Citadels of the Lost (40 page)

Drakis shook his head. “Urulani, you don't know who I've been . . . or who I am. Half of what I remember, I can't tell if it's real or made up.”

“Look at this place, Drakis,” Urulani said, her arms open, gesturing at the tower around them. “This is
real
. This was what our ancestors built . . . all this beauty, all this incredible wonder . . . and they threw it all away. We were a great people, once. I don't think I realized how great we were, and look at us now; either slaves who don't even remember who we are let alone what we have lost or . . . or hiding from the world so that we don't have to think about it. But we're
here
, Drakis and I've seen things . . . heard things . . . and I know what we've lost.”

Urulani stepped up to Drakis, jabbing her long, elegant finger into his chest.

“And you
are
a man of destiny, Drakis, whether you like it or not!” she said. “You could make a difference in this insane world if you would just
choose
to do something with your sorry life.”

“What?” Drakis was incredulous. “Now
you
think I'm this legend?”

“Yes! . . . I mean, of course not. Oh!” Urulani huffed. “Sometimes I think I'd really like to just knock you to the ground!”

“Are we interrupting something?” Ethis called, his voice echoing down through the chamber from above.

“No, not at all,” Drakis replied, taking a step back from Urulani. “Just discussing our next move.”

“We take the river to the right!” Ishander said. The young Far-runner was descending the steps quickly in front of Ethis. “We find Chelestra.”

“If we do,” Ethis added as he made his way down, “it would seem that these celebrated ‘towers of light' are invisible. We were at the top of this tower at dawn and I made a careful survey of the horizon. There are no towers or structures visible of any kind as far as I can see; just the canopy of the rain forest.”

“My father went down the right-hand river,” Ishander said in a tone that defied contradiction. “That is the road to Chelestra.”

“How can you be so sure?” Urulani asked.

“He learned it from one who had seen it,” Ishander replied. “He told me so before he left.”

“Another Far-runner?”

“No,” Ishander said with a grin. “From Clan-mother—who got it from a dragon!”

Three days.

For three days, the boats drifted down the River Tyra into a silent, dead land.

Jugar had become their compass although initially there were problems with his using Aer to detect Aether. Mala emanated tremendous Aether power—so much so that it made it impossible at first for Jugar to discover any magic other than what radiated from her. The
Akumau
she wore, they decided, was the problem. Jugar was able to compensate for the effects of the medallion only after considerable effort.

The first evening brought them to a broad spit of sand at the turn of the river. There they made their encampment under a clearer sky and warm, moisture-laden air. There was only sporadic conversation—stopping and starting in fits—as everyone was occupied with his or her own thoughts. The dwarf grounded his mystical stone in the sands and managed to draw from the earth some modicum of its energy. He further healed his leg that night—announcing that there was no magic in the air after his examinations—other than Mala's irritating Aether trinket—and that if there were a city of magic, it was too far off for him to feel it.

The second day was long, muggy, and offered slowly mounting consternation. The lush jungle growth to either side of the river slowly evolved into sickly, yellowish foliage, and the trees were far shorter than those they had encountered the first day out from Koram Devnet. Moreover, the nearly constant chattering, croaking, and cawing that had emanated from the jungle till now had suddenly stopped completely. The silence that enveloped them now was unnerving. Jugar started telling tales of the dwarven kings just to fill the air with the sound of his own voice. So anxious were his companions that they hung on his words—except for the Lyric who offered a running commentary and critique on each of the tales as Jugar told them.

Mala spent her time gazing down the river, a look of anticipation on her face. Drakis could not guess what motivated her to do so and, when he asked her what she was looking for, she only smiled and turned away.

Urulani, on the other hand, maintained a profoundly angry silence at the tiller of the second boat. She occasionally would work the tilleroar and push her boat with the dwarf and the Lyric aboard ahead of Drakis' own craft, expending her energy through the small ship and, it seemed, feeling the better for it afterward, at least for a time.

Ethis continued to peer forward from the bow of Drakis' boat as though searching for something. Never one to waste words, he found no discomfort in the silence except, it seemed to Drakis, for the ominous change that it seemed to portend.

Ishander stood at the tiller of Drakis' boat, lost in his own thoughts. He, too, peered over the bow in search of what was to come and kept strictly to his own council.

The quiet was beginning to make Drakis itch.

At the close of the second day, they beached the boats on the left bank. A flood some years before had cleared the trees, leaving behind a patch of open ground. There, near the boats, they made their encampment for the night.

The next morning, Jugar shouted in triumph.

Holding the Heart of the Aer in his left hand and his right hand above his head, he proudly proclaimed that there was magic downstream. It was barely discernible but it was there nonetheless.

He was confident that they would reach it by noon.

It appeared almost all at once.

“By the gods!” Drakis murmured. “Is that . . .”

“Chelestra,” Ethis nodded, his own voice quieted with awe. “The Lost Citadel of Humanity.”

The river widened as they cleared the bend. There stood the angled walls of the city, jutting out into the river, the stones from their crumbled tops fallen in great piles at the water's edge. The vertical stone mountings of a water gate rose up to the broken tops, each set across from the other over three hundred feet apart. The gates and their mountings had long vanished, but the cuts in the stones where they had been attached were still visible—speaking to the incredible size of both gates and the enormous effort that must have been expended in opening them into the river.

“Jugar!” Drakis called. “Where do we go now?”

“Through those gates, lad!” the dwarf called back. The Heart of Aer was in his left hand once more as his right hand guided them. “It's through there!”

The two river boats of the Ambeth seemed smaller still as they passed between the towering, broken pillars. The world was silent as they moved across the still waters, the slap of a small wave against the boats' hulls the only sound.

Spread around them in an oval was a wharf nearly a mile long on either side constructed of white stone with hundreds of berths built out into the bay. The stone was stained, and moss encroached upon the base of the wharf stones from the river but declined to climb much higher than an arm's length above the waterline. The ruins of diverse buildings—what Drakis did not doubt had been warehouses, pubs, inns, trade businesses, and perhaps homes—littered the top of the quay. Many of the berths were tall, but toward the far end, Drakis could see several stone staircases leading down from the level of the buildings to smaller landings much closer to the water's edge.

“There,” Jugar pointed with his right arm, his voice hushed yet sounding loud in the silence. “That landing is the one.”

Ishander urged the boat forward with his long-bladed tiller. The prow connected with the ancient stone quay with a resounding thump, scraping momentarily along the side until Ethis managed to pull the hull parallel to the dock with all four of his arms.

Ishander leaped off at once, proclaiming, “I am the first! You all are witness to my being first!”

Drakis shook his head as he stepped over the side of the boat and onto the landing. The sun was high overhead and the air was still. The air was oppressive. Drakis moved quickly to the prow of the boat, pulled the mooring rope, and looped it around one of the short stone pillars that stood at intervals along the landing. As he made another loop, he stopped, staring down into the water.

Urulani, maneuvering her own boat toward the landing saw his look. “What is it, Drakis?”

“Nothing,” he replied. “Come in and I'll catch the bow.”

Urulani nodded, shifting the long oar with a twist that pushed the boat forward. Drakis caught the leading edge of the craft and then walked it down the landing until there was enough room to swing the side of the ship against the dock. Then he fastened the bow to one of the pillars as he had done with the first boat and helped Mala onto the dock. He offered Urulani his hand as well, but she ignored him, jumping from the upturned aft end of the boat directly onto the dock, her sword already drawn.

The dwarf jumped out on his own, the ancient book held tightly against his chest. Once on the ground, he slipped the large book into his pack before shouldering it.

Ishander was already running up the stone stairs to the promenade at the top.

“Stay with us, Ishander,” Drakis called up.

“I am a Far-runner!” called down the young man, his chin raised. “I must find a prize to claim my honor!”

“You are our guide,” Drakis said in reply. “That, too, is part of your honor.”

Ishander shrugged but remained at the top of the stairs.

“What was that about?” Ethis asked as he helped the Lyric from the boat.

“I want him to stay close,” Drakis replied in a quiet voice, turning his back to Ishander as he spoke. “I am concerned about what we will find and how he will react.”

Drakis nodded down over the edge of the dock.

Just visible several feet beneath the surface could be seen the sunken outline shape of a third Ambeth boat.

T
HE STREETS LEADING AWAY from the oval-shaped harbor were largely choked with rubble from the collapsed buildings on either side. There was a devastating sameness to the landscape, the undulations of five low hilltops surrounding the city apparently also carpeted with the same coarse jumble of ruins. What few walls remained were seldom higher than the level of Drakis' eyes. Here and there a corner of a building reached upward as much as twenty feet but these were a rarity. It appeared as though every effort had been made to flatten the stonework of the city back into the ground on which it had been built.

“Am I mad, or is it even quieter here than on the river?” Drakis asked, his voice hushed and yet still carrying through the silence around them.

“I cannot speak to anyone's sanity here,” Ethis replied, his own words hushed. “But not even insects appear to want to visit this place. And, here, look at these cobblestones in the roadway.”

“What about them?” Drakis asked.

“There isn't so much as a blade of grass coming up between them,” Ethis answered quietly. “In the midst of all this jungle—with the flora of the surrounding lands teeming with life—none of the plants have encroached upon these ruins. In Ambeth, it was all they could do to keep the growth outside the walls and that was with concerted effort. Here, however, these ruins have remained undisturbed for centuries, without the encroachment of either plant or animal.”

“Just us,” Drakis observed.

“Indeed, just us,” Ethis acknowledged.

“We're close!” Jugar called out, his voice sounding harsh and loud among the ruins. “This way!”