When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by K. Scott Lewis

“Only that during the Empire, Templars took wolven children to serve as Imperial agents. Arlen was taken the night before Darkfall, and then never seen after that. We found the sky car that had moved him and a few other children. It had fallen from the sky, but there was no evidence the passengers died at the crash site. They must not have been high. I discovered that one of the crime guilds, the Red Panthers, ran underground gladiatorial matches. They were collecting wolven children, but the people who knew where they might have been taken were killed in the guild wars. The trail went cold. There’s no evidence of wolven at any of their fighting pits or remaining guild houses.”

  Tiberan nodded. “It’s a start. I’ve been meaning to give Pavlin a visit anyway. Let’s begin there.”

  Tiberan, Kristafrost, and Ghost found the former High Templar in the northwestern part of the city where he had established a new command center for the reformed Templars. He had pledged his men to Rajamin’s cause, and his ranks grew weekly. Rajamin dubbed his men as constables. They didn’t have runic powers, but they helped keep order and preserve the peace. They opened offices around the city where people could come and file complaints against the slights of their neighbors.

  Pavlin was watching his men spar in the courtyard of a short stone building, honing their fighting skills. He had ordered his men to not set any of their offices or buildings in the large Artalonian towers. He didn’t see Tiberan and his companions approach.

  Ghost stopped in front of the man and lay down lazily, tail flicking left and right. Pavlin started, and the great cat looked up at him with mild curiosity.

  Pavlin tried to take a step back but bumped into Tiberan. The men stopped sparring to watch, uncertainly looking for direction from their boss.

  “Wolven,” Tiberan said.

  “What of them?” Pavlin asked. Remaining remarkably well controlled, he smelled of neither fear nor alarm. The only thing the elf felt from him was a well-guarded undertone of hate.

  “Where are they?” he asked.

  “As far as I know, they all died in the towers,” Pavlin responded. “At least, those that were in Artalon.”

  “Not these,” Tiberan said. He stood behind the man, close enough to speak softly into his ear. “There was one, a boy. Maybe others. He was taken from his family, and his sky car fell in Darkfall.”

  Pavlin stepped away to the side and faced the elf. “You can’t be serious,” the man said. “There were tens of thousands of people in this city. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Kristafrost watched them in silence.

  “Put your men on it,” Tiberan told him.

  “We’ll keep an eye out,” Pavlin said. He was controlling himself. “But don’t get your hopes up.” He had no intention of helping. His smug scent confirmed it.

  Tiberan snapped. In one fluid motion he grabbed the man and brought him to the ground. He leaned over, knee planted on the man’s chest and a dagger held to the former Templar’s throat.

  Ghost jumped to his feet, crouched and ready.

  “You little worm,” Tiberan hissed at the man. “You are lucky to be alive after what you did to Eszhira. You will help in this.”

  Pavlin’s face twisted in anger. “You elves! Always meddling. It’s your fault Artalon fell. Your people have caused us nothing but evil.”

  “She might have offered you the possibility of forgiveness,” Tiberan’s voice trembled in the quiet certainty of a predator, “but don’t think that I have. If you ever touch another of our kind again, I will find you, and I will end you.”

  “Tiberan!” Kristafrost exclaimed. “This isn’t helping.”

  He checked his anger and stood. Stepping away from Pavlin, he saw the other men had moved closer, hands gripping their weapons. They smelled uncertain, not angry. It was obvious they did not want to fight. The seelie were seen as symbols of the new age Rajamin promised.

  One of the men came forward. “I used to work for the Red Panthers,” he said. It was not surprising. Many guild members had deserted, especially the rank and file who had joined out of necessity rather than loyalty.

  “I’m listening,” Tiberan indicated.

  “Our leaders were interested in finding wolven children,” he said. “I don’t know if we did or not, but they wanted to use them against the other guilds. They were even more interested in this after Malahkma got the Templars on their side.”

  Tiberan frowned. He knew this already. “But you don’t know of any.” A dead end.

  Pavlin pushed himself to his feet. “If you want to find your friend, you should search outside the main city. All the guilds have safe houses in the suburbs.”

  “It’s true,” Kristafrost said. “They can dig underground outside Artalon. I’ve searched the safe houses we were able to discover, but I’m sure there are more. I just don’t have any leads.”

  Tiberan grinned. “You didn’t have me with you.”

  Tiberan, Eszhira, and Yinkle searched over the next weeks outside the city, while Aradma and the others were busy overseeing the integration of the seelie, the new Church of Light, and the remaining Artalonian survivors. Ghost padded along at their side. Kristafrost and her mysterious SSSI staff worked overtime behind the scenes to misdirect guild leadership’s attention away from Tiberan’s search.

  Just as he had done in the jungle of Vemnai, Tiberan reached out with his mind to sense the presence of living beings around him. There were too many people in the city for him to make out each one, but one thing he realized was that in Artalon, he never felt anyone below him.

  In the suburbs, the guilds had built a complex network of dissociated tunnels and hideouts over the years, often connected to house basements. When Tiberan felt people underneath a street or a house, they searched until they found its entrance. Most of the time they were the remnant members of guilds running and hiding from their last efforts to kill each other off. Occasionally they found and freed prisoners.

  Then one day Tiberan sensed a clump of living presences huddled beneath a back alley in the southwestern stretch of the city’s sprawl.

  “There are children beneath our feet,” he told his companions.

  The cramped street led to a well-guarded house at its end. The guards wore red bandanas, marking them as Red Panthers. The companions watched them from behind the corner of the alley’s turn.

  “I count nine,” Tiberan said.

  It was late afternoon, and the sun would soon descend. The guards had not noticed them.

  Eszhira vanished, dropping into invisibility and moving ahead. Tiberan could follow her by sensing her location, but he couldn’t see her.

  One of the guard’s yelped, and then Eszhira was there, dagger plunged into his back. She vanished again.

  The other guards turned towards their fallen companion, dropping their attention from the street. Ghost and Yinkle rushed forward, and Tiberan dropped three of them with his bow. Between his marksmanship, Yinkle’s flashing sword, and Ghost’s claws, the nine thugs didn’t stand a chance.

  Tiberan tried the front door. It was locked. “Yinkle, can you open this?”

  “What, you think because I’m small, short, and a rodent that I’m a thief? I’m sure Kristafrost would have had no problem.”

  “How about a key?” Eszhira asked. She held up a bronze key she had pulled off one of the guards.

  “That works,” Tiberan quipped. “Let’s find the children.”

  Yinkle grabbed and lit one of the guards’ torches, holding it in her left hand with rapier at the ready in her right.

  The companions made short work of the remaining Red Panther thugs, who they found in the tunnels beneath the house. The underground complex held a small network of passages, each with prison rooms, presumably where they had kept illegal gladiators. Tiberan’s sense of the lifeforms kept them moving towards their goal, until they stopped at a dead end.

  “They’re behind this wall,” he said, frustrated.

  “Here,” Eszhira said. “It looks like a latch.” S
he explored the wall with her hands, then pulled on something Tiberan hadn’t seen. A portion of the wall slid a few inches. Eszhira and Tiberan pushed it open the rest of the way.

  Inside, they found a secret room holding three young boys and two girls, each of them presumably wolven. They didn’t appear to be hurt or mistreated, only confined and bored.

  “We’ve come to get you out of here,” Eszhira said.

  One of them came forward. “I don’t think we’re allowed to leave,” he said uncertainly. “Who are you? Are you elves?”

  “Yes,” Tiberan said. “We’ve been searching for you.”

  “Are any of you Arlen?” Eszhira asked.

  “I am, lady,” the boy said.

  “Have you been hurt?”

  “No, my lady,” he answered, “but we don’t think we belong here. They told us this was part of the Templar training program, but I don’t think it is.”

  “You’re very smart, Arlen,” Yinkle said, stepping into the room.

  He regarded her curiously. “You’re a rat,” he stated. “We’re being saved by a rat.”

  “Ratling,” she corrected him. “They were Red Panthers, not Templars. They hoped to make you one of them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re wolven. You will grow to be very powerful.”

  “I see,” Arlen said. “It makes sense. The car fell from the sky, and then I remember waking up here. Are we going back to the Templars now?”

  “No!” Eszhira interjected.

  “The world has changed,” Tiberan explained. “You no longer have to be Templars.”

  “Good, I want to go home,” Arlen said. “I didn’t want to leave them.”

  Eszhira nodded. “Your parents live with us, and your sister.”

  Arlen’s face brightened. “Keira! Wait, they live with you?”

  “Yes. A lot has changed. You’ll see. You others, will you come with us?”

  They all agreed. None had wanted to become agents of the Templars, much less the Red Panthers.

  Eszhira told the others, “I don’t know where your parents are, but if they’re alive, we’ll find them.”

  They left the hideout and walked out into the open air, returning to the Rusty Gear in the early hours of the evening.

  Eszhira smiled when she saw Jorey’s face light up. Arlen ran to his dad’s arms, and Jorey lifted him high into the air, shouting “Magda! Come see! Magda, Keira! Arlen is back!”

  His family came running, and they all embraced the boy.

  Jorey noticed the four other children. “Who are they?”

  “They’re my friends, Dad,” Arlen said. “They’re like me.”

  “The Red Panthers held them all captive,” Eszhira said. “They wanted wolven in their ranks to fight against Malahkma.”

  Kristafrost joined them from the back halls and sat on her stool at the bar. “We’ll try to find their parents.”

  “Until then,” Magda said, “they can stay with us. Jorey and I’ll watch over them.”

  The children looked relieved.

  “Here, come with me, kids,” Jorey said. The family went into a back room, leaving the common area.

  Only Keira remained behind. She wrapped her arms around Tiberan’s legs and squeezed them with all her might in a big hug.

  “I knew you would help us, Uncle Tibs!”

  That night, Tiberan and Aradma lay in bed together. He rested on his back, eyes open and looking up at the ceiling as he thought about the day. Aradma lay against him on her side. The nights were still warm, and they eschewed the bedsheets. As the sun went down and the temperature cooled, it only seemed to get hotter as the air grew heavy with moisture.

  “Almost reminds me of Vemnai,” he chuckled. “Although, they make a good case for living in caves. It’s always cool in there.”

  Aradma traced a finger down his chest to his belly button, leaving a flattened path in the fine beading of his sweat. He glanced down at her. Their bodies glistened with a gossamer sheen as the moisture on their skin reflected the gold and green luminescence from their eyes. In the dim light, he could see her belly’s gentle swell rise beneath her breasts.

  She propped herself on her elbows, sitting halfway up to meet his eyes. He couldn’t help but look down the side of her body to the curve of her hips and legs. He would never grow tired of seeing her.

  “You did a good thing today,” she said.

  “I’m happy for them,” he agreed. He shifted onto his side to face her and placed a hand on her belly. “They are a good family. I’m glad their home is restored. They have shown me another kind of love, one that was foreign to the Vemnai. I want what they have.”

  “Our daughter will have a big sister,” Aradma smiled.

  Tiberan couldn’t help but grin.

  “What?” she asked, her own smile widening in response.

  “‘Our’ daughter.”

  “You said you would accept her as your own,” Aradma replied. “You’ll help raise her, like Jorey and Magda do with the wolven children. That makes her our daughter.”

  Still smiling, she leaned forward and kissed him. He embraced her despite the summer heat. Their kiss deepened, and he felt the tips of her breasts stiffen, tickling his chest as she moved on top of him. His body responded to her touch and the sound of her breaths. She withdrew from the kiss and grinned softly, then sat upright, taking him inside her.

  He laid his hands on her growing belly, feeling the heat of her body and cradling the life within her womb as they made love. She covered his hands with her own, curling her fingers around his palms. Their sweat commingled and she held his gaze as they moved together, as gentle as the calm lapping of lakeside waves.

  35 - Things Fall Apart

  In late September, Aradma sat in the common room of the Rusty Gear. She reclined on a comfortable chair that Kristafrost had brought in for her. Her belly continued to grow, and her body felt swollen. Sometimes she ached.

  It had been a month now since the first seelie walked into the city. People funneled them to Aradma and Tiberan. Aradma met each of them to hear how they had arrived in this world and how they had been treated. Some were fortunate to have made lightfall together and had not been alone from the beginning. Not everyone had answered Valkrage’s beacon—some remained behind, especially those who had felt bonds of love with the natives of Ahmbren. For those without attachment, the call had proved difficult to resist.

  Now that they gathered together, Aradma took the time to observe and learn as much as she could about her people. Valkrage too proved interested in discovering the racial characteristics of the seelie, and he visited her from time to time.

  Not all of the seelie manifested powers and none as potent as Aradma. The gifts of the Dragon differed from elf to elf, except for the ability to become invisible. This they all shared, although not all of them had yet discovered it before arriving in Artalon. Valkrage told Aradma that this ability was a lingering quality of the Otherworld in them. They could shift out of phase with Ahmbren just enough that light would miss them, but for most, they had to remain completely still lest they drop back into phase with this world.

  The other Dragon powers manifested in varying degrees. Aradma shared the Dragon’s connection to the mystical element of Life and could directly channel it to create plants or to heal. This was also what gave her the ability to read the music of people’s souls. Her shapeshifting was not from the Dragon—that was part of the druidic arts. Graelyn’s strong presence within her, however, made her a druid savant. As she had explained to Odoune, from a certain point of view Aradma was Ahmbren’s first druid, reborn anew. Tiberan’s power to bond with animals did not extend to sapient creatures, but he could sense the presence of all living things. Eszhira discovered how to hold herself out of phase with Ahmbren’s light even as she walked, able to remain invisible as she moved. Other elves manifested similar powers, to lesser degrees of potency, and some had so little of the Dragon’s spark within them that they had no
thing more than the ability to fade from view.

  But they weren’t just the Dragon. There was another thing they all had in common: the Fae memories. Some had more, some less, and the qualities of the Fae whose memories they captured varied. Some granted deep knowledge about a few topics, and some seelie seemed uninformed about the basic aspects of the world.

  The struggle to integrate these memories was a shared experience by all. The individual that emerged was the amalgam of the Fae shards held together by the spark of the Dragon’s soul. They were those memories, and their turmoil was the churn of a newly created mind trying to crystalize disparate forces into a singular identity.

  The process of integration varied for each seelie. Once they proved successful by finding the Dragon at the core of their being, they discovered their true name. Aradma’s self-realization had been accelerated by the sorceress Marta. Most seelie who had already found balance had done so through the catalyst of a traumatic experience, though a few reported a gentle transition. Tiberan, of course, had hunted and devoured those aspects of himself in his vision quest.

  The fullness or sparseness of their body markings revealed the dominance or submissiveness of the individual Fae threads within them. Tiberan’s inner journey had removed all markings because none of those aspects, not even the Dragon, existed anymore within him as a separate entity. Aradma achieved balance through her inner court, and so her red stripes were present but not overpowering.

  Many seelie still struggled with their inner journeys when they came to Aradma. Just as she had done with Eszhira, she offered to heal each seelie to facilitate a peaceful transition. Most accepted, but a small few refused. One called Athaym, a seelie with even darker skin than Eszhira, believed it was better for all the seelie to win balance for themselves. He did not stay in Artalon long, and he left with a few who shared his view.

  Aradma wished them well on their journeys, fully confident they would achieve balance in time. In all the seelie who arrived, she had not yet discovered any who had lost the struggle to the Fae personalities within. She wondered what would happen if an elf did lose that battle.