When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by K. Scott Lewis

  I’m so proud of you, Anuit, Aradma thought. You’ve found your balance in the Dark, as Kaldor said you would. Even more than that, you will redeem the Dark.

  Above the sorceress, the heavens darkened and whirled. Hosts of demonic baalenites and imps swarmed towards her, intent on dismembering the upstart Queen of Dis. At the center of the dark maelstrom, a point of lightning crackled, and then Anuit opened up the gates to Dis, unleashing her armies upon Athaym’s fallen hosts. Thousands of raven-winged celestials tore through the demonic forces. Squadrons of gnomish gyrothopters and elemental streams of sidhe wizards circled in awe as the newly arrived army cleared the skies of Artalon.

  Below, Arda jumped off her dragon from an impossible height. As she fell, she transfigured into a being of diamond-brilliance. Wings of light spread wide, but then she pulled them in close, streaming a gossamer comet trail as she slammed into one of the bridges crowded with troglodytes and toad demons spitting fireballs. Her impact snapped loudly on the zorium-framed bridge and sent the middle cluster flying. She leaped to her feet. Her duster and tricorne had shifted with her, flowing in brilliance as she fought with sword and gun. The blade moved as a beam of starlight slicing through the forces of darkness, and when her guns flared, stabs of thick star-fire tore into the ranks of shadow.

  Tiberan and Keira guided Kreen and the flight of dragons. Aradma suspected he communicated with all of them through his animalistic senses. The dragon breathed fire, and then there was a moment where the two of them streaked through several streets faster than her eye could follow. Only the brightly lit trail of dragon fire on her retinas registered their movement. The Seal of Time…

  Palaen sensed her intentions and caught the winds to hover. “Is it time, Lady Graelyn?” he asked.

  “It is,” she answered, stroking his orange neck. “It is time I reveal the truth of my being.”

  “For Ahmbren’s Light,” the dragon replied.

  Aradma stood and then stepped off the dragon’s back.

  A rope of vines shot up to meet her feet, spreading into a pillar. The plant lowered her down until she stood just over the watery surface of Artalon’s streets. Aradma stepped over the water, and thick lily pads rose to meet her feet. She stretched out her arms and opened herself to Ahmbren.

  From deep within the earth, the planet’s life force gathered in response. Roots grew and expanded, forming a knot-work mesh that surrounded and grew over the city’s edges, filling in underneath the water. Wood conjoined and thickened into a massive trunk and then lifted Artalon up out of the water, back to its rightful place.

  The sea fell out of the streets with the roar of waves crashing, and greenery continued to sprout upwards, vines climbing and spreading leafy foliage over Artalon’s towers to their very tops. She stood now on firm branches where the water’s surface had just been, a hundred feet above the still-wet city streets. Aradma remembered her time on Moon Rock, confronting Soorleyn when she lived among the Vemnai, only this dwarfed the amount of power she had channeled then.

  The Archdragons were like gods, she thought. This is effortless now, and I am but a spark of the Green Dragon. And the Archdragons were as far below gods as I am of her. The only things that saved her from the gods’ wrath now were the strange rules that prevented them from acting against the faith of their people, of acting against those who arrived with the one marked by a god. Tiberan’s horns made the believers in Artalon pause. Aradma remembered when she had held the faith of a people in her hand years ago, when she had broken the sovereign power of Hammerfold into smaller realms. But that was the past, and Athra had left her; now she wouldn’t have been enough of a symbol on her own to have Tiberan’s effect, marked as he was by the Horned God.

  All he needs to complete the image is to sacrifice an eye, she thought. Then: Why are the gods more powerful than we were? The Kairantheum is a sidhe creation, and we were mightier than they. The answer came to her. Because it is not the Kairantheum that makes the gods powerful. It is the hopes and dreams of mortals given life. Mortal aspirations, mortal ambition, mortal potential… mortals are seeds from later aeons, and their potential exceeds dragonkind. Mortalkind is Ahmbren’s blossoming.

  She smiled to herself. She could participate in that now as one of them.

  The growing life grew thick and clogged the airways. It pushed the flying sidhe and gnomish airships back to their towers, and the demons ascended to escape the trap, only to be caught between Anuit’s raven-winged hosts and the dragonflight.

  The white owl landed on her outstretched wrist. She smiled. “Hello, Odoune.” A platform of thick leafy branches emerged before them, giving him a place on which to shift into his troll form.

  “Aradma,” he said softly, a smile spreading over his face, almost to his tusks. “We were expecting the Black Dragon.”

  She took his hands and stepped forward, embracing him fiercely. “He is dead. Truly dead this time.” She gestured around her at the tower bridges and balconies, all lined with humans and dwarves, orcs and trolls, seelie and gnomes, and even the sidhe watching from God Spire. “You’ve been busy,” she remarked. Then: “Where are my daughters? Naiadne came with Athaym’s armies.”

  He nodded. “We have her. You must come with me. Both are with the kings, but my healing can do only so much for Fernwalker. She is badly hurt. And Naiadne…”

  “Take me to them,” Aradma said.

  Odoune shifted into the owl and flew, Aradma following as the white falcon. Moments later they landed on one of the bridges close to God Spire. They shifted again to their humanoid bodies and walked into the tower where the kings were gathered. Arda and Anuit joined them. Alliance forces and the gathering of orc warriors parted to make room for the dragon that alighted to allow Tiberan and Keira to dismount.

  A murmuring arose among the assembly at the sight of Tiberan’s stag horns. Aradma saw the light of the Kairantheum echo and pulse through the crowd. Those horns evoke faith, she reflected once more. What is Keruhn’s game? She inwardly cringed, wondering how the god would make his move.

  Pushing those thoughts aside, she followed Odoune to the chamber in which Fernwalker rested. “Naiadne is in another room,” Odoune said. “We’ve kept her asleep, but we’re not taking any chances. She’s too dangerous. She did this to our daughter.”

  Fernwalker weakly opened her eyes. “Mom,” she murmured happily through a grunt of pain. She tried to sit up, but only managed to wiggle her body once before resting.

  “Don’t move,” Aradma said, heart breaking to see her daughter hurt.

  “It’s okay,” Fernwalker said. “It doesn’t hurt if I move. I just can’t feel my arms. My shoulders… but I stopped her. My sister…”

  Aradma’s heart jumped into her stomach. She knelt beside Fernwalker and placed her arms on her shoulders. “Breathe,” she gently urged her daughter.

  Aradma directed the flow of Life. She didn’t need to reach for it again, for it still coursed through her being. She could feel the seal now, as active and strong as the link, and the elemental essence responded to her being as much as she responded to it. Her healing abilities learned from Odoune in Vemnai had stemmed from her ability to see the truth of things and restore them to their natural, balanced state. Early in her life, her healing focused primarily on imbalances of mind and soul. In those days, restoring the physical body had proven more difficult. No longer.

  Life streamed through Fernwalker’s body, guided by Aradma’s vision of the truth of her daughter’s being. Flesh and bone knitted together, and the bruises faded away. Odoune’s healing hadn’t penetrated deep enough, nor had the rune magic—Aradma could see their golden residue in the Kairantheum’s light. As Aradma healed her daughter, the runic essence faded away.

  “Mom!” Fernwalker bolted up, throwing her arms around Aradma’s neck. “Naiadne! You have to help her!”

  Aradma stood. “Oh, Fernwalker,” she said. “I will try.” Even with her deepening connection to Life, she wasn’t sure she could undo
Athaym’s twisting.

  Odoune took her to an adjoining room. “Come with me,” Aradma told the others as she followed. She wanted her friends with her. She wanted the seals together.

  Naiadne lay on a cot, still sleeping. Her face looked so pure and innocent. Aradma sat beside her and brushed the blue bangs away from Naiadne’s face. She reached into her daughter with Life.

  Naiadne moaned and her eyes shot open. Her face contorted in rage. “No!” she screamed. “No, no, not you! Where is Father?”

  The child struggled, but Aradma placed her hand on her chest and probed deep. The coursing Life filled Naiadne’s link as it had done with Athaym, preventing the girl from using the Dark to slice at her mother’s hands. Aradma could feel the girl’s intent, but didn’t dwell on it, instead focusing on finding a way to help her. She could feel the link to Dark, placed there by Athaym, but all she could do was temporarily block it. It was rooted too deep within her. So too were the nerve tendrils implanted by Taer Koorla. Taer Koorla was dead, but Naiadne would always have some of the troglodytes within her.

  “Father, where is Father?” Naiadne cried.

  Aradma looked at her daughter thoughtfully. “Death is mercy for the weak,” she said finally, deliberately. “He died because he wasn’t strong enough to love. I tore open his chest. I feasted on his heart. And I drank his blood as life faded from his eyes.”

  Naiadne stared at her mother, falling into stunned silence.

  Anuit knelt on the other side of the cot. “I can see it,” she said. Her eyes flashed as dark as Arda’s, but the rest of her remained human. “His mark. I can remove the link.”

  “No,” Aradma said. “It is a part of her. If you do that, you will kill her, or at least her mind.”

  Anuit put her hand on Naiadne’s forehead. The sorceress’s gaze snapped up to Aradma in surprise. “She also has a link to Light! She can hold multiple elements, like the Shadowlord did.”

  Aradma nodded. “The link to Light was Kaldor’s, passed to her when she was conceived. Athaym put the link to Dark in her when she was born.”

  “The Light is blocked,” Anuit said. “Just like Life was for you. If I can’t take away her link to Dark, I can remove the block to Light.”

  “You!” Naiadne hissed at Anuit. “You stole Dis from me!”

  Aradma took a deep breath. What else could they do? Naiadne was dangerous, lethally so, left as she was. Her mother nodded.

  Anuit closed her eyes. Darkness overshadowed her, and she called out, “Naiadne! I release you! Be free in the Dark!”

  The girl grimaced, lips contorting in rage. Through her flow of Life, Aradma felt the other elemental link open.

  “I see it now,” Arda said. “The Light is—”

  Naiadne shrieked, a long single note that wavered in the air. Her body tensed, her back twisting into a high arch.

  Aradma’s flow of Life fell away, ejected from her body as the two elements mixed. Naiadne didn’t struggle but slowly relaxed. As she returned to the cot’s surface, her shriek fell in volume until it continued as a decrescendo’d sigh. The seelie child resumed a low, steady breathing, and stared catatonically at the ceiling.

  Aradma touched Naiadne’s forehead. Her mind was… not gone, exactly. Stunned. Shocked. A single tear fell from each of Naiadne’s eyes, slowly trickling down the sides of her face. Aradma swept her bangs back and kissed her daughter’s forehead. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I will never abandon you.”

  Anuit’s brow furrowed in concern. “What happened? Did I…”

  “She’s fine for now,” Aradma said. “Her mind can’t process what just happened. She’s never touched the Light before.”

  Arda crossed her arms. “She’s never known joy, or hope,” the paladin said, “and that’s what the Light is. She has no context by which to understand what she’s feeling.”

  The Light is joy, and joy is Life’s purpose. Aradma nodded. “She is in shock. She will sort herself out, but it will take time.”

  “How much time?” Tiberan asked. He had remained standing just inside the doorway. It was obvious he stood frustrated at not being able to help. Fernwalker stood beside him.

  Aradma shook her head. “I don’t know. But at least now she has a way out. Hopefully she’ll take it.”

  “We need to go to God Spire,” Arda said. “It’s time we end this.”

  Aradma touched Naiadne’s cheeks. Fernwalker came forward and sat on the foot of the cot. “I’ll stay with her, Mom,” she said. “You go save the world.”

  The four Living Seals walked across the grassy midlevel bridge leading into God Spire. The kings and queens met them at the entryway. Aradma knew who they were. Odoune had told her of them so she could place faces to names for those whom she hadn’t yet met, but she opened herself to hear the music of each of their souls. Sunlight spilled down over the green-covered towers, dancing with shade from the open leaf canopy that had grown over the city.

  The four Living Seals stopped.

  King Donogan of Hammerfold looked at Aradma with reverence in his eyes. King Leiham of Farstkeld stood with arms folded across his beard, his spirit echoing notes of cautious curiosity. Flolum almost sputtered, muttering to himself, and his soul tremolo’d in supreme agitation. Couraime—the Matriarch—regarded Aradma with an odd mix of sadness and gratitude. The orc chiefs Thorkhan and Seonna, accepted as orc though she was seelie, each had music that reverberated off each other, strong and pure. The darkling sultan, Tahim, glared with open vehemence. Aradma didn’t need to read his soul. There were five sidhe there as well. Tallindra she picked out, but Odoune hadn’t known the names of the others. Finally, there was Athra’s Jewel. No. Athra herself. No soul music sounded from her. Only the light of the Kairantheum could be seen, flowing into her like a glowing nexus point.

  It was King Donogan who approached. “Lady Aradma,” he said, spreading his hands.

  “My king,” Aradma returned. She gave a slight bow of her head. He was still the sovereign of the land she had chosen to make her home.

  “You have the keys to Artalon,” Donogan began, “but—”

  “They are the keys to Artalon,” Athra intoned. She stepped forward. “You cannot be allowed to enter,” she said. “It is too much power to trust to mortalkind. It is ours.” Then she saw Tiberan’s antlers. “Keruhn!” the construct exclaimed.

  “He sent me,” Tiberan responded.

  Athra stood silently. She’s uncertain, Aradma realized. The druid then addressed the mechanical goddess: “Your kind were constructs of magic, just as you are now a construct of brass and tin. Artalon was made to claim you. You have no claim on Artalon. Stand aside.”

  “Unlock Artalon and return control of it to us,” Flolum stated. “It is ours.”

  “You may have built it,” Aradma responded, “but Artalon is Ahmbren’s. It has not been yours since the beginning.”

  He sputtered. “No! I have waited eight hundred years to bring it back to my people!”

  “I watched the first of you build it, long before you were born,” Aradma replied, drawing upon her dreamwalker memories. “Your kind surrendered it to humans and watched and did nothing while they fell to sorcery and became darklings. You forfeited your claim to Artalon long ago. Stand aside.”

  “Then it is ours,” Sultan Tahim declared. “I am a darkling, an inheritor of the sorcerer tradition.”

  Anuit snorted but said nothing.

  “No,” Aradma replied. “The ancient wizards of Artalon knew the King of Dis would be their doom, but they chose to deceive themselves for power. They awakened the Black Dragon and were punished for it when Archurion sank Artalon beneath the sea. Your claim to Artalon was revoked an age ago. Stand aside.”

  “Then us,” Tallindra said. “We administered it at Aaron’s bidding and organized an empire that empowered him to slay the Black Dragon. The Kairantheum was our mistake. Let us protect its abuse by protecting the Eternal City.”

  “You administered it at Valkrage’s bi
dding,” Aradma answered. “You were his tool. The Archdragon Eldrikura’s tool. Your purpose has been fulfilled in Artalon, and you never had claim. Artalon was built in response to your people’s presumption. Stand aside.”

  Thorkhan took a look at Seonna for a moment. He stepped forward and bowed low at the waist. “The orcs never had claim to Artalon,” he said. “We will stand aside.”

  “Well, we won’t!” Flolum protested.

  “Nor we,” said one of the other sidhe war captains.

  Aradma’s eyes flared. “I claim Artalon. We are entering. Do not think you can stop us.”

  “By what right?!” Flolum protested.

  “It is my price for saving you from yourselves. It is my price for believing in you more than you believe in yourselves. Artalon is now mine, and I her queen. Stand aside.”

  King Donogan, the Matriarch, Thorkhan, and Seonna moved out of her way. King Leiham considered for a moment, then followed their lead. Tallindra followed in turn.

  Only Flolum, Athra, the sultan, and the four remaining sidhe war captains remained blocking their way.

  “I will not let you take Artalon!” Flolum exclaimed.

  Aradma stepped forward, and with each step, grasses and flowers bloomed around her feet. She listened to the music of his soul, and knew that his heart was pure. He felt guilt that his people had made such a city, just to see if they could. The soul music resonated with her Dragon memories from the Second Age. His ancestors had given no thought to the consequences of what they built; only that they could do it. They wanted to outdo the high elves and build something that could undermine the magic of the sidhe’s Kairantheum. Then, when they marveled at their creation, they realized what they had built and put locks on it such that it could never be used, save in the most unlikely of circumstances: that the Black Dragon would rejoin his siblings. Flolum didn’t want to use the Kairantheum; he didn’t want anyone to use it. He wanted to protect and hold it, so that it would never be used. He would have been happy had Aaron never restored it in the first place.