“She’s not here,” Varia whispered.

Linsha blinked. “What?”

“She’s gone. The pool is empty.”

Linsha strained to see in the intense darkness, but there wasn’t even a beam of moonlight leaking through a crack to lessen her blindness. Frustrated, she pulled from a small pack a tiny lamp and the clay pot that held a precious coal. Breathing gently on the faint orange glow, she was able to light her lamp and cast just enough light in the chamber to see the pool.

Varia was right. The pool had once brimmed with clear water deep enough to swim in. Now it lay still and lifeless. Much of its water had drained or evaporated away, and what was left was muddy and covered with a stagnant scum of dust, dead insects, and old algae. The ancient floor tiles she remembered seeing on her first visit were now covered with dirt and piles of rock that had fallen from the ceiling.

The voices grew louder and hooves clattered down the stairs. The centaurs and the Legionnaires crowded into the chamber with Linsha. They stared at the pool.

“Is it here?” Lanther breathed near her ear.

“She’s gone. Probably back to her own elemental plane.”

“Really?” He sounded skeptical.

“Iyesta commanded her here. Perhaps when the dragon died, her hold over the water weird disappeared, allowing her to escape.”

“Good. Then let’s not dawdle.”

“Sir!” one of the Legionnaires called to Lanther. “Look here. Someone has been in here before us.”

He pointed to the edge of the pool and toward the ground at the furthest reaches of the small lamp. Several sets of tracks were barely visible in the dirt.

Linsha looked and recognized them. She chuckled, with slight undertone of sadness. “Those are our tracks from three months ago. Iyesta’s and mine, then mine and several other groups. We brought some of the militia out this way when the city fell.”

She led the way past the pool and down another set of stone stairs to a chamber on a lower level. Once there, underground where lights could not be seen above, they brought out torches and lit them from Linsha’s lamp. Holding their torches to light the way, the party tramped down another, longer, flight of stairs and moved into a high corridor.

The labyrinth beneath Missing City was as old as Gal Tra’kalas itself. Deep beneath the city it formed a massive maze of chambers, interconnecting corridors, and puzzling dead ends. Its purpose was long forgotten, but its lofty tunnels still bore evidence of the skill and aesthetic taste of its creators. The tunnels were arched, and in many places the graceful lines of fan vaulting helped retain the strength and beauty of ceilings that were centuries old. At the intersections of major corridors, the lintels were carved to resemble tree trunks that rose and burst into leaf in stone relief over the doors.

Only Lanther, Linsha, and a few of the Legionnaires had been in the tunnels before. Anxious for the eggs, they pressed on, following their own faint trail. Whenever they came to a turn or an intersection that gave them doubts, Varia whispered directions in Linsha’s ear. The owl had a phenomenal memory for dark places.

The rest of the Legionnaires and centaurs hurried behind, their eyes wide with wonder and surprise. They had heard of Iyesta’s death in the labyrinth near her palace, of the midnight escape of a few trapped pockets of militia and Legionnaires out of the city through the tunnels, and of the battle with Thunder in the egg chamber. But they never imagined anything as spacious and well-crafted as these tunnels, nor a space so well preserved after hundreds years of neglect and abandonment.

In silence the party walked deeper and deeper into the maze, making turns to the left and right that Linsha never would have remembered on her own. As they penetrated farther into the labyrinth, they began to pay less attention to the walls around them and more to the floor and to the heavy darkness that pressed close. They were far in now and had seen only the traces of the earlier small groups. If the Tarmaks had truly carried the eggs into the great chamber in the center of the maze, there should have been some evidence of their passing.

True, Linsha thought, there were other entrances to the labyrinth and other tunnels that led toward the chamber, but she worried nonetheless and kept a close eye on the dusty floors of each tunnel they passed or entered.

She was so busy looking for tracks that she did not realize they were nearing the chamber until she heard someone behind her whisper, “What is that light?”

Linsha’s head jerked up. A pale gold light glowed through the pitch darkness from a turn in the tunnel ahead. It was still there!

But it looked different, and something else was gone. When she came the first time to the cave with Iyesta, she’d found the air in the egg chamber was rich and moist like the air in the woods around Solace. Now it was like the rest of the labyrinth-cool and dry and smelling just slightly of decay. The hair on her neck rose, and a warning went off in her head.

“They’re not there.” She said it so sharply that the centaurs jerked to a stop.

Linsha ran forward, nearly unseating the owl on her shoulder. She ignored the pain of Varia’s talons on her skin. She ignored Lanther’s shout of warning and the exclamations of the others. She charged toward the light with her heart in her throat. At the turn of the tunnel she raced into a chamber as grand and enormous as befitting a nest of dragon eggs, and she came to a skidding halt.

Her eyes took it all in-the withered corpse of the mother brass dragon against the far wall, the mound where they had buried Azurale, the decayed, beetle-chewed carcass of the blue dragonlord, Thunder, and finally, the ruined, trampled nest of sand where the egg had once lain. Varia flew from her shoulder and flapped in a circle over the nest, her voice sadly keening.

Linsha’s body stilled. Her nostrils flared. The warning in her head turned into a klaxon, and she knew without a doubt. Linsha wheeled.

“Go back!” she shouted to the others coming up behind her. “We’ve got to get out! It’s a trap!”

Race for the Door

5

Lanther grabbed her arm and pulled her to a stop. “What do you mean? How do you know?”

“Look!” she said. Her hand pointed to the empty nest. “There are no eggs! They were just used to lure us down here. We’ve got to go!”

Tanefer trotted to her side, his bearded face locked in a frown. “Are you sure? Couldn’t the Tarmaks have placed the eggs somewhere else? This labyrinth is huge.”

Linsha didn’t want to argue. Every part of her mind screamed at her to leave as quickly as possible. But the centaurs and the Legionnaires milled around in confusion, staring at the dead dragons and talking among themselves.

“There is no other place in this labyrinth suitable for incubation,” Linsha said. “Iyesta and Purestian altered this cavern with magic to give it light and warmth and the proper conditions for the eggs’ development. There is nothing left here but the light, and even that is failing. No, there are no eggs down here. Now get rid of those baskets and run!”

She was relieved to see her urgency finally sink in. Young Leonidas was the first to accept her word. With a swift cut of his dagger, he loosed the ropes holding the baskets on his hack, dumped them on the floor, and gave her his hand. He hauled her onto his back. Lanther and Tanefer exchanged alarmed glances before they too urged the others to move. Baskets fell to the floor, swords were drawn, and the Legionnaires were quickly mounted on the backs of the centaurs.

Suddenly Varia’s feathered “ears” popped up. Her eyes grew enormous. She screeched an alarm everyone understood and flew out the tunnel entrance.