City of Death (27 page)

Scirye wrapped her arms around her griffin as if he were an anchor. “I think He did. He's helping us along and not bearing any grudges because I didn't join His maenads.”

“I'd better wake up everyone else, or I'll eat all the grapes,” Bayang said and began rousing the rest of the company.

Scirye had to agree. It was hard to stop with just one.

When they were all awake, Scirye told the others about what had happened last night.

Kat nodded when she finished. “Dionysus has blessed you—and us.”

But M
ā
ka was actually annoyed. “He had no right to claim you because you belong to Nanaia.”

“You might want to keep your voice down,” Tute warned.

“A follower of the True Path must scold even a god when he misbehaves,” M
ā
ka said indignantly as she got to her feet.

Scirye tried to pull her friend back down. “I think He was offering me a gift, and I was free to turn it down.”

M
ā
ka, though, was determined to protect Scirye. M
ā
ka balled her hands into fists and defiantly faced the direction of Dionysus's statue. “Scirye has been chosen by Nanaia already,” she scolded. “She cannot be yours.”

Koko cringed as her voice echoed from the frozen walls. “Now you've done it.”

No one moved. No one said anything. They hardly dared to breathe as they waited for hordes of vengeful maenads to attack.

When nothing happened after several minutes, M
ā
ka began to look sheepish. Scirye reached up and tugged at her sleeve. “Thanks for defending me, but why don't you sit down and enjoy the god's gift?”

Koko helped himself to a handful of grapes. “Don't scare me like that. I almost lost my appetite.”

But as each of the Pippalanta took their share, they dipped their heads respectfully first to Dionysus and then to Scirye, much to her surprise and discomfort. Even her parents regarded her thoughtfully as they sampled the grapes.

Back in the palace, I resented that they treated me like a little girl,
Scirye thought sadly.
Now I wish they would.
But as she ate another grape, she felt a new energy wash away any sadness. Anything, even getting the arrows, seemed possible this morning.

She hoped so.

 

48

Bayang

Refreshed, they soared through the pass with all the ease of a holiday flight. And as they neared the end of Dionysus's pass, Scirye turned around and called behind them, “Thank you.”

As they left the pass, the winds became strong again as they roared up the steep slope. Angling downward, Wali's griffin bobbed up and down and swayed from side to side as if drunk. Even so, the Pippal and her griffin remained as calm as if they were out for just a little exercise.

Though Bayang would usually have preferred to be flying on her own, she was glad to leave it to Wali right now. Her body still ached from the torture at the villa, and though she had slept well, she would still need many more hours of rest to make up for what she had lost. Even a dragon's iron constitution had its limits.

As they descended, they paralleled the frozen waterfall that looked like a tower of ice had fallen on the slope. Fringes of icicles decorated the sides, and judging by the waterfall's width, the river must be impressive in the spring thaw.

Snow lay in crevices and on ledges in cottony lumps as if the mountains had just been pulled from a giant box and the packing was still clinging to it. Here and there a scrawny, leafless tree twisted out of some crack in the rock as it struggled to survive.

The base of the mountain ridge thrust out in a series of wider shelves that descended to the foothills below.

The next ridge was lower than the pass, but steepness of its barren slopes gave them an impression of greater height. Wingless because of her injuries, Bayang was glad she was riding a griffin rather than trying to climb the sheer sides with just her paws. She could just make out the snowy road that snaked up the ridge and a wrecked truck lying off to the side. It would be amazing if Roland got any of his vehicles through.

But it was Leech who dominated her gloomy thoughts. The clever hatchling had obviously been arguing not only with Bayang but with Lee No Cha as well. That meant that Leech was still in control of his mind and body and not the monster Lee. But how long could the human hatchling hold out against a strong-willed killer like Lee?

Wait. Leech had been trying to get me to look at things as a human, not as a dragon.
She owed that much at least to the hatchling who had saved her life.

It would not have been easy for most dragons whose lives were bound by tradition, but as an assassin, she had taken pride in her ability to disguise herself in posture, thought, words, and actions as well as in costume. To pull that off, she'd learned how to cast off her dragonness and think like the character she wanted to become.

So she tried to see things through the eyes of a human almost newly hatched facing a dragon prince in all his righteous indignation—the large, strong body; the sharp claws and fangs. She would have used her most powerful weapon to smash the threat too.

And afterward a hatchling's primary concern would be avoiding his or her parents' anger and might not be aware of what other dragons would say if he or she mutilated the corpse.

At least Bayang had been able to grow up and become a warrior who never again had to feel so afraid and helpless. The Lee that was trapped inside Leech had remained that terrified hatchling whose inexperienced mind believed violence was the answer to any threat.

She remembered how frightened and angry she had been during Badik's invasion. What if her mind had remained forever locked as that scared hatchling, never to mature, never to escape?

Shame washed over her. And what if Lee had been awake in some of the reincarnations when Bayang had come? She shut her eyes in shame as she remembered the face of one terrified hatchling after another—two hatchlings if Lee had also roused. No wonder he thought she was the monster instead of him.

She glanced at Leech who was clinging to a Pippal on her griffin. If Bayang could not convince Lee that he was safe, he could again become a deadly threat to dragon-kind.

Could she allow that to happen? Or could she break her promise to Leech? Either way, the dragons and Lee would be trapped in the ancient cycle of killing or being killed. The madness had been going on for centuries, acquiring the ponderous weight of tradition so that no one looked for another solution.

Until now.

There had to be another way to end this craziness. But what?

 

49

Scirye

They passed over one desolate ridge after another until, on the afternoon of the fifth day, they reached the inmost circle of foothills with level after level of terraces cut into the sides. Scirye could see the outlines of walls under the snow like someone had drawn the parts of a jigsaw puzzle with vanilla icing on a giant white cake.

Her father signaled to the other riders to fly lower so sentries would have a harder time seeing them, but not so low as to raise a curtain of snow with the downdraft of the griffins' wingbeats. They finally landed upon a broad ledge upon the western side of a hill.

When Scirye slid off, she heard an odd clack beneath her boots. With her foot, she scraped away the snow and dirt to reveal bits of brown and yellow tile that formed the head of a mosaic lion.

She glanced around until she saw the odd bumps that must have marked a wall. “I think we're on what's left of a house.”

Leech pointed up the slope to the hilltop, which had split down the middle so that the two halves stuck up like horns. “Did that happen in the battle?”

“Probably,” Kles said, fluttering nearby. “Since there were no survivors from either side, we don't know what really happened, but it must have been powerful magic unleashed that day.”

“Well, for once no one can blame that on me,” Koko said, waving a paw at the destruction.

“Just remember that the defenders sacrificed themselves for us,” Lady Sudarshane said. Taking a pair of binoculars from a saddlebag and hanging them about her neck, she began to climb the slope.

“Guard the griffins,” Lord Tsirauñe instructed Oko and Wali, and then fetching his own binoculars from his gear, he trudged with Kat after his wife.

Scirye started after them. After all, her parents had not told them to stay put, and she was curious about what Roland might be up too.

Her friends must have felt the same strong urges because they fell in behind her. When he heard them coming, her father looked as if he were about to order them to return to the griffins when her mother put her hand on his shoulder.

“This is really their quest, not ours,” she whispered to her husband.

Lord Tsirauñe gave a reluctant nod and then, putting a finger to his lips for silence, resumed his journey.

Several yards from the hilltop, her father got down on all fours along with her mother, who motioned them to do likewise. When they had obeyed, her parents began to crawl upward, creeping on their bellies until they had reached the cleft in the hill. Then, with great caution, they peered down at Riye Srukalleyis, the City of Death.

Below them, surrounded on all sides by steep hills and mountains, was a basin that had been formed by a great river—the outlines of its banks showed like a jagged scar cutting the ground into halves. The east bank had been farmland, fields still outlined by what was left of the boundary walls.

The west bank was full of what looked like glassblower's rejects. Scirye decided that the long, rolling burrows must have once been the city walls. Here and there, the snow had been blown away to reveal a surface like melted wax the color of dried blood. Within the walls, the buildings and towers had been reduced to large mounds. Snow covered half their relics, but their exposed lee sides were as slick as glass with browns, blacks, greens, and reds fused together like poorly mixed cake batter. The city hadn't so much been destroyed as melted in the final battle, and she couldn't even begin to guess what titanic magic that had taken.

“Who did this?” Leech asked in an awed voice. “Was it the invaders? Only they got caught in the backlash?”

“It might have been,” Kles said. “Or it might have been the defenders in one last desperate bid to stop the invaders. No one knows.”

“Oh, the poor people,” M
ā
ka murmured and began to weep. “Can you hear them? They're still crying.”

Now that M
ā
ka had pointed it out, the breeze did sound like folk wailing in the distance.

Tute patted her awkwardly with a paw. “It's just the wind.”

But M
ā
ka lay her head down on her arms and began to cry. A kind soul like hers would be vulnerable to such suggestions, especially if her magic amplified her senses. If that was true, then her gift was also a curse, and certainly not one that Scirye would want.

A hundred yards away from the ruins, the rows of tents of Roland's camp billowed in the wind. A rider in a white uniform coat rose on the back of a griffin and began circling like a vulture. More of the vizier's guards in heavy white overcoats and with rifles slung over their shoulders marched in front of the slick walls. She wondered if any of them had any doubts about their master, now that he had let a stranger violate this holy site.

She tried to imagine the city before its destruction, when its streets would have teemed with pilgrims and camels and griffins and the mounds were actual buildings, but she couldn't picture it. The city had been dead too long, and its twisting lanes were a rabbit's maze. It would take an army to search all the ruins, not the few members of her party. And they would have to dodge Roland's men at the same time. And even if they found the right spot, how did they dig through solid glass? No wonder Roland had wanted to bring heavy equipment.

Boom!
A cloud of dust, snow, and shiny fragments plumed upward, and even as the cloud settled, they could hear the glassy lumps shattering.

“They're using dynamite,” her father said.

Shocked, M
ā
ka raised a tear-streaked face. “That's sacrilege!” She started to rise but Tute clamped his strong jaws on her sleeve and yanked her back down.

Lady Sudarshane was perplexed. “But why would they do that? They'll destroy the arrows along with priceless artifacts.”

A dragon directed turbaned men to the remains of the mound where a convex slick disc now lay revealed. Even at this distance, Scirye could see the bright yellow sashes around their stomachs, which must be the murderous sashes that Bayang had told her about. A moment later, they heard the roar of a generator and then the
rat-a-tat-tat
sounds like machine guns firing. Scirye ducked, but her parents, Kat, and Bayang remained where they were.

Lord Tsirauñe adjusted the focus on his binoculars. “The dynamite removed the debris that had piled up after the destruction of the city. The thugs are using jackhammers now on the city level.” The glassy layer broke like dozens of plates shattering. “I suppose they'll dig right through to Yi's time, before the city ever existed.”

“The dragon in charge is Badik,” Bayang said grimly.

Scirye felt her stomach tighten. They'd caught up with the creature who had killed her sister and Leech's friend Primo, as well as terrorized Bayang's clan.

Leech rolled onto his side and looked at Scirye. “So where do we start?”

As everyone's eyes turned toward her, Scirye pulled the glove from her marked hand. The “3” pulsed slowly but she didn't have any idea where to search first.
I guess I always hoped that You would tell me what Your mark means once we got here. Please, please give me a sign,
Scirye pleaded silently with the goddess. But Scirye's mind remained a blank. For the hundredth time, she tried to remember the details of the vision.