by Greg Curtis
There was a reception committee waiting for them Edouard saw as the sky ship slowly settled. Half a dozen men in scaled clothing – the unusual uniform that Ascorlexia expected his servants to wear – standing in a wide semi-circle near where they thought they'd land.
It was a strange garment. A long scaled vest that ran from the neck to the knees and which unlike priest robes looked quite uncomfortably tight. But he'd never heard of the dragon's servants complaining about it. Not even about the cold in winter when their bare lower legs were exposed to the weather. But they did often wear long black capes over the top of it when they wandered through Theria on their various errands. If anything it made them look even more out of place, but it probably helped with the cold.
Most of Edouard's attention though wasn't on the servants. Not after he'd thrown the land anchor over the side and pulled the cords that released a tiny amount of the warm air from the balloon allowing them to settle gently. It was on the cavern itself. Or rather, the entrance to Ascorlexia's cavern.
Cavern though was probably the wrong word to describe Ascorlexia's abode. But Edouard wasn't completely sure what the right word was. Cliff? Cave? Mine? Cathedral? Any of them could have been just as descriptive. And all of them were just as inadequate.
All Edouard really did know about it as he brought the sky ship in for a gentle landing on the flat grassland in front of it was that it was more impressive than he'd imagined. Far more. And he'd imagined a lot.
Yet all he could see of it was the temple that led to the entrance. A huge edifice of fluted marble pillars supporting a cantilevered marble roof large enough for an army to stand beneath. In fact his entire fortress could sit underneath that roof as well, with the tower not even reaching half as high as the columns. It was vast and elegant, dwarfing any other structure he'd ever seen. And yet for all its size it showed the clean lines and beauty of the true artist. It looked like a temple built by the gods themselves. Yet its history said otherwise.
Once, according to the tales of the bards, the black dragon's lair had been a mine. One of the mines of the ancient dwarven people. If there really had been dwarves and they too weren't just stories for the bards to tell for a few coppers. The dwarves according to legend had been half the height of a man and twice the width, but they built things ten times as large. A hundred times. They built for giants. At least that last part of the legend seemed accurate.
How, he wondered, could anyone have built such a structure? Just to lift those countless tons of marble hundreds of feet into the air must have required an army of men with pulleys. And after it had been built a second army of masons would have been needed to carve it. Because all of it, every fluted pillar towering up above them – the floors and the roof itself – were elegantly carved with images of great beasts and mighty warriors carrying impossibly large weapons. The images adorned every inch of the flat marble. And the images were always of battle. Great and terrible battles. Battles that could never have happened.
The frieze above the front of the temple that formed the gable end of the roof depicted one of those mighty fighters bringing his double headed axe down on to the neck of a dying dragon. If nothing else it suggested that these powerful warriors had great imaginations and confidence in their abilities beyond all reason. No one as far as he knew, had ever killed a dragon. Not when they had ruled the skies, and not since. And there was an irony in that it decorated the entrance to the dragon's home.
As they followed the man who had greeted them – he had given them no name save that he was the Lead Archivist of Ascorlexia – Edouard tried to guess just how large it was. And as they kept getting closer he found himself constantly revising his guess upwards.
After walking up the fifty steps to the temple's floor and then along the several hundred paces of its length they reached the entrance to the cavern itself, and even there the term ‘cavern’ seemed the wrong word. A gigantic mine opening with many more friezes adorning its sides and roof would be more accurate. And yet even those words still would not have done justice to it when the entrance stood surely seventy feet wide and eighty tall. It was simply too vast to be a mine opening.
Inside the cavern itself he discovered that the walls had been polished smooth and flat, not at all like the walls of a typical mine. It was as though a huge river of immense power had worn the stone smooth for a million years. But he knew that there had been no water there in a very long time if ever. The water had to be piped in.
Every ten feet along the walls on both sides of them there was a fountain, but not like any fountain he'd ever seen before. These fountains glowed somehow. The water that sprayed up from them in graceful arcs sparkled in the white light of the glowing basins and sent little shimmers of light cascading all around them. Somehow they transformed what should have been a dark and gloomy tunnel into something beautiful and even living. It was the sort of place that he could imagine the mythical fairies living. The fountains gave off heat as well as light, and as they passed each one he felt the warmth radiating from them and seeping into his very bones. The inside of the cavern was surprisingly warm, but that at least he understood. Dragons according to what was said about them, liked it warm.
The other thing that surprised him about the cavern was its length. They walked surely the best part of half a league into the entrance before they reached the immense vault that was Ascorlexia's domain and Edouard was actually quite tired by the time they reached it. He guessed that the whipping and all the time he'd spent in the dungeon had robbed him of some of his fitness. Though it could well be fear of what awaited them that was doing the same job.
Still, once they had reached the gigantic underground vault he quickly forgot about the limitations of his flesh. Instead he found himself awed all over again. It was simply so much larger than he had imagined. In fact it made everything that he had seen before seem tiny in comparison.
The vault had to be the size of a small city. The walls behind them stretched out beyond to the far side thousands upon thousands of paces away and stood easily a couple of hundred paces high. The immense domed roof that grew from them towered so high above their heads that it was impossible to make out much about it. It was just a shadow. Light and warmth came from more of the fountains which were dotted all around the floor, while a vast yellow diamond surely the size of a house if not a castle shone light down on them from the very centre of the dome above their heads.
Most amazing of all to him, was the library. The stories had said it was vast. But those who had told the tales did not truly know what vast was. All of the walls, save where there were openings in them leading to other chambers, were covered in shelves. Massive shelves filled with books. Books the size of a man, stacked on to six levels of shelves that lined the walls. This then was the dragon's great library. A city of books.
Somewhere in this underground labyrinth he knew had to be the bindery. Books of the size that the dragon liked to read had to be printed especially for him, and so he had a team of experts who scoured the lands for more books for Ascorlexia to read, and another team who then reprinted them into six foot tall tomes. Massive works that were too large for a man to carry and which had to be hauled around on trolleys.
What struck him most about them though was that as large as they were, as they disappeared into the distance they seemed to shrink until they looked tiny. They looked like specks of colour splashed on a dark stone wall. It was simply perspective at work he knew, but it was something that he could never have imagined until he saw it with his own eyes.
As Edouard stood there staring he tried to take a guess as to how many books the dragon had in his library. It had to be in the tens of thousands at least, but he wasn't sure if it wasn't hundreds of thousands or even millions. And all of them the dragon had supposedly read. Janus was right about one thing Edouard realised. If there was any creature or man in the world who knew of the Cabal wizards it was Ascorlexia.
“Wait here please. I will speak with the master and
ask if he wishes to receive you.”
The head of staff, a man about whom he knew nothing save that he seemed to be uncommonly polite and wore the strange scaled vest that the rest did, left them then, heading for the very centre of the vault and a small black hill. At first Edouard didn't understand why there was a hill in the centre of the vault. It took him a few moments to realise the truth – the idea was simply too incredible even after all they'd seen – but eventually he understood. The hill wasn't a hill at all. It was the dragon himself, curled up into a ball as he slept.
Anywhere else he would have seemed enormous. Over two hundred feet long according to the stories and weighing more than any other creature ever to walk the land. Or to fly over it. But here in this impossible vault even he looked small.
“You think he'll see us?” Kyriel whispered the question, for the first time ever apparently uncertain of herself.
Kyriel seemed unsure despite the fact that that was the entire reason she had come. The Mother had sent her specifically so that she could ask the questions that needed to be asked. And as a handmaiden she carried her Mother's authority. Edouard doubted the dragon would have wasted his time speaking with him. He was far too insignificant. Even after the first attack the emissary sent by King Byron had been turned away. The man had left his words with the staff. But at least he hadn't been eaten. Probably because he hadn't been stupid enough to try and force his way in. Kyriel though was a handmaiden for Tyrel, and Tyrel was a power like the dragon. The powers usually had more respect for one another, and as such he assumed they at least tolerated one another's servants.
“I think he'll see you.” Edouard told her that, certain it was true. Certain not because he actually had any knowledge of who the great dragon might choose to entertain. But rather because he knew he couldn't be lucky enough to simply be sent away. His life lately had not been one of good fortune.
A few moments later he was proven right as he saw a golden yellow eye appear in the small black hill as the man spoke to it. Ascorlexia was awake and listening. Edouard wasn't sure that that was a good thing. Worse though was that the eye was looking at them.
“By the Seven!”
Edouard whispered the blessing quietly when he saw the golden eye with its slitted pupil staring at them. Then he watched the small black hill move and he knew they were going to be seen. Until that moment he'd secretly hoped and even dreamed that they would simply be turned away. It was the safest option. The one that didn't involve being eaten by a dragon. But when the hill moved he knew he would not be so lucky.
Then the dragon stood up and he realised things were even worse.
Ascorlexia was immense! He was the largest creature he'd ever seen. Edouard knew that when he watched the dragon unfurling. Stretching out his long sinuous neck and even longer and more sinuous tail, until he had to be two hundred feet in length. At least. He stood surely forty feet tall Edouard guessed when he compared his height against the tiny figure of his servant standing in front of him. The stories were true. Then Ascorlexia stretched out his huge wings and everything Edouard had estimated about his size suddenly seemed too small.
But in the end it wasn't the black dragon's size that so awed him. He was immense but there were many more creatures of lessor size that could kill a man in a heartbeat. It wasn't his armour, though the dragon was more heavily armoured than any titan. Dragon scale was fire proof and resistant to all known weapons. It wasn't even his legendary fire breath that could incinerate an entire village in one strike.
It was his presence.
Edouard had only ever felt that sort of awe inspiring presence once before. When he and his brother had stood before Tyrel. And both of them he understood, were the same. There was something to them that was more than just powerful. More than just dangerous. It was reality. It was as though where they stood was real, while all around them the rest of the world was only a reflection. They were eternal; all else was ephemeral. The powers did not concern themselves with the shape of the world around them. They did not have to. The world shaped itself around them. And just then as the dragon completed his stretches and headed for them, reality bent.
Of course the floor was trembling in awe as well as the dragon walked towards them. Shaking with fear, as were Edouard's knees. It took a lot of willpower for him to keep standing there, a respectful few feet or so behind Kyriel. All he really wanted to do was run. Though he might not have been able to. Not when his knees were threatening to fold up like a collapsing deck chair.
Soon – worryingly soon – Ascorlexia was standing before them, and Edouard knew their lives hung in the balance. They had disturbed a power, and that was always a gamble. Yet even as he imagined the end he couldn't help but notice how foul the dragon's breath was. His head was still a good twenty feet from Kyriel, she another few feet in front of him, but his breath was like a gentle breeze flowing past them, filled with the scent of carrion. Suddenly Edouard was back in the sewers.
“Servant of my sister, why have you disturbed me?”
His words did not sound good to Edouard. Because Kyriel was a handmaiden the dragon had paid her some little attention, but he still wasn't happy to do it. Edouard had to wonder just how much protection her position would really lend her.
“Great Ascorlexia, the Honoured Mother seeks your knowledge on a matter that may concern you both. She says that with your great learning you may be able to answer an ancient riddle.”
“Riddle? Not more of Yule's endless twisted words.”
“No great Ascorlexia. An actual event that causes puzzlement.”
Edouard was stunned at how calm Kyriel seemed to be as she stood before the dragon. How her words flowed so easily to a head that was larger than she was. Much larger. Actually the dragon's teeth were larger than she was.
“You felt the opening of a portal a bit over a month gone by. And you have surely heard that it was used to send an army of mammoths to harm a great many innocents.”
“I felt it. A minor annoyance as I napped.”
“And the second portal that was opened a few weeks later to allow an army of sprigs through to kill a great many more innocents?”
“Yes.”
The dragon wasn't concerned though. Edouard knew that. Mortal lives were nothing to him. And even huge spells of portal magic were as nothing to him. He simply wanted read his books and to sleep. He didn't want to be disturbed.
“We have learned that these things were done for one who wished to rule other mortals. But that they might have been done for him by one who hasn't walked the world in three thousand years. Far beyond the lifespan of any mortal.”
Those few words had at least attracted the dragon's attention. Edouard could see it as his eyes widened a little to show more of that glorious gold.
“And?”
“And we believe that the one who did these things might have been a Cabal wizard. Vesar the Corrupt.”
“Cabal wizards?” The dragon snorted with derision for some reason. A sound that echoed around the immense cavern deafening them all and shaking the floor.
Edouard resisted the urge to clamp his hands over his ears, thinking it might not be respectful. More importantly it might attract the dragon's attention. He was better off standing very still and praying.
“You know of them Great Ascorlexia?”
“Of course. I remember them, but the term pays them too much regard.” Not that the dragon thought any mortals were worthy of any regard. The very best he thought of any of them was that some of them made worthwhile servants. The rest were probably little more than snacks.
“Vermin is more apt. Vermin of the depths.”
“Depths great one?”
Kyriel was bold Edouard thought. Asking questions of the huge dragon as if it was normal, standing so close to him when he would have far rather been hiding behind a pillar instead of standing behind her.
“Underground caverns, mines, chasms. It's where they came from and where they should have stayed.”
The dragon sounded annoyed, as if they'd done something to upset him. Maybe they had. But at least he was answering her questions. His respect for her was minimal, but at least he held some for her Mother. Enough not to eat her at least.
“Rock gnomes. That was what they were called. Foul creatures. No respect for someone's home. They burrowed right into my lair one day, and then thought to steal my books. Imagine that! They sought to steal! From me!” He snorted at the very idea and the gust of foul air that blasted them was almost enough to knock Edouard off his feet. It very nearly made him choke.
“Still, they went down easily enough. Not much meat on them and a bit chewy as I recall.”