Dragon Wing (The Death Gate Cycle #1)

by Margaret Weis

  They descended the stairs swiftly, the runes making it easy to see the way. Hugh would not have recognized the bumbling, stumble-footed chamberlain. Alfred’s movements were surefooted, his stance erect. He hurried ahead with an anticipation that was eager, yet wistful and tinged with melancholy.

  Reaching the bottom of the steep staircase, they found that it opened into a small narrow corridor; a veritable honeycomb of doorways and tunnels branched off it in countless directions. The blue runes led them out of the corridor and into a tunnel-third from their right. Alfred followed the sigla unhesitatingly, bringing with him a wide-eyed and awestruck Jarre.

  At first the Geg had doubted the man’s words. She had lived among the delvings and burrowings of the Kinsey-winsey all her life. Gegs have a keen eye for minute detail and excellent memories. What looks to be a blank wall to a human or an elf holds a myriad of individual characteristics-cracks, crevices, chipped paint-for a Geg, and once seen, is not soon forgotten. Consequently, Gegs do not easily lose themselves, either above ground or below. But Jarre was almost instantly lost in these tunnels. The walls were flawless, perfect and completely devoid of the life that a Geg can find, even in stone. And though the tunnels branched out in all directions, they did not turn and twist or ramble. There was no indication anywhere that a tunnel had been built just for the hell of it, out of a sense of adventure. The corridors ran straight and smooth and gave the impression that wherever you were going, they’d get you there the quickest route possible, and no nonsense. Jarre recognized in the design a sense of strong purpose, a calculated intent that frightened her by its sterility. Yet her strange companion seemed to find it comforting, and his confidence eased her fear.

  The runes led them in a gentle curve that kept taking them to their right. Jarre had no idea how far they traveled, for there was no feeling of time down here. The blue sigla ran on before them, lighting their path, each flaming to life out of the darkness as they neared it. Jarre became mesmerized by them; it seemed as if she walked in a dream and might have kept walking forever as long as the runes led the way. The man’s voice added to this eerie impression, for-as she had asked-he talked the entire time.

  Then, suddenly, they rounded a corner and Jarre saw the sigla climb into the air, form a glowing archway that burned and glistened in the darkness, inviting them to enter. Alfred paused.

  “What is it?” Jarre asked, starting out of her trance, blinking, and tightening her grip on Alfred’s hand. “I don’t want to go in there!”

  “We have no choice. It’s all right,” said Alfred, and there was that note of wistful melancholy in his voice. “I’m sorry I frightened you. I’m not stopping because I’m afraid. I know what’s in there, you see, and … and it only makes me sad, that’s all.”

  “We’ll go back,” said Jarre suddenly, fiercely. She turned and took a step, but almost immediately the runes that had showed the way behind them flared a bright blue, then slowly began to fade. Soon the two were surrounded by darkness, the only light coming from flickering blue sigla outlining the archway.

  “We can go in now,” said Alfred, drawing a deep breath. “I’m ready. Don’t be frightened, Jarre,” he added, patting her hand. “Don’t be frightened by anything you see. Nothing can harm you.”

  But Jarre was frightened, though she couldn’t say of what. Whatever lay beyond was hidden in darkness, yet what frightened her wasn’t a fear of bodily harm or the terror of the unknown. It was the sadness, as Alfred had said. Perhaps it had come from the words he’d been speaking during their long walk, although she was so disoriented and confused that she could recall nothing of what he’d said. But she experienced a feeling of despair, of overwhelming regret, of something lost and never found, never even sought. The sorrow made her ache with loneliness, as if everything and everyone she had ever known was suddenly gone. Tears came to her eyes, and she wept, and she had no idea for whom she was crying.

  “It’s all right,” repeated Alfred. “It’s all right. Shall we go in now? Do you feel up to it?”

  Jarre couldn’t answer, couldn’t stop crying. But she nodded, and, weeping, clinging closely to Alfred, walked with him through the archway. And then Jarre understood, in part, the reason for her fear and her sadness.

  She stood in a mausoleum.

  CHAPTER 36

  WOMBE, DREVLIN, LOW REALM

  “THIS IS DREADFUL! SIMPLY DREADFUL! UNHEARD-OF! WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO? What are you going to do?”

  The Head Clark was clearly becoming hysterical. Darral Longshoreman felt a tingling in his hands and was hard pressed to resist the temptation to administer a right to the jaw.

  “There’s been enough bloodshed already,” he muttered, grasping hold of his hands firmly behind his back in case they took it upon themselves to act on their own. And he managed to ignore the voice that whispered, “A little more blood wouldn’t hurt, then, would it?”

  Decking his brother-in-law, though undoubtedly very satisfying, wasn’t going to solve his problems.

  “Get hold of yourself!” Darral snapped. “Haven’t I got trouble enough?”

  “Never has blood been spilled in Drevlin!” cried the Head Clark in an awful tone. “It’s all the fault of this evil genius Limbeck! He must be cast forth! Made to walk the Steps of Terrel Fen. The Mangers must judge him-“

  “Oh, shut up! That’s what brought on all this trouble in the first place! We gave him to the Mangers, and what did they do? Gave him right back to us! And threw in a god! Sure, we’ll send Limbeck down the Steps!” Darral waved his arms wildly. “Maybe this time he’ll come up with a whole army of gods and destroy us all!”

  “But that god of Limbeck’s isn’t a god!” protested the Head Clark.

  “They’re none of them gods, if you ask me,” stated Darral Longshoreman.

  “Not even the child?”

  This question, asked in wistful tones by the Head Clark, posed a problem for Darral. When he was in Bane’s presence, he felt that, yes, indeed, he had at last discovered a god. But the moment he could no longer see the blue eyes and the pretty face and the sweetly curved lips of the little boy, the High Froman seemed to waken from a dream. The kid was a kid, and he, Darral Longshoreman, was a sap for ever thinking otherwise.

  “No,” said the High Froman, “not even the child.”

  The two rulers of Drevlin were alone in the Factree, standing beneath the statue of the Manger, gloomily surveying the battlefield.

  It hadn’t, in reality, been much of a battle. One might hardly even term it a skirmish. The aforesaid blood had flowed, not from the heart, but from several cracked heads, gushed out a few smashed noses. The Head Clark had sustained a bump, the High Froman a jammed thumb that had swelled up and was now turning several quite remarkable colors. No one had been killed. No one had even been seriously injured. The habit of living peacefully over numerous centuries is a hard one to break. But Darral Longshoreman, High Froman of his people, was wise enough to know that this was only the beginning. A poison had entered the collective body of the Gegs, and though the body might survive, it would never be healthy again.

  “Besides,” said Darral, his heavy brows creased in a scowl, “if these gods aren’t gods, like Limbeck said they weren’t, how can we punish him for being right?”

  Unaccustomed to wading in such deep philosophical waters, the Head Clark ignored the question and struck out for high ground. “We wouldn’t be punishing him for being right, we’d be punishing him for spreading it around.”

  There was certainly some logic to that, Darral had to admit. He wondered sourly how his brother-in-law had come up with such a good idea and concluded it must have been the bump on the head. Wringing his wounded thumb and wishing he was back home in his holding tank with Mrs. High Froman clucking over him and bringing him a soothing cup of barkwarm [13], Darral pondered the idea, born of desperation, that was lurking about in the dark alleys of his mind.

  “Maybe this time, when we throw him off the Steps of Terrel Fen, we
can leave off the kite,” suggested the Head Clark. “I always did think that was an unfair advantage.”

  “No,” said Darral, the rattle-brained ideas of his brother-in-law making his decision for him. “I’m not sending him or anyone else Down anymore. Down isn’t safe, seemingly. This god-that-isn’t-a-god of Limbeck’s says he comes from Down. And therefore” -the High Froman paused during a particularly loud spate of banging and whanging from the Kicksey-Winsey-“I’m going to send him Up.”

  “Up?” The bump on the head was not going to come to the aid of the Head Clark on this one. He was absolutely and categorically lost.

  “I’m going to turn the gods over to the Welves,” said Darral Longshoreman with dark satisfaction.

  The High Froman paid a visit to the prison vat to announce the captives’ punishment-an announcement he reckoned must strike terror into their guilty hearts.

  If it did, the prisoners gave no outward sign. Hugh appeared disdainful, Bane bored, and Haplo impassive, while Limbeck was in such misery that it was doubtful if he heard the High Froman at all. Getting nothing from his prisoners but fixed cold stares and, in Bane’s case, a yawn and a sleepy smile, the High Froman marched out in high dudgeon.

  “I presume you know what he’s talking about?” inquired Haplo. “This being given to the ‘Welves’?”

  “Elves,” corrected the Hand. “Once a month, the elves come down in a transport ship and pick up a supply of water. This time, they’ll pick us up with it. And we don’t want to end up prisoners of the elves. Not if they catch us down here with their precious water supply. Those bastards can make dying very unpleasant.”

  The captives were locked up in the local prison-a grouping of storage vats that the Kicksey-Winsey had abandoned and which, when fitted with locks on the doors, made excellent cells. Generally the cells were little used-perhaps the occasional thief or a Geg who had been lax in his service to the great machine. Due to the current civil unrest, however, the vats were filled to capacity with disturbers of the peace. One vat had to be emptied of its inhabitants in order to make room for the gods. The Geg prisoners were crowded into another vat so as to avoid being placed into contact with Mad Limbeck.

  The vat was steep-walled and solid. Several openings covered with iron grilles dotted the sides. Hugh and Haplo investigated these grilles and discovered that fresh air, smelling damply of rain, was flowing in through them, leading the men to assume the grilles covered shafts that must eventually connect with the outside. The shafts might have offered a means of escape except for two drawbacks: first, the grilles were bolted to the metal sides of the vat, and second, no one in his right mind wanted to go Outside.

  “So you’re suggesting we fight?” inquired Haplo. “I presume these elven ships are well-manned. We’re four, counting the chamberlain, plus a child, and one sword between us. A sword that’s currently in the possession of the guards.”

  “The chamberlain’s worthless,” grunted Hugh. Leaning back comfortably against the brick wall of their prison, he drew out his pipe and stuck the stem between his teeth. “The first sign of danger, and he faints dead away. You saw him back there during the riot.”

  “That’s odd, isn’t it?”

  “He’s odd!” stated Hugh.

  Haplo could remember Alfred’s eyes trying desperately to pierce the cloth covering the Patryn’s hands, almost as if the chamberlain knew what was beneath. “I wonder where he got to? Did you see?”

  Hugh shook his head. “All I saw was Gegs. I had the kid. But the chamberlain’s bound to turn up. Or rather stumble up. He won’t leave His Highness.” The Hand nodded at Bane, who was talking away at the misery-stricken Limbeck.

  Haplo followed Hugh’s gaze and focused on the Geg.

  “There’s always Limbeck and his WUPP’s. They’d fight to save us, or, if not us, their leader.”

  Hugh glanced at him dubiously. “Do you think so? I always heard Gegs had the fighting spirit of a flock of sheep.”

  “That may be true now, but it didn’t used to be so. Not in the old days. Once, long ago, the dwarves were a fierce, proud people.”

  Hugh, returning his gaze to Limbeck, shook his head.

  The Geg sat huddled in a corner, his shoulders slumped, arms dangling limply between his knees. The child was talking at him; the Geg was completely oblivious of the conversation.

  “He’s been walking along with his head in the clouds,” said Haplo. “He didn’t see the ground coming and got hurt in the fall. But he’s the one to lead his people.”

  “You’re really caught up in this revolution of theirs,” observed Hugh. “Some might wonder why you care.”

  “Limbeck saved my life,” answered Haplo, lazily scratching the ears of the dog that was stretched out at his side, its head resting in his lap. “I like him and his people. As I said, I know something about their past.” The mild face darkened. “I hate seeing what they’ve become. Sheep, I believe, was how you put it.”

  Hugh sucked thoughtfully, silently on his empty pipe. The man sounded good, but Hugh found it difficult to believe this Haplo was that concerned about a bunch of dwarves. A quiet, unassuming man, you tended to ignore him, forget he was around. And that, said Hugh to himself, might be a very big mistake. Lizards that blend in with the rocks do so to catch flies.

  “Somehow we’ve got to get some backbone into your Limbeck, then,” remarked Hugh. “If we’re going to save ourselves from the elves, we’ll need the Gegs to help us.”

  “You can leave him to me,” said Haplo. “Where were you headed, before you got caught up in all this?”

  “I was going to return the kid to his father, his real father, the mysteriarch.”

  “Damn nice of you,” commented Haplo.

  “Hunh,” Hugh grunted, his lips twisting in a grin.

  “These wizards who live in the High Realm. Why was it they left the world below? They must have enjoyed a large amount of power among the people.”

  “The answer to that depends on who you ask. The mysteriarchs claim they left because they’d advanced in culture and wisdom and the rest of us hadn’t. Our barbaric ways disgusted them. They didn’t want to bring up their kids in an evil world.”

  “And what do you barbarians say to all this?” asked Haplo, smiling. The dog had rolled over on its back, all four feet in the air, its tongue lolling out of its mouth in foolish pleasure.

  “We say”-Hugh sucked on the empty pipe, his words coming out between the stem and his teeth-“that the mysteriarchs were afraid of the growing power of the elven wizards and beat it. They left us in the lurch, no doubt of it. Their leaving was the cause of our downfall. If it hadn’t been for the revolt among their own people, the elves’d be our masters still.”

  “And so these mysteriarchs wouldn’t be welcome, if they returned?”

  “Oh, they’d be welcome. Welcomed with cold steel, if the people had their way. But our king maintains friendly relations, or so I’ve heard. People wonder why.” His gaze shifted back to Bane.

  Haplo knew the changeling’s story. Bane himself had proudly explained it to him. “But the mysteriarchs could come back if one of them was the human king’s son.”

  Hugh made no response to the obvious. He removed the pipe from his mouth, tucked it back in his doublet. Crossing his arms over his chest, he rested his chin on his breast and closed his eyes.

  Haplo rose to his feet, stretched. He needed to walk, needed to work the kinks out of his muscles. Pacing the cell, the Patryn thought about all he’d heard. He had very little work to do, it seemed. This entire realm was overripe and ready to fall. His lord would not even have to reach out his hand to pluck it. The fruit would be found lying, rotting, on the ground at his feet.

  Surely this was the clearest possible evidence that the Sartan were no longer involved in the world? The child was the question. Bane had evinced a magical power, but that might be expected of the son of a mysteriarch of the Seventh House. Long ago, before the Sundering, the magics of those wizar
ds had reached the lower level of both Sartan and Patryns. After all this time, they had likely grown in power.

  Or Bane could be a young Sartan-clever enough not to reveal himself. Haplo looked over to where the boy sat talking earnestly to the distraught Geg.

  The Patryn made an almost imperceptible sign with his wrapped hand. The dog, who rarely took his eyes from his master, immediately trotted over to Limbeck and gave the Geg’s limp hand a swipe with his tongue. Limbeck looked up and smiled wanly at the dog, who, tail wagging, settled down comfortably at the Geg’s side.

  Haplo drifted over to the opposite end of the vat to stare in seeming absorption at one of the air shafts. He could now hear clearly every word being said.

  “You can’t give up,” said the boy. “Not now! The fight’s just beginning!”

  “But I never meant there to be a fight,” protested poor Limbeck. “Gegs attacking each other! Nothing like that has ever happened before in our history, and it’s all my fault!”

  “Oh, stop whining!” said Bane. Scratching at an itch on his stomach, he looked around the vat and frowned. “I’m hungry. I wonder if they’re going to starve us. I’ll be glad when the Welves get here. I-“

  The boy fell suddenly silent, as if someone had bidden him hold his tongue. Haplo, glancing surreptitiously over his shoulder, saw Bane holding the feather amulet, rubbing it against his cheek. When he spoke again, his voice had changed.

  “I’ve got an idea, Limbeck,” said the prince, scooting forward to be very near the Geg. “When we leave this place, you can go with us! You’ll see how well the elves and the humans live up above while you Gegs slave down here below. Then you can come back and tell your people what you’ve seen and they’ll be furious. Even this king of yours will have to go along with you. My father and I will help you raise an army to attack the elves and the humans-“

  “An army! Attack!” Limbeck stared at him, horrified, and Bane saw that he had gone too far.

  “Never mind about that now,” he said, brushing aside world warfare. “The important thing is that you get to see the truth.”