Spine of the Dragon

by Kevin J. Anderson

  In the town’s highest tower, a support cradle held a bronze bell, which could toll loudly if Hethrren raiders were spotted, calling farmers and shepherds from the surrounding lands into the protection of the stockade. Now sentries in the watchtowers raised a new set of red banners to signal the approaching procession.

  The main gates were open, but well guarded. Tamburdin city guards came forward to greet them, along with the local priestlord. Neré was thin like a spindly birch tree, her dark hair hanging in two long braids. Her brown eyes were like dark knots in pinewood, and her brown caftan had Tamburdin geometric designs. Her collar and cuffs were lined with fox fur.

  Seeing Klovus at the lead of the soldier escort, Neré bowed. “Key Priestlord, I am proud and humbled that you have come. Hear us, save us.”

  “Hear us, save us,” he repeated automatically. “Now, let us get down to business.”

  The party rode through the gate into the enclosed town. The head of the Tamburdin city guard stood at his post, clearly disappointed by the size of the entourage. “Ten soldiers and some priests? That is all the empra bothered to send? All together, you may be able to fight four of the Hethrren!” He had a bushy black beard and a conical iron helmet lined with fox fur. His leather vest was reinforced with dozens of small metal plates.

  Klovus sniffed. “I am here, and I will do what the army cannot.”

  “You can fight Magda herself,” Neré snorted to the guard. “We will handle the rest of the Hethrren.”

  “Magda?” Klovus asked. “The barbarians are led by a woman?”

  “She’s huge and muscular. Some say she married a bear because no man could survive her embraces.”

  “I fear for the bear,” said the bearded guard captain.

  Neré gestured for Klovus and his four priests to follow her. He said loudly, “We must pray and sacrifice to the godling. It exists for the purpose of protecting Tamburdin. That’s all we need.”

  The townspeople muttered, “Hear us, save us.”

  The wooden buildings were covered with shake shingles harvested from the nearby forests. A sweet, biting smell of woodsmoke hung in the air. As Neré led them through the narrow streets, a persistent barking dog harassed one of his ur-priests. The priest tried to frighten it away, waving his hands and shouting, but the dog backed into an alley before rushing around the next narrow street, yapping and growling at him again.

  “Can we just get one of the guards to kill it?” Klovus grumbled. “Let them practice with their bows.”

  Neré drew her brows together. “Dogs are useful. We turn them loose in the hills, and their barking alerts us to the Hethrren.”

  Klovus frowned. “Right now, the barking has only alerted everyone to my priests.”

  The temple in the center of the city was an ornate structure with wooden walls, the boards sanded and stained dark, the pointed roof covered with wooden shingles like large scales. Eight prominent gables flanked the central spire. The main timbers were carved into imposing symbols of the forest, fierce wooden bears, stags, and wolves. Carved eagles protruded from the prominent gables.

  The worshipping hall was built from twisted logs to form uneven, hostile-looking walls. Neré said, “Those logs are from trees that were struck and killed by lightning, so now they hold the power of lightning. The godling can draw on that, along with the sacrifices we share.”

  “It’s a wild and powerful godling,” Klovus said.

  Neré nodded. “We made it that way, and it has grown even more so lately. Now it is restless and barely contained, which is why I may need your help. The Tamburdin District has the usual dangers of a forested land. The rivers run angry with the spring melt. Wolves, bears, and tree leopards prey upon our hunters.”

  Klovus said, “Ishara was a virgin land full of magic when our ancestors arrived. We tamed much of it, but humans are still newcomers here. Out on the boundaries, there will always be dangers.”

  “The natural dangers are not what concern us most,” Neré said. “The Hethrren are fiercer than golden bears or starving wolves.”

  Klovus crossed his arms over his chest and slid his hands into the opposite sleeves of his blue caftan. “What do the barbarians want? Do they wish to take over the city? Does Magda mean to overthrow the district leader and rule for herself?”

  “No, the Hethrren want to take what we have and ride back to their own lands. We are sport to them.”

  Klovus blinked. “That makes no sense. Why would they do that?”

  “The barbarians would never live in our cities. They just want to raid and attack, kill some people, steal food and gold—even though they could collect the gold out of the streams themselves if they bothered to make the effort.” Neré made a disgusted sound. “No one knows where the Hethrren came from, or why they even exist.”

  “So, this Magda doesn’t want to be a queen so much as she wants to be feared?” Klovus thought he understood.

  “When she leads her followers against us, she keeps their violent nature otherwise occupied, then they don’t think about overthrowing her.” Neré scowled. “And we’re the ones who pay the price.”

  Klovus drew his gaze across the lightning-blackened trunks. A wooden carving of a stag with sharp antlers stood at one wall looking toward the shimmering spelldoor. On the other side of the worship chamber towered a fierce wooden bear twice as tall as a man with massive paws and claws as long as knives. Klovus could feel a tingle of magic in his blood and sensed the godling behind its shimmering spelldoor, restless and protective.

  “Call a full worship ritual and sacrifice, with as many people as possible,” Klovus announced. “Tonight we will feed the godling and make it more powerful, part of all of us.” He stood next to tall, thin Neré. “You and I will be partners, and together we’ll give Magda something to fear.”

  62

  THE heat shimmered in the vast desert, sending thermal mirages through the air. Queen Voo could still feel angry vibrations through the ground from when she and her wreths had demonstrated their power. The shock had indeed disturbed Ossus deep beneath the mountains, and she was reassured by her own magic. Voo felt a warm glow in her heart, certain now that her people would ultimately triumph.

  The mage Axus and her brother Quo looked at the black mountains that sliced across the Furnace. The mage nodded slowly. “I am impressed, my queen. We cracked the world like a lizard’s egg.”

  Her eyes gleamed with pride. “Yes, we did this. We can still wring magic out of the land.”

  Quo seemed aloof and cocky. “Then let us do it again and break the rest of the mountains.”

  “We will, dear brother, but not now. We made the dragon stir, but we are not quite ready to fight him.”

  Axus squinted at the line of damaged peaks in front of them. “Ossus has a long memory. For now, we will give him terrible nightmares.”

  Voo led her party to a dry lake bed at the base of the mountains, a white expanse of bitter, salty powder. As crosswinds swirled the dust, a pale haze drifted across the barren lake. The augas had been set loose to romp in the desert, and now they milled about in the powder, crunching through the hard crust and finding pools of scummy water to drink.

  In the days when they still had the power to shape living things, sandwreths had created augas to survive in the most desolate environments. That was when the land itself had magic to spare, and wreths could manipulate it as they liked. Her people had been so ambitious back then.

  Similarly, they had created the human race from dust, just as Kur had created wreths when he made the world. Since even their own god had not made his children perfect, the wreths could not be expected to make humans perfect. And yet, Voo found the subordinate race satisfactory. Recently, she had been impressed by what she saw in Bannriya, the tall buildings, the walls, the persistent civilization. Human progress was much more significant than the small settlements her wreth scouts had first encountered when they began to explore beyond the desert after awakening. When taken in large enough numbers
, these people might actually be as strong as she hoped.

  Voo had brought a party of twenty wreths with her, including hardy workers from the lower castes. Now they clambered over the fractured cliffs, exploring the slopes on her orders. Some ventured into the main fissure that was like a raw wound in the rock. With the mountains split apart, the interior would be pristine, maybe containing a potent residue of magic undamaged by the old wars.

  Maybe something she could use.

  Human laborers would not be sufficiently skilled or strong to do work like this, so she turned her wreths to the task. They wormed their way into cracks, calling to one another, lowering themselves with ropes into the mysterious depths.

  The next time she presented herself to King Adan, she had even grander ideas of what to propose. If she manipulated them properly, or wielded a powerful enough fist, the three human kingdoms would become her allies against the frostwreths. If she swelled her fighting force with humans, they could conquer whatever armies her rival Onn scraped up from the frozen wastes.

  Watching the augas slurp polluted water from the lake crust, she asked her brother, “Would this place be appropriate for another camp, if we brought more human laborers? We should plan ahead, be ambitious.”

  Axus brushed white powder from his face. “It is probably not worth the effort out here. They are very fragile. The heat would kill them, the water would poison them, and then we would need to bring more and more humans just to replace them.”

  Quo gave her a petulant frown. “I have enough trouble tending the ones you already gave me.”

  “Very well, I certainly wouldn’t want to inconvenience you,” she said, annoyed.

  Absently, she swirled salt from the lake bed and fashioned figures of majestic wreth heroes and less-impressive humans. As a game, Voo knocked down the human shapes while Quo crushed them back into powder, then built them up again.

  Mage Axus watched them, his seamed face pulled down in disapproval. “If you want the humans to be effective and loyal, you should treat them with greater care. They damage easily, and broken humans are of no use to us.”

  Voo was indignant that he would speak so boldly to her. “I am not accustomed to having a mere mage question my decisions.”

  “The reason you have mages, my queen, is to serve as your advisors, and I advise you that we should spend our humans where we benefit most from the cost in blood. They are a resource.”

  She pouted. “True, but even the lowest-caste wreth is superior to a human.” She gestured to her people who were exploring the fissure in the mountain.

  “Their chief advantage is that humans breed so quickly.” Quo looked down at the crumbled salt figure he had sculpted. “Remember the old days when they replaced themselves as quickly as we could diminish them? Even our people bred with humans.”

  “If you consider them inferior, then why go to so much trouble?” Axus asked her pointedly.

  Voo was distracted by the augas frolicking in the alkaline powder. They snorted and rolled, crusting their scaled hides with salt crystals. She glanced at her brother and said in a disappointed voice, “Axus does make sense. The humans won’t be useful at all if they do not survive the alliance.”

  Quo bridled. “Are you criticizing my management?”

  “I am suggesting you give them a few more amenities, maybe an extra ration of water and food. If they are going to die, I would rather they died fighting the frostwreths for us.”

  He didn’t sound pleased. “They are quite resilient. We did not expect to find any of them still alive when we woke from our spellsleep. No matter what we do, some of them will manage to scurry out of the way and survive.”

  Their discussion was interrupted by shouts from the peak. A muscular sandwreth worker scrambled out of the fissure, waving his hands. “A grotto! It was once sealed, but the walls are broken!”

  That didn’t sound terribly interesting. She called back, “Are there any artifacts? Things of great power?”

  Quo was already starting up the slope, climbing the slabs of fallen rock. Voo followed, but at a more delicate pace. The muscular worker stood at the top of the fissure, hands on his hips. “We did find something, but I am not sure what it means, my queen. Perhaps one of you can enlighten us.”

  Three workers struggled to lift a heavy object from below. It was a smooth, curved section of murky translucent material, like a piece of a gigantic eggshell, or a fibrous cocoon. The broken section was as large as one of the doors to her bedchamber in the sand palace.

  “We found several fragments in the grotto.” The workers rested the large piece on the rocks above the fissure. It seemed to be made of dark milk, solidified. Voo tapped the hard substance with her fingernail, and to her surprise felt warmth lingering there, a vibration of old magic.

  Huffing with exertion, the mage Axus joined them. He studied the object. “That is not ancient, my queen. Only recently hatched.”

  “I suspected as much,” she said.

  After all their efforts, the wreth workers seemed crestfallen. “You do not find it valuable, my queen?”

  “Oh, we will take it back to the sand palace, where it can serve as a curiosity.” She pondered where she could display the thing. “We may find a use for it. The thing has intrinsic interest.”

  Suddenly, a thrum rippled through her heart and mind, and shuddered into the cracked mountains. The wreth workers scrambled away from the edge of the fissure as boulders shifted and loose rock pattered down into the depths.

  Queen Voo turned her gaze to the sky rather than down into the fissure. She felt the strongest magic, a pull and pang—high overhead. Her brother followed her gaze, and his mouth opened in amazement. He let out a laugh, pointing eagerly upward. Even Axus brightened.

  High overhead they saw an angular reptilian form beating its great wings, raising its serpentine neck as it scanned the desert. Its shadow played across the dry lake bed, and the augas darted about in panic like rodents sensing a predator circling above. The dragon was enormous, its wings triangular, its arrow-shaped head sharp and fierce, its barbed tail like a thick whip. The creature shattered the desert air with a single piercing shriek.

  Still staring, Quo said to his sister, “Is that really Ossus? Did we awaken him after all?”

  Voo snorted. “No, that is just a small dragon, one of the children of Ossus, but killing it will be good for practice. We need to prepare ourselves.”

  She watched the monster fly across the sky, following the line of mountains. Its lair would be somewhere in the desert range, and Voo could use her senses to find it again, wherever it might try to hide. The mages could summon it, but only when she was ready. Her pulse raced. She hadn’t been this excited in some time.

  Voo smiled at her brother. “When we get back to the sand palace, I will call a dragon hunt. What better way to ready our wreth warriors?” Her smile broadened as another idea came to her. “Ah, I will even invite King Adan Starfall to join us. I am sure he would enjoy it.”

  63

  HIS skin was blue with cold, nearly frozen solid. The blood had paused in his veins. The wind blew hard pellets of snow with a scouring, whispering sound across his bare chest, dotting the frozen varnish of splashed blood.

  Lasis opened his eyes.

  His naked body lay discarded with the garbage outside the frostwreth palace along with broken crates, glassware, chipped ceramics … other bodies. Sluggishly, thoughts carved new pathways through his brain.

  After his eyes opened, he heaved a breath. The frozen air sliced like razors in his empty lungs. When he attempted to sit, the sheet of blood on his chest cracked. More red liquid bubbled from the gash in his throat, then stopped as the threads of healing tissue caught and held. He bent his arm, reached up with numb fingers to touch his throat. He pushed the wet, torn flesh together and summoned just a little more of the magic that had saved his life.

  As full-blooded wreth royalty, Queen Onn was far more powerful than he could ever be, but as a Brava, Lasis h
ad unusually powerful skills of his own. Wreths knew how to send themselves into spellsleep, shutting down their breathing, their blood flow, their need to eat for centuries at a time. Rather than bleeding to death when Onn slashed his throat, Lasis had instinctively plunged into the deep trance, pulling the magic around him like a blanket and making himself effectively dead. Then Onn’s servants had discarded him outside, naked and frozen.

  Now that he was awake again, though, he could well die here in the frozen wastes. Blocking any sensation of cold for now, he reached to his side, but he already knew that his ramer was gone. He bent his stiff joints and straightened against the wind, surrounded by unrelenting frozen whiteness.

  Behind him, the palace rose high among other frostwreth structures the ancient race had built as they resurrected their civilization. No matter how much Lasis needed food or shelter, he could not go back into the palace. The frostwreths would capture him again, torture him, kill him.

  Ahead, away from the fine buildings, he saw low rounded structures, hovels scattered outside the great fortress. They were patched together from scraps of metal, tree branches from a faraway forest, even bones, all cemented with ice and snow. He would try to go there, even though they seemed infinitely far away.

  He saw small-statured creatures moving around the huts. A line of them streamed into the frostwreth city, while others worked around their clustered huts to assemble new structures or patch their old ones.

  These were drones the frostwreths had created in a clumsy attempt to forge a new servile race. From what he had seen, the drones were ill treated, but he didn’t trust them. In order to serve their masters, they might well sacrifice him to Queen Onn. Or maybe they would help. The drones were his best chance to survive and escape, perhaps his only chance. He really had no choice.