The Dark Glory War (37 page)

He was quite proud of everything, as well he should have been.

I think I found the flying buttresses the most impressive. They had not been carved, but poured of a mixture of limestone and sand, which was blended into a slurry and fed into wooden forms that had been carved with designs. He called itacretestone. Metal posts ran through the mixture, which hardened and set, then the next piece was poured. The forms produced a stone in the shape of a dragon, which stood on the head of the one below it, and so on down to the ground, with the dragons getting slightly smaller as the buttress went up. When we got to the top, the uppermost dragons leaned in to hold the tower upright. We could have easily walked out on their broad backs—Dothan offered us the chance to do so, in fact—but I demurred.

“It is quite solid, Hawkins. It can support a lot of weight.”

“That’s fine, I believe you.” I held my hands up. “After all we have been through, walking out there is one more chance than I want to take.”

“Very good point, Hawkins.” Dothan laughed aloud. “Why drink from the cask of luck now when you might need a mouthful later?”

The Crown Chamber capped the tower, as one might expect. Stout wooden rafters supported the leaded, conical roof. The chamber itself had no decoration or furnishings aside from a round firepit at the floor’s heart in which burned a small votive fire and three small plinths arranged around it. On each plinth rested a dazzling stone bound in gold—almost identical matches for the piece of the DragonCrown I’d seen in Svarskya. One stone was a ruby, another a bright yellow sapphirelike stone, and the last a green stone resembling the one I’d seen before. It had hints of blue in it, the significance of which I did not know.

We looked at the room through a wall made of the same iron bars that covered the windows in a crosshatched pattern. Dothan smiled and rested his hand on the iron-bar door in the center of the wall. “I would invite you in to look at the pieces of the crown more closely, but trie effort of disarming the thief traps would take far too long. If you would like a closer look, however, I can bring you along on my weekly inspection.”

Lord Norrington gave him a quick nod. “That would be appreciated, but only if it is no trouble.”

“None whatsoever, not at all, not at all.” The master of Fortress Draconis waved us back toward the stairs. “You have come a long way and have accomplished much. Let me see you to your accommodations. Please, consider the fortress your home. Make yourselves at home—use the gardens, raid my wine cellar, whatever suits your fancy.”

Prince Kirill smiled. “You are most generous.”

“I would like to think so, but everything I have here has come from the nations of the world—your nations. Our supply often exceeds our demand, so we have excess for times like this. Giving it to you, to repay what you have done, it is the least I can do.”

Dothan Cavarre’sleast was by far the most luxurious treatment I’d had in my entire life. The apartments he led us to were small, but filled with ornate furnishings. I had a big bed with a canopy over it and a heavy down quilt covering it. A wardrobe and a matching chest of drawers stood as sentries on either side of the door, then a sideboard, a small table, and four upholstered chairs took over the half of the room next to the bed. A small iron stove functioned in place of a hearth and hugged the wall right beside the bed, with the stovepipe burrowing into the wall and, I presumed, linking up with some flue hidden therein. A couple of rugs covered most of the floor. The window, which was functionally narrow, gave me a distant glimpse of the harbor.

The sideboard had three decanters full of wine and four goblets, as well as some cheese and a small basket of dried fruit. I’d just unstoppered a crystal decanter to sniff at the red wine therein, when a gentle knock preceded a servant slipping into my room. He was older than me, but not by much, and held himself erect—making me wonder if he weren’t a soldier pressed into auxiliary duty.

“Begging your pardon, sir, but the Baron, he asked that I conduct you to the bathing center.”

I returned the stopper to the decanter, then set it back on the sideboard. He opened the door and I followed. We took a stairway worked in the external wall and descended to ground level. He led me past the arched doorway to a vast room tiled in ivory, with mosaics on the walls and along the bottom of pools. Steam rising from most of the pools prevented me from getting a good look at the art, but the general theme seemed to have something to do with the slaying of Aurolani beasts.

I disrobed in the alcove the servant indicated. I left my mask hanging from a peg and donned a slender cloth bathing mask of brown. I cut down through a cool corridor and slipped into a pool of warm water—one of several, each hidden from the rest of the room and each other by a low wall. The brushes and soap tucked into niches around the rim led me to believe I was supposed to scrub myself in this pool before visiting any of the others, and the wall allowed me the I wanted to remove my mask to bathe. I took the hint to heart, pulled my mask off, and plied the soap and brush over my skin with serious effort. In fairly short order my skin shed the brown hue I’d mistaken as sun-tint from my journey. Feeling truly clean for the first time in ages, I tied my bathing mask back into place and slipped from that pool to one that was slightly hotter, and from there into another that was hotter still. I closed my eyes and floated there blissfully, drawing the warm wet air deep into my lungs. The heat melted away the knots in my muscles and returned to me a sense of peace I’d all but forgotten existed.

I bobbed up and down as someone else’s entry sent ripples through the pool. I rolled over and smiled as both Leigh and Nay entered the pool. Nay was smiling broadly and groaned delightedly as he sank to his neck in the steaming water. Leigh still moved a bit slowly, but even his face lit up as the water wrapped him in a hot cocoon. Me, I was just happy to see him without Temmer.

Nay sighed aloud. “There were nights on the ships, in the rain, that this was just a dream.”

Leigh nodded. “The cold, it just sinks into your bones, but this burns it out again.” He lowered his face into the water, then came up with his face dripping and his blue eyes bright. “Well, lads, who would have thought we’d be here, doing this, a scant three months ago? Hawkins, you were hoping you’d be a Scout, and Nay, well, I don’t know what you were hoping.”

“Being a Scout would do.”

“Those are still goals we can attain.” I frowned at Leigh. “What were you hoping for yourself?” He shrugged. “Does it matter? Now I have new goals. Marry a princess, start a dynasty—the usual, you know.”

“Oh, indeed.” I affected the lilting tone of his voice. “Slay a dragon, conquer Aurolan: trivial matters.”

“Quite so, quite so.” Nay’s attempt at aping Leigh’s tone had enough enthusiasm to cover the stiffness therein. I expected him to continue, but he stopped and his face drained of color. I whirled around to see what he was staring at, then had to lunge for the edge of the pool to catch myself.

A man stood in the mists, wearing the ceremonial cloak of a Knight of the Phoenix. His left hand came up, touched just below his left eye, descended and rose again—the signal for us to follow him. He spun on his heel, his cloak swirling through the mist, then he disappeared out of the room.

The three of us got over our astonishment rather quickly and hauled ourselves out of the pool. I went immediately for the alcove where I’d left my true mask. I wasn’t so much concerned about being naked as I was about having a bathing mask on. The other two followed. We found our masks, and Phoenix Knight cloaks where our clothes had been. Pulling them on, we ran through the hall to try and find the person who had summoned us, but he was gone.

Leigh pointed to wet bootprints on the stone. We quickly followed them and descended a stairway, then found the Fledgling sign worked in a stone along the side of a narrow corridor. Nay pushed on the stone, then pulled his hand away as if it had been stung. “Not liking that at all.”

A magickal glow began in the stone. Further down the corridor a section of the wall pulled back and tipped down, providing us a drawbridge into another corridor. I led us across the section of wall, then had to turn immediately to the left to continue even though the corridor looked as if it extended for a good long distance. Had a breach been opened in the wall and I’d tried to leap across the chasm, I’d have slammed into a wall that had been ingeniously painted to look like a corridor. I’d have either dashed my brains out, or fallen to my death below, and I wasn’t certain which fate I would have preferred.

We descended a spiral staircase and came out onto a narrow platform. Steep stairs ran up from it to a broader, deeper platform, perhaps five feet above us and fifteen feet back. Starting level with it, a semicircular series of benches rose in five steps. Upon these benches sat men and women in a rainbow of hooded cloaks.

The small man standing in the middle of the dais could have been no one other than the Draconis Baron. He wore a cloak of red trimmed in gold. He extended a gloved hand toward us and filled the room with a voice that took on a resonance I’d not have thought possible from having heard him earlier.

“Behold three who were, just weeks ago, made Minor Fledglings in Oriosa. In Alcida they were given instruction, and since then they have been in service to the world. The first has slain twosullanciri, a feat unequaled in the annals of heroism. The second has slain a giant, crushing it in three blows. And the third has confrontedsullanciri and has proved to be an archer of such skill that Loquelves fashioned for him a bow of silverwood. Their selfless efforts have brought great glory upon us.”

The assembled Knights applauded politely. Their cloaks had enough variation to mark them as coming from different nations. Some had hems trimmed in gibberer fur. Others sported dangling temeryx feathers of white, and at least one hood was made of a vylaen pelt. That they applauded us at all struck me as odd, for these were men and women who, by the very virtue of their being at Fortress Draconis, had likely seen and done more than we would ever do. As with Cavarre’s earlier praise, I did not think what I had done was worthy of such acclaim.

Nay seemed to be similarly uncomfortable, but Leigh beamed proudly. I couldn’t fault him for that—he’d eliminated half of Chytrine’s leadership cadre, which was a momentous accomplishment. There was no doubting he was a hero and the acclaim seemed to infuse back into him some of the life the sword had drained.

“As the acting Flock Lord for the precinct of Fortress Draconis, I ask if there is anyone who would speak.”

A man stepped forward in the first rank wearing a scarlet cloak trimmed in black; the quilted feathers on his cloak were likewise outlined in black. Until he spoke I couldn’t recognize him, but his voice permitted no mistake.

Prince Augustus cleared his throat. “I have witnessed the actions of these three. They have acquitted themselves far better than their youth or rank would suggest possible. It is my thought that elevation to the rank of Wing is in order.”

“Thank you, Grand Black Phoenix.” Cavarre slowly turned and looked around the room. “Is there anyone who would speak against this elevation?”

The other Knights remained silent.

The acting Flock Lord came around to look at us again. “It is my pleasure to welcome you to the rank of Wing.” At his signal three other Knights moved from their places and stood in a line behind him. Each one bore a folded cloak. The Flock Lord beckoned us forward, and as we stepped toward the stairs, the clasps on our cloaks failed, leaving them behind. Naked, we climbed the stairs in the order of our initial recognition.

The new cloaks, which were brown except for a red course of feathers above the yellow course we’d worn before, were draped over our shoulders. Cavarre stood before each of us and reached up to fasten our clasps. Once that was done, he retreated a step and bowed his head to us.

He spoke in a solemn voice that filled the amphitheatre easily. “In the course of your time here at Fortress Draconis, you will be tutored in that which you must know to fulfill the duties and shoulder the responsibilities of your new rank. It should make you proud to know that seldom has any one person reached this rank this swiftly. Never before, to my knowledge, has a trio of Knights risen this far, this fast. On the eve of the battles we will face here, we consider this a most fortuitous omen.”

After our elevation—an event that surprised and pleased me—I got some food, returned to my room alone, and promptly fell asleep. While I’d certainly slept onboard the ships and caught as much rest as I could on the road, there was no denying I was exhausted. The sun was just setting as I crawled into my bed, and it was long past dawn when I awakened.

I got dressed from the clothes in my wardrobe—which did not include the ragged garments I’d worn since we left Yslin. Someone had filled my wardrobe with tunics and trousers that fit pretty well and were dyed Oriosan green. I slipped the boot knife Nay had given me into the top of my right boot.

I wandered down into the dining hall and found it fairly full. As Cavarre had explained the day before, the garrison troops ate in shifts, so food was always available. I grabbed a bowl of thick stew and half a round of bread, then retreated to an empty side table to eat. I was fairly certain that I could have joined any of the groups of men and women seated elsewhere, but I kept my distance on purpose.

Despite the praises sung of us in the Phoenix Knight assembly, I knew the reality of the world. The men and women serving here had bonded through their experiences. They trained together and every day were willing to fight and even die to defend the fortress. Their sacrifices were greater than any I had made. I was just a youth off on an adventure, and to be touted as somehow their equal or superior was simply wrong.

Part of me wanted very much to join them, and I took great solace in the warm laughter that echoed throughout the room. Brags were shouted from one table to the next, with individual challenging individual and unit challenging unit. Wagers were offered and taken concerning the numbers of enemy each would slay, the number of prisoners to be taken, the number of citations to be won, the honors that would be awarded, and even the number of stitches to sew up wounds. The warriors gathered there exuded a buoyant confidence that would do more to defend Fortress Draconis than walls and weapons.