Emperor Mage (9 page)

Clasping
his hands together, he touched them to his forehead in a kind of salute, and
sat down.

Duke
Gareth rose to make his reply, reading from a letter written to Ozorne and his
ministers by King Jonathan. Daine hid a yawn under one hand. She might have
found the letter more interesting if she had not heard discussions about its
contents on the voyage to Carthak. Instead her mind kept skipping away from
Duke Gareths voice, returning to the tiger-skin rug, or to the badgers visit,
over and over. She had mentioned the need to talk to Numair and Alanna on their
way to the noon banquet, but she knew it might be some time before they could
get the chance to safely hear what she had to say. As the emperors guests, most
of their time away from the talks would be taken up with entertainments and
activities. Both had promised to do what they could, and Daine had to be
content with that.

If only
I knew what the gods had in mind, or when it was going to happen, she thought
as the foreign ambassadors read messages from their own rulers. I don't know
what Numair or Alanna can do with "Something bad is going to happen."
I don't even know what / would do with it!

Once
the ambassadors were done, each of Ozorne s delegates had a speech to make,
followed by a speech from each Tortallan official. Daines yawns began to come
thick and fast.

Suddenly
a clerk tapped her on the shoulder and passed her a note from Duke Gareth.

There
is no reason Jbr you to remain Jbr all this— your presence in Carthak has
nothing to do with being bored to death. Why don't you go? No one will mind.
Just remember to he changed and ready jbr the supper banquet this evening, and
go nowhere that is not permitted.

When
she stuffed the note into her pocket, Zek woke from his after-lunch nap. We're
done now? he asked, hopeful.

That
was enough to decide her. Maybe they aren't done, but I am, she told the
marmoset. Leaning around Alanna, she caught the duke's eyes and nodded. He
smiled at her, and Alanna gave her shoulder a pat.

"Kit,"
the girl whispered, "I'm leaving. Come on.

The
dragon shook her head. She appeared fascinated by the speakers. Daine tugged
her paw; Kitten shook her head again. With a shrug, the girl left her, and
quietly made her way out of the room. Looking back as she let the door close,
she saw her dragon climb into the vacated chair.

Outside,
she found herself in a long breezeway that opened on both sides to gardens. She
sat on a marble bench with a sigh of relief, and lifted Zek

down
into her lap. "Amazing how much two-leggers can talk, isn't it?" she
asked him.

"Given
that the alternative to speech this time is war, I imagine talk is a little
better." Lindhall had followed her. He sat on the end of the bench and
offered a hand to Zek. Curious, the marmoset went to inspect his fingers.
"I would like to show you something of interest—something you would not
see at home. Unless you had planned to return to the deliberations of the
mighty?"

"Goddess,
no!" she exclaimed with a shudder, and picked up Zek.

As they
set off through the palace, LindhaU said, "I wanted to ask—is it true
marmosets form monogamous groups in the wild? No ones ever been able to
actually observe them in their native wilderness. There are other tales, of
course, such as the one that claims they vanish in plain sight and reappear in
another part of the forest, which is clearly false—isn't it?"

Daine,
politely waiting for him to finish, realized that he had. "Zek says they
don't vanish. They freeze. The way their fur is colored, they seem part of the
tree. Or they zip around to the far side of the trunk and keep it between them
and whoever is watching. And yes, they have just one marriage. Zek used to live
with his wife and their three children before they were trapped."

Lindhall
shook his head. "Wild things should remain in the wild. Down this
corridor."

They
now entered the heart of the palace, where throne rooms, reception halls, and
waiting rooms were located. Lindhall stopped before a large double door that
bore a brass nameplate: The Hall of Bones, The handles on each flap were very
large bones of some kind. Daine and Zek touched one with curious fingers.

"What
do you know of fossils?" the mage asked,

"They're
creatures and plants that lived so long ago no mortals remember them. There are
some in the royal museum—shells, batlike creatures, fishes and such. Numair
says there are others, skeletons of huge beasts called dinosaurs, but no one
has found any in the Eastern Lands yet,"

"Quite
true" replied Lindhall. He spoke a word in a language she didn't know, and
both door flaps swung inward. Daine squeaked; Zek darted under her hair.
Peering at them from the shadows was a wry large skull. Three horns sprang from
the bony face: a short one, near the end of its nose, and two longer ones that
pointed forward over the eyes,

"Oh,
you beautiful thing," the girl whispered, and went up to it, hardly
believing what she saw. She only came as high as one of the large eye sockets.
"What is it?" With trembling fingers she touched the beaklike plate
of bone that seemed to be the creature s upper lip.

Lindhall
clapped. Overhead, throughout that immense hall, light-globes began to glow.
"One of the horn-faced lizards. We call them lizards because they resemble
lizards more than other creatures, but they didn't act like our modern reptiles
do." Daine blinked up at Lindhall, who smiled. "This one is a great
three-horn. All the horn-faced lizards had some type of facial protrusions. The
three-horns and one-horns also had a simple or ornate bone frill behind the
skull. This fellow was the largest of his family—the others varied from
eighteen to twenty feet in length."

She saw
a massive, curved fan of bone behind the long horns. "Neck armor?"
she asked. The hand with which she touched the skull itched,

"Apparently."

"And
they weren't lizards?"

"No.
The appearance was reptilian, but most were quite agile, and less vulnerable to
changes in temperature than modern lizards are. They seem to have behaved more
like birds than lizards. We know so much thanks to those seers who are able to
look back in time. The real world has little use for them, but in a university
they are in great demand."

"Nobility—"
A slave had appeared in the doorway. Lindhall went to speak to him.

Slowly
enough that at first Daine thought she imagined it, the skull turned to train a
single eye socket on her. The girl stared at it, appalled. She had missed that
flare of white light in the flicker of the overhead globes. "Hold
still," she hissed, flapping her hands at it. "Quit moving!"

The
head cocked slightly to one side, as if to ask why she made such an odd
request. Carefully the dinosaur raised a bony foot and wriggled its three toes.

"Daine,
are you all right here?" asked LindkaU. "There's something I must
tend to/*

"I'll
be fine," she replied, not taking her eyes from the skeleton. She watched
it for some time after the mage left, but the bones' period of movement was
over.

That
was fun, Zek remarked. Why were you angry with it? Touch some more of them.

Dead
should stay dead, she replied silently and firmly. I will not touch any of
them. To emphasize her point, she thrust her hands into her pockets, where they
could start no more trouble, and looked around.

To the
right of the three-horn, where the large hall connected with a smaller one, she
discovered a far different dinosaur. Ten inches tall, it stood beside a nest of
eggs, some whole, some broken.

"A
mountain-runner lizard. We don't know what killed him, but at least we kept him
with his nest." Lindhall had returned. "There's an adult of his kind
standing guard." Daine looked where he pointed, and found a somewhat
larger skeleton, eight feet long, peering at her. They were clearly the same
animal, and there did seem to be a protective air about the big one. It stood
in front of a doorway that led to a chamber full of smaller dinosaurs.

"They
almost look as if they could move, don't they?" the mage asked.

Daine
winced. "How did you fit the bones together?" she asked. "Did
you find them like this?"

"The
process is fascinating," replied Lindhall. "It was developed by the
School of Bardic Arts and the School of Magecraft. If you understand magical
theory, you know that things once bound to one another retain the occult tie,
even when separated. Knowing that, the bards and mages create special musical
pipes. Played correctly, they call the bones together to form the original
owner."

Daine
nodded; she had seen Numair do the same thing with skeletons at home. Together
she and Lindhall roamed the collection. Behind the three-horn she had briefly
awakened, she discovered another, smaller three-horn, whose neck frill was
larger and flatter and whose brow horns curved up, rather than pointed straight
ahead. A brass plaque set into the base of his stand identified him as a bull
three-horn, listing his height, weight, and the place he was found. Following
this line of skeleton stands, which ran down the center of this branch of the
hall, she discovered other horn-faced lizards, whose neck frills grew more and
more ornate: a spiked three-horn whose frill was topped by large, curved
spines; the thick-nosed horn-face with extra bone plates instead of a nose
horn; and the so-called well-horned three-horn, who boasted down-turned spikes
on his frill. None of them were less than eighteen feet in length, from nose to
tail tip'

"Don't
you wish you could have seen them when they were alive?" the girl asked
Zek.

The
marmoset, as fascinated as she was, shuddered. Daine translated his answer
aloud for Lindhall: "Only if they were grass eaters. Even so, I should
prefer to see them from the top of a very tall tree." The mage laughed at
that.

They
saw bony-headed skeletons like giant, long-legged crocodiles, covered with back
and head spikes and wearing solid bone clubs on their tail tips. All were more
than ten feet long and belonged to a family called armored lizards. They gave
way to cousins, plated lizards, each with leaf-shaped plates and spikes running
along their backs. These, too, were giants, ranging from thirteen to thirty
feet in length. Each one's tail was laden with a collection of spikes that
looked like a mace.

"There's
so much learning here," she remarked softly. "The king's trying to
build a university to equal yours, but it'll take years. And when it comes to
things like this..."

"Once
Carthak was famous largely for its treasures." LindhaU's voice was equally
soft. "It was a citadel of learning, arts, and culture. It still has those
things in abundance, but now the army and the navy garner the attention of the
world and of the emperor."

When
she glanced to her left, her jaw dropped. The skeleton before her, labeled
Great Snake-neck, was ninety feet long. Its tiny head, at the end of an
extremely long neck, stared down at her from nearly twenty-five feet in the
air. With small teeth only at the front of a light jaw, and eyes that faced to
the sides like the three-horns, she knew it was a plant eater—"A very
large plant eater," she told Zek quietly. The marmoset, who had climbed on
top of her head for a better look, agreed. Behind this one, she saw other
snake-necks, though none so large.

Near
the snake-neck was another, frightening skeleton, for all he was only
two-thirds as long as his neighbor. His eye sockets faced forward, and his
heavy jaws bore a collection of sharp and jagged teeth, marks of a meat eater.
He had cousins, too, Daine saw.

They
found a cluster of duck-billed skeletons and, behind them, dinosaurs who
sported odd, bony crests on their skulls. One reminded her of a basilisk, only
the skeleton had a long, freestanding head knob, like a large bone feather on
its owners head.