The Curse of the Phoenix Crown

by C. L. Werner

  When the tower had been reduced to a burned-out cromlech, the dragon threw itself back, tearing a great chunk of the wall away as it ripped its claws free. For an instant, the mighty beast hurtled earthwards, then its immense wings snapped open. With a grace incredible for a creature so massive, the dragon soared away from the smoking tower. Bolts and rocks shot out at it, but it ducked beneath their cast. The dwarf artillerists thought to bring down a fleeing adversary. It was an error from which they wouldn’t recover. They thought the monster’s outrages were at an end, but they were woefully mistaken.

  The carnage had only begun.

  Hissing like new-forged steel, the dragon swept towards the smashed gates. Folding its wings as it dived down, it propelled its immense body through the battered defences and into the great hall beyond. Slamming its mighty claws into the granite floor, the wyrm arrested its momentum, bringing itself to a stop just beyond the gate.

  For an instant the dragon simply stood there, surrounded by the havoc wrought by the rock it had loosed against the hold, the blood of massacred dwarfs pooling about its feet. The wyrm’s nostrils flared and its heart pounded with the intoxicating scent. It wasn’t hunger, but something even more primal. It was power, the raw expression of naked, merciless force.

  Throwing back its head, the dragon roared, its deafening bellow knocking stones from the damaged ceiling and walls, driving stunned survivors from hiding to flee in mindless terror before it. The wyrm lashed its tail against a nearby pillar, shattering the visage of an ancestor god and sending the entire column crashing down. A cloud of dust rolled across the exultant reptile.

  A phalanx of dwarf warriors came marching into the great hall, ponderous door-like shields raised to defend themselves against the wyrm’s fire. Crossbowmen hidden behind the advancing warriors loosed their bolts at the beast, groaning in despair when they saw the missiles bounce harmlessly from the monster’s crimson scales.

  The dragon unleashed a blast of fire at the oncoming warriors. The runes etched into their shields protected the dwarfs from the flames, flaring into brilliance as their protective magic was evoked. But if the fire couldn’t hurt the warriors, it could block their vision. It could stifle their advance.

  The dwarfs resumed their grim march the instant the fires cleared. Then they saw that the dragon wasn’t waiting to meet their axes and spears. During those seconds of blindness, the dragon had reared up, sinking its claws into the already crumbling roof. With a murderous shriek, the wyrm gouged out a great wound in the ceiling and brought the floor above crashing down onto the dwarfs below.

  Up through the rubble and debris, the dragon clawed its way into the upper deeps of Kazad Kro. The opulent halls of the guilds and nobles, the richly appointed chambers of the goldmasters, the vast temples of the ancestor gods. One after another they suffered the wyrm’s malice. Dragon fire scored the marble walls and pitted granite columns. Those dwarfs of the upper halls, whether they chose to fight or flee, were slaughtered by the wyrm.

  Through it all, Lord Ilendril savoured the destruction. Long, so long, had he lusted for this might. The legacy he had wanted so desperately for himself was his now. He hadn’t bowed to the fickle hearts of reptilian beasts. He hadn’t let his dreams be murdered by the cruel hand of fate. He’d reached out and seized what he wanted from life, claimed what should always have been his. The awesome might of a dragon to command and control. Let the dragon riders of Caledor cling to their foolish traditions of dragonsong and communion. He was a truer master of dragons than any of them.

  Searing pain ripped through Ilendril. The fang hanging from around his neck felt as though it were on fire. Blood oozed from his charred cheek and he could feel his skin bubbling and blistering. Beneath him, through him, he could feel the agonies of the dragon.

  Looking around, Ilendril saw a lone grey-bearded dwarf raise his strange metal staff and send another blast of lightning searing into his slave’s scaly hide. Through the sympathetic pain that stabbed into him, he recognised his enemy as one of the mud-mages of the grubby little dwarf culture. When the runelord moved to assault the dragon again, Ilendril compelled the wyrm to fight past the pain that wracked them. The agony of the rune-lightning was nothing beside the mental daggers the elf sent stabbing into the reptile’s brain.

  With a howl of agony, the dragon whipped its tail around, catching the runelord and flinging him far across the shattered temple in which they fought. The grey-bearded dwarf slammed into one of the walls, even his rune-etched armour unable to keep every bone in his venerable body from breaking. The runelord crashed to the floor in a jumble of shattered flesh.

  Ilendril daubed at his bleeding face with a silken cloth. He wasn’t enjoying himself as much as he had only a few moments ago. The magnificent power of his dragon had made him oblivious to his own vulnerability. To die, now, when he was so close to securing his place in the annals of the asur, would be ignominious. Even now, Lady Kelsei and her entourage were watching his progress through the scrying crystals of Tor Alessi’s mages. He had so many more important things to think about than simply allowing the dragon to run amok.

  Even so, there was still one further thing the dragon needed to do. One act that would impress upon the watching mages that the destruction of Kazad Kro was total and complete.

  Exerting his will, Ilendril forced the wyrm to claw its way to the very heart of the fort. There was no toying with the dwarfs now. Every passage connecting to the main hall was brought down by a sweep of the wyrm’s tail or collapsed by its powerful claws. Fire turned every warrior who stood before him into a blazing ember.

  After more than an hour of slaughter, the dragon reached the core of Kazad Kro. Three dwarfs stood before a great door fashioned from gold. They screamed as the wyrm caught them in its jaws and wolfed them down in great gulping bites. Then the dragon turned to the door again. A heave of its tremendous bulk brought the door and the wall in which it was set crashing inwards.

  The treasure hall of Kazad Kor was a testament to the greed and avarice of Skarnag Grum, High King of the skarrenawi. While his domains withered and died, while war raged all around him, Skarnag Grum had withdrawn into his vault, lurking amongst his hoarded gold. Tonnes of it lay piled about the floor, heaped in stacks of ingots and coins, gathered in jumbles of nuggets and mounds of dust. Even now, with the great dragon glaring at him through the ruined wall, the hill dwarf king clung to his gold. Crouching among his coins, he wrapped his arms about the closest stacks, drawing them to him as though he could protect it with his mere presence. A stream of Khazalid obscenities flew from the crazed king’s foam-flecked lips.

  The dragon glared at the mad, pathetic dwarf for a moment. Then it reared back and unleashed a great gout of flame. The gold heaped about Skarnag Grum melted in the fury of the dragon fire. A wave of molten metal washed over the cursing king, transforming him in an instant into an unrecognisable lump of gold, a precious nugget with a rotten core of burned flesh and scorched bone.

  Ilendril stared at the vanquished king and a cruel smile spread across his face. None would contest his power now. He had done more than just give battle to the dwarfs; he had slaughtered one of their kings within his own hall. Let his detractors try to deny his power now.

  As he ordered his wyrm out from the crumbling halls of Kazad Kro and back into the open sky, Ilendril’s smile might have faltered if he could have read his steed’s mind the way those truly attuned to a dragon could. He might have sensed then the lesson the reptile had learned during the massacre: that when the wyrm was hurt, its rider suffered too.

  And when the rider suffered, his control over the dragon wavered.

  In his pride, Ilendril had named his steed Ilendrakk – ‘Ilendril’s Dragon’. But soon, even the asur would begin to call the wyrm by the name the dwarfs gave it.

  Malok, a Khazalid word meaning ‘malice’.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dirge for Athel To
ralien

  445th year of the reign of Caledor II

  ‘Khazuk! Khazuk!’

  Even out on the bay, the sound of the dwarfish war-cry sent a thrill of fear rushing through Thoriol’s blood. His mind retreated back through the centuries to that day when he’d stood on the walls with Baelian’s archers against the besieging hordes of Morgrim Elfdoom. It was a sight that was as clear in his memory as though it were yesterday. Every sound, every smell, every touch of that day was imprinted upon his very soul.

  It wasn’t so easy to forget the day when you should have died.

  Tor Alessi had been attacked many times over the intervening years, but never again with such force. The other attacks had been petty, vindictive acts of reprisal staged by individual kings. None of them had mustered the kind of throng that Morgrim had.

  Until now. Earlier that day Thoriol had watched from the Tower of the Dragon as the dwarfs again came against Tor Alessi. With the help of a scrying crystal left to him by Lady Liandra, he’d watched the enemy as they advanced. The army outside the walls this time was no rabble drawn from a single hold but a great host of tens of thousands, assembled by none less than High King Gotrek himself. From the walls, the dwarfs could be seen gathering beneath the shelter of the trees.

  The High King had marched out on his own, borne aloft upon his Throne of Power by a bodyguard of thanes, their heavy armour gilded and inscribed with runes, their horned helms cast in the semblance of angry ancestors and scowling gods. The king’s armour was no less ornate, its dark plates of gromril bound together with links of gleaming gold, mighty runes picked out in lines of diamond and ruby. His long white beard was tucked into a broad belt with an enormous buckle fashioned from a single piece of emerald, each lock of his beard festooned with a line of onyx beads. He was broad of build and shoulder, his arms massive knots of muscle that strained the jewelled torcs wrapped about them. In his hands, he hefted an axe that might have been too big for an ogre to carry. Upon the dwarf king’s face was etched an expression of such hatred that even the most prideful of the asur felt an icy tingle of fear along their spines.

  The High King’s royal procession had stopped a short way onto the field between the walls and trees. Gotrek’s voice had barked out, carrying like thunder to the asur behind their fortifications. His words were Khazalid, but there were enough in the city familiar with the tongue to soon translate it. They were words the elves had heard many times before.

  ‘Leave now or remain forever in your graves.’

  Not a threat, rather a terrible promise of the destruction the dwarfs would loose against the city.

  The dread memory of Morgrim’s siege, the knowledge that Gotrek’s army would be even bigger than that of his nephew, spurred Lady Kelsei to call upon Lord Ilendril’s powers. The once dishonoured and exiled highborn was only too happy to oblige the general. Since the destruction of Kazad Kro, Ilendril had managed to enslave three more wyrms by means of his sorcerous methods. The dragons had been posted all around the colonies, taking the place of the absent dragon riders of Caledor. Now the reptiles were hastily summoned back to Tor Alessi to defend the city in its hour of need.

  Fear and despair were driving the asur to embrace powers they had once shunned, to countenance things they’d once deemed utterly immoral. To save Tor Alessi, the asur were ready to blacken their souls.

  Thoriol listened to the harsh, guttural war-cry booming out from the besieging army. They were working themselves into a frenzy. For days the dwarfs had taken shelter in their tunnels beneath the trees, safe from the attentions of Ilendril’s prowling wyrms. How many more dawi had marched to join the attack it was impossible to say with any real accuracy. Even the mages were unable to pierce the veil of the forest, their magics cast aside by some elder enchantment that hung over the woods like an aethyric fog. There could be a hundred thousand dwarfs under the forest waiting for Gotrek’s command to attack.

  Desperate moments forced people to desperate measures. Thoriol was never more aware of that truth than the moment he climbed down into a fishing smack and started rowing out to Draukhain’s island.

  What was he, after all, but the disappointment of Tor Caled? He wasn’t the Master of Dragons his father had been. He wasn’t the warrior his uncle was. He wasn’t wise like his mother. He wasn’t even a shrewd politician like Caradryel. He was nothing and he had nothing to offer.

  But he could. An awful thought had driven Thoriol across the bay. Draukhain was often absent from its island. If the drake was gone, he would be free to search among the rocks and dwarfish carrion strewn about the isle. All he needed was a broken tooth or a sliver of claw, maybe just a lost scale or chip of horn. He could take what he found back to Ilendril, have him use his magic to make a talisman. Draukhain would be his to command, to bring into the battle against High King Gotrek and his horde.

  Thoriol fairly leapt from the boat as soon as he brought it close to the shore of Draukhain’s island. He scrambled up the rocks, his hand tight around the hilt of his sword. The sword his father had given him. The sword of a dragon rider.

  He would be a dragon rider. He would seize the legacy of his blood, become the great warrior his father had always wanted him to be. He would prove himself a true son of Tor Caled. He wouldn’t suffer the whims of beasts to keep him from his destiny.

  Through most of the day, Thoriol scoured the island, picking among the charred dead for what he needed. The grisly wreckage of scorched armour and blackened bones was all around him, a seemingly limitless chronicle of carnage and destruction. The first corpse he drew from the piles was fresh enough that some meat yet clung to the bones, sloughing away beneath his touch as he tried to drag the body off. Fighting down his revulsion, Thoriol inspected the mangled dwarf, checking the armour for any rent or tear, studying the decayed corpse for any wound. All that rewarded his attentions were a few sea-worms and a scavenging crab that scuttled out from between the dwarf’s exposed ribs.

  Crushing his feelings of disgust and nausea, Thoriol pressed on with his search. One body, then two, then three. Again and again he inspected the morbid trophies, the ghoulish hoard the dragon had gathered for itself. A dozen, then two dozen, each body as unrewarding as the last. One by one he shoved them away, hefting them over the rocky shore to sink into the bay. Dozens became scores and still the prince continued his search, roving with eyes and hands across the rotten wastes. Some of the bodies sported golden rings and jewelled necklaces, torcs and belts studded with precious gems, yet it was not for such mundane treasure that the prince hunted. In frustrated despair, he hurled the valuables out into the water. What he had to find continued to elude him as the scores of bodies stretched into a hundred and more. Still the prince wouldn’t relent. What was at stake was too enormous to relinquish. The sounds of battle rising from outside Tor Alessi faded away, the cold bite of the sea breeze ceased to sting his skin, the stink of the dead no longer churned his stomach. Nothing mattered now, except the search and the prize.

  When he was just beginning to lose hope, when he was just considering abandoning the search and returning to the embattled city, the prince’s hand fell upon the very thing he’d been seeking. There, embedded in the breastplate of what had once been a dwarf noble, was a cracked dragon tooth. Planting his foot on the blackened armour, Thoriol worked the fang back and forth, gradually freeing it from the torn metal. He held the fang up before his face, studying it with covetous eyes. Soon he would be there, sailing the clouds on the back of a mighty wyrm, the primordial power of a dragon his to command.

  Thoriol turned and looked back at Tor Alessi. He was a hero to them already. Defying the king’s orders to return to Ulthuan had enhanced his reputation still further, but he didn’t think a simple act of defiance was enough to claim the legacy left by his father. He needed to earn the adoration of Tor Alessi. With the fang he held and the dragon it could command, he would have the power to earn that acclaim.

&
nbsp; In his life Thoriol had been forced to make many hard choices, but never one so excruciating as that he had now made. In his mind he could imagine the roar of the wind as he flew through the skies. He could feel the vibrations of power pulsing through his bones, the thunder of the dragon’s heart throbbing through his own veins. His ears were filled with the rush of mighty wings, the crackle of searing flames. He could feel the harmonies of the dragonsong, not a lonely unrelieved appeal, but a dream fulfilled, a purpose at last achieved. He could picture the adoring crowds, cheering his valour and his might, crying out their adoration for the prince who had come into his possession, the elf who had claimed the birthright of his blood. Thoriol, the Master of Dragons!

  Tears in his eyes, the prince threw the fang out into the bay and watched it plummet to the bottom. Even to save Tor Alessi he couldn’t accept a path that defiled Imladrik’s legacy and betrayed the ancient alliance between dragon and elf. That was the way of the druchii and if the asur behaved no better than their sundered kin, then they deserved to perish.

  Resolved to his purpose, Thoriol turned and started hunting among the dead for anything else Draukhain had discarded. Sooner or later, someone else would think to force the dragon to fight for Tor Alessi and help break the siege. He was determined to remove that possibility.

  A strange sound struck Thoriol as he resumed his search. It was a weird, slopping noise, wet and rasping at the same time. He could feel a shiver pass through the rocks under his feet and a few of the helms and shields he’d taken from the corpses and piled into little stacks were set to quivering and rattling.

  You do honour to your father.

  Thoriol froze, reeling as a deep voice burned itself into his brain. He slumped down atop the charred armour of a dwarf lord, clapping his hands to his head. Again the voice hissed across his mind.