The Killing Song: The Dragon Below Book III (34 page)

Mithas seemed genuinely startled at Ashi’s blunt pronouncement, and Singe couldn’t keep his lips from curving into a smile. Who had the sorcerer underestimated now? Standing tall and proud, untouchable in her savage dignity, Ashi spun her sword around and slid it deftly back into her scabbard.

She met Mithas’s eyes boldly. “But I will go with you,” she said.

  
S
inge’s sense of triumph twisted into shock. “What?”

His voice wasn’t the only one raised. “Ashi, no!” Dandra cried out at the same time Natrac said, “Host and Six, are you insane!” Rhazala’s face brightened and she called,
“Moza, chib!
Save us!” Mithas’s smile came back to his face in a grin that made Singe feel sick.

At the same moment, the Thronehold spectacle began. Singe was dimly aware of ringing bells and blaring horns, a joyful call that spread across Sharn and climbed until it rang in the dark sky. It was joined by flashes of light high overhead. Two dozen or more spellcasters and dragonmarked would be working together to cast illusions into the night, their individual efforts combining to create vast panoramas and enormous phantasmal effigies. The wave of awed gasps as the entire city drew breath in amazement was audible even above the bells and horns.

It mingled with the sounds of violence that rose from Fan Adar. A deep voice cursed in Goblin, then a higher human or kalashtar voice wailed in pain. Singe couldn’t look up. His eyes were on Ashi. His ears rang with the shock of her declaration.

She would go with Mithas?

But Ashi wasn’t finished. “There’s a price!” she shouted at Mithas over the noise. “I go with you for a price.”

The sorcerer’s face grew suspicious. “What is it?”

“Ashi, you don’t have to do this for us!” said Dandra.

Ashi thrust a hand at her, motioning for her to remain quiet. She didn’t take her eyes off Mithas.

“Fight for us,” she said. “You say the kalashtar aren’t your concern? Make them your concern! You’re a mercenary. You fight for payment.” She reached to her shoulder, seized the fabric of her sleeve, and tore it free. She held her bare arm across her body so that the shifting light from the spectacle above played across her skin and made her dragonmark seem to dance. “Here’s your payment. When this is over and everyone is safe, you can deliver me to the lords of Deneith and claim your reward. I’ll go willingly. You have my honor.”

Mithas licked his lips but hesitated, looking like a hungry dog expecting the bowl of food placed before him to vanish if he moved. The greed in his eyes flashed bright. “Done!”

“Then follow us—quickly.” Ashi pointed at Singe. “Whatever order he gives, obey it. Rhazala, get us to the Gathering Light!”

“Moza!”

Singe sat down heavily as the skycoach shot forward. Ashi stayed on her feet, her body rigid. Behind them, Mithas was shouting at his men, getting his coaches moving, but aboard Rhazala’s coach no one said anything for several long moments. Finally, Natrac growled and said, “We drop and run. After the kalashtar are safe, we drop and run. Mithas won’t catch you, Ashi—”

“No.” The hunter shook her head. “I gave my honor—and even if I hadn’t, I meant what I said. I’ll go with him.”

“Ashi, we could have fought our way free!” The words broke out of Singe’s chest. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Rond betch
, how exactly could we have fought free?” Ashi snapped. She turned to glare at him and Singe saw that her mouth was set in a hard, thin line. “Mithas had us and every moment we fought with him was another moment for Biish’s raid to go unchecked.”

Singe blinked. There was no answer he could think to give for that. “But … Mithas wins. He gets what he wanted.”

Ashi’s lips twitched and her teeth flashed in a sudden, savage grin. “Mithas wins? I would have gone to Deneith at some point anyway, wouldn’t I? It’s my clan now. This way we still have a
chance to stop the raid—and maybe a better chance because we have Mithas and his men to fight with us.” Her eyes softened slightly. “Who told me I had to look at the greater good?”

His mouth opened and closed, then he smiled too. “Twelve moons, I hope the lords of Deneith are ready for you, Ashi.”

They were over the Gathering Light in only moments, but the confrontation with Mithas had cost them more than just time. Singe peered down over the side of the skycoach, trying to assess the situation with the dispassionate logic he had learned during the war. It was hard to be dispassionate, though, when he felt a connection to the people struggling below—and such a hatred for their attackers.

Fleeing prey and pursuing predators had converged on the Gathering Light. Singe had to give the kalashtar and Adarans credit—the hall was admirably situated for defense. The walkway and ramp that led down to the sunken courtyard before the building were broad, but allowed only a single means of access, while the courtyard itself left anyone in it exposed and fighting up stairs to enter the hall.

The same features made the Gathering Light a trap. A few burly bugbears held the walkway and the top of the ramp. A handful of goblin archers perched on the roof of one of the other buildings that overlooked the courtyard, loosing arrows into the fray. At the sides of the Gathering Light, Singe spotted fighting in alleys that must have led to other exits from the buildings. The members of Biish’s gang were forcing back anyone who tried to escape. The refuge of Fan Adar had become a prison.

It was a sight to rival any the spectacle projected into the sky and far more terrible. A statue of a kalashtar woman with crystal eyes standing in the center of the courtyard was the only fixed referenced point. All around it, Adarans fought hobgoblins in a seething mass of bodies, bare fists and strange weapons against sharp swords and heavy axes. Herons darted in and out of the fighting, clawing with talons and battering with wings. The doors of the hall had been forced open and light spilled out onto the battle. A line of Adarans stood against
those who tried to enter, but that line crumbled even as Singe watched. Goblins leaped across their fallen foes and sprinted inside. They didn’t get far—thin, high-pitched cries rose and faltered—but the way had been opened.

There were no kalashtar fighting. Some stood here and there in the midst of the heaving conflict, but none of them moved except when they were jostled by the combat. The Adaran humans tried to protect them. Biish’s people ignored them. The kalashtar themselves stood with their faces raised like flowers toward the sun, staring at the peaked roof of the hall’s porch.

A solitary heron perched there, acid-green eyes staring down at the scene below. The bird looked like all the others, but there was a focused intensity about it that hinted at a greater power hidden in that feathered form. It was Dah’mir.

Singe caught a glimpse of slackness entering Dandra’s face and his heart almost stopped—the protection of Ashi’s dragonmark shouldn’t have faded so quickly—but before he could even speak, she blinked and drew a shuddering breath. “I called out through
kesh,”
she said. “There’s nothing! Dah’mir’s presence has captured them all!”

Singe stared at Dah’mir. The heron was as still as the statue in the courtyard—he must have thrown all of his concentration into controlling the kalashtar. As long as it kept him out of combat, that didn’t seem like such a bad thing. “Don’t try to fight him!” he said. “Concentrate on stopping Biish for now!”

“Singe!” Natrac cried. “Look there!” He pointed with his knife hand and Singe looked. In a corner of the courtyard protected by the descending ramp, hobgoblins guarded a group of nearly a dozen kalashtar, fighting back any Adaran who approached. Vennet stood with them, leaping about and screaming as his cutlass slashed air and flesh indiscriminately.

The captive kalashtar were too far away for Singe to be certain, but he had a feeling that all of them carried psicrystals. They were Dah’mir’s targets, the ones the dragon had arranged all of this just to capture.

Singe’s hand tightened on his rapier. He spun around and
gestured for Mithas. The coaches carrying the sorcerer and his men hovered only a short distance away. Many of the mercenaries were staring in open amazement at the battle going on below, but Mithas at least maintained a professional alertness.

“Free the side doors!” Singe shouted at him. “Evacuate any kalashtar you can. Carry them out if you have to!”

Mithas raised a fist in acknowledgment and slapped the gawking steersman of his coach. Singe turned to Natrac, Ashi, and Dandra. “Dandra, you and Natrac help defend the main doors. Ashi, you and I will break the guard on the captives.”

All three nodded in understanding. Singe looked to Rhazala. “Take us down to the court—”

A harsh shout in Goblin from below interrupted him, and an instant later, a flurry of arrows struck the belly of the coach. “They know we’re here!” said Ashi, peering over the side. “It looks like the goblin archers are waiting before they loose again—
Rond betch!
Singe!”

Singe looked down again—and saw that Dah’mir had turned away from the battle to face them. He moved no further but acid-green eyes seemed to flare with hatred.

Like soldiers responding to some silent drill command, the herons that had been swooping over the battle broke away. They began climbing toward the coach, wings hammering on the air. Singe glanced at Dandra. Her eyes were burning.

“I’ll take the herons,” she said tightly. “You take the archers.”

“Done.” Singe pointed at Rhazala. “Down!”

The goblin screamed something that was probably unflattering, but thrust at the steering rod all the same. The coach dropped.

The sight of the Gathering Light invaded—defiled—by Biish’s gang brought an anger out of the depths of Dandra’s spirit like nothing she had ever felt before. Maybe it was because the hall should have been a place of haven and community. Maybe it was because Dah’mir thought he could so casually seize kalashtar and bend them to his will—as the coach dropped, she saw old Shelsatori dragged unresisting through the fighting
and thrust among the dragon’s other captives. Maybe it was because if they failed here, more kalashtar would experience the anguish that she and Tetkashtai, Medalashana, and Virikhad had experienced, stripped and sundered to meet an ancient evil’s ambition.

That wasn’t going to happen.

The droning chorus of the whitefire rose around her, a throbbing counterpoint to the arcane words of the spell that Singe wove. She gathered her will and the psionic power coalesced in a hot shimmer around her hand. For a heartbeat, she waited as the distance between the climbing herons and the dropping coach closed—then she screamed her rage, thrust her hand forward, and released the fire.

Pale flame roared from her palm in a gout that lit up the night. Caught in the blazing cone, the herons screeched as the whitefire consumed them. They fell out of the sky like balls of burning pitch, greasy feathers trailing stinking smoke. New shouts broke out below as the burning remains fell into the fight in the courtyard. Vennet’s voice rose above them all. “No!
No!
Storm at dawn, no!”