The Dragon Prince
Page 27
He looked at the dozen parchments on his dresser, where he had kept each of his brother’s missives from across the Small Sea. He grabbed the last one again, the one from a spy acting as a teamster near a battle in Corinth.
Prince Jandhar died in his tent. Possibly assassinated and put to flame. Entire army lost. Dragons destroyed.
The army was a small force, not even one hundredth of the Visanth reserve. The other loss, though, was irreplaceable. It wasn’t supposed to go this way.
His mother buried her head in the crook of her arm. She hadn’t said anything since the message had arrived. He read the message over and over again as he left his room and walked down the hallway toward the center of the palace, where a large garden had been. While his brother Jandhar had roamed the Dragongrounds and stayed aloof from the capital to avoid their mother, Roshan had prepared a present for his older brother’s return. Roshan had hidden the gifts as far from Jandhar as possible and sworn all of his most trusted subjects to utmost secrecy, expecting to one day surprise the true king of the Visanth Empire with what he knew Jandhar had really wanted.
Roshan knew the expedition was doomed, just as his mother had known, but he thought his brother would just lose his army and maybe a few or all of his dragons and fly back home on Jahgo. As Roshan got closer to the garden, the shrieks and squawks grew louder until they became a cacophony. He bent over the railing to observe the garden three stories below.
He had collected hundreds of the finest eggs he could find—learning as much as he could from the spies he had in the markets and the scholars who shared their knowledge for sponsorships and coin. Below him, three dozen dragons out of the hundreds of eggs had reached adulthood. The finest surgeons in Scythica had learned and improved on the methods of those doctors to the east, and these stitches required almost no maintenance. The neck lining of the dragons had been bred into even sturdier skins in the resulting stocks. Some creatures were already ten feet long and all loyal to him.
He read the message one last time and paused at the last sentence. Dragons destroyed.
“Did I kill you by saving these gifts for your return?” he asked, choking on his own grief and bawling as he leaned against the balcony railing. “If you would have had these dragons, would you have survived?”
He cried silently for several minutes. He returned to his room to console his mother and escape the shame he felt for the hoarded dragons. She looked up at him with worry from the divan.
“Tell me you’re not chasing a ghost across the Small Sea,” she said weakly. “Tell me that I will not lose everything to this madness.”
He shook his head as he poured himself water from a nearby pitcher on a dark cherry desk. Unlike his father, he didn’t drink alcohol or visit harems. He didn’t pursue vendettas across oceans on the backs of a handful of dragons. He shied away from danger. He waited for his enemies. He stayed informed with a network of thousands of spies spread throughout the world. He did not try to attract the spotlight. He was the lion in the grass, and the Visanth Empire was now his pride.
“I do not seek to become a hero,” he said, “only a good king.”
She broke down into tears once more.
“You’ll take the crown?” she asked. “You won’t follow your brother? Thank the gods!”
He thought of the missives about the Blood Lord and Orcus.
“The gods had nothing to do with this,” he said. “My brother was killed by demons.”
He drank from his cup of water as he peered out from the balcony. “After they’re done with Surdel, they’ll be coming here. We must be ready for them. I have no interest in ruling a kingdom of the undead and the damned.”
He poured the rest of the water out onto the sunlit porch. “But for now, we mourn. My brother will have a funeral. Forty dragons will burn his ship in the Scythica harbor, and if I find out that the royals of Surdel had anything to do with his death, I’ll see Kingarth reduced to ashes too.”
His mother sighed.
“Don’t worry, mother,” he said, “I’ve already told you that I have no plans to pursue vengeance across the sea. You will not see another Rasalased son die in your lifetime… not on my watch.”
He walked over to her divan and kissed her forehead. Then he summoned three of his closest spymasters and instructed them on the messages that must be sent out to the public and which ones to send out to the questionable nobles in the western cities. If they were susceptible to rumor and plotting, they would be culled. He needed to check the foundations of his empire. His mother joined him in his study to suggest possible wives to solidify his power and start producing heirs.
Most brothers would be in mourning for weeks. He was not most brothers. He was the Lion of Visanth, an untested king, and the last male heir of the Rasalased line. His enemies would come out of the grass, looking for an opportunity to finally elevate their houses to royalty, and he would be waiting for them, ready to pounce and rip out their throats to make an example of them for all to see.
He was not like Jandhar. He channeled his rage into his work. He didn’t push his friends or enemies away; he brought them closer and asked their advice. He did not see destiny in the stars or in a king’s offer of passage across the Small Sea. He saw destiny as what resulted from hard work and planning. His enemies would not see a small army of 10,000 and a handful of dragons—the meager gatherings of an angry young man in a hurry. When Visanth moved again, there would be a million men if there was one, and a cloud of dragons that would blot out the sun.
The End of The Dragon Prince
Book Three of the Age of Magic
The Age of Magic continues in
THE RED POET!
The Age of Magic Series
Age of Magic
The People’s Necromancer
The Dark Paladin
The Dragon Prince
The Red Poet
The Queen’s Consort
The Blood Chief
The Holy One
About the Author
Rex Jameson is the USA Today Bestselling author of the Primal Patterns series, the Age of Magic series, and half a dozen short stories. An avid history buff and an unabashed nerd with an appetite for science fiction and fantasy, he loves to create complex speculative fiction with layered characters. He earned a PhD in Computer Science at Vanderbilt University and researches distributed artificial intelligence in robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. Rex and his wife Jenny live in Pittsburgh where they enjoy hosting family and friends.
Other Fiction by Rex Jameson
The Primal Patterns Series
Lucifer’s Odyssey
The Goblin Rebellion
Shadows of our Fathers
The Perspectives Series
Angels and Demons: Violent Afterlife
Elves and Goblins: Father’s Rebellion
Other Fiction
Hallow’s Ween
“Don’t Mess with the Meadow” in the Pink Snowbunnies Ski in Hell Anthology.
“Saving Suzanna” in The Pride Collection.
If you liked this book and would like the series to continue, please be sure to leave a review on all of those amazing online places where readers congregate to find good books. Also, tell your friends!
Author website: http://www.rex-jameson.com
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