Then spoke to him in a soft, deadly tone.
In the language of Marincaer.
“Fear not, friend,” he said, too quietly for anyone but Evrit to hear. “Your liberty is coming. Be ready when the call comes to fight. Tell no one else. For what I must do now, I apologize.”
Then his expression changed to one of disdain, and he dropped Evrit harshly to the floor of the cave. He jerked the whip back, causing it to crack menacingly; Evrit could feel the other slaves, their backs to him and the soldier, wince at the sound. A red line of blood appeared, circumnavigating his neck.
But the pain from it was minimal.
“Back to work.” The words were spoken in the harsh tongue of Sorbold.
Shaking, Evrit obeyed.
The lashman watched him rise unsteadily to his feet. Evrit made his way back to the wall, after picking up his trowel, and set about scratching ore again. He was fairly certain he caught a nod of the head of the lashman as the soldier met the gaze of another guard, who seemed to nod in return, but his head was spinning too fast to be certain.
After a few moments of filling his scuttle, a sense of peace descended on him that he had not felt since long before the Freedom had departed from Marincaer.
He had no idea why.
JIERNA TAL
Talquist watched eagerly from the parapet as Titactyk’s regiment rode into the courtyard of Jierna Tal below. Delight spread quickly over his face as he saw the soldier Fhremus had brought to him in the basilica of Lianta’ar dismount, unload what looked like a small chest, and make his way toward the palace gate.
Ahead of them, Faron’s chariot was coming to a halt. The stone titan stepped out of the cart and threw the reins of the team of eight horses over the bar, then looked up at the tower. It seemed to Talquist that he was smiling, but the statue was too far below to see for certain.
The emperor hurried down the tower stairs and to the second floor, where he could hear bootsteps coming echoing up the stairwell. He smiled beneficently at the young soldier, wearing the insignia of the Empire of the Sun, as he crested the top stair.
“Ah, Kymel! I have been eagerly awaiting your return. Did you locate the object from the fresco in the abbey?”
“Yes, Majesty. There were many of them.”
Talquist’s brow furrowed. “Many?”
“Yes, m’lord.” Kymel stepped forward quickly and bowed, then handed the emperor the wooden chest.
Talquist lifted the lid and gently pulled aside the layers of cloth that had been packed around its contents, dropping them to the floor. His eyes took in the yellow shape, scored on the surface and tattered at the edges.
It did not catch and reflect the light as his scale did, however.
Talquist extended his index finger at touched the object. It felt slightly sandy and cold. He took the edge in his grip.
It snapped off in his hand, crumbling.
Irritation burned in the emperor’s eyes but his voice remained calm.
“This is all? This is what you found?”
“Yes, m’lord,” said Kymel quietly. “They were everywhere in the abbey. I scoured the grounds for anything else even distantly resembling the image in the fresco, but there was nothing but this.”
“I see.” Talquist sighed heavily. He had been accustomed to disappointment for all of his life; in the grand scheme of things, this was a small one. It was even amusing; he let out a small chuckle. “Oh, well. Thank you, Kymel. Your regiment is returning to Sepulvarta now?”
“Yes, m’lord.”
“When you arrive, report immediately to Fhremus and tell him I said to deploy.”
Kymel, sick at heart already, had no idea what the emperor meant, but he merely bowed.
“Yes, m’lord.”
“You may go.”
Kymel bowed again, turned on his heel and made his way down the stairs to the courtyard, where Titactyk’s regiment awaited. He mounted up and rode off with his cohort back to Sepulvarta.
He did not look back at the magnificent palace, its towers piercing the clouds.
43
YLORC
The women set out when the first indication of the new day was apparent in the sky. The night had not yet fled, but there was the slightest hint of birdsong, and a thinning of the devouring blackness that was turning, at the very edges of the horizon, to the slightest of deep grays.
They had ridden as far north the Bakhran Pass, the last of the formal Firbolg outposts at the mountainous border of what was considered Ylorc, two nanny goats in tow, but when they came to the final outpost, guarded by Eye and Guts clan members of Grunthor’s elite force, they dismounted and proceeded forth on foot, leaving the horses at the guard station but bringing along the two nanny goats Rhapsody had been using milk from for Meridion.
Analise had set the pace; being the eldest of the group, she was the slowest, though her Liringlas heritage had bequeathed her a considerable amount of stamina and the ability to walk long distances at a time. The globe of glowing blue light was in her hand from the moment that dusk came into the sky; she told Rhapsody during one of their meal breaks that she wanted to associate the outdoors with it, so that when they were inside the mountains she was able to recall the image of open sky and wind by looking at it. The Lady Cymrian had smiled broadly, understanding her need on a soul-deep level.
Once they were out of the Bolglands, or at least the part of the Bolglands with which Rhapsody was familiar, Gyllian’s knowledge of the terrain became invaluable. The green spectrum of the Lightcatcher Achmed had provided to shield them with the power of Grass Hiding had given off the faintest trace of a shadow that formed a path in the air, which Rhapsody maintained by humming the note attuned with that color, but occasionally the path that the Lightcatcher projected went through areas that were impassable or too steep for them to summit, so they relied on the Nain princess and the innate lore of earth that she possessed to guide them.
It had been agreed that Krinsel would be the primary bearer of the baby so that both of them could benefit from the new cloak of mist Ashe had sent. The Bolg midwife was still a little unsteady on her feet, so Analise and Melisande took turns spotting her, watching for any sign of exhaustion, a task that was not made easy by the cloak’s natural tendency to shield both the eye and the mind from its sight. The mist that rose from its folds was a natural form of obscurement, making the task of keeping an eye on Krinsel more than a little difficult.
Rhapsody and the Nain princess had taken on the responsibility of guarding the group, and shared the role of scout; both were armed with crossbows, though Rhapsody carried her white Lirin longbow across her back as well for when they were finally out of the mountains and crossing the small part of the steppes they would need to ford between the Bolglands and the northern mountains that led to the doorstep of the Nain kingdom. She and Gyllian took on the task of standing watch as well, having privately determined even before they left that none of the other women were trained or strong enough to do so.
Melisande had been very disappointed upon learning of this arrangement, so when it was Rhapsody’s watch, the Lady Cymrian often invited her to join her in her task. She was given the job of maintaining the watch while Rhapsody fed the baby or did perimeter checks, a responsibility that clearly made her feel more like an adult, a need that Rhapsody remembered from her own youth and status as the youngest of six children, and the only girl in her family. Melisande frequently positioned her bedroll next to that of her adopted grandmother, too, and the Lady Cymrian would often wake to find the little girl curled up next to her, Meridion asleep in the small space between the two of them.
On the sixth day of their travel, and the second out of the mountain passes and crossing the open grasslands before the place Gyllian had indicated they would seek the entrance to the Deep Kingdom, as the sun was beginning to set, the nanny goats began bleating. They were a noisy pair, enough so that each of the women had commented on it at one time or another in amusement or annoyance,
but there was a definite change in their vocalizing.
Rhapsody recognized it as terror.
She had been walking with Melisande’s hand in her own; she loosed it now and looked around her.
For as far as she could see to the west there was no sign of animal or humanoid life, just a partial clay plain, and a tall sea of highgrass waving and bowing in supplication to the sun that was filling the sky with warm colors. To the north and east were endless mountain peaks, the northern peaks so far distant as to be shielded by the mist of low-hanging clouds, while the peaks to the east were proximate enough to reach with a sprinting run.
“Krinsel,” she said quietly, using her Naming lore to put the sound of her voice directly into the woman’s ear, “how is Meridion? Is he asleep?”
The Bolg woman pulled aside the folds of the mist cloak and peered inside, then raised her head and shook it.
From within the cloak, a whimpering sound dissimilar to any she had heard before issued forth.
“Something’s wrong,” she said softly to Gyllian. “Very wrong—Krinsel, step closer to the mountainside, climb up a short way. Melly, go with her, and you, too, Analise—”
Just as her friend’s name came out of her mouth, the ground beneath her feet began to shake.
“Run!” she shouted to Melisande and the other women. “Get up as high as you can!”
The goats, squealing in terror, had frozen where they stood, shuddering with fear.
Rhapsody looked around her and, seeing nothing, drew Daystar Clarion from its sheath.
The elemental sword of fire came forth with a whisper and the ringing of a trumpet call.
She turned in a full circle, scanning the horizon and skies for anything other than the scrubby brush of the piedmont, the skittering, hurried flight of birds that had been sailing past on the wind a few moments before. What am I missing? she thought, smiling at Melisande to ease the fear she saw in the little girl’s eyes. What am I—
Her thought vanished as the ground at her feet split in twain. She jumped aside to keep from falling into the crevasse that had just opened.
Only to see an immense claw tear forth from the ground, broken talons extended, and seize the goats with a vicious, precisely aimed swipe.
Just as another ripped out of the earth beneath her, and snatched her in its grasp as well.
44
Anwyn had been lurking beneath the loose red clay of the northern steppes for the better part of the sennight, searching in vain for fresh blood to nourish herself. She had sensed only small game, occasional rabbits and the rodents known as jurillas, small-eared, quick-footed relatives of groundhogs that dug intricate and annoying tunneled nests in the ground above the ruins of Kurimah Milani. Had a large enough nest existed in the proximity, it might have been worth the risk of the jagged cwellan disk moving closer to her heart in going after them, but the ones she sensed were itinerants, crossing the clay desert in search of better resources, and would not have provided enough meat to even be noticed in her maw, or to get stuck between her teeth.
So when at dusk the sortie of women and goats came into her awareness at the edge of her waning senses, at first she thought she had been dreaming.
It had been so long since a traveler had been unfortunate enough to pass through the lands above where she had taken refuge in the broken vault that had, in ancient times, been one of the great baths of the mythical city of healing, that the dragon almost refused to believe the possibility. Hunger had clawed at her viscera for months uncounted; now, in the advent of starvation, all she felt was a dull ache around the firegems in her entrails, the source of her ability to breathe fire. Additionally, the information that her dragon sense had transmitted to her indicated that one of the traveling party was, in fact, the woman she hated more than anything her fragmented mind could remember.
So the possibility of the mirage’s reality was initially dismissed in the wyrm’s mind as being a fantasy, much too good to be feasible.
Until her heightened sense of smell caught wind of the goats.
* * *
Rhapsody had just enough time to maneuver the sword out of the crush of the dragon’s claw as it wrapped around her before the breath was squeezed from her lungs.
“Get back!” she shouted to the others, or tried, but the air was not there to carry her words; the command came forth as a shuddering gasp, with almost no active sound.
Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw Krinsel, who had climbed into the rocky, elevated ground of the piedmont, duck behind a rocky outcropping; her mind made grateful note of Meridion’s cover.
The ground of the steppes exploded as the dragon ripped through the clay and emerged, rampant and triumphant. Anwyn loosed a scream that echoed off the piedmont and the mountains beyond, dragging her immense body out of the ground and into the open air.
“At last!” she hissed. “At last!”
Rhapsody struggled for breath, her ribs aching as the beast squeezed tighter. She pulled herself up as high as she could among the individual talons, as the dragon lifted her into the air and dangled her body in front of the beast’s tattered eyes.
“Can it be possible?” Anwyn crowed in delight. “M’lady! How kind of you to return for a visit!”
From her elevated height, Rhapsody could see Krinsel cowering behind her rocky outcropping. Analise had joined her, while Gyllian had swung her crossbow into her hands from where it had hung at her back and was sighting a bolt, but both women knew that it would not penetrate the hide of the dragon, its only possible target the beast’s already injured eye.
She could not see Melisande at all.
But instinctively Rhapsody knew that all of them were well within range of the beast’s breath.
Quickly she pulled the shoulder of her arm that held the sword at an unnatural angle, the tendons screaming as she did, and struck with Daystar Clarion, slashing the part of the claw that would have been a palm in a human being, dragging the sword down as far as her arm could reach, through the scarred talons that she herself had injured several years ago, severing a tendon.
The beast reacted with shock. The claw fell open and Rhapsody pitched to the ground, executing a maneuver Grunthor had taught her long ago known as a horseman’s rollout. She hit the ground hard and gasped as she inhaled a storm of red clay that blasted her face, then rolled to the side, dodging the claw as it struck again.
She struggled to her feet and ran, her free arm pressed against her ribcage, due west, away from the mountains and the other women, the dragon in fast pursuit. She had made it fewer than forty paces, zigzagging, when the other claw struck again, seizing her by the back of her shirt and dragging her to a halt.
Anwyn lifted her off the ground again and dangled her in the air once more.
“Leaving so soon? Surely not.”
Rhapsody flicked her wrist, bringing forward a dagger, and quickly sliced her shirt open in the front, freeing herself and falling to the ground again.
“No, surely not,” she muttered as she pulled herself to her feet and took off to the west once more.
Another sweep of the claw caught her back, and Rhapsody felt the sting of her skin as it tore open. She fell to the ground, and the blow missed her, shouting to Analise in Ancient Lirin.
“Get up into the piedmont—head for the mountain!”
The dragon reared up to breathe down on her, supine on the ground.
Then spun around in shock.
Melisande pulled her dragon claw dagger out of the beast’s tail, where she had planted it with a two-handed overhead blow.
“Get away from my grandmother!” she screamed, burying the weapon in Anwyn’s foot claw as the wyrm lashed its torn tail from side to side, splattering the ground with black blood in the darkness.
Rhapsody saw the fury in the dragon’s eyes as the beast looked behind her. “Melisande, run!” she shouted, scrambling to her feet again. “Run!” Seeing the wyrm turning toward the little girl, she backed away to the w
est.
“Coward,” she said, pointing her finger and using the Naming ability to place the words directly into the monster’s ear. “Chasing a child with a dagger instead of a woman with a sword. You are a pathetic excuse for a dragon, Anwyn. Perhaps, rather than wyrm, you are actually worm.”
The dragon’s enormous head snapped back around. She crawled forward, following Rhapsody westward, where she stood alone in the open desert field.
“I will eat your eyes,” the dragon whispered. “And your cursed mouth, which utters such lies.”
“I suggest you eat something else,” the Iliachenva’ar said.
She raised the sword above her head and spoke the name of the evening star hanging low to the horizon, a blue white one named Helaphon, named by the Lirin of this land for a warrior queen of long ago.
The open field at the edge of the steppes was suddenly blanketed with an ethereal light as bright as midday, though silver in hue. It flooded over Rhapsody, causing her hair to shine silver as well, and the beast, whose eyes glowed as they opened wide in shock.
Then, with a thunderous roar, the fire of the star blasted down on both of them, the woman and the dragon, illuminating their outlines as it flooded over them, rolling over the steppes and lighting the highgrass into a low inferno for miles around.
45
At first nothing but silence and the crackling of burning grass reigned in the desert to the west of the mountains.
Then the wind picked up, whining mournfully, whipping through the steppes in the dark. After a moment, the wind’s dirge was joined by the wailing of a terrified child.
“No!” Melisande sobbed from halfway up the piedmont. “No, please, no.”
“Shhh, child,” Analise whispered, pulling her into her arms and letting the girl bury her face in her shoulder. “Quiet now. We are not yet out of danger.”
As the words left her lips, a burning swale of grass flexed and moved.