by Rob Summers
Chapter 37 Zeeba, Daughter of Nero
The December dusk came soon. Clay prudently established his army’s camp well inland, raising a small town of tents and pavilions. Markuz’s army, weapons all given up, was corralled in Kreenro’s Den until some decision could be made about them. Even after their losses, they outnumbered Clay’s force. The wounded of both sides, far more Anatolians than Realmers, were taken to a site atop the cliffs, where more tents were raised. The dead were being buried near the road south of the cliffs.
In the last light, Clay, Nashpa, and Bafrel rode into Igthuz to try to discover whether the reported Dragons would come closer. They came to the wooden docks, dismounted, and joined Michael, the Silb commander named Boryanto, and a crowd of Silbs who were looking out to sea. Though nothing was visible on the surface of the water, Clay saw tension in Michael’s face.
The Prince pointed to the dim horizon. “Watch,” he whispered. “We’ve been seeing their fire out there.”
Clay saw nothing.
“The Lusettas say the Dragons won’t talk to them,” he said in a voice hoarse from shouting orders. “Will they just pass us by?”
Boryanto made a negative sound deep in his throat. “They scent blood. Some of the enemy were washed over the falls into the sea and much blood with them. They’ll come for the corpses at least.”
Clay had not considered that the Dragons might be simply hungry. When he thought about the many soldiers yet to be buried, he gagged and felt sick.
“We have to keep them from coming in,” he said.
“Yes, Your Eminence, but how?” Michael was slightly pop-eyed with excitement. “They can approach without our ever seeing them because the bottom here is very deep right up to the dock. Solomon’s Dragon fighters down south have learned ways to resist them, but we’ve never fought them. It’s said that it’s best to get them talking, if possible.”
“No, talking’s no good either,” said Boryanto grimly. “They’re subtle and cunning. How we could use Lord Ombanto now. He sometimes negotiated with Dragons when they came to the Broken Island. He was able to see through their subtleties.”
“What about Sipnur?” Clay asked.
“Yes, old Sipnur, too, could deal with them, but he’s with the fleet, and they haven’t returned. They’re probably standing out to sea, afraid of the Dragons as we are.”
“Well, who else?”
“There’s young Nerjatto, Your Eminence.”
Michael laid a hand on Clay’s arm. “He’s seeing to his father’s burial.”
Clay considered. “Look, I know this is a terrible time to call for him, but we have to. Right now, we’ve got no plan at all; and we can’t just march away and leave our wounded.”
“I’ll get him,” Michael said. He turned to Nashpa. “May I borrow your korfy, Leader?”
Bafrel laughed. “The Prince isn’t intimidated?”
Twice back in Agnesia, Nashpa had granted Michael permission to ride his korfy Hagel; for Michael was very keen, and though he had never seen a korfy till his visit to the Ice Caves, he had read several books about them and felt he knew the proper techniques. Although the Mangars told him otherwise, he insisted that the use of a stick was the best way to guide. As a result, he had spent much of his first ride hanging upside down with one leg tangled in Hagel’s harness and his hair just brushing the ground. With much coaching, his second ride had gone better: he at least stayed in the saddle and managed to guide a bit. But he still used the stick, which he now produced as soon as Nashpa consented.
The Prince climbed onto the back of the seated bird and confidently poked it in the neck with the stick. It sat still. He poked it again at another point, and suddenly it reared up and rushed forward, running perilously close to the edge of the dock. He managed somehow to turn it, and then thundered up a village street, gripping the harness desperately while hanging well down on one feathered side.
Clay and the Mangars laughed themselves tired at this, laughed harder (Clay knew) than the episode called for. They were giddy from a long day of stress compounded by present fear.
When they stopped laughing, the group turned back to the ocean. This time it was not long before Clay saw, far out, a flicker of light. That seeming spark, he knew, must be a great column of fire shot from some distant basilisk’s gullet. He had been told that a very few of the Dragons were enormous and that it was only these monsters that had been spotted by the Lighters. Apparently, Zeeba had sent only her invincibles on this mission.
Silbs, Mangars, and humans waited long in the dark. Michael had just returned when one of the Silbs shouted and pointed. He claimed to have seen a great arch of back or of tail far out on the sea. No one else had seen it. They waited again for several minutes.
Then only about a hundred yards out, a gray island rose above the water, great saw teeth along its high ridge; and the folk on the dock cringed back in terror, some shouting in despair. Clay could not move or turn away. He could actually hear rivers of water pouring off the creature’s sides as the back continued to rise. He shuddered violently and felt his knees almost give under him. Around him Silbs were sinking to the dock; and Michael had his arms wrapped around a stanchion as if he expected to be carried away in a hurricane. The huge back crested, then slowly descended and disappeared. Before long, the waves beating the dock were much higher. Clay gasped for air, his heart pounding as if he had run a race.
He determined that he would tell the others to retreat into the village, but found that his voice would not work. He tried again and produced a very small sound. This terrified him even more, for he thought the thing might surface again before he could get them all away. Stumbling over to Michael, he managed to look him in the face and tell him. But before they could move, a great wave splashed over them and an enormous pillar of neck shot up directly in front of them. Towering two stories over them was the beast’s great head, spewing fire into the sky, fire that lit its terrible face and wild eyes.
Many on the dock fell and lay still as if unconscious. Others, Clay included, ran blindly up the village streets. Clay did not think of finding Velprew, but only ran and fell and ran again. Each time his goo-like legs gave out, he screamed and moaned, afraid he would not be able to rise again. Meanwhile, the narrow streets jammed with villagers, all likewise screaming as they ran from their houses. He ran with them. Mothers and fathers carried young children; the aged hobbled as best they could; and no one at all said anything, but only made agonized noises. Behind them the lower village began to burn.
In the first dawn Clay stood with his officers near the burial grounds and looked down through a rocky cleft at the site of the village of Igthuz. It was entirely gone, all burnt, but smoke continued to rise, obscuring his view of the Dragons. These were resting in the ashes. The largest among them reclined on what had been the main street, her scales mostly green but inclining to red along much of her back and neck; and around her neck was a gold chain thicker than a man’s leg. This, he now knew, was the infamous Zeeba, daughter of Nero, leader of the Dragon’s of Dragonland. One claw was raised before her dreadful face, and on it was perched, apparently fearlessly, the Lusetta Lebu.
When these two had finished their conversation, Lebu flew up to Clay. “Zeeba won’t stay in the village,” she reported. “Now that it’s daylight, she and the other Dragons are coming up on the plain. I told her that the Emperor doesn’t want her here, but she won’t obey.”
Clay kicked at the ground. “Why did Raspberry tell me to come here? She said the Dragons would respect the Lila-me. Did I come all this way, and did all those people die yesterday, for nothing?”
“She does agree to allow Sipnur’s ship to land,” Lebu said weakly. “One of us has flown out to tell him.”
“Well, that’s just peachy. What now? Jatto?”
The young Silb answered slowly. He, like the others, had had no sleep. “We must wait on Sipnur’s wisdom, Your Em
inence. Allow the Dragons on the plain, then—”
“Allow? Who’s going to stop them?”
Jatto waited a moment. “Then we’ll have to hold them in conversation until Sipnur can join us. I haven’t the experience to deal with them. One wrong word to a Dragon, and you’ll find you’ve agreed to something disastrous.”
Clay sent Lebu to invite Zeeba to parley and then led the officers away from the cemetery, where many of the slain were still being buried. They passed a knot of villagers, now homeless: some seated, wrapped in blankets supplied by Clay’s army; others adding wood to a small fire. Preoccupied, Clay did not notice until he passed close by that one of these was a girl his own age. Pale skinned and brown haired, she looked directly at him with nervous, sorrowing eyes. Clay hurried on with the odd thought that she looked no different than girls back in Indiana, and that he and she ought to have been out with a group of young people the previous night, a Saturday, or maybe even dating each other. Instead, she may have lost relatives last night, and he was trying to solve the problems of the Fold with a teenager’s inexperienced mind and immature personality.
When he looked back and found that she was still following him with her eyes, he quickly turned his head again and strode on. A little normality would be nice. Sleep, for starters. Then to somehow get back to Viola and try to save his college scholarship. Yes, and enter the Institute of Technology and never have to think about the Fold again.
But now he could only shoot up a prayer as Lebu returned to him and the Dragons began to crawl over the top of the slope and across the snow covered plain. He and his officers waited as Zeeba alone came near them. They were intensely aware that even by herself she was able to scorch and devour them easily enough. She lowered her huge, ugly head until her gold chain thumped against the ground and fixed Clay with a yellow, unblinking eye.
“You are the Emperor? Are you indeed?”
Clay said he was.
“I, Zeeba, have longed to see you. It’s necessary for you to take up my cause, for the Dragons have been much wronged in our war to the south. The humans slaughter us when they can with their spike-slings, their traps, and their cross bows. Won’t you tell Solomon to make peace?”
Jatto leaned near to Clay and whispered. “Don’t agree to anything. She’ll trick you and then hold you to your word.”
“But—I can’t make Solomon—”
“I know, but just don’t say anything lightly.”
Clay said to Zeeba, “Solomon doesn’t recognize my authority.”
“What?” said the Dragon triumphantly. “He doesn’t? What sort of Emperor are you then if your fellow humans deny you?”
“Not all humans accept Clay,” Jatto said, “just as not all Dragons recognize Zeeba as ruler of Dragonland.”
At this Zeeba rumbled and her throat grew redder. “Would you remind me of the cold heartedness of my elders? Little do the Pendragons of the Pons care how long and cruelly the war drags on in my land. Two questions only are pertinent. Does the Emperor care? And is he able to do the slightest thing about it? I see your army’s tiny camp. Frankly, Your Ineffectualness, if you have no more followers than this, Solomon will snuff you out. Perhaps I’m foolish to treat favor with such a mouse.”
Clay had no answer for this. Raspberry! What had the Fijata expected him to do? He was a mouse.
“You cannot reply?” Zeeba’s enormous eye finally blinked like a window blind. “Then tell me what you’re good for but this: to give me leave to join your forces and fight Solomon. Without my help, your dream of Emperorship will be pathetic and short-lived. But I and my servants can lead you to victory, capture Colonia, and put you on the throne you crave.”
To blindly agree to this proposal would be disastrous, but Clay found himself very nearly nodding. Perhaps her eye was hypnotic.
“Don’t agree to anything,” Jatto pleaded, “no matter how good it sounds.”
“I—I’ll have to think it over,” Clay said.
“Think it over? While Solomon is on his way to crush you? What is it that requires meditation? Or will you retreat north? Because you know he will come there and burn Agnesia to the ground.”
“Lusettas!” Michael suddenly said, pointing at the clouds to the south. “These will be the ones that were still out last night. They’ll be bringing news about Solomon.”
Clay begged Zeeba’s pardon and went aside. Soon four Lusettas glided in and landed before him.
“Where’s Solomon?” Clay demanded. “Which of you knows?”
“He and his army are on the march, Your Eminence,” one of them answered. “He’s on the road between Colonia and Anthopolis. It may be two weeks before they reach here.”
“But they’re definitely coming?”
“Yes, Your Eminence,” the Lusetta answered. It sounded puzzled. “Don’t you want him to come? How can you win the Empire unless you defeat him?”
Clay ignored the question. “How many?”
“A larger army than the first. Five legions.”
“Five legions? That’s....”
“We estimate twenty-one thousand, Your Eminence.”
“But he may pick up some other troops along the way,” said another Lusetta helpfully.
Clay had a headache. He knew he would never be able to entrap another Anatolian army. From now on the easterners would be extremely cautious.
“OK, that’s all I want to know. You can get some rest.”
“But Your Eminence,” said another, “we two also have a report. A great cloud of flying Sarrs is coming toward you from the west.”
Clay tried to be uninterested. “They’re just, I don’t know, some kind of bird migration.”
The Lusetta was firm. “They’re not migrating, they’re greater than any bird, and they carry weapons. They are in appearance like the Vults of old. Something has perhaps wakened them from their ancient sleep. They should be here any time.”
Nashpa growled low in his chest. “Let it be on my head. I’ve called them down on us.”
“No, it was my big mouth,” Clay said charitably. “I just had to experiment. Let’s hope they’re not as mean as they are ugly.”
“There’s more,” said the Lusetta.
“More!” Clay said. “How could there possibly be more? I’ve got Dragons coming at me, Solomon’s army, Vults—what else?”
“Something from the mists of legend,” it said. “Something I did not dream actually existed, but now I’ve seen it with my own eyes. A Turtle, Your Eminence, large as a hill has crossed the border into Meschor and is coming this way at great speed.”
Slowly Clay connected this with what he had seen at the Door in Mullins Cave four months earlier.
“Tsawb!”
“That’s an ancient name we remember,” the Lusetta agreed.
“Was he—mad?”
“He appeared so, Emperor.”
“Oh, crud. I guess he thinks my passport’s expired. How long will it take him to get here?”
“Perhaps a few days.”
Clay glanced back at Zeeba and found that she was sitting up on her haunches, tall as a several story building.
“Mouse, what is your answer?” she cried out.
Clay came back to her shadow, and she lowered her head again.
“Give me a couple hours, right? I need Sipnur first, a Silb coming in by ship; and there are Vults or something coming across the plain. So I don’t know what the situation is, and I—”
Zeeba interrupted with a Dragon’s laugh, which sounds like marbles in a blender. “You don’t know. You beg for two little hours. Fortunately for you, I’m feeling patient and amenable. I give you until I call. And if the answer I receive after that is not what I want, my servants will feast on your newly dead. Did you think we wouldn’t notice the cemetery because we’re upwind? Go now!”
Clay was very glad to go. He hurried to his pavilion in the
camp and hid away with just Nashpa, Michael, and Jatto in an inner room where golden lampstands illuminated maps spread out on folding tables. Here he sat on a stool with his head in his hands and spent the first minutes of his reprieve panicking. The worst of it was that he had met disaster this way before—over the chessboard. How many times had he, when younger, found himself unable to think because of some dire setback in a game? That is, until he had matured enough to discipline his emotions. When a chess clock is ticking away toward zero, it is no time to wallow in fear and self pity. He had learned to force clarity on himself, to sublimate his panic.
Ha. Not now. The others were talking to him, proposing this and that, and he was not even taking it in.
“Go north,” said Nashpa, “but don’t let Solomon have the prisoners back. He outnumbers us too heavily as it is.”
“Are you kidding?” Michael said. “Take nearly twelve thousand mouths to feed? Guard them all that way?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“I don’t know,” said the Mangar, gesturing as if to throw something aside. “Kill them. Cut their throats.”
“Nashpa!”
“We’re desperate. It’s time for desperate measures.”
“We aren’t desperate,” said Jatto. “Sipnur will be here before Zeeba’s time is up, and perhaps—”
“And what answer will he have?” Nashpa hissed. “This Zeeba holds all the cards. Besides, have you considered that we may be in another battle at any time? What if these Vults attack? Has anyone alerted the sentries?”
“I did,” said Michael.
“Good, then—what’s this?”
A Silb messenger was being admitted. He bowed to Clay. “They’ve alighted, Your Eminence, perhaps four thousand of them, in fields to the west. The land is black with them.”
“The old stories say that they were great warriors,” Jatto mused. “Lucky for us they’ve not attacked. Someone should go out and talk to them. Isn’t that so, Emperor?”
Clay did not move or make a sound.
“I’ll see what they want,” said Prince Michael. He smiled. “Friend Nashpa, your korfy? Just for a few minutes?”
Nashpa snorted. “If Hagel will let you sit her after last night, then—all right.”
After Michael left, Nashpa and Jatto waited nervously. Clay breathed hard, felt sick, and considered all the nightmare possibilities. Suppose he tried to retreat the army against Zeeba’s wishes? What would she do? One does not say no to a hundred yard long Dragon. She seemed to want him to go south with her and meet Solomon’s army, but why did she need Clay’s small force if she wanted to do that? What was her game? She wanted, or so she said, to make him Emperor over Anatolia in Solomon’s place, and that was more or less what Raspberry had had in mind. Then there would be peace. Yes, maybe. But what about Tsawb? What about the Vults? No, nothing was settled.
He heard the rumble of a korfy’s footsteps, and in a few minutes Prince Michael reported. He entered smiling, yet with a furrowed brow.
“They’re Vults, all right, just like in the children’s books. But there’s a girl with them, a human girl.”
Clay looked up. “What?”
“A girl taller than me. She says she’s your sister. I’ve got her outside with a couple of the Vult leaders. You want to talk to her?”
“Don’t waste time on an imposter,” Nashpa said.
“But why would an imposter come here if she knows Clay can identify his real sister?” said Michael.
Nashpa had no answer. “Let me look at her.” He passed out of the inner room.
Michael turned to Clay and raised an eyebrow.
“She isn’t my sister,” Clay said. “Someone said she’s at Mount Rinna. Anyway, unless she’s fussing and arguing out there, it’s not my sister.”
Michael nodded and went out. Once again, Clay remembered his last look at Simone as she had ridden away on the out-of-control korfy at Lucilla. He had reached out to her, yelling to her to keep going, not to turn back.
Michael stepped part way in again. “Well, you better have a look at her, all right?”
He was gone again. What difference did it make? Why did he care if they were together again? He would only be dragging her into his colossal difficulties. But it sure would be good to see her. As Nashpa re-entered, Clay stood up and faced the tent door. Still blocking Clay’s view, the Mangar turned and was introducing himself to someone. At last, he stood aside and there she was, coming in on Michael’s arm. Somehow she was dressed in winter clothes from back home: her old, blue nylon coat, her knit hat and red gloves. She looked at him as if she did not recognize him.
“Simone!” Clay said in English. “Am I glad you’re here!” He came around the table and gripped her hands. She was smiling now. “I’ve got heavy problems. These Dragons are pushing me around, and on top of that, Tsawb’s coming, and—”
“Hey there, scudball,” she interrupted happily. “It’s time to go home.”
