When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by K. Scott Lewis

  7 - Betrayal

  Lunarin had already dressed when Duke Montevin and Aiella visited her chamber at daybreak. Servants accompanied them with trays and covered platters of food. They set out a small table with a breakfast of fruits and cheeses, alongside some sweet rolls.

  The duke sat and then Aiella. “Please join us,” he gestured to the empty chair.

  Lunarin sat politely, hands folded on her lap. Her long hair fell gently over her shoulders, matching the pure white of her gown.

  “I trust that you are comfortable?” Montevin asked.

  “Comfortable enough,” she answered crisply. A memory, someone else’s memory, flashed through her mind in irritation at the lords of Windbowl. But she also had the strong sense that was another time and a different ruling family.

  “Please,” he said, gesturing to the food. “We’ll speak after.”

  The three of them ate in silence. The fruits burst with sweet juice in her mouth, and the cheeses were full bodied and fulfilling. The rolls still cradled the oven’s warmth, with soft moist centers and lightly crisp outsides glazed with sugar and honey.

  When they finished, Lunarin waited for them to speak.

  “One more day,” the duke began. “One more day until this Odoune returns.”

  “Are you worried?” Lunarin asked.

  “Yes,” the duke admitted. “I believe his threats are not idle. He is confident for one who shows no military might, and I don’t take him for a fool.”

  “More importantly,” Aiella said, “we need to understand who and what you are.”

  “I’ve told you who I am,” Lunarin replied. “Or at least, I’ve told you all that I know.”

  “We believe you.” The duke sighed. “You must understand, however, the predicament we face.”

  Do not trust him, voices in her head hissed. The humans will betray you. They have always hated elves. “I do. Perhaps you should focus instead on what happened to the Empire. I am not the cause of this.”

  “I have,” the duke replied. “The initial reports from my agents confirm both Arda’s and Odoune’s observations, but we still don’t know what’s behind it.”

  Aiella pursed her lips. “Before your arrival, when the pathways to the Otherworld closed, there was a surge in faerie energy in the land. That is now gone. You are all that remains.”

  Lunarin sighed in surrender. “I understand your apprehension. It seems I’m connected to this event.” She already knew more from her brief conversation with Odoune than from her time with the people of Windbowl. She had no intention, however, of revealing the troll’s visit from the night before.

  Run away from here. Do not let the trolls take you. They will only want your power in the end.

  The wizard leaned forward intently. “I believe you are this event.”

  “No,” the elf shook her head. She remembered… more lights falling across the world. “You place too much importance on me and are fumbling around. There is a larger pattern here.”

  “You are safe for now,” the duke interjected. “So long as you remain here.”

  Lunarin arched an eyebrow. “I am here because I choose to be.”

  The duke frowned.

  “He didn’t mean it like that,” Aiella said, smoothing over the issue. “You are not a prisoner. It’s just better if you stay until we know more.”

  No. They are unworthy of us. Kill them and leave this place. Lunarin frowned inwardly and pushed against those voices. No, she answered, drawing a line of separation in her mind. These are not evil people.

  “You will share what you learn?” she asked aloud.

  Aiella nodded genuinely. “Of course.”

  “Then I will think on it.”

  * * *

  Arda looked up the stone wall from the north base of Windbowl’s keep. Low clouds drifted over the city, and she couldn’t see the top of her goal. It was a good thing they had scouted earlier in the day, marking the location from which to make her ascent. It was now after sundown, so they worked in almost pitch darkness. Arda was grateful for her darkling eyesight that granted her the ability to see without light.

  Attaris knelt beside her, busy laying out runic stones in a circle underneath the base. “Just about ready,” he told her. “The wind tunnel will flow upwards. When you’re ready to descend, step into it, and you’ll float gently down.”

  “Not like last time?”

  “Last time, there were extenuating circumstances,” he snorted. “Last time, I had to shoot the runes into the ground from high above, eyeballing a perfect circle. Last time, ratling zingerbats shot pyrotechnics at our heads. This should be easy.”

  “Never say ‘easy,’” she quipped.

  She placed her hands on the wall, feeling the stone. Her fingernails were strong, tapering to small pointed claws, which helped her find grips in tiny stone crevices and gave her an advantage where other races might find difficulty. Few walls were perfectly smooth unless made by magical means, and this wall was no exception. She found slight handholds and pulled herself up, scaling the side foot by foot.

  She climbed high, out of earshot of her companion. She used window ledges and arrow slits when she could, sometimes throwing herself up and trusting to the Light that she would catch the next hold. This would take a while, but she was a paladin and patience was a virtue.

  * * *

  Lunarin sat at the room’s small tea-table. She looked up, startled, as the door suddenly opened. “Why do you intrude upon me?” The duke had promised she wouldn’t be disturbed.

  Marta stood in the doorway and quickly entered, accompanied by her golden-haired daughter. Just past them, Lunarin saw a rather handsome man locking eyes with the guard. The guard drowsily swayed from side to side, but otherwise seemed oblivious to their presence.

  “More questions?” the elf growled. She remembered the crone from the initial audience. There was an air of ancient evil cloying about her. Lunarin stood and backed away, feeling cornered. “I grow tired of questions.”

  “I risk the Hunt by coming to you now,” Marta responded flatly. “But the Empire has fallen, and I don’t need this city’s protection any more. You carry a prize I have sought for a long time, at least so far as my daughter tells me. I must know for sure.”

  “What do you mean, Mother?” the young woman asked.

  “Silence, Seredith!” Marta snapped.

  Seredith closed her perfectly rounded lips without expression.

  “Ariontes,” Marta commanded. “Come.”

  The handsome man glided smoothly into the room, leaving the guard asleep and leaning on the wall behind him. Ariontes closed the door, and then came to stand quietly beside Marta. In full view, she could see two short, black obsidian horns smoothly curving away from his forehead and cloven feet extending from well-tailored pants.

  “What would you have me do, mistress?” he asked her in a rich, silky voice that tickled Lunarin’s bones with delight. She wished he would speak more.

  “Sedate her so I may enter her mind.”

  No! the thousand voices shouted in Lunarin’s head. “No!” Lunarin shouted aloud. Spurred into action from the upsurge of fright within her soul, she instinctively flung her hands forward. Green vines sprouted from between the floor stones. They thickened and wrapped themselves around the three intruders, binding them to the floor. Marta and Seredith both grunted in pain as they tightened.

  Ariontes only stared at Lunarin. She made the mistake of meeting his eyes and found she could not look away. She panicked, but then she heard something in the back of her mind akin to a rattlesnake, and the voices silenced for the first time. A sense of well-being grew, overshadowing the urge to fight. Really, she had overreacted. She had nothing to hide. Marta would see that, and they would all soon laugh over the misunderstanding. These people had welcomed her when she’d arrived. To be even more honest, she herself wanted the mystery solved. She hoped Marta could find out who she was and tell her. Marta was on her side, after all, even more tha
n the duke. It was the duke who held her in the tower, not Marta. She relaxed into Ariontes’ gaze, and the vines fell lifeless and limp to the floor.

  “Better,” Marta muttered. “Seredith, help me stand.”

  Seredith assisted her mother in rising, and the old crone came and stood before Lunarin.

  “Now, Lunarin,” she crooned, “look at me.”

  Lunarin obeyed. The rest of the room seemed to go blurry except for the crone’s leathery face.

  “Don’t you want answers?”

  “Yes,” she affirmed dreamily.

  “Will you let me in to find them?”

  “Yes.”

  Marta grinned and touched her knobby finger between Lunarin’s eyes on the bridge of her nose. She said one word, “Perfect,” and Lunarin’s world exploded in fear and terror as Ariontes’ psychic coils dropped away from her. The voices returned, howling, but it was too late. She slumped over and darkness took her.

  * * *

  Arda climbed. She entered the cloud layer, losing sight of the stones below. Despite her darkling eyesight, the mist obscured her vision both above and below. All she could feel was the cool, wet air of the cloud. Cold droplets of water covered the stones, but she took her time, patiently feeling her way above until she found another hold for her claws to grip.

  After a long, patient ascent, she crested the cloud layer. The sky above opened to a clear expanse of stars and a bright moon. She could now see the sheer path all the way to the lit window above that was her destination. She breathed in relief and continued the climb, focusing on the golden light streaming from that window.

  Screams from the room pierced the serene moonlight. She held her breath and threw her body up, trying to close the distance as quickly as possible without losing it all and falling. She hoped Attaris was keeping his vortex active.

  * * *

  Lunarin knelt naked in a spotlight in the center of a stone amphitheater. Here in the recesses of her mind, her body was pure silver, unmarked by the red stripes. A light shone from overhead, beaming solely on her. The crone stood at the edge of the light, and all around them in the darkness were thousands of shadowy red faces sitting in stone bleachers.

  Overhead was pitch darkness save for the blinding light. She couldn’t tell whether there was ceiling or sky. She felt there was neither.

  The crone stared at her with baleful eyes. “Who are you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Liar, a murmur of voices rose around her. You are us. We possess you.

  “No,” Lunarin answered them coolly. “You are not I.”

  LIAR!

  “Who are they?” the crone asked.

  “They are nothing. Remnants of the past.”

  LIAR! We are the Fae lords and ladies of old. We are the masters of all the faerie. Of you.

  “Who are you?” the crone repeated.

  “Lunarin.”

  The multitude of shadow hissed with sinister laughter.

  The crone reached out her hand and contorted her fingers into a grasping claw. Lunarin doubled over in pain, falling to the ground. She screamed, and the hissing laughter around her grew.

  Yessss! Destroy her that we might reclaim what is ours. The shadowy red faces smiled benevolently.

  The crone approached and knelt beside the writhing elf. She reached her hand into the elf’s heart and squeezed. Lunarin screamed again as pain exploded through her veins. Pressure surged down her arms and legs, causing a sharp pain inside her armpits and inner thighs that burned to her toes and fingertips. The agony reverberated in the space under her ears, inside her jaw, and her tongue clenched to the top of her mouth.

  Lunarin’s mind floated away from her body in the amphitheater, retreating even deeper. The pain grew distant but did not leave her completely. She lay flat, floating away in the void. A burning sensation crawled beneath her skin.

  There was a subtle shift, and she seemed to be lying on solid ground. She rose to her feet to stand in the emptiness. All that remained was a glowing green light and the surrounding vortex of screaming voices from a whirling mass of warped elven visages.

  One shadow came forth from the morass, a beautiful man with red skin and long pointed ears. His face was thin and his eyes large. “The Green Lady preserved us,” he told her. “You are our land. Stand aside so we may rule you once again.”

  Resisting the urge to surrender, she turned her back to him and stepped towards the glowing green light. Floating in its center was a brilliant emerald, a perfect, smooth sphere. It pulsed with a steady heartbeat, slightly expanding and contracting as light emanated from it. Its heartbeat drummed through her being and reverberated over the throng in the void around them.

  The shadowy man stepped closer. His form was slender, stretched thin through the ether. His face was warped, both unpleasant and beautiful at the same time. A crown adorned his head. “I am the King of the Fae Court!” he hissed. “It was I who held the Black Dragon’s dreamwalker so his mind did not touch your world. I am sovereign, and you are my kingdom!” He reached a hand towards her, and a thousand more hands greedily extended from the swirling mass, reaching in to caress her asunder.

  She wanted to surrender to them. She wanted to fall into her king’s arms and incline her head as he showered kisses upon her face. She wanted to submit to the hands that reached for her and let the ancient court rule her body. Instead, she leaped and grabbed the glowing emerald. The light flared, and the multitude of hands jerked back as if burned.

  No! they hissed. You are ours. We were eternal. We must live again! Don’t let us diieeeee…

  Only the warped king did not retreat from the light, though he stepped no closer towards her. He knelt. “Please,” he bent his head, tilting to the side and eyeing her with one strange eye. “Do not banish us to the Void. Would you slay a great civilization, an entire people?”

  The crone emerged from the shadows. “There you are. Pain is such an effective way to dissect a mind. You cannot hide from me. Soon you will have nowhere else to run.”

  Lunarin grasped the emerald with both hands and was pulled deeper inside herself.

  She floated, suspended in green darkness. A great form, unseen and primal, hovered around her. She felt the shadowy shape of wings expanding in an arc and encircling her, and the great being that owned them extended far above and below.

  Two eyes opened in the void, and then a great green dragon head revealed itself. It was vast, beyond what she could have imagined. She floated over its nose, smaller than the length of one of its great fangs.

  My daughter, its thoughts rang in her mind. Be not afraid.

  “It is you,” Lunarin accused. “You are the reason a thousand souls whirl inside me.”

  Those thousand soul fragments are you. As am I. I died to save your world from the shattering Otherworld, but I live on in you, and all like you.

  “The other seelie.”

  Yes. The Black Dragon’s spirit had grown so intertwined with the very fabric of the Otherworld that when Aaron slew him, it left a void. That dimension’s shards would have rent this world asunder. Ahmbren would have been unmade. This would have been Klrain’s revenge, his final act of victory to unmake both worlds.

  I flew between the planes of existence and the shards pierced me instead. My life split apart, but my spirit encased the shards, giving these shattered pieces life when they entered the physical realm. Thus, in Ahmbren you came to be, a new race of elf. You are Klrain’s revenge redeemed, transformed into the promise of hope and life.

  “How is this possible? How do you speak to me if you are dead?”

  I do not speak to you. My memories live in you and inform who you are. In all of the seelie, but you most of all.

  “Who am I? Why me?”

  Look within. Your name is imprinted on your soul in the most ancient, primal language of the world. It reflects the quality that bound the parts of me and the parts of them together to make you. You do not hold whole people in your mind. They are n
ot ghosts—they are memories. The Fae King who spoke to you is dead; his memories are scattered across many seelie, and all of you have fragments of memories of many different faeriekind. They are your memories now. Use them, but do not lose yourself to them.

  “What of the trolls?”

  I taught the druidic arts to the forefathers of the Vemnai many years ago, but the memory of why I did so does not live within you.

  Lunarin went even deeper within herself, and she saw the core of her being, the great green light that had pulled thousands of unraveled faerie wisps into its orbit, those of like kind to this aspect of the dead Dragon. She was the Dragon’s compassion, and thus the compassionate aspects of Fae were drawn to it. But she was also the Dragon’s pride and conviction, and the Fae likenesses those qualities attracted.

  A vision unfolded before her, and she witnessed Graelyn’s disintegration as she sought to protect Ahmbren from the crumbling Otherworld. The Dragon’s spirit dissolved into countless motes of compassion and pride, of fear and love, and of all other manner of passions. They condensed the shards of the Otherworld into wisps of light that would manifest anew in Ahmbren.

  The brightest light of Graelyn beat within her, and thus she had drawn the greatest shards of the Otherworld into her being. Her true name reverberated around her and now formed on her lips.

  “Aradma.”

  The Heart of the Dragon.

  The crone’s cackling broke in around her, and the Dragon’s image crumbled. Aradma was yanked out of the stone back to the void where the crone and the dead king stood. The crone grabbed her long silver hair and pulled, again jerking the elf back a level of consciousness to return to the stone floor in the first amphitheater. The pain, which had never stopped, assaulted her conscious mind again, and she screamed. Glowing green blood sputtered from her nose and mouth. She coughed up gobs of the thick liquid, trying to breathe through it.

  The crone stood over her. Aradma’s chest was torn open, an empty hole where her heart should have been. The verdant blood flowed from the hole between her breasts, and the crone clutched her emerald heart in her hand, holding it high above her and cackling wildly in triumph. The crone vanished, and Aradma was yanked forth through the amphitheater walls back to physical awareness.