The Dragon's Path

figures were set into the stone along the wall like sentries, their features eroded into knobs and stumps, and a huge spread-winged dragon toweredabove them all. Great banners shifted in the breeze, one at each of the thirteen statues. Each was a field of a different color—blue, green, yellow, orange, red, brown, black, through thirteen distinct shades—with a pale circle in the center cut by four lines into eight sections.
    Its sigil was of cardinal and intercardinal showing the eight directions of the world in which no falsehood could hide.
The sign of the Righteous Servant. Tears leapt to Geder’s eyes, and something like relief flooded him. Triumph, perhaps. This was the place. He’d found it.
    They drew nearer, and the longer it took, the more Geder understood the breathtaking scale of the place. A huge iron gate hung at the front of the wall, imposing and forbidding. Above it, in a brutal script, were the words
Khinir Kicgnam Bat,
each letter as tall as a man. Geder squinted up at them, struggling to make his translation while still half drunk with wonder.
    Bound is not broken.
    The villagers brought their cart to a stop still fifty yards from the great iron doors. Geder saw now that a section within the door itself was set with a complex of swirling gears. The interlocked teeth clanked once, shifted, and the section of iron parted like a curtain. Six men walked out toward them. They had the same general features as the villagers, though with more roundness to their cheeks and oil sleeking their hair. They wore black robes tied with lengths of chain at the waist and sandals that wrapped their ankles. The men of the village knelt. Geder bowed, but didn’t dismount. His horse shifted uneasily beneath him.
    The priests looked at one another, then turned to the young man who had led the group.
    “Who is this?” the eldest of the priests asked.
    “A stranger,” the young man said. “He came asking afterthe Sinir. We brought him to you, the way the Kleron told us.”
    Geder urged his horse closer. The grandness of the place had made the beast skittish, but he held the reins tightly. The eldest priest stepped toward him.
    “Who are you?” the monk asked.
    “Geder Palliako, son of the Viscount Palliako of Rivenhalm.”
    “I don’t know this place.”
    “I’m a subject of King Simeon of Antea,” Geder said. And then when the priest stayed silent, “Antea’s a very important kingdom. Empire, really. Center of Firstblood culture and power.”
    “Why have you come here?”
    “Well,” Geder said, “that’s a long story. I was in Vanai. That’s one of the Free Cities, or, really it was. It’s gone now. But I found some books, and they were talking about this… Ah… They called it the Righteous Servant or the Sinir Kushku, and it was supposed to have been designed by the dragon Morade during the fall of the empire, and I thought that if I could use the different descriptions of where it was compared with the times when the accounts were made I might be able to… find it.”
    The priest frowned up at him.
    “Have you heard of the Righteous Servant?” Geder asked. “By any chance?”
    He wondered what he would do if the man said no. He couldn’t bring himself to ride back out. Not after seeing this.
    “We are the servants of the Servant,” the man said. His voice was rich with pride and certainty.
    “That’s excellent. That’s just what I’d hoped! May I…” Geder’s words tumbled over themselves, and he had to stop,cough, and collect himself. “I was hoping, if you have archives… Or if I could speak with you. Find out more.”
    “You will wait here,” the priest said.
    Geder nodded, but the man had already turned away. The priests were pulling the cart in through the gap in the iron gate, the village men retrieving another much like it. As Geder watched, the priests vanished into their temple, and the other men, waving at him and smiling, went away down the trail, returning to their homes. Geder stayed where he was, caught between the desire to see the temple behind the wall and the fear of being left alone and unable to find his way back through the mountains. The gears in the gate ground themselves closed. The rope-drawn cart vanished around the stones. Geder sat on his horse, trying not to look at the five servants he’d dragged across the known world and into this emptiness. In the distance, a hawk shrieked.
    “Should we set up camp, my lord?” his squire asked.
    N ight