Song of the Dragon

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.

“He would kill you if he could, Drakis, this very afternoon. But someone will intervene on your behalf-and will save your life, though in doing so you will wish that you had died.”

“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.

But the voice. . he knew that voice.

Tsi-Shebin’s voice.

“You left me here with nothing to comfort me,” the elven princess pouted, “and nothing with which to occupy my time in this forsaken frontier.”

Drakis felt the brush of silk against his right arm. The pinched face of the elf woman drifted into view as she sat next to him, leaning across him as she rested her weight on her hand.

Tsi-Shebin was young for an elf woman. . impossible to guess in actual time but easily placed as equal to human females of sixteen or seventeen years. She was far from a child and yet not quite acceptable in elven adult company-an age of being between. Her head had the characteristic elongation of her race, though the back of her skull had a gentle taper to it that other elves found quite becoming. She wore her long, silver-white hair up after the royal fashion, exposing her shoulders while at the same time covering the baldness of the female elven crown with carefully pinned curls. Indeed, her angular features, narrow face and long, tapered ear tips were, Drakis had heard, considered stunningly beautiful by elfkind.

She looked revolting to Drakis.

“So, I suppose you’re wondering what you always wonder about now,” Shebin said through a crooked smile. She had been in a flowing household dress when he had last seen her in the throne room. Now she wore a vibrant blue silk robe wrapped with a wide sash about her narrow waist. She sat upright and placed her bony hand on Drakis’ chest. “There isn’t much time, so I’ll just tell you.”

Drakis was suddenly, horrifyingly aware that he was completely naked.

“We are in the healing room in the avatria,” Shebin continued in languid tones. “You’re lying on a bed of Healer’s Blade, and thanks to the Aether Well of my father, your wounds are being bound back together. I managed to stop Father’s little self-indulgent rage before you were of no further use to anyone ever again. I had the servants bring you here, and I dismissed them so that I might tend to your healing myself. They’ve never told on us before. . so they certainly won’t now.”

She moved her hand lightly up his chest. “The door is barred, so no one will bother us.”

His breaths came more quickly. He tried to think; Shebin was Timuran’s only child, a pampered young woman whom he could only recall having seen watching the combats from the wall around the training arena. She had applauded him once some years ago-this much he could recall-but beyond seeing her smiling at him as she stood next to Sha-Timuran at court for the presentation of each bounty, he had no recollection of her at all.

“You were always my favorite,” Shebin said, the long, carefully manicured fingernail of her right hand scraping across the skin of his wide chest. “Tsi-Narusin-she’s that insufferable girl over in House Tajeran-she always used to brag about her little games with a hoo-mani from her father’s stables. Her father found out about it, though, and burned that slave to ash right on the spot.

“Narusin was devastated about it for weeks.” Shebin giggled to herself with a strange gurgling sound. “It still galls her that I’ve got you to play with-and I remind her of it every chance I get.”

By the gods! Drakis thought. This can’t be happening to me! Mala! He had to get away, but he could not. His body remained unresponsive to his mind, the nerves working, his heart beating, his lungs dragging in air, but he could not willfully move. None of this made sense to him-it was a bad dream from which he could not awaken.

The dwarf! His world had turned upside down ever since they found the dwarf. Perhaps the dwarf was the key to ending this horrible nightmare. Maybe the dwarf was cursed or was a wizard or a deity or demon who came into the world to plague him.

“I know you’ll come to me tonight when you’re better healed-it takes time to knit the tissue back together properly,” Shebin cooed. The young elven woman reached down and began to unwrap the sash at her waist. “But we have a little time right now. . and you’ve been away too long.”

The sash fluttered down out of her hand. The silken robe parted slightly, revealing the skin of the young elf female from her narrow neck down past the hollow of her stomach.

“I know I should have waited until after House Devotions,” she said through a sigh. “But why wait?”

Shebin pulled her knees up under her, kneeling next to the human warrior’s immobile form. She unpinned her hair, which fell down around her shoulders, revealing the long bald strip typical of her race between her forehead and the back of her elongated crown. Shebin laughed darkly, then slipped the robe from her shoulders.

Drakis drew in a sharp breath.

Shebin was easily numbered among the greatest elven beauties in all the Western Provinces.

To Drakis, her wraithlike, angular, and bony form appeared hideously cadaverous-a living corpse whose fingers now lightly stroked his chest and body.

“Tell you what, Draki,” she murmured. “Why don’t you just think of that hoo-mani woman you’re always going on about-that precious Mala of yours-and know that I was the first to have you. . that I am always the first to have you!”

Drakis could not-dared not-scream.

CHAPTER 12

Hall of the Past

Drakis stepped furtively through the archway and into the ornate hallway beyond. He noted with shocking clarity the pastel-colored walls curving upward from the polished stone floor. He felt the stones cool beneath his feet. Drakis concentrated on each of these aspects in turn with fierce single-minded determination, because if he did not, he would start to think. .

“Has she quite finished with you?”