Return of the Exile

11 Sirenfal’s Promise

The Tarmaks leaped to their feet. The nearest one was reaching for his sword when Linsha’s makeshift bag hit him in the face. Dusty powder flew into his eyes, nose, and mouth, and he collapsed like a dead man. The second guard managed to unsheathe his sword before the powdery bag struck him. Linsha leaped by his falling body and ran about ten paces to escape any floating powder before she whirled and crouched to face her opponents.

There was no need. Both Tarmaks lay on the floor, their bodies limp, their eyes rolled up in their heads. Cautiously she approached them. When she saw they were still breathing, she dragged them to their fire and arranged them in realistic sleeping positions in case other Tarmaks came to check. She hoped they were on the same schedule as the other guards in the palace, which might give her a few hours before anyone came along. She considered borrowing one of their weapons, then thought better of it. She wanted the guards to be as groggy and confused as possible when they regained consciousness. A missing weapon would be sure sign someone had been there. She brushed away every mark of footprints and left everything untouched. With luck she would be in and out before the guards woke up.

One thing she did borrow was a small brand from the fire. Its glowing end was better than nothing in the ebony dark of the cave. Leaving the guard post behind, she walked carefully into the depths. The cavern smelled strongly of seaweed and saltwater, and echoed with the sounds of the rain and surf outside. Its floor was covered with gravel and sand. Almost immediately she found a narrow trail that led from the entrance to the interior, and she gratefully followed its lead.

She had gone no more than a hundred feet or so when she saw a faint glow ahead. She stamped out her brand and tread softly toward the light. Moving warily, she kept on the lookout for a barrier, a ward, or anything that kept the dragon trapped in the cave. Surely there was something that held the brass in the cave besides intimidation and some combination of poisons and sedatives.

If there was a barrier in the cave, it wasn’t readily apparent to her. She was able to walk the entire length of the passage without difficulty. The light grew brighter the closer she drew to the larger cavern. She pressed against the wall and crept small step by small step toward the opening. Her eyes scanned the interior. The bulk of Sirenfal lay in the same place where she had been two nights before, in much the same position. Her head was tucked under her wing and her breathing was shallow and regular. Torches flickered on the upper level where the stair tunnel entered the cave, but Linsha could see no sign of guards or priests. Was it possible the priests had so much faith in their concoctions and spells that they left the dragon unguarded?

She eased her head out of the shadows of the cave opening and peered into the cavern. No one shouted or yelled a challenge, so she eased a little further inside the big chamber. The walkway above was empty, and except for the scorched stone platform there was nothing and no one on the cavern floor. Rainwater poured though an opening in the high ceiling and fell in a thin stream into a shallow gathering pool. Muted sounds of the storm echoed dimly through the cavernous spaces.

The dragon’s tail twitched on the sand.

Surprised and hopeful, Linsha’s breath hissed through her teeth. “Sirenfal.”

The brass’s wing rustled slightly then her bright eyes peered over her folded wing. “I knew you’d come,” she whispered. “Be quiet. There are guards at the entrance up the stairs, and a priest sleeps in a small room over there.” She lifted her head a fraction higher. “How did you get past the sentinel?”

Linsha trod silently over the sandy floor, keeping the dragon’s body between her and the stairs. As soon as she reached the dragon, she ducked down behind her.

“The guards? I knocked them out.”

“No. The sentinel in the wall. There is a magic alarm of some kind that is supposed to stun intruders. My own magic has failed, but I was told the ward is still working.”

Considering the state of magic on Krynn, Linsha rather doubted it. Nevertheless, some old artifacts and ancient spells remained viable. Linsha lifted the ends of the wet knotted belt tied at her waist and ran them through her fingers. “Afec gave this to me to ward off spells. Could that have helped?”

Sirenfal cocked an interested eye to study the belt. “Ah, knot magic. I have heard some Damjatts believe in its power to protect. You should keep that belt with you.”

Linsha made a mental note to thank Afec and secured the belt with another knot, just to be sure it did not fall off. She touched Sirenfal’s shoulder.

“You look better,” she said quietly. “Your scales are brighter.”

I have not eaten, replied Sirenfal in Linsha’s mind. I knew they were keeping me drugged with something, but ate anyway because I had no hope. Tonight I buried my food when they did not watch.

“Why? Why was tonight different?”

I wanted to see what would happen. I need to know if the drug will wear off quickly or if I need to avoid food until we can escape.

Linsha felt a bud of elation blossom. “Escape? Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”

The dragon’s response shot back in alarm, You do not? I thought that’s why you came. To work out a plan.

“Yes, yes!” Linsha hastened to assure her. She leaned against the dragon’s warm bulk and grinned at the shadows around them. “I just want to be sure you are aware of the danger.”

I know more of our danger than you do, Sirenfal told her. I am not well and I never will be again. When the Tarmaks experimented on me with the Abyssal Lance, they left splinters in my back. The splinters are small, insignificant, but they are there, and like the lance, they have the power to kill. One day, the splinters will reach my heart and I will die. If that happens while we are flying —

Linsha interrupted her. “Then we will deal with it then. Do you want to risk it?”

Sirenfal did not move, but her body trembled with her emotion. To be free of this place? To fly with the wind? To see my home and find my mate? I would risk anything. Just help me out of this horrid cave and I will take you anywhere.

“Can you take two? I have a friend who has helped me survive these long days. I cannot leave her behind.”

One or two, it will not make any difference to the splinters. I believe my wings will carry us—at least to the nearest island.

Linsha nodded. “Then before we lose the chance, take this. A healer gave it to me and said it was for you.”

Sirenfal’s light brown eye rolled around to glare suspiciously at the flask Linsha removed from her belt. I will take nothing made by those Tarmaks. I have had enough misery from them.

“This was made by my friend, Afec, a Damjatt, a slave in the Akeelawasee. He is fascinated with dragons and only wants to help you.” Linsha popped off the cork and sniffed the contents very carefully. “It smells good,” she said, surprised.

The one who gave you the belt? Very well, then, agreed the dragon. She opened her mouth just enough to allow Linsha to pour the contents over her tongue. Oh! It does taste good. She licked her lips and sighed. That is the best thing I’ve had to drink in a very long time. Please give him my compliments. Is it meant to do anything?

Linsha tilted her head, perplexed. “I don’t know.”

So what do we do now? Sirenfal asked. How do you plan to get me out?

“What is keeping you here? Why do you not blast them and fly out?”

When the priests and that Akkad-Dar man first brought me here, they broke my wings and kept me asleep. I think my wings have healed now, but I am chained to this wall and my food is always full of their poisons.

Linsha listened to the brass’s words in her head and felt a deep sadness. The Tarmaks had not only broken her wings and chained her leg, they had almost broken her spirit. Most healthy, self-respecting adult dragons would have tried to fight their way out of this cave years ago. But the Tarmaks had kept this young one in such a state of bondage and fear that she believed in her own captivity. Maybe now she and Sirenfal could change that.

“I must be married in three days,” Linsha said.

Yes, I heard. To the Akkad-Dar. Will you go through with it?

“Not if I can change it. He has already told me he will not return me to my home. How much time do you need to regain enough strength to fly?”

Sirenfal thought for a moment or two. A few days would help me.

“Then in two days I will try to come to you. We will get out of here together.”

Voices echoed in the tunnel above, sending shivers down Linsha’s back.

Sirenfal’s mental voice took on an overtone of panic. Get out. Go while you can. I will wait, two days, two hundred days.

Linsha leaned over the dragon’s back, hauled her long nose to eye level and said fiercely, “No. If something happens to me, find a way to get out! You can do it! Go to the Plains of Dust and find a dragon named Crucible. Tell him about me. You have to promise!”

Sirenfal’s eyes gleamed with a sickly light of fear, but she seemed to take strength from the intensity in the woman’s voice. She bowed her head and closed her eyes. “I promise,” she told Linsha softly.

Like a deer before wolves, Linsha broke for the passage opening, sprinting with all her strength as the voices in the stair tunnel grew louder. As soon as she was in the shelter of the darkness beyond the torchlight, she slowed and turned for one last look at the brass dragon. Sirenfal had returned to her former sleeping position, head under wing and tail curled around her body. Voices echoed in the cave around her, and to her dismay, one voice sounded like Lanther.

Linsha did not wait to see if she was right. Fear put speed in her feet and led her back on the path to the small entry cave where the two guards still slept by the embers of their fire. Outside the rain fell in the sheets and the wind howled around the island.

Linsha woke to the sound of the bell calling women to morning exercise. With a groan she rolled over to her back on her damp pallet and stared at the ceiling. She hoped never to go through another night like that again. Climbing down the cliff and entering the dragon’s cave had not been extremely difficult, nor had escaping the cave. The guards had still been unconscious when she slipped by them and hurried out of the cave. Going back up the cliff in the heavy rain had been almost impossible.

The trouble had started when she realized the waves, driven by the powerful winds and incoming tide, washed up against the stony face of the promontory. She’d had to fight her way back through water that sometimes surged up around her hips and threatened to drag her out into the bay. Finding the rope she had left anchored ten feet up the slope had not been easy either. She struggled back and forth along the rocky slope where she thought she had left the rope and finally found it when she saw it flapping loose in the wind.

But if it hadn’t been for that rope, she would never have made it back up the cliff face. Instead of a dry descent in the dark, she had a miserable ascent on steep rocks turned slippery and treacherous from the rain. By the time she reached the top of the promontory, her entire body hurt. Bruised and breathless, she’d had to rest before she could even consider climbing the rope up the palace wall. The driving wind and rain helped shield her from Tarmak eyes and kept the guards huddled down behind crenellations or in the tower, but they also buffeted her against the stone wall and made the rope as hard to hold as a wet snake. Her arms and legs, already tired and sore from the treacherous climb up the rocks, trembled and burned by the time she lifted her head over the wall and flopped on the walkway like a gasping fish. Guards or no guards, she’d huddled in the shelter of the tower to regain enough strength to haul up her rope, stumble down the stairs, and return to the women’s quarters before she was missed at dawn. She’d hid the dark clothes, retrieved her own wet tunic, and hurried cold and wet to her pallet to snatch an hour’s sleep.

Now, like it or not, it was time to get up.

Callista stopped in the doorway. “Thank goodness you’re back,” she whispered. She came in bearing a cup of hot spiced tea and the usual dodgagd juice. Linsha gratefully drank them both.

She groaned and lay back for a moment, her eyes closed. “We will go tomorrow night,” she told Callista in a hushed voice. “Before the ceremony. We will need warm clothes, water, and food if you can get it.”

Callista grinned in delight. “I will.”

Although she was sore and bone-weary, Linsha went out for her morning run with the other women. She wanted to appear as normal as possible and give the Tarmaks no reason to be suspicious. But she received a nasty shock when she came in from her run. Two large Akeelawasee guards waited for her at the dining hall. They were from the ketkullik that usually guarded the entrances and walls of the women’s enclosure, not the eunuchs who were permitted inside, so their presence created a stir among the women. The females looked askance, talked behind their hands, and gave the big guards a wide berth. The Empress did not look pleased either, but she made no attempt to have them removed. The guards stood behind Linsha while she wolfed down her meal, and they followed her every step through the morning.

Her thoughts and emotions went through a crazy whirl of fear that the Tarmaks had learned of her clandestine visit to Sirenfal. Had the guards in the cave outpost recognized her? Had she left footprints? Had the dragon been forced to reveal their plans? Her guards said nothing to her. They only watched with cold eyes and dogged her every move. They wouldn’t talk to her even when she demanded answers. Yet they did not search her belongings for ropes or stolen clothes or the carefully hoarded pouch of powder from Afec, and they did not try to drag her before Lanther.

She wished she could talk to Afec, who might know what was going on. But with the guards on her heels, she did not dare approach him for fear of drawing undue attention to him. She waited hopefully for him to come to her in the afternoon for another lecture on Tarmak customs, but the Damjatt was nowhere to be seen, pushing Linsha into more dreadful speculation that perhaps the Tarmak had imprisoned him and were torturing him for his knowledge of her plots. When he did not appear by evening, Linsha grew truly worried. She could not think of a day when she had not seen him somewhere around the Akeelawasee busy at his tasks.

As exhausted as she was, Linsha could only sleep in fits and starts that night while her brain ran over every worry and fear she had concocted. She hoped fervently the guards would be gone the next morning, but one look at Callista’s face at dawn told her they were still there just outside the sleeping quarters.

“What are we going to do?” the courtesan murmured while she served the juice. “If the guards stay with you, we won’t be able to get out of here.”

“I know, I know,” Linsha replied, her mood made sharp by lack of sleep and her own deep apprehension. “Do you know where Afec is? Have you seen him at all?”

“Not since yesterday. He received orders to attend the priests.”

“That does not sound good,” Linsha muttered.

“No.” Callista put a dainty hand on Linsha’s arm and tried to smile. “I have the water and the food we need. I am trying to find some warm tunics or cloaks. What do you want me to do tonight?”

Linsha felt a cold feeling of dread and worry squirm in her stomach. Gods above, tonight was the last night she would be free to stay away from Lanther. They had to escape. Somehow, they had to get away from the guards, climb down to Sirenfal’s cave, and get the dragon out of there. By Kiri-Jolith, she missed Varia. She hadn’t realized until this separation how much she had come to depend on the owl for her courage, her intelligence, and her willingness to spy. She could really use the owl this night.

Instead of an owl, she had a feisty courtesan and stubborn old eunuch. They were doing their best; it just took a little getting used to. “I will feign illness and try to convince them to allow you to stay with me, so you won’t have to sneak out of the servants’ quarters,” she said. “Maybe they’ll find Afec, too.”

Callista nodded and went to fetch the basin of water for Linsha’s washing while she went outside for her run. As Linsha feared, two Tarmak guards fell in behind her, and this time they followed her around the path of the garden for her entire run. They stayed with her through the day, from the morning meal through the exercise schedules and her swim in the lake, to her evening meal and the quiet time before the women retired to bed. Linsha refused to eat her dinner and dragged herself to her quarters where she planned to have Callista inform the Empress that she was ill and would someone please summon Afec.

Instead she was met at her cubicle door by a Keena priest in a sleeveless black robe. Callista stood behind him looking pale and sick with fear.

“Drathkin’kela,” the priest addressed her with a bow. “If you will accompany me, the priestesses are waiting for you.”

“Why?” Linsha cried. Her most basic instincts wanted to back up and make a break for the wall, but the two armed guards stood directly behind, blocking her path.

“If you will come with me,” the Keena said, and he took her arm and pulled her toward the hall.

Linsha cast one agonized look back at Callista and was forced to follow.

There would be no escape that night.