When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by K. Scott Lewis

  “Do they worship Soorleyn as well?”

  “They honor her, but they believe Soorleyn and Rin separated, and Rin adopted the trolls as her own.”

  “It must be nice to live where women are so honored,” Yinkle chirped cheerily.

  “Tsk tsk,” Rajamin said. “Better to be here, where we live equally.”

  “Oh, I know, Uncle Raj,” Yinkle said, poking his furry tummy playfully. “Still, to have a harem of husbands serving my every whim…”

  “Yinkle!” Rajamin exclaimed in exasperation.

  She just laughed. “Oh, you’re too easy!”

  Aradma’s heart responded in warmth to the loving banter between them.

  He sighed. “My niece has the spirit of the trickster in her, but at least she has the heart of a saint.”

  Aradma brought the conversation back to the topic at hand. “You speak of their beliefs, but you are a priest as well. Do you believe their stories?”

  “The funny thing about gods,” he said, “is that they don’t usually stop to have conversations with you. When they do, it’s to reveal something of great import, not to discuss the finer points of mythology. We all have different stories, and some of them conflict. There’s no question the gods are real. The evidence is in the runic powers they grant. All true priests are runewardens and can display power, even when their myths don’t always match. I suspect the gods are unconcerned with the details of their stories as long as we live by their messages.” He paused in thought for a moment before he added, “But I wouldn’t tell the Matriarch that.” Then, he looked at her quizzically. “Why are you going to them, anyway? If you are truly a remnant of an Archdragon, why become entangled in their religion?”

  “Going there feels right,” Aradma said. “Not for Rin, but for druidry. It is a practice my mother revealed to them long ago. But…” she searched her memories again, “nothing about Rin has meaning for me.”

  “Then you must be very careful,” Rajamin said. His voice sank low, barely above a whisper. “It has been with great finesse that we have coexisted with them over the years. Only because we are scrupulous to not encroach upon their forest, importing our own wood, that they have allowed us to persist here over the centuries.”

  “How did your people come to be?” Aradma asked. “The trolls have a story for their heritage. What’s yours?”

  Rajamin chuckled. “Well, ours isn’t so mysterious. It’s clear history. We are the results of a mad gnome’s scientific magicological experiments gone horribly awry. Or horribly aright. There is no god who made us, which is, I suspect, one of the reasons that our people remain largely areligious.”

  “An… experiment?”

  Yinkle chimed in. “It was a long time ago, but this city used to be a gnomish settlement. One of the wizards was working on something—we don’t know even what any more—but he kept pet rats. Sometimes for experiments maybe, but I think he just liked the company, because, well you know, rats!” She grinned widely and opened her fingers grandly in the air to highlight the point. Then she continued, “Anyway, there was an explosion one day, and all his hundreds of rats were suddenly given the bodies, size, and intelligence of furry gnomes. At least we kept our faces, fur, and tails. We just narrowly avoided being ugly!”

  “Not that she means anything by that,” Rajamin hurried to apologize. “I’m sure there are some who find you pretty enough. Your own people. I mean. Er. Ahem. This isn’t going well.”

  “What he means to say,” Yinkle said, “is that you’re ugly. But just to us. But not to the other skinners. I mean those without fur.”

  “What she means to say,” Rajamin said, “is that you’re like a hairless cat…”

  “Uncle! What he means to say—”

  Aradma threw her hands up and laughed. “Enough! I took no offense.”

  The two ratlings looked demurely down at their nuts and berries, nibbled on a few, and then Rajamin continued, “I can’t say I understand all the intricacies of their society. But from what I’ve gleaned from Odoune, druids don’t exactly fit in with the doctrine of the Matriarch. They have their place, but they stand somewhat apart. Male druids are not bound to men’s roles. There is a delicate balance between Odoune and the Matriarch.”

  “Odoune specifically?”

  “He is their Archdruid,” Rajamin said, “though he does not advertise it. He is a good man. He honors Rin but seems a little more… balanced than the Matriarch. I suspect if there is one you can trust, it would be him.”

  “But not too much,” Yinkle said. “Always remember, if you ever need us, send word and we will help.”

  “Why?”

  “My dear,” Rajamin said, “you are the first of an entirely new race of people. And if you are from the Lady Graelyn, it’s in our best interests to establish good relations with you.”

  Yinkle added, “And we like you.”

  “I like you too,” Aradma said with warm merriment. Then: “You said earlier that Rin joined with three gods, but you only spoke of two—Soorleyn and Voldun.”

  Rajamin raised an eyebrow. “Oh? You don’t know then?”

  “Know what?”

  “For the third, she was seduced by Malahkma, the evil Goddess of Desire, more dreaded than even Yamosh the Deceiver.”

  “And their children?”

  “Only one. Graelyn the Green.”

  12 - Into the Woods

  Aradma slept that night in an open hammock beneath the clear starry sky, suspended over the ocean bay hundreds of feet below. She awoke early in the morning before sunrise and watched the moonlight blink over the water tops. The hypnotic light evoked memories of the Fae and the Otherworld.

  The voices of the Fae were strangely silent on the thought of the gods. Were they silent because they had neither faith in nor contact with them, or were they silent because even their fragmented memories feared becoming entangled with such powers?

  Aradma meditated and withdrew into the silence within her, receding into the court of her mind. The circle had become calm and ordered since Marta’s invasion, with the green light of the dragon shining brightly in the center of her soul. In the circled rows of seats surrounding the court, the shades of the Fae sat in endless rings stretching into the far darkness. Aradma stood in the center between them.

  “What can you tell me of Rin and Soorleyn?”

  Silence.

  “What of Malahkma?”

  Silence.

  Aradma thrust her hands into the green light, but nothing more than the certainty of the Dragon’s power filled her. She didn’t need power. She needed insight.

  A quiet, hissing laughter rose from the council of shades. “You banished us to the outer circles,” they whispered. “Had you let us rule, you would not be here. Enjoy your fruit as the Vemnai Matriarch remakes you into her image. You are nothing more than a collection of broken souls. She stands with a goddess.”

  The light elf bit her lip, wondering if she had been too quick to join the trolls.

  Aradma and Yinkle went to the city gates on the ground shortly after sunrise. They arrived first and waited for Odoune beneath the branches of a small olive tree. The wind rustled through its leaves, and Aradma sensed something different about it. She reached out with her senses, but the spirit of the tree was not natural to the soil beneath it.

  “This tree was not here yesterday,” Aradma stated.

  Yinkle eyed her quizzically.

  “This is not a tree.” The elf reached out again and touched the bark with her feelings. “Odoune.”

  The tree shifted and took the form of the troll druid, his red hair almost orange in the full morning sun. “Well done,” he said. “The gift of the goddess Rin,” he explained. “All trolls may take the shape of a tree once between sunrises. We sometimes sleep in this manner.”

  Yinkle held out her open hand to Odoune. “For the outfit?”

  Odoune gave her a gold coin. “This should cover it.”

  Yinkle nodded and bowed. She then took t
he elf’s hand. “Good luck, Aradma! I know you’ll make a fine druid! Don’t forget, if you need anything, you only have to ask!”

  Aradma patted Yinkle’s head. “Take care, furry one.”

  Yinkle gave her one more poke at her white belly, waved, and then headed back into the city.

  Odoune looked her up and down. “Dressed as lovely as any lady of the Vemnai,” he said, “and more appropriately for the moist jungle air.”

  “Is it a long journey?” Aradma asked.

  “For us, it will be. In time you will learn to travel swiftly, but for now, we walk. And we talk.”

  They walked in silence for a while, following the river inland. Around noon, they turned away from the baked dirt path and went into the jungle. Odoune moved effortlessly through the foliage. Aradma tried his trick and found that the plant life parted for her as well, and then concealed her tracks behind her.

  “You are a natural druid,” he remarked. “A gift from your mother, no doubt. I expect that all your kind will manifest the Green Lady’s nature in some way.”

  Days passed as they walked through the jungle, and Aradma enjoyed their conversations. She found Odoune’s insights brought clarity to the world around her and allowed her to connect even more with the jungle. She loved the smells of the greenery and flowers and the thick, moist air on her skin. Tribes of apes watched them pass from overhead, lazily curious, but leaving them alone, and the perpetual chorus of birds and the chirping of oviraptors tickled her long ears as richly textured music.

  One afternoon Aradma asked, “Can you tell me more of Graelyn?”

  “She is one of the Four Archdragons,” he said. “Or she was,” he corrected himself. “There are lesser dragons in the world, but they are few and none are as the Four. The Four were the direct descendants of gods.”

  “Malahkma?”

  Odoune withdrew a dried root from a pouch and placed it between his lips at the side of his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. He handed a piece to Aradma, and she took it as well, curiously chewing the end while she waited for an answer. It released a pungent flavor into her mouth, somewhat like bitter licorice, and caused her tongue to tingle in a manner that she found pleasant.

  “Yes,” he finally answered. “Malahkma. The mother of all dragons. She is the most evil of all the gods, but it was she who created the Four, each through the seduction of a different god. Only one of her offspring, Klrain, chose the path of evil. I suspect because his father was Yamosh the Deceiver. The other Three were the offspring of her seduction of good gods.”

  “Malahkma is evil?” Aradma frowned. She didn’t like the thought of being the descendant of a dark goddess.

  “She is the Goddess of Desire. Not of hope, not of fulfillment, not of bounty, but of the desire and lust that drives mortals to suffer in their pursuit. She is chaos.”

  “She is the source of me then?”

  “In a manner of speaking. But so is Rin. The Four, even Klrain, never manifested in ways reminiscent of their mother. Instead, they reflect the natures of the gods whom Malahkma seduced.”

  “So Malahkma is a dragon?”

  “She is a goddess. She is often depicted as a great red dragon, or as a woman with red serpent hair. In truth, she appears only in stories. She has no priests nor churches, nor is there any tale of her ever touching mortal history. Nevertheless, she plays an important part in our mythology.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The danger of lust in all its forms, when desire drives you to act against or beyond your nature. This is the heart of druidic philosophy—to know your own true self.”

  “I thought it was about the power of the wild land.”

  “Do you find those to be different?”

  On the morning of the sixth day, Odoune held up a warning hand. “Quiet,” he breathed softly. “We’re being hunted.”

  The jungle was strangely calm. Only wind rustled the leaves overhead, and the birds had fallen silent.

  Odoune crouched beneath a canopy of low foliage. “We need to be still and silent,” he whispered. “If it detects us, run. Reach out to the jungle, and it will grant you one of its forms to speed your way.”

  Aradma heard heavy sniffing above her. The leaves moved aside, and a tyrannosaur with verdant green scales stepped through the trees. Its head moved left and right, bright yellow eyes searching. Aradma sucked in her breath and froze still, gripped by terror at the sight of the massive dinosaur. Something in her faerie blood reacted to the fear, and she became as invisible as the air around her. Odoune raised an eyebrow, surprised at the elf’s disappearance. His body twisted and became a tree.

  The tyrannosaur did not leave. It bent down and searched left and right, sniffing, unconvinced that two tasty bites could simply cease to be. Its left leg stepped closer, its great weight pushing a few inches into the earth, moist dirt caking around its claws. Its leg muscles rippled beneath the taut green skin, scales glittering, as it crouched further.

  The dinosaur bent down so that its head rested inches above the ground, rustling through the thick leafy carpet. It snaked its snout left and right, sniffing and staring, eyes twitching as they darted to focus on different points in the clearing. It sniffed again and then froze, becoming very still. Continuing to bend over with its neck to the ground, it turned its head to the left, snaking right towards Aradma.

  Aradma remained motionless as long as she could, but she knew the tyrannosaur’s snout would touch her in a matter of seconds. She stepped back, but as soon as she moved, her body lost its invisibility.

  The tyrannosaur’s yellow eye immediately focused on her. Its head rose high, angling down at the elf, and then it opened its massive jaws and snapped at its prey.

  Aradma bolted into the jungle and the dinosaur gave chase, moving swiftly through the undergrowth despite its massive size, able to step over much of what she had to run through. Aradma ran out onto a riverbank only seconds before the tyrannosaur broke out after her. She remembered Odoune’s words and touched the spirit of the jungle.

  The jungle answered as she leaped out over the water. Her body shimmered and then shrank into the shape of a trout. She darted through the water as quickly as she could, but the river was shallow and water rushed over jutting rocks. If she had been able to swim deeper, she could have escaped, but as it was, she spent half her time jumping and flipping in the air between the rapids. The tyrannosaur would not be discouraged so easily and ran in after her, stepping over the rocks.

  The trout wasn’t fast enough. Aradma made it to the river’s opposite bank, and another animal form came to her. The fish stretched out, and then she was a white leopard, rushing through the trees at uncanny speed. The green growth whipping past her face was nearly dizzying, but she kept pushing herself, knowing that the only thing that kept her from being rent by sword-like teeth was the feline strength in her four legs that propelled her forward.

  It was no use. The tyrannosaur was quicker, impossibly fast for its large size. Its nose slammed into Aradma and sent her flying into the side of a tree. She fell out of the cat form and back into her elven shape. She lay on her side, propped up on her palms.

  She had no time to think as the dinosaur closed in for the kill. On instinct alone, she thrust her hands down, and the green light rushed forth into the earth. A thick pillar of wrapped vines, wood, and leaves sprouted from the soil and grew tall, flinging her body into the air, high up over the treetops.

  In a single moment of stillness, she hung free in the sky at the height of the arc. The tyrannosaur postured itself under the elf and opened its jaws to catch her. Before she descended, another form came to her. She stretched her limbs out to catch the wind. Feathers sprouted from her body, and she collapsed into the shape of a white falcon. Feathered limbs that had only a moment before been hands and fingers caught the air. She soared over the jungle, leaving the frustrated dinosaur behind.

  A great horned owl, gray with black striping and a lighter underbelly, joined her in her flight. She
recognized Odoune, following him up the river a few miles before they landed together on an empty riverbank. He shifted back into his troll form and she followed him, standing tall once more as an elven woman.

  “As I said,” he beamed at her. “You are a natural druid. You have accomplished what we take years to master.”

  She looked to the sky with anticipation. “We could fly the rest of the way.” She laughed at the rush of just having escaped the dinosaur and soaring through the air. She wanted to leap in joy. Instead, she panted, catching her breath in the excitement while bending over with hands on her knees.

  He grinned. “We could. But we will walk. You have more time to listen, and I have more to tell. The heart of druidry is wisdom, not power.”

  They journeyed together for twelve more days through the dense foliage. Odoune continued the conversation, and there were no more incidents like the tyrannosaur attack. They heard the calls of velociraptors, but those never came close. As they followed the river, a vast canyon rose around them. They descended into its bowels on a small dirt trail.

  The jungle gave way to alternating swaths of thick trees and swampy bogs with water that sometimes came up to their waists. Odoune waded through, paying it no heed, and Aradma followed his example. At the end of the canyon, a great waterfall fell from its upper lip into a lake.

  “There,” he said and stopped to point at the waterfall. “Our village is at the bottom and in the caves on the cliffs. This is the home and heart of the Vemnai.”

  Aradma was moved by the beauty of the water falling over green cliffs and the mists of the water spray blanketing the lands below. Sunlight danced through the water, and a cascade of rainbows shimmered in the mists. “It is beautiful!” she exclaimed. “I am overwhelmed!”

  “Before we go in,” he said, “remember all that we have discussed. When you need clarity, come out to the purity of the jungle. Meditate upon the natural world and your own inner self.”