The Curse of the Phoenix Crown

by C. L. Werner

  We share the dragonsong of Imladrik. It is the heritage he has left you.

  As the prince raised his face he saw the enormous bulk of Draukhain crawling up from the water just beyond the obelisk for Oeragor. The drake’s sapphire scales shone with a silky newness, as though the reptile had just shed its skin. The eyes of the dragon studied the forlorn elf.

  This is why none of my kind would bear you. They could smell your fate.

  With each thought the dragon projected into his mind, the pain lessened. Thoriol briefly wondered if this was how his father had communed with Draukhain. Was there a way to make the drake understand his own thoughts? If there was, it was an art lost to Thoriol.

  ‘Too many of my people don’t understand,’ Thoriol cried out to Draukhain. ‘To save themselves they would enslave what they can’t control.’

  That has ever been the weakness of your fragile folk. They are too delicate to exist among the elements, so they seek to reshape them. They pull down the mountain to make walls and gates and towers. They cut down the forest to plant orchards and groves. They build a ship so they can contend against the sea.

  ‘Now there are some who would do the same to dragonkind,’ Thoriol warned.

  Already there are those who have tried.

  Thoriol felt the impulse to turn his eyes from the gigantic reptile, looking into the rocks past him. A shudder ran through him as he recognised the ornate armour of Lord Teranion and the high silvered helm of Vithrein lying among the piles of dwarfish dead. He knew at once what must have happened. Instead of exposing the secret of Ilendril’s magic, Teranion had instead succumbed to it. The temptation to possess the glories of a dragon rider was too great for him to resist and in the end he had submitted to whatever promises Vithrein made to him.

  Strangely, Thoriol felt no sympathy for the dead asur. They had embraced their own deaths when they came to this island and tried to enslave Draukhain. He looked back at the dragon. ‘Why did you not kill me? I might have come here to do what they failed to do.’

  You are the son of Imladrik.

  It was the only explanation the drake would give him, but somehow Thoriol understood. He could feel the bond between them, something more powerful than anything he’d ever known. He felt he was a part of Draukhain and knew that the dragon felt the same. All the doubt and emptiness of his life, the feelings of purposelessness and want… they were gone now. He knew that this was what he’d been waiting for, the role he’d been biding his time to take upon himself.

  Slowly, the prince felt himself compelled towards the dragon. He felt an almost primal terror rush through his veins. The image of a bird hypnotised by the glare of a snake rose unbidden, making his heart quake within his breast. His every instinct railed against what he was doing, yet that part of his mind that had ever refused to abandon his father’s dream fought back, rebelling with the knowledge that here at last he had found his destiny.

  Afraid or elated, Thoriol knew he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the dragon’s. He could no more defy that reptilian gaze than he could demand the sun to freeze itself in the sky. Closer and closer he came until at last he reached out with his hand and pressed his palm against Draukhain’s forehead. The reptile’s scales were cold and damp from the sea, seeming to leach the warmth from his touch. At the same time, he could feel the incredible heat burning deep within the drake, the elemental flame that fuelled its fire.

  A deep, rolling hiss rasped across Draukhain’s fangs. The dragon closed its eyes and its immense body trembled for an instant. Thoriol shivered at the same time, feeling his own heartbeat slow as that of the dragon sped up, each of their bodies struggling to find sympathy with the other. Soon Thoriol could feel the beast’s mind coiling around his own, wrapping him in a somehow protective embrace.

  ‘The dawi march against Tor Alessi,’ Thoriol told Draukhain. ‘Will you defend the city?’

  No. The dragon’s thoughts swirled through Thoriol’s mind. The city has no interest for me. What I will do is kill dwarfs, make them suffer for what they have done. Make them remember the might of your father. That is what I would share with you, Thoriol of Tor Caled. The tide of vengeance is great enough to bear us both. Together, we will teach the dwarfs what it is to fear.

  Thoriol trembled at the awfulness of the dragon’s passion. It was like listening to a thunderstorm explaining its rage or a volcano expressing its hate. It was both terrible and wrong that such elemental power should be so focused and purposeful. And at the same time, he couldn’t deny the call of that same power. He knew how Teranion had been tempted, because he felt that same lust pounding through his own veins. The dragonsong was something shared between drake and elf, but never before had Thoriol considered that the call could be issued by the dragon as easily as it could by the asur.

  Be the dragon, become the dragon.

  Draukhain lashed its mighty tail, toppling the obelisk. Beneath the stone, entombed in a shallow pit, were the gilded saddle and harness the dragon had once worn to bear Imladrik across the world.

  Together, Draukhain’s mind-voice slithered through Thoriol’s brain. As the prince climbed down to retrieve the saddle, he tried to tell himself he did so to save the city, to protect the people of Tor Alessi. In his heart, however, he already knew that was a lie. He would punish the dwarfs for taking his father away. For now, that was all that mattered. Later, later he could think about what it meant to be a dragon rider and to wield such power.

  As he lifted the saddle from its hole, Thoriol looked again to the shattered armour of Lord Teranion. He wondered if Liandra’s hunt had ended the same way, if her remains too were lying somewhere on the island.

  If she had fallen in the end to the daemons of her soul.

  The dwarf lords stood within the mouth of the old mine-working, wrapped in the shadows of their refuge. Far below them, beneath the great cliffs, the elven city stretched away towards the sea.

  ‘The dragon hasn’t returned, my lord.’ Drogor lowered the spyglass from his eye and bowed to the dwarf beside him. Morgrim was silent for several minutes, only the fingers slowly pulling at his greying beard betraying any sign of the sombre deliberations unfolding inside his mind.

  Morgrim finally glanced over at his old friend. ‘The High King’s deception has drawn it off,’ he agreed, ‘but will it stay away?’ He reached out, taking the spyglass from Drogor. It was a cunningly contrived instrument, fashioned by the engineers of Barak Varr for their once mighty fleet of ships. It would take a long time for the sea hold to recover, but it would recover. The damage wrought upon it would be repaired.

  The same would not be said of the elf city Morgrim stared at through the glass. The walls would be cast down, the towers toppled, the streets pulled up and cast into the sea. When the dwarfs were through, there would be nothing left to mark the trespass of the elves. Only in the bitter grudges of the dawi would the existence of the city be remembered.

  Athel Toralien, standing against the rolling sea, the golden domes of its towers blazing like fire in the setting sun. The white stone of its streets and walls seeming to glow in the encroaching darkness. It was a captivating sight. Even the dwarfs were compelled to acknowledge the city’s beauty. The oldest parts of the city were readily obvious to Morgrim’s eye. Though built to an elven design, there was no mistaking the heavier construction and ponderous solidity of dwarfish labour. When the asur prince Malekith had founded the city, he’d called upon his friends, the dawi, to make his vision a reality.

  Those days were long past, gone as though they’d never been. The old friendship between elf and dwarf would never rise again. There was too much hate, too much blood between them now. Morgrim recalled the confidence Imladrik had shared with him during that last, fruitless effort to negotiate peace. He’d claimed that Malekith yet lived, but that some great affront had driven him into discord with the asur, caused him and his followers to become a renegade peop
le. Even now, Morgrim didn’t know if he put any credence to the story. What he did know was that it didn’t matter. The war wouldn’t end until the asur withdrew to their island kingdoms. That was the only path to peace now.

  ‘The dragon won’t be back,’ Drogor assured Morgrim. ‘The elgi will be worried about the High King’s army and Tor Alessi. They won’t dare take resources away even when they learn of our attack here.’

  Morgrim nodded as he returned the spyglass to Drogor. It was a brilliant piece of strategy the High King had conceived. He was exploiting the arrogance and pride of the elgi to bait a cunning trap. By showing himself at Tor Alessi, he would convince the enemy that the main attack would fall there. Forek and those dawi who knew the elgi best agreed that the elves would never consider the possibility that an assault led by the High King could be a feint because they could never imagine their own Phoenix King would be willing to engage in such a deception and let another take his glory.

  The High King’s army was considerable, but it was far from the strength it appeared. Dummies of wood and straw wearing armour fashioned from tin would be carried by the dwarfs when they sallied out towards the walls, metal rods lashed to the shoulders of each warrior supporting scarecrows to left and right. Phoney siege towers, catapults and bolt throwers would be hauled around the forest, furthering the deception. By night, the woods would be aglow with thousands of fires to heighten the notion that Gotrek had brought the full fury of the Karaz Ankor against Tor Alessi.

  He would, in time, but that time was not yet. Gotrek was unwilling to leave the elgi their other coastal settlements, bastions from which they could stage their own reprisals against the dawi. Before the head of the elgi serpent was lopped off, the body would be cut asunder. Only then could Tor Alessi be finished.

  The elgi would learn that they weren’t the only ones who could trick their enemy with illusions. While High King Gotrek held them at Tor Alessi, Morgrim would bring a much bigger army crashing down into Athel Toralien. The city, more than any other, was ripe for conquest. It had, after all, been partially built by dwarfs.

  Morgrim looked back to the cliffs behind him. They were pockmarked with old mine facings. The ore had been played out long ago, but the shafts remained. Brok Stonefist had been the first to conceive the idea of using the cliffs themselves to assault the city. His plan had called, first, for the old mines to be joined to the Ungdrin Ankor, a process that had taken almost a century of excavating deep underground to finally achieve. The second part of Brok’s plan called for vast reserves of zonzharr to be piled within the shafts and used to blast apart the face of the cliff and send it smashing down into the city below.

  It was a scheme that called for careful timing and exacting precision. The lower shafts, those nearest the coastal plain, had been shored up and reinforced to withstand the blasting that would demolish the upper heights. Once the top of the cliff was sent crashing down into Athel Toralien, demolishing its walls and razing its outskirts, the dwarfs would emerge from the lower tunnels and rush into the resultant breach. The asur would be unable to act swiftly enough to stop the surge of warriors into their city. The only real threat to the plan had been the dragons. With them gone, victory was assured.

  ‘Now the elgi will understand why you are Elgidum,’ Drogor said as he followed Morgrim back into the mineshaft. The two thanes passed the engineers and miners inspecting the barrels of zonzharr that had been placed through the passage as they made their way to the tunnels leading back to the lower workings. Drogor had proposed using an even more powerful explosive, but Morgrim had rejected the idea. For this to work, what was needed was precision, not power. Now wasn’t the time to experiment with unknown factors.

  Morgrim rested his hand on the elf sword hanging from his belt. ‘They already know,’ he told Drogor. ‘They are just too proud to admit it. So we have to show them – for however long it takes to make them understand.’

  Drogor nodded, a cold gleam in his eyes. ‘Would it be such a bad thing if we had to kill them all?’

  Morgrim didn’t answer his friend. He didn’t like to think about that question and how easily the answer would come for many dawi. The war was consuming them, becoming what defined them as a people. They were losing their identity. What would the dawi be, he wondered, when they no longer shared an enemy to keep them united?

  The streets of Athel Toralien were abuzz with rumour, messengers hastening through the crowded streets to pass word from one house to the next. Lord Ilendril had left the city on his dragon! There was more – Ilendril had been sent away to help Tor Alessi. The High King of the dwarfs, the feared Gotrek, was laying siege to Tor Alessi, bringing with him an army a million strong and armed with siege engines that could pound the colonial capital into rubble. No less than Lady Aelis herself had sent the cry for help, begging Lord Gelthar to send the dragon.

  Liandra wasn’t sure how much of the rumours she believed. It was certainly possible that the High King had finally dared to poke his head from the mountains, but talk of an army a million strong was too much for her to entertain. As for the siege weapons, whether the dwarfs had them or not, there was nothing she could do about it. The fate of Tor Alessi was something beyond her now. She had her own quest to consider and her own goals to achieve. If anything, the dwarf attack was a boon to her, for it had drawn Ilendril away from Athel Toralien and left her free to confer with the informant she’d cultivated in his household. It had taken years to find an elf whose greed outweighed his fear of his master.

  The informant was waiting for her in the shadow of a large alabaster fountain sculpted in the shape of a swan with outstretched wings. She hurried to the spy, joining him before he could reconsider and slip away. Liandra pressed coins into his hand. The elf quickly hid them beneath his cloak, twisting his fingers in a cabalistic sign to invoke the protection of Mathlann. After what he’d done, he’d be leaving Athel Toralien on the next ship he could find. He didn’t want to be around when Lord Ilendril returned from Tor Alessi with his dragon.

  ‘There will be a patch of wall at the base of his tower,’ the spy told her. ‘I’ve marked it with a sprig of holly pressed between the stones. Push one of the blocks an arm’s length to the left of the holly and you’ll open a passage into Ilendril’s cellars. What you are seeking is there. May Asuryan watch over you.’

  As she watched him hurry down the alleyway, Liandra couldn’t keep the disgust from her face. What she’d been told went beyond the worst of her fears. Ilendril’s filthy magic drew upon the fell forces of Dhar, the blackest shade of magic, but more than that, it was rooted in druchii sorcery. The highborn even had a witch locked away in the dungeons beneath his tower. Not just any witch – she was a witch known to Liandra. Someone she’d thought dead and dust long ago.

  Drutheira, the druchii sorceress who had called up a black dragon and destroyed Kor Vanaeth. The witch who had brought about the death of Vranesh.

  She’d thought Drutheira slain by the dwarfs when they conquered Oeragor. How the witch had survived, how she had come to fall into the hands of Ilendril, these were questions that didn’t matter to Liandra. All that mattered was that the witch lived and she knew where the druchii was being held.

  There was murder in Liandra’s heart as she stalked towards Ilendril’s tower. Once, long ago, she had spared Drutheira, kept her alive so that Imladrik could use her to convince the dwarfs it was the druchii, not the asur, who had fomented discord between their peoples. Now she could use the witch as evidence against Ilendril, to utterly discredit the elf lord’s despicable magic. Yes, she could use Drutheira to do that, but she wouldn’t. Liandra wouldn’t take the chance that the sorceress would again slip through her fingers. This time she would die.

  Liandra had just caught sight of the glazed cupola that topped Ilendril’s tower rising above the streets when the entire city seemed to rise up a few inches from the earth and then come slamming down again. She saw the cupola
collapse, raining shards of glass down into the streets. The walls of the buildings around her quivered, cracking as the tremors rumbled through them. She was thrown from her feet as the paving stones in the street split.

  Any kind of audible sensation was drowned out by a titanic roar, a booming rumble that rolled into the city from the east. She could see stunned elves staggering out from their homes, their mouths open in screams of alarm, but whatever sound rose from them was silenced by the reverberations of that awesome crash. Then, even that sight was blotted out as a massive wave of dust came flooding through the streets, engulfing them in a grainy, choking fog.

  Coughing on the dust in her throat, Liandra struggled back to her feet. Her heart hammered in her chest, shock and terror warring for mastery of her body. It was an effort to subdue the instinct to flee, to run in blind panic through the fog. That way lay certain destruction. The only path was to remain calm, to collect herself and use her reason, not unthinking emotion.

  The echoes of that first roar were still ringing in her ears, but now she could hear screams and cries as well, muffled as though they came from some great distance. When her hearing cleared, the shrieks resolved themselves into a piteous din that rose from all around her. Wails of anguish and fright that sounded from every building and every quarter.

  Liandra felt her heart crack as she heard those mournful cries, the image of Kor Vanaeth after the black dragon ravaged it rising in her mind. She had neglected to help the survivors then, choosing instead to slake her need for revenge.

  Forcing herself to focus, she evoked a spell that let her eyes pierce the veil of dust. Through her magically enhanced vision, she could see dazed asur stumbling about in the street, blundering into one another and the rubble that had fallen from the roofs above. Veiled in mantles of dust, the elves looked like ghosts as they fumbled their way blindly through the destruction.