In the Hall of the Dragon King

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  Eskevar had but little time to rally his flagging troops before the enemy surged around them like a flood whose waters rose to overwhelm all. At once the hapless defenders were surrounded on every side and cut off from any possible retreat. The warlords urged their warriors to fight in a frenzy, and one by one the Dragon King’s brave soldiers fell.

  Ronsard and Theido fought to keep abreast of the king and protect him to the very end. But a sudden rush of the enemy swirled up before them and drove them apart.

  Three black-braided, howling Ningaal, mouths foaming, eyes wild and faces smeared with blood, leaped up and grabbed the reins of Theido’s mount. One of the attackers instantly lost a hand in a crimson gush; another dropped dead to the earth, his axe in Theido’s chest, and the knight felt the blade bite deep as his armor buckled and parted. He reeled in the saddle, falling back beneath the force of the blow, which would have killed most men.

  The Ningaal attacker, still clutching the haft of his axe, was pulled off the ground as Theido’s courser reared. Theido swung his buckler down upon the enemy’s head, and his opponent fell sprawling to the earth, where the warhorse’s flashing hooves made short work of him.

  Theido, by some miracle, remained in the saddle and wrenched the axe from the crease in his chestplate. He knew himself to be grievously wounded but turned to look for Ronsard and Eskevar. The current of battle had carried them far apace. He saw Ronsard engaging four or five enemies with flaming pikes and swords, trying to keep them from reaching the king, when suddenly a warlord, charging into their midst with his black cape flying, struck into the fight.

  Instantly the warlord was met by the lightly armed figure of Myrmior. The seneschal, his face a mask of hate, thrust himself between the king and the warlord. Theido saw Myrmior’s sword flash in the starlight in a shining arc. The warlord raised his blade; Myrmior’s sword shattered with the force of his mighty blow. The warlord struck again and beat angry Myrmior’s shield. Theido watched, helpless, as the warlord’s cruel and curving blade flicked out and buried itself deep in Myrmior’s unprotected chest. Myrmior clutched at the blade with one hand and pulled, even as the warlord sought to withdraw it, jerking the battle lord forward in the saddle. In the same instant Myrmior brought his broken sword up and slammed it into the warlord’s throat. Theido then saw the two men topple to the earth.

  So quickly did this happen that Theido scarcely lifted the reins to send his mount forward and it was over. From his vantage point the knight saw Ronsard, who had killed three of his assailants, lurch away and drive once more to the king’s side. But in that momentary lapse, worlds were lost, for Theido, already pounding to his aid, saw Eskevar pulled from the saddle to sink into a boiling mass of Ningaal with pikes and axes.

  Ronsard reached the spot where his monarch went down first. He killed two with one stroke and four more in as many passes. Theido’s arrival sent the rest darting away as Ronsard, heedless of his own safety, flung himself from the saddle and knelt beside his king.

  Soon there were shouts all around. “The king has fallen! The Dragon King has fallen!” The defenders swarmed to his side, forming a wall around the body of their beloved ruler.

  Ronsard held Eskevar’s head in his hands and carefully removed the king’s helmet. “It is over, brave friend,” Eskevar gasped. “I shall lift my blade no more.”

  “Do not say that, Sire,” said Ronsard, tears seeping out of the corners of his eyes to run down his broad cheeks. He tore off his own gauntlet and thrust a corner of the king’s cloak into a bleeding wound at the base of Eskevar’s neck.

  “There is no pain . . . no pain,” said Eskevar, his voice a whisper. “Where is my sword?”

  “Here, Sire,” said Theido, placing his own weapon into the king’s grasping hands.

  Eskevar clutched the weapon to his breast and closed his eyes.

  Those watching from the castle ramparts and battlements saw the king fall, and a cry of grief and dismay tore from their hearts as from the throat of a mortally wounded beast. But the cry had not yet died in the air when someone shouted, “Look to the east!” All eyes turned their gaze eastward, where the forlorn watchers beheld a strange and wondrous sight.

  It appeared to those watching, and to the soldiers crouching over the body of the Dragon King, that lightning flashed out of the east with the brightness of the blazing sun, for there was a sudden blinding flare that seemed to fill the sky, outshining even the light of the Wolf Star.

  Another burst of brilliant light struck the sky, and surging Ningaal paused to look up from their bloody work to view with alarm this new marvel.

  Suddenly all anyone could see was the form of a knight on a white horse bolting out of the east. In his upraised arm he carried a sword that blazed and flashed with living light.

  All the earth seemed to fall silent before the approach of this unknown knight. The thunder of his charger’s hooves could be heard pounding over the plain as he flew as on eagle’s wings into battle.

  “Zhaligkeer!” someone shouted. “The deliverer has come!”

  A murmur swept through the ward yards and towers of Askelon. Alinea, Bria, and Esme, holding vigil in the eastern tower, looked out through tearful eyes to see this strange sight. The soldiers of the Dragon King, standing shoulder to shoulder around their fallen lord, raised their visors in astonishment.

  The sword in the knight’s hand seemed to cast a beam of light toward heaven as he rode swiftly onward. The Ningaal, amazed at this unheralded apparition, looked on with gaping mouths. Even Nin, Supreme Deity of the Universe, struggled to his feet from his throne upon his platform to better see what was happening.

  Quentin, astride the speeding Blazer, saw the remnant of the Dragon King’s army surrounded by the enemy upon the plain. With Toli at his side, he had no other thought but to rush to their aid and take his place beside them. In his dash he had seen the standard of the Dragon King fall beneath the flood of the enemy. He had then drawn his sword and with a battle cry he launched himself straight toward the place where he had marked the banner’s fall.

  Zhaligkeer burned with the brilliance of a thousand suns, throwing off bolts of lightning that seared the air. For the Ningaal, transfixed by the unearthly vision, this was too much. Unafraid of bold earthly warriors, they were terrified at the appearance of this heavenly foe. The barbarians threw down their weapons and fled before him. Quentin drove into the center of the reeling horde and rode untouched into the midst of the Dragon King’s awestruck army.

  Quentin glanced down and saw his friends Theido and Ronsard kneeling over the body of Eskevar. He read the sadness in their eyes and knew that the Dragon King was dead.

  Without a word Quentin wheeled Blazer around and leaped after the fleeing Ningaal. An unspeakable grief seized his mind, and Quentin had no thought but to drive the hated enemy before him, to ride until he could ride no more, to the sea and beyond. In his mindless grief he drove straight toward Nin the Destroyer and his fifty thousand panic-stricken warriors. The Ningaal parted before the invincible knight with the flaming sword, as waves before the tempest.

  Quentin saw nothing distinctly; it was as if he had entered a dream. Pale shapes moved before him, rolling away on either side like clouds; the night sky was filled with a burning white light. Then there was a darkness before him that rose up in a seething mass.

  Zhaligkeer flashed in his hand. Quentin raised himself in the saddle and flung the sword skyward with a mighty shout. The sword spun in the air, and it seemed that as it reached the apex of its arc it suddenly exploded with a blinding crack that showered tongues of fire all around.

  The sky went white, and every man threw his hands before his face to save his eyes. It seemed to Quentin that he entered his vision, for he was once more the knight standing upon a darkling plain, wearing the shining armor and lofting a blazing sword that burned into the heart of the darkness gathered about.

  There was a shudder in the air, and he felt the fire rush through him. Though the lightning dance
d blinding waves around him, he opened his eyes and saw the darkness roll away, revealing a city splendid and beautiful, shimmering in the light as if carved of fine gold and gems. The exquisite sight brought Quentin off his horse and onto his knees.

  He threw his hands before his face to blot out the vision, and the tears came rising up as from a spring. In that moment he felt in his inmost soul the hand of the Most High God upon him.

  When Quentin raised his head, he was alone, and the night was dark. The Wolf Star had disappeared in a great flash. Some said that the Shining One had reached up into the sky and smitten the star and extinguished it, for it vanished in the same instant that Quentin had thrown the sword.

  Zhaligkeer had fallen to earth and was found buried to the hilt in the obscene body of the Immortal Nin. The Conqueror of Kings lay dead, pinned to the ground like a serpent. His unhappy minions, witnessing the swift miracle of their cruel lord’s death, fled screaming over the plain. Their pitiful cries filled the night as they sought to escape the justice that would soon overtake them. The warlords of Nin fell upon their swords and joined their loathsome sovereign in his well-deserved fate.

  Quentin returned to the place where Eskevar lay. Together with Theido and Ronsard and the lords and knights of Mensandor, he picked up the body of the king and, lifting it upon his shoulders, bore it away to Askelon.

  56

  The funeral of the Dragon King lasted three days, and his mourning continued for thirty. During this time Wertwin and the armies of Ameronis, Lupollen, and the others arrived—greatly saddened and contrite, for the news of the king’s death had overtaken them on their way. They were in pursuit of the Ningaal who were fleeing back along the Arvin toward the sea, where their ships still waited. The lords slew many of the enemy in their flight, and the rest were driven into the sea at lance point.

  Eskevar’s body was taken at once to the castle, where it was placed upon his own bed. Durwin, aided by Biorkis, came to minister to the body, washing it and composing it for entombment. Inchkeith worked long hours over the king’s armor, pounding out the dents inflicted upon it in the last battle and shining it bright as new. Queen Alinea herself dressed her husband in his finest garments; Bria and Esme adorned him with his most treasured jewels. And then he was taken to the great hall, where he was solemnly laid upon his bier.

  The king’s body lay in the great hall for two days, guarded by a sorrowful contingent of knights and nobles throughout the day and night while a steady procession of tearful subjects filed past the litter. The miserable, wailing peasants filled the ward yards, and afflicted citizens roamed the streets of the town, inconsolable with grief. The great Dragon King had passed; no one had ever thought to see that dark day.

  Quentin remained in his chamber and would see no one. He did not even venture to the battlements to watch the funeral pyres of all the brave dead of the king’s proud army as they burned upon the plain. He held himself to blame for the king’s death, reasoning that if he had arrived but a few heartbeats sooner, Eskevar would still be alive. Quentin would neither eat nor sleep, but sat slumped in a chair before the darkened, empty hearth.

  At midnight on the second day, Quentin bestirred himself and crept quietly to the great hall. The mourners had gone, and no one lingered in the hall except the ten knights standing as statues of stone around the body. Torches burned on standards at the four corners of the bier, casting a soft, hazy light over the pall. Quentin moved closer, mounting the flower-strewn platform to kneel beside the body.

  In the lambent glow the king’s features were relaxed and calm; except for the unnatural stillness, he might have been asleep. Gone were the traces of illness that had so wasted his noble frame. Gone, too, were the lines of care and concern that had creased his features in the last few days. The years seemed to have been rolled away, and Quentin saw a younger Eskevar than he had known. His hair was dark and swept back over his temples. The high forehead was smooth, the nose straight and well formed above a firm but not ungentle mouth. The hard jut of the jaw had been softened, revealing a man at peace within himself, and the deeply cleft chin spoke of the unflinching purpose of the man who had been. The king wore his armor and held his helm nestled under his left arm. His sword lay upon his chest, where it was held at the hilt in his right hand. The writhing dragon device on the king’s breastplate seemed to twist and wink in the firelight. A cloak of royal blue edged in silver and gold was fastened at the throat by a golden chain and the king’s favorite dragon brooch. Eskevar appeared ready to leap to his feet and ride once more to the trumpeter’s call.

  Quentin bowed his head, and hot tears fell upon the bier. He recalled so vividly the time when he had seen his king just so, held in the evil Nimrood’s spell. Then, by an impossible miracle, the necromancer’s enchantment had been broken and the Dragon King freed to live again. But it was a far more powerful sorcery that embraced the king now, one that claimed all men in the end and from which there was no release.

  Quentin heard a soft step behind him, and he felt a light touch on his shoulder. He glanced up to see Queen Alinea, dressed all in sable, looking down on him, her green eyes deep pools of sorrow, but shining more beautifully for the compassion with which she regarded him.

  “I have sought you these past two days, my son.” The queen spoke softly, and the tone eased Quentin’s troubled heart. He did not speak.

  “You must not blame yourself, for in the end he chose his own course, as he ever did. It was his wish to die serving the kingdom he loved. And of all his loves, this one, his love for his realm, claimed his highest devotion. He was a king first and a man only second.”

  “Thank you for your words, my lady. They do soothe me well. I will not blame myself, though I did at first. I know now that his course was set for him long ago. He would not bend to another.”

  “Not and remain Eskevar for very long. Look at him, Quentin. See how peacefully he slumbers. Death held no terror for him; he had conquered it many times. The thing he feared and hated most was that his realm would fall before him, and he would not be able to save it. That gnawed at him; it poisoned his last days. But he conquered that, too, in the end.”

  “How well you knew him, Alinea.”

  “Knew him? Perhaps I knew him as well as anyone could, and I loved him with all my heart; he loved me, too, in his way. But a king does not belong to himself, or to his family. He belongs to his kingdom. Eskevar felt this more intimately than any I have known. He died for Mensandor as he lived for it.

  “But there was much that even I did not know of him. The long years of war, years away from his home, took more than time away from us. Many was the night I cried out in loneliness for my husband and would have had a strong hand to hold my own. There was none. Eskevar was away, fighting for his kingdom. Even when he returned, he never rested; he was always turning his eyes here and there, searching every remote corner of Mensandor for any sign of weakness or trouble.

  “He once told me—by way of apology, I think—‘If you seek to know me, know first my kingdom.’ He was Mensandor; its life was his.”

  Quentin looked upon the dead monarch, realizing there was much he would never know of the man who had adopted him to be his own. “Now that he is dead, what will happen to his realm?” he wondered aloud.

  “It shall live on in the life of the new Dragon King,” murmured the queen softly. She bent over her husband’s body and removed the dragon brooch and chain. She then turned and drew Quentin to his feet. “You will find this to be far heavier than the weight of its gold, my dear one. But he wanted you to have it, and all that goes with it.”

  Quentin shook his head slowly, fingering the golden brooch the queen had fastened on his cloak. “I was never his son. As much as I love you both and am grateful for your kindness to me these many years, I am not fit to be king.”

  “Who would be better?”

  “His trueborn son, perhaps.”

  “You know he had no male heir. But I shall tell you something. I have alway
s thought it strange that a man who valued his throne so highly would have—”

  “Given it away so freely,” muttered Quentin.

  “No, he did not give it away at all, Quentin. You see, Bria was born just before Eskevar went to war with Goliah. When he learned that I could have no other children, and his offspring was female, I expected him to be angry. I offered to relinquish my crown so that he could take another, but he would not hear of it. He said he was content, that he would trust whatever god that ruled him to provide an heir when the time came. He never spoke of it again.

  “So when he asked you to be his ward, I knew he had found his heir. How he knew, I cannot say. But he saw something in you that pleased him very much.”

  “It seemed a kingly whim to me, my lady. Not that I was not overjoyed to receive his high favor. But as much as I loved him and Askelon, Dekra is my home. He must have known that.”

  “It did not matter. He wanted for you only your happiness. He knew that when the time came, you would fulfill his hopes and expectations, so deep was his trust.”

  “I hope he was not mistaken. I pray he was not,” said Quentin. Alinea looked upon the still form of the king and, drawing a long breath, turned away at last, offering Quentin her hand.

  “He was not mistaken, my son. All is as it should be—as he would have had it. You will see.”

  Quentin cast a glance toward the body and withdrew with Alinea on his arm. Their footsteps echoed in the darkened hall, and when they had gone, silence again reclaimed her own.

  The next morning the body of the king was taken to the Ring of the Kings, the ancestral resting place of the Mensandorean monarchs established within the green walls of Pelgrin Forest.

  The funeral cortege, made up of knights and nobles on horseback and loyal subjects on foot, wound through the hastily cleared streets of Askelon. Townspeople stood among the ashes of their ruined city to pay a last farewell to their sovereign. Quentin rode on Blazer, next to Alinea and directly behind the funeral wain. Bria and Durwin followed and were in turn followed by Theido and Ronsard, who led the procession of noblemen. Others came on in turn, riding beneath their colorful devices and banners. At the head of the cortege, the Dragon King’s own standard carried his red dragon hung with pennons of black.