The Killing Song: The Dragon Below Book III (27 page)

“Aahyi-ksiksiksi-kladakla-yahaahyi—”

Orshok’s eyes focused on him, and the song rose to a pitch. He raised his hunda, holding it like a weapon. Geth didn’t move. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t kill a friend. Run, he told himself. Take Wrath and run!

And leave Orshok in Medala’s power?

Then a shadow moved behind Orshok, seeming to emerge from the solid trunk of one of the trees. Something rose and fell with a swiftness Geth wouldn’t have expected. It struck Orshok across the back of his head, and the young orc’s eyes rolled back. His body slid to the ground—and Batul faced Geth over his prone student, his own hunda stick slowly sinking.

“You fool,” he said harshly. “You couldn’t wait? You couldn’t restrain yourself?”

Geth barely heard the words. He stared at Orshok, anguish and giddy relief pummeling him. “He’s not dead, is he?”

“No.”

“Medala had him.” Geth looked up at Batul. “Medala had all of them! She still has her powers and your magic can’t stop her. She’s manipulating the entire horde, even the Gatekeepers—”

Batul slammed the butt of his hunda stick into the ground, his good eye blazing. “I knew that, you idiot! Word of Vvaraak,
didn’t you think I knew that? If you’d gone along with her, if you’d waited to speak to me some other time—
any other time
—this might not have happened!” He gestured around them.

“Geth! Batul!” Ekhaas came charging out of the trees, her sword drawn, and pulled up short at the sight of the carnage. Her eyes went wide, and her ears stood up tall.
“Khaavolaar!”

Geth felt very small and very ashamed, felt guilty for surviving a fight that shouldn’t have happened.
Wouldn’t
have happened if he’d held himself back. “They lured me away. It was a trap.”

Ekhaas pressed her lips together. “I guessed as much when I realized Hona’s curiosity was too intense to be natural. Medala used my arrogance against me.” She nodded toward Batul. “He found me before I could find you again, though, and I told him what we’d discovered—and he told me what he already knew.”

She actually looked humbled too. Batul growled a curse under his breath. “And neither of you considered that allowing me to remain largely under Medala’s control for the moment might give you more insight later? You’re both fools.” He sighed and his anger seemed to draw back. He closed his eyes wearily, then looked back at them. “I have to return to the ceremony of the horde before the spell that brought me here ends—and before Medala realizes that I’m not entirely under her power. You two will have to leave. She’s backed you into a corner.”

“Medala spoke through Orshok,” said Geth. “She said kill or be killed, she’d still have what she wanted.”

Batul nodded. “If you died, you’d be out of her way. If you lived, you’d face the rage of the horde for killing friends and oath-brothers. The bodies would have been found, though now Orshok will wake and raise the alarm. Even when you flee, you’ll be reviled, a fallen hero.”

The words turned like a knife in Geth’s belly. A reviled hero. He’d felt that way before. The loss of what he had enjoyed again, however briefly, stung. His head dropped—and he stared into Kobus’s split face.

Orshok lay unconscious before him. Pog’s body grew cold. They had died at his hands—but also because Medala had sent them against him like tokens in a game. The sting of loss turned
into fiery anger. He raised his head, teeth clenched. “Medala’s still up to something. We can’t just run!”

An idea flashed in Batul’s eye. “Do you think you could run ahead of the horde—all the way to the Bonetree mound?”

Geth stared at him, but Ekhaas’s ears twitched in understanding. “If she’s going to do something unexpected, she’s likely to do it there. We can scout ahead.”

“And if you need us, we’ll be there. We can do that.” Geth bent down and snatched Wrath up from the ground. “But we’ll need guidance. I don’t know the way to mound from here.”

Batul hesitated for a moment, then his hands went to his neck and pulled an amulet from beneath his shirt. “I think this may be what has enabled me to hold back Medala’s influence,” he said, “but your need is greater than mine now. Run north tonight, then lie on the ground at dawn, and it will show you the way.”

Geth knew the amulet. When he’d carried Wrath out of the ghostly fortress of Jhegesh Dol, he’d also carried out the amulet, and Batul had recognized it immediately as a lost artifact of the Gatekeepers. There was a dragon’s scale encased within it, a relic of the legendary Vvaraak. Geth drew a sharp breath. “Batul, I can’t take that!”

The old druid looked at him sharply and for a moment, Geth had the eerie feeling he was staring at him not with his good eye, but with the eye that was milky and blind. “You will take it,” Batul said with confidence and a wry smile, “and when the time is right, you will bring it back and wake me from sleep. I see this.” He started to lift the amulet over his head.

Geth stopped him. “Wait. Do you see anything else?” He licked his lips. “Do you see Dandra and Singe?”

Batul shook his head. “No—but there are many things that I don’t see.” The orc drew a deep breath, then pulled off the amulet and put it in Geth’s hands. Almost at once, his good eye blinked and a struggle crossed his face. “Run now,” he whispered. He turned and stumbled toward the nearest large tree—and passed straight into its trunk. Druid magic shimmered like starlight on the bark for a moment before fading. Geth clenched his fingers around the amulet.

North put the trees between them and the majority of the horde, though none of the warriors were looking in their direction. Less than two fingerwidths of the sun remained above the horizon, and the attention of the frenzied horde was entirely on the druids who stood and shouted on the rim of the Sharvat Vvaraak.

Geth and Ekhaas ran hard and silent through the gathering gloom. The land rose into a ridge and they climbed it. Geth’s leg still ached a little, but Ekhaas’s songs had healed it enough that he could run without too much discomfort and had lent him a little extra speed as well. She herself wore magical boots that could have allowed her to run as fast as a horse, though she slowed just enough to let him keep pace with her.

They knew the exact moment when the sun set and night fell because the noise of the horde—almost a constant roar—vanished into silence. An instant later, individual voices rose into the star-flecked sky. The senior Gatekeepers were chanting, invoking the power of nature in unison. Geth paused and looked back.

Last night, he’d listened at a campfire as an old orc warrior with more scars than face had explained what would happen when the horde was ready to march. “The horde comes together, and all the warriors receive horde marks as a symbol that we’ve left our tribes behind and march as one. When the horde marches, we leave everything but our weapons in the camp as a symbol that Eberron provides all we need to sustain ourselves.” The warrior’s hideous face had looked around the circle of his audience. “But there’s one more symbol, a sign we make so that our enemies know we have already left our lives behind and are willing to die to defeat them—”

The voices of the druids cracked and broke, and a new chorus of hissing, crackling voices seemed to answer them. Flames burst up from the Sharvat Vvaraak, a dozen pillars that climbed into the sky then collapsed back down, filling the flat basin with fire and the night with new light. Shapes danced in the inferno—the shapes of fire elementals summoned by the druids. The camp upon the sacred Sharvat and everything that had been left in it burned, severing the ties of the warriors to the lives they had left.

A roar rose up from the horde that drowned out even the
crackling voices of the elementals. Against the glare of the massive fire, Geth could see dark figures begin to swarm across the land. The horde of Angry Eyes was on the move.

“Khaavolaar,”
said Ekhaas. “That’s a sight you only see once in a life. It’s like an entire town is burning.”

A growl rose into Geth’s throat. “When a town burns, it’s bigger,” he said. “Come on.” He turned away from the flames and moved on up the ridge, once again running away, once again reviled and hated because he hadn’t been able to hold himself back.

Except this time he ran with a purpose. With every stride, Wrath bounced at his side, Adolan’s collar jumped around his neck, Batul’s amulet thumped against his chest—and the Bonetree mound drew a little closer.

  
T
he passage was straight, broad, its walls broken only by a few closed doors and decorated with more of Bava’s murals—further confirmation of Dandra’s guess that the terrace had been for the arena’s better clients. It had the same air of abandonment as the exterior of the arena, but there were also signs of activity. A couple of cheap cold fire torches had been jammed into ill-fitting brackets. A thin path of footprints was worn into the dust and debris of the floor. One of the doors off the passage was partly ajar, and more cold fire lit the room beyond. There was no sound within. Dandra peered inside without touching the door. She could see the corner of sleeping pallet, as well as a heap of scattered clothing. Swirling marks had been drawn on the walls as if by a bored child, but these scrawls resembled the patterns of a dragonmark. They surrounded other rough drawings—clouds and lightning and ships of strange design—and Dandra clenched her teeth as she eased away from the door.

“Dah’mir hasn’t abandoned Vennet yet,” she said.

Singe lifted his rapier. “Good.”

As they moved closer to the far end of the passage, Dandra became aware of a smell in the air. At first it was merely stale, but it quickly grew stronger and more pungent. By the time they stood at the base of a short flight of stairs leading up into the open space of the arena, it was a sickening stench. The air was thick with it. Dandra pressed a hand over her nose and
mouth and fought back a rising nausea.

“Bird droppings,” said Singe in answer to her unasked question. “Bird droppings and rotting bodies.” He eased one of the cold fire torches from its bracket, damping the glow of the heatless magical flames in his free hand, and mounted the stairs. Dandra followed him.

They stood at the rear of what must once have been the best seats in the arena, close enough to the oval ring for a good view, far enough back to be out of danger if combat went awry. The light that leaked through Singe’s fingers fell on one large chair that remained in place, a cushion moldering on the seat. Others lay scattered in pieces.

Firelight shone up from the arena floor, flickering in long shadows across the steep tiers of benches that circled the arena, their empty ranks broken by other private boxes higher up. Just as Moon—or Virikhad—had said, the arena had no roof and was open in the center to what passed for sky in Malleon’s Gate. The light from below made the opening seem even darker and turned the sagging poles and tattered remains of canvas that had once been awnings over the upper ranks of benches into great ribs trailing scraps of flesh. Both the broken awnings and the benches beneath them were marked with long white streaks of bird droppings. Dandra guessed that the droppings had come from Dah’mir’s herons, though none of the black birds were visible. Maybe they were all up in Overlook, watching Fan Adar.

Singe breathed in her ear. “Do you feel Dah’mir’s presence?”

In their other encounters with the dragon, Dandra had felt his dominating presence tugging at the edge of her consciousness before she’d actually seen him. This time, though, she felt nothing. “No,” she answered, “but that could be because Ashi’s dragonmark protects me.”

She stepped off the air and, staying low, moved cautiously forward until she could look over the low rail that surrounded the box and see down into the ring below. Her breath caught in her teeth.

That light that danced around the arena came from cold fire that burned on several stout posts set into the floor of the arena. The stench of decay that filled the air came from five
bodies that lay within the circle. Dandra looked away, forced air into her lungs, and made herself look back again.