She hesitated in taking it. What would it change? This was the man she’d wanted to run from since she came here, an enemy trying to lull her into his reign.
She winced as the King of Treveria came closer to her and took a step back, slipping over the edge.
Tancred dashed forward and caught her hand, pulling her back over the ledge. He let out a scream of exhaustion from the pain of his broken ribs. Tancred closed her into his arms and pressed her deep into the chainmail of his hauberk, holding her like the most precious belonging.
“I’m not letting you go,” he said. Tancred embraced her and took a deep sniff of her hair. The mightiest woman in the whole north now found herself in the arms of the mightiest man of the kingdoms. “It’s all going to be good,” he said.
She knew it wasn’t.
As Tancred held her tight, he spotted Dryston below the rubble. The sight of his old bodyguard made him screw up his face in disgust. Jarnsaxa could read his thoughts in his expression. A traitor. Renegade. Rogue.
DRYSTON LOOKED UP. The ground shook as molten mass and rocks hailed down. Before him, he recognized the boots of a Kolanthel assassin and the familiar heels of Kyra. She looked terrified as the Kolanthel had her at his mercy.
“Not her,” Dryston whispered.
The elf stretched his hand out to him. His fingers were clutched around the phial of an unfamiliar potion.
“The pariahs’ potion,” he said and gave it to Dryston. “It is the antitoxin to Cairn-breaker’s poison.”
Dryston wasted no time on questions. He unplugged the flask and, whatever it was, poured the counter-venom down his throat. His dry and split lips stayed on the opening of the phial till his body had ingested the last drop of it.
The step of a boot on a nearby ledge let them all turn their heads. Asukara Uryah stood there, propped against a fallen stone pillar, his elbows bent in textbook firing position. His one eye was aiming over the bolt drawn in his repeating crossbow at the assassin’s head.
“You will need more of it,” the elf said to Dryston.
Asukara held his breath and began breathing out slowly, his finger brushing against the trigger.
“Wait, Asukara, please,” Kyra pleaded.
The Kolanthel hunter blinked.
“I can provide you with more, if you follow me and the sorceress,” the elf continued.
“Why have you given this to me?” Dryston asked.
“Cairn-breaker wanted me to acquire the potion from the pariahs to trade it with you for that girl,” the assassin said. “In return, he would show me the way to the pariahs’ weapon, the dragon. It turned out different than planned. But here, I gave the potion to you. I don’t want to stand in anybody’s debt, be he dead or alive.”
Dryston shook off the bitter aftertaste and got back on his feet. He was seeing double but still, his circulation was coming back to normal. “What do you need me for?” he asked.
“So that the sorceress won’t kill me,” the Kolanthel said. “I want her to join me voluntarily. Her body language revealed her emotions. She is attached to you. She will come with us and do what I say, or she will lose you.”
“What makes you so sure of that?” Kyra asked him. She took a step back from him and lifted her outstretched hand, palm facing towards him, ready to cast. The elf regarded Asukara and Kyra.
“Please, what other chance do you have?” he said.
“Let me end this right now; we can find something for your friend later,” Asukara said.
“You won’t find another antidote with the dragon unleashed and roaming around on the surface,” the elf said. “It is a powerful weapon that could bring the downfall of this kingdom. The Kolanthel were assassinating mages long before, because they were the only ones able to stop it. But, I need you, sorceress, to help me capture the dragon.”
“You want to capture it, and then what?” Dryston asked.
The elf looked at the slow-flowing magma mass approaching them. It was a bitter reminder of his volcanic homeland. “We should go,” he told them without answering the question.
“You’re going nowhere!” Asukara shouted.
“Please, give us a chance and settle your grudge later,” Kyra said to him. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Asukara sighed and let his crossbow sink. He didn’t let the Kolanthel out of his sight.
“You and me are not done,” Asukara said. “But I will wreak my wrath on your friend in the warband first, who you were supplying with drugs, and who paid you back with innocent lives. I will be done with him quickly. I will trace you. And if you two are still with him when I come back, you won’t be able to stop me.”
“Looking forward to laying my eyes on you again,” the assassin said.
“I have a map of the sewers,” Dryston said. He pulled out the piece of cloth the serf of the mansion gave him, the one that had belonged to the old brotherhood. He could imagine now why they once decided to travel under the surface. “Where are we heading?”
The elf regarded him and Kyra. “We are leaving the city. North.” He was marching already and looked back to the two to follow. An unusual alliance. They broke into a run, leaving the desolate chamber with Asukara Uryah behind and climbing up an ascending corridor. The assassin smiled with his next words already on the tip of his tongue, while the gaze of the King of Treveria pursued them till they were gone.
“To the Kolanthel.”
“To the Kolanthel while a dragon is roaming around,” Dryston said. “What’s your name, madman?”
“Sendel Varon.”
Dryston and Kyra followed him out of the aqueduct. The dragon wheeled in the cloudy air, setting everything on flames with a beam of blinding fire trailing in front of it. The three of them took cover behind a block of stones. A whole line of trees ignited in walls of fire.
It was better to stay inside and ride out the storm. It wasn’t sure that they were going to survive at all. But Sendel got up and watched, apparently caring more for taking pleasure in the destruction of the human kingdom than caring for his own safety.
“I can’t watch this without doing anything about it,” Dryston said. “Kyra, let’s bring that beast down. We will talk Sendel into it. Tell him that we have to capture it now before it’s too late. Maybe with lightning or ice, freeze its limbs and bring it to fall. Then let Sendel move up to him, he can cover himself in fire retardant like he did before and try to communicate with it. He is an elf, he’s old, maybe he knows the language. And then, when they are both occupied, I will end it.”
“End it how?” Kyra said.
“Godsmite would have been the right one to do it,” Dryston said. “It would be the forging of a legend. But we lost our hero. When I was in the sewers with Tancred and I had my decision to make, I realized there is a way to become a hero and a way to survive. I choose to survive. Now I will do the opposite. I’m going to kill that dragon.”
“That means throwing away your life,” Kyra said.
“I don’t care,” Dryston said. “I have the chance to kill a dragon, so I will take it. Sendel won’t kill me after I shatter his dreams. He will be too busy gathering the shards of his heart from the ground. Maybe there is another way to find a cure, Tancred might forgive me when I save his kingdom. You saw him with Jarnsaxa together on the aqueduct. They will get together. Everyone will be in my debt.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t do it,” Kyra said. “I can’t bring the dragon down. You are expecting too much from me.”
“Look what’s happening,” Dryston said.
Sendel overheard their last words.
“The Kolanthel are going to take back what’s theirs,” Sendel said.
“There will be nothing left to take back, except ashes,” Dryston said.
“Now, there’s nothing left,” Sendel said. “We will rise from the ashes and make do with what we have.”
Dryston shook his head. “This is the end time. We will all burn.”
“There is no such thing,” Sendel sa
id.
“What?” Dryston said. “What about the prophecies? Everything came true.”
“The prophecies are lies,” Sendel said. “We should know, because we fabricated them. Civilizations fall for the most minor reasons. A poisoned well, a harsh winter, one failed harvest, a plague, fear. It takes only one small thing to tip the scales, one frail log to let the house collapse. Like in your own life, Dryston. The girl with the tattoos is insignificant in the greater scheme of things, yet you met her and your life turned for the worst. All that you went through was because of her, you walked through hell. You even killed the Cairn-breaker and crossed that name from her list. Now your life is in my hands, just as my life is in the hand of your sorceress.”
“You couldn’t have planned this whole thing,” Dryston said. “That Godfrey would take the prophecies seriously and suffer paranoia and that Tancred would punish him for this from fear for his own neck. The actions of kings and rulers were out of the Kolanthel’s hands.”
“Sure,” Sendel said. “It didn’t matter what actually happened. The end effect always would be the same, utter chaos, and you can’t plan in chaos, just prepare for it to come. The Kolanthel are ready to strike, as you will soon see.”
The dragon let out a scream, like a call to gather its kin. There was none left alive to join it. It was a relic past its time, a fossil of a long gone era dug out, awakened and thrown into a world it didn’t belong into anymore. With one last fierce cry it flew off from the burning city, growing smaller and smaller in the sky like a melting ice crystal, until it vanished behind the distant mountains.
Sendel followed it with his gaze and blinked as his sharp eyes lost it. He turned to Dryston and Kyra.
“Now, shall we?”
“Wait,” a voice said.
Dryston directed his gaze to the part of the wall that was towering in front of him. Skadi walked down the stairs, slick with grime. White flakes of ash orbited her.
“I’m coming with you.”
DRYSTON FELT LIKE AN OUTCAST in the camp of Kolanthel. It was well hidden, deep in the woods, and underground. He only detected it when the forest floor changed and he saw that there was more beneath a layer of leaves than just soil. He was walking on the roof of the camp, a net that was stretched over a wide pit. He saw head movements first and people talking down in the pit. Then there were buildings, better masked on the ground.
Sendel led them around and down into the inlet. The clearing was only the entrance and upper domain. Ways wound down through caves, past scores of Kolanthel guards.
“I’m going to bring you to the Kolanthel leaders first,” Sendel said.
“So this is where all the leaders of the Kolanthel are assembled,” Dryston whispered to Kyra.
They looked at each other for a long moment.
“Interesting,” he said.
SKADI FOUND HER PLACE in a hut of an orc tattooist. He had practiced his art on the backs and faces of several warriors. Now it was time to cross out the next-to-last name on Skadi’s list.
The tattooist drew a line over the runes that made up Cairn-breaker’s name.
“Twenty nine done,” he said. “Tell me, are you a heart-breaker? Or a life-taker?”
Skadi didn’t respond, as the stinging pain entered her skin and went through her marrow.
“Only one left,” the orc said.
“I could handle twenty-nine before him,” Skadi said. “I’m sure I will handle this one too. Even if it means that another fifty men have to die.”
“This one,” the tattooist said, “I’ve heard of him.”
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Red Axe, Black Sun Page 24