Song of the Dragon

the sound. Instinctively, he reached to his side, drawing his sword from its leather scabbard, but though his eyes shifted back and forth in anxious anticipation, sight was useless in the total absence of light.

Black is the sightless light smothering. .

Dead to the waking world sighs. .

Dead is the hero. . Dead to all lament. .

Buried past memory here below. .

He was alone with the song.

Drakis’ hand began to shake uncontrollably in the darkness.

“Octian!” Drakis called out, his words swallowed into the black void around him, echoing small and hollow. His fellow warriors had passed through this same fold just a few moments before him. They should have been arrayed all about him with their globe-torches shining.

Yet he crouched in the darkness, and there was no reply to his call.

The wheeling melody surged forward in his mind once more. Drakis quickly muttered a prayer to Rhon-god of war-and drew enough courage to shout again.

“Octian!”

The gentle, answering voice coming from so near in the darkness unnerved him with its quiet calm.

“I am here, Drakis.”

The warrior spun around in the dark. “Braun? Is that you?”

Dim blue light grew stronger as he watched, pushing back the smothering black as it brightened. Drakis fixed his eyes and his sanity on the glowing, expanding circle. Drakis’ world settled with each revelation of the brightening sphere. The headpiece, then the shaft of the Timuran Proxi staff that he had followed to victory in every battle of his life emerged from the darkness. Then the bald head now obscured with three days’ growth of gray-flecked hair, the hooked nose and the piercing eyes. .

. . The figures of Impress Warrior dead.

The bodies of an Imperial Octian lay about their feet. Drakis frantically started examining the mutilated corpses but then stopped.

“These aren’t ours,” Drakis said.

“No, they’ve been waiting for us here for a day or so now, as you might have guessed by the stench,” Braun nodded. He pointed over to the decapitated body of a human nearby with a broken Standard staff still gripped in his cold, discolored hand. “He’s how we got here. That fool managed to do his duty to the last; and carve the gate symbol before they got him. I guess we arrived a bit late to be of much use to him.”

Drakis looked down at his feet. The freshly severed arm of a dwarf with an ax in its hand lay bleeding onto the ground.

“And if we had been a little later, we wouldn’t have arrived at all. Braun,” Drakis struggled to make his voice calm as he spoke. “Where is the rest of our Octian?”

Braun looked up, considering the question, then smiled knowingly. “Not far, I should think. No doubt they have been called away by some glorious and pressing cause on behalf of our masters. Still, I should think that they will need us more than we will need them in the end, wherever they have gone.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Hurt?” The Proxi asked in amused surprise. “No, Octis Drakis. . I am remarkably at peace.”

Drakis stared at his companion for a moment. “Braun, stop that talk. You’re pushing KriChan’s fur the wrong way. I think he’s about ready to tear your limbs off as it is.”

“And how would the big cat get home then?” Braun answered simply. “How would he be able to lie on his master’s feet and be petted? Who would feed him his table scraps then? And who would remember him, buried here under the mountain? Not a one, Drakis, not a one.”

Braun peered into the darkness. “His memory would be buried with him here-and with it he would have ceased to exist at all.”

Drakis shook with a sudden chill. “Now those are exactly the kind of words that get you into such trouble with. .”

“Look!” Braun said, pointing with his free, right hand. The glow from the top of the staff was now shining with a brilliant white, revealing a great underground avenue running between facing sets of narrow structures. All featured an arched opening next to large, ornately framed windows fitted with thin plates of polished crystal through which Drakis could see with almost perfect clarity. Yet, in spite of their common features, each was uniquely appointed with different carvings and strange dwarven symbols.

“What are they? Drakis asked.

“Shops, I should think,” Braun replied.

“Shops?” Drakis asked. “What are shops?”

“You don’t know what a shop is?” Braun gave a sad little laugh.

“I am a warrior of House Timuran,” Drakis said, setting his jaw. “I have had no need to know of such things before, nor do I see any point in it now.”

“Let’s find out anyway,” Braun replied, stepping toward the open archway of one of the buildings. The light from his staff shifted the shadows across the buildings as he moved.

Drakis realized he was being left to the darkness. He quickly sheathed his sword and fell into step behind the Proxi. “Braun! We’ve got to find the Octian!”

But the Proxi was already inside the archway of the structure, his light shining out through the gentle ripples in the polished crystal window. Drakis ducked quickly through the low arch. He was stopped almost at once by a vertical wall beautifully carved with dwarf figures, some carrying baskets over their shoulders filled with vegetables and grains while others were enjoying eating loaves of bread and drinking from tall mugs. He easily stepped around the wall and into a large room. The fitted stones of the floor shone like a white marble mirror under the light from the Proxi’s staff.

Drakis shook his head. He knew they had to move, to rejoin the Octian and press the battle forward. ChuKang had told them time and again that to stand still on a field of battle was to invite death to find you. Drakis had to join the battle, had to find some honor in this debacle. More importantly to him, he secretly dreaded the silence and the stillness around him; it gave the music in his mind space to grow.

“What do you think, Drakis?” Braun said as he stood in the center of the room.

“I think we need to find our Octian and. .”

“No,” Braun snapped, an angry edge to his voice. “Do you see the picture? There’s a large flat platform inside the window. There. . back there. . is a carved stone counter and behind it. . can you see it?. . there are three ovens.”

Awaken the ghosts long forgotten. .

Recall the loved dead. .

Drakis began to sweat in the chill room. “It’s a. . a kitchen. . a kind of dwarf mess hall. . a place to eat. .”

“You look, but you don’t see!” Braun urged, stepping closer to Drakis. “The spirits still breathe whispers of their passing in this place. Their voices shout to us from the silence, and you! You hear nothing!”

They eat here. They love here. They laugh here.

Better if left and forgotten. .

Nine notes. Seven notes.

“I hear enough.” Drakis swallowed hard. “Leave me alone, Braun!”

“It isn’t what is here, Drakis; it’s what isn’t here that you need to see!” Braun swept past Drakis to the window. “Here on this shelf were the wares of this shop: baked goods, breads, meats-can you smell them still in the air? There. . there in the archway that we came through, there is no door. There have been no doors in any of the openings or halls through which we have come in the three days we have been wandering down here in our graves. By all accounts, the dwarves love their gems and their precious metals and their stonework-we are told they are all even more covetous of such things than our righteous elven masters. Why, then, are there no doors between the dwarves?”

We kill without cause. We kill without thought.