A Darkness in the East

by Aaron Pogue

  “Mayor Bannus. Despite what you have done, I am not your enemy. I am the Dragonprince, the new lord of Palmagnes, and I have come this far from home because I heard about your town’s plight. I came to protect the people of the eastern plains from dragons, and there were rumors of something worse. If you will help me, I will complete that mission.”

  The mayor considered Daven a moment in silence, still suspicious, then he raised his chin. “Why would you forgive me so easily?”

  “I won’t. But I will save this town despite you. My war is with the dragons.”

  “Your war?”

  “To the death.”

  “Then are all the rumors true? I’ve heard it said you have an army in your tower.”

  Daven shook his head. “A couple hundred hunters. Perhaps a thousand able men to protect the walls, but not an army.”

  The mayor laughed darkly. “I doubt the king could field so large a force in these dark times. But rumors say your men are fearsome killers, dragon slayers, monsters in their own right.”

  “They have a fine commander.”

  The mayor’s eyes beamed hungrily now. “Then bring them! If you are the man you claim to be, then bring your men here to protect us! We shall build another stronghold in the east, and you can scour the mountains clean.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  Daven shook his head. “No. My hunters are good men, but they cannot fly. They cannot do battle like I do, and I will no more endanger them than you would risk the people of this town.”

  “But it is for this town.”

  “And for this town I have come. I am the only army you will get. Well...Pazyarev and I.”

  “Paz...”

  “Pazyarev is my bonded dragon. He’s watching from the sky, and when we finish here, he’ll carry me in search of your enemies.”

  “You...you and one dragon?”

  Daven showed his teeth. “We are more than enough. I do not need more men; I need information! Tell me what has happened here, the truth behind the rumors I have heard, and I will find the monsters that lurk behind it.”

  The mayor shrugged. “What rumors have you heard?”

  “Only that something strange is happening here. The dragon raids...there’s something odd behind them.”

  “Oh, aye. Nightmare raids! Dragons attacking villages and farms! They burn everything, land and livestock and any manmade structures—“

  Daven shook his head. “They do this all across the world. They kill in endless scores. It is the dragonswarm.”

  “But that’s the strangeness of it! These dragons aren’t killing. Not in the usual way. In just this region, they are leaving survivors. It is as though some force restrains them.”

  He trailed off, unwilling to voice the accusation yet again, but a darker suspicion burned in Daven’s heart. This was what he’d feared. Could it be Vechernyvetr, after all? Acting in his nature but restraining his hand at the last? Daven didn’t want to believe it, but he had never heard of dragons behaving in this manner.

  “You know what I am speaking of,” the mayor said. “You pretend to ignorance, and yet I see it in your eyes.”

  Daven shook his head. “I know more than any man about the ways of dragons, and perhaps I know what’s happening here. Perhaps, under just the right circumstances, a broodlord could have a conscience.”

  “Conscience?” the mayor spat. “I said they leave survivors, but not that they are kind. Wherever these monsters strike, they kill one.”

  “That...that is a kind of mercy.”

  The mayor sneered. “Mercy? No. In every raid, they choose a single victim. Women or children for preference. And then, by the light of blazing houses, they...they play with the wretched thing. They throw it in the air and pass it back and forth. When at last the victim dies, they drop it on the village green and fly away, leaving havoc in their wake.”

  A long silence fell, until Daven said, “That is...most unusual.”

  “It is a kind of torture,” Bannus said. “For the survivors as much as for the dead.”

  Daven sighed, thinking of the stranger who had mentioned Sachaerrich. “It is a message, Mayor Bannus. To me.”

  “Why would the dragons send a message to you?”

  “Because I defy them. Because I alone represent a threat to them, and they know of me. They’ve lured me here—”

  “And now that you know this, you will run?”

  “No. I will make the dragons pay. But first, I’ll bring a wizard from my stronghold to take your people to safety.”

  Bannus shook his head. “They will not go. We will not abandon our home. Not while there’s a soldier still willing to defend us.”

  “I can offer no promises.”

  “And you are not the only soldier in the world. We have sentries of our own.”

  Daven ground his teeth. “I have met Ricarl. He seems a sturdy man and true, but he could not stand against a flight of dragons. A thousand such men would be hard-pressed.”

  “But we will not leave our home. This is worth fighting for.”

  Daven caught his breath to argue, but after a moment he let it go. “Very well. I will do everything I can.”

  “Then come with me. The whole town is waiting to hear my judgment, and I would be proud to name you our salvation.”

  “No. You have my gratitude, but I do not fight for accolades.”

  The mayor grasped Daven’s shoulder and stared into his eyes. “These people starve for hope. You heard the rumors, but we have lived them. I beg you, play the hero.”

  Daven bowed his head. He unsealed the prison door with a gesture, and Bannus led him out through the twisting halls. The outer doors stood open on a little village green packed with soot-smeared townsfolk.

  The mayor had a speech for them. Daven didn’t hear it. He lost himself in the cadence, the rise and fall of stirring rhetoric, but he had no use for the words. His attention fixed on the faces. Bloodshot eyes, shadowed by exhaustion. Worry lines and scars. Sunken cheeks.

  Torture, Bannus had called it, and he had not been wrong. These people were wrung out, worn down, and on the edge of breaking. But the mayor had some skill with speech, and Daven watched hope bloom among the crowd. When his title was proclaimed, “Dragonprince,” Daven thrust his hand above his head, summoning a Chaos blade to glisten in the dawn’s light, and a reverent gasp washed over those gathered.

  Daven stepped forward, bowed in solemn acceptance of the responsibilities he’d committed to, and then as he’d done in Auvillan, he caught a thread of air to launch himself into the sky. It must have been an impressive sight from the market square, because a mighty cheer chased Daven into the low clouds.

  As soon as Pazyarev’s claws closed around him, Daven dropped his show of calm control. For all the effort it had required, the mayor’s information served him little. No, Daven had learned more from the captured broodling than he had from the people of Cammin, and even that was little enough.

  What could explain the rumors he had heard? What could explain the dragons’ strange behavior, or this wretched traveler who slandered Daven’s name? What could explain “Sachaerrich” on his tongue or that half-remembered, almost-human voice Daven had heard from the broodlord?

  And what was happening to Vechernyvetr? Even now, Daven felt the creature’s torment.

  A darkness worse than rumor reigned in these mountains. Daven was beginning to recognize it. He had tasted that darkness when he’d bonded Pazyarev. His frail mind had nearly drowned in the strange, thick emptiness. He remembered it all too well. Perfect Chaos had raged and roiled around him, wild as a thunderstorm and confining as a grave.

  And now he felt that selfsame torture at one remove. His bonded dragon wrestled the devastating madness, fighting to retain his sense of self. It came paired with torment and pain, but the madness burned darker than the rest. Perhaps the broodlord torturing these towns sought too to gain control over Vechernyvetr. What monster could subsume the Dragonprince’s
bond? What monster would dare try? And for how long?

  The stench of Chaos burned in the back of Daven’s mind and never went away. For weeks now it had plagued him. But here, upon the eastern plains, it seared hot and real. Vechernyvetr was close, and he was hurting.

  Now, buried in his sympathy and pain, Daven found an extra grain of fear. What would happen if Vechernyvetr failed? Would that give this new broodlord some access to Daven’s mind? Some influence over him, or even direct control? Vechernyvetr had chosen long ago not to exert it, but could he fight off a monster capable of wreaking this much pain upon his bonded dragon?

  Daven didn’t want to consider it. Better far to prevent it. Better far to protect the creature that had become his friend and destroy the broodlord haunting the eastern plains. But...how?

  He needed answers. And if men could not supply them, dragons could. He bent Pazyarev’s course toward the mountains then settled low, searching the rugged earth for signs of lairs. This had become his specialty, and Daven almost felt relaxed as he settled into his place on Pazyarev’s back and opened his mind to sense the living earth below for shadows, empty pockets, barriers to his wizard’s sight.

  Daven searched for half an hour, but he found none. It was unlikely in a wild such as this, so he pressed Pazyarev closer still and searched with ordinary eyes. He looked for sunning ledges and cloven stone and carrion falls—all the signs he’d taught his Captains of the Hunt. It was slower, clumsier than his other means of searching, but in this instance, strangely, it proved more effective. Almost as quickly as he started looking, he found a likely candidate: a sunning ledge beneath a cavern cleft, paired with vents marking the hillside higher up and the rotting bones of doe and boar strewn not far away.

  A dragon’s lair. Daven leapt from Pazyarev and dove toward the cave mouth, wrapping himself in air as he flew, but already he could see something very wrong. He could see the lair. By his wizard’s sight, he could see through earth and stone to the sprawling cavern, the wild dance of water in the cooling pool. It was a lair that might have held a score of broodlings—and it was empty. It had no owner to defy Daven’s special vision.

  It had been a lair, Daven had no doubts, but now it was just a cave.

  Confused and more than a little worried, Daven rode Pazyarev north until he found another likely lair. This one, also, was abandoned. Daven searched the mountainside while the sun climbed to its peak, and in all he found more than two dozen lairs. Two dozen lairs! His Captains of the Hunt would have been proud to find half that number in a whole night’s hunting, but in these mountains, they crowded thick and close.

  And every one was empty.

  Daven shivered at the strangeness of it. What could have cleared so many dragon lairs so quickly? How was it related to the madness plaguing the towns? He was still puzzling over these things when he stepped into yet another empty lair, and an overwhelming sense of familiarity settled over him.

  He’d been here before. This wasn’t the one he’d lived in, but now that he recognized this one, he could have easily pointed straight to Vechernyvetr’s lair. This one had once belonged to a little brood of greens and a feisty dame that Daven had helped Vechernyvetr subsume. By the looks of it, some other dragons had claimed the lair since then, but they were gone now, too.

  But now he knew the way to Vechernyvetr’s lair. He sprinted out onto the rocky mountainside, and then he hesitated. Did he dare check the lair? Could he bear to learn...whatever he might learn there?

  Before he could decide, something else caught his attention. From this high vantage, he could see for miles over the rolling plains, and as he glanced that way now, he saw the cruel pillar of coal black smoke rising to the south and west. Close to the mountains’ foothills. He didn’t have to guess. Cammin was burning.

  Daven hurled himself down the slope and caught himself up in Pazyarev’s clutches. He beat those massive wings and bent the monster’s mighty strength to one desperate goal: a rush to Cammin’s rescue. He had no doubt this was the work of dragons. He’d told Ricarl truly that dragons rarely struck by daylight and never against a dangerous opponent, but these were no ordinary dragons.

  Some tiny voice cried warning that this might be a trap for him, but Daven didn’t slow. Let them lay a trap for him! He’d foiled one already. Let them but face him, and perhaps he’d find some answers.

  When he arrived, he found Cammin overrun. There were not two dozen dragons this time, but two hundred. Drakes by the score writhed and slithered through the village streets, and adults circling above still blasted down occasional bursts of flame, though there was little left to burn.

  There were survivors, dozens of townsfolk, dirty and bleeding, corraled by the drakes so none could run. But the drakes were not attacking them. Nor were the flyers aiming fire at the crowd. As soon as Daven noticed that, he remembered what the mayor had told him.

  They choose one victim. They play with it. Daven saw the body, then—the ragdoll corpse, snatched up by a dragon on the wing, shaken viciously, then tossed up high for another beast to catch. The villagers below let out a wail of grief. Daven growled his rage.

  He had Pazyarev with him this time. And he had daylight on his side. He’d make the monsters pay for breaking their own rules. Pazyarev dove into the swarm, never slowing, and he caught two of the dragons in one great gulp, grinding them between his teeth. He lashed his mighty tail left and right and broke a dozen dragons’ fragile wings. He grabbed with his great claws and crushed living behemoths within his grip. Then from the ancient forge within his breast, he blew a blast of fire that even dragons’ scales couldn’t stand. Another dozen dragons died, searing, screaming as they tumbled from the sky.

  Then Pazyarev broke free of the press, rushing out the other side like a tilting knight completing his first pass before returning back to the joust. Daven banked Pazyarev hard, coming around low above the heads of the gathered townsfolk, and with a furious focus, he shaped the living earth as he had shaped strands of air at Auvillan. Instead of a hundred airy nooses, he fashioned as many deadly spears, smooth and perfect as his Chaos blade, and ripped them from the earth in one sudden, lethal gesture. He gored five score drakes at once—or near enough—and freed the townsfolk from their serpentine shepherds.

  Then Daven fell gasping against Pazyarev’s back, exhausted by the effort but thrilled at what he’d done. He counted three pounding heartbeats, then reached out to the spears again, tore them from the earth, and flung them like an artillery volley into the mass of dragons overhead.

  Some screamed. Some died. Daven barely heard them over the pounding of blood in his ears.

  He gathered threads of air to hide himself and drove his monstrous charger once more into the roiling swarm. The beast was living death. He struck two dozen more out of the sky without taking more than nicks and scratches. Another pass and he’d have half the brood dispatched....

  But as they left the press of dragons this time, Daven spotted something. There was another, an elder blue, that held itself apart from those that had toyed with their victim. It hovered now some short way off, watching carefully but not engaged. The broodlord! Daven’s lips pulled back to show his teeth. The broodlord dared show himself by daylight. Foolish pride. Daven could kill the beast and destroy the whole brood at one blow!

  Heart pounding, Daven sprinted the length of Pazyarev’s neck and flung himself from the monster’s crown. Then he sent Pazyarev hurtling back into the fray while Daven arced toward the distant elder. He did not yet make a blade or summon fire. He kept himself shrouded in primal air, hidden from the eyes of the broodlord, careful not to give himself away until the moment of his impact.

  He landed hard, halfway down the dragon’s back, and caught himself with one hand on its spine ridge. The creature might have felt the impact through its armored hide; Daven didn’t wait to find out. He stretched his will toward the distant earth, calling up the essence he would need to craft a blade even as he ran.

  He called it into bei
ng as he passed the huge wing joints. As he went by, he lashed out hard, hacking deep into the right wing’s joint with the new sword, then snapped a vicious kick at the bone on the left. The dragon bucked beneath him, faltering, and Daven ran on. He stabbed the sword above the dragon’s collarbone, down deep, then dragged it out and stabbed toward the spine.

  He roared in animal rage, and two hundred paces off Pazyarev let loose a deafening echo. Daven struck and struck again, and as the elder’s flight became a fall, Daven cried out in his heart, “You are undone! For Ricarl and all your other victims—”

  The broodlord answered him with a voice of quiet calm. You are so worried over strangers. You don’t fear for yourself?

  Two hundred paces off, the swarm around Pazyarev broke away, flashing straight toward the falling elder.

  Daven sneered. “I do not fear these gnats. They will die when you do.” He struck down hard again, and the elder gave a feeble cry of pain.

  But the broodlord’s voice did not falter. It mocked him. Is that your plan? You mistook that little blue for me? Poor child, I am safe within my lair. The dragon was in freefall now, dropping like a stone, and the other dragons certainly showed no sign of falling. Pazyarev struck at them from behind, killing them with abandon, but there were dozens more, all fixed on killing Daven.

  You should be worried for yourself, the broodlord said. For Themmichus and Isabelle. For Claighan who was kind to you and Lareth who kissed your ring. For Sachaerrich and Teelevon and all the refugees inside your tower. I’m coming for them, Daven. I’m going to kill them all.

  With that victorious cry, the dragons fell upon Daven. Fire lanced toward him, faster than he could control it, and he had to leap aside. Jaws snapped at him, and he sprang right into a striking tail. The long spike missed skewering him, but the force of the blow drove the air from Daven’s lungs and knocked him from his perch upon the falling elder.

  Daven saw the earth rushing up to meet him and he reached out desperately to Pazyarev, but his companion was still too far away. Instead, Daven focused all his will upon the broad, flat earth. With air wrapped around him like a bubble, he opened up the earth an instant before he would have stricken it. He dropped into a deep, dark well, then closed it up above him.