Citadels of the Lost (49 page)

Drakis dropped the key at his feet, instantly grasping the hilt of his sword and drawing it.

The partially reassembled rotunda of the Citadel was filled with drakoneti. They stood at the edges of the circle, hundreds of them, their barbed tails coiling and uncoiling about their feet. They shifted listlessly from one clawed foot to the other. Their spike-boned faces were fixed on Drakis, swaying back and forth as though waiting.

Ethis was struggling across the floor toward Drakis. Ishander stood uncertainly holding his sword next to the dwarf wielding his ax.

Drakis looked up. The dome was nearly complete with a large circular opening at its apex. A column of light shone down through the aperture but was occluded by the silhouette of Pharis alighting on its edge, his enormous rust-red head craning down through the opening. The dragon suddenly released his perch, falling from the ceiling to land on all four of his legs with a thunderous shock onto the floor on the opposite side of the Font. Drakis staggered slightly from the impact, the tip of his sword shaking in his hand. The dragon more than filled half the space of the Citadel.

Drakis snatched the key off of the ground with his left hand and backed several steps away from the dragon, keenly aware of the wall of drakoneti behind him. Jugar and Ishander closed ranks with him. Ethis, trembling and having trouble holding his form, quivered on the ground at their feet.

Pharis hissed. His eyes fixed on Drakis.

Footsteps scraped across the stone behind Drakis.

Drakis spun around, his sword raised.

One drakonet stepped from out of the horde. It was enormous; a full head taller than most of the other drakoneti. Its facial bones swept back from its face into a series of broken spines and horns. One eye was milky and useless but the other stared at Drakis with a brilliant, intense blue color. Its scales had a polished sheen that shifted colors as though oiled. Its shoulders were wide and its arms enormous.

The drakonet stopped, its barbed tail coiling behind it.

Drakis could hear his own heavy breathing. He raised his sword with his right hand, its tip wavering slightly in the still air. The left gripped the key.

The massive one-eyed drakonet began working its jaw. A horrible, choking sound croaked from its maw, its sharp teeth scraping against one another. It reached out with its right hand, the long, broken claws of its fingers opening toward Drakis, palm up expectantly.

Drakis lowered his sword.

“No, lad!” the dwarf croaked. “Don't do it!”

“It's over, Jugar,” Drakis sighed. It had all been a horrible bad joke. So many sacrificed—Mala, Urulani, the Lyric—so many gone—and for what? All because they wanted him to be someone he was not.

The creature shrugged its shoulders, its jaw working again, a guttural rumble now emerging from its throat.

Drakis slid his sword back into its scabbard.

“No! Drakis, listen to me!” Jugar shouted in desperation.

The one-eyed drakonet raised its head.

“No, Jugar,” Drakis said, transferring the key to his right hand. He held it up in front of him, gazing at it. “No more words.”

He stepped forward, stopping in front of the huge dragon-man towering nearly a foot and a half over him. The monstrous creature was staring down at him with its vibrant blue eye, its wide jaws working as it muttered.

Drakis held the key out in front of him for the creature to take.

The rotunda fell into shadow.

The one-eyed drakonet looked up. Drakis followed its gaze.

Dragons were settling on the edge of the opening at the top of the dome, their shapes blocking out the sky beyond. There were five crowding the opening of various shapes, colors, and markings, all illuminated by the column of light above the Font. One was more striking than the rest, its scales a polished, golden hue burnished to a bright shine.

Pharis looked up as well, his neck recoiling as he hissed at the dragons perched above him.

The drakonet
spoke
.

Drakis turned to face the creature in front of him. For a moment, Drakis was not sure what it said but his eyes widened in astonishment as the word became clear in his mind.

The human's eyes went wide in astonishment.

In that moment, the drakonet reached forward. Its open hand plunged past the key and instead grasped Drakis' arm.

Drakis cried out in pain.

The world shifted. The rotunda was suddenly whole and restored: a beautiful vision of perfection. The arched buttresses rose to the complete dome, the columns stood in symmetry beneath the arches of the colonnade circling about the Font where the light of its Aether shot up through the opening like a beacon of hope.

Gazing down from above, the silver-burnished dragon spoke, its head arched down and facing Pharis as it spoke.

And Drakis
understood.

“. . . discovered what you have done, Pharis! Since the time the Darkness Fell you have told the lie of humanity betraying dragonkind. You were the Guardian of the Font. Yours was the charge to protect the Aether and our oath with humankind!”“

“My loyalty was to dragonkind, Hestia!” Pharis roared. “It is a loyalty and a duty lost among many of us!”

“We swore an oath!” Hestia answered from her perch above.

“An oath of servitude!” Pharis snapped. The dragon circled the Font. “An oath that sold the birthright of dragons to the soft life of human pets! Listen to me! We had a destiny! We could have been a great and noble race that ruled the sky and land! We were the embodiment of Aer—the magic of the land. It welled up through the stones of our lairs and into our bones. We were one with the Aer! But the humans offered us an easy path, a seductive path! The Aether made us soft, complacent, and weak. We traded our eminence for soft rest and easy feasts. We forgot the wild sky and the touch of hard stone. Humanity made us tame and servile! They stood between us and our better selves!”

“And so you rid us of them?” Hestia asked in a hissing voice. “Thinking higher thoughts than the Ring of Five, higher still than all the oaths of the Dragon Elders who vouched for each clutch, you alone determined to break the oath, to sunder the magic and pull the darkness down upon us all?”

“I said nothing of the Dark Fall,” Pharis replied. “The humans brought this on themselves.”

“And yet when the human Drakis came—presented himself at our borders,” said Marush, the green-and-yellow dragon that perched next to Hestia on the rim of the dome, “you kept him hidden from the eyes of our Queen—even as she heard word of him and searched the wildland for him.”

“Not true,” Pharis hissed back, circling the Font. “Marush, what have you to gain by lying so? Do you covet my title so that you would lie to our Queen?”

“Where is this Drakis?” Queen Hestia trumpeted.

“Here, Great Queen!”

Drakis turned to look at the drakonet gripping his arm who had just called to the Queen. He was astonished. The massive drakonet had been transformed in his eyes. The worn and broken horns of his head were complete and perfect. His bony face had taken on an indefinable elegance in nobler, smoother lines. The barbs on the tail were rounded and the creature wore a striking robe of crimson trimmed in gold brocade. His blind eye now matched the blue of the other, both giving a softer look to the face.

“Speak, Theodris,” Hestia commanded. “Too long you have been without a voice.”

“Too long since the Dark Fall,” Theodris answered. “Too long since our adoption to dragonkind by the power of Aether and the long night of our dimmed minds and barbaric half-thoughts. We were immortals condemned to roam the world as little more than animals when the Aether fell. We have lived a waking nightmare these long years.”

“And found you Drakis?” Hestia said.

“This is Drakis, Queen Hestia,” Theodris said, still gripping the human's arm.

“The Drakis of old?” Hestia replied, her eyes narrowing.

“I cannot say, Queen Hestia,” Theodris answered. “But he restored the Font and fulfilled the oath of humankind.”

“And what say you of Pharis?” Hestia asked.

Theodris spoke clearly into the hall. “He enslaved us, bade us first that we might kill this Drakis before you had discovered him. When this failed, he turned us to a new purpose—to seize him in the wilderness. He wanted him taken but for himself alone and in a place far from the eyes of Your Majesty's loyal friends. At last he determined as he had done before to follow them to this fallen place and attempt to retrieve the Key of the Font.”

“For what purpose?” asked the purple-hued dragon in a high, fluting voice.

“That he might recover the Key of the Font—and hide it from Your Majesty . . . and the world.” Theodris answered.

“Not true!” Pharis shouted. “A conspiracy of lies!”

“Pharis,” Hestia intoned. “We are beings of the Aer and so we existed before the human Aether . . . and so we have existed since. By the power of the Aer we breathed our fiery breath. By the power of Aer we could lift ourselves into the sky. Now the darkness is lifted by the hand of a human and powers that once were mine are mine again.”

Pharis coiled back.

“As you had taken the Aether from us,” Hestia declared, “now we take the Aer from you . . . and leave you to the justice of humanity's heirs here among us; the drakoneti.”

Theodris released Drakis' arm. The perfect form of the rotunda vanished at once, replaced by the strange incompleteness of the suspended ruins. Theodris once more assumed his monstrous visage

Pharis leaped upward, his wings extending as Hestia and the four dragons with her drew in their breath. Pharis beat his wings once, twice . . . pushing frantically to get through the opening of the dome, but it was too late. Hestia's breath and the breath of the dragons about her spewed from their gaping maws, encompassing the rust-red dragon in a gray mist as he rose into the dome. Pharis beat his wings again, trying to push past them through the opening but the mist remained behind, holding the dragon's form in the air for a moment behind him. Pharis faltered in the air, wings flailing, desperate to support his weight, but the power of Aer had been pulled from him.

“Out of the way!” Jugar shouted, pushing at Ishander. Ethis managed to stand, staggering toward Drakis.

The dragon fell out of the ceiling, crashing down atop the Font. Pharis scrambled to get his footing on the stones, clawing at the dragon statues to find a purchase but the drakoneti were already swarming toward him. The dragon-men rushed from the surrounding walls, leaping upon the dragon, clawing at the membrane of his wings, tearing at his scales.

Pharis howled in pain, thrashing his great claws about, but the drakoneti would not be denied. The crippled dragon managed to roll onto his feet, charging between the suspended columns of what had once been the entrance hall. The drakoneti cheered and abandoned the rotunda, streaming out in pursuit of the fallen Pharis.

The din of the mob receded and silence again filled the hall. Four of the dragons had left their perches atop the dome to witness the end of Pharis—inevitable now that he could no longer fly or breathe magic—but Hestia remained, looking down from above. Theodris, too, had remained, standing near Drakis as though waiting for something.

“Drakis?” Jugar said quietly. “What's all this about? Where did all those monstrosities rush to in such a hurry? Are we going to be eaten or worse?”

Drakis was gazing blankly at the Key of the Font still in his hands. His voice sounded far away in his own ears. “No, Jugar. I've spoken to them. They won't harm us.”

“Drakis, lad, you've
done
it!” Jugar's shout echoed among the ruins, his voice startling in the silence. The dwarf brandished his ax. “Now if these beasties don't mind, we can get to those fold gates! Maybe now we can go home, eh?”

Home. The word rang in Drakis' mind. House Timuran had been home but it was lost. Urulani's village could have been home before the Iblisi had destroyed it looking for him. Home was where Mala wanted him to take her . . . where he had promised to take her.

But he knew now that home
was
Mala.

“Drakis!”

Drakis raised his head sharply at the sound. A woman's voice echoed down the entrance hall. He could see her running toward him, holding another woman in her arms. His eyes brightened, widened, hoping . . .

“You wish home?” the drakonet said with a heavily slurred tongue.

Jugar looked up at the enormous beast in surprise. “Why . . . yes . . . yes! Can you assist us in getting back to our native soil?”

Drakis stepped toward the hall in anticipation. The women were drawing nearer.

“Hestia say dragons honor still ancient oath to humankind,” the dragon-man said. “Come to aid and defend as oath to fulfill. With Aether their strength is new. No gates or fold. Dragons carry you home to southlands.”

Home. He had promised to take her . . .

Urulani rushed into the hall carrying the Lyric, whose arms were wrapped around her neck. “There's something wrong with her, she's . . .”

Drakis' face fell in anguish.

“Mala?” he asked.

Urulani shook her head . . . could not meet his gaze.

Drakis' comprehension of Urulani's simple motion drove him to his knees, the Key of the Font rolling from his open hands.