Ryswin smiled. “If there is, and he’s here, we have to hope he’ll be on our side.”
They left their sanctuary and explored along the other pathways that had opened up. In the depths they discovered a large amphitheater with a semicircular arrangement of stone terraces. In the center stood a raised circular platform. It clearly had once been a meeting place, and Erlestoke speculated that it had belonged to one of the various secret societies. That one or more had facilities at Fortress Draconis made sense, since the garrisons were drawn from all over the world.
This one, however, had been transformed. The terraces would normally have served as seating for the society’s members and, at six feet in width, could have accommodated a considerable crowd. As Erlestoke studied the place, he could easily imagine the hearty shout of assent to some proposal, or the bass murmur of a ritual invocation echoing through the place.
Now the terraces did, in fact, accommodate a crowd, but one of far different sort than intended. On each level, with their feet pointing inward, lay stone effigies of Fortress Draconis’ defenders. The images had been exquisitely crafted and showed each person in serene repose. Walking down the stairs Erlestoke saw a few individuals memorialized there whom he’d seen blown to bits by Chytrine’s thunderballs. On the side of the slabs upon which they lay their names had been inscribed in their native script.
The dead all lay together, unsegregated by nation or race. Ryswin knelt beside a comrade, laying a hand on her cold stone forehead and using the other to hood his eyes. Others spread out, finding comrades and weeping, or noting the presence of others just to confirm their fate.
Toward the top Erlestoke found Pack Castleton. His effigy showed him carrying a quadnel, which brought a smile to the prince’s face. He traced a finger over the man’s mask and along the stone representation of a ribbon Erlestoke himself had affixed to it. “Rest well, my friend. You have earned it.”
Jullagh-tse Seegg, a rust-red urZrethi, shifted her shape so a pair of long, slender legs let her step easily up the stairs to reach him. “I see many here, but not the Draconis Baron.”
Erlestoke shook his head. “Perhaps whoever has done this needs his bones.” He surveyed the room, estimating numbers, then frowned. “This place could hold four thousand, maybe, and it’s only three-quarters full. That means a lot more have survived.”
Ryswin joined them. “That, Highness, or the caretakers are behind in their work. If you are right, that would mean there are a thousand of us still lurking in little groups here in the fortress. That’s fewer than Chytrine’s troops, but far more than I would have ever imagined.”
“Highness, over here!” Jancis Ironside beckoned him with her mechanical left arm. She stood on the steps leading up to the central dais. “You have to see this.”
The whole of their company moved toward the center of the chamber and mounted the steps. As Erlestoke’s eyes came even with the platform, they widened, because where he expected a flat surface he found something entirely different. As he approached, the platform shifted, the flat disk suddenly developing lumps that slowly resolved themselves into walls and the ruins of buildings. Toward the center rose the Crown Tower. At various points the rock retreated to form pits and within a couple of minutes, a miniature model of the fortress had laid itself out.
Even more oddly, the stone took on a transparency that allowed the prince to look deep into the model’s foundations. There, far below, he found a simulacrum of the chamber in which he stood. And there, I can see tiny figures staring down at a model of this model and in it they would see tiny figures…
He shook his head, then glanced at Jancis. “Is this something you understand?”
She shook her head, too. “No more so than I understand the blocks moving. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Jilandessa’s raven braid snaked over her left shoulder. “Actually you have. There are traces of arcanslata magick being worked here. Likewise in the spells that took Pack’s body and deposited it here beneath that effigy. They are probably urZrethi in nature, but there is something else. My knowledge is limited in that area.“
“Understood, Jilandessa, and not a concern.” Erlestoke frowned. “The magick was triggered when Jancis mounted the steps?”
“It would seem that way, but I have no way to be certain.”
“Highness, there, in the fortress.” Nygal pointed at a blue-green glow near the Crown Tower. “That’s near where the crawls are digging right now.”
As the prince moved closer, other details painted themselves on the model. Little red lines described paths snaking in and out of buildings. They connected large red dots with a white dot at the center. The dig site likewise had a red tinge to it, though it covered a larger area than one of the circles.
Suddenly the earth shook. The tremor was far from violent enough to topple them, but Erlestoke felt the short, sharp shock easily enough through his boots. On the model, a ruin near the site of the dig collapsed into nothing.
A heartbeat later the entire model wavered and vanished.
Erlestoke crouched and pressed his right hand to the platform’s smooth stone surface. It felt as cool as the effigies, and had Nygal and Jilandessa not been staring at the stone with surprise on their faces, he could have believed he imagined it.
He stood and folded his arms over his chest. “We agree we saw a map of the fortress, right?”
Ryswin nodded. “The red lines and spotted dots looked like patrol routes and garrisons.”
“Agreed.” The prince ran a hand over his jaw. “The glow at the dig would have been a DragonCrown fragment?”
“That would be likely.” Jancis frowned. “Were we only being shown one because we’re being given a mission, or is that the only one left in the Fortress?”
Nygal’s eyes widened further. “If there is only one here, then Chytrine has two.”
Erlestoke thought for a moment, then smiled. “I think time is long past when this sort of information about a fragment could do Chytrine good. Before her assault, another fragment was evacuated. If that is a fragment, then she’s only gotten one away from here. Jilandessa, any idea why the model went away?”
The Harquelf’s dark brows arrowed down over her slender nose. “A spell of that size would require a very powerful sorcerer to cast and a lot of energy to maintain. It could be that he got tired or it is possible that when that building collapsed, he was injured or killed.”
The prince nodded. “If I were to guess, I would say the Aurolani used firedirt to bring that building down. They would seem to be getting more desperate in their hunt for this fragment.”
Jancis walked up over to where the glow had been. “Here is the problem, Highness. They are digging here right now.” She took two steps to the left. “Two days ago, they finished digging here. And last week, they were digging over there.”
“You think the fragment is being moved?”
“It’s a logical conclusion to draw. Either it’s being moved, or something is making them dig in the wrong places.” The meckanshü shrugged her shoulders. “I think we have to ask if we can get to it before they do and then somehow get it out of Fortress Draconis. The difficulty is going to be that wherever it is, it will be defended. We’ll have as hard a time getting at it as they will, and then we have to get it away.”
Ryswin knitted his fingers together at his belt. “Perhaps we let them get it, then take it away from them.”
Erlestoke shook his head. “That plan has merit, save that they could give it to an araftü and have it flown away before we can crawl up from below.”
Nygal smiled. “We’ll just have to kill all the araftü. I’ve got plenty of shot and firedirt.”
The prince nodded. “Good idea, but what if a dragon is sent to get it?”