To Dream with the Dragons (Hyborean Dragons)

by B. V. Larson

  Books by B. V. Larson

  HYBOREAN DRAGONS SERIES

  To Dream with the Dragons

  The Dragon-Child

  Of Shadows and Dragons

  The Swords of Corium

  The Sorcerer’s Bane

  The Dragon Wicked

  HAVEN SERIES

  Amber Magic

  Sky Magic

  Shadow Magic

  Dragon Magic

  Blood Magic

  OTHER BOOKS

  Swarm

  Extinction

  Mech

  Mech 2

  Shifting

  Velocity

  Visit www.BVLarson.com for more information.

  TO DREAM WITH THE DRAGONS

  (Hyborean Dragons #1)

  by

  B. V. Larson

  Copyright © 2011 by the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  Author’s Note

  This series of Novellas, Hyborean Dragons, is written in a format that might be new to some readers and I want to take a moment to explain. First of all, let’s be clear on what a novella is. Essentially, it is a work that is longer than any sane short story, but shorter than a full novel. Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a professional author’s group of which I am an active member, defines the novella as a work that is 17,500 words to 40,000 words long. Works more than 40,000 words in length are considered to be novels. Every book in the Hyborean Dragons series is a novella.

  Why are the stories not full length novels or short stories? They were written this way on purpose. As a young reader, I devoured my parents’ collection of mid-1900s Sword and Sorcery works, commonly printed in the pulp magazines that were popular in the past. Classic examples would be the works of Howard, Lovecraft, Smith, Leiber and Wagner (all of which I heartily recommend if you enjoy this series). These stories are quite different than the typical Epic fantasies that dominate today, which all resemble to some degree the Lord of the Rings. Sword and Sorcery stories do not resemble D&D or WoW. They are much shorter and harder hitting, often written as episodic pieces rather than a single continuous... epic. In this lost genre there are continued characters and a continued timeline exists between the books, but you might stop one place and start up in another, with a brief author’s note explaining how the hero got there.

  Starting around 1980, there was great pressure placed upon authors to lengthen their books. This was done simply to justify the growing cost of novels to the public. Authors, to this day, often throw in a dozen extra characters to stretch things. Are these stretched books a more satisfying reading experience? Not always.

  Hyborean Dragons was written as a tribute to the lost, older format. The main advantage to this type of story is that it skips the boring parts. You will rarely learn what any of the characters ate for breakfast. Long, windy speeches (like this one) are almost never made by anyone. The stories focus tightly on a single hero or pair of heroes, almost without exception, rather than a dozen points of view or a talkative crowd of people journeying together. You should never find yourself ‘skipping’ to get to the part you care about.

  Another key advantage is that readers are better able to withstand a dark, anti-hero when the work is shorter....

  I hope you enjoy the read.

  -BVL

  Therian

  -1-

  For a century the sun slowly dimmed over the great island kingdom of Hyborea. Winter now stretched long and deep, full of dark, frozen nights. Every year great glaciers—winter’s roving blue-white teeth—gnawed away a bit more of all that was bright and warm in the land. Summer was a fleeting affair, a shallow reflection of past glory.

  The kingdom’s northern provinces had been abandoned, one after another. Survivors that did not flee Hyborea entirely migrated to the silver towers of Corium, the capital. Due to the natural hot springs that bubbled and hissed founts of warm steam up from the Dragon’s Breath Mountains, Corium was the warmest region of the island.

  In the Year of the Toad, the winter was the coldest and longest yet known. Each night yawned wide—seemingly an abyss of blackness. In the still gray mornings the peasants stirred and tunneled their way through the white drifts to escape their entombed huts. Around them, they found a dead world. During what should be early spring, birds were often found dead in their nests, welded by ice to their silent young. Children clutched the tiny frozen creatures and wept, for it seemed that spring would never come.

  Scholars tore at their almanacs, frustrated and mournful. Prophets lanced and sliced the organs of owls and snow apes, but saw only doom in their deliberations, and so spoke little. None could advise King Euvoran of a proper course that might save the land. There were whispers of sorcery and mutterings of consulting with the Dragons in their slumber. None, however, dared speak these forbidden thoughts to the King, upon peril of their life and soul.

  The people of Hyborea were a breed apart from the rustic folk who lived across the oceans to the south. Hyboreans considered the southern folk to be crude and grotesque, with barbaric manners. The southern kingdoms in return considered the Hyboreans to be inhuman, uncaring souls with ice in their veins to match their faintly blue complexions. Each side, regarding the other from their own perspective, was partly right. The southern peoples were quick-tempered and uneducated. The northern Hyboreans were colder in both demeanor and body temperature. They were human enough to interbreed with the southern folk, but they were strikingly different in appearance. A talent for sorcery was a common trait amongst Hyboreans. Their lives were longer than that of normal humans, but their customs often seemed strangely cold, calculating and even cruel.

  King Euvoran of Hyborea, ancient and ailing, had lived for nearly two hundred years. He had sworn off sorcery in his first century of life, and would hear no more of it from his subjects, upon pain of death. He slumbered most of his final years away, peacefully dreaming of the good times. In his dreams of the past, the sea was not coated with ice. In his dying mind, birds of bright plumage still flew up from distant warm lands to spend the forgotten time of summer in Hyborea.

  -2-

  One frosty morning in the month of Tau, when the kingdom should have been thawing and spring well-started, the sun rose as slowly and weakly as an old man struggling to get out of bed. A shadow of its former brilliance, it formed a wispy pale disk in the sky. The people took even this wan light as a good sign, as the sun was rarely seen at all.

  Just as weak and diffident as the pale disk that shimmered in his window, Therian, the sole surviving son and heir to the frozen throne of this land, climbed out of his bed and padded over the cold stones of his chambers to gaze outside. He pushed his black hair out of his eyes, hair so black and straight it shone with its own luster. He shivered and clutched an indigo fleece robe about him. He reached his hand up to touch the frosted panes. The glass was so cold his fingertips stuck to the surfaces. Catching sight of his faded-blue, thin-boned fingers, his lips twisted in a moment of loathing. He dropped his hand to his waist so that he wouldn’t have to look upon it.

  Before considering his own breakfast, Therian fed his only pet, a small black serpent he kept in a glass case by the hearth. A live rat served the purpose quite well. Many were the chambermaids that had discovered his pet and been unpleasantly startled. All of them speculated darkly as to
what Therian saw in the creature, commonly drawing unflattering parallels between the reptile and Therian himself. In truth, he kept the snake as part of a memory of warmer times, when such creatures lived wild in the land. The cold had long ago extinguished the last of their species in Hyborea.

  As usual, he took his breakfast in a dusty alcove in the library. He gnawed on cheese and blackbread while poring over Ean’s Fifth Volume: Architecture of the Manticore Era, a text that included much historical information concerning the ancient structures of Corium.

  The Chamberlain glided up silently and stood nearby, hands clasped over his abdomen, head bowed in humility. He watched Therian with glittering eyes that belied his posture. After a moment, as Therian seemed to take no notice of him, the Chamberlain pointedly cleared his throat.

  Therian glanced up, slightly annoyed. “Yes?”

  “I bring grave news, milord,” murmured the Chamberlain.

  Therian turned him his full attention. “Deliver your news.”

  “The King is ailing, milord. He cannot be roused,” he paused while Therian took in this news, eyes blinking. After a moment the Chamberlain continued, “The court has taken up a vigil. Long live the King.”

  “Long live the King,” echoed Therian, “and Euvoran has lived for so very long.”

  Therian sat for a moment, unmoving. The Chamberlain waited patiently.

  Therian rose slowly and looked at his beloved books. Fantastic stacks of ancient tomes rose all around him.

  “These books are my best friends, you know. They are my true counselors and confidants,” he whispered.

  “I believe you, milord.”

  Sensing perhaps, some form of mockery, Therian snapped his head around and took pains to stand straight and tall, although it was difficult for his body to do so.

  “I will join the vigil shortly.”

  The chamberlain nodded and glided away as silently as he had arrived.

  Therian took a moment longer to look about the castle library, a place where few now ventured, save himself. Already he felt lost at the prospect of ruling a dying kingdom. His life was about to utterly change, and he did not relish it.

  Only once during the vigil did the Great King Euvoran awaken. Therian, slumbering in a carven oak chair beside the deathbed, was awakened by his stirrings. He found the Chamberlain crouched intently over the King, who seemed to be whispering something.

  Therian rose with all the suddenness he could muster, although the movement pained him. He approached his father and the Chamberlain reluctantly retreated, fingers trailing across the bed sheets.

  “What is it, father?” Therian asked in a hushed voice. He leaned close to catch the dying words.

  “I tell you what my father told me, and his before him,” whispered Euvoran.

  Therian listened intently, feeling emotion, although he and his sire had never been close.

  “Rule, not as I ruled,” uttered the King. “The time has come to rule as did our ancient fathers.”

  Therian gazed upon his dying father, and their eyes did meet.

  “I will do as you bid, Sire.”

  Words seem to fail the King, he reached up a trembling hand. Therian clasped it awkwardly. Then the King lifted his other hand and pointed with it out the window.

  Therian followed the gesture. Outside loomed the Dragon’s Breath Peaks. There, Euvoran would soon be laid to rest.

  “What is it, sire?”

  King Euvoran worked his mouth, but no sound issued. Speech was again beyond him. Therian turned and gazed outside. After the King had lapsed back into a fitful slumber, Therian went to the window and gazed outside, pondering what it was his father had been trying to say. Was he gesturing to the tombs of his ancestors that lay in that direction? Was he indicating the hateful winter that never ended? Or perhaps he believed that Therian might need to call upon the Dragons that slept beneath that very mountain, as the ancient lords were said to have done in the distant past. Therian thought to himself that he might not know the answer for many years, if ever.

  -3-

  The vigil continued for two days and two nights. The night King Euvoran breathed his last was as bitterly cold as any yet that year. A great oak, burdened by gusting winds and many tons of cancerous white ice, snapped at the trunk and crashed down in the town square during the very hour that the bells tolled the sad news of the King’s passing. The tree fell upon the living quarters of the best smithy in town, crushing the life from the smith, his wife and their three daughters. They died with frozen branches and grotesque icicles thrust through their bodies like spears.

  “The people consider it an ill-omen, milord,” murmured the Chamberlain as he delivered the news.

  Therian took a glass of wine with him as he left his father’s chambers. Normally, he rarely drank; his constitution really couldn’t withstand it. Tonight, however, he planned to get drunk. He walked from the royal bedchambers down the dimly lit halls toward the throne room. The Chamberlain followed him silently.

  Without hesitation, Therian mounted the steps to the throne. Behind him, he heard a sudden intake of breath. He sat himself upon the throne and tossed back the last of the wine.

  The Chamberlain stood at the foot of the steps, aghast. Therian smiled to himself, so rarely had he seen the Chamberlain look rattled. He took a perverse pleasure in it.

  “More wine,” Therian ordered. A servant scuttled off to obey him.

  “Milord,” said the Chamberlain. His voice rose slightly, and then he checked himself with an effort. “Milord, the coronation hasn’t yet occurred.”

  “A mere formality.”

  The Chamberlain stared. Therian stared back.

  “In truth, my father’s throne feels anything but appropriate to me,” Therian sighed. “But I suppose I will have to get used to it.”

  The servant returned with a fresh glass. Therian took it and drank it as well. When he was finished, he rose from the throne on unsteady feet. Coming down the steps he stumbled, and the Chamberlain caught his thin elbow.

  Therian knew an intense moment of loathing for both himself and the Chamberlain. He jerked away from the man with a curse.

  “I’m no fainting washer-woman.”

  “Of course not, milord,” murmured the Chamberlain, withdrawing his support. “Please forgive me.”

  Struggling to walk properly, Therian stalked off to his chambers and began a long night filled with vomit and foulness. In the midst of the night, when the sickness had passed somewhat, Therian felt he had reached the lowest moment of an unhappy life. Lying there, gasping for breath amidst his stinking bed sheets, Therian made a decision.

  From a hidden recess beneath his bed he dragged out a large, black book. The book was bound with a hide of black scales, a hide that must have come from a creature like his pet serpent, only much larger.

  As Therian read the book, he pondered his father’s words. He would not rule as his father had ruled. He would not dream his life away.

  -4-

  The Chamberlain cleared his throat pointedly. Dimly, Therian realized this was the third or fourth time he had done so. Therian tore his eyes from the book he was devouring and turned on the Chamberlain.

  “What is it, man?”

  “Milord, I beg forgiveness.”

  “I beg for you to speak and leave me be,” growled Therian. He thought to see the Chamberlain craning to learn what tome it was Therian read so avidly. Like a jealous child, Therian snapped the book shut and hunkered over it.

  “Speak!”

  “It is your father’s funeral, milord. It is time to lay the King to rest.”

  Therian heaved a sigh and straightened with embarrassment. He restrained himself from apologizing—the Chamberlain would not have understood such an act any more than he understood Therian’s odd mood in the first place. “Of course,” he said, voice softening. “I will prepare myself.”

  “I have had a litter prepared to bear milord up the mountainside.”

  Therian’s
face twisted into a snarl. “That will not be required. I will march with the procession.”

  The Chamberlain blinked in surprise. “Milord? Perhaps milord has forgotten that it is customary for the heir apparent to wear armor and go armed up the mountain…”

  “I have forgotten nothing,” said Therian. “Now leave me.”

  Scowling, the Chamberlain vanished. Therian smiled to himself. There went a man who didn’t like surprises. And Therian did indeed plan a surprise.

  Clutching the tome to his chest, he went to his chambers and gestured for his valets, who quickly dressed his body. Never did he allow the book from his sight. Not for a moment was any hand save his own permitted to touch it.

  He groaned with the weight of the ceremonial chainmail shirt, even though it was designed for comfort and the rings were far lighter than those woven for battle. He took a moment of pride in strapping on his father’s twin swords, Seeker and Succor. The two were wickedly-sharp blades. Each was as long as a man’s arm and gently curved, Succor with a glittering inner edge, Seeker with the same unusual luster at the tip. The brightest metal edges were also the hardest and legend told they had been forged from the core of a fallen star. Long ago, Therian’s ancestors had used the precious fragments to form the hooked inner curves of Succor, the defensive blade, that it might better catch the weapon of an enemy. The tip of Seeker was similarly hardened and refined, so that it may pierce armor and strike through to the heart. The swords had been worn by the kings of Hyborea for millennia. Throughout his youth, Therian had only been allowed to touch Succor once—and that time only to place his lips upon the flat of the blade as part of his ceremony of fealty.

  The weight of the twin swords, one on each hip, comforted him and seemed to give him strength. He knew he could not bear the swords, the mail and the book, however. He requested a slave to place the book in a locked chest and to carry it behind him, following him closely throughout the procession. With only the slightest hint of a raised eyebrow at this odd request, the castle servants hurried to obey him.