Song of the Dragon Read online

  “What?” Ch’drei’s outburst threatened to overwhelm the noise of the enormous fountain behind her.

  “Rather interesting, isn’t it? An entire living forest bent on the destruction of anyone invading its territory, and these seven bolters from an obscure and apparently unimportant elven House pass the faery line without so much as a hair out of place. It rather begs the question of why these particular seven are the exception to Queen Murialis’ standing decree to kill all invaders first and then ask who they were later.”

  Ch’drei leaned forward on her throne. “You think Murialis is assisting them?”

  “Certainly. Why else would they have survived the border crossing unless on her express instructions.” Soen stepped in front of the throne and dropped down on the stones of the floor, crossing his legs under him as he sat facing the Keeper. “As for why Murialis would do such a thing—that part remains hidden to me. Murialis knows that harboring bolters would provide the Emperor with the very excuse he needs to declare open war on the faerylands—and she knows that he’s looking for any such excuse now that the war with the dwarves is finished. The fact that she allows them to live means that she is aiding them somehow though she won’t publicly admit to it. But suppose that rumors began circulating around the Imperial Houses that Murialis is not only harboring dangerous fugitives but even hinting that they may have been acting under her orders to destroy an elven House on the frontier ? Were I Murialis in such a circumstance, I would be under increasing pressure to push these trouble-plagued bolters out of my kingdom as soon as possible. Murialis won’t risk open confrontation; neutrality has worked too well for her thus far.”

  “So you want me to foment a war?”

  “Just beat the drums loudly enough so that Murialis is uncomfortable.”

  Ch’drei nodded slowly. “I think I can manage that . . . but why bother? Seven slaves escaping into the Murialis Woods are hardly . . .”

  “The reason to bother is, in fact, my second truth,” Soen said, straightening his back. “You no doubt have the reports of our discoveries at House Timuran.”

  “Yes,” Ch’drei nodded, her face thoughtful. “Great tragedy, that. Never happened officially, of course, but the explosive collapse of the Aether Well is still of considerable private concern—especially to the Occuran.”

  “You know, then, that one of the bolters is a human male by the name of Drakis?”

  “Yes . . . what of it?”

  “The second truth I have discovered is that this human named Drakis also hears the Dragon Song.”

  Ch’drei looked up in disgust. “Oh, by all the gods! Do you actually believe this human to be the fulfillment of the Desolation Prophecies?”

  “Of course not . . . what kind of a fool do you take me for?” Soen snapped, his voice echoing off the walls of the domed chamber. The Inquisitor stood up quickly and moved closer to the Keeper. “One out of every ten human males of the Seventh Estate hear that same song in their heads—and since the humans still teach that prophecy to their young before they’re impressed for Devotions, it seems hard to find a male child who hasn’t been named ‘Drakis’ by their sires. Those prophecies are nothing but the cooling embers of a dead faith.”

  Soen’s hand reached out, grasping the arm of the Keeper’s throne and pulling him closer to her. “He may not be the Lost King come to destroy Rhonas and bring honor back to humanity . . . but he could be the one or, worse, mistaken for the one. We’ve got to find him before any of the ministries do . . . before the Legions and their generals . . . before the Emperor or any of his minions have any idea of his existence. We are the Keepers of Truth, Ch’drei, and this is one truth we would want within our control.”

  “You think he might be useful to us,” Ch’drei nodded, her voice barely audible over the rushing waters behind her.

  “He doesn’t have to be the One,” Soen smiled, his sharp teeth showing. “But in the right place he could pass for the One. He did cause the Aether Wells of nearly every House in the Western Provinces to fail—think of it, Ch’drei! To fail! The Well of House Timuran utterly destroyed: a feat beyond even the Grand Wizard of the Occuran, and yet this Drakis did it. In the wrong hands he could threaten the foundations of the Empire.”

  “And in the right hands.” Ch’drei asked.

  “In the right hands,” Soen replied, “the Empire might still fall—but in a direction that could be to the right people’s advantage.”

  “You propose a most dangerous game, my Inquisitor.”

  “But it is my game, Keeper,” he replied, his lips parting into a wide smile revealing his pointed teeth. “The stakes are high—perhaps none higher—and yet in the end you know that you risk nothing at all.”

  Ch’drei nodded slowly and smiled back through her translucent, needlelike teeth. “I always liked you. I’d hate to have you killed.”

  “It might prove a difficult task to carry out, my Keeper,” Soen nodded. “It’s been tried before.”

  “Stay with the subject at hand,” she snapped. “All of this might have proved useful . . . if you actually had this Drakis slave,” Ch’drei pointed out, her long fingers uncurling into an open palm. “But as you have already said, this bolter is a guest of the vast kingdom of Murialis. Even if we flush this bird out of the forest, he could reappear anywhere along a thousand leagues of Murialis’ border . . . back into Hyperia, Aeria, Chronasis . . .”

  “This Drakis is currently about seventy-three leagues inside the border of Murialis,” Soen said, standing upright and folding his arms across his chest.

  Keeper Ch’drei eyed Soen in astonishment, momentarily unable to speak.

  “And he will emerge in Vestasia to the north,” Soen finished with a smirk.

  “Are you a wizard, Soen,” Ch’drei frowned.

  “You can believe that if you wish, my Keeper,” Soen said, reaching into the folds of his robe. “But the source of my knowledge is more mundane—and it is my third truth that I have brought to you.”

  He pulled out his fist, opening the fingers into a loose bowl. Cupped in his fingers were five round stones, each entwined with twigs or blades of grass.

  “Beacon stones!” Ch’drei sighed in wonder.

  “I found the first of them before the fold gate near the Timuran ruin,” Soen said, his eyes wandering lovingly over the stones in his hand. “Once found, it was a simple matter to align my staff to their Aether emanations and follow them—and other signs—through each successive gate.”

  “The gods favor you, Soen,” Ch’drei chuckled.

  “If so, they did not see fit to favor me with the lives of Qinsei and Phang,” Soen replied, closing his fist around the small stones.

  “Do you think the other bolters know?” Ch’drei asked, her question merely curiosity.

  “That they have a traitor among them who is giving away their every move to us?” Soen pondered for a moment. “No, this is a truth that is known to only three of us . . . you, myself . . . and the wretched creature that will deliver these slaves into my . . . forgive me, Keeper . . . our hands.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Pretending

  DRAKIS AWOKE WITH A START, sitting upright so quickly that he felt three vertebrae in his back crack back into place. He drew in a great gulp of air and then held it for a moment, his eyes blinking as he tried to make sense of his surroundings.

  The walls of the circular space were a dark, rich brown color. The curve of their surface showed slick and glistening in the thin light that spilled down through a woven grating that capped the room ten feet or so above his head.

  At length he let out his breath and stretched slowly. Every muscle in his body felt stiff and aching. It was to him as though he had slept for a thousand years, and yet he still longed for the bliss of unconsciousness. He rubbed his hand quickly over the bristles of his emerging hair and was surprised at how long it had gotten.

  How long have I been in here? he wondered. For a while, he fingered the matted animal furs under him.
He remembered running into the woods. Then something about Mala finding him . . . leading him somewhere . . .

  He frowned at the thought of her, his mind tumbling through a cascade of memories. He loved her—had to love her—and yet the things he had done to her, had suffered because of her were shameful, painful, and unforgivable . . .

  A small, quivering voice cut through his dark musings.

  “Drakis?”

  He turned at once toward the sound. He sat on a slab of stone about the size of the tombs where the bones of the Rhonas dead were so often placed. There were two more of these slabs set around the floor of the curved room, but only one of them was likewise occupied.

  “Mala,” he replied as evenly as he could manage. “I’m here.”

  Mala sat with her legs pulled up tight against her chest as she rocked nervously back and forth. “Please, Drakis. Is it you?”

  Drakis smiled ruefully, gripping the edge of the stone bier with his hands as he leaned forward. “I might ask the same of you. Are you all right?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.” She raised her face toward the light. Her eyes were red from crying and still filled with tears. The beautiful shape of her head was now covered with a bristle of rust red hair, nearly obscuring the dark stains of the House tattoo. But there was something in the heart-shape of her dirt-streaked face and her wide mouth that called to his heart. And her eyes . . . those emerald eyes . . . called to him still.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  “I . . . I don’t know that either,” she said, her voice quavering. “I’m frightened.”

  “There’s nothing to be frightened about . . .”

  “Have you seen the walls?”

  Drakis turned his head around, pressing it closer to the reddish brown surface. “I don’t see what . . .”

  He stopped.

  The wall was composed entirely of enormous cockroaches. Their legs were linked together, forming a thick pattern so dense that it was impossible for Drakis to tell if there was anything beyond the mass of roaches or whether they alone formed the wall. He reached out gingerly to touch it.

  “No, Drakis! Don’t . . .”

  The wall of roaches reacted at once to his touch, a clattering, chattering sound engulfing the cell as the walls around them contracted inward in a violent spasm. Drakis leaped off of the stone slab with a yelp, reaching without conscious thought for his weapon and only then realizing that it was no longer at his side.

  Mala screamed hysterically, pulling herself into a tighter ball as the size of their confined space grew rapidly smaller.

  Then, with equal swiftness, the surrounding cockroach wall stopped and receded, though, to Drakis’ eyes, not quite so far back as it had been before.

  Drakis concentrated on bringing himself under control. His breath was too quick, and he could feel the heat of his flushed face. He had no idea where they were nor how they had gotten here, but he was certain that anywhere else would be better for them. At once he turned his face toward the overhead grating and was again surprised. What had appeared to him to be a thick grillwork he now saw was constituted entirely of large snakes, their bodies woven to cover the opening. He could not discern much of anything in the light beyond the snakes, but he held little hope it was much better than where they were now.

  Drakis looked down at the soft, fine-grained floor under his feet. Various skulls protruded from the deep white grains along the wall’s peripheral base; the sand was composed of crushed bone.

  “It will be all right,” Drakis said, as much to himself as to Mala.

  “How will . . . will this possibly . . . be all right?” Mala asked through gulping sobs.

  Drakis turned. He longed to go to Mala, to take her in his arms and comfort her. He took a step toward her, and then he stopped and stood awkwardly in midstride, watching her.

  She gazed at him, her tear-filled eyes narrowing on him, reflecting a world of pain, longing, hatred, hope, and despair. When she spoke, her words were more of an accusation than a question. “You remember, don’t you?”

  Drakis heard his own quickened breaths in his ears. His mouth had suddenly gone dry, and he was having trouble looking her in the eye. “Yes, Mala. I remember . . . I remember a great many things now . . . we all do . . .”

  Her lips parted in contempt.

  Drakis let out a harsh breath. “But, yes, I remember.”

  “How could you, Drakis,” her voice shook as she spoke. “How could you do that to me? The servants who brought me to Shebin’s rooms scorned me and tore at my clothes . . . all the while screeching that my hoo-mani body was too ugly to tempt them . . . and then they forced me to watch you . . . you . . . and that hideous, soulless elf bitch . . .”

  Her voice trailed off to nothing.

  Only now did he remember it all—how he had spurned Tsi-Shebin the day before because of his love of the garden slave called Mala and how her vengeance had taken its own cold course. So she had changed his Devotions that night to include erasing his memory of the woman he so tenderly loved so that she could arrange her horrific and unforgivable humiliation.

  It was not the first time, Drakis knew, that Tsi-Shebin had played cruelly with him or with those he dared love other than her.

  He shook with revulsion, feeling the urge to vomit and all the while knowing that it was he alone who made him sick . . . that it was himself whom he hated the most. Drakis was filled with unspeakable shame over what had happened and what he had done.

  Yet his other memories of Mala persisted at the same time: of their yearning to touch softly through the bars that separated them, of the quiet talks they stole, and the warm smiles they shared.

  He looked again into those emerald eyes and saw his own loathing and longing reflected back.

  “Mala,” he said quietly at last. “I am so terribly sorry—more sorry than I think there are words to tell. I wish there were a way that I could take it all back or change it all. I even sometimes wish that I could just forget it all and go back to being ignorant and happy.”

  Mala gave a short laugh, wiping her eyes against the soiled cloth covering her knees. “I’d settle for ignorant.”

  Drakis smiled slightly and nodded. “Well, if all you’re looking for is ignorant, then here I am.”

  Mala gazed at him again, her face serious. “Drakis, I don’t know how to forget. I look at you and I see so many different faces now all at the same time. So many of them I hate and so many of them I long for all at once. I can’t make myself forget what I know. I need you, Drakis . . . I don’t understand what is happening to us or where we are going . . . but I need to follow you, be with you and be comforted by you. But every time I see you I also see your other faces, and I just can’t . . .”

  “Maybe,” Drakis said. “Maybe we could just—pretend.”

  Mala looked away from him. “What?”

  “Look, I—I don’t know what happened to us, and we’re all dealing with our own pasts,” Drakis said, taking a step closer.

  Mala tightened her grip around her knees.

  “I know there are a lot of things in my own past that absolutely terrify me,” he went on. “I’ve seen things . . . done things . . . you know that I have . . . that are . . .”

  Drakis ran out of words, unable to express his self-loathing. “Up until now I’ve been able to push all these memories aside. I keep telling myself that I’ve got to take command, I’ve got to be in control and get everyone to safety—and that I’ll think about my unthinkable past later. I haven’t stopped—haven’t really let any of us stop—long enough to deal with our own thoughts and memories. We’ve been running away from ourselves as fast as we could, dreading being caught by our own pasts as much as any Inquisitor the Empire has sent after us. Now we’ve stopped, and we have nowhere left to run from ourselves.”

  Mala turned her gaze back on him once more, her eyes both pleading and reserved.

  Drakis offered his hand out in front of him. “Now all I know is that you are
here . . . and I am here . . . and together we’re stuck in this hole. You need someone to hold you, and I need someone to hold. So if we can’t forgive our pasts or forget them, maybe we can just pretend—for a while at least—that I still love you and you still love me. Let’s pretend that all that happened before was just a bad dream and that all that matters is what’s happening right here and now.”

  Mala did not move.

  “We are who we are,” Drakis said quietly extending his hand once more. “But for today, can we pretend to be those people we were before we remembered?”

  Mala reached out her small, dirty hand slowly, taking his large hand in hers. He climbed up onto the stone bier next to her and slowly, carefully, put his arms around her. She turned into him, leaning against his body and turning her face into his chest.

  He held her there for many hours, doing his best to pretend that she loved him.

  All the while, she shrank from his touch.

  CHAPTER 28

  Eternal Halls

  DRAKIS OPENED HIS EYES to a dream.

  He sat facing walls that were the white of fine marble illuminated by soft balls of light floating in perfect stillness at set distances between narrow, fluted pillars. Carefully shaped trees and plants adorned the octagonal space in hues of green, augmented with brilliant flowers in orange, blue, yellow, and crimson. The pillars drew his eyes up toward a glorious and intricate ceiling twenty feet above him. Clouds drifted past the intricate latticework formed between the arches high overhead.

  Somewhere in the distance, he could hear the soft echoes of musical pipes playing a gentle melody.

  Mala was still at his side, though sleep had taken her at last, too. She leaned against him, quiet at last.