Fortress Draconis (74 page)

Erlestoke accepted a small horn and poured a fine black dust from the narrow end into a hole atop the dragonel, near the butt end. “Firedirt comes in three grades: gravel, sand, and dust. Dust gets used here. Small grains to small holes, bigger to bigger.”

Will peered closely at the powder in the dragonel’s hole. “What is it? Where do you get it?”

The Oriosan prince laughed heartily and themeckanshü joined him. “That, Norrington, is the question my father and every other head bearing a crown would love to have answered. The Draconis Baron worked long and hard on the formulation. Only themeckanshü know how to make it, in what proportions the parts are mixed, how it is cured. I don’t know; I just know what it does.”

Erlestoke reached out a hand to take a slowly burning bit of match-cord from one of themeckanshü, but he stopped and looked at Kerrigan. “You’re the mage, yes?” He nodded.

The prince waved everyone away from the dragonel, then pointed a hand at the powdered hole. “If you can make fire, please.”

Kerrigan concentrated, then flicked a finger at the dragonel. A spark, gold and scintillating, shot toward the hole and the powder there immediately began to smoke. A heartbeat later, as Prince Erlestoke leaped back, a gout of flame thundered from the dragonel. The weapon recoiled along well-worn ruts in the stone and even before the smoke had begun to clear, themeckanshü crew had leaped to the process of reloading and readying the dragonel again.

The smoke made Kerrigan’s eyes water, and the blast had set his ears to ringing. Lombo grasped him by the back of his shirt and directed him back away from the battery. They joined the rest of the company on the wall and Kerrigan found Erlestoke looking proudly at him.

Kerrigan smiled. “Was that acceptable?”

The prince nodded solemnly. “If I need a master deto-nationist in the siege, I will draft you.

“You are too kind, Highness,” Kerrigan tried to hide his smile.

“Not at all.” Erlestoke waved his hand back toward the fortress. “Let us continue.”

Kerrigan ducked his head and followed in silence as Erlestoke conducted them through a tour of the rest of the fortress. They made a quarter circuit around the irregularly shaped structure’s outer walls. Beyond them, to the northeast, east, and southeast sat three smaller fortresses, akin to that which warded the harbor. A swelling hummock connected them to the main fortress and Erlestoke indicated that supply tunnels ran beneath the ground to connect the buildings. Each of the smaller fortresses bristled with two dozen dragonels, guaranteeing a murderous cross fire for any troops storming the fortress. Moreover, the main fortress and the smaller ones could cover each other, so taking them would be a bloody affair as well.

Erlestoke then led them off the wall and in through the city, heading toward the Crown Tower. The city, he explained, was known to the locals as the Maze. “It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you do, you can get through it quickly. An invading army, on the other hand, will be broken up and cut to pieces.”

As he led them into the Crown Tower, through a tall arched doorway, he pointed a hand toward the sky. “Twenty-five years ago the Crown Tower was three times taller than it is now. As you know, the DragonCrown fragments were housed in the very top, and a trap set there slew a dragon which Chytrine had commanded to take them. Right up there, molded into the wall, is that particular dragon’s skull.”

The beast’s bleached bone stood out starkly from the grey stone. The hollow eye sockets peered down and Kerrigan imagined he saw someone hidden there, looking down at them. The skull itself was nearly thirty feet long and twenty wide toward the back, and had teeth so large a man would have barely rated as a morsel.

Erlestoke continued his commentary. “Because the dragonels are so effective at bringing towers down, the Draconis Baron lowered the tower and reinforced it. It is, however, still the home to the DragonCrown fragments.”

Erlestoke led them through the tower, up stairways that ended in corridors requiring them to move across the tower to pick them up again, or to traverse baffles. Getting to the top of the tower would not be easy were it defended, and the tower itself boasted manymeckanshü guards. Most of them seemed to have armor grafted onto their skin in a metal carapace that had been decorated with hooks and blades and spikes at elbow, knee, and heel.

In the archway before the fragment chamber, Erlestoke turned to Kerrigan. “Please, no magick in here. There are defenses worked into this place that I don’t know about, much less understand, and I don’t want to find out about them right at the moment.”

Kerrigan nodded, then entered the chamber behind the prince. The stone-walled circular room had no windows and no decoration, save for three stone plinths occupying the corners of a triangle centered in the room’s heart. On each of them rested a massive gem set in gold, virtually identical to the fragment they’d rescued on Wruona. The nearest one, a huge ruby, cast bloody reflections over the floor and walls. The center stone was a yellow gem with the qualities of a sapphire, though its light seemed muted. The last, a green stone with blue flecking, did glow with its own light, though not nearly as ostentatiously as the ruby.

Erlestoke allowed all of them to study the stones for a moment, then folded his arms over his chest. “In the south, when people think of Fortress Draconis, they think of the power of the dragonels. They forget that these three stones would allow Chytrine to unleash forces that make dragonels toys.”

They followed Erlestoke back down to the bottom of the tower, where a knot of soldiers pressed into duty as servants greeted them. Each warrior conducted one of the company away, save for Kerrigan. Erlestoke smiled. “I’ll be your guide, if you don’t mind.”

Kerrigan couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just wandered along with the prince, remaining silent. They moved quickly into the tower’s depths, ascending several floors, then coming to a dark door. The prince knocked once, then opened it into a large room with shelves full of books. For a moment Kerrigan could imagine himself back in his rooms on Vilwan, but the sight of the Draconis Baron rising from a chair quickly dispelled that notion.

The small man smiled. “Ah, very good, Kerrigan Reese, I’m glad you came. I am pleased you are here, and regret that I did not speak with you in Yslin. I was uncertain of your identity at that time.”

Kerrigan blinked. “My lord?”

Dothan Cavarre smoothed his moustache with his left hand. “It has been reported to me what you are able to do magickally. In some ways I find this curious, and in others merely a confirmation, but this leads me to ask you something.”

The Draconis Baron’s fast speech left Kerrigan waiting to catch up, then he nodded. “Please, my lord, if I can be of service.”

“Oh, I think you can.” Cavarre waved him deeper into the room. “We shall talk. If I hear what I expect to hear, you can perform a service for me. A great service, for which I shall forever be in your debt.”

After a moment’s reflection Alyx realized she wasn’t surprised seeing Crow at Kirill Square. After the tour she’d retired to her room and dropped into bed for a brief nap. She’d not intended to sleep until first light, but her body had a different idea. She didn’t have nightmares and, in fact, had no dreams at all. As she woke very rested, she wondered if the Draconis Baron had somehow had the fortress magicked against dreams, preventing Chytrine another possible point of access.

She’d dressed quickly, choosing from the clothes that had appeared in her room’s wardrobe while she slept. Unseen servants had filled it with the pirate garments the elves had cleaned and repaired, as well as the Loquelven Goldfeather uniform and more suitable local garb. She chose the standard grey Fortress Draconis uniform, which, in her case, had a winged horse rampant on the left breast, and a crown on the right. Both of them had been embroidered in white, but traced in black, the significance of which she did not quite grasp.

Down in the mess hall she grabbed some bread and a mug of hot soup. She drank the soup as she threaded her way out of the hall, past tables full of people from every nation and species. She noted that instead of a national insignia, themeckanshü wore a sword crossed with a wrench, surrounded by a toothed gear-wheel, embroidered in the color appropriate for their nationality. Alyx also noted that they tended to congregate together and not share much with the other troops—but she could not be certain if that was because they no longer thought themselves part of their nations, or if their countrymen shunned them so they’d not have to look at what they might become.

Munching on her roll, she left the Crown Tower, exited the grounds through one of the five gardens surrounding it, and headed east toward the place where her father had died. She’d heard that a memorial had been raised to him, or at least that was how she’d had it from her family, but none of them had ever visited. What they had described, however, in no way matched the reality.

The entire square behind what had once been the inner gate had been preserved intact despite the reconstruction, while all else around it had been changed. The stones around the gate had been half wilted by dragon’s breath, with tendrils of stone frozen in place as if they were sand being blasted back by a spray of water. The gateway itself sagged a little, the cobbled courtyard was unevenly paved. Missing stones had been replaced by newer ones, and she had no doubt that the stolen ones had been broken down into talismans soldiers carried into battle for luck.

Over on the north side of the gate, just inside the wall, a mountain of candles burned before a crater that had been smashed into the wall. Little strips of paper, cloth, and parchment fluttered from where they had been jammed between rocks and into cracks. Ivy had grown up around the crater, but no branches intruded upon it. Amid the candles stood a number of statuettes of various sizes, made of anything from terra-cotta to bronze, all representing her father.

The sight of it choked her, bringing tears to her eyes. She’d been ready for some grand monument, with a huge statue: her father in a heroic pose, dominating the square. That was what her grandfather and her great-grandaunt thought was here.They would hate so humble a display.

She did not. She understood it. These were the offerings, the signs of respect everyday warriors were showing him. To them he was another warrior, a man who gave his life to defeat Chytrine. They didn’t need to see him resurrected in some heroic statue—the crater itself told them everything they needed to know about his courage. This courage they venerated and hoped they would know, too, when the right time came.

Crow slowly rose from setting a candle into place. “Good morning, Highness. Forgive my intrusion.”

Alyx shook her head. “I’m the one who intrudes, Crow.” She walked over to him and got close enough to feel the heat wafting off the candles. “I had always imagined something ostentatious and gaudy.”

“Something your father would have hated.”

She nodded. “Yes, exactly, but something Aunt Tatyana would think barely adequate. The candles I understand, and the statuettes, but the paper? They look like prayers.”

“They are.”

“But my father isn’t a god.”

Crow smiled softly. “First, to those who were here that day, his intervention was nothing short of divine.” He pointed at a two-foot statue that was covered with a rainbow of melted wax. “King Augustus had that first statue fashioned after the Alcidese custom of ancestor worship. Others who didn’t quite understand took it to have another meaning and, well, you know how soldiers are with their superstitions. There are many who claim your father didn’t die here, but moved into another plane of existence.”

She shook her head. “That makes no sense.”

He shrugged. “Fact of the matter is, Highness, that your father was most roughly treated by thesullanciri who killed him. As for your father’s body, well, recognizing him wasn’t possible. Stories sprang up about how he’d not died. People accosted by roving bands of bandits or Aurolani would tell of a warrior answering your father’s description who would save them.”

“But those stories are nonsense.”

“They might be, but some people needed them to be true, Highness. Every other hero from that time, save the Draconis Baron and King Augustus, is dead or has joined Chytrine. People needed a hero to oppose her, and some chose your father for that role.”

She narrowed her eyes and regarded him closely, recalling the nighttime raid staged before the battle on the Svoin plain. “Some of those rescues, they were you and Resolute, weren’t they? You didn’t mind the stories being spread, so Chytrine would waste time and resources looking for a hero who didn’t exist.”

“Nothing that was done was anything your father wouldn’t have done, were he alive. I’m sure he took great comfort in people being saved. But, please, don’t be angry. We were not mocking him or his memory.”

“I didn’t suppose you were.” Alyx frowned. “You stopped, though, why?”

Crow scratched at the back of his neck. “We realized that Chytrine could easily use one of hersullanciri to make it look as if your father had been taken, had gone over. When Bosleigh Norrington did just that, we were glad we’d stopped. Besides which, once Leigh became asullanciri we had to start our search for the Norrington of the prophecy. We knew it wasn’t Leigh, so the hunt became paramount.”

Alexia shivered despite the heat swirled up from the candles by a breeze. “As I grew up, the world was painted for me in very simple and stark terms—Chytrine had killed my father, had taken my nation, and I was to undo all of that. As a child I saw it as a grand adventure. As I grew up and was trained, I learned that it wouldn’t be easy, but there were glimmers of hope. I never imagined that others would oppose her as you have, but now I see that all these efforts are going to be required to stop her. Ultimately, all of us who are arrayed against her will have to make the same choice my father did, make the same sacrifice, or at least be willing to do so.”

“But you’ve always known that anyway.”

“Yes, but I didn’t really grasp that others were willing to do it, too. I saw it as my duty as his daughter.” Alyx pointed at the candles and other offerings. “This shows me a host of different paths that are leading to the same goal. Only by pulling everyone together will we succeed.”