Song of the Dragon Page 34

  Mala stopped talking, her eyes still fixed far away.

  “And what, child?” Shasa urged.

  “And then the Aether Well came apart . . . like shattering crockery only so much quicker and with a terrible noise. That’s when I knew.”

  “Knew what?” Kintaro asked.

  “That’s when my memories returned to me . . . and I knew that my life was over.”

  “He is the fulfillment of a prophecy laid down in the most ancient of times.” Belag stood tall in the center of the lodge, the crest of his growing mane nearly touching the rafters of the ceiling overhead. He spoke with conviction, his eyes bright in the torchlight. “He freed me from the enslavement of the Rhonas sorceries and showed me the way to life and peace. He is the embodiment of the promises made of old. He will journey to the north countries, commune with the gods, and return in power to wreak vengeance and doom upon the Rhonas Imperium. He is the one that my brother sought beside me . . . and for whom he gave his life.”

  “And how do you know this?” Harku demanded. “How do you know he is the one?”

  “My brother gave his life for him,” Belag affirmed. “He is the one!”

  “. . . now, Drakis, he knew that the Iblisi were after us after we had spent the night at Togrun Fel, and he was determined that those slippery elven bastards would not lay a hand on us. He also knew the Song of the Dragon that was calling him along, giving him the knowledge of what was to come, that if we had stayed there but another hour, those very demons of the Imperial Corruption would be upon us. So, he stood before us and led us westward through the entire length of the Hyperian Plain—where the gods favored him by laying all manner of food and drink in our path. I tell you, Elders of the honored Sondau Clan, that the gods themselves granted powers to that boy that are beyond explanation!”

  “Thank you, Master Jugar,” Shasa said for the fourth time.

  “Wait! There’s so much more to tell! Take, for example, that time when we were passing the Hecariat—that terrible, doomed tower on the plains of Hyperia! The spirits of the mountain came down among the stones as we passed . . .”

  “We shall take your statements into account as we deliberate,” Harku said emphatically. “You may go.”

  “Oh, but there is so much more!” the dwarf offered cheerfully. “The Miracle of the Faery Halls! The Miracle of the Hak’kaarin! The Miracle of the . . .”

  Elder Kintaro groaned.

  “THANK YOU!” Shasa said too loudly.

  It was late by the time RuuKag was led out of the lodge. As the manticore was led from the room, Urulani moved to one of the guttering torches at the side of the room.

  “He is hiding something,” Kintaro said a few moments after the door closed behind RuuKag.

  “He is afraid,” Shasa replied. “Fear can make anyone do foolish things.”

  “He doesn’t believe in Drakis,” Kintaro said.

  “He says he does not know, but, then, he doesn’t really believe in anything,” Harku observed. “Which is of no use to us.”

  Urulani pulled the fluttering torch from its mount and snuffed it out in the pot filled with sand sitting on the floor below it. “You will not need the others.”

  “How so?” Harku asked.

  Urulani pulled a new torch from a second holding pot and lit it on one of the other torches. “Because one is a Lyric who no longer knows herself—or finds it too painful to be herself. In either case, examining her will not help you.”

  “And the other?” asked Kintaro.

  “The other is a chimerian,” Urulani answered as she placed the new torch in the wall bracket. “It has been rightly said that a chimerian once told the truth—and was executed on the spot for heresy.”

  “I do not like your tone,” Shasa said, “but I agree that we cannot in this matter trust the word of a chimerian. They see the world through their own eyes . . . and have no love or regard for us.”

  “Then it is time we dealt with this prophecy directly,” Kintaro said.

  “I agree,” Harku responded.

  Shasa nodded. “Urulani?”

  “Yes, Elder Shasa.”

  “Bring us this man Drakis.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Drakis, my lords.”

  “Of what clan?”

  “I do not recall. I may have been too young to remember—and my memories are still disjointed, especially of my youth. But I believe that my family came from one of the clans near here.”

  “The white clans were hunted to near extinction,” spoke the gray-haired man.

  “It was obviously many years ago,” Drakis replied, “but I recall my . . . my mother . . . I believe it was my true mother . . . telling me about our family to the north. She always spoke of going north and family at the same time.”

  “And your father?”

  “I do not recall my father, my lord.”

  “Any other family?” the balding man asked.

  “I . . . I had a brother,” Drakis paused, looking away briefly and then, blowing out a quick breath, continued. “I had a brother whom I recall as being quite close to me. He, uh, he died—beaten to death by one of our masters. I may have had a sister . . . but I cannot say with certainty whether she was my actual sister or some relationship our masters concocted for us.”

  The bearded one spoke next with impatience. “What caused you to rebel in your master’s House?”

  “I . . . I don’t know what you . . .”

  “Where did it start?” the balding man urged. “What brought you to the point of breaking the bonds of the Devotions?”

  “Well,” Drakis thought. “I guess it all started with the song.”

  The bearded man’s eyebrows arched up. “What song?”

  “Well, it’s not really a song, I suppose . . . I’m sorry, my lords, let me answer your question. I suppose in a way it started with the dwarf . . .”

  “Wait,” the balding man said, holding up his hand. “Tell us about this song.”

  Drakis looked puzzled. “Well, it’s something that seems to be running in my head all the time. It wasn’t always there, but the dwarf calls it . . .”

  “The Song of the Dragon,” the bearded man finished.

  “Well, the Dragon Song actually, but . . .”

  “Enough. Drakis . . . come with me.” Shasa stood up from his chair and stepped in front of Drakis, crossing to the right side of the room. He took a torch from the wall and then stepped down to the corner of the lodge, beckoning Drakis to follow.

  “Look here,” Shasa said, pushing the torch closer to the wall.

  Drakis leaned forward, gazing at the relief carved into the wood planks. It was crude by elven standards—almost primitive—but the figures were unmistakably human.

  “This is our story of what will be,” Shasa said, as he moved slowly down the wall with the torch. “The other walls tell of our past and our present but this wall. . . here . . . tells us the story that is yet to come. It is the story of the man who will be a slave but will break his own bonds. It is the story of the man who will come out of the south and journey across the waters to the ancient home of our people now lost to us, hidden beyond the clouds. It is the story of the man who will bring back the glory of humanity that was lost and destroy the oppressors of the land. Look here!”

  Drakis drew himself closer to the carvings, following Shasa’s pointing finger.

  “Here is this warrior-prophet being called home.”

  “What are those creatures calling him?” Drakis asked.

  “Dragons, brother. They are dragons calling to the souls of the chosen to come to them and find their destiny. Many have heard the dragon song, but none before you have followed the path of the story.”

  “Are you a god?” the dwarf’s words echoed in his mind.

  Drakis looked into the face of the Elder.

  “Are you this Drakis, son,” the Elder asked. “Are you this warrior-prophet who will free us all?”

  Drakis drew in severa
l breaths before he responded.

  “Elder Shasa . . . I truly do not know.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Something of my Own

  “WELL, DRAKIS, what are you thinking?”

  Drakis smiled. “I was just thinking how beautiful this place is, Elder Shasa.”

  Drakis walked side by side with the large, balding Elder down the wide path on the right-hand side of the village square. Small children ran about their feet, chasing one another with concentration in their delight that was oblivious to the adults around them. The square itself was lined with stalls filled with a dizzying variety of goods—fruits and vegetables from the farms that terraced the hillsides surrounding the village as well as pottery, tools, weapons, shields, and any number of other crafts. Many of the goods were obviously made by the Sondau, while many others had quite obviously been looted during previous raids. Everywhere Drakis looked there were dark-skinned men and women, young and old, all freely engaged with one another. Three huge and powerful men stood together at the corner of the green speaking to each other in quiet tones but with large gestures, their eyes filled with the passion of their argument. Ahead of them, two women walked past, their arms filled with large fruits. They both turned to look at Drakis as they passed, then broke into giggling laughter as they walked on.

  “Yes, son,” Shasa said as he stopped at a stall filled with a sweet-smelling, long yellow fruit and turned to face a woman with high, delicate cheekbones tending it. “There is no place more beautiful than Nothree . . . wouldn’t you agree, Khesai?”

  “Far be disagreement from my door,” the woman replied with a wide smile. “May the gods grant you a fair wind, Elder Shasa.”

  “Where is Durian today?” Shasa asked. “I would have thought he would be here on market day . . . especially with such a fine crop.”

  “He is helping Moda repair a ship at the beach,” Khesai replied. “Moda has offered to help us add a room to our home in exchange.”

  Shasa raised his eyebrows. “Another room? Then have the gods blessed your family, Khesai?”

  “Soon enough,” the woman smiled even more.

  Shasa nodded. “Have you met our traveler, Drakis?”

  “Fate smiles,” Khesai bowed slightly with the traditional greeting.

  “Fate smiles,” Drakis bowed back.

  “Your family shall be in our hearts, Khesai,” Shasa said. “Forgive us our leaving. I must speak with Drakis.”

  Shasa turned and continued down the path with Drakis falling into step at his side.

  “Elder,” Drakis said, “I have only been here a week, and yet I feel more at home here than any other place I have ever been.”

  “This was not always so, Drakis,” Shasa laughed deeply.

  Drakis grinned. “No, Elder Shasa . . . that is true. When we first arrived . . . well, I had never seen any humans with skin nearly so dark as the Sondau.”

  “And this worried you?” Shasa asked.

  “Well, no . . . I just felt terribly conspicuous . . . as though everyone was looking at me.”

  Shasa laughed again; warm and filled with humor. “Everyone was looking at you. It is easy to pick you out in a crowd . . . your white face could be seen from two leagues in the darkest part of a cloud-covered night. Finding you is not a problem . . . hiding you is.”

  Drakis nodded.

  They passed the great house at the end of the square. The path under their feet now moved under the canopy of the tall, palm trees and the huts of the village families. The sounds of a mother yelling from inside the home for one of her children drifted past them as the path soon started to climb a winding trail up the steep slopes surrounding the village and its bay.

  “There was one other thing,” Drakis said after many steps in silence.

  “Yes, Drakis.”

  “It’s that I’ve never seen so many humans in one place before,” he replied. “There have always been a few of us, of course, doing specialized jobs or kept around as curiosities. Timuran owned five or six of us, and that was considered an extravagance. But several hundred in one place? That could only happen when entire Legions were called into battle, and even then it would be hard to find them in the enormous press of so many other races. How did you get here? How have you survived?”

  “The Sondau Clan settled Nothree during the Age of Fire, some seven hundred years ago by the counting of our lorekeepers,” Shasa said. “In those days, it was an outpost of the Drakosian city-states; the human kingdoms of the north that ruled all the land of Armethia. They were still recovering from the War of Desolation—the first great conflict between the humans of the north and the Rhonas army of conquest from the south. It was an unsettled time, and the Clans of the Coast took it to be a sign of opportunity.”

  “Opportunity?” Drakis squinted in disbelief.

  The path became steeper and more winding as they climbed.

  “Certainly!” Shasa nodded. “In all change there is opportunity to benefit someone. So our ancestors came in their ships to what they saw as a land of promise. They found that the Forgotten Coast east of Point Kontantine was mountainous and lush, its ground fertile and mineral rich from the ancient volcanoes that had shaped it. Much of the coast was treacherous going for ships but there were choice harbors to be had if one knew where to find them along the arc of Sanctuary Bay. The Sondau captains were exceptional seafarers, and soon small settlements tucked in the back of hidden harbors like this one—accessed through all-but-impassable rock-strewn passages—dotted the great jagged shores of Sanctuary Bay.”

  As Shasa spoke, they stepped to the crest of a low hill overlooking the village. The thatched roofs of the huts below could barely be made out through the canopy of trees—lush broad-leafed hardwoods and tall, strange trees with great fanlike leaves spreading out from their tops. He had never seen their like in all the lands of Rhonas and wondered why. Surely, he thought, they would fetch a handsome price for so strange a thing as these trees Shasa called “palm.”

  The village was formed around a small, deep harbor surrounded entirely by steeply rising hills. The homes had to be built on the hillsides, and in many cases the roof of one butted up against the foundation of the next home higher up the hill. Communities here seemed to grow in clusters, like fruit springing somehow from the mountain-side. The harbor itself was guarded by a narrow and winding passage that looked to Drakis to be entirely impossible to navigate although whenever he brought this up with the Sondau villagers, he was universally greeted with laughter.

  Behind him, bright in the rising light of morning, stood the craggy peaks of the Sentinels, nearly vertical mountains whose slopes were covered in lush foliage and whose tops were always shrouded in clouds. Those peaks seemed to hold the outside world at bay and, Drakis reflected, perhaps that was truer than he knew.

  “So they found their land of opportunity, then,” Drakis said as he sat down and looked back out over the village spread below him.

  “No, not nearly as easily as they had hoped . . . for no dream comes without cost,” Shasa mused, sitting next to him. “Many other settlements were established during that time as the Drakosians tried to extend their land holdings to include footholds in Nordesia and the Vestasian Coast. but each in turn failed. Only Nothree, Notwo, Nofor and a handful of others clung stubbornly to their existence through the tumult of war and shifting alliances that marked that age. Our fathers found themselves increasingly on their own. The Clans of the Coast, as they called themselves . . . Darakan, Phynig, Merindau, Sondau and Hakreb . . . struggled to survive as the ships from our homelands became increasingly infrequent, and our distant government drifted farther and farther removed from our lives.”

  Shasa picked up a stone from the hillside and tossed it lightly down the slope.

  “Then, two centuries ago, when the dragons of Armethia betrayed their alliance with the Drakosian lords,” he continued, “the ships stopped coming at all. We became ‘The Forgotten’ colonies, and here, in our little havens, we have b
een born, loved, lived, and died ever since.”

  Drakis thought about this for a moment, the silence resting easily between them. “Elder Shasa . . .”

  “Yes, Drakis.”

  “Have you determined whether I am this ‘prophet’ everyone is looking for?”

  “Drakis, what a strange question,” Shasa said. “It seems to me that a prophet would know the answer to that question himself!”

  “I don’t know, Elder,” Drakis replied. “Sometimes I believe it, and sometimes I think it’s just nonsense. I hear the Dragon Song in my mind, but from what I understand so do many others. My name fits the prophecy, but then it’s a common name . . . there is none more common among human slaves.”

  “There seem to be a lot of people who want you to be the Drakis of prophecy,” Shasa replied. “Perhaps you should ask a different question.”

  “A different question?”

  “Yes,” Shasa said as he, too, gazed off across the harbor. “Perhaps you should ask yourself what you want. Do you want to be the Drakis of the prophecy . . . or do you want something else?”

  Drakis stared at the balding man sitting next to him for a moment.

  “Because if you’re looking for something else . . . then you might consider looking down that upper path around the western hill,” Shasa said casually. “I believe I saw Mala following that same path toward the Lace Pools not ten minutes ago.”

  Drakis smiled and stood up at once. “Thank you, Elder Shasa!”

  “Write your own destiny, Drakis,” Shasa called after the warrior as he sprinted down the path.