The Coming of Dragons: No. 1 (Darkest Age)

by A. J. Lake

  Ninety-three. Ninety-four. Ninety-five.

  He stopped and looked out beyond the waves. This was where the dream had told him to come, but it had not told him what he would find. Only that something would come out of the storm, something of great importance that must be kept safe at all costs; something that might not look outwardly precious …

  Aagard frowned as another fiery tongue seared the sky. Outwardly precious! As if he needed his dreams to warn him about outward trappings! He had learned that grim lesson two years ago in Venta. These days it was only his soul, his dreams, his mind’s eye that he trusted; even so, he thought wryly, this particular dream might have been a little more specific …

  At last he saw it. Something bobbing in the tide’s white horses. A black shape looming in the storm’s reflecting glow. It was too far out to reach, first drifting in towards the strand and then clawed back in the undertow.

  Quite suddenly, with the ninth wave there it was, deposited directly before him, ten strides out on the wet sands. Aagard stared at it, half expecting some further revelation to explain its purpose and his mission. And that was when he realised: it was not one thing, but three.

  Aagard picked his moment carefully. He was too old to fight the sea, but he couldn’t risk losing this strange delivery. Yet as he paused, some inner voice nagged: Trust your dream! Watch the sky! Act now, before it is too late! He struggled across the sucking sands to the largest of the three shapes. It turned out to be a sturdy oak chest.

  A stillness came over him. The chest was familiar; ominously familiar. He had hoped never to see it again. And to see it now of all times, on this night of unnatural storm, made his blood run cold. Uncertain and fearful, he knelt to look at the padlock. It was still firm, the runes around it blackened with age and wear, but seemingly untouched.

  ‘Well, then,’ he muttered. ‘We’re not wholly undone. Not yet.’

  He leant over the chest to see what else the sea had brought him, and gasped.

  Of all the things he had thought might come to him out of the madness and malice of the storm, this was the least likely, and the most baffling. But no, he had seen them before! This dark girl and pale, pale boy. Now he remembered. Had he not also glimpsed them in the dream?

  The children of the storm.

  Chapter Three

  Edmund rose, gulping, from the waves. Above him the huge winged monster swept down … his breath turned to stone … he lashed out …

  Edmund’s eyes flicked open in disbelief. Instead of the storm’s roar there was quietness, and instead of freezing wetness there was warmth, and the burst of red that had so terrified him before was only firelight crackling in a hearth. The scaly apparition had disappeared. The storm was gone. He was safe.

  Gods be praised. His mother’s offerings for a safe journey had worked after all. Edmund gazed around him. He was in some kind of cave. Candles flickered on high stony ledges, casting little pools of light. Beneath him was the rustle of clean straw over which a warm blanket had been spread. Even his clothes were almost dry – steaming a little in the heat from the fire. Next to him the girl slept on, under a blanket of her own. Edmund stared at her sun-bronzed cheek, where black strands of hair stirred a little on her breath. That dark hair made him think of his mother again, and again the storm came roaring back. His heart leapt with shock. The last thing he had seen was … was that thing in the sky … then the waves burying him. What had happened? How had they got here? And where were they?

  The cave was furnished like a learned man’s chamber, with a shelf of books against one wall and a lectern on which to rest the larger volumes so as to read them more easily. There was also a table and stools, and on the table a platter and knife set out for a meal.

  Beyond the firelight, someone was speaking very quietly. No. It was singing rather than speaking; a man’s low voice, chanting words he could not fathom. Edmund raised himself on his elbow, wincing at the stiffness in his arms.

  In the furthest corner of the cave a man was standing with his back to him. He was bending over something with his hands outstretched, and as Edmund watched he finished his chanting and knelt down. There was a small, metallic noise; then the man straightened up, sighing. But he seemed to know Edmund was awake for he turned calmly and came over to him.

  He was old, his face seamed and wrinkled and his beard more silver than black. But his eyes held a piercing and unsettling darkness, and his carriage was proud. He stood like a king, or a man used to speaking with kings.

  ‘You are welcome here,’ the man said. His voice was clipped, but not unkind, and his accent more like Edmund’s than he might have expected so far to the west.

  The old man raised his eyebrows in faint enquiry, and Edmund said, ‘My name is Edmund.’ He was not prepared to give away any more of his identity than this, especially as he knew nothing about this man. Was he rescuer, or captor?

  Suddenly the man bent closer and searched Edmund’s face as if trying to solve a riddle. ‘You are wondering where you are,’ he said. ‘This place is called Gullsedge, and you are in my home.’

  ‘How did I get here?’ Edmund asked. His voice sounded strange – low and hoarse. ‘I was … a wave swept me off the deck, while I was looking at …’ He hesitated. How could he describe the thing that he had seen in the eye of the storm? No one sane would believe him. He glanced across at the girl. She was still asleep, oblivious. Had she seen it too?

  ‘I am Aagard,’ said the old man. ‘Once of the kingdom of Wessex, now of Dunmonia. The sea cast you up here; you and something else.’ Once again, he gave Edmund a searching look. ‘If you are well enough to stand, there’s something I would like to show you.’

  He turned and walked away, further into the cave, and Edmund rose shakily to his feet and followed, shivering at the night’s dank air beyond the firelight.

  Aagard went to the thing he had been bending over before. It was a chest, rimed with salt water and draped with bladder-wrack. It looked very old and its metal edges were black and corroded. A huge padlock of rusted iron held it shut, but as far as Edmund could see, the lock had no keyhole.

  Aagard pointed at the chest. ‘What is this?’ he asked. ‘And where did it come from?’

  Edmund stared at him, confused. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before.’

  ‘It was washed up alongside you,’ Aagard said. ‘Did you not cling to it when your ship broke up?’

  Edmund shook his head. He had no recollection of anything after the waters closed over his head.

  The old man looked again at the chest. ‘But it must have come from the ship on which you travelled,’ he persisted. ‘Do you really not know where –’

  ‘Wareham,’ said a new voice.

  Edmund and Aagard turned to see Elspeth walking stiffly towards them. ‘We took it aboard at Wareham. My father loaded it himself.’ She broke off and curtsied awkwardly. ‘Elspeth Trymmansdaughter, sir,’ she said. ‘Is it you I must thank for my life?’

  Aagard waved her words away. ‘You came alive out of the flood, so it is your own strength and spirit that should be thanked.’

  ‘Even so,’ Elspeth insisted, ‘you brought us here, and gave us shelter.’ Before Aagard could speak she went on, ‘But can you tell me, sir – was there anyone else? Any other men from the ship, or wreckage, even? My father …’ Her voice trailed off as she read the answer in Aagard’s face.

  ‘There were only the two of you,’ he said. ‘But the village of Medwel is only a league away down the coast path. Ships wrecked on the rocks often wash up there, and survivors too sometimes. Have no fear, the villagers will care for any that they find. Tomorrow you can go there and enquire.’

  Elspeth nodded unhappily and Edmund felt a stab of sympathy for her. She turned her head to hide her tears, and Edmund looked away too.

  ‘But first,’ Aagard went on, ‘there are things I must ask you.’ He indicated the chest. ‘I have seen this before, and I fear its coming here bodes no good. Did you see who brought
it to your ship?’

  ‘It was an old man,’ Elspeth said. ‘He wore a red gown – like that one.’ She pointed to a long robe, wine-red in colour, that hung from an iron hook on the wall.

  Edmund frowned. The tunic Aagard was wearing was grey wool, patched and thin-looking, but the robe that hung from the hook was altogether richer. A lord might have worn it, or a companion to a king. He looked at his host with a new interest.

  ‘The man who brought the chest gave my father some trouble,’ Elspeth went on, smiling at the memory. ‘He insisted on going aboard to see it stowed for safe delivery to Gaul. He said there would be someone to meet it when we reached the harbour. Father said he was so careful of the old box, he’d wager there were jewels in it.’

  ‘Thrimgar,’ Aagard muttered. ‘He would not have sent it away except in the direst need …’ He stopped and looked at Elspeth more gently. ‘You are tired, child. Rest by the fire. I’ll bring you food shortly, when I have spoken with your companion.’

  ‘He’s not –’ Elspeth began, but then she shrugged and went over to the fire, stretching her palms out to catch its warmth.

  Edmund opened his mouth to say he knew nothing that could be of use; that he had barely been on deck during the voyage, and had no memory of seeing the chest before now. But Aagard bade him sit down at the table, fixing him once more with that piercing gaze.

  ‘You have not told me everything, have you?’ the old man pressed quietly. ‘Believe me, I know this night’s storm was no common one. If you saw something there, let me know of it.’

  Edmund felt his face grow hot. ‘Did you … ?’ he began. But he didn’t even know how to ask the question: did you see something flying through the sky tonight, something that has no business outside old wives’ tales and children’s stories?

  ‘Did I see the dragon?’ Aagard finished for him.

  Edmund stared across the table, speechless.

  The old man went on, ‘No, my boy, I did not see him, but in my dream I felt the evil that could conjure him. Such a creature has not been seen in many generations, and his coming now bodes great evil. The storm was only the start.’

  Edmund shuddered, remembering the vast beast hovering over the stricken ship; the monstrous eye rolling above him as he lay on the splitting deck. Only for a moment had he stared into that eye, but its cruel gaze had burned into his mind like a brand.

  ‘His name is Torment,’ said Aagard. ‘You need feel no shame if you were afraid. Strong men have wept to face him. Gods have died fighting him.’

  Edmund did not answer.

  The old man gave him a wintry smile. ‘You thought dragons were a fable? It’s true that they have been kept apart from men for centuries. But they can return, with reason enough. What you saw was real, I promise you.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ Edmund blurted out. Before he could think better of it, he told Aagard of the dizzying moments before the wreck, when he seemed to leave the Spearwa and hover high above the ship, looking down at his own body. ‘I thought I was running mad,’ he confessed.

  Aagard eyed him gravely, with no trace of contempt or even surprise. ‘It was no fantasy,’ he said. ‘You are – let me see – eleven years old?’ Edmund nodded, wondering where this was leading. ‘And on the ship, when you looked down at yourself,’ the old man continued, ‘were you still afraid of the storm?’

  ‘Of course I …’ Edmund stopped. For those few dizzying moments, he had not been afraid at all. He had looked down at the ship as if it were a piece of wood swarming with insects. He had rejoiced to see it swept away! Edmund bowed his head in horror and confusion.

  Aagard touched him softly on the arm. ‘You were not losing your mind,’ he said. ‘You were looking through another’s eyes. The dragon’s.’

  I was what? Edmund searched the man’s face, too shocked to speak. What was he saying?

  ‘Tell me, what do you know of the Ripente?’

  Edmund flinched as if Aagard had struck him. Every great household had heard of the Ripente: a rare line of second-sighted men and women, who could look into a man’s mind and out through his eyes, seeing as he saw. They were outsiders wherever they went, treated as a race apart and used as spies and informers by anyone who could pay them well enough.

  Aagard looked at him with narrowed eyes. ‘You know something, I can see that. It would be unusual for you to be the first in the family. Does your father have these powers also?’

  Edmund flared with indignation. ‘The Ripente are nothing but treacherous vagabonds! Men with no lords, without loyalty to anyone. My father …’ He stopped, recalling his mother’s warning just in time. He must not give away his father’s name. ‘My family is an honourable one,’ he finished stiffly. ‘No spies or traitors ever shared our blood.’

  ‘And yet you have the Ripente power,’ Aagard said mildly.

  ‘No!’ Edmund was furious now. ‘If a … a dragon takes hold of my mind …’

  ‘He did no such thing,’ Aagard broke in, a new edge to his voice. ‘You took hold of his mind. And he could not have known it, or he would have killed you.’

  Edmund fell silent. Aagard took him by the shoulders and looked into his face. ‘I have some knowledge of the Ripente,’ he said. ‘I suspected when you first opened your eyes that you might possess the skill. But to look through the eyes of a dragon …’ He dropped his hands, and his voice became urgent.

  ‘You have a great power. That does not make you a spy, or a traitor. Yes, the Ripente have often been outcasts. People always fear what they cannot understand. And it’s true that some Ripente have used their skills selfishly, for gain and power. But you need not!’

  Sitting by the fire, Elspeth heard their voices raised, as if in argument. Edmund was so haughty, she thought: could he not even bring himself to be polite to the man who had taken them in? But she did not greatly care. Her mind was filled with her father as she had seen him last, calling orders as he hauled the tiller round, calm and purposeful in the face of the storm that would split his boat into kindling. I won’t cry, she told herself fiercely. Even if he’s drowned, he would have wanted no other death. But he’s not dead; he’s a stronger swimmer than I am. I won’t believe that he’s dead.

  Unable to sit still any longer, Elspeth climbed stiffly to her feet and began to wander around the cave, running her hand over the rough stone walls. Ahead of her was the chest that had saved their lives, the salt-rimed piece of flotsam that had brought them to this place. It looked older than anything she had ever seen; even older than the saints’ reliquaries in the great godshouse at Durovernum. But more intriguing still was the lock. How was it meant to be opened with no keyhole? Elspeth knelt down and ran her hand over the blind, seamless face of the padlock.

  There was a grinding rasp of metal against metal and the hasp of the lock sprang free.

  In surprise, she turned to call to Aagard, but he was leaning towards the boy, speaking so earnestly that she did not like to interrupt. She turned back to the chest. Slowly, she slid the lock out of the wards and pulled them up. The lid swung open soundlessly, as though its hinges had just been oiled instead of soaked with sea. The chest exhaled a sour whiff of ancient air.

  Inside, it was dark unvarnished wood, giving back no reflection from the candlelight. At first Elspeth thought it was empty, but something glimmered at the bottom. She bent in for a closer look and the thing grew brighter, as if a pale flame suddenly shone within it.

  It was a gauntlet made of finely wrought silver facets, each one overlapping its neighbour so they rippled like the scales of some magical fish. Elspeth’s eyes widened. Surely no silver mined from the earth could have that living shimmer? Or perhaps some minuscule creatures from the sea’s depths, those that shine with their own light, had attached themselves to the surface of the gauntlet as the waves turned it over and over. And yet that couldn’t be, for the inside of the chest was bone dry.

  Entranced, she reached down to touch it.

  The cry that rang round t
he cave froze Edmund’s blood. He flung up his arms like a shield as a white light blinded him.

  But in a moment it was gone. When the light’s dazzle had cleared, Edmund saw Aagard staring open-mouthed across the cave.

  Elspeth stood before them, her right arm held straight out as if it were stone. On her hand was a shimmering, silver gauntlet – and in her grasp was a sword of pure, translucent crystal.

  Chapter Four

  Elspeth was rigid with shock. The sword, shining with its own light and longer than her arm, filled her sight so that she could not look away. She tried to open her hand and drop it, but her fingers would not unbend inside the gauntlet. One cold winter she had taken hold of an icicle. The silver glove burned and clung to her skin in just the same way. She tried to throw the sword from her, but there was such a stab of agony that she screamed.

  ‘Help me! Take it off!’

  Dimly, she saw Edmund jump to his feet, knocking over his stool. Aagard was already on his feet; he crossed swiftly to her side, but did not touch her and, as Edmund ran up, he held the boy back.

  ‘The pain will fade soon,’ he said. Even through her terror, and the burning needles stabbing her body, Elspeth could see that the old man’s face was white. She bit down another scream, breathing in great gasps, and held herself stiffly, feeling that the slightest move or touch would only make the pain worse.

  Just as Elspeth thought her knees would buckle with exhaustion, the pain began to ebb. When the burning died down to a dull throb, she let her arm fall. The sword hung by her side, glowing with a cold fire. What is this? Elspeth thought in terror.

  Aagard took her by the shoulders and led her back to her seat at the hearth. Elspeth scarcely noticed the warmth of the flames. When she didn’t stop shivering, Aagard fetched the red robe from its hook on the wall and draped it around her shoulders. The sword-shaped light shone out against the rich material, pulsing to an unheard rhythm.