Song of the Dragon (14 page)

“I don't know what you mean,” the manticore replied with a shrug of his great shoulders. “We were stuck on that pillar of rock you left us on for another six hours before a Proxi showed up to get us out. It must have been some other incredibly handsome Warrior you saw at the throne.”

Drakis' smile waned at the thought. He turned instinctively to look up at the avatria towering above them. He pushed Jugar's predictions out of his mind and crossed the arena to the chakrilya and his audience with his master.

Sha-Timuran sat upon the elevated throne and glared down through his black, pupilless eyes.

Drakis kept as still as the cold, marble stone on which he knelt. Since he had been ushered into the large, oval room by the house slaves, he had waited on his knees, his head bent over in submission. Even so, he felt the chill stare of his master's blank, onyx-eyes. No slave spoke in the presence of his or her master until specifically bidden to do so. No slave looked upon the master until directly addressed.

So he had remained, with increasing pain shooting up his legs as the moments dragged into eternity.

He was keenly aware of his surroundings. The audience hall was situated within the floating avatria, its arching walls rising upward in the shape of wide, alabaster leaves whose tips cradled crystal panes, each casting columns of light from a delicate lattice overhead. Curved stairs led down into the room from two archways situated between the leaves while the throne itself floated at the far end of the oval floor.

Standing still as statues at the perimeter of the room were a number of the elves from the household, paid servants who worked in the avatria or as overseers in the subatria below. These were pressed against the curved walls well away from their master's position in the hall. One slave, the Lyric, had little choice in the matter. A waiflike human woman clad in a loose fitting, translucent robe, she was chained by a golden collar to the throne of the master. Drakis vaguely remembered seeing her, though if she had a name, he did not know it. The Lyric squatted as far from the throne as the chain would allow. Only Tsi-Timuri, Timuran's wife, and their daughter, Tsi-Shebin, stood next to the throne with any affectation of desire.

Everyone waited.

At long last, Sha-Timuran spoke.

“Drakissssss,” he said, his grating, high-pitched voice hanging onto the last syllable, drawing it out like the sound of a snake.

“My Master,” Drakis answered, his words sounding too loud in his own ears. He looked up.

Sha-Timuran was tall even by elven standards, making even more pronounced the narrow features of his race. His sharp, narrow chin jutted out from the angular features of his face. The back of his head was elongated compared to the other creatures of the world, a protuberance that the Imperial Will had pronounced at once as unquestioned evidence of both the physical and mental superiority of their race. His elegantly elongated ears framed his face, and the hair that rimmed his protruding crown fell back in long, white strands. He still wore a common lime-colored work tunic beneath the mantle of his House. The mantle was a required sign of his authority whenever formally holding audience, though today it had apparently been hastily donned. He held his long baton restlessly in his hands, the Imperial medallion fixed to its head turning repeatedly, flashing occasionally in the column of light cast down from overhead.

But it was the featureless, black eyes staring down the thin, hooked nose that held Drakis in such awe that he forgot to answer.

“Drakis,” Sha-Timuran repeated from behind a thin veil of patience.

“By your will, my Lord!”

“So you have returned to us from the war,” the elven lord said with quiet detachment. “My great warrior—now leader of my Centurai, it seems. ChuKang has fallen, and yet somehow—somehow—you managed to survive.”

Drakis swallowed. “My Lord! My brother warrior ChuKang was great, indeed, and led the Centurai of your House to great honor. We followed him into the heart of the Dwarven Throne and . . .”

Sha-Timuran held up his long-fingered left hand, his right still gripping the baton. His voice wheezed with the sound of rusted blades sliding together. “We have heard the stories of that final battle—indeed, all the elven world, it seems, is talking about the fall of the dwarves, news of it having reached the Imperial ear itself. How could it be helped since the House of Tajeran has insured it to be impossible
not
to hear the tale?”

Sha-Timuran's long, pale fingers twitched along the handle of the baton.

“Tajeran . . . ah, that noble House of my neighbor.” Sha-Timuran stood now from his throne, his voice rising with each step of his bare, narrow feet, “A neighbor who shall never let me forget that a warrior of my own House . . .
my own House
. . . held the crown of the dwarves in his hands and tossed it into
HIS hands!
”

“But, my Lord,” Drakis blinked in confusion. Lord Timuran was a kind master who prized him. Lord Timuran had never spoken harshly with him in all the years of his life. “If you will but hear me . . . you will understand . . .”

“
THREW IT TO HIM!
” Lord Timuran screamed, his voice squealing with a sound like scraping glass. “Tossed it to my
neighbor's
warriors as if it were scraps from the table!”

Instinctively, Drakis leaned back from the onslaught, catching himself with one hand behind him before he could fall to the floor. Sha-Timuran stood over the startled warrior, his hands shaking with fury. “But, my Lord, your warriors
. . .
we
saved
them for you, and I thought I was throwing the crown to . . .”

“
Saved
them?” Sha-Timuran's lips twitched into a hideous grimace. “You
thought?
”

In a sudden eruption of rage, the elf lord's baton slammed against Drakis' face, its medallion cracking his jaw. The sharp edges of its ornamental wings cut furrows across his cheeks and nose that instantly erupted with welling blood. Drakis' head pitched sideways with the blow, its power twisting him around until he fell with his face against the marble.

Through the haze enveloping his mind, Drakis saw his blood staining the marble beneath him.

Marble, he noticed only now, that had been deeply stained before.

The pain of his broken face was nothing compared to the confusion that overwhelmed his mind. Drakis had fought and killed many creatures—human and otherwise—who had done him far less harm. Yet all he could think was that Timuran was good. Timuran was kind. Timuran was father to them all. Surely there had been some mistake. His master, he thought, did not understand. He pushed himself up, kneeling on the floor, his hands clasped together as he turned to grovel before the elf lord.

“I didn't want them
saved
you stupid, thoughtless
hoomani!
I wanted the crown! But now my
neighbor
has the crown, and in his appreciation of your ‘gift,' he arranged to have you delivered to me at once—so that all the Myrdin-dai would know which House of the Western Provinces
gave away
the greatest prize of the war!” Sha-Timuran shouted through a rage that seemed boundless, beyond control or thought. His hands were working the length of the baton handle now, twisting it and pulling at it. “You embarrass my House, you embarrass my name, you make me the heart of every citizen's laughter from one end of the Empire to the other, and you think that is worth saving the pointless, worthless lives of a few slaves! You will pay for the insult—someone always has to pay, Drakis—someone always has to pay.
Hoo-mani always
have to
pay!
”

The baton handle separated under Sha-Timuran's hands, revealing as they pulled apart the long strands of a living firereed. The nine fronds of the plant extended nearly six feet in length, a whip waving menacingly in the air as Timuran raised his arm above his head.

Drakis' eyes went wide. His speech was slurred by the sudden swelling of his cracked jaw but he spoke past the pain. “My Lord! The bounty we brought you! The greatest treasure of the dwarves . . .”

“Bounty?” Sha-Timuran snapped. “You bring me a dwarven fool and an ugly piece of rock and call it ‘bounty'?”

Sha-Timuran's arm swung. The fronds flashed suddenly through the columns of light, wrapping around Drakis' back. The razor-sharp hooks of the firereed cut through his tunic, burrowing down into the flesh of his back. Searing pain engulfed the human as Sha-Timuran pulled, raking the fronds across his back, their barbs tearing his flesh and leaving his nerve endings raw and exposed.

Drakis' tears mixed with the blood flowing from his face. “Please,” he choked. “I'll do anything for you! Tell me and it shall be done!”

Sha-Timuran, his hand raised for another blow, gazed for a moment at Drakis through the solid blackness of his eyes.

Then, with a coldness Drakis had never known, Sha-Timuran slowly smiled.

The firereed whip cracked again through the hall, ripping at Drakis' back and tearing new furrows in his skin and muscles.

“Master! Please!” Drakis sobbed like the confused child he was, “Tell me what you want!”

The blows rained down on him faster now, the pain becoming an overwhelming, encompassing reality. Drakis panicked within himself, repeating the same words over and over again through the cries and sobs that were wrenched from his soul.

“Please . . . I'll do anything . . . tell me what you want!”

The last thing Drakis knew was the sound of the whip grating against his own bones . . .

. . . And the sound of Sha-Timuran's angry laughter.

“T
RULY, DRAKI, I'm finding this tiresome,” spoke the reedy, high voice, calling him back from oblivion.

Drakis' sight returned to him slowly along with his awareness. He was staring up into a hazy, dim green fog as pungent, conflicting smells assaulted his nostrils.

I'm not dead,
he thought.
But I should have been.

“I thought perhaps you had finally managed to anger Father enough to butcher you at last,” the voice spoke once more with its dangerous, high-pitched purr. “I'll admit that I was tempted to just let him kill you—trouble that you are—but after all the effort I've put into you, I just couldn't let you go. Not yet.”

Drakis seemed to float in a misty, emerald void. He tried to move, but his muscles refused to respond to his mind in even the smallest degree; his eyelids remained open, and his burning eyes were relieved only by the flow of tears that welled up in a constant and unbidden cascade. Panic threatened to pull his mind back into the abyss from which he had just emerged, but he thought of Mala and pushed the horror back down.

He ached everywhere, and his back felt as though it were burned raw; but it was a more general pain, he realized, than the deep cuts that had nearly stolen his breath for the last time. Sha-Timuran's unbridled rage still hurt and confused Drakis—in all Drakis' long memories of his enslavement not once could he remember Lord Timuran striking him in anger. Yet Drakis had seen enough war to know the meaning and intent behind those black, featureless eyes. It was unmistakable; Sha-Timuran meant not just to punish Drakis, not to teach him discipline, but to beat him to death for the simple pleasure of doing it.

“What are you thinking of, slave?” the voice whispered into his ear. “Are you thinking of your little slave girl
hoomani
? Does it excite you to think of her?”

Drakis felt the black panic rising inside him once more.
Where am I? What happened to me? Why, after all these years, would Sha-Timuran wish me dead today? If he wants me dead, what is to stop him?

As he struggled to keep his fears at bay, the words of the dwarf came back to him, and he clung to them for a time like the last bit of rope before the fall into a bottomless chasm.

“Are you listening to me, Draki?” The voice was murmuring in his other ear now. He could feel the hot breath on his ear as she spoke and would have pulled away if he could. “We've shared so much over the years. I've always kept our dark little secret, haven't I? But you . . . you've been bad to me,
hoo-mani
. Very bad, indeed.”

The dim ceiling overhead was coming into focus now and again through his tear-blurred vision: the outline of arches converging in a dome above him with frescos of vines set between the columns. It was useless. He did not recognize the room at all. It followed the elven pattern of design, but what its purpose was or even
where
it was he could not say.