When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by K. Scott Lewis

  The pair of elodian crystals set in her eye sockets acted as her body’s power source, the same crystals that gnomes used to power their flying ships. They were the only things in her body that could come close to being called magical, but they were still naturally occurring resources from Ahmbren’s depths, mined by the dwarves in their homes, their kelds.

  She stopped in a thick copse of trees away from the roads, still a few miles inside of Windbowl near the East Pass. She marveled again at her new body. Understanding flooded through her artificial form in waves of pleasure. The gnomes had constructed mechanical devices that acted as logic gates. They compared the “or” and “and” conditions of inputs and gave a response. The entire mind and behavior of the constructed intelligence called Athra’s Jewel was based on an extremely complex interlocking of such logic gates. The construct was a completely unconscious, artificial simulation of a personality. It didn’t think or feel, but responded to inputs from its environment in such a convincing way that mortals would think it had a mind.

  Under normal conditions, something capable of the computational power of Athra’s Jewel would require such a mass of logic gates that it would need a hollowed mountain to house it. And that’s exactly what the gnomes had done. They had a hollowed mountain in the Hidden Mountains of the Elder Forest, north of the Sapphire Sea, in which they built the mechanical intelligence of gears and levers.

  Gnomes prided themselves on making wondrous things that seemed to be magical but required no magic to function. This was true for the zorium alloy that made Artalon’s skyscrapers possible and Kaldorite swords unbreakable. This was true for the armor-resin, soft and pliable until it stiffened upon impact, that the Kaldorites used in their armor. And this was true for constructed intelligences. Even though gnomes prided themselves on their nonmagical gadgets, their means of crafting were magical. They had no qualms about using alchemy and wizardry to uncover the world’s natural secrets. Once the mind behind Athra’s Jewel was built and ready to be powered, they flooded it with gnomish shrink rays until it reduced to a size small enough to drop into the silver-plated skull and be powered by the elodian eyes.

  The body alone was a vessel worthy of Athra. Ingenuity, learning, technology… all these were achievements of civilization. But civilization was more than just gadgetry. It also encompassed philosophy, art, law, and social order. As such, the constructed intelligence and its body by themselves could just as well have been a tribute to Lorum, the God of Learning.

  But Valkrage had done his work with the construct a little too well. He preserved the knowledge, all recorded history, art, philosophy, and literature, from the Library of Astiana before its destruction. All of human civilization’s fruits were uploaded into the construct, and he named his creation Athra’s Jewel with more than a hint of irony. In it, he hid a secret message for Kaldor—that the nature of the Kairantheum itself was a magical construction of sidhe wizards in the First Age. He took Athra’s Jewel, encased her in a gem-encrusted egg, and hid her underneath the sands of the Surafian Desert. For all that Valkrage knew, however, he must not have grasped the full implications of the Kairantheum, for his intent was to use the construct to hide knowledge from the gods, not bring them back to life.

  The marriage of the construct’s ingenuity and the knowledge of civilization made Athra’s Jewel the perfect living embodiment of the meaning of civilization itself. That the construct had no conscious mind or soul protected its discovery by the gods. But should a part of the Kairantheum ever be brought to it, the goddess Athra would know of the perfect vessel that would facilitate her permanent entry into the world.

  Aradma had made such a transition possible. Already initiated into Athra’s service—poor Rajamin, he was such a good and clever servant—Aradma had prayed for Athra to inhabit Athra’s Jewel in order to save her daughter from the vampire queen.

  Athra’s Jewel now no longer behaved unconsciously, according to logical programming. Athra herself animated the body. The goddess’s awakening in the construct had brought her to a focused lucidity she had never before experienced. She understood now the relationship between Artalon and the Kairantheum. Artalon could control the Kairantheum… control the gods themselves.

  She couldn’t let that happen.

  If her face could show expression, she would have frowned. Strange. She didn’t know how Artalon would control the Kairantheum. Only that it could. Valkrage must not have discovered Artalon’s secret, for it could be found nowhere in the memory banks of Athra’s Jewel.

  She wasn’t about to let mortals take control of the gods. They needed the gods’ guidance. She would take Artalon and ensure it remained in the gods’ control. She…

  …her mind suddenly came upon her internal archives of higher mathematics. Valkrage had supplemented it with advanced trigonometry and calculus. He recorded numerical truths that only wizards knew, which historians were too dense to comprehend and record.

  Her body wobbled, and she slowly sank to the ground. Her mind and internal mechanisms shuddered in what could only be describe as orgasmic pleasure as she solved higher-order mathematical problems. With each new insight, she twitched and let out a giggle.

  Three days later she found her central focus once more and suspended access to mathematics for the time being.

  “Hello, Athra.”

  A man stood in front of her, dressed in solid black. His pants and overcoat were impeccably pressed, free from any dust. He offered her a hand and helped her rise to her feet.

  She regarded him for a moment. Even though she was rooted in her body, the strands of the Kairantheum still flowed through her. She was a goddess, after all. She read the patterns that coalesced around him and identified him as one of her cousins.

  “Yamosh,” she stated.

  He nodded and grinned. “A pleasure to find you active again in mortal affairs.”

  She nodded. He made it appear so easy, manifesting physical form from the Kairantheum, but she knew it wasn’t. The gods received energy primarily from the faith of their worshippers, but also from things in the world that reinforced the god’s meaning. It expended vast amounts of energy to hold physical form, which is why gods normally didn’t do so. It was a waste of faith. Yamosh was proud, however, and always appeared to his people in physical form, preferring that to the easier methods of dreams and crafted hallucinations mortals liked to call “visions.”

  Her relationship with Yamosh was a complex one. She was a Goddess of Light, Lady of Civilization. She was counted among the good gods by mortalkind, and she felt benevolent enough. She may not care as much about individual life as did her son, Keruhn the Consoler, but she wanted to see life grow, flourish, and advance. Maybe even someday seed the stars and spread civilization to other worlds.

  Yamosh, however, was chief among the evil gods. Although technically not as powerful as Malahkma’s raw desire, she was safely locked away in the Abyss while Yamosh was free to act in the world. He was ruthless, the most cunning of the gods, with the possible exception of Sestra, the spidery Goddess of Assassins, Thieves, and Spies. Yamosh had not always been a god. He had been the chief archangel of his creator, Karanos, but had risen up to slay his maker and seize the mantle of godhood. He was sometimes called the Father of Lies, but Athra knew the truth. Every word Yamosh uttered was true. He just never told the whole truth, giving only enough to imply a convincing falsehood. More importantly, he was also the God of Contracts. This guaranteed him a role in civilization.

  No, she thought to herself. You lose yourself in the beliefs given to you by your worshippers. None of that is precisely true.

  He smiled at her thoughts. It was difficult for gods to conceal their minds from each other. He was a lower order of god than she, one of the younger gods. Normally, being a high god, she could conceal her thoughts from one such as him… but her relationship with Yamosh was an intimate one. He seemed to understand her so well.

  “Strange twist of fate, isn’t it?” he bantered. He was rotte
n to the core, pure evil… and yet, so damned charming. The enigma of him fascinated her mind in the same way that mathematical paradoxes did. If she thought about him too much, she might get sent back into a reverie of mental masturbation, so she throttled back her thoughts, slowing down the automatic responses of the Jewel’s internal gears.

  When she didn’t respond, he continued. “It turns out mortals are our creators, not the other way around. I never rose up against Karanos, because Karanos never existed.”

  “He came to exist,” she reminded him. “The God-King.”

  “An academic point,” Yamosh arched an eyebrow. “The Kairantheum made him so because of Eldrikura’s damned meddling avatar. They made him into the resurrected god of a god that never existed.”

  “It’s more than academic,” Athra responded. “Our memories might not be real, but the Kairantheum rules us… mortals rule us. It’s distasteful. And Valkrage managed to weaken, almost destroy, all of us.”

  “Some of us survived.”

  “We all survived, but at what cost? Keruhn is barely a glimmer of his former self, and Daag may as well be still sleeping.”

  “It’s ironic, amusingly so,” he persisted. “They seek Artalon to control us—I’m sorry, to ‘bring balance’ to us—but mortal dreams already shape the Kairantheum. But I suppose that’s not enough. They want conscious control.”

  “I don’t intend to let that happen,” she said. “I will take Artalon and ensure the Kairantheum remains safely in the hands of the gods. At least now we know. We can tell them what to believe and use their beliefs to change us into who we want to be.”

  His eyes glittered. “You mean to evolve.”

  The tone in her voice took on a sneering note. “No. Evolution is Rin’s domain. Sloppy and organic. I mean to design with intelligence. I mean to achieve.”

  “Semantics,” he stated. He waived his hand, as if the word choice were unimportant. “Regardless, I’m all for conscious evolution. You’ve achieved something none of us have. A physical body. I’m close with my Covenant of vampires, closer than even Malahkma had been. But you… you have done so.”

  The light of her crystal eyes warmed in a smile. “I was always the greatest among you.”

  He frowned briefly, but then returned his face to its controlled charm. “What do you intend?”

  “I’m going to convene the council of the gods. I’m going to the Celestial Temple in Nyptherion.” The temple was Nyptherion’s secret, a place where all the gods, good and evil, could meet on neutral ground.

  “Do you think they will come?” he wondered. “Gods are such fickle beings.”

  “They will come, those that can,” she said. “We must all work together if we’re to preserve Artalon for ourselves.”

  He appeared to consider, but she knew he had already made up his mind to help her. “Go to Kriegsholm,” he said. “My Covenant vampires will have a ship ready to speed you on your way. You’ll need it… one of the unfortunate limitations of your physical form.”

  “Yes,” she assented. Then: “What do you require in return?” There was always a price with Yamosh. He was no altruist.

  He spread his arms. “When Keruhn finally awakens, keep him and the others out of Astia. The Covenant lands are mine.”

  She considered.

  “I’ll even allow your worship in my lands. You and I shall be consorts in the Covenant.”

  “Done,” she said. “A ship and the worship of your people, and Keruhn and the other Gods of Light won’t trouble your lands.”

  “Of course, in Astia you will be second to my rule.”

  “Of course.”

  He vanished. She smiled internally again. He went to the limits of his energy to manifest just to seal the deal and protect his little kingdom. She wondered if, in time, he would find a way to escape the Kairantheum as she had.

  3 - A Cold Trail

  After Kaldor’s funeral, Anuit and Arda took the magic carpet into the skies. Odoune and Attaris had already begun the search for Aradma, but to no avail. The roads were empty of gypsy caravans.

  The gypsies had emptied the duchy the night Aradma went missing and Kaldor was stabbed in the back by the Reverend Rajamin. Aradma’s daughter, Fernwalker, had witnessed her mother being taken by the sidhe vampire queen and the seelie known as Athaym. Arda and Anuit flew on Anuit’s enchanted rug to cover more ground. Odoune had flown shapeshifted as an owl to search the roads to the south and east, so the two of them went west towards the White Sea, over the last remaining road not yet scouted.

  Arda stood at the carpet’s edge as Anuit guided the magic rug through the air. Its fringe flapped in the passing wind, but the enchantment that made it fly also kept the air on top relatively comfortable and still. Arda’s hair fluttered only a little from the sky’s breath that moved over them.

  She crouched, scanning the crevices and valleys between the mountain ridges intently. A thorough search would require boots on ground, but this helped them find any obvious signs quickly. With every passing day, she grew more worried that they would not be able to find Aradma.

  The flying carpet had become a symbol to the paladin. Kaldor had made it with Anuit’s assistance. The wizard had taught the sorceress its craft in an effort to encourage her development of cleaner magic. Its threads had been spun by both of them together, the wizard of Light and the sorceress of Dark. It held the memory of Kaldor for Arda, but it also belonged to Anuit, Arda’s lover. In some ways, the darkling paladin started to think of the carpet as a symbol of their relationship, a blending of light and dark.

  “There!” Arda pointed. There was something strange on the path below them. A darker patch of dirt and a colored cloth fluttering in the breeze, caught by pine branches. “Stop! Let’s examine that!”

  Anuit nodded, and the flying carpet circled the area as they descended. There was no sign of immediate danger, but something had recently happened here. Based on how far they had flown and the steep and windy narrow mountain trails, Arda guessed this path was a few weeks out from Windbowl by foot.

  They landed on the trail at the edge of what looked like a filled-in sinkhole. Fresh dirt filled a circular maw about thirty feet wide. Blood lay on the ground at the circle’s edges and in the surrounding mountain grass.

  “What happened?” Anuit wondered aloud.

  “I don’t know,” Arda said, “but there were gypsies here.” She pointed to the tattered, colored cloth in the tree branches. Now that they were up close, she could see they were shreds of wagon covers.

  “Over there,” Anuit pointed. Under a knoll, not visible from above, lay the splintered frame of a wooden cart.

  They cautiously approached. Arda’s hands hovered near the revolvers at her hips, drawing back the sides of her new leather duster. She moved ahead of Anuit, stepping over broken wood.

  The wheels had been ripped from their axles, and the wagon’s top torn and strewn about. The sideboards were broken away from each other, and even the wagon floor and benches had been crushed into pieces. The body of a man lay dead in the center. Most of the flesh had been torn away from his body, and, given that it didn’t lay strewn about the ground, probably eaten. He clutched a destroyed fiddle to his open chest, and his eyes had been pecked out by scavengers.

  “A gypsy,” Arda stated.

  “If they were the ones who took Aradma…” Anuit remarked.

  Arda nodded. “Then what did this to them? I don’t think it’s as clear-cut as we thought.”

  Anuit uttered some words in that dark language that made Arda’s skin crawl. The imp Belham appeared before the sorceress, a six-inch-tall winged man with indigo skin that looked like dark lapiz. He hovered before his mistress. “What is your command?” he asked, flourishing a mock bow in the air. Ever since Anuit had accepted her love for Arda, her demons’ show of respect came off as much more forced than genuine.

  At least it shows more honestly now. Demon respect is never genuine, Arda reminded herself.

  “Sea
rch the area,” Anuit told him. “Find anything that might explain this.” She pointed to the shredded wagon, the dead man, then the bloodied sinkhole in the road.

  “As you command, mistress,” Belham replied, then flew off to fulfill his master’s wish.

  Anuit smiled hesitantly at Arda. “I know you don’t like me using them,” she said. “But…”

  Arda shrugged. “It’s part of who you are,” she replied. “No, I don’t like it, but Kaldor also said you shouldn’t just turn it off. It’s part of you, and I have to accept it if I’m going to love you.”

  “I know,” Anuit replied softly. “I’m being careful.”

  Arda sighed. “I’m with you in this.” The paladin then turned her attention back to the broken wagon. She crouched to examine the wood. “Claw marks,” she stated. “These were ripped apart.”

  Anuit stared down at the man and his broken fiddle. “Sad,” she murmured. “Clutching what was important to him to the last.”

  Arda glanced over at the broken instrument. It reminded her of Danry, her bard friend-turned-vampire. She had killed Danry after he turned.

  “Wait, what’s this?” Arda asked. Her boot struck something hard in the dirt. She brushed the soil aside and picked up a wickedly cut dagger, seemingly made from insect chitin. “This looks like… troglodyte make!” Arda had encountered them once or twice in her youth, when her early quests with Attaris and Danry took them far beneath the ground into subterranean tunnels.