Dragon Secrets

by Christopher Golden

  “No more work,” Ivar muttered.

  Free of his bonds, he ran with uncanny speed to the tunnel entrance, but he did not go inside. Instead he stood for a moment against the volcano wall, and his skin changed pigment, the color matching the black glass sheen of the volcano’s throat. Then he dug his fingers into the rock, pressed his body against it, and used his feet to search for the tiniest crack, the smallest bit of leverage.

  Then he was climbing.

  For long minutes he clambered up the inner wall of the volcano, completely unnoticed. The heat was terrible at first, searing his flesh, but it diminished as he climbed higher. He was more than halfway to the outcropping where Verlis dangled in chains out over the abyss, when an alarm was raised far below. Ivar paused and glanced down. Several Wurm, including two warriors, had alighted upon the ledge where the heatstone quarry tunnel was. His absence—and that of the guard he had killed—had been discovered.

  It occurred to him that it would be far easier to escape undetected if he left Verlis where he was. But regardless of the fact that he was a Wurm, Verlis was his ally. To leave him behind, even if it meant sacrificing Ivar’s own survival and the possibility of rescuing Timothy, would be dishonorable and undignified.

  The Wurm began to hunt for Ivar. Warriors and guards and even some of the ordinary citizens of the city joined the search. They started from the heatstone quarry, thinking the Asura could not have gotten far. Ivar’s ears were quite sensitive, and so he even overheard one warrior calling to another that he had probably fallen into the volcano.

  Invisible against the wall, he continued to climb. Several times Wurm flew by so close that he could have spit on them as they passed. When this happened he grew still and waited until they were gone so that his motion did not give him away. He knew that the creatures had a powerful sense of smell, and that if they came close enough they would scent him. Thus far he had been saved by the fact that there was only updraft here, and none of them had come in directly above him. As he climbed, Ivar moved from side to side to avoid being immediately below any of the cave openings.

  Swords were drawn. Shouts of rage and disgust were raised. Ivar ignored them and continued to climb.

  Every muscle in his body hurt. The tips of his fingers were scraped raw, and he hoped they would not begin to bleed badly, for that would make climbing very slippery. His toes found purchase wherever they could. He stretched his legs far out to either side, contorting his whole body however it was necessary to continue upward. And soon enough he found himself just below the outcropping where Verlis was imprisoned.

  His ally hung upside down, chained, wings pinned back and together. Verlis had his eyes closed, but Ivar sensed he was awake. The Asura warrior climbed onto the top of the outcropping that jutted from the volcano wall. Still blending the color of his flesh with that of the rock, he crawled slowly to the farthest tip of rock and then hung his head over the side.

  “What, precisely, were you waiting for?” Verlis asked, his voice a low growl.

  A slow smile crept across Ivar’s features. “The moment when it seemed least likely one of us would die. You knew I would come?”

  The Wurm opened his eyes. A small puff of smoke rose from his nostrils. He looked absurd, hanging upside down with his legs wrapped in chains. “I caught your scent while you were climbing. You do smell quite badly, you know.”

  Ivar raised an eyebrow. “After your experience in Abaddon and now here on Draconae, I would have thought you would be more interested in your freedom.”

  Verlis did not react. He knew Ivar would not leave him there, so the threat was hollow. The Wurm only grunted. “In addition to your personal stink, there is one other, small thing that concerns me.”

  The Asura reached down and ran his fingers along the chains. Before he released Verlis, he wanted to free the Wurm’s wings. It was the simple matter of releasing a catch on the clamp of black spikes that had pinned his wings together. A device for the torture and imprisonment of their own kind, invented by Wurm. Ivar was horrified.

  When he unlatched it and Verlis’s wings were free, the Wurm sighed with relief, moving only a little in the coil of chains that held him aloft.

  “What is it that disturbs you?” Ivar asked, his hands now moving again along the chains, searching for the place where they would be locked together. It took him only a moment, and then he began working his fingers over each link, searching for a weak one.

  “I can also smell your blood.”

  Ivar froze. His brow creased in a frown.

  “They whipped you, did they not? Your back will be striped with bloody wounds. Even if you managed to get all the way up here without them noticing the splashes of blood that would not blend, the way your skin does, into your surroundings, they must have smelled it.”

  For the first time since childhood, the Asura warrior felt like a fool. He was on his belly on the outcropping, his arms wrapped around it, fingers tugging on the chain, trying to break Verlis free. Now he raised his eyes and gazed down past his captive ally.

  He counted seventeen Wurm in a rough semicircle just below him. There would be others above. They had swinging maces and swords, and in their midst were a pair of sorcerers whose magic shimmered around them.

  Ivar knew they were going to die, and yet his only concern was for Timothy.

  His fingers found the weak link, and he twisted it sideways. The chain snapped. Verlis shrugged out of it, the metal bonds falling away toward the volcanic maelstrom far below. He spun into the air, wings spreading, and caught an updraft. With a roar, he beat his wings and hovered there, facing his enemies. Ivar stood up on the outcropping and let his flesh return to its natural color. The time for battle had come. If he was to die by the side of his ally, Ivar would do so proudly, as the last of the Asura.

  One of the Wurm warriors shouted a command and each of them opened their jaws and let loose a short blast of liquid fire, not an attack so much as an intimidation.

  A chorus of roaring replied, but it was not from below. It was from above. Far above.

  Ivar glanced up and saw Wurm darting through the air, streaking downward, soaring on the superheated drafts into the throat of the volcano. None of them wore armor, but they did carry weapons. For a moment he presumed these were only reinforcements. But then the new arrivals began to attack Raptus’s warriors, swords and spears flashing in the golden glow of the sun above, and the red glow of the volcano below.

  Verlis roared something in the ancient language of the Dragons of Old, and Ivar, whose people had known the Wurm as enemies for ages, understood. Upon their arrival, they had found Verlis’s settlement destroyed, but only a few corpses. The others had not been captured or destroyed; they had escaped. This was Verlis’s clan, his family.

  With a grin, the Asura leaped off the outcropping, landing on the back of the nearest Wurm. It tried to knock him off, but he broke the monster’s wrist and stole his ball-and-chain mace. Then Ivar began to swing the spiked ball over his head, letting loose the ululating battle cry of the Asura.

  The volcano city existed in the midst of an oasis of lush vegetation that was supported by the warmth of the volcano itself. But a short flight from the base of the volcano, the vegetation was smaller, grayer, and then finally died out entirely, giving way to frozen tundra. Timothy saw all of this as the Wurm flew with him over that inhospitable landscape. In the distance he could see that the tundra became a mountainous region of ice and snow. The barrens, he heard the Wurm call it in hushed and reverent tones. They were creatures of fire. They would not venture very far into the barrens.

  Though the land was comprised of such different environments, it all bordered a roaring, frigid ocean. The waves churned and leaped far higher than anything he had seen, either on the Island of Patience or in the harbor of Arcanum. At the edge of the frozen tundra, a high cliff fell away in a steep drop down to the ocean.

  As his Wurm guards carried him toward that place, Timothy stared, transfixed with horror,
at the transparent, shimmering wall of energy that rose from the cliff’s edge so far up into the sky that the top of it could not be seen. On the cliff there were two small buildings that looked as if they were made of heat-stone. These were clearly meant as shelters for the Wurm who were posted out here. Working out here. From a distance, he could easily make out a team of eight or nine Wurm on the cliff. Several seemed only to be observing, but the others were all sorcerers. They were arranged on the bluff overlooking the crashing waves so that they could all face the shimmering magical barrier before them.

  Not just a barrier. But the barrier. He was sure that was what it was. The one that the mages put between their own world and Draconae, to keep the Wurm from ever returning. Raptus had his sorcerers stationed here, on the cliff, attempting to breach it, to get back through into the world of their birth. Timothy tried to imagine how long they had been at it, how many years they had spent attempting to get home to take their revenge, and the thought chilled him.

  “Oh, no,” he whispered to himself.

  He knew where this was going.

  Up ahead, he saw Raptus dip his wings and swoop down toward the cliff. The warriors that were his personal guard followed. Then the Wurm that were carrying Timothy followed, and he had to hold his breath as the ground rushed up toward them, the wind whipping at his face. His stomach lurched and he nearly vomited. And then they were on the ground.

  The warriors yanked him upright. Raptus roared a command at the sorcerers and they backed away, staring at their general, and then at Timothy himself. The ocean crashed far below. The cold wind swept around Timothy. The wall of magic, the barrier the mages had built, rose as high as he could see.

  Raptus strode toward him, slightly hunched. Timothy stared at the black helmet, at those black eyes, as the general bent to stare at him. Raptus clutched Timothy’s face in one hand, talons digging into the boy’s throat and cheeks, drawing blood.

  “You are a fascinating creature. Unique, to my knowledge. There are many ways you might be useful to me. If not, I could simply kill you.”

  Timothy swallowed hard, trying not to inhale the general’s stinking breath. His eyes watered. His face and throat stung where the talons cut him.

  Raptus released him and stepped back. He gestured toward the barrier. “Your touch disrupts the presence of magic, unravels spells. So be it. Touch the wall. Push through it. Open the door.”

  Open the door…

  Not on your life.

  Timothy shook his head. “I’ve never tried to disrupt anything this powerful before. It… it probably won’t work. It could kill me.”

  He was lying. But he would have said anything at all just then to avoid doing Raptus’s bidding.

  “Not so confident now?” the general sneered. A snort of fire came from his snout. Then he reached out and grabbed Timothy by the hair. He hauled the boy off his feet. “Do it!”

  Raptus dropped him and Timothy collapsed to the ground. He took his time rising, first to his knees and then to his feet. He felt sick to his stomach thinking about the Wurm attacking Arcanum unannounced. There were Wurm who were adept sorcerers, but even the warriors—even the least creature among them—had some magic. And they were savage. Fierce. The Wurm might eventually be stopped, even destroyed, but first there would be a massacre.

  For a long moment he stared at the transparent wall, and at the ocean beyond. Then he turned and faced Raptus, standing as straight and tall as he could manage, still barely more than half the general’s height.

  Timothy shook his head slowly. “No.”

  Raptus snorted, his jaws opening and closing as though he were ravenously hungry. Those black eyes stared out from inside that helmet.

  “If you refuse, we will force you.”

  “If you force me, I’ll fight to my death. Then what good will I be to you?”

  Raptus snarled and beat his wings. He darted back and forth in the air in such a fashion that it reminded Timothy of the way his father had sometimes paced. Several moments went by. The warriors alternately watched their general, their captive, and the shimmering barrier that kept them from sating their bloodthirsty vengeance.

  When at last Raptus landed, Timothy knew what his reply was going to be. The general gestured toward him again.

  “Push him through. Try not to hurt him. But if he dies fighting, that is preferable to never knowing whether or not his power would end our banishment. Take him.”

  Timothy Cade had been trained in armed and unarmed combat by the last of the Asura. The Wurm could not have known this. When the first of them reached for him, he fought back. He dodged, letting the Wurm’s left arm slide beneath his right, and then he twisted, snapping bone. When a second lunged for him, Timothy slashed his fingers across the air and tore at his eyes, blinding the Wurm. Several of them raised their weapons, but they would not use them, not after Raptus’s caution.

  He punched another Wurm, then took the sword right from the creature’s grasp.

  They moved in around him and Timothy turned around and around, trying to keep them all in sight as they circled, closing in.

  “Raptus!” one of the warriors barked. “Look!”

  Dozens of Wurm were flying toward them from the volcano at blinding speed. Beyond them, many, many more were spilling out of the volcano’s gullet in pursuit. In the front of the oncoming group, Timothy saw a Wurm carrying a person—Verlis and Ivar!

  “The rebels!” Raptus roared in fury. He began barking orders, pointing into the sky as Verlis and Ivar led the others—Verlis’s clan, Timothy assumed, miraculously alive—toward the cliff. Toward those shelters and the shimmering magical barrier. Toward Timothy himself.

  They outnumbered Raptus and the few warriors he had with him by far. Even with the sorcerers, who were now being summoned from their shelters, Verlis and his clan had a superior force. But the rest of the Wurm city, Raptus’s followers, were in pursuit, and Verlis and his clan had less than a minute’s lead on them.

  Timothy had only one course of action.

  Sword in hand, he took advantage of the moment of distraction, of the chaos as Raptus’s warriors prepared to repel an attack. He darted past the Wurm nearest to him and ran right at Raptus. The general was staring into the sky, ordering his warriors to take flight, to combat the rebels.

  Timothy gripped the sword in both hands and ran him through. The general roared in pain, but Timothy did not attempt to stab him again, or to see what result his attack had wrought. He turned and ran with every bit of speed he could muster. Around him the Wurm were taking flight, most of them not even noticing that Raptus had been wounded, their attention fixed upon the attackers flying in from above and the commands that Raptus had issued only a moment earlier.

  The boy ran below them as they took off, ducking under clawed feet and wings. As fast as his legs could pump, he sprinted back toward the volcano, toward Verlis and his rebellious clan. He did not even look back, focusing only on Verlis and Ivar.

  Above him, the Wurm were clashing now. Weapons clanged. Battle cries split the sky. Spells crackled and sparked in the air, knocking Wurm down, causing them to crash into the ground or the magical barrier. Past them all he saw the citizens of the Wurm city giving chase. Verlis’s clan could defeat Raptus, destroying him forever, just by overwhelming his forces here. But there was no time. Raptus’s reinforcements would be there all too soon.

  Verlis must know that, he thought. Ivar must know.

  Timothy realized that they did not hope to win. They were not battling for victory, but for him.

  And then Verlis dropped down out of the sky with a female Wurm beside him. Ivar shouted something Timothy could barely hear and did not understand, and then the female Wurm picked the boy up and they were flying, soaring away from the battlefield at a speed that stole his breath away. Timothy twisted around, trying to see what was happening. As they gained more distance, the air became colder, even frigid, and he shivered. Verlis and Ivar were right beside the Wurm that carried
Timothy. She was strong—perhaps even stronger than Verlis.

  Behind them came the rest of Verlis’s clan. Raptus’s warriors—those who were not already dead or dying—were giving chase. Those from the volcano had nearly arrived at the site of the mêlée, and now there were not a dozen, but hundreds of Wurm pursuing the group that gathered around Verlis in the air now. His clan. Thirty of them. Perhaps a handful more than that. Nothing in comparison to the others.

  They were headed straight toward the barrens.

  The air grew ever more frigid, a bizarre counterpoint to the scorching air inside the volcano. They had passed beyond the tundra into the barrens and were flying over mountain crags covered with ice and snow. He kept craning his neck to look behind, and at first it seemed that Raptus’s warriors would catch up to them.

  The cold felt like daggers in his skin. Every exposed bit of his flesh started to grow numb. The Wurm flew more slowly, their flesh getting gray. Some of them looked frightened.

  The next time Timothy looked around, Raptus’s warriors had turned back, given up the pursuit.

  But Verlis and his clan, carrying Ivar and Timothy, kept on flying, up into the frozen mountains of the barrens of Draconae, where nothing awaited them but an icy death.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Timothy, Ivar, and the Wurm took refuge in the shadow of a steep cliff. They were in a valley of sorts, but the wind was blowing at such an angle that the mountain took the brunt of it. Still, with the ice and snow it was very cold. Ivar did not seem terribly bothered by it, despite the fact he wore very little, but even in his thick shirt, Timothy shivered and his teeth chattered, and he knew that this cold, endured for too long, could kill him. The Wurm, though, were even worse off than he was. Their skin had quickly become mottled and gray and their eyes had clouded over.

  In spite of the obvious truth—that the cold was devastating to them—Verlis and his clan seemed in no hurry to depart. Light snow fell from the sky. The ice cracked and shifted beneath them. The wind howled off the edge of the cliff high above, but might shift direction at any moment. Yet the Wurm were too busy arguing to even notice.