When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by K. Scott Lewis

  Five unseelie stood with her, three women and two men, all that remained of the forty who had been named choros-nalcht. She looked down the hole and saw the faint glimmer of light dancing over rushing water. It looked fast, too fast to swim in, especially in her condition. The other unseelie stared emotionlessly at her.

  A yolisk head poked out of the tight bend from which they had emerged. The unseelie pointed and wailed when they saw it.

  There was nothing for it, then. It was either the yolisks or the water. Aradma wasted no time and pushed the closest elven woman into the gap. The unseelie fell into the water, but any sound of a splash was masked by the underground river’s natural roar.

  The other unseelie saw their companion disappear, and they jumped into the water of their own accord.

  The yolisk head butted Aradma and knocked her to the ground. One of its legs stepped upon her ankle, and its proboscis extended, with a sharp needle-like point sliding out into the air that she had not seen revealed during their feedings.

  Aradma grabbed a nearby rock and raised it over her head, leaning forward and thrusting it into the insect’s left eye.

  It stepped back for a moment, releasing her ankle. She rolled to her side and over the lip of the hole, falling into the rushing river below.

  The underground rapids caught her, pulling her underneath the surface. She struggled to rise for air, but the water had its own designs. It carried her along, and just when she thought she might not be able to hold her breath a moment longer, it spit her up and out on a smooth rock ledge, covered by a cushion of springy mushrooms.

  She gulped in air on hands and knees, trying to orient herself. She rose to her feet and saw that she was not the only one there. The stream continued to empty out into a larger pool that widened into a placid calm away from the rushing outlet. The five unseelie stood beside her, but there were others as well, other young troglodytes who looked somehow different from the ones who had captured her. Their scaled bodies were a different shade of black.

  An older troglodyte greeted them. He stood across a smaller pool, separated from the larger lake. “You have earned your selves,” he told them. “The first step of your journey is complete. You are no longer choros-nalcht. Now you are simply choros, the lowest of the low, who exist to serve all who rise above you. But you have proved that you are not animals.”

  Aradma noticed something curious about the troglodyte elder. He stood naked here, like all of them. Unlike every other race she had encountered, the space between his legs was smooth like the rest of his body. Nothing hung to indicate he was male. Maybe she had misjudged them. Maybe they were neither men nor women, but something else entirely. She placed that thought aside for the future.

  “You will wear the garb of choros,” the elder troglodyte declared. “If you would live, come forward into the pool and through it, and emerge reborn at my side.”

  Forward, she heard the Fae King whisper in her mind. The only way through is forward.

  She stepped into the water before the others. Something tickled her toes, but she willed herself to proceed.

  The elder stepped into the water and met her in the center. He placed his wide, scaled palm behind her shoulders and laid her back, submerging her beneath the surface.

  Hundreds of little… things… crawled over her skin, tickling her. She held her breath again, but only for a short moment this time. He lifted her up to the air and back to her feet. “Arise, choros. You are now a child of Taer Koorla.”

  She stepped out of the pool on the far bank as the others behind her followed in the strange baptism. She looked down at her body and saw what had been climbing over her. Thousands of tiny—she wasn’t sure what, bugs? No, more like mollusks—had covered her body. She saw the soft undersides of their flesh grow together even as they sucked down onto her skin. As they tightened, their tiny backs, which looked very much like black serpent scales, pulled in tight to form a cohesive surface. It looked like troglodyte skin and covered her body from toe tip all the way up to her neck and ears in the same color as her captors. Only her face and head remained uncovered. She wondered if all troglodytes wore this, for she saw on the elder a similar skin of mollusk-like living armor, almost as natural as the scales of his face.

  For a moment, she worried that the armor had sealed her in, and she would have trouble attending to natural needs like making water. She pulled at where a waistline should have been and was relieved to find that the new clothing peeled back like tight-fitting cloth, except it made a moist sucking sound. She released its edge, and the thin skin of living armor resettled on her body.

  It seemed to grow into her skin. It wasn’t painful, just a mild tingling sensation. She felt energized by whatever it passed into her bloodstream, and the aches from earlier scrapes and bumps faded away.

  They were led up a set of stairs into the lower levels of Taer Koorla. Aradma didn’t need to touch the element of Life to know that the tower itself was alive. She saw its veins and felt the air rush through the halls as it breathed. It reversed direction with each inhale and exhale, and as Aradma stepped into its main hall it almost seemed as if she heard the tower… sigh.

  The other new initiates, both troglodytes and unseelie, were quickly assigned to troglodytes that came in to collect them to begin their time serving their betters. Only Aradma was left alone with the elder who had baptized her.

  “Come with me,” he said. “You will not serve a house. You belong to Athaym.”

  Without looking back, he moved towards one of the spiral ramps leading into the tower heights.

  Aradma slipped out the side of the tower instead, intending to escape to the city streets. She had no intention of submitting to Athaym’s will.

  The tower’s breathing grew agitated, and suddenly it inhaled so hard that it pulled Aradma back into its entryway. The elder grabbed her neck and hissed, “Are you so foolish you seek to deny the Black Dragon?”

  He dragged her up the spiral ramp by her neck. She struggled, but it was no use. The troglodyte’s strength was too much for her.

  The tower’s breathing returned to a pleasurable sigh.

  The elder threw her on the ground in one of the tower’s top chambers. Athaym and Sidhna awaited her arrival. The elder then left her alone with the two of them.

  Aradma stood, folded her arms across her chest, and calmly met Athaym’s gaze. It did not matter that he had taken her power. It did not matter that he had taken her pride. It did not matter that he had bound her will to his. She would not submit, and she would not forget that she was his equal.

  “Excellent,” he stated. “I was beginning to wonder if you would make it. You may speak, if you wish.”

  “You are mad,” she said. “There was no purpose in that.”

  “I am far from mad, I assure you,” he replied with a cold edge in his voice.

  “You had already bound me to your will,” she told him. “I can feel the demonic pact inside me. There was no need for that.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “That was not for my benefit,” he said, “but for hers. The tower now accepts you as one of her own.”

  Her? Then Aradma considered. It felt right. She didn’t know how she knew, but the tower’s presence felt feminine, almost maternal.

  “What can you possibly want from me?” she asked. “I have nothing to give you, no power in the world above. I command neither armies nor kingdoms.” She stared at him coldly. “Is it my body? A child? Do you intend to rape me?”

  His face grew cold, and all semblance of pleasantness left him. “Do not think me so base,” he replied. “I am Klrain. I will have your body and your womb, but not by force. You will give yourself to me freely in the end.”

  Aradma laughed.

  Agony flared through the bond, and she fell to the floor as all her muscles cramped and went into spasms. She cried out in pain.

  “But first,” he added, “you will suffer. You may think I do this out of desire for revenge, for holding me in dragonslee
p and binding me in the Otherworld. But you would be wrong.” Then he paused. “But don’t make the mistake of thinking I will use pain to make you offer yourself to me. You will come to me in spite of all this because it is the truth you find in agony’s clarity that will set you free. I do this for you, Sister.”

  “Go to hell,” she muttered when the pain stopped. She thought briefly at how the sorceress Marta had tortured her spirit in Windbowl, drawing out knowledge of her true name.

  He leaned over her. “Who are you?”

  She glared at him. That was what Marta had asked. Now she knew the answer. “Aradma, the Heart of the Dragon that gave you life.”

  He closed his fist, and her body went into spasms again. Burning pain flared raw over her nerve endings, reaching into her core. She screamed.

  When he released her, tears streamed down her face. Her throat was raw. “Don’t, please,” she whispered. “My child.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” he said. “Aradma is not a lie, but neither is it the whole truth. Let go of your guilt. Who are you?”

  “You said my child was important—”

  More waves of agony raped her soul. She screamed until she could scream no more.

  He released the dark power, and she lay on the floor, sweating and barely conscious.

  “You were all fools,” he said. “You denied me, fought me, accused me of lying, and imprisoned me, only to come to the same conclusions I had reached, after all of it. If only you had joined me from the beginning. We were the Archdragons! We should have been united.”

  “What do you want?” she breathed. She pushed blood out from between her lips. “Your prattling bores me.”

  “Want? I want the same thing you want.” He took her head in his arms and gently stroked her hair and ears. He kissed the crown of her head. “I want to kill the gods.”

  15 - The Seal of Time

  Tiberan sat with Keira on top of Cloudpaw as the bear trudged through the driving snow. Ghost followed behind him in his wake. The elven man pulled the fur cloak tight, able to ward away most of the cold. He wore a scarf over his lips and nose to keep them from freezing, and the hood protected his long ears. Still, he regarded Keira with envy. You couldn’t wrap a winter cloak more tightly than absorbing it into your own skin.

  Illeski and Osku rode side by side in front of them. The four of them had been traveling for weeks through the Ice Mountains. Wherever Illeski was leading them was hundreds of miles from the White Sea. Here in the deep of the interlocking mountain ranges winter never surrendered to summer.

  Tiberan kept his senses cast widely about him. Troglodytes were in the mountain passes; of this there was no question. So far, he had detected them far enough in advance that his group avoided them. Two weeks ago, when the sun had glittered brightly over sloping ascents of snowy banks, they had seen a troop of them emerge across the valley. Illeski and Osku had watched in silence as the things moved across the open space and then descended once more into the ground. The two Glavlunders just nodded to Tiberan in acknowledgement at the sight and then continued on their path.

  The troglodytes seemed to be looking for something. Whatever it was Valkrage had hidden up here, Tiberan surmised, they knew about it. He hoped Valkrage’s magic was still strong enough to keep them out and hadn’t died with the Archmage. If it weren’t for the troglodytes, he would have left well enough alone. It should still be safe, a thought prompted by Fae memories told him. Faerieholm was a place of magic. It would have provided an anchor for his spell to outlast his death. This is why he must have needed it.

  He had no desire to involve himself further in the wizard’s affairs, but he knew if the servants of the Black Dragon sought something left behind by Eldrikura’s avatar, Tiberan couldn’t turn a blind eye.

  It grew dark early, and they made shelter between two rock outcroppings. Illeski pitched a short tent, and Tiberan did the same. He and Keira huddled together with Ghost, whose fur had grown long thanks to the magical collar Tallindra had given him. Couldpaw curled at the tent’s entrance, seemingly not bothered by the cold.

  Tiberan’s dreams were not as vivid when Keira slept beside him. He still saw the tortured dreamwalker of the Green Dragon in the Otherworld, submitting herself to Klrain’s pleasure, but it felt removed and far away. He no longer cried out in the night, nor awoke with trembling anger. Still, the dreams left him with a sense of unease.

  Keira had already awakened and was outside. Ghost still slept at an angle, but his tail seemed awake enough. Its furry tip brushed Tiberan’s face, tickling his upper lip and nose. Tiberan poked the tiger’s ribs. “If I have to get up, you have to get up,” he said.

  He stretched and crawled out from under the tent. The snow had stopped, and the wind had ceased its fury, diminishing to a chill pull that tugged around him. The sky was a brilliantly expansive blue, without a cloud to mar its sapphire depths. The world lay covered in fresh snow, pristine and smooth. Keira crouched atop one of the rocks, overlooking the valley. She sniffed the air and then turned to regard Tiberan.

  You dreamt again, she mentally told him through their link.

  I know, he answered. It is always the same.

  I felt it this time. I could see her. The Green Dragon’s soul, captured. What do you think it means?

  Not captured, he told her. Surrendered. It is a memory, nothing more. I know not why it haunts me now.

  Who is it that tortured her so?

  The master of those we now seek to thwart, he replied. The Black Dragon.

  The eyes in her canine face showed sadness. She opened and closed her mouth as dogs are wont to do and gave a small, audible whimper.

  It is in the past, Tiberan repeated.

  Ghost emerged, and Tiberan packed the tent. Illeski and Osku had already stowed their gear. Osku handed them dried, salted fish from the summer’s catch.

  “How much farther is it?” Tiberan asked.

  Illeski shrugged. “It’s difficult to tell, with the weather and snow. I think a month more.”

  They continued on under the sun. Here, it brought little warmth, but it was just enough that Tiberan drew back his scarf and let his face feel the wind. It did not hurt him as it had when they began the journey. He was acclimating to the cold.

  It was midmorning when they came to a wide opening with neither trees nor rocks. The slope here was gentle, almost flat. It rose to the right and then fell off a cliff about two hundred feet to the left. The fresh snow masked any rocks or imperfections of the ground, smoothing the land to a creamy surface.

  “We call this the Demon Shelf,” Osku said. “It is deceptive and easy looking, but this way is troubled by sliding snow.” He pointed to a distant slab that jutted from the ground, three miles ahead. “Those rocks. If the snows come, we must make for that and find shelter. Keep quiet, for here the mountains consider loud talk to be rude.”

  They proceeded out into the deep snow.

  Halfway to the rock shelter, Tiberan sensed life beneath his feet.

  “Troglodytes!” he whispered to his companions. “They move beneath us!”

  “Keep moving,” Oksu responded quietly. “Hopefully they do not know of our passing, but we cannot afford to tarry here in any case.”

  They hurried on across the Demon Shelf, and the troglodytes moved ahead. The companions were three quarters of the way across when the mass of chthonic warriors erupted from the ground beneath the jutting rock slab. Their black scales and chitinous-plate armor glittered in the sunlight. There were roughly a dozen of them, and their leader pointed to Tiberan and his companions. He roared in a guttural language, shaking a long spear in his hand. The others bore similar weapons, spears and wicked swords with saw teeth on inner curves.

  Ghost and Cloudpaw answered his roar, rushing forward.

  Whumph.

  Tiberan’s eyes widened in alarm. The sound came from the land. From the snow.

  Once more. Whumph.

  Then the sickening sound of a dull
blanket of white noise, both loud and diffuse, rose in volume. Tiberan looked up and saw a rising cloud of white snow build at the top of the Demon Shelf, rushing towards them with increasing speed.

  “Run!” Illeski shouted.

  There was nowhere to go but towards the troglodytes, who now held the only shelter within reach. The reptilian men grinned, banging their weapons against their chests.

  The companions rode as fast as they could across the thick snow. The roaring cloud of deadly white surged closer. The troglodytes waited with glee.

  Tiberan removed his large mitts, exposing his hands to the air. The fingerless gloves underneath the mitts kept his palms warm, but allowed him to loose his bow and nock an arrow. He fired at the troglodytes even as they hurled spears back at them.

  He took two down with arrows through their heads. Keira jumped off of Cloudpaw’s back and ran on all fours beside Ghost. The two of them closed the distance first, and the troglodytes were forced to turn their attention away from spear throwing to defend against tooth and claw.

  Tiberan glanced up the shelf. The cascade of snow seemed a hundred feet tall, bursting towards them.

  “Move!” Osku shouted. “There is no time, RUN!”

  Tiberan leaned forward. Run, Cloudpaw, as fast as your legs can take you. The bear roared and sprinted over the snow, fast for all his size. The Glavlunders followed close behind on their wolves.

  The avalanche was nearly upon them. Cloudpaw made it, joining the fray amid the troglodytes. Tiberan leaped from the beast’s back, tumbling on the ground beneath the immense stone slab. He turned to check on his Glavlunder companions. Illeski rushed in behind him, impaling one of the troglodytes with his hunting spear, Osku at his back.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Tiberan saw one of the troglodytes lift Keira and throw her out into the open from under the slab even as the might of the avalanche descended.