The Shadow of Black Wings (The Year of the Dragon, Book 1)

by James Calbraith

  Before reaching Brigstow itself, they first had to pass over a deep gorge, carved where the river raced towards the sea. A tremendous tower of gleaming white marble spiralled upwards some three hundred feet, parts of it still under construction, cranes and scaffolding climbing around crenelated walls, peaked arches and buttresses. On the other side of the gorge another smaller tower grew over a golden dome and a grandiose sandstone building. A broad bridge thrown over the gorge, suspended on silver silksteel ropes, connected the two structures.

  “That’s Clistane, the Tower of High Magic,” explained Dylan as they circled the taller spire, “and the Brigstow Academy on the other side. Designed by the arch-thaumaturgist Brunel, himself.”

  “And what’s that one?” Bran asked, pointing to another tall ornate spire of red brick and white limestone.

  It towered over a vast vaulted structure, with copper roof supported by a forest of wrought iron columns, hidden behind a turreted facade of black granite. A huge tube of imbued glass emerged from the eastern side of the building and disappeared into a nearby hillside.

  “That’s a terminus of the Atmospheric to Lundenburgh,” his father replied. “A two-hour journey takes you straight into the heart of the capital. That’s also one of Brunel’s.”

  The city spread out for at least three miles each way, street after street of tall, massive stone houses, palaces, towers, warehouses and wharves. Bran felt as if they had travelled not only in space, but in time. A few hours before they had left their little slate house where Rhian was baking cakes for breakfast using an old iron griddle and a single fire faery. The house and the little town of Caer Wyddno‌—‌with its grey stone walls, fishermen coming from their morning catch, farmers departing to till the barley fields‌—‌seemed like something out of the Age of Unbridled Flame now as they circled over the naval harbour, a marvel of engineering and thaumaturgy, floating above the river in a series of terraced cascading docks supported on arches of wrought faer iron.

  Modern, sleek, mistfire-powered ironclads prepared for their long journeys, spreading the power of the Dracalish Empire over the high seas. There were battleships and frigates, infantry transports and dragon carriers. Dylan kept pointing and naming each one of them, until Bran could no longer remember the types and names. A few airships hovered above it all, ever watchful. One of them, a streamlined chaser, approached Bran and his father menacingly, to ward them off, away from the docks. The Dracaland was always at war somewhere with somebody; it was its way and purpose.

  They ascended to avoid a large glowing orb, travelling slowly in a perfectly straight line‌—‌a carrier wisp, delivering some important message to one of the ironclads. Another long line of warships piqued the boy’s interest, steaming out of the harbour at full speed.

  “Where are they all going?”

  “There is some trouble brewing in the Scythian Sea,” said Dylan. “The Varyaga and the Shahr are at each other’s throats again, and Rome will not stand by idly either, when there’s fighting so close to Taurica.”

  Bran was barely familiar with the names his father dropped so effortlessly. He knew only that the Scythian Sea was somewhere east, far beyond Midgard.

  “Taurica?”

  “A province of Rome on the northern coast of the Sea, stuck like a thorn in Varyaga’s side. Remind me to show you the map later, if you’re curious. The koenigs of Varyaga have been eyeing it for a long time.”

  “And why is our fleet involved in this?”

  “The balance of power must be sustained. Rome, Varyaga and the Shahr are the most powerful nations on the continent‌—‌we can’t let any of them grow any stronger.”

  “We will stand against all three?”

  “By Owain’s Sword, no!” Dylan said, laughing. “That would be our doom. Diplomacy, trade, spying‌—‌that’s the great game the Dracaland plays. The navy will be just one of our assets.”

  They banked to avoid another airship emerging from beyond a steep tower. It was black and threatening, armoured with iron spiked plates.

  “A Midgard delegation,” said Dylan, pointing to the Fafnir insignia painted on the side of the ship, an emerald dragon over two crossed swords, volant, which served as the symbol of this militant northern nation. “I wonder what their official business is, apart from spying on our fleet. You know, I’m glad we’re leaving now. Your mother worried needlessly‌—‌the East should be a much more peaceful place than here.”

  Bran looked down to the bustle of the streets below, overwhelmed by the immense splendour of the city. He could not believe the crowds moving along the broad pavements and boardwalks. They seemed like living creatures, giant, thousand-headed serpents slithering their way in every direction.

  “How many people live in this place?”

  “More than in all of Gwynedd combined!” his father yelled back over the noise of the factories, mills and mistfire plants they passed as they circled the eastern industrial district. One of the multitude of chimneys belched out a great cloud of thick, black sooty smoke. Dylan’s dragon swerved right immediately, but Emrys was too slow and rushed straight through it.

  Bran and his dragon hovered over the factory, both covered in soot, coughing and spluttering. The boy futilely tried to wipe the black dust from his goggles. The silver drake looked at them with scorn. Dylan stifled a laugh and sighed.

  “All right, that’s the end of sightseeing. I can see your dragon is too exhausted, let’s get you to the hotel.”

  “What’s a hotel?”

  The word was new, foreign-sounding to Bran’s ears.

  “It’s like an inn, but much, much larger,” his father explained. “There’s only one in Brigstow, but it’s quite decent.”

  The Brigstow Grand looked like no inn Bran had ever seen. It was tremendous, opulent, over the top. The ground floor was shot through with giant panes of crystal glass, and there were three more rows of windows above it, dividing the yellow facade with straight stylish lines. A balcony with intricate iron balustrades spanned the length of the second floor. The roof was surrounded with a line of sculpted plaster supported by heavy stone brackets.

  The valets reached for the dragons to take them away to the stables. Emrys was anxious at first, but Bran managed to placate the beast and it shuffled off, still snorting and sneezing from the dust. The boy followed his father through the entrance, a portal of crystal and wormfire-wrought steel, braided and spliced together in floral ornaments worthy of a nobleman’s palace. The lobby was as big as the Great Auditorium at Llambed and lavishly decorated. Bran felt dizzy from all the excitement‌—‌and the black smoke he’d inhaled.

  “See that dining hall, son?” Dylan said and pointed to another crystal and steel entrance. “Get yourself cleaned up and come down here for supper. I have to deal with a few formalities and make sure all our bags have arrived. The bellboy will take you to our room.”

  The “room” was an apartment, almost as big as their slate-roofed house in Caer Wyddno, with two separate bedrooms and a palatial bathroom, blue-tiled, with a huge enamelled bath. The water was kept hot constantly by a couple elementals trapped in the fire-stone piping. Bran felt overwhelmed by all this richness, but he quickly dropped his soot-stained clothes onto a marble floor and jumped into the bubbling water.

  Soaking himself in the luxurious bath, he wondered why Dylan had never taken him to a place like this before. Brigstow did not lie beyond impassable mountains and oceans, it was easily reachable by dragon or mistfire omnibus. Why had they never moved to a city? Life here seemed much more convenient than in Gwaelod‌—‌and much more interesting.

  Half an hour later Bran and his father were sitting by a large oak table, waiting for the main course. Dylan wore a knee-length black frock coat embroidered with golden thread, with silk-faced lapels and a grey waistcoat. His face, furrowed by age and experience like a bark of an old fir tree, was smooth-shaven and freshly powdered to conceal the scar on the left cheek and his eyes, glinting the same green as his so
n, shone brightly. Bran had never seen his father look so dapper before.

  A human-shaped, turbaned and bearded creature of smoke and fire whooshed out of thin air by their table, with a carafe of rose wine and a bread basket.

  “Who… or what… was that?” whispered Bran when the creature had disappeared in a puff of scentless smoke.

  “That’s a Djinni. They come from the deserts of Durrani,” explained Dylan. “A few of them served as porters and interpreters in the Dracalish army and when we moved out, they chose to come with us rather than remain and be branded traitors.”

  “I don’t know these names. We weren’t taught anything about this history.”

  “I’m not surprised. These were Dracaland’s wars, not Prydain, and not something to boast about. The Queen’s armies tried to conquer the Durrani some three years after you were born, but they were decimated. They say only one dragon survived the retreat from Gandhara.”

  “I thought the Dracalish soldiers were invincible.”

  “Mm, so did they.”

  “Were you taking part in this war?”

  “No.” Dylan shook his head. “I was never in that part of the world. Durrani is inland, between Varyaga and Bharata.” The tip of Dylan’s finger lit up and he traced a simple map in the air. The drawing hovered for a moment before Dylan dispersed it with a wave. “Maybe one day. We will return to Durrani, eventually, it’s too precious to leave it alone. The Dragon Throne always hungers for more riches.”

  He keeps saying we, thought Bran. It was disconcerting to hear. Although both sides of the Dyke were formally united under one crown, most of the freemen of Gwynedd prided themselves in their independence from the White Dragon Throne in Lundenburgh.

  The Djinni appeared again, this time with platters of fancily prepared meats and salads. Dylan chose the dishes, as the names on the menu, all in Latin, meant nothing to Bran.

  “This is duck, I believe,” explained Dylan.

  “How is this duck?”

  The bits his father pointed to on the platter resembled no food he had ever seen.

  “It’s foamed and pressed through a cold steel tube.”

  “Why?”

  “This is a restaurant for spoiled city folk who are bored with normal food. But that’s still tasty.”

  “And this?”

  Bran pointed to a small golden cube.

  “Try it.”

  The boy gingerly put the cube into his mouth. At first it tasted of seared beef, but then it exploded in his mouth with a rainbow of tastes and aromas, which he barely recognised. Bran opened his eyes wide. Dylan laughed.

  “The cook here is also a wizard. I’m sure there are many other surprises like this. So tell me, Bran, what have you managed to learn about Qin?” Dylan asked, putting a spoonful of foamed duck onto his plate.

  “Not a lot,” Bran admitted. “I studied Boym’s Travelogue you gave me, I read of the silk trade, of their wars with the Horse Khans and Toshara, and their dragons… But as you said, there doesn’t seem to be much new information, at least not for the last couple of centuries.”

  Dylan nodded.

  “Two hundred years ago‌—‌not long after Boym’s travels‌—‌they sealed themselves off behind a giant shield, like a country-sized tarian, impenetrable to outsiders. Haijin, they called it, the Sea Ban.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “You’ve read the books. Back then the Qin was an island of wonder in the sea of despair. There was nothing the outside world could offer them except refugees and disease.”

  Bran pondered the news briefly.

  “You said we’re sailing to Qin…”

  “Ten years ago we’ve managed to penetrate their shield by force and establish a factory. There is now decent trade flourishing between Dracaland and Qin.”

  “Then what are we going to do when we get there?”

  “You, boy, will be mostly sightseeing and learning.” Dylan pointed his fork at Bran’s pouting face. “I have my mission, and that is an actual state secret, so I’m not telling you anything else. You’ll read about it when the state archives open in fifty years,” he said, chuckling.

  “I imagine the Qin have changed a lot over two hundred years.”

  “You’ll see for yourself,” Dylan said.

  “Be Sires caring for appraisal of our dessert course?” interrupted the Djinni, hovering over the table with a silver bowl. “We having offering of sherbet of hibiscus and sandalwood, or offering of pistachio halva, garnished with saffron.”

  “I’ll have the halva,” Dylan said, “the boy will have sherbet. You’ll love it,” he added, smiling at his son.

  Bran only nodded, too busy trying to tell apart the changing flavours in his mouth.

  The city attacked all his senses at once with a barrage of noises, smells and sights.

  The airships passing overhead whirred their propellers monotonously. The mistfire carriages‌—‌Bran had only seen one of the contraptions before, driven by the richest merchant in Caer Gwyddno‌—‌clinked and clanked about the broad cobbled avenues with a whistle like a boiling kettle. The omnibuses, crammed full of people, hurried between their destinations with the great roar of their elemental-powered engines, ringing of bells, screeching of geared wheels upon grooved iron tracks. The horses whinnied, the wyverns bellowed, the paperboys and greengrocers tried their best to shout over the constant din.

  The streets reeked of sulphur, soot, smoke and the acrid stench of wyvern droppings flowing down the open gutters. The tafarns and restaurants spread the smell of burnt meat and spilt ale, the bakeries overpowered Bran’s nostrils with the sweet, mouth-watering scent of freshly baked bread and moist aroma of yeast. The river, split into several canals running through the city centre, stank of silt, seaweed and something else Bran could not easily identify‌—‌an oily chemical stench. The water in the river ran brown, with rainbow stains of grease.

  Tall towers rose on every corner, delicate spires of steel or stocky turrets of white stone. The people of Brigstow liked to build high. The topmost levels of the merchant residences and aristocrat mansions appeared to float in the air, supported by a thin latticework of miststeel. The rooftops peaked in a series of narrow conical turrets, almost piercing the clouds. Bran wondered how the inhabitants could enjoy climbing so high up every day, until he saw the lifts‌—‌stone platforms rising and falling noiselessly on pillars of compressed Ninth Wind. At night, the city streets were as bright as day, illuminated with blazing evertorches and glistening sparklespheres. Brigstow never slept.

  Hosts of people he had never imagined could exist in one place filled out vast market squares and broad thoroughfares. The men all wore dark frocks and tall top hats, the ladies donned flounced skirts, capes and bonnets. This was a far cry from the simple country garments he was used to back in Gwynedd, or the practical uniforms of the Academy. There were more different kinds of clothes, shoes and hats to buy at the market stalls and in shops lining the main streets of the city than he had ever thought necessary. Bran’s clothes all came from the same tailor in Caer Wyddno, and he only had two pairs of shoes, one for flying, one for walking.

  In time, Bran began noticing other, more subtle, things. There were very few dragons. He had become used to their constant presence at the Academy, their smells, their sounds, the constant buzz of Farlink feeds passing through the air that his sensitive mind would inadvertently pick up on. Here only the town guards travelled regularly on dragonback, mounting purple hawk drakes, a small swift and agile race fit for chasing ruffians along the narrow alleyways. Sometimes a nobleman or army officer would soar past on an expensive thoroughbred. Ordinarily, however, even Emrys was bound to make a sensation when it landed in the middle of the market square, startling the much smaller, two-legged wyverns of the common townsfolk.

  “A dragon is an expensive creature to keep in a city,” explained Dylan.

  They were sitting on a bench in the Empress’s Square, watching the well-to-do citizens o
f Brigstow walking their pets. This was the only quiet part of town, although even here the honking, whistling, clacking, roaring and shouting carried over from the surrounding streets, drowning the singing of birds and wind rustling in the oaks and limes. On one side of the square the buildings were strangely ruined, abandoned, staring at the garden with black empty windows.

  “You need stables, pastures…” Dylan continued. “Land is too precious, and you can get anywhere by omnibus or automated carriage, really, which don’t need feed and freedom to roam.”

  “And what about mages? I haven’t seen any since we arrived.”

  “You won’t see them just wandering the streets, they’re always busy.” Dylan smiled. “The Brigstow wizards are not like our flashy provincial ones‌—‌they don’t like to cause a fuss. Use True Sight in the evening, and you may spot a few in the park or a tavern, but mostly they’re just holed up in the Tower of Grand Magic. No need to go out much; they get everything they need delivered there… Brunel’s the only one who regularly comes down to the city, to look after his ships and trains.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t go for wizardry, then.”

  Dylan laughed loudly, startling a passing lindworm, which let out a puff of sulphuric steam. The creature’s owner gave him a scornful look.

  “It certainly is not as glorious a job as they present it in the Academy, but some people prefer sitting in laboratories and libraries to soaring in the clouds.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Bran, shaking his head.

  “To each his own, boy, to each his own. Think of the advances we’ve made thanks to the wizards and thaumaturgists. Imagine what this place would look like without them. No airships, no mistfire, no automatons…”

  Bran nodded, without conviction. In the countryside where he had grown up there was little use for these novel inventions. Spark oven and Faerie laundry was all the modern magic his mother used on a regular basis. He realised how remote his father’s life had become to that of his family. They were almost strangers.