The crowd of humans, dwarves, elves, and goblins erupted wildly as the man in black and gold armor made his way to the front of the stage. Queen and Commander embraced each other’s elbows and Mogon kissed Allaria on the cheek, then dropped to one knee to kiss the top of her hand.
“I pledge my blade and my soul to you, my Queen,” he said, head down.
“And what of your heart? Your body?”
“That I cannot do,” he whispered. “My heart belongs to another.”
“Ishora. It is illegal for opposing races to marry, of course.”
“Unless one ruler allows it.”
“And will King Olmero grant you his approval?” she asked, though both of them knew the isolationist elf king would never give his blessing, even for the Great Hero of the Golem War.
“I beg of you to let me marry her,” he said, looking up with searching green eyes. “In exchange, I shall throw my entire reputation behind you.”
Allaria held her smile but thrilled internally at his words. This was better than his hand in marriage. Pieces, she knew, were coming together.
“Rise, Captain of the Dragon Legion,” she commanded, and let him see her grin as he obeyed. “You belong to the crowd now,” she said as she moved past him, “but my approval of your marriage to Ishora depends on how well you sell the crowd on your belonging to me.”
Mogon kissed the queen’s hand and left her for the podium.
The captain of the Dragon Legion could feel the sense of excitement in the air. He was not one for ceremony - there were still wizards at large on the Third Continent that needed decapitating - but as he looked out on the gathered dwarves, elves, humans, and yes, even the goblins, Mogon felt a sense of pride at what the Dragon Legion had accomplished, and so he told the thousand people just that.
“As I look out here today at the gathered good people of the continent,” he said in the dying light of the day’s sun, “I am proud that the sacrifices of my brothers in the Dragon Legion have helped to bring us together. The Golem War ravaged our peoples - all of our peoples - and there are none among us who did not know personal tragedy at the hands of the wizards.
“Off to my left, you see the thirteen surviving members of our count, in addition to myself. Two thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine of us entered the mountain that day, the finest collection of human soldiers the Continent has ever seen. When we emerged four days later, there were only fourteen of us,” he lied, sticking with the commonly told story and ignoring the one member of the Legion the public could not know about.
Mogon continued, welcoming the three Elven Kings, the newly-appointed Dwarf Emperor, the two kings, one queen, and one human President rulers from beyond Vastervik, the members of the Goblin Collective, and all of their guards and traveling companions.
Sweat came to his forehead. He began to cough. He drank from the cup of wine left behind by Queen Allaria.
“I want to also mention the men, and woman, who ride with me,” he said, eagerly gulping from a refilled cup and grunting at the taste of bitter berries. “My Riders of Judgment,” he called, “please rise from where you sit.”
Four rose to their feet: Ishora, a female silver elf from the Quill Forest; Yuba, a farmer from a village in Ryst; Looj, a dwarf weapon maker from Keskeinen Mountain; and Chig Chig, a green goblin with a love of blood who had come, like all goblins, scurrying out of the ground.
“I want to thank them for … for …”
A coughing fit befell the soldier, and he gulped the bitter, berry wine in one gulp. Before he could motion for more, a serving girl brought him an entire decanter. He tossed the top aside and took multiple pulls. He could hear a slight murmuring from the crowd, so he slammed the bottle on the podium and offered the crowd a small laugh.
“Apologies for my dry throat. As my men will tell you,” he laughed, “I usually leave the speechmaking to others.”
The crowd laughed because they loved Mogon, Slayer of Golems.
“Wherever the Dragon Legion rides,” he said, his voice turning sullen, “we are always set upon by those who want to know what happened inside the mountains of the Spine.” Mogon looked to his men on the left and let his eyes wash over the assembled crowd. “We have said nothing of those events out of respect for the 2,845 soldiers who gave their lives on that day. We faced trials unimaginable. We fought horrors out of fairy tales and beasts out of the Devil’s nightmares. With every passing step, it seemed as if another brother fell to the darkness of wizards and their automaton slaves.”
Mogon gulped more wine.
The Dragon Legion began to murmur among themselves. Something was wrong with their captain. Their eyes and whispers made targets of the three Legionnaires who rode with Mogon on the wizard hunt: vain Olig, the barrel-chested Ensch, and the onyx-colored Norril. These men had no answers, but each of them thought back to the wizard they had killed the previous week.
“We should pull him off stage,” Olig murmured.
“Put away your skirt,” Norril snapped, sniffing hard to get any stray yellow powder that remained in his nostrils. If only Looj hadn’t stopped him from snorting more of it in the bar he’d be dreaming in the Oblivion right now, far away from this cursed ceremony.
At the podium, Mogon continued. “On the ride in today, we saw magic in the sky above Vastervik. Elven magic. There are those that say the elves should be forbidden from using their ancient arts, and others who argue it was not elven wizards who birthed the Golems, but dwarves and humans that had learned the craft from elven masters. There are those that …”
Mogon shook his head and he leaned forward against the podium. He knew something was wrong and he cursed himself for drinking berry wine, a favored spirit of the elves for its sweetness and potency. His armor felt as if it were burning on the inside and the hero of the Golem War knew he needed to get off the stage and to a medic. His eyes took in the swirling water of the moat and he thought how nice it would be to dive in and leave this world behind.
“I have but one last thing to say,” he said, pushing himself fully upright and wiping sweat from his eyes. His hand tightened on the hilt of his broadsword, gaining strength from its solidity. “One last thing,” he repeated, his voice rising and energy surging through his veins. He stepped away from the podium, and pulled out his sword.
“There is strength in power, and power in unity!” he roared and the nervous energy of the crowd evaporated as they roared with him. “We have a young queen in Allaria,” he said, pointing his sword across the stage to where she sat, “but she is a woman beyond her years. She is …”
Mogon slammed the tip of his sword into the wood of the stage. “Enough of that bollocks. Do you want to know what happened in the bowels of the Spine?” he asked in a low, challenging voice and his breathing became ragged. “Do you want the answer to how the Golems and wizards were defeated? Do you want to know the great secret of the Dragon Legion?”
Shouts of “Yes!” rang through the crowd from everyone but the Legionnaires.
Mogon did not look in their direction. “Then I shall tell you,” he announced. “God forgive me, I shall tell you!” he yelled. “The Dragons are … are …”
Mogon, Captain of the Dragon Legion, Hero of the Golem War, opened his mouth to bring into the light the greatest secret of the Third Continent.
He spoke one word, and upon that word touching the night air, his skull exploded.
That one word rocked the continent.
One word.
“Traitors.”
QUEEN ALLARIA WAS first on her feet, moving across the stage as Mogon’s body wobbled unsteadily without its brain. The young woman’s thoughts were first of herself and how this death would effect her desire to consolidate power. This damned soldier had been so close to giving her an actual endorsement that she’d spent the last seconds of his life knowing she had to make him her husband in order to unite the kingdom.
Albero would be angered by that, of course, but it was not like she had any
intention of removing the half-elf from her bed. He knew they were playing a long game, and so he would fall in line.
As she approached the headless body, Mogon fell to his knees, and Allaria caught sight of something dark and thin slither up from his spine and into the night air. Her eyes followed it as it rose toward the moon, where the smoke twisted and twirled for one brief moment, into the image of a dragon.
And then it was gone.
WITH THE CROWD erupting in surprise and panic, Ensch rushed away from the Dragon Legion and toward the stage. The veteran soldier’s eyes had been locked on his captain the entire time and had seen nothing before the explosion. Coming to the chest high stage, Ensch saw the idiotic queen looking into the sky and trained his eyes instead on the stage, where Mogon’s headless body was lying on his stomach. There were pieces of brain and skull scattered around, but Ensch’s eyes were drawn to the exposed neck cavity, where blood ran out in a steady stream, pooling on the stage and dripping between the wooden slats to be soaked up by the grassy ground.
Before he could fully process what he was seeing, Ishora of the Forest was at his side.
“What is it?” she asked.
All Ensch could do was point.
Mogon’s blood had turned gold.
QUEEN ALLARIA LOOKED out over the crowd to see if anyone had noted the image of the dragon, but the crowd was moving and surging with interests of its own. Guards circled rulers as visitors panicked, running away from the stage with no true destination in mind except to get away.
“Wait!” Allaria yelled. “Remain calm!”
No one listened.
“Allaria!” Albero yelled, coming up behind her. “Get down! Get off the stage! The assassin might still be-!”
The queen turned and slapped her lover in the face. “Don’t be a fool!” she snapped.
“Yer majesty!” Ensch said, his voice cutting through the panic.
The queen looked down, ready to rebuke another, but stopped when she saw the grim look of determination on both the Legionnaire’s face and the female elf beside him.
“Get to the throne room,” Ensch ordered, his eyes moving from Allaria’s to Albero’s. “The Dragon Legion will bring you the suspects.”
“Suspects?” Albero asked.
Allaria scoffed. “There’s been a murder,” she said, her foot tapping Mogon’s body.
“There has, indeed,” Ensch said as Ishora easily jumped onto the stage. “And I’ll be running the investigation.”
“What about the body?” Allaria asked.
“Ishora will guard it,” the Legionnaire assured her and then offered the queen a hard stare. “You ain’t the only one who prefers the company of another kind.”
THE LEADERS OF the Third Continent gathered in the Great Hall, circling the dead body of Mogon, Slayer of Golems, Cleaver of Wizards, Great Hero of the Golem War. His head was missing, of course, but the rest of his body looked at peace, but for a small spackling of brain and bone and dried blood on his upper armor. Ensch stood to his left and Ishora to his right; neither spoke to one another but they shared a look when Olig and Norril carried his body in on a stretcher that declared an allegiance they would have thought impossible this morning.
Ensch and Ishora did not like one another, but each knew where the other stood and that was more than they could say for anyone else in this room.
Their eyes took in the room.
Allaria sat on her throne, trying not to look nineteen. Albero, an elf with a specious claim to the throne of the Quill Forest, stood just off to her side. Ensch looked at the elf in his purple and gray armor and saw a magic user; Ishora saw a concerned lover.
If the throne was north, the elves stood to the east. Curran, King of the Lake Elves, wore only a shirt of grey metal over his athletic, light blue-skinned torso, tight pants made of a material called “rubber” that they acquired in trade with the Fifth Continent, and no shoes. He was young, despite the cropped white hair on his head, and as wise as anyone in the room. King Olmero led the Forest Elves; he was old, elitist, cloaked in an ornate green and gold robe, and saw no reason to remain there. Q’andrasik led the Mountain Elves; his grey skin nearly matched the heavy pelts he wore on his shoulders. Ishora wondered if he would even bother to voice an opinion at this meeting.
In the south position stood Emperor Zagi, ruler of the dwarves. Ensch knew there was not a more politically astute leader on the Third Continent. Over the past year, she had consolidated power from the five Dwarf Kings; they still held their titles, but Zagi held their power. She wore audacious golden armor and made no secret that she favored humans and elves as her lovers. Her eyes invited Ensch to pleasures he had no interest in discovering.
To the west, the four human rulers huddled together. Lang, Bishop of the Mazotic Gardens, was thin, middle-aged, and cloaked in his traditional brown robes. Elderly Solandu of Ryst sat in a chair that had been provided for her, her blue overalls signifying that she saw herself as no better than the farmers she ruled. Kotan, the Merchant King of Bel-tu and Fek, the King of Theluji, talked in hushed whispers, the former cloaked in golden chains and rings, the latter wearing a lion’s pelt.
And moving between and around them, nine goblins chatted and yawned and drank and tried to get close to Mogon’s body. The goblins employed a Collective rule, and any majority of goblins present at any meeting could vote for the entire race.
At the far edges of the massive room, all of the various guards and advisors to these rulers stood; the guards looked to the closed doors, the advisors looked to the circle of power.
“This is your throne room,” King Olmero of the Quill Forest called to Allaria, calling the meeting to order, “and so tradition dictates this is your assemblage to run. Be quick about it, so that we may all leave this wretched place.”
The rebuke from the Elven King brought Allaria’s world into focus; she was not going to allow Mogon’s assassination to derail her plans. She believed fully that one of the people in this room was responsible and she would see their treachery revealed.
“Thank you, wise king,” she said, moving off of her throne and joining the circle, “but you are not going anywhere until this crime has been solved.”
Kotan of Bel-tu was almost amused as he asked, “You mean to keep us here? As prisoners?”
Allaria scoffed, rising to the challenge. “Not as prisoners, Kotan, but as honored guests. Clearly, none of you would dare leave when the Continent just watched our greatest hero’s head explode.”
Ensch and Ishora flinched at the queen’s words, but held their tongues.
“You have large balls,” Fek of Theluji laughed, “for a woman.”
“Leaving Vastervik so soon after the crime would cast a cloud of guilt over your people,” Allaria replied. “Maybe Olmero would like to pretend he does not care what others think, but not even the Forest Elves could stand to be isolated from the rest of the Continent.”
“We can survive fine on our own,” Olmero assured her.
“Can you?” Curran of the Lake Elves asked. “Does it rain enough in the Quill for you to survive without the waters Genesi Lake provides?”
“You wouldn’t dare let the rivers of the Continent run dry!” Olmero insisted.
Emperor Zagi laughed. “If you’re the only contingent that leaves Vastervik before Mogon’s murderer is discovered, Olmero, Curran won’t have to. People from every region of the Continent will be looking for justice. Or revenge. Or whatever. So please, do take your snobby tree huggers and leave us. Perception of your guilt will cause the Quill to burn.” The dwarf turned her eyes to Allaria with a newfound respect. “How shall you,” she said emphasizing that it was Allaria who would reap either the reward or penalty for this investigation, “solve the crime?”
Before Allaria could speak, Ensch interjected himself into the conversation. “I shall lead the mission,” he said. “As the new commander of the Dragon Legion-”
“You have as much to gain by his death as anyone,” Is
hora challenged.
Ensch’s face turned red with rage and his hand went to his sword. “You would impugn me, whore?”
“Silence!” Queen Allaria demanded, stepping into the circle. “None of you shall- no,” she corrected herself. “None of us shall lead this investigation because all of us,” she said, making sure to meet the eyes of every member of the circle in turn, “all of us are suspects. Everyone present is a suspect. Perhaps everyone in the kingdom is a suspect for surely such a crime as what we witnessed has no obvious perpetrator.”
“Except maybe your elf,” Ensch grumbled, pointing to Albero. “We saw the little magic trick he pulled this afternoon.”
Allaria’s face remained hard and cold. “If you would like to lock him up, Lieutenant, I am certain we can find a cell that will hold him.”
The Legionnaire leveled his gaze. “You play a dangerous game, girl.”
“Is that a no?”
Ensch scowled.
“What is your plan?” Ishora asked with barely contained contempt. “Not that we should trust you, of course, given that Mogon denied your request for marriage.”
The room exploded in smirks and murmurings, but Allaria ignored them and kept her eyes focused on Mogon’s elven lover. “Yes,” she smiled, “my spies noticed how relieved you were when he made that clear on the stage. A rather good indication, I think, that you did not know he would reject me until that moment, which left you plenty of time to plot your revenge between whenever you discovered my proposal and his rejection. Tell me, Ishora,” Allaria challenged, stepping toward the elf, “how many of Mogon’s ex-lovers you’ve killed over the past year. Or are we to believe all of their deaths a tragic coincidence?”
“Enough!” elderly Solandu said, using what little strength she had to command the room’s attention. “Let us hear your plan, Allaria.”
The nineteen year old queen smiled. “Follow me,” she said. “We need to take a trip.”
“Where?” Olmero asked.
“Down,” Allaria smiled. “To the only person we can trust had nothing to do with tonight’s assassination.”
The Disintegration of Dragons, Part 1: A Death in Vastervik Page 3