Blood of the Emperor by Tracy Hickman Read Free Book Online

understand.”
    “I understand it a good deal better than you,” Braun said with an imperious air. “I’ve already proven that it works. That’s what brought you up short.”
    “Short!” Jugar snatched up his ax.
    Braun raised his hands in front of him, making a sudden circular motion with each. To Urulani’s astonishment, a fold portal suddenly opened up in the stone beneath the dwarf. With a cry of rage, the dwarf fell through the portal.
    The fold collapsed.
    Braun lowered his arms and grinned.
    Urulani thought she could hear the distant sounds of a dwarf swearing from the other side of the town.
    Drakis needs to see this,
she thought biting at her lip.
Where is he?”
    Suddenly, looking westward across the tops of the commanders’ tents, she knew.

C HAPTER 5

    Haunted
    D RAKIS STEPPED INTO THE GARDEN of the Governor-general’s home and shuddered.
    The wall of the surrounding subatria was still largely intact. The avatria that had floated overhead was nowhere to be seen. The floating structure had been hastily blown aside when Jugar dealt with the font. Now, instead of the perpetual shadow of the avatria, an unobstructed view of a brilliant blue sky took its place, with low-lying clouds drifting quickly overhead and a column of smoke rising from the still-smoldering ruins of the city.
    Where the avatria had fallen, Drakis had not asked.
    The garden itself had escaped with little damage. Paths ran between the carefully cultivated flower beds and trimmed lawns. In an arrangement Drakis had not seen before, there was a reflecting pool surrounding the Aether Well in the center of the garden. The crystal of the Aether Well shone with a bright column of light extending upward along its surfaces, pushing the clouds aside into a ring around its light as it reached into the sky. There was a purple tinge to the edges of the light that reminded Drakis somewhat of lilacs that had grown in another garden…
    “Drakis!”
    The voice was bright and carefree in his mind.
    Another garden…another time…
    She smiled at him, the Sinque mark tattoo clearly visible on her clean-shaven head as she approached. She moved with light steps quickly around the Aether Well, touching on the Altar of House Devotions that now lay cracked and broken next to the Aether Well. She wore her slave’s robe that was now unmarred, clean and whole as he remembered it. Her emerald eyes flashed at the sight of him.
    “Mala,” Drakis whispered as he smiled.
    “So you
did
return to me after all!” His beloved smiled back at him as she had that day so long ago—when they were innocent and without memory of pain. He could hear her voice as though she were there as she turned her face up to look into his eyes again. “I prayed to all the gods each day that they would bring you back to me.”
    Drakis closed his eyes against the memory. She was happy and content then. Both of them were without care except for each other, caught in a dream from which he hoped never to awaken. But awaken they did when the dwarf shattered the Aether Well, released them from the enchantment of their elven masters, and made them
remember
the truth of their enslavement and that they were living a false life.
    If only he could live that lie again…if he could go back to a time when his life made sense even if it was a dream from which he never awoke.
    If only…
    He opened his eyes again.
    Mala was still dead. She had died because of a different dream…a false dream.
    It had been her belief in him that killed her.
    Since that day, color and taste had left his experience. Night and day were all the same to him. The celebrations and rejoicing at their return by the rabble Belag had assembled in his name were like the annoying sounds of pieces of tin banging together to his ears. For a time he had endured their council meetings, giving his opinions with diffidence only to watch his idle and disinterested observations become words of law and prophecy by the following day. He was