Flynn scrambled back to his feet, reaching again for the cloth in the basin and wringing it out. “Yeah—I think so. I’ve seen worse out at the Maelstrom Wall but not by much. Whoever did this wasn’t taking any chances. Dead now or dead later, they were determined to kill her one way or the other. What’s all this about, Grissif?”
“That’s Griffiths!”
“Yeah, Griffiths, whatever,” Flynn said, turning back to Merinda and starting the cleansing again. “Why does Targ want her dead?”
“It’s not just her,” Griffiths said, gazing down at Merinda’s now still form. “He wants us both stone cold.”
“You, too?” Flynn scoffed. “How do you know that?”
“Targ himself tried to kill me!”
“Targ? The greatest Vestis there is tried to kill you?”
“He certainly did!”
“So what happened?”
“He succeeded!”
Flynn stopped what he was doing and looked at Griffiths out of the corner of his eye. He raised an eyebrow. He took in a breath to ask a question but then thought better of it. He just shook his head and continued with his healing arts.
18
Courts of Tsultak
The Tsultak dragons had a strict propensity for order in all that they did—unfortunately they were never very comfortable with numbers. In the ancient days, so it was whispered among the E’knari stevedores, the Tsultak didn’t understand numbers at all beyond the concepts of “few,” “many,” and “none.” To the humanoid mind, this would have been a contradiction: fanatical devotion to sequence and order without a clear understanding of counting—but it made perfect sense to the Tsultak dragons. Their sequencing was all bound in their complex language forms, which often were tied to mutually accepted hierarchical forms of the dragons’ types, colors, categories, and various body parts. Travelers were often dismayed by this fact, for directions to various places—from the deep warrens to the massive court complex of the lofty caldera—were invariably confusing to all but the savviest new visitor.
For this reason, so far as the Tsultak were concerned, the Brishan was cradled at the Wyvern Portwing Dewclaw dock in the cavern Dragon’s Eye. With the yardow bulk-freight ships coming and leaving many times through the day, the relatively small size of the Brishan hull was of little concern to the local dock authorities. The casual observer quite easily missed it as it rested under the massive shadows of the merchant fleet.
For this same reason, another landing was taking place in relative anonymity in cavern Dragon’s Lair Starboard Cresthorn. Its small, compact form was quickly steered out of harm’s way from the moving larger ships and directed to a remote berthing at Wyvern Starboard Wing Clawtip dock. The lines of the new ship’s hull were unfamiliar to the port director—a relatively young dragon of only two hundred and thirty-five years. However, the procedural ceremonies required for accidents in the port were so long and tedious that he preferred to simply get the small ship out of the way rather than examine it further.
The hull was black—polished to a mirrored finish. Its general lines reminded one of an enormous, elegant insect, being comprised, as the ship was, of rounded components easily classified as a head, thorax, and abdomen. The ship slipped silently through the massive cavern. At one point it narrowly avoided a hulking transport with Aendorian markings that was just then lumbering out into the main exit pathways from an elevated departure dock. Dim red mooring lines of force extended from the ship to the cleats on the dock as it slid silently to a halt.
Stevedores—both sanctioned and unsanctioned—swarmed the dock at once. The ship was elegant, small, and obviously of distant construction. Any one of these factors would have signaled money and opportunity to the dockyard workers anxious to bargain a better wage for themselves; to have all three present in a single craft was an unprecedented opportunity. In moments the dock was filled with clamoring, excited E’knari as well as a smaller mixed bag of other races, each trying to determine where the hatch on the seamless hull could be located. Each creature there hoped that they might be the first to offer their service to the important—and undeniably wealthy—person aboard.
No hatch opened. The figure simply slid through the hull of the ship to appear before them.
A collective gasp breathed through the crowd.
It was a tall, thin figure—tall enough to be human—though it was difficult for anyone present to tell. The long robes concealed the features of the creature. Its face lay completely hidden under a massive hood.
Worse yet, a globe of darkness surrounded the figure, whose very presence inspired fear and loathing in all that were present.
The dockworkers closest to the dark figure pressed hastily back against the crowd. Shouts of alarm were raised from the back.
The figure drifted silently toward the dock, never touching the ground.
The crowd turned in panic. There was no reason in their desire. The approaching darkness was beyond reason and beyond thought. Still the back of the crowd remained unaffected and refused to move.
The globe of darkness touched the first rank of the stevedores. Their cries rang only for a moment before they dropped to the planking of the dock, unconscious and unmoving. Rank after rank in the crowd fell before the gray perimeter of the robed figure’s passage.
The back of the crowd at last realized what was happening. Those stevedores still moving vanished as quickly as they had arrived. In moments the only figures remaining on the dock were the still forms of those dockworkers who had the misfortune of being the first to arrive—and the robed figure of darkness that silently drifted over them toward the promenade.
Suddenly, a mammoth dragon appeared in his path. Its bright red doublet and ruffled shirt were impeccably tailored. The chrome helmet fitted over its thorny crest seemed somewhat redundant to its fierce demeanor. The dragon was ancient, massive, and had almost surely seen service in the early wars of conquest during the Tsultak migration seven hundred years earlier. He towered over the robed figure menacingly.
“Unknown man! We demand your attention to our inquiries as we are an officer of peace and justice duly recognized and accredited by the Lord Master of the K’dei and Arch-empiris of the Majestik Sphere, may the celestial spheres shine forever on his magnificence and wisdom, praise to his righteous reign and blessing upon his clutch and brood! In his name and in the name of the Tsultak nation whose security I guard, you shall forthwith identify yourself, your ship, and your purpose in walking the ancient halls of the Tsultak sanctuary! Speak now or answer the consequences of Tsultak wrath!”
The robed figure listened to the litany with detachment until a long pause ensued.
“Oh, were you speaking to me? Are you finished?” the figure demanded after a few moments.
“Your impudence shall not go unnoted in my rehearsal of all facts before the Council of the Nine! You shall respond as decreed by the Law of Challenge or be held accountable!”
“Oh, very well,” the robed man said, hovering in the center of his darkened sphere. “Ahem—now please pay attention, I only want to do this once. Let’s see—how does that go now? Oh, yes—I hear your admonition, Lord of Port Security, and shall comply with your challenge of demand as is within my desire to do so. My name has been challenged: I refuse to give it for it is of higher station than your own and therefore is not yours to demand. My ship’s business is my business and therefore also my own. As to my purposes in arriving upon this world, I have come to demand an audience with the Lord Master of the K’dei and Arch-empiris of the Majestik Sphere—may the celestial spheres shine forever on his magnificence and wisdom, all praise to his righteous reign and blessing upon his clutch and brood. I further demand, as you are my inferior, that you take me before the Courts of Tsultak in the Palace Aerie at once.”
The massive dragon blinked. Not only had this strange human that hovered literally in the shadows responded with entirely proper Tsultak protocol, but he had effectively placed himself above the secu
rity dragon on the social sequence. The dragon hardly thought it possible, but this little morsel of a human had the gall to place himself above the dragon of all security! The Tsultak momentarily considered simply eating the impudent little snack. Two thoughts, however, stopped him: one, he could not think of any justification for the action under the New Code which had governed all Tsultak for that last seven hundred and thirty-two years and, two, it occurred to him that the human might be right.
In any event, the dragon reasoned, if he brought this robed fool before the Council, perhaps, they could come up with a legal protocol whereby he could kill the man.
* * *
The Tsultak Majestik was a vast stellar empire but it had not always been so. In the ancient times beyond the memory of even the eldest Dragons of the Mystic Circle, the Tsultak dragons lived on a distant world now forgotten. The sun that had spawned them, however, ultimately failed them, for the Tsultak had divined that their celestial neighbor had become unstable. The Seers of the Mystic Circle prophesied their impending doom—and thus was their entire race thrown into the stars.
The catastrophe came at a most fortunate period in the Tsultak history, if one could consider any such cosmic horror as coming at a good time. The Tsultak warriors had subjugated a number of neighboring suns and conquered the native races living there. The Tsultak were not, therefore, completely without options in the saving of their race and their culture. The Great Fleet was undertaken as an interstellar imperative. It is one of the greatest moments of Tsultak history that the fleet was almost eighty percent completed and operational by the time the Tsultak sun finally exploded into oblivion.
One of the legacies of the Great Fleet was the New Code. The evacuation of an entire race of dragons from their home world was an organizational and logistical behemoth. Careful planning and organization, beyond an order of battle, ran counter to the warrior culture of strength and dominance which had pervaded their society up to that point. However, Grashna the Philosopher, a young dragon of the Tailblade clan, proposed a revolutionary restructuring of their entire society through a set of organizational, procedural, and ceremonial structures. Grashna had actually taken the time to study several of the cultures which the dragons had crushed and come to the conclusion that many of their ideas might further Tsultak society.
Faced with the question of either changing their old warrior code or dooming their race to extinction—the Tsultak naturally fell into lengthy debate. The Mystic faction, led by the elders of the Mystic Circle, held that for the race to die off entirely in a cataclysmic flash of energy from their suicidal sun would be a valued death honored in the halls of the ancients. Indeed, they held that such an event might well represent the crowning achievement of their entire race. The Grashnak faction, on the other hand, argued that there would be no songs sung of such an achievement, and therefore it would be of no value in the ancient warrior code. Further, the Grashnak argued that as their empire expanded even marginally out from the galactic core, the races they encountered were demonstrating both power and civility. For the protection and furthering of their race, survival in a more civilized galaxy required that they change their ways.
These debates were short-lived—only seventy-three years—before the Mystic Circle conceded the argument in an elaborate ceremony. In that act, the Great Fleet was born and with it, the New Code.
The New Code governed nearly every aspect of Tsultak life. It was the way of the Tsultak and, as such, was the only way anything was done. In their rush toward both the organization and the domesticity that they found in other star-faring races, they took on all the trappings of civilization without a deep understanding of the reasons behind it. Their ceremonies were endless and omnipresent. There was not a single act in the day of any Tsultak dragon that did not involve a prescribed and rigid procedure and code to be followed. They wore outlandish costumes because the code dictated it. They affected elaborate speech patterns because the code required it. Nothing short of their honor was at stake. It had been ingrained in every Tsultak that participated in the Exodus of Tears. It was woven into the teachings of their young. The old ways were being stamped out—quite systematically—by the New Code.
And yet …
Each Tsultak wore the prescribed garment but it was as much of a shell as the New Code itself. Each Tsultak offered meditations at the prescribed time but no regulation clearly dictated what thought dragons should meditate upon. For beneath the foppish clothing and behind all the ceremony, there still beat the heart and soul of a conquest-centered, battle-blooded dragon.
It was prudent for those who dealt with them to remember that fact from time to time.
“… The master of the house of Kipchik, whose name was great before the Battles of E’knar Prime and whose deeds are sung still beyond the outposts of Thebindara …”
The shadowed man drifted slightly in the center of the Hall of the Nine. All the ruling elders were present, each lounging on a massive fainting couch, their tails draped around the furniture in the prescribed manner. Each was set in his own alcove on a level high above the polished marble floor where the man hovered.
The man seemed to right himself suddenly, as though his concentration had somehow lapsed in the midst of the litany and he had only now recovered himself. Dealing with the Tsultak could often be a matter of patience beyond endurance.
The cloaked figure had endured enough.
“… When, in the midst of our trials, did my ancestor side with the blessed Grashnak, may all honor be unto his name and to his descendants all glory …”
“Excuse me?” The hooded man raised his hand from within the globe of darkness about him.
“The reading of greeting is not yet complete!” said the rust-red dragon from an alcove to the man’s right. “We cannot deal with the complaints lodged against this creature without a full reading of greeting and an establishment of our jurisdiction over this complaint!”
“Agreed,” responded the cobalt-blue dragon languidly from her alcove behind the robed man’s position. “The New Code is clear on these protocols and must not be violated.”
“I quite agree with you,” said the robed figure loudly from his place below. His voice resounded through the overly ornate hall.
The heads of nine dragons turned toward him as one.
“Without a reading of greeting and jurisdiction, you cannot adjudge me nor rule on my requests officially as the Council of the Nine. However,” the robed figure said clearly, “if you will indulge my ramblings for a few minutes—simply listening in silence while I allow my thoughts to take form through my words—I believe that your selection of protocols and processes may be much different and to the greater benefit of the Tsultak Majestik.”
The robed figure waited.
The dragons watched him—in silence.
The robed figure smiled to himself.
“I am a Sentinel. I represent a great and holy movement far across the stars. Our goals are one with the Tsultak Majestik. Your race was anciently wronged by the passing of a terrible and cursed soul known to us as Lokan. With him came the power to conquer the stars—through him was even the mighty Tsultak brought to its knees in disgrace.”
The dragons shifted slightly in their anger.
“Yet,” came the clear voice from the globe of darkness, “should the Tsultak choose to join with us, we believe we have the means to deliver the power of Lokan into your hands—er, pardon me, claws. The Tsultak will be mighty again for none should stand to stop them.”
Once again, the Sentinel smiled at the silence.
“I am a Sentinel; would you hear my thoughts?”
19
Cold Trails and Old Tales
Griffiths sat queasily in the bar deep within the warrens. Flynn had brought him back here after he had finished working the healing arts on Merinda. It would take time now for his ministrations to take effect. Flynn had insisted that an otherwise empty ship guarded by the TyRen might afford her the best chance of healing.
Besides, Evon seemed anxious to talk. Griffiths, on the other hand, was still very much in the dark as to where they were and, more particularly, why they were here. When Flynn offered him a drink, therefore, it seemed like a mutually beneficial deal.
Who knew, Griffiths thought miserably, that the spacer would lead them right back to the same grubby tavern deep in the bottom of the volcano where he had found him in the first place?
“A Sartagon grog for my friend and myself,” Flynn cried out to the barmaid who, to Griffiths’s astonishment, was a bare-breasted female centaur with an enormous, firm chest. “And make them hot!”
The centaur looked back at them through suspicious eyes. “You have money, Flynn? You’re far behind on your tab now!”
“Not mine, old filly!” Flynn bellowed across the cavern. “My old friends have come to buy me a drink.”
“Hey,” Griffiths said under his breath, “I don’t have any money!”
“You don’t!” Flynn said with mock surprise. “Well, I’d say that’s terribly inhospitable of you, friend! You invite me out for a few drinks …”
“I did not invite you out!”
“… And here I’ve come to find that you aren’t even paying for the rounds! Well, never mind. We’ll charge it up to the bay and Merinda can put in on her expense account. I’m sure the Omnet isn’t going to miss the price of a drink or two at their expense.”
“I’d think you might have a hard time selling that line to the owners here,” Griffiths said dubiously. “I’d bet a month’s pay that they’ve heard that dodge before.”
“Not at all, boy! I borrowed Merinda’s baton of passage. Careless of her to just leave it lying around her cabin like that. Such a valuable instrument should never go unguarded. Did you know that this little beauty could act as credits just about anywhere that the Omnet is recognized? Even in this sorry excuse for a drinking facility, old Ophid will no doubt part with quite a bit to get a credit impression from the base of this little jewel! Of course, it probably won’t be worth a damn once word from Central gets here that her baton has been recanted. Still, as Merinda is fast enough to outrun that information for the time being, this baton is a prime target. Such a device shouldn’t be left lying around where thieves and cutthroats might use it for their own nefarious purposes.” Flynn slipped the baton back into the open folds of his tunic. “Best if I keep an eye on this until she regains her strength.”
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