Citadels of the Lost (12 page)

The Scheliss Field Road wound its way among the gently rolling mounds of the Northmarch, an unhurried path for traders who came eastward from River Town. At that walled village the road split, the Coast Road following the river to the ports of the Shadow Coast to the west. Gnomish goods from Cape Tjakar on Manticus Bay traveled this road as well as goblin spices from Nordesia's Gorgantia Bay far up the coast. He knew this because he had journeyed with those cargoes, quietly working his passage on a gnomish galley and helping shift their jars in Shellsea to the transport wagons. Shellsea was an elven settlement requiring that Soen take more care to not be recognized for either whom he now was or who he had once been. He had covered many leagues since discarding the robes that once heralded him as an Inquisitor of the Iblisi, taking instead the more common robes of a Fourth Estate merchant as he reinvented himself and his false past. His Matei staff—powerful symbol of his former calling—he disguised as best he could from the eyes that occasionally might be cast in his direction. He never considered discarding it though its discovery in his hands would certainly expose him; it was too powerful a weapon to be without.

In his mind, Soen saw the farther reaches of the road branching south from River Town to become the main trade route down through the Northmarch connecting with the Imperial Folds—the magical transportation portals that were the backbone of Rhonas commerce, communication, and might—just outside an otherwise inconsequential village called Char. Through those portals he had passed freely only a week before—a master on a mission sanctioned by the Imperial Will and blessed by Ch'drei, the matriarchal head of the Iblisi Order that he faithfully served.

What a difference a few weeks can make,
he thought.

He drew his mind back sharply to the present and again studied the road below him at the base of the knoll. It was a well-traveled road as it made its way east toward the town of Scheliss Field at the base of the Whispering Hills, just two leagues ahead. Scheliss Field was one of several towns established just short of the borders of Ephindria, the silent, reclusive land of the chimerians. Those strange, four-armed creatures with their blank, nearly nonexistent faces came to Scheliss Field for trade—leaving their own borders closed to anyone not of their race.

The Scheliss Field Road was not wide or well maintained because those who normally traveled it, while constant, were few. Recently, however, some great movement had flooded over the boundaries of the established road. The new ruts had not yet sunk deeply into the hard ground despite the evidence of a large number of travelers—all moving northeast. The predominance of tracks were manticorian—lion-men inexplicably now moving from their traditional clan holdings in the Steppes of Chaenandria up this road and probably far past the Whispering Hills. Such a migration was without precedent, but it was not manticorians alone; also mixed in with the tracks were those of Plains gnomes from Vestasia and an unusual number of goblins who where rarely, if ever, seen this far south of their Nordesian lodges.

“Whole nations on the run, and I'm running right along with them,” Soen sighed. “All because of a few broken slaves.”

Soen gazed down again at the dirt road. The number of manticorian tracks was dizzying.

And I have to find one among an entire nation of manticores,
Soen thought. “
Just a single broken, crazy, bolting manticore slave by the name of Belag. Find him and I'll find the human Drakis . . . find Drakis, and perhaps then I'll have the means of convincing the devout members of my former Order that there is more value in my life than in my death.

Soen was both the hunter and the hunted; the game was which role he would fulfill first.

Someone below him had left the road and was climbing toward him up the knoll. Any new acquaintance could be the harbinger of either his salvation or his doom. Soen always found his interest piqued to discover which of the two was approaching.

“Good noon to you,” called out the other as he approached.

“Good noon to you as well,” Soen called back. He could easily make out four arms and the featureless face that marked the approaching creature as a chimerian. This approaching citizen of Ephindria held walking staffs in two of its four hands. As to its gender, Soen knew that determination would have to wait until the creature was closer. Most elves could not tell whether a chimerian was male or female until the creature specifically let them know during conversation. Even as a trained Inquisitor, Soen had difficulty knowing at a distance. “What news do you bring?”

“News enough!” the chimerian replied. “And good news at that. I come from the Shadow Coast and the cities are alive with the most amazing talk.”

“Come share the shade of my tree,” Soen coaxed with a practiced smile, his hand resting with studied ease on his disguised staff. Fire and death spooled in the back of his mind, his hand communicating his murderous intention to the staff that warmed beneath his hand. “I long to hear what is happening in the world.”

It was a lie. Soen had himself just come from the Shadow Coast and knew better than most what was truly going on there.

“Thank you, noble elven lord,” the chimerian said as he stepped up to the tree, paying the deference to the elf that Rhonas demanded of everyone else in the world. “Your generosity is great and does honor to us both.”

“I am Thein Tja-kai, of late a merchant of the Fourth Estate and of the Order of Paktan,” Soen lied again. When conversing with strangers, he knew, the more distant his location was from the heart of the Imperial Will, the more politic it was to distance himself from the Empire in every way. “I have come to seek a better destiny here in this wild land than I found in the stifling and rotting courts of Rhonas. And you?”

“Ah,” the chimerian replied. “Then the Shadow Coast is just the place for you—or perhaps even the Mistral Peninsula itself far beyond the Mournful Mountains. There are great opportunities there. I should know; trade was once my profession.” The chimerian extended a free hand. “I'm called Vendis.”

This seems to be the season for changing professions,
Soen thought but instead reached up with his own free hand, grasped Vendis down near his elbow, and said, “And what do you do now, Vendis?”

“Why, I believe I am a pilgrim!”

“You're a . . . I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand.”

“I am a pilgrim . . . I am on a spiritual journey,” Vendis said, leaning on both his walking sticks. “You asked for my news. Have you heard the stories of the Prophet?”

Hunter or hunted,
Soen thought though not a muscle moved in response, his left hand still resting on the
Matei
staff.
I've heard of nothing but this “prophet” Belag since tracking the manticore all the way to Port Melthis
, he thought.
The more immediate question has more to do with Vendis. Do I use this chimerian or kill him where he stands? Is he a predator or the prey?

“A Prophet?” Soen replied with carefully feigned interest. “Is there such a thing?”

“All the winds of the Shadow Coast could not match the force of the words being whispered about him from Shellsea to Gorganta Bay. Surely with so many stories, he must exist.”

“The weight of tongues never adds to a truth—it only detracts.” Soen said. “But please go on. Tell me about it.”

“I have heard that it began many centuries ago . . .” The chimerian stopped. “Surely my noble lord has heard this tale!”

“Not at all, I assure you,” Soen lied again. He had heard variations of this tale—some wilder in their miraculous attributions than others—in every town, village or hamlet that he had entered. Each one had grown with every telling. But he was trained as an Inquisitor and so he took in all variations of accounts . . . knowing that often the truth was found in the smallest, barely included detail. “Please, continue.”

The chimerian's face twisted into what almost passed for a smile. “Well, I have heard that it began many centuries ago when the
hoomani
ruled a great nation across the northern sea. There the might of terrible Rhonas came down in its wrath upon the
hoo-mani
and crushed their brittle bones back into the dust of their land. But as their great priest died on the altar of their citadel, he wrought a great prophecy that one would come afterward who would bring down the towers of the unjust and avenge the bones of the
hoo-mani
. Rhonas would fall before the thunder of his words and the fire of his mouth. And his name would be called Drakis.”

“I believe I have heard something of this tale,” Soen coaxed. In truth, he had studied the original Prophecy texts in the deep libraries of the Iblisi Lyceum. The Prophecy itself was far more complex than this simple telling and more disturbingly—almost grotesquely—detailed. This was a children's version, but he had to know who this chimerian was and why he had approached Soen searching for the same Belag he sought himself. “It is very old.”

“But he has come,” the chimerian hissed quietly. “This Drakis has come at last. It is said he broke the chains of his enslavement through the power of his own hands. He vanished before the eyes of the Iblisi who were sent to recapture him—destroying a Legion of their ranks with the wave of his hand—and weeping for their loss afterward. He walked the forests of faery and emerged whole and untouched from the other side. This
hoo-mani
Drakis is the prophesied one. He has fulfilled the prophecy in every particular!”

That was certainly
not
true. Soen and three remaining members of his Quorum had chased Drakis and his companions down the wide length of the Hyperian Plain only to lose them when they crossed into faery lands. That move had cost him the lives of his two Codexia and nearly that of the Assesia his master Ch'drei had sent to spy on him.
Would that he
had
died then,
Soen thought.
I managed to track Drakis again on the Thetis Coast only to lose him when the fool Jukung showed up to kill us both and ruined it all.

“So this Drakis is the Prophet you are looking for?” It was a deliberate error meant to bait Vendis. Soen knew very well who the Prophet was supposed to be.

“Oh, no,” the chimerian answered gently. “The Prophet is the one who tells the stories of Drakis. He is the one who comes ahead of Drakis, preparing the way for his return . . . at least; those are the tales that are being told on the Shadow Coast. I have not met this Prophet and am curious as to what sort of a creature he is . . . that is why I have become a pilgrim, that I might discover the truth.”

“A worthy ambition,” Soen nodded. The Iblisi had been the guardians of truth for centuries. It was their job to keep the truth safely hidden away. In an empire where history itself was modified to suit the whims of the moment, only the Iblisi kept the sacred difference between reality and expedience. Truth—or the safekeeping of the truth—was, therefore, his business. “To find the truth of a thing is of value indeed. I think I might like to hear what this Prophet has to say as well. I am on no otherwise urgent business and am searching for a better truth—just as you seem to be. I don't suppose you know where this Prophet might be found, do you?”

Vendis opened his mouth as if to speak . . . but hesitated for a moment. “He is, they say, a most generous being, but those who are close to him keep his location closely guarded for fear that the Emperor might wish him ill. But those who told me the tale also told me where to seek him.”

“I am an elf as you can clearly see,” Soen said. “But is not the truth for all creatures—even the elves under whose doom we quake? Is there no elf who might hear the truth and, knowing it, follow it, too?”

Vendis thought for a moment and then nodded, smiling his strange smile once more. “Then Thein Tja-kai come with me into Scheliss Field, and we shall decide together how best we may find this prophet!”

Soen did not for a moment believe that this Vendis of Ephindria met him by anything like coincidence. Only fools believed in the providence of the gods arranging such an obvious and fortuitous meeting.

Soen stood up, his Matei staff still ready.

An interesting game,
he thought.

“I
T'S ABOUT TIME, YOU GOT IN!”, the goblin innkeeper huffed, his brick-red arms folded across his sunken chest. “I was beginning to wonder myself what I'd be able to find for my own supper—let alone anyone who's left with coin.”

Soen stood in the shadow just inside the open doorframe. The contrast made it hard for the goblin to see him from his perch atop a tall stool behind the inn's ledger desk. Soen hung back to observe as Vendis dealt with the creature behind the desk as well as his own mounting frustration.

“Good innkeeper,” Vendis said after a deep breath, all four of his narrow hands gripping the front edges of the desk as he spoke in controlled tones. “For the last time, we are NOT the teamsters you are expecting. We do not have any shipment for delivery . . .”

“Well, then what good are ya?” the goblin yelled as he leaned his face forward until his hooked nose nearly touched the chimerian's face. His nasal, high-pitched voice was grating even on Soen's ears. “I've got nothing to EAT! Sold it all down to the last pickle and THEN sold the barrel they come in. I'll bet they ate THAT, too!”

The chimerian gripped the desk edge harder. “We're NOT merchants . . . I mean, we
are
merchants but we're not
your
merchants . . . That's not why we're here. We just want to ask you if . . .”