Drakis pushed himself off the stone-the same stone they had sat upon in the roach cell, he realized, as his bare feet landed on a soft green material that blanketed the floor. His practiced eye glanced around him, searching for something that might be used as a weapon, but other than the large stone bier itself in the middle of the tall room and the small trees that seemed to be growing right out of the flooring, there was nothing that presented itself to him as useful in combat.
He took in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. This was not a battlefield; indeed, there was something about this place that was so far removed from everything he knew about life that he found himself increasingly anxious in the midst of absolute peace.
“A land of peace and rest?” the young boy said. “Even if there were such a place, you won’t know what to do when you get there.”
“What do you know about it?” his brother whispered gruffly beside him as they pushed the wheel of the mill with a dozen other slaves. “There is a land of peace and freedom. .”
“That’s not what Drakosta says.” I’m twelve, Drakis thought as he heard his young self speak. That young boy was me. Drakosta was still alive then and would not be beaten to death by Timuran for two years yet. “He says that it’s all a story someone made up.”
“Well that’s not what Mom says,” Polis answered back, sweat pouring from his forehead. “It’s north-in Vestasia maybe-beyond a sea of water and even a sea of sand. That’s where we’re going, Drak. . you and me together. No one will ever make us work again. You wait and see.”
I had a brother, Polis. Which brother was that? And was that our mother who told those tales or was it someone we only thought was our mother because the elves always tried to make us believe we were in families even when our parents were dead, when several sets of parents were dead and our memories of each were successive lies. .
“Drakis! What is it?”
Drakis shook himself back into the present. Mala stood in front of him. The soft tune continued to play.
“Come on,” he said as he turned toward the tall arched doors of translucent glass and pushed them open with a violent shove.
The room beyond was a small, circular garden enclosed by a glass dome overhead. A fountain murmured in the center of the garden, whose appearance mildly shocked Drakis as it was identical to the one he remembered being in the glade just before his thoughts faded.
“This is it,” Drakis said. “This is where you brought me when you found me in the Hyperian Woods.”
Mala cocked her head, her eyes narrowing above her cheekbones. “What are you talking about? I couldn’t find you in the woods. .”
“This,” Drakis said, stepping up to the fountain. “When we first entered the Hyperian Woods, we all got separated. You found me and brought me back to this fountain. . it was in a glade then. .”
“What glade, Drakis?” Mala asked. “I never found you. . that dwarf of yours found me.”
“Oh, that dwarf,” Drakis growled and gritted his teeth. Drakis turned around, shouting up into the dome. “Jugar, you monstrous little snake! As soon as I find you playing those damned pipes I’m going to take them, break them and one by one insert them into your. .”
“Silence, Master Drakis,” came the imperious voice behind him. “These are my halls, and you will respect my home.”
Drakis turned, his tirade cut short.
The Lyric stood before him, her narrow face uplifted in regal scorn. She still wore the same dress, now tattered to rags, that she had from the beginning of their ordeal, but now on the sparse and stubby golden hair sprouting from her head she wore a circlet fashioned of woven twigs. “You need not concern yourself with Jugar. He is with us, and his dwarven ways shall not trouble you while you are in my realm.”
The Lyric gestured behind her, and a wide, familiar, and now troubled face came into view at about the level of her waist.
“Good friends are always well met in strange circumstances,” Jugar said quietly, his mouth shaking beneath troubled eyes as he spoke. “You’re a mighty man, Drakis, to live within the boundaries of the Murialis Woods.”
The Lyric turned to face Drakis once more, her face raised in defiance. “You stand within the Eternal Halls-my forest palace where you are, for now, my guests. But you may find what the dwarf, it seems, has lost the words to tell you: that it is far easier to enter the Eternal Halls than it is to leave them.”