by Ben Galley
‘Where are the other dragons?’ asked Farden, distracting him.
‘Sealed in our prisons.’
‘And the riders?’
‘With them,’ Glassthorn answered. ‘The distance aches.’
‘What about the wizards I heard Saker mention?’
The great blue dragon chuckled through the gaps in his sharp teeth. ‘We were caught off guard, but they weren’t quick enough to catch us all. Some of the wizards and a few of the soldiers escaped. They’ve been driving Saker mad ever since, which is one small morsel of satisfaction. They’re the ones behind this fog.’
‘Impressive.’
‘And the only ones keeping the Clans from completely destroying our last breeding grounds.’
More growls from the dragons. Farden tried to help Towerdawn by pushing his neck away from the spitting, glowing collar. It was like shoving against a wall, one of muscle and scale. Tyrfing was drowning in concentration. His hands that throttled the collar were now white-hot. The iron was slowly, but surely, relenting.
Glassthorn rattled his own collar and shackles. ‘Can you help with these, Farden?’
Farden couldn’t help but make a face. ‘Er…’ he began. ‘Not right now,’ he muttered. Glassthorn gave him a quizzical look, but said no more. Towerdawn distracted him with questions. He could smell the lack of magick in the mage. It pained him.
‘We know why we are here, but what about you? Did they send a hawk? Are there others?’
Farden turned back to the Old Dragon. ‘No, and no. It’s a long story, Towerdawn. One that I don’t think we have time for,’ he said, eyeing the bubbling metal.
‘One minute,’ Tyrfing gasped.
Farden eyed the nests above and the doorways. They were too exposed, too few. He lifted his sword onto his shoulder and crouched lower. ‘She has reared her head.’
This time, there were no growls, no baring of teeth, just the hot whooshing of a collective sigh. ‘She brought three daemons down on Krauslung. We killed one, let two escape. Now she’s heading north for more magick.’
‘Do you mean to intercept her?’ asked the big blue male.
‘Not yet, but we will,’ said Farden, squeezing his teeth together before continuing. ‘Elessi was hurt in the battle. One of the daemons cut her with his claws.’ He made a rough gesture to where she had been hurt, drawing a line down his neck and chest. It was an honest sort of gesture, indicating more than just a wound. ‘Now she’s hovering on death’s doorstep, and we don’t know how to save her.’
‘Daemontouched,’ whispered Towerdawn. There was a sharp ping as part of the collar cracked under the searing heat of Tyrfing’s hands. The air about his shoulders wobbled.
Farden nodded. ‘We need your help.’
Towerdawn groaned. ‘We are not much of that, under the current circumstances, mage.’
The big blue shook his spines. ‘No cure for that sort of wound, mage.’
Farden eyes went wide. A crack had appeared in his plan, and was getting wider by the second. The idea that they had come all this way for a shake of a scaly head and a handful of commiseration had just entered his mind, and he didn’t like it. Not one bit ‘Surely there must be something? In the tearbooks maybe? The healers must know something!’ he asked. ‘Something?’
‘To be daemontouched, Farden, is to know death.’
‘But she is still alive!’
‘Yes, for now…’
‘Almost done!’ Tyrfing hissed.
‘… but sadly not for long.’
Farden clenched a fist. ‘There has to be a way!’
‘Did you not hear me? How do you cure death, Farden? Impossible. Once you’ve seen the other side you cannot come back.’
Farden punched the granite. He couldn’t meet the Old Dragon’s gaze. He looked instead at the cracking, glowing collar, so painfully close to his neck. Char-marks were beginning to appear. Flecks of molten iron decorated the dragon’s scales. ‘No. I promised him…’ Farden started to say, but he didn’t get much further.
It was at that moment that a loud clapping echoed throughout the hall. A slow-paced, sadistic crack-crack of mocking hands. Footsteps played their own rhythms alongside it, and the scraping and shuffling of claws and scales provided the percussion. Farden and Tyrfing turned to face the music.
Saker stood in the nearest archway. A shadow draped itself across the middle of his face, giving him the look of a court jester, daubed and painted. He was smiling like one too, all needle-teeth and thin lips. His yellow eyes matched those of his dragon, standing very close behind him. Behind them stood a score of riders and clansmen, weapons being worked free of their scabbards and sheaths. Above, the crunching and rasping of feet and claws could be heard. Blunt snouts poked into the light.
Farden heard the whipcrack of fireballs bursting into life behind him. The dragons on the floor growled in unison. The mage could do nothing but raise his sword and point at Saker as the air began to grow hot, and uncomfortable.
Chapter 9
“Blood, fire, eggshell, tears,
tell the wyrm your deepest fears.
Shadows, hunger, snow and stone,
let the bond sink into bone.
When it’s done, two days of silence,
mind in turmoil, blood in violence,
take wing and breathe the highest airs,
the bond is forged, an iron pair.”
An old Siren bonding poem, for the riders and their dragons
Farden’s neck was beginning to burn. He could feel it. Like one of his carved candles, he could feel his neck melting. First the prickling, then the sweat dribbling under his collar, and now the sensation of his skin roasting. How ridiculous. His uncle’s spells would cook him alive before anybody in that blasted hall dared to move. He shook his head. Here he was, yet again, he said to himself. Between a rock and a bloody sharp blade.
With an exasperated sigh, Farden lowered his sword and shrugged his tired arms. ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’
Saker took a ponderous step forward, a theatrical cat, stalking a bunch of mice. ‘I was hoping you would give me an excuse, mage, to finally test your famous mettle.’ Behind him, Fellgrin growled something incomprehensible. Saker nodded. ‘But judging by the fact you hold a sword in your hand, and not a spell, I imagine I will be disappointed.’
Farden bent a finger towards him. ‘You could come a little closer, and we’ll see how disappointing I can be,’ he replied.
Saker let his smile die. ‘Why have you come here?’ he snapped, the muscles across his chest shivering like a plate of eels.
In answer, Tyrfing kicked a piece of iron collar across the floor. It dribbled molten metal as it skittered over the flagstones. ‘Why do you think, Saker?’
Saker narrowed his yellow eyes at the iron. His calm and sneering demeanour was slowly peeling away, scale by ash-grey scale. ‘I imagine your visit had something to do with daemons falling from the sky, but it seems that you’ve become distracted by matters that don’t concern you. Typical of you Arka.’
Farden took a step forward. Everybody in the hall tensed. Somewhere in the shadows of the nests, bowstrings creaked. He decided to try something a little different. ‘How about a trade?’ he suggested. Saker tilted his head, intrigued. Farden knew he couldn’t help but entertain him. The Lost Clans were nomads. No nomad could refuse a good bargaining.
‘I’m listening.’
The mage smiled. ‘You don’t need an excuse to test me. You know that. We know that. Let’s not treat each other like idiots. My offer is this. You give me and my uncle an hour with one of the Sirens’ best healers, and we’ll leave. Alone. We won’t interfere with whatever greedy little empire you’re trying to build,’ Farden offered, waving his hands at the bound dragons. ‘We’ll get back in our ship and turn around.’
‘That’s it? An hour with a healer, and you’ll leave,’ Saker snapped his fingers, ‘like that.’
Farden shrugged. ‘We didn’t come for them,’ he s
aid, glancing back at the five dragons. He could feel sulphurous eyes on him. In him. Fellgrin was trying to read his mind. He winced. This was no gentle reading of his thoughts, as Towerdawn had done, but rather a bludgeoning, body-weight slam against his thoughts, a raw scraping against his brain. Farden tried his best to keep her out. ‘We have our own problems,’ he added.
‘Farden!’ Tyrfing hissed. The dragons growled. Towerdawn bared his teeth.
‘Shut up,’ Farden waved his hands at them.
Tyrfing’s spells turned a dark shade of orange. The heat they threw off was fierce. Farden almost had to take another step. ‘You spineless bastard…’ his uncle shook his head.
‘I came here for Elessi, not to get stuck in some civil war!’ Farden shouted. He turned back to Saker. ‘My offer stands. Let us have a healer and we’ll be on our way.’
Saker rubbed his scaly chin. Fellgrin lowered her mighty, horn-riddled head to his shoulder. It alighted there as softly as a feather. Saker cocked his head as if to listen to something, and yet all the while, she just kept staring at Farden. The mage could almost feel her razor-claws gouging the inside of his skull. He grit his teeth and tried his hardest to resist, to push back. He thought of betrayal, of lies, of nothing; he dredged up every single memory of his blades falling for the Duke, anything to keep her at bay.
The silence ached around them. After a minute, Farden broke it. ‘What do you say, Saker?’ he asked. ‘Do we have a deal?’ Saker lowered his hand to his sword-hilt. Fellgrin lifted her head and let the verdict tumble from between her teeth.
‘He lies,’ she rumbled.
‘Kill them!’ bellowed Saker.
Farden felt his ears pop as his uncle’s spell enveloped him, diluting the sudden roar of snarling action to a murmuring din. It is in such rare moments that time slows, dripping by with all the haste of treacle. Farden watched, momentarily dumbstruck, as black arrows bounced from the very air in front of him. Ripples spread from where they struck, snapping in two, or spinning to the floor like twigs in a gale. He could feel the heat of his uncle’s spells slide past his ear, blinding him as they flew across the hall. Behind him, he could feel the rush of air as Towerdawn tore himself free of the half-molten collar. Beads of orange iron scattered like raindrops. A river of hot fire poured across the floor. Farden watched it all.
‘Farden!’ the shout shook the mage from his stupor. He hadn’t frozen like that in decades.
‘You good?’ Tyrfing yelled.
‘Never better!’ Farden grinned. He flourished his sword as a brave clansman ran forward through the flames and smoke, axe raised and howling. Farden strode out to chop him down to size, but before he could even get near, Glassthorn’s tail swiped him into the wall. Farden clenched his teeth. He could do nothing more than wave his sword. Fire swirled, keeping the rest at bay.
There was a mighty roar as Towerdawn seized the collar of the big blue male in his jaws and bit down hard. The iron crunched and whined. The blue dragon began to push and buck, slamming his neck against the metal. It took seconds for the iron to crumple, and suddenly the blue was spitting fire of his own. Towerdawn joined him, spewing a fountain of flame at the dragons above. The heat of the fray was terrifying. Tyrfing punched the air and lightning flicked from nest to nest. Over the sound of the cracking and booming, screams could be heard. ‘They will kill you, if you stay!’ Towerdawn hissed between breaths, fire sputtering around his teeth.
‘What about you?’ Tyrfing shouted.
Towerdawn shook his head. ‘They will keep us as trophies. You need to go, while you still have a choice.’
Tyrfing nodded. It was the truth. ‘Farden!’ he yelled.
‘What?’ Farden yelled, still trying to find something to introduce his sword to. The fires were too intense.
‘We’re leaving!’
‘Already? I was just starting to have fun!’
‘Get moving, nephew!’
‘And Tyrfing?’ rumbled the Old Dragon, in the deepest of voices, just as they were turning to run.
The Arkmage turned. ‘Yes?’
Head to the library, if you can.
All Tyrfing did was nod.
Masked by the blinding fire and the growing smoke, with the sound of roaring, of flames, of shouting, and of arrows burying themselves in scales ringing in their ears, the two mages fled from the hall.
Farden was first into the wide corridor. It was emptier than a drunk’s wineskin, for now at least. As he moved to hug the wall, sword low and ready, he found his uncle’s hand on his shoulder. It gripped him hard, and pressed him against the stone. Farden turned to find Tyrfing staring at him with an angry look in his eye.
‘Tell me that was just a ruse,’ he snapped.
‘What?’
‘Tell me what you just said in there, about leaving the dragons behind, was a ruse.’
Farden tried to shrug himself free but Tyrfing held fast. His uncle’s fingers had the consistency of steel. Farden rolled his eyes. ‘You heard Saker’s dragon,’ he said. It was an answer, but then again it wasn’t. It was the best kind.
Tyrfing’s grip relaxed. ‘I did,’ he said, as if reminding himself. Something caught in his throat then and he turned away to cough it out. Farden surreptitiously rubbed his shoulder as he watched his uncle convulse. Farden sighed.
‘Are you finished? There’s an army of angry dragon-riders behind us.’
Tyrfing wiped his hand on his cloak and took the lead. Threads of light swirled absently around his crooked fingers.
Farden looked back as something crashed and roared behind them. He frowned. ‘Where are we going?’ He still had to shout over the noise.
‘The library!’ A memory of trawling through endless piles of useless books came floating back to Farden. He groaned. The words hopeless and mission scampered through his head in quick succession. ‘It’s not too far, from what I remember!’ Tyrfing yelled, already sprinting down the corridor.
Three stairwells, several fiery, bloody encounters, and a score of bodies later, a breathless pair of mages stumbled into the dusty mouth of a corridor that led to the library. It was dark there, too dark for their fire-blinded eyes.
‘A little light?’ Farden called, and Tyrfing quickly obliged. Rays of white light reached out into the shadows. Farden saw their problem almost immediately. He raised a finger, pointing into the dusty gloom before them. ‘Erm…’ was all he could say.
Where the ornate doors of a grand library had once stood guard, a wall of grey rubble and boulders had now taken their place. The end of the corridor looked as if the mountain had swallowed it, and then vomited it straight back up. Rock, impenetrable and solid.
Tyrfing rubbed his blood-spattered forehead with the knuckles of his fist. ‘Don’t say it,’ he snarled, eyes closed and deep in thought. ‘Don’t say anything.’
Farden looked around at the smooth walls that had escaped unscathed and intact. ‘This is the right corridor, isn’t it?’ he asked. Even as he voiced the question, little features began to ring bells in his memory; the shape of the columns, the low ceiling, even the dragonscript scratchings of some thoughtful stonemason, giving directions, an arrow pointing straight towards the rubble. Farden scratched his head, frustrated. ‘Would you like to go back and check with Towerdawn?’ he ventured, sourly.
His uncle didn’t answer. He was busy racking his brains, and quickly too. The trail of bodies they had left behind was no doubt being followed. They had minutes at most.
Farden stalked up and down the hall, aimlessly prodding bits of loose rubble and wreckage with the tip of his sword. A broken spear lying in a bed of its own splinters. A shoe with a bloody cut across its toe. A shield with a mosaic of dust and dents across its grey face. The cracked blade of a halberd or axe. A stray bit of cloth, burnt to a memory. ‘What a mess,’ he remarked. ‘Cave-in, do you reckon?’
‘Has to be.’ Tyrfing cracked open an eye and followed the grooves of claws and the scars of spells across the walls. ‘Over-zealous wizar
ds, maybe. Now be quiet. I’m trying to think what I might have missed, before we get cornered.’
Farden kicked out maliciously at a cracked stone and watched it bounce off the wall of rubble at the dead end of the corridor. It struck with a thud. A rather hollow thud, come to think of it. Farden raised an eyebrow. Not the sound one expects from stone striking stone. ‘What have we here?’ he mumbled to himself.
‘Shh!’ his uncle flapped his hands, muttering to himself about escape routes and riddles.
Farden padded softly to where his stone had skittered to a halt, just at the foot of the rockfall. He peered closely at the rubble, at its nobbled contours, its deep, bloated veins of mica, at the dust that coated it. It certainly looked like rock, but what was rock that didn’t sound like rock? Farden raised his sword and prodded one of the boulders with its tip. The blade sung dully as it kissed the rock.
Much to Farden’s shock, the boulder twitched under his blade. A bright, flame-orange eye, almost as big as his fist, popped out from the stone, no more than an inch from his sword-tip. It squinted, staring straight up at him. There was an awkward, utterly confused silence.
‘Erm…’ Farden began, but he wasn’t given a chance to finish. With a scraping roar, the entire rockfall unfurled in a whirlwind of dust and crunching stone. Grey limbs flailed. Teeth flashed. Something strong and clawed wrapped around his waist and wrenched him inwards, sucking him into the swirling blur of rock and darkness.
Before he could even think to kick or scream, Farden abruptly found himself face-down on a cold and red-stained floor. He blinked, once, twice, to make sure he was alive. Apparently he was. Farden began to grope for the handle of his sword but his hand found a boot instead. He looked up, head still spinning, to find a muscular Siren staring down at him, a spear-butt raised ready to knock the daylights out of him. The Siren was about to strike when a gruff voice barked out an order. ‘Stay your hand!’
Farden was quickly and roughly rolled onto his back. He found himself gazing up at a scarred face. One from a dream, long ago, when Farden had been a different man. The face spoke. ‘By Thron. It is you.’ Hands the size of hams grabbed him by the scruff of his cloak and dragged him into the air. Farden was so bewildered he didn’t even struggle. Confusion was to be expected after being swallowed by a wall. Farden blinked owlishly at his saviour.