Citadels of the Lost Read Online Free PDF Page A

is it?”
    â€œWe need to set a watch,” Drakis said, walking over to her.
    â€œWatch?”
    â€œYes,” Drakis insisted. “Someone to watch the stairs to make sure that no one follows us here and another to . . . is there something wrong?”
    â€œNo!” Urulani said at once as her eyes suddenly focused on Drakis. “I’ll take the first watch. Set the dwarf over here while I keep an eye on those stairs.”
    â€œWill someone get me off of this horrible contraption!” Jugar howled. “Bad enough that I should be dragged through the forest like a fireplace log, but to be tied to this . . . this thing ! It is too much of an indignity to be borne by man or dwarf!”
    â€œRelax, Jugar,” Drakis said, wiping his brow as he knelt to undo the straps securing the dwarf to the litter. “You’re not going anywhere for a while without considerable help on our part, so you might as well get used to being polite.”
    â€œPolite, is it?” Jugar sniffed. “Dragged into the wilderness of a forsaken land because some Ephindrian jelly-man had to shut the door on our only way back home! Having a dragon’s head fall on me and who nearly ate me after he was dead! Considering the events of the day, I believe I have been the very epitome of polite!”
    Drakis chuckled to himself, then shook his head. “Well, perhaps you might extend your famous patience a bit longer and help us. We can hardly know where we’re going until we’re sure of where we are now.”
    â€œWell, it’s written right in front of you!” the dwarf groused.
    â€œWhat is he talking about?” Urulani asked.
    â€œThose columns,” the dwarf yelled, pointing with his broad, right hand. “Those aren’t just pretty carvings, you know! It’s the ancient script, used from before the Shadow Wars in the time of the Age of Mists. That was after Drakis Aerweaver—the first Drakis, mind you—fought the dragon Kopsis south of the God’s Wall Mountains and created the Desolation of the Sand Sea. That was nearly two thousand years before . . .”
    Drakis held up his hand to stop the dwarf’s mouth.
    â€œJust tell us what it says,” Drakis demanded.
    â€œReduced to reading for the illiterate, eh? Fine!” Jugar flushed red but held his temper. He turned toward the pillar and pointed again. “This says, ‘Hekrian, Seer of our Goddess Quabet, bids all seekers . . .’ or, maybe that’s sojourners ‘. . . welcome to the peace and beauty of Pythar—City of Unification.’ Then there’s some religious nonsense about ‘seeking the higher way,’ and finding ‘peace in the one.’ I like the way it finishes, however. Right here it reads, ‘Behold the eternal might and glory of Armethia, where man and dragon rule as one in their terrible might and justice.’
    â€œWitness my polite compliance.” Jugar gestured around him as he gazed on the ruins, “as I behold the eternal might and glory of humanity and the dragons that protected them so well.”
    â€œI am looking, dwarf,” whispered Urulani, her gaze following the ornate column upward and then out over the ruins of the city now so much more evident below them. “I had never supposed that we were once so great a people.”
    â€œOnce, perhaps,” Jugar replied. “But no more.”
    â€œBut we could be again,” Urulani said with sudden conviction as she turned toward Drakis. “The prophecies! I had not believed . . . had not dared to believe that they could have been true. Yet here I stand in the land of legend, my hand touching the lost glories of our past and looking at the man who could make all of those things once lost come to be once more!”
    Drakis groaned, shaking his head. “Not you, too?”
    â€œYou could be this man, Drakis,” Urulani said, stepping toward him with conviction.