Spine of the Dragon

by Kevin J. Anderson

  The fires continued to spread, reaching several more hovels. Impatient, Elliel said, “They don’t understand you. We have to search ourselves.” She ran past them and pushed aside the tattered skin hanging across the door of the nearest hut. The interior reeked of rot, rancid oil, and unidentifiable odors. She called out, “Birch! We’re here to rescue you.” In the dimness, she saw no human boy, no one else at all. She hurriedly searched the next hovel, also without success.

  Lasis rushed from hut to hut, and the drones imitated the Bravas, hurrying about and looking inside their own homes, as if they didn’t know what might be inside them.

  Before long, Elliel was convinced the child wasn’t among the drones and she turned to face the impregnable ice walls. “If the boy isn’t here, then we have to search the fortress, while we can.” The battle still raged out on the frozen lake.

  Lasis nodded. “Rokk may have kept him as a trophy.”

  Understanding now, three of the drones moved toward a section of ice blocks that was transparent rather than milky blue. But there was no obvious door into the fortress.

  Elliel removed the golden band from her belt. “No time to be subtle. We’ll cut our way in.” She clamped the ramer hard around her wrist, felt the bite of gold fangs drawing blood and magic from within her. Lasis did the same, and together they ignited torches around their hands. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder, they swung their arms as if wielding hatchets of fire. They chopped into the ice, and the ramer blades flashed the frozen barrier into steam.

  They hacked a hole all the way through the wall, and Elliel looked inside. With the three eager drones following like squires, the Bravas pushed their way into the wreth fortress.

  91

  REGARDLESS of his appearance and uniform, Zaha was a killer.

  He walked down the drafty torchlit corridors of the keep’s northern wing, hearing thunder, blowing wind, and the patter of rain outside. The halls smelled of mold and salt, along with smoke from the torches. Fulcor Island was a miserable place.

  The Commonwealth soldiers and staff who normally resided in this wing were staying in the crowded barracks buildings on the main grounds, no doubt anxious for their unwelcome visitors to leave. The keep had the best quarters the garrison could offer, and Empra Iluris herself seemed satisfied.

  Zaha had orders from the key priestlord. He looked like a common Isharan soldier, dressed like the guards who patrolled the halls. Iluris considered herself safe here with her increased guards, giving the konag the benefit of the doubt, trusting him in their open negotiations.

  Failing to understand the repercussions of cooperating with the enemy, she did not cast her net of suspicion wide enough and look to her own people as a threat. The empra’s foolish actions would weaken the godlings and cause incalculable damage to Ishara itself. The Black Eels had been created by and for the priestlords, and the intense, secretive assassins were imbued with a magic that they drew from the land itself, and they would serve.

  Zaha would serve.

  He moved toward the empra’s suite, just another Isharan soldier on patrol. Black Eels could move with utter silence, using stealth for protection, but at the moment there was no reason for stealth. Instead, his greatest weapon would be guile. He walked like a normal man, and his boots echoed on the stone floor.

  The scamp Cemi had taken residence across the hall. As the girl accompanied Iluris, Zaha had noted her avid curiosity, her dangerous diligence. Black Eels did not like attentive people who might notice things they shouldn’t. He would need to be careful around her.

  Although it was long past midnight, Cemi often spent late hours with her mentor, discussing ideas or playing games. If so, Zaha was prepared to kill the girl, too. With the empra herself murdered, what did an orphan street child matter?

  He encountered no one along the torchlit corridor until he reached the closed doors of the empra’s chamber. Two hawk guards stood at attention outside, one on either side of the entrance. Zaha approached slowly, studying their eyes, reaching out with his senses. The elite hawk guards would sacrifice their lives—in vain—to protect the empra’s life.

  But the Black Eels had planned ahead. One of the two men standing at the door made a furtive hand signal to him, and Zaha relaxed. The guard was a Black Eel, wearing the guise of a hawk guard, while the other remained loyal to the empra, an adopted son. Earlier that evening, the Black Eel had killed the actual guard, altered his face and body to look like his victim, and assumed his identity. The body was likely stuffed in a storage chamber or thrown over the walls to be devoured by the waves. Zaha knew no one would ask too many questions once the shouts and alarms started.

  He stepped up to the pair, saw the real hawk guard grow wary, but he could feel the camouflage magic that simmered in the Black Eel’s flesh, behind his eyes. The real hawk guard drew his sword to look intimidating, and beside him, the imposter drew his fighting knife.

  Zaha walked up to them without hesitation. “I have a message for the empra.”

  The real guard said, “She asked not to be disturbed. The message will have to wait until morning.”

  “That is not for you to decide,” Zaha said.

  Without making a sound, the disguised guard shoved the long knife into his comrade’s side, thrusting through the kidney and liver, into the spine. At the same time, Zaha lunged forward to clamp a palm over his mouth to stifle any sound he might make. The dying guard struggled, trying to raise an alarm as he fought and bled, but he lost his battle and sagged with a muffled clatter against the wall. Then Zaha and the other Black Eel eased him quietly to the floor.

  “He was beginning to suspect me,” the Black Eel said. “He asked me too many questions, and I didn’t answer. Apparently, he and the other one were friends.”

  “A murdered guard is another good detail,” Zaha said. “They will find his body just before they find her. When is the changing of the guard?”

  “Not for another hour. You will have plenty of time.”

  Zaha nodded toward the door. “Is she asleep?”

  “She remains awake, but quiet. Reviewing papers, I believe.”

  Zaha removed his helmet, set it on the floor, and checked the curved sword at his hip. He loosened his leather chest armor to give himself room to physically grow. He drew a breath and called upon his shaping magic, stretching his bones, rising taller. Like a sculptor, he adjusted his flesh, widened his cheekbones, elongated his eyes, changed the color of his hair, until he was a different person, easily recognizable as Utho of the Reef.

  “Traditional Brava garments would have completed the image,” he muttered as he ran a hand over his cheekbones, his mouth, and along his chin to massage the fine details. “But a man intent on murder would wear less recognizable clothing.” He studied the Black Eel. “You should go. As part of the plan, I hope to be seen, so there will be witnesses to accuse Utho, but if they see me with you, I will have to kill you as a hawk guard.”

  The other man understood. “If another corpse is required, I will serve.” He looked at the slain hawk guard on the floor.

  “Such a waste would be unfortunate. Stay hidden until the alarms are sounded, then come to fight for your mother the empra, as any hawk guard would.” The other Black Eel showed no relief, no emotion whatsoever. “There won’t be time for questions if we fan the flames properly and create the necessary chaos.”

  The imposter guard slipped away, making no sound.

  Zaha faced the door, grasped the latch, but did not knock. He would give Empra Iluris no warning, although soon enough he would need her to scream. He rattled the latch, but the wooden crossbar was in place; she had locked herself in. He cursed quietly. Obviously she was not as complacent as Klovus had expected.

  Her voice came through the thick wood. “What is it? Who disturbs me?”

  Zaha considered tricking her to open the door, but chose to be more direct. For the narrative, Utho must be a brutish, violent assassin. He turned his hand to stone, hardening the flesh of
his fingers and knuckles, then twisted the latch, splintered the hasp. He shoved it inside, punching a hole through the thick old door. Thrusting his hand into the hole, he reached up to knock the crossbar out of place before the hardening spell faded. He shoved the door inward and burst into the empra’s quarters.

  Iluris was in her nightclothes, a gown of gray silk, and her long hair was down. She pushed back from a desk lit by a candle in a pewter holder. Her gilded traveling chest sat open against the outer wall near a stone bench under the window. Lightning flashed outside. The sheets on her bed were rumpled as if she had tried to sleep, but had gotten up to do more work.

  She lurched to her feet. “Who are you? How dare you intrude?” She took a step backward, looked around for some defense. “Guards! Where are my hawk guards?”

  Outside the door, she saw the uniformed man lying in a pool of blood. Zaha answered in a low voice, “I am here to kill you in the name of the Commonwealth.”

  The words did not trigger the terror he expected. Instead, she seized the pewter candlestick. “You’re the konag’s Brava, Utho of the Reef. I know you.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  She knocked the burning candle loose and it fell onto the desk. The flame guttered out, leaving the room lit only by one other candle by her bedside. The shadows deepened, jumpy and angular. She held the heavy candlestick as a weapon, but Zaha knew it would do her no good.

  He called upon magic to ignite fire in his hand, then threw it. The ball of flames struck the side of her bed, setting the pillow and quilt on fire. Iluris ducked, crouching with the candlestick in hand, but he had missed her intentionally. He had to leave convincing evidence. Another blast of flame struck the stone wall, leaving a black scorch mark, just like a ramer would.

  “What sort of treachery is this?” Iluris shouted, “Help—guards! I’m being attacked!”

  Not confident he would have as much time as he wished, Zaha drew his sword and summoned more fire. He could cut and burn his victim in ways that Utho might have. The fiction would be easy to maintain, especially once others recognized “Utho” as he fled the scene of the murder. With intense fire in his left hand and the sword in his right, he moved forward to kill her.

  * * *

  The candlestick felt heavy in her hands, yet useless against a skilled Brava. But Iluris herself was not useless, and she would not surrender to this man. Could he really be the konag’s grim bodyguard? Bravas hated Isharans because of their tragic past history, and festering memories had kept that vengewar going.

  But she sensed something strange about this man. She fixed on the almond-shaped eyes that indicated his wreth ancestry. Wheels spun in her mind as she tried to find a reason for this attack. What did Konag Conndur have to gain by killing her now, especially in such a blatant way? Their negotiations had proceeded well so far, and assassinating her would surely trigger all-out war between the lands again. That wasn’t what Conndur wanted. This made no sense.

  Therefore, the answer lay elsewhere.

  And then she knew.

  “You’re not the Brava. What are you?”

  The man with Utho’s features hesitated. “You have heard of the Black Eels?”

  The blood curdled in her veins. “Black Eels are just rumors. They don’t exist.”

  “Only our victims have ever seen us. They never survive.” The man raised his sword in one hand, held magical fire in the other.

  Without hesitation, she threw herself at him with a wild scream and swung the candlestick. She startled him, hammering the heavy pewter object down on his left shoulder. The man twisted out of the way and slashed with his sword.

  Iluris ducked and narrowly avoided having the top of her head sliced off, more by luck than skill. He hurled another ball of fire, which struck the writing desk, scorched the wood and ignited the papers. The flames ricocheted, burned the side of her gray silk gown, and caught some of her hair on fire. Scrambling away, she slapped at her hair, and extinguished the flames.

  “Key Priestlord Klovus sent me.” The assassin cocked back his arm, summoned more fire to incinerate her. “I do this for Ishara.”

  In anger and disbelief, she cried, “I am Ishara!”

  Just as he flung the flames at her, Iluris felt an outside force ripple past, a shape made of distorted air and wind, a barely controlled presence that boiled around her and smashed into her attacker, driving him back.

  Iluris didn’t know what had just happened, but she felt the presence ripple, then fade away as it whisked past.

  The Black Eel looked at her in amazement, then his false face twisted in anger. His malleable features distorted, flickered, resolved into a different face before he restored the appearance of Utho. Her bed was burning, the chamber filled with smoke.

  The man roared toward her, and Iluris tried to retreat, but her long nightdress tangled around her ankle. As she stumbled away, she stepped on the wax candle she had dropped on the floor. Iluris fell backward, dropping the pewter candlestick as she tried to catch herself.

  The back of her skull smashed against the stone bench beneath the window. The crack resounded like an explosion in her mind, and she drowned in blackness.

  92

  THUNDER rolled across the sea, echoing over the angry waves, and lightning flared closer in Prince Mandan’s window. He gave up all hope of sleep in this miserable place, on this miserable night. The coals in the hearth had died down to an orange glow. The garrison towers would be high enough to attract lightning on the bleak, rocky island. Even the guards patrolling the open courtyard were vulnerable to a jagged bolt from the sky. He pulled the blankets over him, shivering.

  On a stormy night like this, so many years ago, he had run to his mother for comfort and found her sprawled on her bed, mouth open and eyes half closed as if drowning in sleep. It had been on a night like this …

  Mandan moaned low in his throat and struggled to stay calm, but this strange, gloomy place magnified his fears. Maybe he should have let Utho give him a small dose of poppy milk after all, so that he could fade into a blissful oblivion. Sleep would shelter him from the storm more surely than these stone walls could.

  His mother had sought comfort like that after her stillborn daughter. Even though she had Mandan and Adan to love, the baby’s death had left a cold black void in her heart, a void that even her beloved son couldn’t fill, no matter how much he tried.

  If his father saw Mandan’s mood now, he would scold him and remind him that he was the future konag of the Commonwealth, that he was twenty-five and still refused to take a wife. Mandan had studied politics, agriculture, taxes, trade agreements, history, warfare; it was as much as he could hold in his mind. And still there was more.

  He had pored over the maps of the three kingdoms, learning the counties and their vassal lords, as well as the mountains, rivers, lakes, cities and towns, mines, forests. He thought he knew the Commonwealth, but he felt distant from the actual land and people. The devastation in the Dragonspine Mountains drove home to him the difference between real people—his people—and statistics, tables enumerating supplies in the granaries and warehouses, population figures for settlements, counties, kingdoms.

  He had seen such terrible destruction from Mount Vada, yet there would never be a proper accounting of how many had died … and Mandan couldn’t grasp how many had lived there in the first place. The results of the loose census eight years ago meant little to him. From the walls at Convera Castle, Mandan often looked out across the lower city, the intersecting rivers, the farmlands on either side of the Confluence. He had believed he knew the streets, the rooftops, the markets. He had always thought he could use his abacus, study projections, and make decisions based on what he saw, like a strategy game. But he didn’t understand anything.

  When he was in Scrabbleton, his heart didn’t fully grasp the life or personality of the woman trying to get a cupful of gritty water for her child, both of them covered with ash. He had watched her pour the clogged stream water through layers o
f cloth, filtering it four or five times until the murky liquid was tolerable to drink. While there in the ruined town, Mandan had seen a depth of compassion in his father’s face, a determination to save those people, or at least help them, but that sort of deep caring was missing in Mandan. He didn’t know if it was something he’d ever be able to learn. He had tried. Truly, he’d tried.

  A roar of thunder shook the walls of the keep. Rain sheeted down against his window.

  He heard distant shouts and alarms, and a bell rang in the courtyard. He pushed off the woolen blankets, suddenly concerned. Danger? His eyes darted around his chamber, and he wondered if he should throw the crossbar and barricade himself in the room. What if the Isharans were attacking? What if the keep fell! Maybe the Isharans had used his father’s overtures as a pretext to capture the fortress.

  He wished Utho were here. Barefoot, Mandan crept to the door in his linen nightshirt, opened it a crack, and listened. The keep resounded with distant outcries, but they seemed to be coming from the Isharan wing. He heard the running guards, probably garrison soldiers rallied by Watchman Osler. He glanced up and down the corridor, wondering why he didn’t have a private guard of his own. He was the prince, after all! At least Utho should have been there to defend him.

  Farther down the corridor, he saw the thick door of the konag’s chambers. It was partially open, and bright light streamed out. His father must be awake.

  Leaving his quarters, Mandan hurried down the hall, but hesitated when he heard the noise outside rise to a crescendo. The courtyard bell rang and rang. For now, the corridor seemed safe, but he knew he would be safer with the konag. He pushed open the door without knocking. “Father! Something’s happening out there.”

  The stench struck him full in the face. A wave of burnt hair, scorched flesh, the gagging wet-metal smell of blood—so much blood!

  Mandan screamed.

  Lit by hanging lanterns and two burning candles, the konag’s chambers were an abattoir. Conndur the Brave lay sprawled on the bed, horrifically mutilated, the pieces of his body in the wrong places. Mandan couldn’t even understand what he was seeing. His father wasn’t … right.