by Ryan Cahill
“Aye,” Erik said, laughing. “I know that feeling, all right. And you, Dann. How goes hunting with Alea and Lyrei?”
Dann blushed when Erik followed up his question with a sly wink. Dann had been spending a lot of time with the twins over the last few nights. He had even taken to hunting with them and joining them on guard when he could. He had insisted that it was to learn more about the craftsmanship of elven bows, but Calen had a feeling that there might be a bit more to his intentions.
“It goes well. I am learning a lot.” Dann kept his reply short, probably trying to avoid any teasing.
“I’m sure you are,” Erik said with another wink that made Calen burst out laughing.
“Oh, fuck off.” Dann gave his horse a tap in the side and kicked on ahead, which only made Erik and Calen laugh harder.
Up ahead, Ellisar stood with his hands on his hips. “This looks like a dead end.”
The path ahead closed off into a small alcove, with rising rock faces on all sides.
“Looks can be deceiving,” Aeson replied. He dismounted, took his bay by the reigns, and led him over towards the rock face on the right-hand side of the alcove. Aeson reached into his bag and pulled out a smooth green stone, with veins of white that rippled just under the surface. It looked as if it were made of glass. A slight shimmer bounced off its surface whenever it caught the sun.
Therin had been teaching Calen to identify the different threads when other wielders drew from the Spark. He was not particularly good at it, but Therin had insisted that it was the quickest way to learn. It was difficult to tell, but it looked like Aeson drew threads of Spirit into the stone.
The stone began to pulsate in a green glow. Calen blinked and wiped his eyes with the heels of his palms. Where there had been a wall of stone, as solid as any Calen had seen, only moments before, there now stood the mouth to a cave. It was over ten feet wide and eight feet high. It seemed to stretch onwards forever into the mountainside.
“Okay… I’ve seen a lot of things in this last month or so, but somebody is going to have to explain this,” Dann said. He sat there on his patchy grey horse, his arms folded across his chest in protest, with a stubborn look on his face.
“It is a glamour,” Therin said. He dropped down from his saddle, joining Aeson at the mouth of the cave. “It is old magic, not something you would find common in these lands. It mostly disappeared with the giants. The stone is the key?”
Aeson nodded, tucking the stone into his coat pocket. “Come on,” Aeson said. “Off your horses. We will have to walk them from here. The roof gets lower the farther you go in.”
Calen swung his leg over and hopped down off his horse. He nodded to Dann, laughing at the grumpy look on his face.
“What?” Dann barked. He furrowed his brow. “He just made a tunnel appear in the side of a mountain!”
“Technically,” Erik interrupted, nudging Dann with his shoulder, “the tunnel was already there.” Erik scrunched up his nose in a ‘just saying’, kind of way, which earned him a glare from Dann.
“He is right,” Lyrei and Alea chimed at the same time, with a giggle at Dann’s expense. Calen didn’t blame Dann for trying his luck with them.
“Yeah, yeah,” Dann muttered as the two elves walked on ahead into the tunnel.
As soon as they had all passed through, Aeson produced the stone once more. Calen watched closely as he drew threads of Spirit to replace the glamour, then pocketed it and took his place at the front of the group.
Aeson wasn’t lying. The farther they got into the cave, the lower the ceiling became. It almost brushed the top of Calen’s head, and the horses had to bow their necks to fit through comfortably.
Torches rested in cast iron sconces, fixed into the walls on either side of the tunnel at regular intervals, just enough so that their light overlapped. The tunnel looked as if it had been cut by hand. The stone face was smooth, almost polished. Calen reached out with his hand, running his fingertips along the surface of the stone.
“It was cut with the Spark.” Calen turned to see Vaeril walking beside him. The elf wasn’t looking at him but past him, studying the walls of the tunnel. “We used similar techniques when constructing our home in the Aravell. In the histories I’ve read, it was common for dwarves to employ mages for this very purpose. It made constructing cities and tunnel networks far more efficient. Though, I have never seen it done myself.”
“It’s incredible.”
Vaeril nodded, a soft smile on his face.
It was at least an hour’s walk through the torch-lit tunnel before they came to a cast iron portcullis fixed into an alcove in the wall. A stone staircase on the other side led steeply upward. Once more, Aeson pulled the polished green stone from his pocket. He slipped it into a tiny groove in the wall, which it fit into like a hand in a glove. Immediately, it lit up, pulsating that emerald green glow.
“Now what?” Dann said after about one minute of waiting.
“Now we wait.” Aeson leaned his shoulder against the wall of the cave. “That stone has a sister, which should light up when our stone has been placed in its groove.”
It wasn’t long before Calen heard footsteps echoing down the stone staircase. “Who goes there?” came the gruff voice of a man, echoing over the sound of his footsteps.
“It is me, Ihvon. Aeson Virandr.”
The pace of the footsteps increased. “Aeson, you old dog! Get in here!”
The man before them looked as though he had seen more than his fair share of battles. The lack of hair on his head was fully compensated for by a thick beard that jutted out from his face, looking as though it had been carved from stone. His nose zig-zagged down his scar-latticed face; it had definitely been broken more than once. A short stump of mottled flesh remained where his left ear had once been. He was a little shorter than Calen, but his shoulders looked like they could take the weight of a horse. The navy doublet he wore seemed out of place on him, like a wolf trying to masquerade as a fox.
Out of his pocket, Ihvon pulled a pulsating green stone, the twin of Aeson’s. He slid it into a similar groove on his side of the portcullis. As soon as he did, Calen felt a tremor reverberate from the walls as the cast iron portcullis receded into the ceiling.
“Get over here,” Ihvon guffawed. He pulled Aeson into an embrace that was reciprocated with a similar but more reserved warmth.
“It is good to see you, Ihvon. How is the king? Is he well?”
“Aye, aye, he surely is. He wishes to see you as soon as he can. He will be eager to know that you have returned. I see your party has grown larger since last we met.”
Ihvon looked around the group, his affectionate smile masked a calculating look in his eyes. Calen hadn’t realised how strange his group might look. Five humans and six elves marching around, armed to the hilt. It almost made him laugh out loud.
Ihvon’s eyes widened and his jaw slackened as he saw Valerys, who now stood at Calen’s feet. A slight rumble let Calen know that the dragon was hungry.
Ihvon turned his gaze to Aeson, back to Valerys, and then back again. “That isn’t…? It couldn’t be.”
He rubbed his fists into his eyes in an exaggerated manner before looking down at Valerys again, who shrieked in response. Ihvon took an involuntary step backward, caught by surprise. A deep laugh came from the man’s stomach as he clapped his hand down on Aeson’s shoulder.
“There will not be a day that you do not surprise me,” Ihvon said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Come. Arthur will want to see you now more than ever, if that were possible. You can leave the horses here. I will send someone for them shortly.” Ihvon turned and walked back up the staircase, waving for the group to follow. “A dragon…” Calen heard him mutter. “The bastard actually did it.”
At the top of the staircase, the pale blue sky was the first thing Calen noticed. He stepped out into a massive open courtyard. The cool light of day bounced off the walls, and the breeze kissed his face.
He wasn’
t sure what he had thought a city built into the side of a mountain would look like, but this wasn’t it. The smooth stone courtyard was immense, easily as large as the entire Glade. It was hemmed in all around by stone-grey walls, as thick as Calen was tall, with large square towers set into every bend.
Long purple and gold banners hung from each of the towers. Each banner was emblazoned with a crossed axe and a sword, with a lonely mountain in the background. On top of each tower was what Calen could only describe as a massive crossbow, fixed into the ground with large steel plates and bolts. He had never seen their like before.
To the right of the courtyard stood a massive keep, embedded in the climbing rock face, rising high up into the sky. Set into the front of the keep were a massive set of thick wooden doors, arching into a point towards the top. They were easily fifteen feet wide and twenty feet tall at their highest point.
It took a minute for Calen to notice the two parallel columns of soldiers that occupied the courtyard, framing the pathway out of the tunnel. They wore shimmering plate armour, with pauldrons on each shoulder and billowing purple cloaks. Their helmets covered most of their face, leaving only two almond-shaped openings for their eyes and a narrow slit from their nose to their chin. It was an impressive sight. They looked very much like they had walked straight out of Therin’s stories. Calen’s first instinct was to reach to his sword, an instinct that he had to actively stave off.
These are friends. We are safe here.
Calen felt the same sense of awe – and caution – from Valerys. The young dragon padded around Calen’s feet, taking in the sheer size of the courtyard. He had grown quickly during their travels, although he was still about half the size of Faenir.
“The royal courtyard,” Ihvon said, opening his arms and gesturing outward. “This is the inner circle of the city. It has the thickest walls and the tallest towers in all of Epheria. It has never been breached, not in the over two thousand years since it has stood.” There was a look of gleaming pride on Ihvon’s face. “Do you want to see the city?”
Ihvon marched off towards the walls before anybody even had the time to answer the question. The column of soldiers fell in either side of him as he walked, hemming the group in between them.
“Don’t mind them,” Ihvon chirped. “They are the Kingsguard, and you are guests of the utmost importance.
“The machines you see mounted atop the towers are Bolt Throwers. They have been installed here, with the help of the dwarves, since the fall of The Order. They are a large part of why the empire was never able to take the city. The bolts they fire are eight feet in length and nearly two handspans wide. Even dragons hide from them,” Ihvon explained as they ascended the zig-zagging staircase to the top of the walls. “And this,” he said, gesturing out over the ramparts, “is the city of Belduar.”
Calen felt it as the breath was taken from his lungs. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined something like this.
It felt like they stood on a sheer cliff edge at the end of the world. So far was the fall that Calen could not see the bottom. To the west were the gargantuan mountains of Western Lodhar; to the east, the plains of Illyanara rolled off as far as the eye could see.
Hundreds of feet below, the sprawling city of Belduar was separated from the Inner Circle by a heavy-set stone bridge that spanned a cavernous gap between the two areas of the city. Calen could not help but think that if he fell off that bridge, he would keep falling until the end of time.
The city itself fanned out in tiers of concentric circles. Each circle was ringed by more walls, each set with countless towers, with a Bolt Thrower nestled into its centre. The lowest tier, which touched the plains down below, was so far away that Calen could only just make out the brown spots atop each tower.
Just past the outermost city walls was the fabled lake of Haftsfjord, where the people of Belduar first broke bread with the dwarves. All Therin’s stories flushed through Calen’s mind as he looked out across this city of legend. It was the last bastion of freedom in Illyanara, the only place that the empire’s hand did not extend freely.
Calen peered over the ramparts. He rubbed the disbelief from his eyes as a pair of eagles glided through the air, not thirty feet from where he stood. They strafed sideways and nosedived down the sheer face of the Inner Circle walls. He knew that his mouth was open wide, but he did not care.
“Not many people get to see the world from where you are standing right now,” Ihvon whispered. He leaned his arms down on the stone walls, gazing out at the spectacle in front of him.
Calen couldn’t help but allow a smile to creep onto his face. The view from those walls was one of the most incredible things that he had ever seen. He knelt down to Valerys. “You will fly over this city as soon as you’ve grown.”
The dragon shook his wings, a low rumble escaping his throat.
“Now that is something I would pay some silver to see!” said Dann, grinning from ear to ear. “How long until he can fly?”
“It depends,” Aeson replied. “Some dragons can fly as early as a few weeks old. Some can take a couple of months. It will depend how he grows and how soon his wings can support his weight. By looking at him, I don’t think it will be too long. It appears that Valacian dragons grow faster than Epherian ones.”
Dann nodded. “And breathe fire?”
That same question had been lingering at the back of Calen’s mind for a while.
“Fire is a tricky one,” Therin said, stepping up beside Dann. “Some dragons find their fire as young as a week old, though it is barely a trickling flame at that stage. Others are nearly a year old when they find theirs, but it can pour forward like a cascading river, capable of turning plate armour into molten steel. There is a lot we don’t, and will never know about dragons.”
“Come,” Ihvon said, breaking the pensive silence. “We’d best be getting on. I am sure the king is eager to see you.”
It was only when they crossed the courtyard again that Calen truly realised how massive it was. Such a large, open space carved into the side of a mountain – it was incredible.
“It is a kill-box,” Ellisar remarked, as his eyes combed the wide-open spaces.
“That it is, elf,” Ihvon said matter-of-factly. “It was designed that way. Every archer on the keep walls would have a clear line of sight across this whole yard if it were ever breached. The Bolt Throwers on top of the keep’s towers have a wide range of motion, capable of aiming straight down into the yard. It is not somewhere that I would want to find myself, were I an enemy to the king.”
As they scaled the stairs leading up to the entrance of the keep, Calen appreciated the true size of the hulking wooden doors. He could not imagine that there was anything capable of busting them open. Just as he was lost in thought, there was a thunderous creaking as the two gigantic doors began to part.
The soldiers who flanked them picked up their pace, pulling ahead of the group. They formed an honour guard into the keep. Calen watched as each of the soldiers attempted not to get caught gawking at Valerys, who craned his neck upwards as if he were a show pony. They may have looked like soldiers of legend in their polished plate armour and streaming purple capes, but they were still only men – men who had never seen a dragon.
The inner hall was almost as breath-taking as the view from the walls. The ceilings were nearly forty feet high, held up by a sprawling network of colonnades, with swooping arches in between them – Purple and gold banners dangled from every second one. At the end of the long hall was a raised podium, atop which stood an ornately carved granite throne.
“Aeson Virandr,” the man who sat on the throne bellowed. His voice boomed through the wide-open hall.
Despite the fact that he was no more than six feet in height, and his frame was as wiry as Dann’s, Arthur Bryne oozed authority. He seemed to almost glide across the floor, a deep purple cloak draped around his shoulders. His greyish-black hair was streaked with wings of white on either side, and a simple crown of
winding gold sat on his head. He was by all definitions a handsome man, even in what seemed to be, at the least, his fiftieth summer.
“Your Majesty,” Aeson said, dropping to one knee as the king approached. Erik and Dahlen followed Aeson’s lead, with Dann giving Calen an unsure look. The elves stood as they were.
“Get off your knee, you fool,” the king said. He reached out his arm and clasped Aeson’s forearm, in much the same way that Aeson had done to Thalanil, pulling him to his feet. “It is good to see you. When you left for Valacia, a part of me feared we would never set eyes on each other again. And your sons – my, how they have grown yet again!”
Arthur took it in turn to grab both Dahlen and Erik by the shoulders, admiring their growth like a fond uncle. Then the king’s eyes fell on Calen – and Valerys. He gazed at Valerys in disbelief, then looked back at Aeson, as if to confirm that his eyes were not deceiving him.
“By the gods… Not only did you retrieve an egg… but it is already hatched and bonded. How is that even…” Arthur turned his gaze to Calen, taking his arm in the same acknowledging grasp. “My boy, I am delighted to meet you. To say that I have waited a lifetime would be an understatement.”
There was something sincere in the way Arthur Bryne spoke. He didn’t break eye contact, and that smile never seemed to leave his face. The man was so charismatic that every word that came out of his mouth felt like it was plucked straight from his heart.
“And you,” he said, focusing solely on Valerys, “you are one of the most breath-taking creatures I have ever laid eyes on. His scales are a thing of beauty. And those eyes…” The king was in a world of his own as he fawned over Valerys, who was happy for the attention. “What is his name?”
“Valerys, Your Majesty.”
Arthur waved Calen away. “Enough with the ‘Your Majesty.’ Even if you were not a Draleid, I can’t stand all that formality. Valerys, you say? That is a very suitable name indeed.”