness. Why the Election of the Mad at all?”
“I still don’t see what this has to do with the office of the Inquisitor,” Tragget said flatly. “It seems to me the easiest way to deal will all of this would be to ask Vasska yourself. You are the Dragon-Talker, after all. Vasska was there.”
Edana chuckled. “A direct, if inelegant, solution. Pir Oskaj, Talker for Satinka, actually did forward that same proposal to the Pentach. We each asked.”
“And?” Tragget prompted.
“And we each were told the same thing: ‘The mad kings must die.’ Nothing else. Just ‘the mad kings must die.’ No dragon would give any further information on the Election or answer any questions pertaining to it beyond that simple response.”
“Then,” Tragget said, still puzzled, “I suppose ‘the mad kings must die.’”
Edana nodded. “Yes, I suppose they must. Yet always I have wondered . . . why? What do the Dragonkings have to fear from a few madmen?” She suddenly looked straight into Tragget’s eyes. “What do the Dragonkings have to fear from a few madmen?”
Tragget did not answer.
Edana looked up at the ceiling and continued. “That is what the Pentach wants you to find out.”
“What?” Tragget blurted out.
“If the dragons will not tell us why they fear the madmen, then perhaps the madmen can. The Pentach wish you to study the madness—find out what it is about these madmen that the dragons fear.”
Tragget stood up, the color draining from his face. “You c-cannot be s-serious! This is . . . is b-blasphemy! To have the madness is a s-sin against Vasska and the Pir!”
“Your emotional outbursts are becoming tiresome, boy!” Edana’s eyes narrowed as she spoke. “You presume to lecture me—High Priestess of the Pir Vasska—on the nature of sin?”
Tragget breathed heavily, struggling to control himself. “Your Grace, do not ask this of me! I find the m-madness repulsive and vile! I am not well suited for this task at all!”
“Sit down, boy.”
“But, p-please, Your Grace, I—”
“I said sit down!”
Tragget dropped at once onto the chair. He faced Edana but his eyes were focused far away.
Edana reached forward, grasped Tragget’s jaw. “Look at me, boy! Now!”
Tragget set his teeth and focused his eyes on the face before him.
“I’ve done all this for you, son. It has taken years.” Her hand closed tighter around his jaw. Her grip was surprisingly powerful. She pulled his face forward as she spoke. “I will not have the entire glory of Hrunard taken away from us because a gutless, whimpering son does not have the courage or vision to see his own destiny!”
“Mother! I’ve done everything you’ve—”
“You’ve done! You’re a child of fate, Tragget! Your future was written in the dragonsmoke before you were born! I saw you there before you were in my womb, child! I knew your greatness then. I nurtured you, saw you raised by the Pir Nobis from your youth. I kept your parentage secret for your own protection. I brought you to your position over the opposition of the Aboths and the Kardis order. I have done all this for us both and I will not have you toss it all aside because you are too pathetic to face your destiny!”
Edana’s grip was powerful. The pain shot up from his jaw into his temples.
“I have seen it!” Edana sneered, her stare burning down into Tragget’s watery eyes. “I’ve shown it to you just as it was shown to me! Do you think you have found this fool which the smoke has portended or not?”
Tragget was on his knees before Edana. Tears spilled over his cheeks from her crushing grip. He nodded as best he could within her grasp.
“Then you will find out why the dragons fear him. You will discover the power that the madness holds. You will wrest this power from his beating heart and master it, do you understand me!”
Tragget closed his eyes against the pain, pressing the tears from his eyes. He nodded once more.
Edana suddenly released him.
And stroked Tragget lightly on the cheek.
“That’s a good boy,” she said sweetly, her entire demeanor changing within a blink of the eye. “I knew that I could count on you to do the right thing, Inquisitor.”
“Y-your servant,” Tragget breathed a shuddering of air through his aching jaw.
“Ah, you look tired, Tragget.” Edana looked down on him, a concerned face framed around two chill eyes. “Your journey has been a long one, no doubt.”
“Yes . . . yes it has,” Tragget said, staggering to his feet. “My apologies, Our Lady, I am indeed fatigued.”
Edana stood up, taking him by the arm. “Then come, let me see you safely to your rest.”
Tragget only nodded. He knew the way well, though few others breathed who knew it also. They walked arm in arm through the northern door and into back hall storage. It was, in a way, comforting to him. The secret latch mechanism and the counterweighted stone door were friends from his distant childhood. The thin corridor led to the rooms of his youth. It was here that Edana had passed the days of her confinement, unknown to anyone. It was here that he was born. It was here that he had lived his secret life. The rooms were dark and dusty now, as forgotten as the days he had spent there. Down another corridor they walked and through another hidden door to his apprentice rooms, now reclaimed by him as the apartments of the Grand Inquisitor.
“Thank you, Revered Mother,” he said as he stood next to the bed. “I . . . I just need a little rest.”
“Of course. We’ll speak more of your assignment tomorrow.”
“Very well,” he replied.
Edana nodded, then quite suddenly turned and pushed her way back through the hidden doorway. She closed it carefully behind her.
Tragget stared at what suddenly had become a blank wall, and then collapsed on the sumptuous bed.
Vasska, what am I to do? he thought to himself. I’m fighting the madness myself and they want me to research it? I’m trying to get rid of the demons and they wish me to invite them in?
He closed his eyes. The sleep was already ove
rcoming him despite his desire to fight it. Already the demons of his sin were dancing around the edges of his mind, threatening to overwhelm him and drag him into their land of flame and darkness. As he drifted off, he could see the Lords of Mithlan, the great mountains behind the city, towering up into a flame-red sky. The mountains were broken, sundered through their peaks with a great cleft. Fire and brimstone gushed from its maw, cascading down into a great plain of molten stone.
Directly before him, at the crest of a hill, lay a great warrior-giant. His armored head alone, lying against the ground nearby, was fully thirty feet in height.
The warrior had been overcome by the demons. The vicious little creatures were dismembering him, dragging off pieces of him for their own dark and terrible purposes. Tragget feared them more than death itself, for he knew that they would take him apart if they could. There was one in particular who seemed to always take an interest in him, a scrawny little demon wearing an oversized cap and a ragged, dirty orange shirt. He could see the little demon climbing out of the fallen warrior’s nose.
Tragget screamed silently in his sleep. He stood in the middle of a great fire. Its searing flames leaped all about him, consuming him, destroying him. All the while, the demons danced frantically in a circle around him.
The madness was getting worse.
19
Mimic
Mimic climbed down from the Titan’s nose, wiped his already filthy sleeve across his own nose, and sat on the rock with a pronounced thud.
Mimic was a goblin—the goblin engineer fourth class in the service of Dong Mahaj-Megong, King of the Goblins. It should have been a wonderfully illustrious and prestigious title, and might have been except for two things: first, there were only four engineers in the service of Dong Mahaj-Megong, and second, there were no fewer than twelve recognized and uncounted unrecognized claimants to the title “King of the Goblins,” each of them less than a hundred miles from his master’s august throne. Mimic decided that these facts tended to put a damper on the majesty of most honored titles.
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