Song of the Dragon Read Online Free PDF Page A

Instinctively, he reached to his side, drawing his sword from its leather scabbard, but though his eyes shifted back and forth in anxious anticipation, sight was useless in the total absence of light.
    Black is the sightless light smothering . . .
    Dead to the waking world sighs . . .
    Dead is the hero . . . Dead to all lament . . .
    Buried past memory here below . . .
    He was alone with the song.
    Drakis’ hand began to shake uncontrollably in the darkness.
    â€œOctian ! ” Drakis called out, his words swallowed into the black void around him, echoing small and hollow. His fellow warriors had passed through this same fold just a few moments before him. They should have been arrayed all about him with their globe-torches shining.
    Yet he crouched in the darkness, and there was no reply to his call.
    The wheeling melody surged forward in his mind once more. Drakis quickly muttered a prayer to Rhon—god of war—and drew enough courage to shout again.
    â€œOctian!”
    The gentle, answering voice coming from so near in the darkness unnerved him with its quiet calm.
    â€œI am here, Drakis.”
    The warrior spun around in the dark. “Braun? Is that you?”
    Dim blue light grew stronger as he watched, pushing back the smothering black as it brightened. Drakis fixed his eyes and his sanity on the glowing, expanding circle. Drakis’ world settled with each revelation of the brightening sphere. The headpiece, then the shaft of the Timuran Proxi staff that he had followed to victory in every battle of his life emerged from the darkness. Then the bald head now obscured with three days’ growth of gray-flecked hair, the hooked nose and the piercing eyes . . .
    . . . The figures of Impress Warrior dead.
    The bodies of an Imperial Octian lay about their feet. Drakis frantically started examining the mutilated corpses but then stopped.
    â€œThese aren’t ours,” Drakis said.
    â€œNo, they’ve been waiting for us here for a day or so now, as you might have guessed by the stench,” Braun nodded. He pointed over to the decapitated body of a human nearby with a broken Standard staff still gripped in his cold, discolored hand. “He’s how we got here. That fool managed to do his duty to the last; and carve the gate symbol before they got him. I guess we arrived a bit late to be of much use to him.”
    Drakis looked down at his feet. The freshly severed arm of a dwarf with an ax in its hand lay bleeding onto the ground.
    â€œAnd if we had been a little later, we wouldn’t have arrived at all. Braun,” Drakis struggled to make his voice calm as he spoke. “Where is the rest of our Octian? ”
    Braun looked up, considering the question, then smiled knowingly. “Not far, I should think. No doubt they have been called away by some glorious and pressing cause on behalf of our masters. Still, I should think that they will need us more than we will need them in the end, wherever they have gone.”
    â€œAre you hurt?”
    â€œHurt?” The Proxi asked in amused surprise. “No, Octis Drakis . . . I am remarkably at peace.”
    Drakis stared at his companion for a moment. “Braun, stop that talk. You’re pushing KriChan’s fur the wrong way. I think he’s about ready to tear your limbs off as it is.”
    â€œAnd how would the big cat get home then?” Braun answered simply. “How would he be able to lie on his master’s feet and be petted? Who would feed him his table scraps then? And who would remember him, buried here under the mountain? Not a one, Drakis, not a one.”
    Braun peered into the darkness. “His memory would be buried with him here—and with it he would have ceased to exist at all.”
    Drakis shook with a sudden chill. “Now those are exactly the kind of words that get you into such trouble with . . .”
    â€œLook!” Braun said, pointing with his free, right hand. The glow from