When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by K. Scott Lewis

  “I have proven my seed worthy,” he said. “I go now to the mother.”

  Graelyn nodded. She led him over to one of the alcoves. As he approached, the fleshy orifice in its depths started trembling. It spewed a fine mist, filling the air with the pungency of thick musk. When the mist touched his head, he suddenly grinned. “I go to the mother!” he said again and took three deliberate, almost drunken steps to the vulva. He placed his hands inside the vulva’s folds and pulled them apart, and then pressed his body into them.

  There was a slick slurp, and the troglodyte warrior was pulled into the tower’s body, consumed by the wall. Troglodytes did not share their seed with females like other races. The men’s bodies held the seed protected within them. They were the seed, in a sense. There were no female warriors. The troglodytes’ living buildings were part of the same race, and the queen was the tower itself, the only one capable of laying eggs. Worthy warriors would sacrifice themselves to her. They were absorbed and their bodies digested until their seed was released inside egg sacks in the tower’s body. Once the eggs were fertilized, dozens would be released for the choros to nurture until they hatched into new warriors. Every once in a while, a different kind of egg would emerge, and it would be taken and planted in the cavern ground outside, eventually to grow into a building. Very few became queens themselves, towers capable of producing their own brood line. It had been a long time since a queen had been birthed.

  “Why do you show him kindness, Mother?” Naiadne asked. She stood near the eggs, her toes sinking into the nutrient goo. The misty musk from the warrior’s fertilization still filled the air, and it made her lightheaded. “He wanted to do this. You dishonored him by doing so.”

  Graelyn knelt before her daughter. “Naiadne,” she said. “You will see truth, in time.”

  Naiadne hated her mother, but more than that she hated that her father seemed to love her. He wanted Graelyn at his side, that was clear, but part of Naiadne hoped her mother would never redeem herself in his eyes. She wanted to be at her father’s side, and she couldn’t understand why he abided such a weak woman. Graelyn was bound to his will in the same way Naiadne’s imps were to her. He could command Graelyn to do what he wanted, and she couldn’t figure out why he didn’t.

  “Why don’t you go to him?” she asked, suddenly sullen. “Father wants you to, though you don’t deserve it.”

  Graelyn stood and folded her arms across her scale-covered chest. “He is not your father,” she said, “and he is wrong, in every way. He is unworthy of our affection or adoration, Daughter.”

  Naiadne balled her hands into fists. “No!” she screamed. “You’re stupid, and you’re wrong! He is the best, the strongest, and you’re so stupid! You don’t deserve him! I wish you weren’t my mother. I wish you would die!”

  Rage overtook the girl so suddenly that she punched her mother in the stomach. A blunt wall of Dark threw Graelyn to the ground, and the druid gasped as the force of the blow knocked the breath from her.

  She could die, she suddenly thought. Right here, and then no one would stand in my way. He could only choose me then…

  The flowing tendrils of Dark emanating from her fists condensed and formed into blades. In another moment, it would be over. Graelyn was weak, and she had no way to fight back.

  Naiadne raised her hands, but then he was there behind her.

  “No,” Athaym commanded, resting his hand on the girl’s shoulder. An ice-cold sensation flooded her breast, and her access to the Dark suddenly shut off. Her blades winked out.

  “She is the Green Dragon,” he reminded Naiadne. “She has only forgotten herself. She will join us in the end.”

  Naiadne pouted. “I don’t want to share you with her.”

  Athaym shook his head. “You are special to me,” he reminded her. “Through you I will bring my armies together.”

  “Father, I love—”

  “No,” he interrupted her. “Do not love me. Love is for the weak. Worship me, and worship me honestly.”

  She nodded eagerly. “I worship you.”

  He inclined his head in acceptance, his eyes shooting briefly over her head towards Graelyn. “Come with me,” he told the girl. “I would show you something.” He held out his hand, and she took it.

  She followed him out of the birthing chamber. As she left, she noticed that the vampire sidhe lurked in the shadows, just outside, no doubt waiting to feed on Graelyn’s blood.

  She huffed angrily. Her mother was so weak.

  * * *

  The revenant hunched over her desk, reading tomes of magic in the pitch dark of her room. She needed no light to see, and so didn’t bother with either candles or torches. Dust covered the bed from years of disuse. No maids or servants cleaned these rooms, and she knew the people of Windbowl had started to whisper that this tower of the castle was haunted.

  The thought amused Seredith. Her apartments were certainly not haunted. No one had bound the souls of dying spirits to these halls. The only person here was her…

  …but she was undead. She supposed her apartments were haunted after all.

  That was foolish, and she knew that’s not what people meant when they said that word. They thought of disembodied souls flitting around between the halls of stone. What’s more, they were spreading stories that her very presence attracted the ghosts of the dead who had already departed.

  Of course that was nonsense. There was no such thing as an afterlife. She had learned that fact from her days as a sorceress, when she still breathed. If a soul was not unnaturally preserved, or captured by magic, it dissolved and rotted in the ether just as the body did in the ground.

  The halls that she supposedly haunted—she chuckled, despite herself—at least looked haunted, with cobwebs, spiders, and thick layers of dust, except for the trail that her feet disturbed between reading desk, lab desk, and bookshelves.

  It was ironic. This was the room from which she and her mother, Marta, had stolen Aradma many years ago for a dark rite Marta had intended to use to steal Seredith’s body. The being that inhabited her mother wasn’t Marta, in the end, but her great, great—she didn’t know how many greats—grandmother, who had stolen the line of her daughter’s bodies and transferred her spirit forward for countless generations. An immortality of sorts.

  The irony was, when Anuit interrupted the rite and Aradma’s essence withdrew from Seredith’s body, she had been left a revenant husk. Her soul was trapped and couldn’t escape, and the body was dead, but wouldn’t rot to time. She didn’t haunt the halls… but she did haunt her own corpse.

  She had turned to wizardry to find a cure but had been unsuccessful after twenty years of study. And now—

  The soft chime of one of her magical wards sounded in the room, breaking her from her reverie and alerting her that someone had intruded upon her presence. She stood and turned, raising her wand in her pale, dry hand.

  In the farthest dark corner of the room she saw a strange sight. A black-skinned seelie man, whose red eyes held glowing gold flecks, stood holding the hand of a seelie girl with cyan hair and black blood smeared over her face.

  “Seredith,” the man said, “there’s no need for that.” He gestured to her wand and smiled. “You were a friend to the Dark once. I think you can be again.”

  She did not lower her wand. She saw an imp sitting on the shoulder of the girl.

  “You’re a sorcerer,” she stated. The skin on her face was soft, one of the few places on her that could bend to emotion, yet she never displayed any. Her cheeks remained stoic, but her lips moved into the slightest twist of a sneer. “I’m surprised a seelie would turn to sorcery at all.”

  “I’m not a sorcerer,” the man replied with a mock look of hurt on his face. “I’m the sorcerer. Once, I was the King of Dis itself. I intend to make it mine once again.”

  She lowered her wand as curiosity overtook her. “You’re Athaym,” she stated. It couldn’t be anyone else. She had heard of the strange seelie who had come
with gypsies and then vanished after Aradma’s disappearance. She never left the tower when she could help it, and had never seen the man herself. She had heard other rumors about him, however, since then. Interesting rumors.

  “Is it true you are Klrain?” she asked.

  His lips turned into a slight smile. “My secret’s out. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  For some reason his laughing and smiling made her uncomfortable. She actually felt… fear! And dread. The experience of having a real emotion again after so many years was interesting in and of itself. She smiled for it.

  “My mother was a sorceress,” she stated and raised her wand again. “I don’t think much of sorcery.”

  “Your mother was a fool who thought she could reach above her station,” Athaym said. “You should hate her. You, however…” He spread his hands wide. “Look at you. You’re the perfect melding of Life and Dark. You may live forever.”

  “What do you want?” she asked, still keeping her wand at the ready.

  “Nothing in particular,” he responded. “I wanted to show my daughter why her mother must live.”

  “Her mother…” She pondered for a moment. “You mean Aradma.”

  “You know my mother?” the girl asked. Her voice sent chills through Seredith’s soul. The revenant’s physical body had stopped responding to fear, but something in her being reacted to this little girl. She is dangerous. Seredith then realized how much danger she was in if she didn’t play this right. She knew that if Athaym were indeed the Black Dragon, he could kill her with a whim. Whatever arcane knowledge Seredith had accumulated in the last twenty years would be useless against him.

  “Yes,” Athaym confirmed. “The very one who made you who you are today. With Aradma, I can make more like you, or… give you the power to do so.”

  “Why would I want that?” Seredith responded. “I have no need of companionship. I am content.”

  Athaym laughed. “You are far from content, dear girl. You love magic. You thirst for knowledge. Nothing else will satisfy you.”

  Seredith didn’t respond. He was right. Somehow, she felt defeated and knew she would listen to the rest of what he had to say.

  He produced a small leather book from a pocket in his shirt. She suddenly noticed that the girl was dressed in nothing but a skintight suit of black leather scales. He, however, wore clothing that might be found on the streets of Windbowl.

  “You’re not searching for a cure anymore, are you?” he asked. “In fact, you stopped searching long ago.”

  She nodded wordlessly. How did he know? All she cared about now was magic, and she wasn’t about to trade an immortality to master its mysteries to return to being a simple girl who would grow old. Like Queen Aiella.

  As if sensing her thoughts, Athaym nodded. “Yes. You are not welcome here,” he crooned. “She has let you exist in your tower, undisturbed while the world goes on around you, because her duke would have wanted her to. But that will not last, and the world will not continue to leave you be. After she dies, what then?”

  “What is that?” Seredith asked, eyeing the book in his hand.

  “Nothing much,” Athaym replied. “A trifle. A spell. The rite to a single spell.”

  Around Athaym’s form, Seredith saw a dark countenance, a shadow within a shadow. She sensed the raw power that radiated beneath the fabric of his being and knew that when she had been alive she would have fallen down on her knees in that moment and worshipped him. But she was no longer a sorceress, and the powers of the Dark no longer held any fascination for her. There was something else she sensed in his power, however, and that was the promise of knowledge.

  “What spell?” Her dry raspy voice cracked with the memory of excitement. “Is it sorcery?” she asked suspiciously.

  Athaym’s eyes glittered. “Seredith, I am the Black Dragon. We were wizards before we were channelers. How do you think I created Dis? I am the greatest wizard this world has ever known.”

  He tossed the book to her. She caught it in both hands, dropping her wand as she did so. It clattered on the dusty floor.

  “A phylactery,” he said. “A means to store your soul safely away, so that if anything… unfortunate happens, you may continue to live.”

  “Why would you give this to me?” she asked hesitantly. She had stopped looking at him. Her dead fingers traced the black leather binding. She held it as if to open it, but it seemed so rare, so great a mystery, she almost didn’t want to. There were few things that made her feel anything anymore, and the first time she opened an obscure book of magic was one of them. She could only open it for the first time once.

  “A gesture of good will,” he stated. “And I would see you continue. I’d like you to rule the surface when I am done with it. I have Aradma. I can teach you the secret to make more like you. You’ll need servants to protect you from distractions.”

  “Distractions…”

  “The living will turn against you.”

  She nodded. She had known this for some time. She just hadn’t gotten around to giving it real thought yet. She had been too focused on her studying.

  “Why is she special?” the girl asked petulantly.

  “Because,” Athaym replied, “she is without faith. She is without hope. She cannot feed the gods of the Kairantheum…”

  Seredith considered his words. It was true, she supposed.

  “…and she is powerful.”

  Also true.

  “We will leave you now,” Athaym told the revenant. “There will be a time when all that you know is gone and dead, and you will endure. The Dark will endure, and I am the Dark. Consider whether you wish me your enemy or ally. I offer you an eternal life of magic, to penetrate the mysteries of the universe. There are countless worlds out there among the stars, and you could know them all. Serve me as my revenant queen, and I will show you things even the sidhe wizards could not dream of. I will return after you have had time to think on it.”

  She still hadn’t looked up from the book, but she knew she stood alone again. They had vanished, jumping through the shadows that had brought them.

  She had once hated sorcery for what it had done to her mother. She despised Anuit for continuing to be ruled by it. She still looked down on it, but for different reasons now. It was the path of the weak. It gave power without understanding, and in the end sorcerers became slaves to the Dark. This man, however… the Dark did not rule him. He ruled the Dark. She knew this in her bones.

  But none of that mattered right now.

  She placed her dried, gray thumbs together in the center of the book’s closed pages. She opened her mouth in a slight circle, almost as if she were about to moan. She turned her wrists and peeled the pages open, shuddering from the only pleasure she knew anymore.

  * * *

  Naiadne turned to her father after they returned to the dark recesses of Taer Koorla.

  “What so special about Seredith?” Naiadne asked again. “If mother’s blood can make more walking dead, why do you need the one on the surface?”

  Athaym raised an eyebrow. “Indeed. Perceptive. We don’t, but she is strong, without faith, and having her is not a bad thing. I wanted to only show you what is possible, and why I will tolerate no harm to your mother.”

  “But—”

  “Enough,” he said.

  Naiadne shut her mouth.

  “Come,” he beckoned. “Let us go to the heart of the tower.”

  Naiadne sucked in a breath. She had never been allowed there before, yet she knew that’s where her destiny lay and was eager to fulfill her father’s purpose.

  They walked up the sloping spiral ramp whose slick red membranes were ribbed with black bony steps. Choros on various tasks tending to the tower’s well-being hurried up and down the pathway, paying no mind to the two seelie. As they ascended there were fewer servants, until finally they were alone.

  “By now, Koorla will have become aware of your rise as kessana,” Athaym told the girl, “at least
, as much as she is aware of things.”

  “She knows me?” Naiadne asked. She knew the tower was alive, but she thought of it as more like a plant of flesh and bone. She never considered…

  “In her own way,” Athaym said. “You will change all that.”

  The slope leveled, and they came to a round passage blocked by an open wall made of two flaps of thick flesh. The two sides met in a narrow vertical slit, which slowly grew wider and narrower as Taer Koorla inhaled and exhaled. Naiadne’s brow sweat, and she wiped her hand over her forehead, dismayed when she rubbed away the dried black blood from her earlier kill.

  Athaym looked down at her. He wiped moisture off of Koorla’s walls and rubbed away the rest of the blood with his hands. “You have proved you are not weak,” he told her. “Do not be ashamed of who you are. Live in truth, not in lies.” He continued to rub his hands over Naiadne’s skin, washing away the last of the black blood with Koorla’s fluids.

  When he was finished, he stood once more.

  “Place your hand on the portal,” he said. “See if she accepts you.”

  Naiadne went up to the breathing membrane. She placed her palm on its sliding surface. After a brief moment the two sides opened wide, pulling back to the edge to open enough for both of them to step through. The membrane closed behind them.

  The chamber spread round and squat, with smooth pink walls. There were several such breathing entryways, all constricted to small openings. Taut gray strands of thick filament ran the expanse of the floor to a place in the room’s center where the surface gave way to a soft, gray mass of a wrinkled and folded… something. Naiadne had seen enough battle to know it was a giant brain, five times the size of any troglodyte warrior. She wondered how big it was beneath the floor. She had the impression she was staring at a very small part of its surface.

  A fleshy mound on the ceiling’s center, right above the brain, swelled. It extended and bulged into a thick tendril. A hole on its tip widened and separated as a single, giant eyeball emerged. Narrow yellow filaments grew out from between the wrinkles in the giant brain, and they each turned and softly swayed towards Naiadne.