“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Don’t be. Go. His eyelid slid closed. Save the eggs.
Her tears fell on the shining scales of the dragon’s nose, and it took all of her will to leave him lying on the side of the volcano and pursue the Akkad-Dar. She left Lanther’s fallen sword where it lay, for it was too heavy for her to handle. There would be others on the ledge. She hurried up the rocky slope.
When she reached the ledge, she discovered all but two of the Tarmak warriors who had accompanied them were dead. The two survivors stared at her as she scrambled over the edge onto the level ground in front of the cave. Their swords drawn, they moved toward her.
Horns blared in the trees to the north and were echoed on the skirt of the peak to the south. The two Tarmaks stopped and stared out at the meadow below. The ranks of warriors that had survived the dragon’s fire were pouring into the meadow below to escape the smoke and flames. Their horn-blowers answered the challenge with a pealing call of their own. All at once a dark flight of arrows soared out of the trees and dropped with deadly accuracy into the milling crowds of warriors. The Tarmak horns sounded another warning as a long line of mounted Plainsmen and centaurs came out of the trees. There was another flight of arrows, and the horsemen charged underneath them into the line of waiting Tarmaks. A thunderous clash of bodies and weapons, the shouts of fighting men, the screams of horses, and the pounding beat of drums filled the valley.
On the ledge of the peak the three antagonists stared at the attacking army of Plainsmen. The two Tarmaks glanced uneasily back at the cave and scowled down at the battle, now joined in ferocious intensity. Linsha took advantage of their distraction. She darted past them for the cave, snatched up a sword from a dead Tarmak, and loped to the cave’s entrance. The two Tarmaks did not follow.
She hurried inside, and the sunlight faded quickly behind her.
23
Maternal Instinct
The tunnel lay straight and true, its sides smooth and its floor level. Dense darkness surrounded Linsha, forcing her to move to the wall and follow the tunnel by touch. She noticed immediately that the air was warm and dry and smelled faintly of molten rock. She jogged blindly down the passage and feared with a sick certainty what she would find when the tunnel ended-the eggs in a nest, waiting to hatch. Lanther would smash them, and she would fail. She wondered briefly where Varia and Menneferen were and hoped they had left when Crucible flew away.
Shortly she saw pale light ahead and realized the tunnel was about to come to an end. She didn’t bother to slow down but hurried toward the chamber and the light. The Akkad-Dar, she knew, would be waiting for her. Her sword gripped in her hand, she stepped out of the tunnel. Her eyes widened with surprise and she looked up with wonder at a mound in front of her.
Crucible had found a chamber fashioned long ago by the internal workings of the volcano’s fiery core. He had leveled the floor, enlarged the chamber, and bored two small ventilation shafts through the side of the cone that allowed both air and light into the cave. He had also built a nest in the center using sand and earth to create a mound for the eggs. It sloped up nearly eight feet and was about twenty feet in circumference. A thin shaft of light from the western ventilation shaft penetrated the gloom and shone on the side of the mound like a beam from a thief’s lantern. The air was very warm in the cave, prompting Linsha to wonder if Crucible had heated rocks or something to add extra warmth for the nest.
“Come up here.”
She looked up the mound and saw Lanther standing on the top holding an egg. It occurred to Linsha that he was not using gloves to carry the round orb. Had the eggs cooled that much?
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Come up here, or I will smash every one. Leave your sword.”
Linsha knew she had little choice. There was no sign of either Varia or Menneferen, and no one else knew she was there. Her heart in her throat, she jabbed the sword into the dirt at the base of the mound and climbed warily up the steep slope.
At the top the mound fell away into a bowl-shaped depression lined with sand. Nestled in the warm sand lay eight of the nine eggs. They were darker than she remembered. They appeared softer, too, for she could see indentations and creases in the shells she hadn’t remembered before. One of them rocked slightly.
Linsha blinked. She looked again, but the eggs stayed motionless. Surely not, she thought. It was too soon.
“You never had any intention of giving me those eggs. You would have said anything to persuade me to come to Ithin’carthia. What made you think I would be the mother of a Tarmak demi-god?” she asked, her soft voice full of derision. “Or that you would be the father?”
Lanther was gazing into the distance, his attention drawn to something only he could see. At her words, he jerked slightly and focused his eyes on her face. “Afec foretold it,” he replied. “And I saw it in my vision from Takhisis when I took the Test in Neraka. From my goddess I saw it all—the fall of the Missing City, the conquest of the Plains, my union with the Drathkin’kela. Our son will he Amarrel, the Warrior Cleric who brings peace and prosperity to my people for a thousand years.”
Linsha leaned forward and said, “Takhisis is gone. She abandoned this world. You have been deceived. And I will die before I ever bear any get of yours!”
A smile as cold as the winds from the Ice Wall lifted his lips and frosted his eyes. “You are wrong, my lady wife. Takhisis is here, in the world. She has come to claim this world for her own.”
The Akkad-Dar’s face was masked in blood and dirt, and his skin was disguised by blue paint. But there was no mistaking the gloating arrogance of victory that exuded from his body in an almost palpable aura. With cold deliberation he slammed the dragon egg to the dirt and smashed it with his foot.
It did not shatter as Linsha would have expected, but split with a sickening crunch and tore open under the impact of his boot. A small dragonlet flopped on its back in the ruins of its shell. It cried piteously, waving its legs. Lanther’s laughter filled the cave.
Horrified, Linsha snatched at it, but Lanther’s arm rose and he slammed the point of a dagger into the small body. He held it up by the limp neck for her to see. She screamed in rage and threw herself at him and brought them both crashing to the dirt. Her hands groped for the dagger as they rolled and strained on soft earth.
It wasn’t the smartest way to attack a man taller, heavier, and better trained, but Linsha’s only thought was to protect the young lives contained in the eggs. The body of the dead dragonlet mocked her. The pain of its murder galvanized her into a fury. She fought hard with fists and feet, elbows and knees, to reach the dagger and get Lanther away from the eggs.
The Akkad-Dar struck back, equally determined to punish her. He punched her hard in the cheek with a sharp jab and wrenched away from her. His dagger flashed out with deadly speed in the soft light and ripped through her sleeve, slashing the skin of her forearm.
Linsha caught his arm and forced it aside. Her face throbbed and her arm burned, but she hardly noticed. She slammed the palm of her hand into his nose and noted with brief satisfaction that the cartilage crunched under her blow and blood poured down his mouth. She hit his broken nose again, then again, blood spraying them both. His eyes rolled, and she lunged again, struggling to take possession of the knife, but he stumbled backward and the blade remained just beyond her reach.
As they grappled on the soft rim of the mound, Linsha felt something shift. The earth, gravel, and sand that comprised the nest had been piled quickly and had not been packed into place. Abruptly the dirt gave way underneath them, and Linsha tumbled down the slope in a small avalanche of dirt and gravel. Lanther fell beside her, dropping the dagger in his fall. A cloud of dust rose and danced in the band of sunlight that shone on the eggs.