Song of the Dragon

leaped twenty feet to the top of the river’s steep southern bank. The scream had come from the south where his Codexia companion had just gone. He saw the careful, subtle marks of her passage-marks only another Codexia could follow-as he moved with swift yet silent steps among the trees.

The trees ended at the edge of a meadow running up the hillside between the trees. He could see Qinsei kneeling at the top of the ridge, her hooded head bent over as though she were examining something in the grass before her. Phang watched for a moment but was satisfied; whatever had happened to her, Qinsei had the problem well in hand. It would be best if he returned to the northern ridge and took up his position among the boulders, he thought and was turning to do so when some movement caught his eye.

It was Qinsei. She was motioning for him to come and join her on the ridge.

Phang grasped his Matei staff in both hands and ran easily up the slope. The ground under his feet was soft and had a spring to it that he found pleasant. The grasses around him were nearly up to his knees. He would not mind staying here to rest a while once the butcher-business of their calling was finished.

“Qinsei,” Phang called as he approached. “We must be in position soon. What is so urgent that. .”

Phang stopped at the sight of Qinsei’s face, raising his Matei staff at once.

Qinsei gazed up at him with the dull eyes that were shared by all elven dead. Thin green vines riddled her face, neck, and hands, shifting and writhing just beneath the surface of her skin.

Phang commanded the Aether of the staff to discharge at once into the hideous apparition that had been his companion, but the Matei staff did not respond at all, its powers vanished. Instead, the wood of the staff came alive, coiling like a snake around Phang’s arm as it slithered toward his head.

Tendrils running through the grass wound their way up Phang’s legs, but it was Qinsei’s dead face that fixed Phang’s vision. The vines in her lifeless muscles contracted and forced the dead Codexia’s features to smile.

The winding course of the stream had cut down into the sloping plain, leaving banks on either side of its curves sometimes as low as three feet, occasionally rising as high as twenty. Soen envied Phang and Qinsei; they were making good time across the open ground, paralleling the river, while the Inquisitor was forced to make his way along the meandering streambed with the sulking Jukung at his side. He could not afford the luxury of speed, for he was closing on his prey and dared not lose their track should they for any reason decide to defy his expectations and leave the watercourse. Still, he took satisfaction that with each twist of the River Galaran, his two Codexia were getting farther ahead, better positioning themselves to spring their trap on the bolters.

Jukung had crossed the river at a shallow ford nearly half a league downstream and remained on the opposite side. It was just as well, Soen mused. The young Assesia had been something of a concern early on, but Soen was convinced now that Jukung was only a pawn of the Keeper, a much easier problem than Soen had thought he was facing. The Inquisitor had been concerned that Jukung was working for one of the myriad other Orders, Houses or lords who were constantly scheming against the Iblisi, but the youth’s actions had dispelled most of Soen’s apprehensions. The youth was still dangerous-both to the Inquisitor and to himself-but apparently not with any darker purpose than his own aggrandizement.

A power-hungry youth was something Soen could manage.

They moved quickly, their Matei staffs held either across their bodies or parallel to the ground in their hands. Their soft boots pushed them soundlessly up the crooked path of the riverbed. He knew their tracks by heart, having followed them across the Hyperian plain when few others could have made out their mark. Now, fresh and deep, he had no trouble making them out even in the predawn light: two sets heavy and wide of the manticores, one lighter and longer of the chimerian, the heavy footfalls of a dwarf, and the three humans-two females and the male. One of the female tracks wandered slightly along the river’s edge.

Soen smiled, baring his sharp teeth. The woman is tired. She slows them down.

The banks of the river were steep now and tall, vertical precipices on either side. Just above their edge, Soen could see the tops of trees.

The Inquisitor continued his silent run, but he was troubled. They should have caught up to the bolters by now-or at least the Codexia should have stopped them before they reached the sanctuary of the woods. There were foul things lurking in those trees, for it was the realm of Murialis, Queen of the Woodland Nymphs and Dryads. All elves hated the woods but especially the forbidding trees of the dryad realm.

Soen was about to quicken his pace when he heard them: voices arguing around the turn of the gully.

The elf slowed his pace and saw what he had been looking for high on the riverbank. The twisted branch pinned back against the trunk of the tree. Qinsei and Phang had marked the spot as just around the bend in the river.

The prey were already in the trap.

Soen signaled to Jukung with his Matei staff to stop. The young Assesia obeyed at once from the opposite side of the river, his black eyes narrowing as he strained to look beyond the angled slope.

Soen crept forward, his Matei staff held firmly across him with both his long hands. He slid with gliding step behind a large boulder that had, in some age long past, tumbled down the slope just, he fancied, to provide him cover right now.

Such was the way of the gods.

Soen peered around the edge of the stone.

The steep “V” of the gully opened just a few yards beyond onto the wide oval of a pool. The waters of the river cascaded down a rock face into the pool on the far side. Soen could see the tree line of the woods running just atop the crest of the rise at the other side of the pool.

Soen frowned. Qinsei and Phang seemed to be cutting this a bit close. The location was ideal for their ambush, but there were several other locations farther downstream that would have served just as well. His concerns, however, were drowned out almost at once by the arguing voices on the left side of the pool.

“. . just leave him here!” one of the manticores was saying. “If he’s so upset by these woods, then he doesn’t have to enter them!”

“We can’t leave him here,” the human male shouted. Drakis, Soen realized with a shiver. “The Iblisi are on our heels. The gods alone can conceive of what they would do to him!”

“All the more reason to leave him behind,” the manticore roared back. “If we toss them a morsel, then maybe the rest of us will have a chance. He’s not coming unless we hit him over the head with a rock, and he’s slowing us down more than that woman of yours.”

Five separate voices erupted at once, arguing among themselves by the side of the idyllic pool without a thought of the black eyes watching them from the shadows.

All too easy, Soen thought.

He frowned again.

It was too easy, he realized, and the hair at the back of his elongated skull stood on end. Something inside told him that there was something wrong with what he was seeing-that his eyes were being fooled in dangerous ways. It was a sense that he had, an unexplained inner knowledge that seldom failed him and that had saved his life more times than he cared to remember. It was never the danger you anticipated that bit you, he remembered, but always something you didn’t see coming and could not have anticipated.

He glanced across the river. Jukung was moving forward, a vicious smile curling his lips back from his sharp teeth. His eyes were on the prey, the predator about to spring.

His eyes were fixed on the prey.

Soen’s eyes shifted around him. The walls of the gully they were in. . the waters rushing past him. . the stones of the riverbank.

The Inquisitor’s black eyes widened.

The stones under the water formed a pattern. Nature had not placed them there, rather the hand of design, thought, and intention. It was subtle and would have escaped the most casual glance, but now his mind was fixed on it. His eyes followed it up the near side of the river where it wound purposefully into the placement of the stones and boulders just in front of him. It wove its pattern up the embankment, disappearing over its crest. It was formed of stones, pebbles, roots, and dirt, but it was unmistakable. He turned quickly, his eyes following its line beneath the waters of the river to where it emerged on the other side among the boulders where Jukung was carefully moving forward.