Citadels of the Lost (15 page)

Soen let go his staff, pushing it slightly away from him even as he felt the pounding feet of the enraged manticore charging toward him. Slowly and deliberately, Soen pulled his knees up under him but he kept both of this hands flat against the ground, his face down and his eyes averted. Then he held very, very still.

He could feel the hot breath of the manticore on the back of his neck.

“WHO ARE YOU?” roared the manticore, its voice so loud in Soen's ears that he was actually startled.

I'm alive,
Soen thought.

“I am a pilgrim,” he answered.

The manticore laughed. “An elf pilgrim?”

“Is not one prophet the prophet of all?” Soen asked. His face remained turned down, his hands touching the ground before him.

Three full breaths from the manticore brushed against the back of Soen's neck before he replied.

“Perhaps,” the manticore answered at last. “Get up.”

Soen stood, picking up his staff.

“Give that to me,” the manticore said at once.

Soen looked at the manticore. He was mature for his race but still an able warrior. He wore intricate armor of a very old design.

“This staff,” Soen said carefully, “was given me by my grandfather—my father's father—and is the symbol of my family's honor.”

The manticore snorted loudly. “It is a stick.”

“Yes, but it is
my
stick and
my
honor,” Soen replied.

“Honor is found in battle, long-head,” the manticore snarled.

“I fight a different war,” Soen answered, handing the staff to the manticore.

S
OEN FOLLOWED AFTER HIS CAPTOR—a manticore who had flatly stated that giving his name to the elf was beneath him—with Vendis at his side. Three more manticore warriors followed a few steps behind them, waiting for their own excuse to pounce on the captives and get a few battle strikes in of their own. The group wound their way into the interior of the encampment, down crowded paths between clusters of tents and wagons. Many of the covered wagons had rigged their canvas to form temporary shelters along the side of the towering wagon boxes. Now these were hastily being taken down and secured once more over the wagon's load. Everywhere Soen looked, there were creatures of many different races rushing in furious activity. The great majority was made up of manticores, but the remarkable thing in this for Soen was that they were in families. Manticores rarely allowed outsiders into their clan-prides or even to see their young, yet here Soen observed them all. Elderly lion-men with long, dusty manes stooped next to a fire by a wagon as they gestured in storytelling to a circle of cubs and their manticore mothers while their fathers readied their wagons to leave. A group of young lion-men struggled with a recalcitrant team of oxen while another group of young manticore women jeered at them from beside their own quickly harnessed team. Manticore males and females rushed to strike their recently made camps or to move the oxen out of corrals and take them back to their yokes.

Not just manticores, however, but other races packed the encampment as well. A considerable number of chimerians were also here in the camp as were a not insignificant number of dark-skinned humans and even a few lighter-skinned humans as well. In several instances, Soen observed these chimerians and humans working at a furious pace side by side with the manticores and they often seemed attached to a manticore family camp wagon. Hak'kaarin gnomes ran everywhere through the camp, stopping here to listen to a story and there to lend a hand or occasionally bumping into another gnome and chatting furiously before dashing off to some other parts unknown.

The paths were occasionally so crowded that it was difficult to tell where a camp ended and the path began. Everyone, however, quickly moved out of the path of the manticore warrior, their eyes fixed on the captives with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion as they passed. Their pace was only impeded by the occasional choke of oxen in the path before them who were not impressed by either the strange prisoners or the fierce warriors accompanying them.

“Just when were you going to tell me about the ambush?” Vendis asked testily.

“What ambush?” Soen answered.

“That ambush at the edge of the camp—the one where I ended up with my head smashed against the back of a wagon.”

“Oh,
that
ambush,” Soen said, delight playing about the edges of a smile.

“You and I need to talk more,” Vendis huffed.

“Look,” Soen said, “you're a chimerian. These manticores patrolling the perimeter of the caravan were obviously in the mood to kill us first and then ask who we were later. I needed time before being too dead to manage a proper surrender to the manticores. I knew you could take the blow of their initial charge because . . .”

“Because I'm a ‘bendy'?” Vendis bristled at the implied insult in the word.

“I was going to say that you are more flexible,” Soen corrected.

“Being ‘flexible' does not mean that it doesn't hurt,” Vendis replied. “Or that it doesn't
still
hurt.”

“Then I am sorry for your pain,” Soen answered almost truthfully. “Nevertheless, manticores prefer to strike first with their claws and fists . . . claws that would not cut deep enough to do you any lasting harm and the unusual telescoping bones and pliable sinews of your race would blunt their hammering fists. It takes a great deal to kill your kind, Vendis; very sharp blades and at the right puncture locations . . . or a knowledge of the nerve points that can paralyze chimerians long enough to allow for more permanent options.”

“You sound a little too familiar with the subject,” Vendis said.

Soen shrugged. “We are still alive, and I count that as something of a victory.”

“For now,” Vendis grumbled.

“Yes, for now.”

The manticore leading them turned to the left and then right once more. The smells of cooking in the camp were becoming more pronounced: heavily laden with spices that were in turn enticing, exotic, cloying, and occasionally brought tears unbidden to the elf's eyes.

“Would you look at that!” Vendis exclaimed.

They were passing a small group of elves. These, too, had been repacking their camp and were just finishing.

“These pilgrims don't seem to be very discriminating,” Vendis said with sarcasm.

“I did say I was sorry,” Soen countered, but his mind was considering the implications. Not only had the encampment included the elves in their camp but indeed seemed at ease with them living among them.

“Where are they going?” Vendis asked quietly as they continued on.

“Toward the center of the camp, I should think,” Soen answered, his mind still on the pilgrim elves. “The layout appears to be concentric even though the paths are mazelike in their design. A good proper defensive structure, actually, so I suspect we're headed for some sort of interrogation . . .”

“No,” Vendis interrupted. “I mean, where do you think this camp is headed? They came from the south, so they wouldn't be reversing their direction. Ephindria lies to the east, and I know from personal experience that an incursion of a single outside individual over their border is cause enough for the chimerians to be outraged, let alone what looks like an entire small nation. If their objective had been the Shadow Coast, then there are much better and faster routes to the west that they could have taken at several places in their journey. That leaves north—the Shrouded Plain. That's no choice at all; it's said to be blanketed by a haunted fog more than a hundred leagues across—a place where ancient spirits continue to wander and exist only to lead others to their doom.”

“Cheerful prospect,” Soen chuckled darkly.

“So where are they going?”

The crush of the encampment suddenly gave way to a large circular clearing surrounded entirely by manticore warriors in full armor. In the center nearly one hundred meters from the edge of the clearing was a large, multi-chambered tent.

Soen grinned. “I suspect we're about to get the answer to your question.”

The tent was not the most opulent that Soen had ever seen. Indeed, even by most manticorian standards, it was modest and a little austere. There were the usual compartments—small rooms all arranged around the large, central gathering room, but they were few in number and all of them had their partitions pulled back so that the elf could see the contents of each. A sleeping chamber with the expected ground mat and tubular pillows, a small dining table built low after the manticorian custom of lounging on pillows for formal meals and an ablutions chamber common to every household in Chaenandria. Curiously missing was the deity shrine that universally graced every manticorian household.

Their manticorian captor had preceded them into the tent and now stood in the center of the gathering room facing them. “Grahn Aur will arrive shortly. You will kneel when he enters the room. You will speak only when he gives his permission for you to do so. You will answer his questions when they are asked and keep your own questions to yourself. Stand where you are, and I will inform him that you are here. Do not move; do as I have instructed you, and you may yet live to see the stars again.”

Vendis cast a sidelong glance at the elf. “Well, Thein . . . what's our next move?”

“My understanding is that we're to make no move at all,” Soen replied, his eyes fixed straight ahead.

“What kind of an elf are you?” Vendis snarled. “You let me take a hit from behind so that you can properly surrender, several Legions of the elven army are about to display the displeasure of the Emperor in a most emphatic way against mostly the old, the infirm, and the helpless, and now you just want to stand here and wait? What happened to the defiant spirit of the elves that led them to conquer the world?”

“It's hard to conquer anything when you're dead,” Soen observed. “Victory always consists of letting someone else die for their cause.”

Vendis cast a baleful eye on Soen.

“You're still here, aren't you?” Soen replied. “Besides, if we're going to find this prophet you keep telling me about, who better to point the way than the leader of these pilgrims?”

Vendis sighed. “Do you always have to be right?”

“No, but I always am,” Soen grinned to himself. He thought he also heard a low chuckle from one of the three manticore guards still standing behind them.

The sound of the tent flap being pulled aside caused both Soen and Vendis to straighten slightly. They felt more than heard the movement behind them before the large, stooped figure of a manticore shuffled around them with two young manticores assisting him on either side. The mane of the elder manticore was almost entirely gray, cascading back from the crown of his head down the back of the great ceremonial mantle that he wore. In his hoary left hand, he clutched a tall, intricately carved staff, the top of which was fashioned into a clawed hand gripping a fractured crystal globe. The ancient manticore squinted at the elf and the chimerian from a face filled with the deep folds of age and partially covered by a long, gray beard that had been carefully braided just below his chin and fell nearly to the center of his chest.

Under the critical gaze of the old manticore, Soen quickly remembered the instructions he had been given. He knelt down to the ground on one knee, followed quickly by his chimerian companion.

The wizened manticore kept staring at them even as he continued his shuffling walk toward the back of the tent, both manticores at his side in constant attendance.

Soen watched and waited.

The old manticore disappeared into the back sleeping chamber of the tent. The two manticores assisting him closed the flap behind them, shutting them off from all eyes in the central chamber.

A moment passed during which no one spoke or moved.

Soen sighed. “Well, I suppose our interrogation is over.”

The quiet was broken by a resounding, deep bellowing sound that shook the tent poles behind them. Soen turned instinctively toward the resonant sound.

It came from a younger manticore wearing a plain tunic, leggings, and a cloth robe. There was genuine amusement in his eyes and perhaps a bit more, Soen thought, as he quickly examined the creature. He had the broad manticorian face though his mane was perhaps a bit short for his apparent age. This he kept pulled back tightly away from his face and bound in the back.

“I can see you have met Gradek,” the young manticore said through a broad smile of his fanged teeth. “He's my captain of the evening watch. He's very good at his job, but I think he takes me a bit too seriously sometimes.”