Blood of the Emperor

by Tracy Hickman

  “To whatever end, Urulani?” he asked.

  “To whatever end, Drakis,” she answered, her voice husky as she spoke.

  Then she turned, climbing the dragon’s neck. Urulani pulled on her gloves, Kyranish took two quick strides, and they were off.

  Five dragon-riders took to the sky that day. The Lyric flew to the west to prepare the pilgrims to move once more. Drakis rose above the army, leading them down the coast to return to their families as warriors laden down with the spoils of their victory.

  The remaining three riders flew off on their missions. All three of them were charged with keeping their goals secret. Only one of them had any intention of keeping that promise.

  CHAPTER 10

  Initiatives

  URULANI PEERED DOWN through the low clouds drifting eastward off the Bay of Thetis. She could just make out the coastline far below from her view over the base of the dragon’s wing. It was difficult for her to see through the slits in her new helmet’s faceplate, let alone from such a height.

  She turned her head away from the wind rushing at her over the dragon’s head, which bobbed up and down at the end of its long neck with every stroke of its enormous wings. The whistling of the air suddenly increased in her ears and once again she silently cursed the fact that there had been no time to try out the strange new headpiece she now wore before continuing on the journey they had briefly interrupted by stopping at Willow Vale. She supposed she should be grateful to have even this much protection.

  When their flight from Port Glorious had almost immediately given the dark-skinned raider captain stinging, reddened eyes, Kyranish had suggested the stop at Willow Vale to have a flying helmet made by modifying a warrior’s helmet. Knowing she’d be hard-pressed to complete her mission if she didn’t find some way of shielding her face and eyes, Urulani had agreed. They landed at Willow Vale and she followed the dragon’s instructions, finding an armor smith among the Khadush Clan of manticores and having him fashion the armored headgear as per Kyranish’s description and her own recollection of some similar helmets she had seen among the carvings in the ruins of Drakosia.

  The gnome leather artisans, not to be outdone in their service to the Mistress of Air, declared they would make her a saddle for her dragon so that her flight would be more comfortable. Kyranish endured their enthusiastic fitting process without succumbing to the growing desire to breath fire on them and end his humiliation.

  While the smithies were beating metal and the gnomes were crafting the saddle into these strange new shapes, Urulani had managed to see the Lyric who, it seemed, had declared herself to be Drakis’ mother—a woman she claimed was called Jerusha—and had set the entire camp into a frenzy of preparations for their great migration following the flag of Drakis despite Tsojai Acheran’s efforts to keep the camp calm and organized. Urulani almost sympathized with the elf’s frustration as the temporarily designated head of the Council of the Prophet but decided it would be Drakis’ problem once he arrived.

  She had her own set of problems.

  Now, rushing through the chill air above the Shadow Coast, she wondered just how she might accomplish her portion of the quest in time. The War Council had publicly charged her as Mistress of Air to spread the word of Drakis and to call all who desired their freedom to support Drakis and his people in their cause against the Rhonas Empire. But then Drakis had told each of the riders in their communion of dragons’ minds that he wanted them to avoid open war and find a means by which the Army of Drakis and their families could live in peace and avoid the Legions of the Emperor.

  The more she thought about it, the more the former objective was needed in order to insure the latter. She was most familiar with the lands in which she grew up—the region north of the Sentinel Peaks beyond Tempest Bay. It was remote enough that the Empire had not bothered them there for many long years until Drakis came. But Nothree was far down the Vestasian Coast and her charge had been to secure the cooperation of as many ships as possible from each of the port towns down the Shadow Coast. The most likely place to board those ships for the Drakis Pilgrims would be Watchman Cove on the northernmost shores of Gorganta Bay. It was actually a good deal larger than its name implied and could shelter a large number of ships simultaneously and, due in part to the cliff-guarded entrance to its anchorage, could conceal ships well. It also had the benefit of being the closest serviceable haven off the Bay of Thetis to Willow Vale although even at that it was still some hundred and six leagues from the encampment. Under the best of circumstances that put the encampment almost three weeks away on foot even if they had the supplies to keep them moving forward. It was clear to her that if their army and all the pilgrims were to make it that far, they would need more than just ships. They would need material help from the ports and towns along the Shadow Coast.

  And wasn’t their cooperation exactly what the War Council had asked her to secure?

  Down from the realms of the cold and ice

  Visions of people and ants

  Destiny falling

  Their doom foretelling…

  She turned her head back into the wind. The shrill whistling lessened considerably but now the wind again dragged against her eyes through the faceplate slits. It was better than without the helmet but still troublesome and sometimes difficult to breathe if the dragon rose too high into the sky, something which Kyranish did too often out of habit. It was then that something caught her eye through an opening in the clouds below. She leaned forward in her saddle and laid her hand against the dragon’s neck.

  The clouds instantly vanished from the sky, warm air flowing over her like a breath of peace. The coastline was perfectly clear beneath them.

  Why do the clouds clear from the sky only after I see it with my eyes in the true world? Urulani wondered. The ways of dragons—and of magic, for that matter—were strange to her.

  “It is Shellsea,” Urulani said to Kyranish.

  “What would you have me do, Urulani of Nothree?” Kyranish asked, the dragon’s song replaced by understanding and meaning. “Shall I alight east of the city gates as we did in Blackbay?”

  Urulani shook her head then smiled. It had taken them almost three days to convince the people of Blackbay, up the coast behind them, to let them in the gates let alone to listen to her message. In the four days she had been on her journey, she had only managed to contact Blackbay. The people of that northern port were skeptical at first but the presence of a dragon—which had caused the local militia to abandon their posts after the second day—ultimately impressed them with both her and the legendary Drakis whom she claimed to represent. But now she had only six days left on her quest and a number of ports ahead of her. Urulani had been considering a different tactic and was anxious to test it. “No, my friend. I think we might try something different this time.”

  The dragon’s head actually craned around in the wind to look at her as it flew on. “What will you have me do?”

  “Do you see that large market square that opens onto the quays?” Urulani said, as the dragon soared around the town far below. She could see that the sight of them had already attracted considerable attention. The distant, tinny sound of an alarm bell drifted into her ears.

  “Yes, Urulani,” the dragon replied.

  “I want you to land there,” she said.

  “Inside the city walls?” Kyranish questioned.

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “And what shall we do when we arrive in the center of this town among all its armed warriors and elven masters?”

  Urulani grinned. “Why nothing, if we can possibly help it.”

  Bells throughout Shellsea pealed madly.

  Gardnephaus Pleu leaned out the window of his Mayor’s Residence to see his town in chaos. He occupied the entire third floor of the Shellsea Ministry; a fitted-stone building which also housed the countinghouse on the main floor and the constabulary on the floor beneath his own. It was one of the tallest buildings in Shellsea, situated on a slight ris
e that allowed him an extraordinary view over the large market square and the harbor quays beyond. Normally the sight filled the fat goblin with inordinate pride that he, coming from such a lowly clan as Pleu, had managed to rise to the exalted position of Mayor and Harbor Master of Shellsea. It was as high a position as one might aspire to in the protected harbor town without actually being an elf.

  It was this last limiting condition which Mayor Pleu had long been harboring some resentment over for his ambitions were much larger than those his Imperial masters seemed to permit him. Still, until he could conceive of a way to be rid of the elven garrison in the town and their fat Legion commandant, he would have to remain content with his title and put aside the grander ambitions which he dreamed of both day and night.

  Now, however, the world outside his window had quite unexpectedly turned upside down. The goblins, gnomes, and even a number of chimerians and manticores were running madly about the marketplace while the warning bells tolled incessantly. Several crews at the quays beyond were scrambling aboard their ships—the square-sailed manticorian traders and a few triangle-sailed goblin ships—struggling to rig their vessels for sea. Several cut themselves clear of their moorings before their rigging was properly set, which resulted in a pair of smaller ships drifting up onto the southern beach and several more running into each other in the confusion.

  The Mayor recognized one of his staff scampering about in the square below him.

  “Kubis!” the Mayor called down from the window. “Kubis! What in the Dark God’s name is going on?”

  Kubis, a goblin master accountant with whom the Mayor had been working for years looked up and then simply pointed toward the sky.

  A shadow passed over the Mayor as it rolled across the square below.

  The Mayor looked up…and froze.

  It was an unmistakable shape straight out of legend. The enormous leathery wingspan seemed to cover the entire inner township, stretching from city wall to city wall. Its large, horn-spiked head roared above the noise of the bells. Talons from its hind claws reached out, gripping a spire from the adjacent Chapel of Aquis Delve and pushing off it as it passed. The spire swayed dangerously but managed to remain upright. As the Mayor watched, the impossible monster rose, carried upward on the breeze from the sea and then wheeled back toward the town.

  Toward the Mayor.

  Gardnephaus Pleu’s eyes opened wide as he ducked down behind his windowsill. He both felt and heard a terrible crashing sound from the marketplace below accompanied by the loud rustle of leather. Then a terrible quiet descended, broken only by occasional shrieks and the distant sobs of hysterical weeping.

  The iron-banded door on the opposite side of the Mayor’s office suddenly opened.

  “Lord Mayor!” squeaked a goblin wearing a wide, golden ceremonial sash.

  “Giblik, shut up and get down!” the Mayor whispered hoarsely. Giblik was his political adviser and liaison with the elf garrison commander. The appointment not only provided for a good living for his brother-in-law but meant that Gardnephaus did not have to deal directly with the Imperial occupiers of his town any more than was absolutely necessary.

  “Giblik, you have to alert the garrison!” the Mayor grumbled. His voice sounded far too loud in the sudden quiet outside.

  “They already know,” Giblik replied. “They said something about regrouping to consider—then they left.”

  “Left?” the Mayor snapped then, suddenly aware of his own noise, lowered his voice to continue. “Left for where?”

  “I don’t know,” Giblik replied. “Out…away. They opened up their fold portals with their Proxis and vanished outside the walls.”

  “So there is something that the mighty Rhonas elves are afraid of, eh?” Mayor Pleu considered with a sharp-toothed grin. His long, pointed ears began to quiver as he considered. “Get over here!”

  Giblik scampered across the room on all fours, then came to sit next to the Mayor beneath the window.

  “What’s the dragon doing now?”

  “I don’t know, Mayor,” Giblik replied. “I can’t see from here.”

  “Well, then stand up and take a look!”

  Giblik’s face fell. “As your adviser I think I should tell you…”

  A voice, deep yet feminine, drifted in through the window from the marketplace below. “Where is the master of this town?”

  Giblik and Gardnephaus looked at each other.

  “I believe they want to speak to you, Mayor,” Giblik offered quickly.

  “They don’t have an appointment,” Mayor Pleu stammered.

  “Do they need one?” Giblik asked back.

  Gardnephaus’ eyes narrowed. “Giblik, stand up and tell me what is going on in the square! Now!”

  The goblin quivered but stood up partway, crouching down so that his eyes barely cleared the windowsill.

  “Well?” Gardnephaus demanded.

  “Well, it’s…it’s not doing anything,” the goblin reported. “I mean, it is a gargantuan, terrifying dragon in the marketplace but it’s just sitting there. There’s a dark-skinned human woman standing in front of it who keeps calling out to speak to the leader of the town.”

  The Mayor raised his thin eyebrows. “Do you see anything else?”

  “No…nothing moving,” Giblik reported. “I think they’re all too frightened to move.”

  The distant woman’s voice drifted upward again. “I come with news of Drakis and his Army of the Prophet. I come to bargain in his name.”

  Giblik looked suddenly at the Mayor. “Drakis? I thought those were just rumors!”

  “That dragon in our marketplace is a rather persuasive rumor,” the Mayor said, rising slowly to his own feet. “You say the elves have fled outside the walls?”

  “Yes, Lord Mayor,” Giblik answered.

  “Then I think I should like to hear from this human woman what this rumor wants,” the Mayor smiled. “In the meantime, I have a task for you.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Giblik asked in fearful tones.

  “I want you to round up the constabulary—as many as you can convince to come out from wherever they are hiding,” the Mayor said, adjusting his own tunic and silver sash. “You know those marks I showed you that the elven Proxis make?”

  “The ones that anchor their transportation folds?” Giblik said.

  “Yes,” the Mayor replied as he moved toward the door leading out of his office and to the stairs that would take him into the square. “I want you and the constabulary to find every single one of those on the city wall and in the elf garrison compound. Then I want you to chisel them out flat. Once that’s done close the gates.”

  “You mean to lock the elves out?” Giblik said with a wicked grin.

  “We have both done well for ourselves being realistic about the elven occupation,” the Mayor said with a nod. “But I think now there is more opportunity for us in this legend.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Hammer’s Fall

  JUGAR WAS SICK to his stomach.

  Dwarves loved the ground. They reveled in the solid feel of it beneath their feet. They felt comfort in its solid mass above their heads in their underground cities. Their hands took comfort in its touch.

  Dwarves were made to be underground…not above it.

  Yet despite the lurching protest of his bowels, Jugar flew on as though Dratjak, God of the Dead, were flying at his heels. Though he continued to apologize from time to time to Pyrash, the cerulean-blue dragon on which he rode, for the vomit that now streaked down one side of the monster’s neck and to which he still occasionally added, Jugar nevertheless pressed on to the southwest over the skies of Vestasia. The savanna stretched all around him, its chaos of plains grasses, winding rivers, copses of trees, and the occasional Hak’kaarin mud dome city drifting far beneath him in a seemingly unending procession. When he could rally himself, he had to marvel at the distance it all represented. They had spent weeks crossing these plains in their journey northward from t
he borders of that presumptuous Queen Murialis’ realm that brought them to the Forgotten Humans beyond the Sentinel Peaks…and then Drakis changed everything.

  Jugar was not a human and so the dragon song did not come into his mind as they traveled together. The dwarf could communicate with his dragon through touch like the humans and could thereby be magically sent to whatever hideous otherworld place the dragons lived in in their minds. Drakis called it “communion”—a communication and a connection with the dragons—but Jugar found it unnerving. He was always afraid that he was “communing” more than just his spoken words to the dragon and, above all else, it was his true intentions that he needed to keep to himself. He could not afford for things to go wrong now; not with so much at stake.

  And it had all been going so well, Jugar reflected. Not according to plan, of course, because no plan ever survives first contact with reality. That’s why great leaders must remain flexible, open to opportunity when it presents itself and then have the will, strength, and vision to seize the advantage when it arrives.

  And if there was anything that Jugar excelled at, it was seizing an advantage. He believed he could pull victory itself from between a dragon’s teeth and had proved it more than once—perhaps even literally, he thought, smiling to himself wanly.

  Pyrash craned his neck around, looking dolefully at the dwarf clinging to the harness Jugar had fashioned to secure himself to the dragon’s back. Jugar knew that look and reached forward with his thick hand, laying it against the dragon’s neck.

  The sky turned suddenly into night in an instant. Stars shone overhead.

  Jugar’s stomach lurched once more.

  “Dwarf Jugar,” Pyrash’s voice came to him. “You are not well. We have traveled far and you need rest.”

  Jugar raised his head. Beneath the star-filled false sky he could make out the razor-edged peaks of the Aeria Mountain Range to the south. There had been a time not two weeks before when he had despaired of ever seeing those formidable, glorious formations again. Now he could see them clearly from the strange, unreality of the dragon’s otherworld. Teylon, Hoglithe, Karak, Dugun, Madrikath, Heparion and Aradak…he could name the sharp, snow-capped peaks as they thrust into the starry sky. Each called him on despite the distress in the pit of his stomach, beckoning him back to the halls of his ancestors.