Song of the Dragon

large hole in the ceiling.

RuuKag watched the smoke for a time. The hole through which it escaped the mud city was called the Oculei by the Hak’kaarin-the Eye of God. It watched over the mud gnomes in their pursuits and, for the most part, brought light into their lives.

RuuKag chortled to himself. The Hak’kaarin repaid their god by blowing smoke into its eye. Perhaps, he mused, that was why god’s eye seemed so blind to the problems of the mortals in their care.

But then another thought came to RuuKag. The blaze of the great fire pit in the center of the mud city consumed the solid wood and sent it up to the gods. Through the Oculei he could see the stars of the night sky beyond-the very realm of the gods-welcoming the smoke and freeing it from the cares of the world.

“RuuKag-ki?”

The manticore, startled from his reveries, looked down into the face of a young gnome. By his reckoning the creature could not have seen more than twelve years in this world. “What do you want, gnome?”

The large, liquid eyes of the youth gazed up at him. “Your story, RuuKag-ki! I want to hear your story.”

The manticore shrugged his field pack higher on his shoulders. “I have business to attend! Go away.”

“You are leaving us, then?”

“Yes,” RuuKag said at once. “I mean, no! I’ve just got to go outside for a while. . I’ve just got something I have to do.”

“Not with a field pack,” the gnome replied, pointing up at the manticore’s back. “You’re leaving forever.”

“I’ve business to attend to, boy!” RuuKag said, pushing past the small gnome.

“But you have to tell me your story!” the gnome said, the urgency in his voice making it louder.

RuuKag turned in frustration. “Quiet! You want to wake the entire city!”

“Just tell me your story,” the young gnome urged. “Look! We’re right next to the storytelling cavern, and there’s no one there now.”

“I don’t want to tell you my story!” RuuKag growled.

“But you’ll be lost!” the gnome wailed.

“Quiet!” RuuKag said quickly. “What are you bellowing about?”

“Your story,” the gnome replied, his eyes tearing up. “If you don’t tell someone your story, you’ll be forgotten. No one will remember that you passed through the world. Your story will be lost, and your soul will not be recognized by the other souls in the sky!”

RuuKag looked up through the Oculei once more. The stars were looking back down on him. He felt their disapproval. “No one wants to hear my story,” he said at last.

“I do,” replied the gnome.

RuuKag sighed. He needed to get out of the mud city, and the last thing he needed was a whimpering, wailing gnome cub calling attention to what was supposed to be an unnoticed departure. “Fine! A short story and then I’ve got to leave.”

“Your story,” the young gnome insisted.

RuuKag sighed again. “Yes, my story. What’s your name little cub?”

“Jith!” the gnome replied.

“Well-Jith-where do we get this sorry tale over with?”

Jith wrapped his small, long-fingered hands around the manticore’s paw as best he could though even both hands failed to encompass it entirely. He tugged at the manticore, who dutifully followed him into a round, side cavern. In its center sat three curved benches that formed a circle. “Here, RuuKag-ki! This is the storytelling place. Sit!. . Sit! Sit! Sit!”

The manticore squatted down on one of the benches most definitely not built for someone of his size. “Just a few minutes, Jith. I’m very busy!”

“Yes, of course, very busy,” Jith nodded as he scampered over to one of the opposite benches and clambered onto it. He turned around, his own feet dangling from the edge of the bench and not quite reaching the floor. The young gnome leaned forward in anticipation. “But first you tell your story.”

Yes,” RuuKag said. “Well, once between a moon long ago there was a manticore named RuuKag. .”

“No, that’s no way to start a story!” Jith interrupted. “You start with, ‘I, RuuKag.’ ”

The gnome milled his hands through the air, urging RuuKag to continue.

The manticore bared his canine teeth in frustration. “Very well then. . ‘I, RuuKag’. . and then what?”

“Tell me about your family!” Jith suggested.

RuuKag closed his eyes. “I have no family.”

Jith caught his breath in surprise and excitement. “What a wonderful beginning! ‘I, RuuKag, have no family.’ Why?”

“Why. . why what?”

“Why do you have no family?” Jith asked. “You must have had one sometime-did you lose them?”

“No,” RuuKag replied, looking at the wall. “They. . well, my father threw me out of my clan. He proclaimed me dead and banished me into the savanna-the eastern edge of this same savanna, as a matter of fact.”

“Banished!” Jith drew in a long breath. “How terrible for you!”

“It was. . I was heartbroken at the time,” RuuKag replied. “My father was a proud warrior who had joined the rebellion against the elven occupation, leading our clan out of our traditional lands and into the wilderness of the Northern Steppes. His name was KraChak, and his armor was ten generations old-very prestigious among our clans. He was the result of a long line of brave warriors with their own tales of bravery in battle and honors in their warfare. He taught me the use of the spear and the blade at an age when other cubs were still wrestling across the green. My mother-her name was Lyurna of Clan Khadush-was so upset with our father that day that he had to call a clan council just to get away from her for a few days! They were both proud manticores who were in a lot of pain now that I look back on it. They had lost everything in the Rhonas occupation-everything but their prideful resentment. My father had lost his ancestral lands, and that was a terrible thing for him to bear. My parents could not give up the life that they once had-maybe they didn’t know how to live any other life. .”

There was something about talking to this little gnome that felt good to RuuKag. He had been carrying the words around inside himself for so long, never daring to tell them to anyone. He had forgotten them entirely while under the elven Devotional enslavement magic, but their burden had returned to him in force with the fall of House Timuran. He wanted desperately to return to the mindless bliss of his enslavement and to rid himself of the weight of his own decisions and consequences. But here and now, in the quiet of the night of a far-off land, he could tell those bitter words to this little gnome and somehow be rid of them.

Soon the words started coming unbidden and in a rush, as though the story had been there all along waiting for him to tell it and be rid of it. He told of his life growing up in a clan exiled from their own nation. He spoke of the customs of the manticores and how disputes were most often settled in combat. He told of the wonders of getting up at dawn on the Northern Steppes and hunting at his father’s side. He talked of lying under the canopy of the night and listening as his mother explained the lights in the sky and how they were his ancestors looking down on his honor from above.

As he spoke, another gnome happened by and stopped for a time. Then a third and a fourth came and sat down. RuuKag took little notice as he spoke, for he seemed lost in the telling of his tale to the large eyes of the enraptured Jith.

“All these wonders. . all these beautiful stories,” Jith said as RuuKag paused, “and your clan family, they are lost to you? Why?”

“The Battle of the Red Fields,” RuuKag said, his voice breaking as he spoke the words for the first time in decades. “The Rhonas Legions were not satisfied with taking control of the government of Chaenandria, they wished to crush all possibility of rebellion once and for all. With the aid and assurances of the Chaenandrian Council, the elf Legions moved north to challenge our rebel clans directly.”

“A war then?” Jith asked breathlessly.

“Barely even that. It had been a hard winter, and we did not expect them to join us in battle so soon,” RuuKag replied. The hall was now full of gnomes, but he no longer cared. To speak the words unburdened him. “When their Legions were reported, there were few that the rebel clans could field. Everyone who could hold a