Belag turned to her. “Lyric, I don’t think. .”
“RuuKag came here because he was in pain,” the Lyric said, her eyes fixed on the nearest shattered gate. “He was in pain because he knew that he was once again part of a great story. He had listened to you, Belag, and heard more than you knew. For all his anger came from his pain, and his pain was that he had too great a heart. He believed you, Belag. In the end, he believed in Drakis, too.”
Belag, Urulani, and the dwarf stared at the Lyric. Her eyes gazed far away, as though she were seeing a scene that was beyond the vision of mere mortals. She began walking toward the shattered gate as she spoke. “But his own story was sad and tragic. He had bragged about going to war when he was a cub, but in his heart he had doubts. He feared pain and death, and so in the end he was branded a coward by his own pride and exiled. He was forgotten-even among the Hak’kaarin who once had sheltered him.”
Urulani whispered. “How can she know these things?”
“That girl knows more than she’s letting on,” Jugar said, his eyes narrowing as he considered her.
Belag shook his head. “Come. . look there in the ground. Those are RuuKag’s tracks. The Lyric’s walking in them.”
They came to the shattered gate. The long tunnel beyond curved gradually upward toward the center of the enormous mud dome as in every other city they had visited, but here they stopped in horror.
The floor was carpeted with the dead.
“What a struggle they must have put up,” Jugar breathed.
Urulani pressed her lips together, unable to speak.
Belag turned to the Lyric. “What happened here?”
“He came,” the Lyric continued, her eyes staring past the end of the rising tunnel toward where the glow of fire could be seen. “He had accepted your faith in Drakis, Belag, and the old fear returned to him. . but this time that he would be remembered as the manticore who failed the human of the prophecy. The battle was already raging when he arrived. He had come for solace from these gentle creatures of the Hak’kaarin, the only family he felt left to him. He saw the battle, heard the desperate cries of the mud gnomes. .”
The Lyric turned and pointed at the ground. “Here he ran, charging past the bodies of the gnomes who had fallen. He picked up a weapon-taken from this gnome’s cold hands-and with a great warrior cry leaped forward.”
The Lyric stepped carefully among the fallen dead, their blood staining her sandals and the hem of her skirt as she walked down the tunnel. Belag and the others, entranced by her words, followed down the hall with gingerly steps.
The Lyric stopped where the tunnel rose sharply upward toward the center of the dome. A great, jet-black stain swept from one side of the tunnel to the opposite wall where some of the mud had melted into dark glass. “Here he saw the first of them-a robed elven hunter whose magic was killing the Hak’kaarin in terrible numbers. Seeing the gnomes being murdered thus, at last RuuKag found his warrior’s heart-or perhaps he found a cause for which he could fight.”
At the apex of the stain lay a robed figure missing its head.
“Here, for the first time,” the Lyric said, “RuuKag found the courage to kill.”
The Lyric, her hem now dragging a terrible bloody stain across the floor behind her, stepped up the ramp and into the great open space beneath the center of the dome.
The fires were burning out in the upper levels but still gave all too bright illumination on the grizzly scene. Two sections of habitat walls had collapsus and buried part of the central floor of the common area. The bodies of the dead gnome defenders were a terrible blanket across the floor.
“Where are the children?” Urulani asked.
“What? What children?” Belag growled.
“That’s my point,” Urulani said, her eyes shifting across the mass of the dead. “These are all warrior gnomes. Some men and some women but none of them old-none of them infirm-and there are no children here among the dead.”