When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by K. Scott Lewis

  “Summoned,” the dragon finished for him. “Yes, I feel it too.”

  23 - The Darkling Legacy

  Anuit hunched over a past sorcerer’s desk in the hidden darkling halls of God Spire. She turned pages in a thick book, obsessed with its contents. Oriand sat nearby at another reading desk with a similarly bound book.

  It was quiet here. Time did not move the same way, as if this place was partially askew from reality, living as much in the world of shadow as it did in Ahmbren. These were the secret library halls of the ancient sorcerer-kings of the Darkling Empire of Artalon, from before when Archurion sank the city beneath the sea. Even the air seemed black, no matter how many candles they lit.

  When Aaron had restored the city, he had pulled back together all its dust and ash using the power of two Archdragons. Even old spells and enchantments were restored, as evidenced by these halls. The book she read was over a thousand years old since it had been remade, and she had no idea how many years it had survived before Artalon’s destruction. It didn’t matter, however, for it would last forever. It was preserved by some sort of Time magic, and she remembered that the very first sorcerers had also been wizards before they made their pacts with Dis. Whatever the spell, its power was localized to the book’s pages, preserving them from the effects of time.

  Anuit wanted to sit cross-legged on the great chair and pull the book onto her lap. She couldn’t, however, for it was illegible with the slightest of movements. She turned the page, and an image of the page was left behind. It blurred and streaked through the air, and then a few seconds later, the left-behind image caught up with the page’s new location. It was as if it drifted in time just behind the now. If she moved the book at all, the entire tome blurred into an unreadable mass until it settled into its new position. Thus, all reading had to be done with the books lying still on a stationary object.

  Everything in these halls was preserved by the same spell. Whenever she slid the chair, it blurred. When they opened a door, it blurred. The candles seemed to work, however, but they lasted twice as long as ordinary ones.

  The place was well hidden. It brimmed with so much magic Anuit thought it insane that the sidhe in the halls outside, much less Valkrage himself, never found it. The darkling Artalonians of old had secrets upon secrets tucked away in the folds of reality.

  Arda wandered the halls somewhere, most likely bored with reading. They spent all their time searching for some clue to the whereabouts of the true Stag Throne. They could read most of the books—the histories, the philosophies—but there were some on sorcery itself that only Anuit could make sense of. She had discovered new techniques with the Dark beyond what Belham had taught her over the years. She could have spent all her time studying sorcery itself in these halls, but she forced herself to read the other books as well. She was now convinced the secret to unlocking Artalon lay somehow in these pages, both in the sorcerous texts and the historical texts together. The journals, commentaries, and essays would reveal what they needed to do… but sorcery was the key to how they would do it.

  Belham had been the one to reveal this hall to them, and it was he who later discovered that the temporal records had been ripped away. Anuit was quite annoyed to learn he was able to read temporal records in the first place and had neglected to tell her. She had discovered—from reading these books, no less!—that imps could do such things for their masters. The only thing that saved him from her wrath was that he had led them to this library in the first place.

  The book in front of her was written by one of the Artalonian Ladies of the Third Court, named Desdemona. It was the second in the Third Legacy of the Circle. Each Legacy was itself a multivolume work, sometimes dozens of books long, and there was one Legacy written by each of the original twelve sorcerers. Anuit felt a certain fondness for this particular writer. Lady Desdemona reminded Anuit of Arda in her reflections and written voice. Of course, Desdemona was a wizard turned sorceress and had been born a human before the pact-rite warped her into a darkling.

  There was one who came in our dreams. He was the Dark Lord, the King of Dis. We had touched the magical elements of Time, Light, Life, and Dark with our spells, but we were no match for the sidhe lords of the High Elven Imperium. He promised a depth of knowledge in the Dark that would give us the power to defend ourselves. We might lose our way with the other elements, but we would sacrifice breadth for raw power. All we had to do was ally with demons.

  We were, of course, worried for our souls. The King of Dis revealed that souls did not live after death. Our trade to the Lords of Dis would be a piece of our soul right then, right there, and we would be given a demon to command. There was no eternal torment that awaited us after death, for there was no afterlife.

  That would change everything, but we did not trust the Dark Lord.

  We decided to find out for ourselves. Guided by the greatest of our number, Tal Harun, we traced the source of the dreamwalker through the Void and found the city of Dis living in the periphery of Ahmbren, in the twilight spaces between the sky and the black starry sea of the Void. A small coterie of us—I was among them—entered the Demon City and saw for ourselves there were no chained souls, no tortured damned. The old legends of the Archurionite Church proved false yet again. Dis was a barren city of darkness, filled with unformed shades of demons. The Dark Lord sat alone in its center and promised that a pact would make us strong. There would be a trade, small fragments of our souls for demons and the secrets of sorcery. Artalon and Dis would be made strong by each other.

  We returned from Dis and convened the Council of Thirteen.

  Having uncovered yet another theological lie, we thought it no wonder that the magic of the runewardens had fallen even more easily beneath the might of the sidhe Imperium. The gods could not help us, and tales of their might seemed like distant memories from the First Age. We were not enough to resist the high elves, and we knew it was only a matter of time before the human race would be but dust in the shadows of High Elven history.

  All but one of us made the pact in 9422 of this Second Age. Only Tal Harun refused, and he left us to our fate. We were now the Council of Twelve.

  We performed the rite as the Dark Lord instructed and bound ourselves and our blood to Dis. We won our demon servitors and lost our magic, but now we had sorcery. We could channel the Dark and work different kinds of rites. There was shadow magic, and curses, and of course reaching ever further into the Void to find and bind more demons of all kinds. We were the first. We paid the highest price. We were marked by the pact. We took on the image of the citizens of Dis, with our horns, and our eyes, our tails, and our claws. None of the others who pledged themselves to the Dark through us were marked so; only those of us who pledged to the Dark Lord himself. His touch was forever in our blood, and all our children would be born with the mark. I now envy that Tal Harun and his descendants escaped this fate.

  Anuit was struck that Desdemona never mentioned dragons or Klrain. Kaldor had revealed that the King of Dis was Klrain’s dreamwalker, but the Artalonian wizards did not believe in dragons. They never knew their true deceiver.

  She turned the page. The next entry was written years later.

  We were encouraged to initiate anyone and everyone. Few were as strong as the inner council, so we kept control of Artalon. Our demons challenged and slowed the sidhe offensive, but it wasn’t quite enough. We architected a curse, based off of our understanding of the curse which infected us and made us darklings. We created the wolven and transformed our armies into a ferocious horde, capable of overrunning the orcish armies that served the sidhe.

  It went on, and Anuit quickly lost interest in the accounts of the battles of the war.

  She stretched back from reading the book and rubbed her temples. The darkness in the air here affected her more than it did the others. It always seemed as if shadows crept out of the corners of the walls and the cracks in the floors. They were never there when she looked straight at them, but when she turned
away, in the corner of her eye, they grew thick and serpentine.

  At the distant end of the room, in the doorway, she saw that flash of blond again. Why did she keep seeing Seredith as she had appeared in life? She rubbed her eyes and groaned.

  “What’s wrong?” Oriand asked, looking up from her own reading. The troll’s candles had dripped wax all over the surface of her dark-stained wooden desk, and the rims of her narrow spectacles glinted in the tiny flames’ light.

  “Nothing,” Anuit replied. “I’m just tired… I think I’ve read too much.”

  Again, in the doorway, Seredith stood. She seemed solid this time and continued to stare back at Anuit. Anuit blinked again, but a young, vibrant Seredith remained. Anuit stood, pushing the chair back abruptly. It blurred as it moved and settled into its new now, but Anuit ignored it, focusing on the apparition.

  The dark-skinned sorceress hurried to the door, but Seredith had stepped away. By the time she reached it, the hallway was empty.

  Anuit frowned. This happened all too often now.

  She bit her lip and looked back over her shoulder. Oriand stared at her, eyes narrowed in studied intensity.

  * * *

  Arda wandered the shadowy corridors. She hated it here, in this space outside of space, and this time outside of time. The old darkling halls weighed upon the light in her soul. She was supposed to be reading, scouring the books with the others, but in truth she was going stir-crazy. She should be out fighting the enemy, or searching for a way to unlock Artalon. She slapped her forehead. That’s what they were doing here.

  But she couldn’t focus. These were the halls of her ancestors. Every book recorded in detail the accounts of the wizard’s council falling into Klrain’s trap. She stopped for a moment and touched the horns on her head. They were thick enough to fill her hands. She could grip them at their base, and her fingers would not touch her palms. She sometimes wondered if her demonic appearance was the reason it had taken a sorceress to fall in love with her.

  She slapped her cheek.

  Snap out of it. She did not sometimes wonder that. She never wondered that, until she’d arrived here. There was something in the air, something in the way it held them askew from time and space. The same thing that hid these halls from interlopers and protected her companions from discovery by the sidhe seemed to be weighing down and dripping into all of their minds.

  Dripping. She shuddered at the truth of that thought.

  What am I doing here? We’re wasting time! The paladin stopped for a moment and leaned against the wall. Another wave of vertigo overcame her as the shadows seemed to grow deeper. The light in her soul sparked in her inner awareness and drove the shadows away.

  Outside, people were dying as the armies tore at each other daily. Everything hinged upon them finding the key to this place.

  Oh, Aradma.

  What had they done?

  She raised her fingers to her face, tracing the ridges of the scars left by the troglodyte’s claws. Was the druid still alive? Ten years later… it seemed unlikely.

  This time she bent over and sicked up her lunch. The buried guilt seemed to be drawn out here by the Dark. The memory that she had abandoned her friend to the Underworld. She should have been stronger. There was always another way, and she had let herself be talked into giving up.

  She heard movement ahead in the darkness, and for a brief moment it looked like…

  No. It can’t be.

  Quite clearly, Gina, the farmer’s daughter, stopped, stared at her, and then turned around to run the other way, honeyed hair springing in its mass of curls. Arda’s heart caught in her throat for a moment at the sight of the past lover she had abandoned for duty many years ago. The shadow pressed on her mind, thickening her thoughts. She hurried forward, wanting to catch Gina and apologize.

  She rounded the corner and bumped into Anuit. Irritation and anger flashed through her at the sight of the woman who had turned her away from saving Aradma.

  Arda blinked. What am I thinking? These thoughts were not thoughts she wanted to feed, and she knew they weren’t honest. And she also knew she hadn’t seen Gina. More tricks of the shadow.

  Anuit seemed equally surprised, exhibiting a similar flash of annoyance, which was quickly replaced.

  Arda put her arms around Anuit’s waist. “This place is getting to us,” she said.

  “Yes,” Anuit agreed. “It’s the Dark here.”

  Despite being eight years junior to the paladin, they now looked the same age. Anuit had thirty-seven winters, and faint wrinkle lines had started to touch her eyes. Arda had seemed to stop aging a few years back as the Seal of Light in her spirit worked upon her body.

  They stood for a moment in each other’s arms, simply being together in silence. Arda breathed deeply and slowly, finding her center once more in the peaceful rhythm. In their embrace the paladin felt the rise and fall of Anuit’s shoulders as the sorceress’s breathing calmed to join with hers.

  in…

  …out…

  in…

  …out…

  They had done this shared calming ritual time and again in the years during the war to bring Anuit down from the Dark after a battle. Arda connected to the Light, and she felt the seal respond. The flow of Light spread from her heart and through her arms and hands, streaming into Anuit’s body until the Light flowed freely back and forth between them. The shadows seemed to retreat to their corners, but she knew they would come again, eventually. In these past few weeks spent in these halls, they had done this calming rite many times.

  After several minutes, Arda released the sorceress. They looked deeply into each other’s eyes, and the world seemed clearer, the air lighter.

  “I’m seeing things,” Arda confessed. “Things that aren’t real. I just saw Gina, the farmer’s daughter I told you about from when I was younger.”

  “This is a place of sorrow and loss,” Anuit said. “I think, in the end, the first sorcerers regretted their choice. Desdemona doesn’t exactly say that, but I get the feeling from her writings that… it’s as if the archives have been stained with the ghost of their remorse. The same Time magic that preserved these books also preserves their sorrow… their regret.” She paused for a moment. “I’ve seen things too… Seredith, as she was before she became a revenant.”

  “Let’s not forget ourselves,” Arda said.

  “As long as we have each other, we’ll be okay,” Anuit replied.

  Arda squeezed Anuit’s hands. “We need to figure out how to find the Stag Throne and then get the fuck out of here.”

  * * *

  Oriand continued to sift through the stack of books long after the other two had fallen asleep. Anuit lay face down over her desk, right cheek in the center of a large block of text. Arda had abandoned her reading hours ago and had sat on the floor beside Anuit’s chair, laying her head in the sorceress’s lap with her arms around her knees. Anuit had spent the last few hours stroking Arda’s hair while the paladin snored, before she too finally slept.

  Oriand had a good three hours left in her. She felt the most at home with books now, but she wished her eyesight wasn’t going. She was in her midforties, but still—it was a little soon for such things. Arda didn’t need glasses, and she was the same age… although she looked ten years younger, damn it.

  In truth, Oriand felt no animosity towards the paladin. She felt fondness towards both women, and if circumstances were different, maybe in a different life, she would jump at the chance to be with either of them. But they loved each other, and she was happy for them. She had resigned herself long ago to being alone. At least she had her books.

  She paused at that last thought.

  I have more than just books, she reflected. She had friends, true friends. That was more than she had ever had as the Matriarch of the Vemnai. And frankly, her friends were more important to her now than finding a soul mate. In truth, she didn’t believe in soul mates anymore, just like she no longer believed in gods worth worsh
ipping.

  She glanced once more at Anuit and Arda and how they had fallen asleep over chair and desk. The troll smiled.

  Yes, they were at war. Yes, they were stuck in a Light-forsaken library filled with accounts of one of the most evil societies Ahmbren had ever seen. Yes, the Dark here was oppressive enough to weigh down upon their very sanity, but Oriand was—

  “I’m happy!” she murmured softly and suddenly to herself, the surge of joy bursting so intensely it brought her thoughts out over her lips.

  She sat there with a stack of open books with her two closest friends in the world nearby, indispensably valuable to something that mattered. She was putting her mind to work, making a difference. She was important to people she cared about. To a people she cared about.

  The realization of happiness filled her with a lightness that made her hips sway with an inner song as she stood and stepped over to the bookshelves to select more volumes. She hummed a little tune to herself—my goodness, what’s gotten into me?—and the heavy shadow of the halls lifted from her shoulders. She felt clear of mind and light of foot.

  She brought another four books, smaller ones this time, back to her desk. Their images blurred behind her as she walked, as all things did here except those things they had brought with them. She set them down and opened the first one to the title page.

  The Confessions of Desdemona. It was dated 9450 of the Second Age and was the latest book they had found written by one of the Circle of Twelve, the original sorcerers. Oddly enough, this was not marked as part of any of the twelve series called the Legacies of the Circle. Anuit would want to see this. Oriand would be sure to show it to her first thing in the morning.

  The first few pages were unintelligible. By now, she recognized it as sorcerous formulae that only Anuit would understand. After that, however, the old Roentian returned as the accounting of their last days began.