Having revealed itself, the drake lost no time in attacking.
It lowered its head and glared at the caravan. But what looked at first like it was studying them intently proved to be something more, as a wave of pure energy struck the wagons and those on foot around them. Soldiers reeled against the argosies’ armored walls. One wagon, unbalanced because one wheel was rolling over a large rock its drivers should have avoided, tipped over sideways with a crash. Those on the far side, pinned under its crushing weight, screeched in pain. Aric’s wagon tipped but didn’t fall; he was dashed against the far wall and barely managed to shield his head.
He made it back to the window in time to see soldiers, some of them with blood pouring from noses and mouths, trying to right themselves, and mekillot drivers frantically trying to keep their beasts on track.
But the earth drake was on the move, head down, charging on all four clawed feet. The caravan could not escape it—the drake had caused boulders and debris from the hillsides to float in the air before and behind the wagons, hemming it in—so the best they could do was to fight it.
And fighting an earth drake, stories said, was usually a losing proposition.
Aric turned toward the soldiers assigned to keep him in the wagon. They were anything but friendly at the best of times, and now they looked positively grim. “I’ve got to get out there and help!” he said.
“You don’t leave this argosy,” one of the soldiers said. “For any reason.”
“But—”
“For any reason,” repeated the other. “You looking for adventure?”
Aric cringed at the word. “No. But my friends are out there.”
“Maybe fortune smiles on them today,” the soldier said with a shrug. “Maybe not.”
Aric wanted to rush past them, or to climb out the wide but shallow window. What could they do to him, after all? They wouldn’t kill him to save him.
They could, he supposed, maim or cripple him. Kadya didn’t need him whole in Akrankhot, after all, she just needed him alive.
From their posture, the tenseness of their jaws, and the way they kept casting quick, darting glances at the wagon’s door, he suspected they were glad to stay inside, “protecting” him.
He returned to the window, from which he could watch the action. If there seemed to be something he could do to help, he would try squeezing through it.
Arrows from the bows of a dozen archers rained onto the drake, most bouncing harmlessly off its rocklike hide. Cast spears had somewhat better success. One lodged in its back, another hit the hard ridge over its brow, glancing off but opening a cut there.
Those minor wounds gave it no pause. Lowering its head, it smashed into one of the argosies. A terrible crashing sound came as it rent the armor. The wagon began to tip, bringing cries of terror from those inside. Then the wagon tumbled down on its side, and screams of fear became the sounds of death. A soldier trapped beneath the wagon’s solid bulk, his torso, head and arms exposed, cried for aid and clawed at the ground, but a pool of blood soaking the earth around him so quickly that Aric knew the man’s hips and legs must have been crushed, if not severed completely.
Almost as if in an act of mercy, one of the earth drake’s rear feet came down on the poor man’s head, ending his desperate flailing.
But the drake had no more sense of mercy than it did of fair play. It wanted only to kill, to smash, to consume. Soldiers attacked it with trikals, with alhulaks, with spears and swords. It took their blows without apparent effect; even when blood ran down its hide and splashed to the ground it showed no awareness of injury.
It rammed a soldier with that gigantic cranium, sending her flying a dozen feet into a boulder. The impact snapped her neck, but she lived, hands twitching and scrabbling at pebbles until a comrade took pity and ended her life with a quick sword stroke.
Another soldier, a goliath, stabbed the drake in the ribs, his sword sinking so deep that he couldn’t yank it free. He tried for too long. When he finally gave up and released its hilt, the drake swung around, that awesome maw gaping open and engulfing the hapless half-giant. It snapped its mouth shut, and for a moment the goliath’s left arm and leg dangled, but then those gargantuan teeth bit through muscle and tendon and the soldier’s limbs dropped to the dirt, as forgotten by the drake as a few crumbs of bread to a person enjoying a fine meal.
Fifteen soldiers formed a line between the drake and the caravan, making ready to rush it all at once. Aric thought they had a chance—at least some of them might get through, and if they went for the eyes then perhaps they could pierce its brain. But it pawed twice at the ground, gave them a forbidding glare, and its psionic energy burst swept over them, forcing soldiers back against the wagons, toppling yet another of the weighty argosies.
Aric turned back to the two guards, huddled against the wagon’s door as if it could somehow protect them from the fury outside. “I’m going out there,” he said. “I’ve got to try to do something.”
“What can any of us do?” one of the guards asked. He hadn’t been near the window, had not seen the drake’s devastation.
“Let him,” the other guard said. “He might even be safer outside—at least there he can run.”
The second guard shrugged and opened the door. “Go quick, then.”
“I won’t run,” Aric said. He pushed between the guards and out the door. He had only the agafari-wood sword on him.
To attack the earth drake with it would be suicide.
But what other choice did he have? He hadn’t seen his friends, didn’t know if they were alive or dead. He couldn’t just sit by while this monster tore through the whole caravan.
He rounded the argosy, sword in hand, on legs that threatened to buckle at every step.
The earth drake stood twenty feet away, snorting and clawing at the earth, readying its next charge. It raised its ugly head, caught someone in its sights. It was Amoni. She stood with legs spread wide, braced for attack, her cahulaks spinning before her.
She would die in a heartbeat.
“Hey!” Aric shouted. “I’m talking to you, you motherless son of a rockslide!” Shifting the sword to his left hand, he dropped to a crouch, picked up a stone bigger around than his fist, and hurled it at the beast. It bounced off the drake’s skull, accomplishing what words alone had not.
The thing turned away from Amoni, its fierce red glare fixed on Aric.
He took the sword in his right hand again. If he could dodge it, run past as it thundered by him, jab at the eye, hang onto the sword and keep doing the same …
It would never work.
He had to try.
3
The earth drake charged.
Aric made ready to move faster than he had in his life. He was a blacksmith, not a warrior, or even a sprinter, but elves were fleet of foot.
Still, the massive beast closed the distance fast.
Aric shifted his weight to his right leg, ready to spring out of its way.
Kadya’s voice called out a phrase in a language Aric didn’t know.
Ice rimed the earth drake’s hide, all at once. Where its hot, moist breath blew out flared nostrils, icicles formed. It skidded to a stop, shivering, stamped its feet and flung its head in outrage.
Then even those actions slowed, as the coating of ice grew thicker on it. Aric could feel waves of cold coming from it, cutting the warmth of the day.
The drake tried to open its mouth. Its jaws creaked, then froze in place. Its tongue darted out from inside, met the cold air, and locked there, sticking rigidly half outside.
It shivered once more, a great shaking that rumbled the earth beneath Aric’s feet.
Then it was still.
Amoni gave it a few seconds, then approached it with her cahulaks loose in her hand. She started to reach out for it with her free hand, but stopped short. “It’s too cold to touch.”
“Leave it,” Aric said. “It’s no threat now.”
Kadya stepped up beside Aric. “
Not at the moment, no. But when it thaws out? Earth drakes hate cities. This one might have been on its way to wreak havoc in Akrankhot when it decided we were a juicier target.”
“You’ve beaten it,” Aric said. With your defiling magic, he added mentally. He would have to see from what she had drawn the power for her spell. The fragile plants clinging desperately among the rocks? The dying soldiers and slaves in the toppled argosies? “Is it still alive?”
“Not for long,” Amoni said. She took a step back, got the cahulaks spinning again, and then brought a four-bladed head down against the drake’s skull.
Like a chunk of ice, the beast’s head shattered under the blow. A piece of its snout skidded almost to Aric’s feet, then stopped, thawing in the sunlight.
The floating boulders and debris blocking the caravan’s progress had fallen when the drake died. “Let’s get out of here,” Kadya said. “What’s left of us.”
Aric eyed her with suspicion. She had defeated the drake, it was true. But she had led them into its trap. She seemed to spare not an instant’s thought for those who had died. The ruined argosies would have to be dragged from their path, wounded mekillots put to death, dead soldiers buried and injured warriors tended to before they could leave.
She was a sorcerer, like her husband. Magic had ravaged Athas, turned it into the nearly dead husk of a planet that it was. Attitudes like hers—the belief that nothing was as important as satisfying whatever goal spurred her at the moment—had, Aric believed, been a big part of that.
He hadn’t been sure what he thought of her, until this moment.
Now that he knew, he didn’t like her a bit.
4
What Aric hadn’t anticipated was the impatience with which the soldiers waited for the earth drake to thaw. He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed as if they performed the other necessary tasks more slowly than they might have—even risking Kadya’s wrath—because they wanted to tear the thing’s body apart. Drake hide, it turned out, made good armor, lightweight compared to bone and chitin, and nearly as strong. He saw soldiers pulling its giant teeth and claws to use as weapons. Kadya herself took advantage of the opportunity to draw some of its blood into a phial.
Others, although they had missed out on the more useful parts, simply cut slices of the thing. “Is it good to eat?” Aric asked Amoni as they watched together. The other work had been completed; they waited only for the division of drake parts to be on the road. Kadya had made it clear that she was in a hurry.
“Terrible eating,” Ruhm answered. He had come up behind them, without Aric even knowing he was there. “But good luck.”
“So some believe,” Amoni clarified. “Not all of us. Enough, though, to judge from the spectacle they’re making.”
Damaric approached them, showing off the claw he had acquired. “I don’t know about luck,” he said with a grin. He touched the claw’s point. “But it’ll make a fine dagger.”
Amoni shot him a withering glare. Damaric nodded. “It’s a bit ghoulish, but why waste it? The drake won’t need it anymore.”
Amoni twitched her head and drifted away from the wagons, and the other three followed. “When I was helping pull corpses from one of the argosies, people were angry, upset, and maybe speaking more freely than they should have been.”
“What you hear?” Ruhm asked.
“Mutiny, almost. They know Kadya’s magic has saved their hides, more than once. But still … it’s magic. Nobody likes magic, except those who use it.”
“True,” Aric said. “But what can anyone do about it?”
“Nobody’ll do a thing,” Damaric said. “She can freeze a charging earth drake in an instant.”
“Lucky for Aric,” Ruhm said.
“I know,” Aric said. “If it had reached me … don’t know what would have happened.”
“We’d be scraping you off the argosy,” Damaric said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m not saying anyone is planning to act,” Amoni elaborated. “I’m only telling you what the mood is. She’s got people worried.”
“We’d do well to stay alert,” Damaric said. “I obey my captain, and she obeys Kadya. If that changes …”
Aric felt the full weight of Amoni’s gaze pressing down on him. “I won’t say anything,” he said, catching her meaning. “I mean … I guess I owe something to Nibenay, for choosing me for this expedition—although at the moment I’m not sure that’s so much an honor as a possible death sentence. But I don’t trust Kadya, and my loyalties, such as they are, are to the Shadow King, not to some templar along for the ride.”
“It’s only talk, anyway,” Amoni said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Soldiers will always grumble and moan,” Damaric added.
Are they dropping the subject because of me? Aric wondered. He wanted to be trusted. But elves weren’t trustworthy, everyone knew that. Tell an elf a secret and he’ll be selling it five minutes later.
He had thought he was past that with Amoni and Damaric. He had believed they had struck up a true friendship, one that overlooked all their backgrounds—the fact that he was a half-elf, that Amoni was a mul, Damaric a slave with barbarian parents, Ruhm a goliath with the bad taste to work for a half-elf instead of as a soldier.
If not? If he’d been wrong?
He guessed he was on his own, then. Or he and Ruhm, as always.
Once they got to Akrankhot and his worth to the expedition was over, he would have to stay vigilant. There would be no one to depend on to keep him alive then, except himself.
5
By the time the caravan emerged from the hills into open desert, a ferocious wind had sprung up. Rather than providing relief from the day’s heat, the wind aggravated it. It felt to Aric like those times he had to reach inside his forge—carefully, with tongs—his face near the fire to see what he was doing.
And the wind picked up desert sand, blowing it against them like fine scouring dust. Kadya had said the city should be visible when they cleared the hills, but it wasn’t. The olive sky was barely visible through clouds of sand.
Aric and Ruhm walked, Aric’s guards apparently having decided that since he had survived his encounter with the earth drake, he was on his own. Ruhm nodded toward the argosy they usually rode in. “Inside’s better.”
“You’re right,” Aric said. “I wanted to see this Akrankhot, but I can’t see anything if I’m blind.”
They returned to the argosy. Others had also wanted to get out of the stinging sand, so it was nearly full, but people shoved over and made space for them.
Tension inside was every bit as bad as out, the air as brittle as frozen drake. Nobody talked much. Aric heard no laughter, no games or teasing. They might have been a wagonload of murderers on their way to the gladiatorial pit.
He wished he didn’t feel the same way.
The mekillots surged forward against wind and sand. The drivers shielding their faces with arms, straining to see the argosy in front of theirs, not caring about the route except to hope the one at the front of the train knew the way.
The wagon picked up speed. The bumping and bouncing grew progressively worse. Mekillots were never truly fast, but they could move slowly or they could move somewhat less slowly, and the drivers urged them to push the limits of that second pace.
“What’s the rush?” a soldier demanded. “You can’t even see where you’re going!”
“Kadya’s worried that the sands will cover up the city before we reach it!” one of the drivers shouted. In his left hand he worked a long whip, spurring the mekillots on. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life digging through sand!”
“Maybe not,” Aric said. “But I don’t want my life to end because we’re racing ahead blindly.”
“Racing?” Ruhm asked.
“All right. Hurrying, then.”
Another bump knocked him into the air, and he came down with a painful thump.
With sand stealing in through the windows and the cons
tant thrashing about, Aric wondered why they needed the argosy at all. They could have saved the weight and simply dragged everybody along behind the mekillots.
Finally, a cheerful cry sounded from the front wagon. The others spread out enough for their passengers to see through the forward windows. Sure enough, there, through the curtain of sand, was a ruined city, half submerged.
At last, they had reached Akrankhot.
6
The caravan stopped at what had once been the city’s outer wall. In punishing wind and sand, everyone climbed from the argosies and faced the ruins of what must have been a great city. A wide avenue led between the remains of buildings of fabulous size and grandeur.
As opposed to the buildings Aric was accustomed to, the ornately carved facades of Nibenay, these were more plain, and elegant in that plainness. Stately columns fronted some, most at the top of wide staircases. Some columns had collapsed and lay in pieces at the base of the stairs, like felled trees in the Crescent Forest. Other buildings had roofs that had fallen in. A few were nothing but rubble. Everywhere, for what appeared to be several leagues, were the remnants of turrets and towers that once might have pierced the sky. The sun was sinking behind the city, but from this angle it looked as if it might be lowering into the very center of Akrankhot.
Everywhere, there was wood. Aric had never imagined that so much wood could be used in the construction of a city. This place must have been surrounded by forests once, with enough water around to feed all that life. He could barely conceive of it.
Looking at it, Aric could imagine what the street must have been like in the city’s prime. Grand processions would have been held here, citizens flanking the walkways between the avenue and the fronts of the buildings, while the city’s nobility and military paraded down the center. Akrankhot must have been a great center of civilization.
And now it was empty, its streets and avenues lifeless, its broken-walled buildings housing nothing but wind and sand. The shouts and cheers that must have echoed down canyons of stone and wood and mud had long been silenced. Perhaps the ghosts of the dead haunted these ramparts. Could a civilization able to build a city on such a scale ever truly die?
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