Spine of the Dragon

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “And yet,” Adan insisted, taking a seat, but remaining on edge as he raised his voice, “the wreths have come back, Father! Last time, they laid waste to this entire continent.” His voice cracked. “Kollanan and I both saw what they did to Lake Bakal. And down in Bannriya, I lived through the terrible dust storm they brought, and I looked directly at Queen Voo when she explained the threat. I believe this time the wreth factions truly mean to wake the dragon and destroy the world.”

  Prince Mandan chuckled, as if this were just some old quarrel with his younger brother. “Wake the dragon! Wreths! Such fanciful stories.” He glanced at Utho, as if for reassurance. “Humans have the world now. The wreths were broken and defeated. No one has seen them since they disappeared.”

  “We have,” Koll said in a gruff voice, then turned away from Mandan as if the prince were beneath his notice. Instead, his gaze burned into the konag’s eyes. “I saw it, Conn. I saw it! The wreths erased that entire town as if it were nothing, as if the people didn’t matter. Because they were in the way! And the wreths will keep coming.”

  “Of course I believe both of you,” Conndur said with an edge of exasperation. “But what do they want?”

  After an uncomfortable silence, Adan said, “The sandwreth queen wants us humans to fight beside them against their enemies. We will need the Commonwealth armies just to stand against them.”

  Utho said, “The wreths created humans, but they abandoned us thousands of years ago. They have not bothered us in all that time. But the Isharans attacked us directly, again and again. They murdered so many innocents.” He paused, turning his hard eyes to the others gathered at the table. “And the Isharans are real. They are the true enemy.”

  “How can you say that?” Adan asked. “We’ve seen wreths, talked to them, and—”

  “Talk.” Mandan scoffed at his younger brother. “Suderra is far away and doesn’t need to fear any Isharan attacks. Of course you don’t take the threat seriously. Of course you think your problems are more important.” He made a rude noise. “Your kingdom is safe, while Osterra is in danger. Our cities are about to be ravaged, just like Mirrabay.”

  Conndur touched the prince’s forearm, making him fall silent. “Mandan, if I wanted to hear Utho speak, I would have asked him myself.”

  The prince flushed, sounding indignant. “You asked me to learn more about politics, Father. Well, I am learning! Utho teaches me, and I trust his judgment.”

  Struggling to contain his impatience, Adan looked at his uncle, trying to figure out what to do, what else they could say. Kollanan’s eyes were hooded, his face drawn in a grim frown. “You haven’t seen what we’ve seen, Conn. War is coming, worse than anything you could imagine.”

  “There will be war,” Mandan said. “On that much we agree.”

  36

  AFTER Kollanan and Adan had departed for Convera, Fellstaff Castle felt empty, cold, and dangerous, now that Queen Tafira knew what was out there. Though the staff built up the fires in all the main rooms, she felt a clinging chill everywhere. Tafira wrapped herself in a fur-lined cape and slipped her feet into rabbitskin slippers. The northern kingdom was much colder than her native Ishara, and she doubted she would feel warm again until Koll came back home.

  Throughout the day, she met with the string of nobles who had followed the king’s urgent instructions to take a census of their available fighters, to inventory their weapons and armor, and to build up the defenses in their separate holdings. Lords Teo, Cerus, Alcock, and Bahlen rode in from outlying counties after hearing the news, only to find that the king had already departed for Convera. They were full of questions.

  “Wreths? Truly?” asked gaunt and skeptical Cerus. “My county has a dozen wreth ruins with broken walls and collapsing towers. People tend to stay away from them, but the ancient race is as dead as my grandsire. How can they pose a threat now?”

  “You are welcome to ride up to Lake Bakal and see for yourself,” Tafira said, “but I wouldn’t expect you to come back.”

  Cerus gave a slow, respectful nod. “I am deeply sorry to hear about your daughter and her family, my queen.”

  Lord Alcock paced the floor in the throne room, his back to the roaring fireplace. “Couldn’t some natural disaster have frozen the lake? We have seen terrible winters before and did not blame the wreths.”

  Tafira’s voice was heavy with the ice of anger. “I saw my husband’s face, and that is all I need to see. He encountered the frostwreths himself, spoke with them and barely escaped with his life. Later, he rescued a young man who hid in the woods and witnessed the whole thing. Pokle—the only survivor of Lake Bakal, as far as we know—is here now and still scared of his own shadow. You can talk with him, if you like. You will see at a glance that he’s been through some terrible ordeal.”

  Lasis entered the throne room, wearing his black leather armor and boots. “I myself saw the wreths building a great fortress on the shore where the town was. It appears to be a beachhead, the first step in a full-scale invasion. Norterra must be ready for them.”

  Though Lord Teo seemed willing to debate with Tafira, he didn’t dare contradict the Brava. He gave Lasis a slight bow. “Very well, I believe you.” He offered a sheaf of papers to the queen, who also accepted similar documents from Cerus and Bahlen.

  Lord Alcock’s brow furrowed. “An Utauk trader came through saying much the same thing about sandwreths down south. They appeared out of a dust storm, he said. He might as well have been telling tales of dragons, so we did not take him seriously. Ancestors’ blood, we should have believed him.”

  “Yes, you should have,” Tafira said. “Now that my husband calls us to arms, we have to prepare. He hopes to convince the konag to send a significant part of the Commonwealth army to defend Norterra and Suderra. If we all fight together, we can be strong enough to drive off these wreths.”

  After the lords left, looking disturbed, the Brava stood at attention in the queen’s presence, as if he needed to tell her something. She smiled at him. “I am glad to have your assistance, Lasis. My beloved is away, but I rely on your strength to protect the kingdom.”

  “You are a strong ruler in your own right, my queen, and the defenses of Fellstaff are improving every day.” He glanced out the arched windows that allowed pale sunlight into the chamber. “But there seems to be more to this conflict … so much we do not know.” He raised his square chin. “With your permission, I would like to gather information, which we can use to plan our defenses. You need not worry for your safety while I’m gone. I will have the vassal lords send additional guards to keep Fellstaff secure.”

  Though the Brava was bonded to King Kollanan’s service, he often went on journeys of his own as a wandering enforcer, a reminder of peace and law throughout the kingdom. Tafira had grown used to his absences, but she had never been concerned about an overarching threat to Norterra before. She looked at him for a long moment, assessing him. “Shall I send a contingent of soldiers with you?”

  “For some missions, a single man—especially a Brava—can be more successful than a small army.” He touched the ramer at his side. “I need to learn if the wreth attack against Lake Bakal was directed toward killing humans, or if the village just happened to be in the wrong place.”

  Tafira sat back in the hand-polished chair. “Our people are still dead. Does the reason matter?”

  “It does, my queen. Have the wreths declared war on humans? Will they hunt us down the way Isharans raid our coastal villages because they hate us so? Or do they simply consider us irrelevant to their schemes? If the latter, our safest course may be just to stay out of their way. We need to know the nature of our enemy.”

  Tafira’s eyes held his for a long and silent moment. “I trust you to do what you need to do. You have my leave to go. Come back with vital information that we can use to save ourselves.”

  * * *

  Lasis headed out before sundown, still regretting that he had let Kollanan go by himself to Lake Bakal in the
first place. Even during peacetime, no king should be without his faithful Brava, not even Koll the Hammer.

  He chose Char, a sooty gray stallion from the stables. He planned to continue through the night under the full moon, and he knew the mount was reliable and strong. More importantly, as he raced under the shadowy pine boughs that arched over the road, the horse’s coat looked like snowfall on ashes and would provide camouflage when he tried to get close to the frostwreths.

  He headed single-mindedly north, stopping only to give Char his feed bag and to drink at clear cold streams that were dotted with fallen leaves. When the stallion needed rest, Lasis stopped for a few hours and napped as well.

  After two days of hard solo travel, Lasis neared the high northern lake and slowed the horse to a guarded walk. They reached the crest of the ridge just after dawn. The rising sun reflected from the frozen expanse of Lake Bakal and washed over the looming ice and stone blocks of the frostwreth fortress.

  In the early-morning silence, sounds of construction carried across the high valley. Ice crackled as blocks were cut free from the solid lake, lifted by magic, then stacked and frostwelded into place. Construction stones scavenged from the town’s original buildings reinforced the wall. He saw hundreds of the white wreths.

  Lasis narrowed his eyes and drew a breath, feeling heat burn within him, a glimmer of the wreth blood that lay so deep in his ancestry. Bravas accepted and respected their half-breed heritage, which gave them access to the magic that let them wield their ramers and draw upon other spells. But Lasis hated his forebears for what they were. The wreths had treated their creations horribly. Their half-breed children, ancestors of the Bravas, were not the result of passionate romance or warm love. No, human mothers had been taken from the ranks of slaves, raped, and impregnated. Wreth women had forced male human lovers to perform or die.

  Lasis found no great honor in his wreth heritage, but he could use his strength and abilities against them now. As a Brava, he had sworn his life to serve and protect the king and the Commonwealth. He had to assess what kind of threat this unexpected enemy posed. The wreths would be sorry they had returned.

  In the cover of the skeletal trees, he slid off the back of his gray charger. Lasis pulled a gray cloak over his normal black garb and paced alongside the horse, taking advantage of its white-and-gray camouflage. He carried a long traditional knife at his right hip and the ramer clipped to his left, though he did not plan to fight.

  Keeping to the shelter of the silver pines, he descended toward the lake. When they reached the edge of the trees at the rocky shore, but still far from the gigantic fortress, Lasis loosely tied Char’s reins to a branch, then touched his forehead to the horse’s mane. “This part I must do alone.”

  He crept off, making little sound. His black boots whispered in the snow as he wove through the trees, following the edge of the frozen lake over rough terrain. When he grew closer, he looked up at the fortress walls that rose precipitously from the shore, anchored on the black rocks. The base covered the area that had been the town square and outlying streets.

  Peering out from between two pines, he watched the activity. Strange beings worked on the site, smaller than humans, but not wreths either. Their faces and arms were smooth, as if only partially formed out of softened wax that held little detail. Were they some other kind of servants?

  He caught sight of several tall, hairless wreths in gray-and-blue robes: mages. Additional wreths with body armor and long, wild hair shouted orders. Their obvious leader, a lanky warrior who gripped a white spear with a long spiraled shaft, gestured toward the walls and work teams, directing the activity.

  Lasis crept closer, lifting a snow-laden pine bough to crouch under it. Loose snow showered onto his gray cloak, and he brushed himself off, inching along the lakeshore. Ripples ridged the lake’s surface, indicating that everything had frozen instantly, so that even the stirrings of wind on the water had been locked in place.

  The wreth mages used magic for much of their heavy labor, which explained how the construction could have progressed so rapidly, and on such a vast scale. Work crews used coils of black, braided rope and gangs of drone workers to manually haul blocks of ice into position. Gauging the size of the fortress, he wondered if this would be the final extent of the structure, or if the frostwreths would expand it, maybe all the way around the lake.

  The morning sun glinted on an enormous block being hoisted high up the tallest tower. As Lasis moved closer so he could see better, a large shard broke off and fell. Like a giant ax head, it tumbled down among the workers, killing several of them. The black rope slipped, and the huge block began tumbling down the side of the tower.

  Responding with a shout, two mages lunged forward and raised their hands as the ice block scraped down the immense wall. Their magic seized the block in the air and held it in place. With a flash of steam, the ice block fused to the tower wall, ruining the otherwise perfect symmetry, but at least it didn’t smash to the ground. The wreth mages stood concentrating as they melted the imprisoned block. Water flowed in thick runnels down the tower wall and froze there like flat icicles.

  Lasis was daunted by the power he had just witnessed. The warrior crew leader was no longer visible, although the tall wreth man had been near the front of the crowd only a moment ago. Feeling exposed, he folded himself in among the pines again. Behind him, a sudden unnatural chill made the air brittle, and he whirled.

  Three wreth warriors stood behind him, moving with a silent grace far superior to his own. “We found a snow rabbit,” said the tallest warrior, the one who commanded the work crews.

  Lasis backed away, one hand straying to the ramer at his side.

  “Queen Onn was right, Rokk,” said a second warrior. “We should not have killed all the men in this little town. They could serve as better laborers than the drones. Let us take this one alive.”

  Rokk narrowed his large, cold eyes. “He is a strong one, and my darling Onn will wish to speak with him.”

  Lasis unclipped his ramer. “I’ll fight you.”

  Rokk chuckled. “That should be amusing. Let us see how you can try.”

  Lasis slipped the golden band around his wrist and clamped the halves together. Golden teeth drew blood, activating the spell designs. Heat surged through him, and a corona of fire lit around his wrist, engulfing his hand in a ball of flame. By force of will, he extended it into a hot serpentine coil, then swept his arm to lash out with the flames.

  Laughing, Rokk lunged forward with his long crystalline spear and met the Brava’s fiery whip. Lasis snatched his arm back, coiling the ramer flame around the shaft of the spear, but the frostwreth warrior yanked hard, unleashing magic of his own. The Brava felt stark cold plunge down into his hand, but the blood-fueled fires grew hotter. He intensified the ramer whip until Rokk’s spear smoked and shattered in his hand.

  The frostwreth warrior recoiled in surprise, looking at the splinters in his hand. “Now, that is unexpected.” He cast the debris aside and called to his companions. “All the more reason to capture him.”

  The wreth warriors closed in, and Lasis lashed the air, drawing a line of fire in front of them. They hesitated.

  Then a frostwreth mage emerged from the trees to confront him. Lasis felt a knot in his stomach. He had come here to see what the wreths were building, and he needed to report to King Kollanan. Perhaps it had been unwise to undertake this mission alone after all. But he did not surrender. If nothing else, he would kill as many as he could to avenge the poor villagers who had been swept up in ice and fear.

  He lashed ramer fire at two wreth warriors, but they managed to block it with their spears, driving the flame back. Lasis spread his fingers apart, splitting the ramer fire into multiple tendrils and used them to strike at the wreth mage, knowing this was the most dangerous opponent.

  “Eres,” Rokk said to the mage, “this one seems to have interesting magic.”

  The mage seemed intrigued as well. “Wreth magic. He must be
descended from the bastard children of our nobles. Apparently some of them still live.”

  Lasis attacked with multiple tendrils of fire like a handful of blazing whips. The flames skittered across the wreth mage, left smoking lines on his blue-and-gray robes, but the lines quickly disappeared. Eres stepped closer, unhurried, and reached out with an open palm, pushing his hand toward the ramer. Its tendrils retracted, withered, dimmed.

  The mage closed his palm and fingers over Lasis’s burning hand, and the ramer fire guttered.

  With his free hand, Lasis drew the long knife at his waist so he could keep fighting, but the pulse of cold backed into the ramer, down his arm, and through his chest. His blood turned to ice. Though he kept trying to fight, he couldn’t wrench himself free.

  The other two wreth warriors closed in behind Lasis and clubbed him with the spiral hafts of their long spears. When the fire in his hand died out, so did the light of his consciousness.

  37

  EVEN as she left the great Convera remembrance shrine, Shadri knew she could have spent a lifetime—a hundred lifetimes—reading through the records of names and legacies, but she had overstayed her welcome with Chief Legacier Vicolia. Still, she had many other interests and many other things to learn, in no particular order.

  In only a short time, Shadri had read countless legacies in huge volumes, filling her mind with the stories of their lives. She loved working in the remembrance shrine, even as a cleaning girl, and some of the legaciers had encouraged her interests, but the chief legacier constantly reminded her that she didn’t belong.

  In another time, another life, Shadri might have become a legacier herself. She could have devoted each day to compiling, organizing, and preserving legacies in the great archive, or she could have managed a local remembrance shrine in a smaller town. She would have been fascinated by the work … at least for a time.