Citadels of the Lost (35 page)

A tingling pain shot through Drakis like an invisible fire from his hand down through his body and legs. He cried out more in surprise than from the sting, withdrawing his hand from the stone.

“No!” The Lyric grabbed his hand forcefully again. “The whispers of magic are deep. It takes time to call them from below. You must be strong to await the drawing of the world to come!”

The Lyric once again pushed Drakis' hand against the carved stone representing the dragon's scales. It shifted slightly at his touch, the tingling pain again coursing uncomfortably through him, but he held his place, throwing his weight into the hand on the statue. Soon, he was aware of a low humming coming from the statue, a single tone of sound that grew with each moment until it filled the sanctuary.

The Lyric, her arms shaking, hurriedly moved to Mala and lifted up her hand, moving toward the second statue. There was desperation to her actions. The Lyric's movements reminded Drakis of once seeing a sick dog who, in the last moments of his life, rushed to return to its corner of the Timuran household to die.

The Lyric pressed Mala's hand hard against the dragon's carved breast scales. She cried out sharply in pain, but the carving shifted inward slightly with a grinding sound.

In moments, a second sound was growing in the arched chamber around the Well, emanating from the statue under Mala's hand. This tone was higher in pitch, becoming a harmonic to the first tone, matching it to create a dual sound in the room.

The Lyric grabbed Ishander's hand, pulling him toward the third dragon statue in the hall. The Lyric's voice was strident now, shouting over the dual tone in the hall and quivering as they moved.

The Lyric pressed Ishander's hand against the breast stone of the final dragon. It, too, shifted. Ishander gritted his teeth against the pain.

Drakis felt his arm going numb. He was unsure as to how much longer he could hold the shifted carving in place.

Ishander's statue slowly added its own third pitch, growing until it matched the other two. As it did, ripples appeared in the air from each of the statues, converging at a place above the dark Aether Well. The air twisted around itself.

Drakis shouted in wonder over the sound. “A fold!”

Slow as a feather, a darkly stained book drifted downward out of the fold. The thick cover was bound in tarnished metal over crackled leather, the binding warped. There was a luster, however, to the edge of the pages. The Lyric climbed up the darkened face of the dead Aether Well and reached up, just as the book settled into her arms.

The Lyric collapsed atop the Aether crystal, her arms still wrapped around the book.

Drakis pushed away from the dragon statue, rushing to catch the Lyric before she fell. As he released pressure on the plate the fold above the stone collapsed. The sound from each of the statues fell suddenly silent as Mala and Ishander gratefully pulled their hands free.

The Lyric's eyes flickered open, gazing up into the face of Drakis. She drew in a rattling breath.

“I knew you would come, Drakis,” the Lyric said in a rasping voice. “I am the last of the Keepers. Did I do it right? Did I keep my promise?”

“You did it right,” Drakis said softly. “You were a great Keeper. Your fathers and their fathers before them will be proud and honor you.”

The Lyric smiled through her bloody teeth. Her eyes fixed on Drakis and then her chest stopped moving.

Drakis bowed his head and drew in a deep breath.

Something pulled at his arms and Drakis looked up. The Far-runner had both his hands around the book and was tugging at it with all his might. The book suddenly broke free from the grip of the Lyric and Ishander wrapped both his arms around it.

“Ishander!” Drakis said sharply. “What do you think you are doing?”

“The book is mine!” Ishander declared. “It is my right!”

“You must respect the dead,” Mala said quietly. “Their souls are not far . . . they are listening.”

“The woman is dead!” Ishander shot back. “She has no use for a book!
We
are alive. My father told the story of such a book among the Fordrim—a book that held the secrets of the old ways. He said it revealed where the Key of Magic could be found. We have our lives to live and darker waters of river ahead of us. Your dwarf reads the old ways. I have watched him from when first you were in Pythar. This book will lead us to the keys of Chelestra but it is
nothing
to dead eyes. Tears for the dead are
nothing
!”

Drakis looked at the young Far-runner for a moment as though he had never seen him before.

“You were right before, Drakis,” Mala said, “We've stayed too long.”

Drakis nodded. He lowered the body of the Lyric back atop the Aether Well crystal, folded her arms across her chest, and then stepped back.

“You did well, Keeper,” he murmured. “You did well.”

“Did I?” the Lyric said, opening one eye. “What did I do?”

Drakis gaped.

“Everyone back to the boats, right now!” the Lyric commanded as she jumped up to her feet, tossing the robe casually toward the young corpse on the ground behind the well and striding toward the stairs, her jaw set as she spoke. “You've got what these people died protecting, Drakis. Now find a way home with it.”

“G
REAT TREASURE OF the Fordrim . . . my dwarven ax!”

Drakis turned a grim face toward the dwarf. The rain had been unrelenting for the last three days since they'd left the desolation of the Fordrim. Ishander stood at the back of the Ambeth boat at his long oar, guiding the boat down the river, his wet hair plastered flat around his head. The youth mostly glowered at the dwarf and his increasingly disparaging pronouncements from under the oiled tarpaulin that sheltered both the dwarf and the Fordrim book—and which subsequently left everyone else on both of the remaining boats exposed to the rain. Urulani stood next to him at the back of the second boat. The river was moving so slowly that they had tied the boats together side by side which allowed everyone to enjoy the slow escalation of the dwarf's frustration with the book in which they had held such hope.

“What is it now, Jugar?” Ethis asked wearily from the bow. The river had passed into a towering forest on either side of its slow, winding passage and the chimerian would even welcome the complaints of the dwarf to relieve him of the boredom of his watch.

“Three days,” Jugar responded, angrily jabbing his thick index finger at the open book that lay across his lap. “Three days I've been poring over this wandering, pompous, disorganized drivel.”

“There has to be something in there,” Mala said, her own frustration mounting. “An entire village died protecting it.”

“Well, then they struck a very poor bargain, if I may be permitted to say so,” Jugar huffed. He rifled through several pages and then stopped, jabbing his finger down onto the vellum page. “Here! A list of the genealogical line of the priests who watched over the dead Aether Well including, may I add, those who stood watch over it after it had died and there was no longer anything to watch
for
. There's a great deal of repetitive text about
who
was entitled to activate the Aether Wells—which they call ‘Fonts' by the way—but there is nothing at all about
how
to activate them or what might have caused them to stop functioning in the first place. Or perhaps their prize was this section back here which contains detailed and explicit instructions on all the ways it is
wrong
to use a woman, a man, a child, aunts, uncles, cousins, and several kinds of beasts that I have never even heard of before. That section, at least, was amusing and—if I ever find a worthy dwarven woman—might have come in handy. There is even a section here which, so far as I can tell, contains cooking recipes that use the Aether magic as part of its preparation. Everything I've read thus far is about
how
to use the Aether that is already flowing from the Fonts—and absolutely nothing about how to restore its flow should it stop.”

“There must be something in there about the fall of magic,” Drakis said in frustration.

“The most promising section,” the dwarf said, gazing with some distaste down at the open book, “is this passage entitled “Lamentation of Twilight.” It is an epic poem or song or free verse or some such nonsense about the fall of Chelestra—the Citadel of Light—and the end of magic. It even talks about you, Drakis.”

“Not me,” the warrior said with a heavy sigh.

“Well, then
a
Drakis,” the dwarf huffed. “He's a hero figure who came out of the destruction of the Citadels and told the story of the fall of the Citadel of Light. It also talks a good deal about the betrayal of dragons causing the Citadel to fall, the Keepers of the Citadel hiding the key to the Font of Aether to keep it safe from these scheming dragons, the subsequent collapse of the Fonts and the utter destruction of the cities in a rather depressing fashion reminiscent of stale dwarven opera. There are entire rapturous passages about this key—which go on and on seemingly without end of repetition—but absolutely nothing about where they hid it or how to use it even if one could dig up the old thing.”

“But we got that Aether Well to work back in . . .”

“It's called a Font,” the dwarf corrected.

“Right . . . so we got that ‘Font' to work back in the ruin of the Fordrim,” Drakis finished.

“Well, you didn't exactly get it to
work . . .”

“Really?” Drakis said. This learned discussion was testing his patience. “It seemed to work when I was there.”

“You did trigger the fold above the Font,” Jugar acknowledged, “but you did so by channeling your own Aer energy into the Font.”

“My
own
Aer energy,” Drakis shook his head. “Now what are you talking about?”

“All living things have some modicum of Aer generated within them as part of their life-force,” the dwarf explained. “By connecting yourself with the Font, you were able to channel some of the Aer within you into the Font. This allowed you to draw some pooled Aether deep within the Font up to the surface to trigger the fold but not enough to get the Aether flowing. As long as you were connected to the Font, you could hold it open and whatever was left below was pulled up. Of course, the Font closed again as soon as you let go—there being no flow from the central Font to sustain it. Ultimately, I suppose, when we find this great Font at the heart of Chelestra, we'll be forced to do something similar to get it flowing again—although that Font would be enormously larger and built to supply Aether to an entire continent. That's where this key comes in—once the Aether is flowing again, we would need it to hold open the Font permanently, unless you plan on standing there forever and holding the Font open.”

“So that's what this key is about?”

“Whoever holds that key holds the power of an entire continent,” Mala said. “The dragons desire it most of all . . . and fear it as well.”

Drakis glanced quizzically at Mala. “Could that be true? Why would the dragons care?”

“Some might want it to bring the magic back and restore the old kingdoms or enthrone themselves as the masters of Aether,” Mala shrugged. “Others may want to bury it forever. If this book can be used to find this key then . . .”

“But it can't! There's nothing in it about the location of the key.” The dwarf slammed the book shut.

“So it's pointless?”

“It's a waste of time, Drakis,” the dwarf declared, frowning as he looked over the side of the boat toward the rain-veiled shore. “A waste of lives.”

Drakis pressed his eyes closed for a moment, wiping the rain from them as he considered. “Well, we're really no worse off than we were before. We still have to find this original Aether Well . . .”

“It's called a ‘Font' here,” Jugar corrected again.

“All right, Font, but the point is that we still need to find it,” Drakis continued gloomily. “Once we're there, perhaps how to activate it may be more obvious even if it isn't in this book. It doesn't have to be open for long—maybe we don't need this key at all. Have you finished reading that book . . . all of it, I mean?”

Jugar shrugged. “No. There are a few more sections I've passed over as not being promising enough, and they were written in a dialect I'm not nearly as well versed in reading. Perhaps there is something in there that can help us.”

“Drakis?” Urulani said from the back of the second boat. “There's something ahead.”

Ethis turned quickly back to look forward from the bow. “I can't . . . wait! It looks like a tower.”

“Keep reading,” Drakis said to the dwarf. He crossed the gunwales into the other boat and moved forward into its prow next to Ethis. He peered into the rain, again trying to wipe the water from his face.

A slim, tall shape rose before them, seemingly in the path of the boats, silhouetted against the gray of the leaden sky.

“I can't see whether . . .”

Lightning arced through the sky, merging in brilliance with the top of the structure. As the flash faded, several more bolts ripped through the sky, their cracked radiance illuminating the spindle of stone piercing the clouds. Drakis recalled the towers of Rhonas Chas and the ache that their beauty had inspired in him—but they were nothing compared to this glorious monument. Impossibly narrow lines swept upward then curved into shapes that inspired in Drakis the image of two elegantly rendered hands reaching into the heavens, holding between them a globe as an offering, the tips of the fingers pressed together to form the uppermost top of the tower.