PROLOGUE
Icy air hung deathly still among the crags of the Kezankian mountains, deep in the heart of that arm of those mountains which stretched south and west along the border between Zamora and Brythunia. No bird sang, and the cloudless azure sky was empty, for even the ever-present vultures could find no current on which to soar.
In that eerie quiesence a thousand fierce, turbanned Kezankian hillmen crowded steep brown slopes that formed a natural amphitheater. They waited and merged with the silence of the mountains. No sheathed tulwar clattered against stone. No booted foot shifted with the impatience that was plain on lean, bearded faces. They hardly seemed to breathe. Black eyes stared down unblinkingly at a space two hundred paces across, floored with great granite blocks and encircled by a waist-high wall as wide as a man was tall. Granite columns, thick and crudely hewn, lined the top of the wall like teeth in a sun-dried skull. In the center of that circle three men, pale-skinned Brythunians, were bound to tall stakes of black iron, arms stretched above their heads, leather cords digging cruelly into their wrists. But they were not the object of the watcher’s attention. That was on the tall, scarlet-robed man with a forked beard who stood atop a tunnel of massive stone blocks that pierced the low wall and led back into the mountain behind him.
Basrakan Imalla, dark face thin and stern beneath a turban of red, green and gold, threw back his head and cried, “All glory be to the true gods!”
A sigh of exaltation passed through the watchers, and their response rumbled against the mountainsides. ‘‘All glory be to the true gods!”
Had Basrakan’s nature been different, he might have smiled in satisfaction. Hillmen did not gather in large numbers, for every clan warred against every other clan, and the tribes were riddled by blood feuds. But he had gathered these and more. Nearly ten times their number camped amid the jagged mountains around the amphitheater, and scores of others joined them every day. With the power the true gods had given him, with the sign of their favor they had granted him, he had done what no other could. And he would do more! The ancient gods of the Kezankians had chosen him out.
“Men of the cities,” he made the word sound obscene, “worship false gods! They know nothing of the true gods, the spirits of earth, of air, of water. And of fire!”
A wordless roar broke from a thousand throats, approbation for Basrakan and hatred for the men of the cities melting together till even the men who shouted could not tell where one ended and the other began.
Basrakan’s black eyes burned with fervor. Hundreds of Imallas wandered the mountains, carrying the word of the ancient gods from clan to clan, kept safe from feud and battle by the word they carried. But it had been given to him to bring about the old gods’ triumph.
“The people of the cities are an iniquity in the sight of the true gods!” His voice rang like a deep bell, and he could feel his words resonate in the minds of his listeners. “Kings and lords who murder true believers in the names of the foul demons they call gods! Fat merchants who pile up more gold in their vaults than any clan of the mountains possesses! Princesses who flaunt their half-naked bodies and offer themselves to men like trulls! Trulls who drench themselves in perfumes and bedeck themselves in gold like princesses! Men with less pride than animals, begging in the streets! The filth of their lives stains the world, but we will wash it away in their blood!”
The scream that answered him, shaking the gray granite beneath his feet, barely touched his thoughts. Deep into the warren of caverns beneath this very mountain he had gone, through stygian passages lit only by the torch he carried, seeking to be closer to the spirits of the earth when he offered them prayers. There the true gods led him to the subterranean pool where eyeless, albescent fish swam around the clutch of huge eggs, as hard as the finest armor, left there countless centuries past.
For years he had feared the true gods would turn their faces from him for his study of the thaumaturgical arts, but only those studies had enabled him to transport the slick black spheres back to his hut. Without the knowledge from those studies he could never have succeeded in hatching one of the nine, could never have bound the creature that came from it to him, even as imperfectly as he had. If only he had the Eyes of Fire … no, when he had them all bonds, so tenuous now, would become as iron.
“We will kill the unbelievers and the defilers!” Basrakan intoned as the tumult faded. “We will tear down their cities and sow the ground whereon they stood with salt! Their women, who are vessels of lust, shall be scourged of their vileness! No trace of their blood shall remain! Not even a memory!” The hook-nosed Imalla threw his arms wide. “The sign of the true gods is with us!”
In a loud, clear voice he began to chant, each word echoing sharply from the mountains. The thousand watching warriors held their collective breath. He knew there were those listening who sought only gold looted from the cities rather than the purification of the world. Now they would learn to believe.
The last syllable of the incantation rang in the air like struck crystal. Basrakan ran his eyes over the Brythunian captives, survivors of a party of hunters who had entered the mountains from the west. One was no more than sixteen, his gray eyes twisted with fear, but the Imalla did not see the Brythunians as human. They were not of the tribes. They were outsiders. They were the sacrifice.
Basrakan felt the coming, a slow vibration of the stone beneath his feet, before he heard the rough scraping of claws longer than a man’s hand.
“The sign of the true gods is with us!” he shouted again, and the creature’s great head emerged from the tunnel.
A thousand throats answered the Imalla as the rest of the thick, tubular body came into view, more than fifteen paces in length and supported on four wide-set, massive legs. “The sign of the true gods is with us!” Awe and fear warred in that thunderous roar.
Blackened plates lined its short muzzle, overlapped by thick, irregular teeth designed for ripping flesh. The rest of that monstrous head and body were covered by scales of green and gold and scarlet, glittering in the pale sun, harder than the finest armor the hand of man could produce. On its back those scales had of late been displaced by two long, leathery boils. Drake, the ancient tomes called it, and if those volumes were correct about the hard, dull bulges, the sign of the true gods’ favor would soon be complete.
The creature turned its head to stare with paralyzing intensity directly at Basrakan. The Imalla remained outwardl
y calm, but a core of ice formed in his stomach, and that coldness spread, freezing his breath and the words in his throat. That golden-eyed gaze always seemed to him filled with hatred. It could not be hatred of him, of course. He was blessed by the true gods. Yet the malevolence was there. Perhaps it was the contempt of a creature of the true gods for mere mortal men. In any case, the wards he had set between the crudely hewn granite columns would keep the drake within the circle, and the tunnel exited only there. Or did it? Though he had often descended into the caverns beneath the mountain—at least, in the days before he found the black drake eggs—he had not explored the tenth part of them. There could be a score of exits from that tangle of passages he had never found.
Those awesome eyes turned away, and Basrakan found himself drawing a deep breath. He was pleased to note there was no shudder in it. The favor of the old gods was truly with him.
With a speed that seemed too great for its bulk, the glittering creature moved to within ten paces of the bound men. Suddenly the great, scaled head went back, and from its gaping maw came a shrill ululation that froze men’s marrow and turned their bones to water. Awed silence fell among the watchers, but one of the prisoners screamed, a high, thin sound with the reek of madness in it. The boy fought his cords silently; blood began to trickle down his arms.
The fiery-eyed Imalla brought his hands forward, palms up, as if offering the drake to the assemblage. “From the depths of the earth it comes!” he cried. “The spirits of earth are with us!”
Mouth still open, the drake’s head lowered until those chill golden eyes regarded the captives. From those gaping jaws a gout of rubescent flame swept across the captives.
“Fire is its breath!” Basrakan shouted. “The spirits of fire are with us!”
Two of the prisoners were sagging torches, tunic and hair aflame. The youth, wracked with the pain of his burns, shrieked, “Mitra help me! Eldran, I—”
The iridescent creature took two quick paces forward, and a shorter burst of fire silenced the boy. Darting forward, the drake ripped a burning body in half. The crunching of bones sounded loudly, and gobbets of charred flesh dropped to the stone.
“The true gods are with us!” Basrakan declaimed. ‘‘On a day soon, the sign of the gods’ favor will fly! The spirits of air are with us!” The old tomes had to be right, he thought. Those leathery bulges would burst, and wings would grow. They would!”On that day we will ride forth, invincible in the favor of the old gods, and purge the world with fire and steel! All praise be to the true gods!”
“All praise be to the true gods!” his followers answered.
“All glory to the true gods!”