Citadels of the Lost (17 page)

They were starting to move at last toward the fog . . .

. . . Still, not quickly enough.

Gradek's horn sounded again, this time with the signal every manticore warrior on the line expected. The manticores began their charge just as Soen arrived.

The Legions were within fifty yards of their lines. The lion-men surged forward as a tide, tearing over the ground with their battle roars resounding, their blades cutting the air as they ran.

Soen gritted his sharp teeth. He knew what was coming but he also knew that he could never have prevented it; never have convinced Gradek of the truth. He charged forward with them, struggling to keep up with the great lion-men in their onward rush.

The manticores slammed into the front lines of the Legions, smashing the Impress Warriors and dealing death to them in horrific numbers. The Impress Warriors, who had no memory of ever losing a battle because their elven masters had erased any such memories from their minds, suddenly panicked, broke ranks, and ran, trusting that the elven warriors behind them would cover their retreat.

The elves were not there. Unnoticed by either the charging manticores intent on their prey or by their own Impress Warriors on the front line, the elven warriors had quietly retreated back through the gate folds another hundred yards. There they had not formed a line but were arrayed in Octia clusters around the folds as though prepared to retreat through them again.

“Forward!” Gradek bellowed over the sounds of death. “Forward!”

Encouraged by their success, the manticores continued their charge in pursuit of the remaining Impress Warriors, running them down and continuing their charge toward what looked to them like the disorganized line of elven warriors ahead of them.

Soen kept glancing backward, dreading what was to follow and desperately trying to reach the still charging Gradek who remained yards ahead of him on the battle line.

Forgotten were the Proxis, most of whom had died in the initial charge; they had come forward with the Impress Warrior line and had, as instructed, inscribed the gate fold sigils at the farthest point of advance.

The gate folds flashed once more . . .

And several Centurai of the elven army emerged from the gates that had suddenly opened
behind
the manticorian line. No manticore warrior stood between them and the fleeing refugees. The elves charged at once toward the unprotected wagons, intent on inflicting as much death as possible.

Gradek heard the folds open behind him. He turned as Soen reached him, the manticore's face filled with horror.

More Centurai of the Legion were folding in all around them. The battle line was dissolving into chaos.

“Run!” Soen yelled at Gradek. “Sound the retreat!”

Gradek's eyes remained fixed on the wagons. A massacre was but heartbeats away.

“Gradek!” Soen screamed. “Charge to the
north
!”

Gradek's eyes suddenly focused. He pulled his horn to his lips and sounded the signal.

The manticore line had collapsed into chaotic melees. Groups of manticores fought elven warriors in a mass of confusion. Manticore blood flowed thick across the ground as the elven warriors' superior training was evident in their systematic and long-practiced slaughter. The sound of Gradek's horn was still answered from up and down the battlefield with repeating sound though far fewer in number than had answered before. Within moments, every manticore on the field of battle attempted to disengage from the enemy and charge northward toward the unrelenting, menacing fog.

The threatened pilgrim caravans suddenly vanished, the illusion dissipated. The confused elves, seeing their prey evaporate instantly before their eyes, were momentarily uncertain, but the Tribunes conducting the battle from the ridge three leagues to the south acted quickly. The elven Centurai quickly folded away, back to their original battle formations to regroup and determine what had gone wrong.

Soen ran with Gradek toward where the illusory caravans had existed only moments before. The elven folds were collapsing around them. The screams of the wounded manticores and elves behind them echoed in their ears, as did the sounds of the pounding feet of the remaining elven Centurai who now were chasing after the retreating manticores.

Soen ran into the fog and kept running, directly into its chill, smothering embrace.

S
OEN SLOWED HIS PACE when he was nearly a mile into the mists. The ground was flattening out and seemed to be descending slightly beneath his feet. Normally, this would have allowed him to quicken his pace, but nothing about his surroundings struck him as normal.

Elves naturally have keen sight and hearing, abilities which had been honed fine by Soen in his role as an Inquisitor of the Iblisi, but his senses appeared to be failing him in this strange, blanketing mist. He could hear the sounds of those around him—usually muted but occasionally sharp and nearby—yet he could not discern their direction or precise distance. The elves also had a limited ability to see heat during the cool of night but this utterly failed him now. All he was left with was a strange, blue-green glow that was everywhere in the mists and increasing with each step. Soen wondered idly if the glow was always here or was created by the passage of living creatures through it. It was entirely speculation on his part, but the mental exercise helped keep him focused despite the haze all around him.

The enormous shape of a manticore shadowed the fog before him. Soen slowed even more, his Matei staff held at the ready. The former Inquisitor gritted his sharp teeth in preparation for battle.

The shadow emerged before him in the aqua-green glow.

It was a pillar of stone.

Soen let out his breath and ruefully shook his head.

“Looking for me?” came a voice sounding clearly in his right ear.

Soen spun into a defensive stance, his staff clearing the space around him, leveled to launch a deadly array of powerful magic.

A figure was retreating from him slowly into the glowing mists. Soen narrowed his lids over his featureless black eyes and frowned. It was about the size of an elf or human and moved like it could have been either. He made a mental effort to relax his grip on the staff and began pacing the figure through the fog, trying to get a better look at it as he moved across flat ground covered in anemic, yellowed grass. He tried to close with it gradually. While he felt he was getting closer, his prey somehow continued to elude him.

There was a building emerging from the mists ahead of them toward which the figure was walking. It was a tall, circular structure set atop a round foundation of shallow steps. Fluted columns supported a domed roof overhead. It was a typical structure of the old kingdoms, Soen realized; the frivolous sort of a building they used to call a “folly.” It was ornamental, lovely in its architecture, and completely out of place. There was something about it that was both purposeful and useless all at once.

The figure stopped halfway up the steps and turned, pulling back the hood covering her head and obscuring her face.

“Ch'drei!” Soen breathed in a mixture of apprehension and admiration.

“How nice of you to remember me,” the ancient female elf said, smiling back at him in the glowing mists. “You've been looking for me behind you since you left me your message on the throne of the Dje'kaarin and now you have found me at last.”

“More accurately, you have found me,” Soen answered though his lowered Matei staff never wavered. “But why come yourself? Killing was never a pleasure to you when it was done by your own hand. You always preferred to enjoy it as a spectator. Why bother to come yourself?”

“Come inside, Soen,” Ch'drei smiled, her cadaverous face pulled back in a ghoulish grin. “Everything will be made right. Everything will be explained.”

Soen raised his narrow, pointed chin slightly. “I think I would like to get this explanation right here, thank you all the same.”

“Nonsense, my boy,” the Keeper said with a sharp-toothed grin. “Come on up here and see for yourself. The answers are all right inside.”

“I'd rather find my own answers,” Soen replied. The wispy hairs at the back of his elongated head were twitching. Something was wrong here.

“You're looking for something that doesn't exist,” Ch'drei said, her smile falling slightly. “Don't be foolish, boy.”

Ch'drei turned away to step inside the folly.

Soen released the charge in his Matei staff. A white bolt shot from the end, encapsulating Ch'drei and suspending her in time. The Inquisitor did not want to harm the Keeper; he needed her alive if he was ever to get back into the graces of his Order. She was the most powerful member of the Iblisi, and Soen knew better than to equate her age with weakness. It had cost him dearly in the drain of the remaining charge in his staff but he knew he had only once chance. That Ch'drei had turned her back on him at all, making his attack possible, was an unusually rare mistake for her, and Soen had not hesitated to take advantage of it. He rushed up the steps of the folly toward the glowing spheroid of temporal stasis, stopping short of the top stairs.

The mystical globe surrounded with silent lightning was empty.

“Impossible!” Soen uttered.

“Come in, Soen,” called the voice from within the folly.

Soen peered between the pillars. There was nothing but darkness within.

“I'm waiting for you.”

Soen turned and ran with all his speed down the stairs and across the plain through the glowing mists. Many shadows appeared in front of him, and he remembered that he had directed the entire column of refugee pilgrims into the mists. Perhaps he had found them gathering together and trying to make their way as a group. In any event, they would provide cover for him against the pursuit of Ch'drei or any Iblisi whom she'd, no doubt, brought with her. He barreled in among the figures, rushing by their shadows in the fog.

They were not moving.

Soen quickly stopped, examining them more closely.

They were stone carvings—statues—all arrayed on the plain facing in the same direction. It was an army rendered out of rock. Some held swords with the short, broad blades of the Impress Warriors. Many were human though the majority were either manticores or chimerians. More striking still, Soen realized that they were all different, carved in the shape of individuals. In fact, some of their faces looked quite familiar.

Soen blinked.

He was staring into the face of a statue that was an uncanny likeness of the human he had met only the day before on the Panaris Road. The figure's arms were outstretched, and his face was upturned in a strange, rapturous grin. Soen struggled for a moment to recall his name.
Braun
, he thought.

He moved quickly past the figures, heading in the direction they were facing, subconsciously following their silent intention. There was the chimerian Vendis, his face turned away, unlike any of those around him, his four hands held up before him as if to ward something off. As he broke through the front ranks of the stone army, Soen saw statues of a manticore and a dwarf standing in front of the motionless ranks behind them facing across a river.

Beyond the stone manticore waited the folly.

Soen drew in a breath. He was sure that he had kept a straight line in his dash away from the isolated structure and yet here it was again, the same in every detail.

“Looking for me?” came a different voice from behind him.

Soen wheeled around and suddenly stopped the arch of his staff before it connected with the man standing there. More in anger than astonishment, the elven Inquisitor exclaimed, “You!”

“I've been waiting for you,” said Drakis. The human didn't look much different from the way Soen had seen him last, fleeing in the ship of the Forgotten. His dark hair was roughly cut and his beard was untrimmed and wild. The dark brown eyes were unmistakable as was his stocky build. More particular was the shape of his ear, a unique feature among humans and, for members of the Iblisi profession, the surest way to differentiate humans from each other. He still wore his tattered slave's tunic but had managed to pick up pieces of leather armor along the way. None of it matched, of course, but it would serve better than no armor at all. Drakis deftly held the hilt of a sword casually in his hand, seemingly more out of habit than as a threat.

“I have been looking for you,” Soen replied. “You've caused a lot of trouble in the world and no small inconvenience to me personally.”

“And yet we both seem to be the prey at the moment, don't we?” Drakis said with a sigh. “I think we can help each other.”

“We can start with who
they
are,” Soen said, nodding toward the statues whose ranks faded beyond Drakis into the glowing green mists around them.