Belag spoke quietly down toward the much shorter human woman. “And whom have I the pleasure of addressing today?”
The Lyric looked up at him, her large eyes shining up from her narrow face. “Of course, you are a manticore and from a far and strange land. I wonder not that you have never encountered my kind before. Fear not, good creature, I am a beneficent spirit and mean you no ill.”
“A spirit?” Belag furrowed his furry brow.
“Aye,” the Lyric responded with a sad smile. “I am the ghost of Musaran the Wanderer. I am most often invisible, but I show myself to those whose stories I wish to take with me. . and to those whom my stories may help. Every creature of the world has a story, and I am fated to know them all.”
Belag let out a relieved breath. The Lyric changed her persona unpredictably, and more often than not lately she had taken to adopting strange and sometimes dangerous characteristics. Yesterday had been a challenge. She had proclaimed herself Clarinda, the throat-cutting harlot of Chargoth Bay and had everyone more than a little wary of her. A ghost of some wandering story-gatherer sounded like a good deal safer personality for all concerned. “Then you know the legends of Drakis Aerweaver.”
“I do-and a good many more,” the Lyric said with a sad darkness in her voice. “There is one story that interests me most right now, one with which you can help me. I have the beginning and the middle right, but I do not yet have the ending.”
“You need my help with a story?” Belag chuckled.
“It is a story that will interest you, I think,” the Lyric replied, arching her eyebrows.
“Thank you, spirit,” Belag replied, turning back to the carvings on the wall. “I have no need of stories.”
“But this one involves you,” the Lyric replied. “It is the story of RuuKag, the manticore who lost his tale.”
“Lost his tail?” Belag snorted. “He should look behind him!”
“Not his ‘tail,’ Belag, his tale,” the Lyric said with surprising impatience. “His story, his personal legend. Every creature is the hero of his own story but RuuKag lost his. Now I fear he has gone to find it.”
Belag hesitated. “Find it?”
“Yes,” the Lyric replied, shaking her head. “He left yesterday late in the evening. I followed him-invisible as I was-for a long as I could. He crossed over the Cragsway Pass toward the. . where are you going? The story isn’t finished yet!”
Belag was already throwing open the doors of the Elders’ Lodge, his pace picking up quickly toward the bay.
“Aye, that’s a fine ship, lass,” Jugar said through his wide-toothed grin. “I’ve never seen the like!”
“Then you’ve never encountered the corsairs of Thetis,” Urulani replied, swinging around a backstay to land on the planked deck beneath her feet. “She’s just three hands under thirty cubits in length from stern to stern, and we can pull her at a respectable speed with a crew of twenty-given a good sea. She’s the smallest of our corsairs, but I rather like her.”
“It is a wonder!” The dwarf said, shaking his head as he gazed at the ship where it was moored to the dock. The Cydron, as Urulani called it, was a beautiful craft, its hull tapered fore and aft with such elegant lines that it looked as though it could fly across the waves with barely a feather’s touch. She was not a terribly large ship-completely unlike the large and rather ponderous galleons that the Rhonas employed against their rebellious cousins on the southern borders of the Empire-but was built for grace and speed. Three slightly angled masts gave a powerful rake to her lines. Her main deck was a single level though a raised walkway just above the level of the oarsmen’s heads connected a small enclosed forecastle and a more elevated afterdeck that held the long, ornately carved arm of the rudder. He was a dwarf and his expertise was largely relegated to the realm of stone, but he certainly could appreciate the art involved in such a fine piece of woodcraft. His eyes twinkled as he took in the lines of the ship. “How fast will it sail?”
“She’ll cross the Bay in less than three days,” Urulani said. “We’ve raided coastal towns in Nordesia when necessary and been back in less than a week’s time.”
“A wonder. . a marvel of our age,” Jugar nodded with appreciation. “Perhaps I will have the privilege of sailing aboard her one day. You know, Drakis is such a strange human, even seen through the eyes of his own kind, I might venture to say, that I wouldn’t wonder if he would request passage to the north. .”
Urulani was no longer paying attention to the dwarf. “It looks as though someone else of your group has taken an interest in boats.”
Jugar turned and was astonished-if not a little frightened-to see Belag bounding toward them, crouched over and rushing toward them on all fours. The great manticore slid to a halt on the planks of the dock, rising back on his hind legs as he spoke.
“Urulani. . Jugar. . have either of you seen RuuKag today?”
Jugar looked up. “No, but I would not consider that an unusual occurrence. He is, as you well know, a most reclusive individual prone to rather moody withdrawals from our company. .”
“Urulani,” the manticore said, turning hastily to the dark-skinned woman. “Have you seen RuuKag. . the other being like me?”
Urulani smiled slightly through her puzzlement. “I do know what a manticore is, friend Belag. . but I have not seen RuuKag since last night when. .”
Urulani stopped speaking.
“What is it?” Belag asked.
“I was discussing Drakis with some of the Elders last night,” Urulani replied, her smile having fallen. “We were considering additional sentries to be posted in the Sentinel Peaks and along the Cragsway Pass. The discussion turned to whether we should have our warriors travel in pairs to watch each other.”
“Watch each other?” Jugar said, raising his own thick eyebrows. “Why should you be concerned about your own warriors?”
“Because,” Urulani said, stepping up from the deck onto the dock, “the stories of Drakis being spread by the Hak’kaarin and the Dje’kaarin both also now speak of incredible rewards being offered for the location of your friend and any of the rest of you. We were talking of this when your friend suddenly appeared. We changed the subject of our speech, but now I wonder if perhaps he didn’t overhear us.”
“The traitor!” Jugar’s word’s exploded from his mouth. “He’s finally done it! We’ve got to stop him! He’ll be the ruin of us all!”
“What do you mean, dwarf,” Belag snarled.
“It’s him!” Jugar said, grabbing his pack and shoving at Belag to get him moving as well. “He’ll bring the Iblisi down on all of us if we don’t reach him first. . without a doubt!”
CHAPTER 41
The manticore stood silhouetted against the bright backdrop of the stars in a cloudless night. He was hunched over, his massive head turning furtively from side to side. The tall grasses of the savanna stretched to the south, west, and east under the starlight. To the north, the dark towers of the Sentinel Peaks stood as a great, jagged wall blotting out the stars. But here, almost exactly beneath his padded feet, two widely trampled roads came to an intersection. One curved down from the mud gnome’s city to the northwest and plunged deep into the Vestasian Savanna to the southeast. The other carved a wide path from the Tempest Bay colonies of the Dje’Kaarin gnomes to the east and wound its way to other more southern mud gnome cities to the southwest. Both roads were formed by the passage of gnomes who were in too great a hurry to stop at this singular place and who, in the depths of the night, had left the manticore entirely alone.
The creature continue to shift nervously under the stars, first on one foot and then the other, turning from time to time to look behind him. All the while he held a small stone gingerly between the thick fingers of his right paw, tapping it nervously onto similar stones he held cupped in his right paw.