“The Sirens!” Jugar crowed. “Those are dragons, my boy! The dragons of the prophecy calling to you!”
“Is it. . is it possible?” Drakis whispered.
“We came to find out,” Ethis said. “It must be four. . maybe five leagues to the base. We could make it before dark, but we’d have to make camp and return in the morning.”
“You want to make camp. . with dragons?” Urulani asked.
“Do dwarves float?” Drakis asked as he started down the road, which ran straight toward the base of the mountains.
Drakis stared up at the dragon.
The dragon’s dead, stone eyes stared back at him.
Drakis stood on a wide, black marble platform. The surface had been pitted and scarred by the blowing sands over time, scuffed to a dull finish. Fixed to it, the great carving of a dragon rose above him, its neck craning downward until its chin also rested on the pedestal. Enormous wings, also of stone, rose high above them nearly one hundred feet into the sky, brightly cast in the red light of the sunset. The front and back claws clutched enormous crystals in their talons that were embedded into the marble base. The crystals looked dark and common, but the dragon carving was intricate and detailed with pictograms of people now long dead and fallen to dust pursuing great deeds that were now otherwise forgotten.
Drakis considered the statue in silence.
“I. . I’m sorry, my boy,” Jugar said next to him. “More sorry than I can say.”
Drakis started to speak, considered for a moment, and then continued. “It’s hollow. Can you see it? The head cavity all the way up the neck and into the body is entirely hollow.”
“Yes, lad,” Jugar said sadly.
Behind him, the rest of their party stood in the sand or sat on the edge of the pedestal. The Song of the Dragon rose and fell around them, a mournful, hollow sound. As far as they could see down both directions of the range, duplicates of this same statue stood on their own pedestals. Each of them in turn was making the same music across the Sand Sea to the south.
“The wind,” Drakis continued dispassionately, pointing toward the head. “It blows here constantly through that hole in the dragon’s mouth. I saw a musician once who played an instrument by blowing into it. It looked about the same size as that hole. You know, there must be some mechanism in the head that varies the pitch so that the song can be played over, and over, and over, and over. .”
“Come, lad,” Jugar said, pulling at Drakis’ arm. “A little supper, perhaps, and a story or two. .”
“There it is, dwarf!” Drakis shouted. “There’s the great destiny of humanity! There are no dragons to save us, just these lovely, marble dreams we created for ourselves. All myths and stories and lies we tell ourselves to comfort us and make us think there is some meaning to what we do. Well, here they are, dwarf! Here are the dragons that I’m supposed to raise from the storybook past and make war with on the elves! Here’s the source of the song that calls me back to a dead land filled with dead dragons! Here are your Sentinels-the sirens of the desolation-watching over us with stone eyes and weak songs!”
“Please, my boy,” Jugar tugged at the human’s belt. “Enough of this.”
“Enough?” Drakis’ laugh had a hysterical edge. “This weak, windy song? Let’s make a decent noise of it! Let’s call the whole world up here to see just how hollow this legend of yours is!”
Drakis turned back to the dragon’s head, drew in a deep breath and blew as hard as he could through the hole.
A thunderous blast of sound shook the ground, raising a pall of dust two feet high. Drakis staggered back from the statue, his hands clasped to his ears.
Mala stood up, her jaw dropping in wonder.
The crystals under the statue’s talons flared suddenly to life, brilliant light radiating outward, then curving back in on itself, forming a ball on the platform directly beneath the statue.