Hemlock And The Dead God's Legacy (Book 2) (15 page)

“Perhaps you would have, at first.  But surely your long term goals would not be so judicious.  You’re like a child playing at a man’s game, Jalis.  Your ambitions are transparent to me,” said Samberlin.

“You wizards who feared the continued rule of Hemlock over us have a choice to make.  The statements I made before are still in effect.  With the exception of the traitorous members of the wizard council, I offer each of you a chance to remain in the Tower in peace and according to the new bylaws which Miara will soon present.  These bylaws will move much of the power from the wizard council and place it under the control of a general vote.  Choose wisely, for you will not be given a chance to reenter the tower if you persist in following these fools,” said Gwineval.

Samberlin next laid out the conditions of peaceful surrender to Jalis and the council members that had opposed Gwineval.  Over half of the wizards who had joined the rebellion elected to remain in the Tower under a new pledge of loyalty to the wizard council.  The ejection of Jalis,
Sychran, Colberth, Splintor and their followers was orderly and proceeded without violence, with the exception of the corpse-like Usum, who was bathed in fire and slain as his kind looked on hopelessly from their magical restraints.  Jalis, for his part, seemed relieved to escape with his life.

On the Dra
wbridge of Ninety-Nine Tears, Jalis had a parting threat for the wizard guild: “You’ll regret this day!  All of you!”  Merit thought he was about to say more, but the presence of the Knights at his side, and the fact that his companions had been disarmed and forced to peacefully discharge their Oberon doses seemed to rein in his tongue.

Gwineval, Miara
, Merit and Samberlin convened in the Meeting Chamber soon after.

“Did you have to let those…things… go?” asked Samberlin.

“Yes, I had no choice.  My magic only had the power of binding, and its barrier was two-way.  The only way I could dispel those portals gave those things an opportunity to escape,” said Gwineval.  Merit noticed how Gwineval slumped in his chair.  Age was hard to gauge, given the wizard’s appearance, but Merit thought he looked markedly older as a result of the evening’s exertions.  Miara was close to his side, and she had to prevent him from falling over in his chair at one point.

Still, Samberlin pressed for information
. “Jalis called Usum the leader of ‘The Seekers.’  Who are they?”

“We must get him some rest,” insisted Miara, but Gwineval waved her off.

“Soon.  But I will respond as I have a few words of my own for the Senator.  The Seekers were a group of wizards sent to the eastern mountains during the early part of Zaringer’s reign over the wizard council.  It is rumored that he asked for volunteers, and that the wizards who did volunteer were never heard from again.  It’s astonishing that they still live after all of these years—because Zaringer’s life span itself was unprecedented, and there were some intervening years under Falignus as well.  They must be sustained by a similar magic to what Zaringer used, although its nature must be different, for they still have material forms, whereas according to Hemlock, Zaringer had been reduced to a wraith.”

“I wonder why they allied themselves with Jalis.  And how did he find them?  Or did they find him?”

“That is surprising.  We will have to investigate that connection.  I don’t like it.”

Gwineval paused as coughs wracked his body.  Miara rose and pulled Gwineval to his feet.  As they made to leave, Gwineval spoke
. “Samberlin, would you really have allowed Jalis to occupy the Tower in our place if I had not been able to trap Tthe Seekers?”

“If he had agreed to the same terms as you offered him, I would have been forced to.  We would have had to work together
from outside of the Tower to clandestinely overthrow him.”

“Yes.  So you say.  So you say,”
muttered Gwineval as Miara led him out.

Merit escorted Samberlin to the front gate
, where a detachment of the knights remained.

Samberlin looked down at Merit as he departed
. “Be sure to write all of this down as soon as possible, and do not neglect my role in it,” he said, with a playful glimmer in his eye.

Chapter Seven

Miara stood and remembered as the magically preserved carcass of the Dragon rolled awkwardly across the Drawbridge of Ninety-Nine Tears.  It was supported by several large carts, which strained under the weight of the great, green, scaly body.  It just barely fit, and the carts had to be adjusted several times by the small throng of First Circle wizards that were helping.

A
n expectant crowd had gathered around the Moat of Acid.  The wizards had not announced the event, but word spread quickly through the City.  Miara hoped that the process of removal and the small ritual she had planned would serve as another symbol of the restoration of honor to the wizard guild.

After some time the carts crossed the moat and entered the Warrens
district.  The wizards paused and waited.

There was a loud cry overhead and then a great shadow fell across the
people.  A murmur of excitement arose from the crowd.  This was followed by a chorus of gasps as a proud Griffin landed beside the dead Dragon.

Miara gave a hand signal and an old man in black vestments walked to the side of the body with the aid of a cane.

“Welcome, wizards and people of the City,” announced the old Priest.

Miara had insisted that the priest be included
, even though the wizards had persecuted those of his faith as recently as the reign of Zaringer.  She had practiced the Essence Faith as a child before it had been outlawed.  Seeing the Priest gave her some comfort as she felt a closeness to the events of that terrible morning that she had tried so hard to forget.

“This creature was slain unjustly many years ago.  The wizards, who are in the midst of a renaissance of values, have decided to honor this fallen beast and return its remains to its mountain home.  It will be carried there by its old friend—none other than the Griffin that sits beside me
,” continued the Priest.

The Priest’s words carried Miara back to that traumatic day in the mountains when she had unwillingly been a part of the death of the Green Dragon.  She knew so little about dragons and even less about this one.  The Griffin had told her a few sparse details—but little else.  Miara turned to the east and could just see the mountains in the distance.

“Would that the mountains themselves would speak the tale,” she mused.



The mountain breeze warmed her hindquarters as she opened an eye to gaze down at the creature that had just landed on the hard stone shelf of her aerie.  It was a comparatively small and graceful creature with the body of a lion and the fore-section of an eagle.  Its grace spoke to something deep inside of her she preferred to forget, and disturbed the peaceful mood she had been enjoying in the echoing solitude of the mountaintop.

She adjusted the position of her great, barbed tail, and lifted her massive, green head to better regard the Griffin.

“What brings you here, old friend?” she asked wordlessly.

“I would speak with you,” replied the voice of the Griffin in her mind.  The voice was melodious and proud—and it assailed her senses just as the Griffin’s appearance did.

“You know it pains me.”

“And it pains me also, yet we must endure.”

“What would you speak of, then?  Let us bring the matter to bear.”

“
You must not associate with the wizards!”

She closed her eyelid
s and sighed, causing a small fiery burst in her throat that culminated in a belch of black smoke. 

“Again you confront me with this, sister?” she asked, immediately regretting the sibling reference, which she considered long past relevance.

“Sister?  So the old ways still bear memory?”

“A mistake of the tongue—nothing more.”

“Perhaps we should fly to the stars together, as in days of old.”

“When I fly
, I soar as my greatness intended.  I do not hop to a world and then descend into an ignoble exhaustion, as you must.”

“Yet what I do I can do on my own—without the suffering of others
,” the Griffin said.

“
What care have I for a few of the walkers?  They are numerous where we are few.”

“We were meant to be their shepherds.”

“A belief that I no longer entertain.” The Dragon sniffed.

“Did the Betrayer convince you so completely?”

“And how did the Creator convince you?  The Dead God exposed the Creator’s deceit.”

“It wasn’t deception—it was a following of philosophy.”

“The Dead God showed us a path to greater glory.”

“
To an excess of glory that corrupted you.”The Griffin looked at the Dragon with accusation in her eyes.

“How many times have we argued thusly?  And to what end?”

“If you recant, perhaps you would revert?”

“I’ll never recant while the stars soar above us.”

“But these wizards mean to harm you.”

She chortled at the notion of being harmed by a wizard as she used an outstretched claw the size of a man
’s forearm to scratch her nose. “We have an agreement.  The wizards will keep the peace,” she purred.

“Their power grows.  They no longer fear me.”

“Am I not four times your size?  Do I not breathe fire?”

“Their magic might offset your abilities.”

“I do not live in fear of what might be.”

“Yet you must learn to be cautious.”

“I am Draco—we fear nothing!”

“Then why do you give over your scales to them?”

She was getting angry now.  Hot gases were fuming from her nostrils.  She didn’t know how the Griffin had learned of her agreement with the wizards to exchange her scales for the delivery of the victims that she needed to fuel her ability to soar through the stars from world to world.  She lived to scream unfettered through the great void.  A few scales given from time to time seemed a small indignity to endure in order to preserve her easy life.  The truth was that the wizards did scare her.  Their hunting parties had caused her much suffering before she had negotiated her agreement with the head wizard known as Zaringer.  But her pride would not allow her to own up to that fact. “I allow them to take a few scales.  It is nothing.”

“
You must renounce your dependence on hunting.”

“Never.”

“Please join me in the far mountains.”

“I will not.”

“One day you will die at their hand.”

“Do not concern yourself with that.  You might as well worry for t
hese mountains.” The Griffin leapt from her perch and took off into the air with a loud cry. “Goodbye, old friend,” she thought to herself as she watched the Griffin depart.  Her senses welcomed the retreat of the other, though her spirit still found some comfort in her company.

As she rested her head and closed her eyes, she heard the sound of footsteps approaching from the path leading down to the lands in the west.  She realized with another
sigh that the very wizards that they had just discussed would soon arrive.  She hoped they hadn’t seen the Griffin.

A
short hour passed as she waited for the wizards.  When they finally arrived, she became apprehensive.  Something about the timing of these two visits along with the impassioned message of caution delivered by the Griffin disquieted her.  But she was hungry, and thoughts of soaring through the stars soon eclipsed her negative feelings.

The wizards stood before her.  The proud little vermin didn’t even look nervous.  She decided to breathe some fire
into the air to remind them of their place.  But the heat at the edges of the flame triggered a hazy magical aura around their bodies.  They had taken precautions against her.  Clever, damned wizards.  She hated them.

The worst wizard of all stepped forward.

“Azeoloth, we have come for our scales.  I also need to discuss something with you,” said Zaringer.

“Do you have my delivery?”

“Of course.  The slaves are in the usual place.  But first I must ask you about the Griffin.”

“What of her?”

“Did I not see her fly from this place mere hours ago?”

“She comes here from time to time to engage me in pointless conversation.”

“You must allow us to capture her.  We need her for our magical research.”

“I will not.  She amuses me.”

“This is not a request.  You will arrange to meet with her when the sun is high in exactly one week’s time.  We will take her then.”

“Impossible.  She would just fly away.”

The wizard raised his arms and there was motion all around her.  She leapt from her perch with a deafening scream and took flight.  But as she rose, something restrained her.  She fell back to her perch with a heavy thud, shattering a part of her favorite rock outcropping.  Looking around her, she saw at least a hundred figures wearing robes that cunningly blended in with the stone around them.  They had their hands raised, holding her in a vast magical netting.  They were all wizards!  And they had either been there for some time or they had approached her, undetected.

“As you can see, stealth will not be a problem.  These wizards have been searching these mountains for some time under my direction.  You probably were
aware of them when they began that effort many years ago; but as they’ve studied the Dead God’s magic, they’ve become masters of stealth and illusion.  An unintended but welcome side-effect to their primary mission,” gloated Zaringer.

She considered breathing fire on the
nearby wizards, who she noticed had an unusually skeletal appearance.  But she had already established that the wizards had taken precautions against her fire.  And the magical confinement had tempered her pride with an edge of raw fear.  Her chief concern now was escape and the eventual destruction of this wizard.  But could she manage that?  And would she betray the Griffin—her one friend in this world since the remainder of her true kin had fled to the chaos of the outer worlds?

Some of her cunning returned, and she asked a question
. “What is the true mission of these, then?”  She thought about the long history of the mountains and of the City.  She had lived through all of it. When Zaringer did not respond, she ventured a guess.  “You’re looking for Julius’ tomb?”  She laughed softly at the notion.  Everyone knew that Julius had spent a decade hiding his tomb with layers upon layers of the Old God’s magic.  She had looked for it herself for a few years.  It was a dizzying array of illusions, false leads, and secrets—a supreme exercise in frustration and futility.  A waste of time.

“You are wise.  Would you offer your help?”
asked Zaringer.

“There is no point.  It will never be found.  The magic is too strong.”

“We will find it.  I am descended from the Old God, just like Julius was.”

“Do not deceive yourself—you are a babe in the woods compared to Julius.”

She saw Zaringer redden at that remark, and she worried for a moment that he might have her slain.  But he calmed himself and ordered her release.

“One week’s time!” he shouted as his robed wizards scurried back into the rocky clearing and dissolved from view. 
Zaringer strode off with his retinue of other wizards in tow.

She felt an urgency to feed that overshadowed all other concerns.  As she prepared to fly, the sensation of the magical restraint returned to her.  She had
n’t felt this hopeless since she agreed to betray the Creator in favor of the Dead God.  She remembered feeling utterly lost in the moments before the magnificence of what she had been transformed into became apparent.  She never wanted to feel restrained like that again.

She leapt aloft and flew high into the afternoon air.  She found a good pocket of smooth air and soared high over the mountains.  She thought of the wizards below her, now insignificant ants scurrying around the mountains—her mountains.

The Griffin had been right.  She had to concede that.  But no—those thoughts would be saved for the vastness of the void.  The impotence she experienced at being so close to the stars above and unable to climb to them further underscored her need feed—immediately.

She gathered herself into a steep dive and began to hurtle down toward her favorite peak and the clearing where the wizards said they had left her intended victims.  She roared
as she penetrated a deep cloud bank and distorted its frothy whiteness with her passing.  Down, down she sped until her great speed became dangerous because of the proximity of the rock below her.

At the last possible second
, she reared up and used her wings to slow her rapid descent.  Her great speed tore at the flesh of her wings, but she almost welcomed the pain.  It focused her consciousness and she lost herself in the ensuing frenzy of blood and death.  When she had finished, and only the bloody chains and the wrecked bones of the two score she had slain littered the rocky platform, she climbed aloft again.  Somewhere inside of her a void had been filled, and a euphoric feeling came over her.  Everything was all right in her world again.  The wizards were meaningless as she beat her wings and the thinness of the upper air became palpable.