Song of the Dragon Read online

  “That’s it,” Drakis grumbled, taking a step forward. “I’ve got to put a stop to this.”

  “Just a moment,” Ethis said, reaching out with one of his left hands and restraining Drakis by the shoulder. “I think he’s nearly finished.”

  Jugar’s voice dropped dramatically into hushed tones, drawing his eager audience even closer to him. “So what did Drakis do?”

  The gnomes leaned closer still.

  “He THREW the crown away from him!” Jugar shouted, reenacting the moment by swinging his arm in a wide arc over the heads of the nearest gnomes.

  The gnomes gasped in astonishment.

  “That’s the truth of it, and may the gods strike me down otherwise!” Jugar concluded. “Drakis tossed away the riches of the elven world—a crown whose wealth would have bought him power and position even among his evil elven masters—for he saw that wealth and power were meaningless if one pays for it with one’s own soul! And from that day to this, Drakis the Just, Drakis the Wise, Drakis of the Prophecy, has wandered the face of the world seeking to fulfill his destiny, destroy evil, and bring lasting peace to all!

  “And now,” Jugar paused then pointed his finger directly toward the astonished Drakis. “Now he has come to YOU!”

  The mud gnomes leaped up, cheering.

  “Oh, no!” Drakis murmured, his eyes going wide. “No, no . . . !”

  The gnomes rushed toward Drakis in a riotous wave of approval, sweeping the human off his feet.

  “DRAKIS! DRAKIS! DRAKIS!”

  “Put me down!” he insisted to no avail. He managed to twist in the mud gnomes’ collective grasp as they lifted him over their heads. “Ethis! Where are they taking me?”

  “I suspect back to the feast hall,” Ethis replied through a perplexing smile splitting his malleable face.

  “Again?”

  “That seems to be their preferred way of showing their appreciation for a good story,” Ethis replied, pushing gingerly away from the dried mud wall of the story-cavern. “Besides, we’re leaving with them in the morning, and we’d all rather do so on a full stomach. I don’t see the need for any complaint. The food here is quite good, and they seem perfectly content to share it with us.”

  “But it’s a lie!”

  “They don’t seem to care,” Ethis observed as the gnomes once again carried Drakis above their shoulders and down a ramp toward their common feast hall. “If anything, they seem to prefer it.”

  Early the next morning, Drakis stood outside the great mud city of the Hak’kaarin mud gnomes and waited in the cool dawn with Jugar, Ethis, Belag, and RuuKag with their traveling packs filled to overflowing in preparation for their journey.

  “What are we waiting for?” RuuKag grumbled. “The sooner we get moving, the quicker we’re out of this cursed plain.”

  “We’re waiting for Mala and the Lyric,” Drakis responded. “A pair of gnomes came with word that they would be late but would be along shortly.”

  “Where have they been for the last three days?” Ethis asked. “I’ve seen them at the feasts, but then they seemed to disappear.”

  “Oh, I know about that!” Jugar said brightly, his round cheeks bowed upward in a cheery smile. “I asked the Chief of the Day where they had taken the precious women in our company and . . .

  “Chief of the Day?” Drakis asked.

  “Oh, yes! I assure you that these Hak’kaarin have enacted a most fascinating form of governance, really,” Jugar replied. “They have no permanent rulers but rather take turns directing things. They change out the chief pretty much whenever they feel like it. There is no set schedule, but a change in leadership usually takes place when the Chief of the Day gets tired of doing the job and gives someone else a chance. They have no interest in power or wealth as we understand it—indeed, they find the stories we tell of the acquisition of such things to be something like cautionary tales. Their civilization is entirely based on total community of property and pride taken in the whole rather than the individual. Individuals don’t ‘own’ anything as we understand it but take ownership in the whole of their society. All these gnomes coming and going take whatever burrow is available to them when they arrive, use the things in it as though they were their own—because in a very real sense they are theirs as a community—and then just leave them behind when they travel to the next mud city. For that matter, it’s one of the reasons the elves—or anyone else for that matter—have never bothered to conquer them: They don’t have anything worth taking. They live relatively simple lives, journeying constantly from one mud city to the next. They have no desire for power—they even think that the great Aether magic of the elves and even the Aer magic of the dwarves is a ‘crutch’ that weakens the moral fiber of anyone who touches it. With no desire for power and no interest in wealth, they are a formidable group for anyone wanting to corrupt them.”

  “Fascinating,” Ethis replied through a yawn, “but you were telling us about the women?”

  “Oh, indeed I was!” Jugar nodded brightly. “The Chief of the Day told me—and in rather disappointed tones—that they have been keeping Mala and the Lyric separated from the males of our group and offered women of their own tribes to you in substitution.”

  Drakis blinked. “What?”

  “The Chief of the Day had hopes that you might each mate with some of their women,” Jugar concluded. “It would have been a great honor for their community.”

  Belag sniffed. “Barbarians!”

  “Well, each of us has our different customs,” Jugar replied with a shrug. “Strange as they may strike us as outsiders, it sometimes is to our credit to keep a more open mind about the traditions of other nations . . . ah, but here is the rest of our intrepid group now.”

  Drakis turned to see Mala running toward him, relief in her eyes. She threw her arms around him, nearly knocking him off his feet in her eagerness. “I’ve tried to find you! These little mud creatures kept pushing me off in other directions. Are you all right?”

  Drakis looked down at her upturned face. The anger and the fear had for the moment evaporated from her countenance, freeing her once again to look like the Mala he had loved in that life before—and still loved in the jumble of memories that occasionally threatened to overwhelm his thoughts. Her skin was still smudged and tanned from the long journey, and her face was now framed in the rust-red hair that had sprouted from her head, nearly obscuring her slave brand tattoo, but in that moment she looked again like the woman he had so long loved—or believed he had loved—and he smiled warmly in return.

  “Mala, I am fine,” Drakis said. “Are you ready for the road?”

  She stepped back, still smiling at him. “Three days’ rest in a mud cave seems to have been quite enough. I’ve got my pack and, thanks to these gnomes, far better shoes for the journey.”

  She turned in front of him, raising her foot. Drakis laughed at the sight of the soft leather boots with their hard soles—indeed, perfect for the road but entirely incongruous with the rest of her tattered clothing.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked, a note of caution coloring her words.

  “They are, indeed, perfect,” Drakis laughed, letting go of his anxiety and fear seemingly for the first time in ages. It felt good to laugh again. “How is the Lyric today—or perhaps I should ask ‘who’ is the Lyric today?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” Mala teased. “But one word of caution—duck right after you ask.”

  They were two days out from the third mud city. The trail of Hak’kaarin gnomes stretched across the savanna in a seemingly endless procession. The line heading northward, in which Drakis and his companions marched on the left side of the trail, was matched in kind by a second endless procession heading back the way they had come on the right side.

  Drakis smiled as he marched along. There was something soothing in the rhythm of his strides, the wide sky above him, and the warmth of the sun on his face. Mala and the Lyric—now claiming to be Sheen-rhaq, Warrior-Queen of
the Manticores—were both riding on a large wagon being pulled by scores of gnomes . . . an honor he had declined. Ethis was arguing once more with RuuKag behind the wagon while Belag tried to broker some peace between them. Ahead of him, Drakis could see Jugar marching alongside the gnomes and decided he could use the sound of the fool’s prattle in his ears. He quickened his pace and shortly, as they crossed a shallow river, caught up with the dwarf.

  “We are making good time,” Drakis said, gazing northward. “We’ll make the next mud city before nightfall. The Chief of the Day tells me that it’s the farthest north of the Hak’kaarin settlements. He also says that they often trade with humans there—actual free humans from the forests bordering the shore.”

  The dwarf’s gaze remained downcast as he stumped along in silence.

  Drakis walked alongside Jugar for a few moments as the silence stretched on.

  “What? No long description of the wonderful customs of free humans in the wild?” Drakis chided. “No half-forgotten epic poem that will last us until sunset in its recital? No made-up facts about an ancient civilization from the past that is going to resurrect dragons from our nightmares and save us all?”

  The dwarf looked away as he marched.

  “Well, isn’t that my fate,” Drakis said, shaking his head. “As long as I’ve known you, I couldn’t get you to shut up, and the one time I want to talk to you, you lose your tongue!”

  Jugar turned his head and glared at the human. “We do have a need to talk, my boy! But not so close to so many ears!”

  The dwarf gave Drakis a great shove, pushing him into the tall grass bordering the trail and following in his wake.

  “You dwarven fool,” Drakis exclaimed, “what are you up to now?”

  “It’s time for you to be quiet and do as I say,” Jugar said with menace in his voice. “Keep walking and keep the trail in sight. The grass is taller than I am and will keep my words between us alone.”

  “But I still don’t . . .”

  “Keep walking!” Jugar snapped. “Don’t look at me, look at the trail.”

  “What’s this, dwarf,” Drakis said as he walked through the rustling grass. “What new game are you playing?”

  “No game,” Jugar replied, “but we are the ones who are being played. See this?”

  Drakis glanced down. “In your hand? That round ball of mud with some grass stuck in it?”

  “It’s a good deal more than that, lad,” Jugar explained, “although it’s certainly meant to appear as innocent as you suggest. Only someone familiar with the magic involved would know its true purpose.”

  “And I suppose that someone would be you,” Drakis said.

  The dwarf spoke with pride. “I know a thing or two about magic.”

  Drakis nodded. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that . . .”

  “Soon enough, my boy,” Jugar interrupted. “But we must speak of this first. This, lad, is a beacon stone.”

  “A beacon stone?” Drakis urged. He’d never had such trouble getting the dwarf to talk before. “What is a ‘beacon stone?’ ”

  “It’s a device of the Iblisi,” Jugar replied. “It is used by the Inquisitors to find anyone who drops them along the way. They have many uses, but it would seem they are now being used to track us. Wait! Did you hear something?”

  Drakis stopped. “You mean beyond the marching feet of several thousand gnomes? No, I don’t hear anything—and just what are you suggesting? That the Iblisi are still following us—all the way across the Vestasian Savanna?”

  “More than that,” Jugar said. “That they are still following us is now certain . . . but what we did not know before is that one of our trusted number is also helping them to do so.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Preceding Reputations

  THE SUN WAS SETTING by the time they reached the entrances to the mud city. Drakis wished as he forced his tired legs up the long sloping tunnel into the city that the Hak’kaarin would take the trouble to put different names to their settlements so that he could at least keep track of where they had been. For a time crossing the savanna he had occasion to wonder if the gnomes were somehow magically leading them back each night to the same mud city. A different name would have helped him at least feel some sense of progress. As it was, however, the Hak’kaarin’s rather odd view of physical possessions—they didn’t believe in them—led to an inability to distinguish any Hak’kaarin thing from another. They simply took whatever hovel-hole was unoccupied at the time in whatever mud city they found themselves, shared in the communal food, and worked at whatever job was needful at the time, and then, bidden by some inner impulse Drakis could only guess at, they would leave one mud city and make an arduous journey to the next. Some patterns in this chaotic life occasionally emerged; not all the gnomes were skilled at everything, and sometimes groups of them would gather who shared the same skills to teach each other what they had learned on their last pilgrimage. Yet such gatherings never seemed to last for very long and would dissolve just as quickly as they formed.

  As to his own inner voices—the musical demons that seemed to torment his mind—they were making him increasingly uncomfortable on the road. Ever since the dwarf had told him that there was a traitor among them, he had not been able to shake the feeling that the sooner they left the beaten paths of the Hak’kaarin, the safer they would be. At least they would be in the wilderness again, and it might be easier to spot trouble as it approached and possibly catch this informer in the act of placing one of these beacon stones.

  As to who that traitor might be, that was a painful thought that revolved in the music of his torment in every monotonous moment of walking whenever they moved between the mud cities.

  manticore fanatic lunatic . . .

  Breaks with a crystalline sin . . .

  Never forgiven . . . ever deceiving . . .

  Belag had evinced a near reverential attitude toward Drakis since the fall of House Timuran that was nothing short of fanatical, and yet there was something inside that fanaticism that Drakis did not and could not trust. He suspected that anyone so deeply committed to a single idea or person was probably likely to react just as strongly the other way if he felt betrayed in that commitment.

  Lion-man hiding from shadows past . . .

  Fleeing from lands he once loved . . .

  Longing for lost homes . . . Longing for dead tombs . . .

  Then there was RuuKag, a manticore whom he never liked even before his memories came flooding back. He had fought the group at every step, but recently he seemed more anxious than any of them to cross this savanna. He never explained himself either way, and his distrust seemed to breed it in everyone else.

  Shifting the shapes of allegiances . . .

  Nebulous is his own heart . . .

  Constantly changing . . . Soul rearranging . . .

  Ethis was demonstrably not only a manipulative and deceptive creature at his heart but now appeared to be highly trained for it. Drakis still shuddered to think of how the chimerian had appeared to him in the form of Mala.

  Hope of a past now a memory . . .

  Love that was all just a game . . .

  Where does her heart lie? When does her tongue lie?

  Then there was Mala herself, of course. Things had improved with her, and recently she had become almost cheerful. Her face was tanned now by their long day journeys between mud cities, and there was an almost robust health to her that was, he had to admit, an improvement over her former self. Yet he knew resentment still smoldered beneath the surface like banked coals waiting to burst again into hot hatred. Their bargain in the faery kingdom to pretend their painful past did not exist had only buried it shallowly.

  Everyone else but the girl herself . . .

  Who is the woman within?

  Masking her faces . . . and her dark places . . .

  He had considered the Lyric, who was unquestionably insane and changed her personality as easily and as often as anyone else might change their
mind. She could be the traitor among them and not even remember it from day to day. That, he thought, would be worst of all since she was the least accountable of any of them, and Drakis felt certain he would have to kill whoever it turned out to be.

  Jesters all hide in the light and sound . . .

  Plain in the face of our doom . . .

  Watch for the fool . . . Laughter is cruel . . .

  Finally, he had to admit that it could even be the dwarf, who had pointed all this out to him in the first place. The conniving little fool might have thought himself in danger of being caught and tipped his hand as a bluff just to throw suspicion off himself. The only thing Drakis was sure about regarding the dwarf was that he couldn’t be sure about anything.

  So he would journey through the day, receding more and more into the cycle of his siren song. Sometimes Mala would walk with him, chattering away about some innocuous memory she had of her life in the Timuran House or some previous House she had been a part of and only recently remembered. Such recollections studiously avoided the darker memories and were occasionally expurgated as she spoke—her voice stuttering slightly and stopping altogether only to restart on a completely different topic—light and breezy once more. Sometimes Belag would journey with him, speaking sonorously of the legends of the manticores regarding the afterlife, or Ethis would join him, respecting the human’s silence with his own. Occasionally the dwarf would accompany him, rattling off some nonsense story he remembered that the shape of a bush they passed or some figure in a cloud above them brought to his memory.