“Turn. Look.” Kikiti swept his long arm out to indicate the uneven plain that lay below them. “What do you see?”
The dawn was just beginning to creep up behind Oldheart Forest—Viyeki could see its warning glow all along the horizon—but night’s shadows still clung to everything but the very tops of the Forbidden Hills. Still, he could make out something on one of the slopes facing him, halfway down its purple-black side. He squinted. Something lay there waiting for the dawn to reveal it—a cluster of dim, boxlike shapes. “A fortress?” he guessed.
“More than just a fortress,” said Sogeyu, stepping up to stand beside him. She smelled of something Viyeki could not name, something sour that made Viyeki’s nostrils twitch and his mouth pucker. “What you see are the remains of what was once the infamous Slave Hold—the place the mortals call Naglimund.”
“But it belongs to the mortals now!” Viyeki said, astonished. “They took it back again when we lost the War of Return.” As the dawn light grew stronger he could make out the mortal settlement that stretched along the hillside below the fort. His sharp Hikeda’ya eyes could even see what looked like the movement of people and animals as the mortals’ day began.
“We did not lose that war,” said General Kikiti harshly, narrowing his own hawklike gaze. “Our queen was persuaded to put too much confidence in her chief ally, the undead Zida’ya princeling—”
This was an old argument, and clearly Host Singer Sogeyu did not want it to begin again because she immediately interrupted. “You are doubtless right, General, but that is not our concern. The task our beloved queen has set us is to take the fortress back, and then to hold it until we have done what we must.”
It was one thing to discover that the Hikeda’ya host of which Viyeki was a commander—although not the sort of commander who was kept informed of important matters, he thought angrily—had been sneaking across mortal lands because of a bargain with the mortal king of Hernystir, but it was another entirely to learn that they were supposed to attack and overthrow a fortified military outpost that belonged to the mortals’ high king and queen. “But why?” he asked. “For the love of our queen and the Garden, why? What purpose does it serve us to start a war here?”
Although Viyeki outranked him, General Kikiti barely disguised his contempt. “The war has already started, Magister. The Order of Sacrifice has known that since the queen first awakened from her sleep, already planning revenge against those who tried to destroy us. In fact, it would be more proper to say that the war never ended. But now our long retreat will truly and finally come to an end.”
If Viyeki had not been so shocked he would have felt gravely insulted. “I do not understand what you are saying, General. All this way simply to attack a mortal fortress? Then why bring me? Any host-engineer of the House of Walls can lay a siege.”
“Ah, but taking the fortress is only the beginning,” said Sogeyu, black eyes glittering in the depths of her hood. “You see, there is a far greater task coming after the siege—one more than worthy of your eminence, High Magister. Because beneath the ancient Slave Hold, hidden under countless tons of rock, lies an object of great power. In all the years they have held their ‘Naglimund,’ as they call it, the mortals never knew what lies beneath. When we briefly held the place during the War of Return, the Order of Song used the power of a certain object hidden there to aid the Storm King Ineluki in his doomed quest, but we did not have the time or knowledge to find it and bring it to the surface before we were forced to retreat.”
“‘It’? What is this object?” Viyeki demanded. “What could be worth resuming war with the numberless mortals?”
“The armor of Ruyan the Navigator,” said Sogeyu flatly, “the greatest of all the Tinukeda’ya. In that armor, he helped our people flee the Garden on the Eight Ships, and brought his own race and ours here, across all the deadly dangers of the Ocean Indefinite and Eternal. But when we have found his tomb and recovered his armor, and it has been given into the hands of the queen and her great counselor Akhenabi, it will do something even more remarkable.”
“And that is?” What he had assumed was Sogeyu’s pride in her own importance, or in their vital service for Queen Utuk’ku, was something more, Viyeki suddenly realized. The sound of her voice and the look on her exulting face told him Sogeyu was a fanatic even by the broad standards of the Order of Song.
“The Navigator’s armor will help us to sweep the mortals and our traitorous relatives the Zida’ya from the very face of this land,” she declared. “That is all any of us needs to know until our queen wishes to tell us more. Hail to the Mother of All! Our queen will live forever, and her triumph will be complete and unending.”
“Hail to the Mother of All!” echoed General Kikiti. “All hail the queen!”
“All hail the queen,” said Viyeki, but his secret thoughts were fearful, and his heart heavy as black granite from the deepest quarries of Nakkiga. The terrible madness that had nearly destroyed them all was sweeping through his people again. And worst of all, Viyeki knew his only child was one of the young Hikeda’ya warriors who would pay the price of their masters’ folly.
The immense length of the serpentine creature scrambling down the hill stunned Nezeru as much as its daunting speed.
Her heart rattled in her ribs until it threatened to burst from her chest. The dragon they had captured seemed nothing beside this monstrous worm—like a model built in soft clay, some clumsy, miniature replica of the awesome reality.
The new beast was more slender than the captive but at least four times as long, with forelegs as exaggerated as the hind limbs of a cricket, so that it lurched from side to side as it descended, knocking loose sprays of snow and dislodging balanced stones, forcing Nezeru and her companions to dive out of the way. Even so, a tumbling boulder as big as a mine cart took an unexpected bounce and struck Goh Gam Gar on the shoulder before careening over the edge of the rocky shelf on which they stood. The giant windmilled his arms for balance, but to no effect: an instant later he had disappeared over the precipice. Another large boulder, sliding more than rolling, missed Nezeru by only a few paces and skidded to a slow halt behind her, just a short distance from the cliff’s edge.
The mortal Jarnulf raised his bow and loosed a stream of arrows toward the dragon; Nezeru saw some of them hit its bristle-covered hide and bounce away. One even flew into the creature’s gaping mouth, which was gray as rotted meat, but didn’t seem to bother the beast at all.
“Nakkiga and the Queen!” cried Makho, waving his sword Cold Root as he clambered through the snow toward the monster.
Kemme was just behind his chieftain, sword in one hand and a rock as large as his head in the other, as though he had simply grabbed what was closest to him. “The Queen!” he shouted. Even in this moment of sheer terror, Nezeru thought he sounded almost happy.
The larger dragon had a neck like the body of a great serpent; even as it wound downslope it kept the two Hikeda’ya at a distance by coiling to strike again and again, each time with a curious, hissing rattle of the spiny hairs along its back. Its head was long and ended in a bony, fanged snout curved like a hawk’s beak. The eyes, like those of the smaller beast that lay bound at Nezeru’s feet, were pale blue and seemed empty as a blind beggar’s.
The snapping jaws struck at Makho again, missing the hand chieftain by only a small distance, but this time as the head swung back it struck him in the leg and knocked him head over heels into the snow. Nezeru was shooting at it, but most of her arrows did not penetrate the creature’s thick skin, and those that stuck only became more bristles rattling against the white hide.
Nezeru struggled to think. Goh Gam Gar had tumbled off the mountain and was gone. Makho had fallen, and although Kemme was protecting him, attacking the creature’s head with a flurry of swordstrokes, the dragon seemed to have no problem evading his blows. Steam billowed from its hissing mouth, so that after a few moments Kemme and the beast seemed to be dancing in a fog bank.
None of this is going to save us, she realized. In only a few moments, they would all be dead and the mountainside would be silent again.
“Jarnulf!” she shouted. “Over here! Help me!”
Arrows spent, he tossed his bow to one side and hurried toward her, lifting his knees high as he struggled through the thick snow.