The Dragon's Blade_The Last Guardian

by Michael R. Miller

  After admiring the view for a while, Sonrid peered again over the edge, down to the chalky red earth far below and withheld from congratulating himself on a job well done. The passageway might be large enough but it was terribly high up. Darnuir would surely be unable to reach it. Not without a deal of help. Perhaps fairies with wings could carry him up, if he wasn’t too heavy for them.

  A scrape and a grunt interrupted his thoughts. “You might have slowed down,” Zax complained. Sonrid felt a weight upon his shoulders as Zax steadied himself.

  “Careful,” Sonrid croaked.

  “Budge up,” Zax said. He sat down too, so that his shrivelled arm was beside Sonrid, allowing for a little more room. Zax inspected the area. “Nope. This place won’t do. Can’t even lie down here.”

  “I’m not looking for a spot to soak in the sun,” Sonrid said.

  “You’re not, but I am. That alright?”

  Sonrid grumbled. “Why must you insist on following me around?”

  “Something to do, isn’t it?”

  “And what is it you think I’m doing?”

  “Something doomed to failure most like,” said Zax.

  “Most probably,” Sonrid said bitterly. “Well, the fewer who know, the better.”

  Zax gave a rattling laugh. “You’re worried I might run to the Master? As if he’d notice or care if I started howling as loud as my torn throat will allow.”

  “Not the Master,” Sonrid said, losing patience. “Red dragons, or perhaps a spectre the Master has deemed loyal to him. Any might catch you.”

  “I ain’t seen a free spectre since they were all brought back. And I wouldn’t tell them, even if I did,” he added, clearly hurt by the implication.

  “They might torture you and make you.”

  Zax laughed again. “I’m in enough pain already. Would be a challenge for them to add anymore.”

  “There’s always more pain,” Sonrid said, remembering how Dukoona forced his way inside his mind. “Not all of it from our shadows or bones.”

  Zax grunted and began swinging his legs, gently kicking the mountainside. “Fine, don’t tell. I’ll go on assuming that you’re looking for a nice spot to sit and watch the world go by. Or end, as the case may be.”

  “I think you want to believe something can be done,” Sonrid said. “I think that’s why you’re pretending to be my shadow. Why not just admit it?”

  “Or I just want to have a good spot when everything comes crashing down.”

  Sonrid faced his Broken brother. “What do the others say about me?”

  Zax remained silent, deliberately avoiding eye contact.

  “They think me mad, don’t they?”

  Zax’s continued silence amounted to a yes.

  “I thought as much.”

  “I think you’ve got spirit though,” Zax said. “More than all the others put together. Some are beginning to… well… not dismiss you out of hand.”

  Sonrid shook his head. “Perhaps it’s just as well. On my own, I am likely to fail. But I do not trust so many to hold their silence, even if the Master ignores us normally. On this, he might just listen.”

  “They’re afraid,” Zax said. “Afraid and in pain and beaten down. Your coming back to the Mountain was shock enough without your talk of overthrowing the Master. Us take action? The Broken? What good can we do?”

  “All we can,” Sonrid said.

  “You say that a lot but it’s no use if you won’t even tell me what you’re up to.”

  Sonrid ground what teeth he had. Zax wouldn’t go to Rectar, he knew that. He held his tongue because Dukoona had told him to trust no one else. A simple instruction. Not one he ought to break.

  And yet Dukoona himself had built his Trusted spectres for many long years before the resistance was discovered. Even Dukoona accepted that he could not work alone. If Sonrid was caught and killed, there would be no one left to fulfil the mission. Without debating any further, it all came tumbling out of him.

  “I am trying to find a suitable entrance by which to bring Darnuir, the Dragon King, into Kar’drun with ease. Once in, I will lead him to Dukoona. If Dukoona is already dead by that point, I’ll lead him straight to the Master.”

  It did sound alarmingly wild to say it aloud.

  Zax’s small eyes popped in amazement. After a moment of stunned silence, he doubled over in his rattling laugh, a sound like broken glass being swept up by a steel broom. Sonrid lowered his head even further than the hunch of his shoulders, muttering darkly to himself. Zax ended his fit with an almighty cough and a number of deep, scratchy breaths.

  “You are mad, Sonrid. But by the Shadows, you might have said so sooner. I know these strange entrances better than most.”

  “You know of a place?” Sonrid said eagerly. “Somewhere on the ground.”

  “Not at ground level, don’t be foolish. The red dragons prowl there too often, we’d be caught. But there is a spot, still some ways up the mountainside but far lower than this.” He ended by pointing a crooked finger downwards, as if Sonrid wasn’t aware of the drop.

  “Then what are we waiting for,” Sonrid said. He got back to his feet as quickly as he dared, steadying himself against the rock face before slipping into the narrow chasm leading back inside.

  Something in the dark stopped him dead in his tracks. Eyes. Many pairs of eyes were fixed on him from the gloom of the ancient hallway. Demon eyes; with whites as pristine as their bones. Sonrid struggled to see much more, having just come in from a bright day, and the ghostly green fire set into the wall did little to lift the murkiness.

  He froze in place, unsure whether they would attack or not. He’d have no way of preventing them if they did.

  There came a scuffle from behind. “You could have lent me a hand, Sonrid, you ungrateful—” Zax fell silent upon seeing what lay before them.

  Things remained like that for a tense minute.

  Sonrid’s mind raced. He hadn’t encountered any demons since returning to Kar’drun and had assumed them all dead, wiped out at Aurisha. Clearly, he was wrong. Yet it wasn’t normal for demons to sit so quietly. They were restless, mindless, aimless, or so he had always believed. In many ways, he’d envied them. Better to have no sense of what’s going on than to live in constant torture.

  His eyes grew reacquainted with the dark and the demons took shape slowly, as though drawn in black ink. Swirling shadows and flames of their flesh followed. They were thin and wiry, yet a few stood taller than himself, hunched over as he was.

  If they came at him and Zax, it would be over for them. Broken spectres could summon a small dirk from the shadows if they strained and concentrated for long enough, but that wouldn’t help here.

  And still the demons stood where they were, in their pack in the dark.

  It was Zax who found his voice. “What should we do?”

  “Let’s carry on. Hopefully they were just roaming and happened to hear us.”

  One of the larger demons took a step forward, and to Sonrid’s utter shock, it spoke.

  “Zzee-grou-Ghaster.”

  “What was that?” Zax said, sounding as alarmed as Sonrid felt. Demons did not speak. Howl, yes. Shriek, yes. Scream in delight when blood was in the air, certainly yes. But they did not speak.

  “Zzee-grou-Ghaster?” the demon said again.

  When Sonrid and Zax did not respond, the demon repeated himself, this time sounding urgent. Something twinged in the back of Sonrid’s mind. For a wild moment, he thought he understood the demon. That understanding flitted in and out of him like a familiar sound from long ago, distant and yet distinctly recognisable.

  “I think it’s asking us something,” Sonrid said.

  “Impossible,” said Zax.

  The demon crept closer. “Zzee-grou-Ghaster?”

  Sonrid clutched at his forehead but
this time thought he could make something out in the demon’s words.

  “Master. It’s saying something about, Master.”

  “They mean to kill us then,” Zax said. “They’ve been sent by Him. If we retreat outside, and are lucky, we might lose them in a shadow.”

  Another demon asked the same question of them. “Ze-rou-Mhaster?” Sonrid thought the demon’s speech was less gargled and confused than its companion’s had been.

  “How are you understanding this?” Zax asked.

  “I… I don’t know,” Sonrid said. Delicately, he moved towards the first demon.

  Zax threw out his one good arm. “Don’t get too close to it.”

  Sonrid paused and frowned. “Why do we call them ‘it’. They are related to us, after all.”

  “But they aren’t like us.”

  “And what are we? Broken. Neither full spectres nor lowly demons. Stuck somewhere in the middle…” he trailed off, remembering again how Dukoona had taken a grip on his mind just as a spectre might do to a demon. It was harder for Dukoona, not an easy thing to do by any means. Yet Dukoona had done it, precisely because he, Sonrid, was closer to being a demon than a spectre.

  “They’ve never done this before,” Zax said. “And that’s suspicious in itself.”

  “We’ve never stopped to think or try before,” Sonrid said. “The spectres were always the ones to issue commands. We had no need to hear the demons speak and they had no need to seek orders. That’s it,” he cried, and the demons startled at his outburst. “They aren’t here by the Master’s will. They are looking for a Master or Masters.”

  Zax groaned, waving his hand as though to shoo the idea away. “You really are mad, Sonrid. Maybe the pain has finally cracked your mind.”

  Sonrid ignored him. “Demon,” he began, unsure where to go after that. “Demon. Are you looking for a new Master?”

  The demon cocked its head and spoke, and this time Sonrid closed his eyes, concentrating hard on the words. “Be our Master?” He was sure that was what was said.

  The effort to translate was dizzying. Sonrid opened his eyes, the hallway spun, and he swayed for a moment before he got a grip on himself.

  “We are Broken,” he told the demons. “We cannot command you.”

  “Mhhhaster.” The demons called eagerly.

  Zax began to back away. “Sonrid, how can you understand them?”

  “You’ll be able to as well. Listen carefully when they speak. You’ll feel it in your mind, that part of you that is closer to them. It’s not easy, I’ll grant you.”

  Zax screwed up his already tight face, eyes shut in concentration as the demons began barking delightful cries of, “Masters. Masters. Masters.”

  “Gahh,” Zax spat in dismay. “I can sense… something. It’s infuriating. As though just out of reach.”

  “Perhaps I’m just more open to the idea,” said Sonrid.

  “Well, if they think you’re a spectre and they wish for instruction, give them some.”

  “How, exactly?”

  “Just be open to it, Sonrid,” Zax said mockingly. “Go on. Try reaching out to their minds like the spectres do. And don’t say it’s impossible. You couldn’t understand their speech until a minute ago.”

  Sonrid looked deep into the demon’s stark eyes. It cocked its head the other way, as though inviting him to do just what Zax had suggested. Sonrid attempted it. Not since his first days in this world had he tried to mimic the spectre’s abilities. He reached out with his thoughts, and the pain did come, as it did when melding, but he could feel the demons around him. It took every ounce of his will to keep expanding towards them, like wading through thick, sticky mud. He reached the nearest demon, taking many seconds to achieve what a full spectre could do reflexively, and broke through its weak defences.

  “No,” he said aloud, his body shaking from the effort. “No. I won’t do this, Zax.”

  “They want you to,” said Zax.

  “Do they?” Sonrid said.

  Even then, with the connection still fresh and raw, the demon collapsed to its knees. It howled in a chilling shrill cry, then curled up on the floor.

  Not ‘it’, Sonrid thought. I must stop calling them it.

  “You’re hurting it,” Zax said.

  “Invading his mind is what’s hurting him,” Sonrid said. As the demon started to whimper, Sonrid pulled back. With a great gasp his thoughts retreated to his own mind and the pain of the exertion began to ease. “Dukoona spoke to me this way, to avoid the Master hearing,” he explained, though he heaved as though winded. “It was the most unpleasant experience of my wretched existence. I won’t do it to them. Look.” The demon’s whining subsided but it lay where it had fallen.

  “Massssster?” the other demons asked as one.

  “I will not be your Master,” Sonrid said. “The only Master we’ve ever known has been cruel. I despise him. I deny him. I will not become that simply because I can. Now, if you will not stop us, my friend and I have business down below.” He hobbled with force through the demon ranks. They parted for him and Zax, who shuffled sheepishly behind.

  “Perhaps I should lead the way,” Zax said. “As I’m the one who knows where we’re going.”

  “Yes, yes,” Sonrid puffed, and as he turned to answer Zax, saw the demons were scuttling along after them, their bulging eyes watched him eagerly.

  “Leave,” Sonrid said. “Go back to whatever forgotten part of the mountain you’ve been hiding in. I can’t help you.”

  Yet they did not listen.

  They followed Sonrid and Zax through endless hallways, down countless stairs, not even attempting to hide themselves. With frequent bursts of, “Master. Master. Master,” the demons hounded their every step.

  “Master,” they called again as Zax led them round a sharp corner.

  “Can’t you at least shut them up,” Zax said. “As if my aching bones weren’t enough ailment in life. Must we hear this nattering for evermore?”

  “Master,” the demons yapped unhelpfully.

  Sonrid groaned, feeling a hot burn in his own legs. His poor twisted knee flared worst of all, the joint scraping as though between two blunt knives.

  “Are we close?” he asked.

  “Just a little farther,” Zax said. “At the end of this hallway. By the twin yellow flames.”

  “Master!”

  “Oh, will you do something, Sonrid? If they keep up this clamour, we’ll have the red dragons on us.”

  Sonrid stopped, if only to give his legs a break. Sometimes, he wished he had one less limb like Zax, so long as the others worked better. He rounded on the demons, his pain manifesting into an angrier glare than intended. The demons halted before him in a packed semi-circle.

  Sonrid raised a finger. “You mustn’t make any more noise. I will be your Master for now if you keep silent.” Their wide, gawking eyes followed the movement of his finger as he wagged it. He took their lack of reply for understanding. “Good. Well, if you must follow me, come along quietly.” He made to catch up with Zax, heading for the twin yellow flames ahead. Their fires burned like two pale watery suns on a winter’s day.

  Zax stood waiting. “Out there,” he croaked with a nod of his head. “I’ll remain to keep watch.”

  “Stay,” Sonrid told the demons. “Wait with Zax.” They stopped as instructed. Some even took to sitting down. Zax slid further away from them, muttering darkly.

  Sonrid forced his malformed body onwards and was distressed to find a small staircase. Why did it have to be stairs? Every step felt like scaling the whole of Kar’drun. Mercifully, the flight was short. Daylight shone upon him and he came upon the ruins of a once fine terrace.

  It must have been built by the Black Dragons long ago, though not from tough starium stone, as the supports had crumbled through time and neglect, leaving only a frac
tion of the standing space behind.

  There was barely room to step out beyond the boundary of the mountainside, which was probably why he hadn’t seen it from above. Yet, otherwise, it would be perfect – a wide-open doorway straight into Kar’drun. And whilst many levels from the ground, it didn’t feel as unassailable as before.

  Yes, this would do. Now, they had to simply avoid death and capture until Darnuir arrived. If he arrived. For now, however, his task was complete. He’d have to find Dukoona again and make sure he knew the way—

  A boom emanated deep within Kar’drun. It drew out into a low rumble that grew with each passing second. Pieces of rubble vibrated near his feet. It continued, loud as thunder with a crack to match it. Only the great gates to the mountain made such a sound.

  Something appeared by his side and made him jump, but it was only Zax.

  “What’s happening,” Zax said. “Is it the gates?”

  “I fear so,” Sonrid said, risking a step out onto the ruins to get a clearer view. Roaring answered their question, even before they saw the wave of red dragons come hurtling out of the mountain.

  He heard shrieks of fright and found some demons had followed Zax. Sonrid tried to calm them, telling them it was alright, that they were safe up here. Those claims felt feeble as the world shook. Soon, the army stretched from mountain to horizon, already a crimson wound upon the world.

  Sonrid’s pain was swept away, caught up in witnessing the beginning of the end of all things, one way or another. The time for freedom or death was drawing close.

  Rectar’s new servants had been unleashed.

  Chapter 28

  THE SPENT RUNNER

  “Fairies value the tending of crops. Many ask, so I shall explain. Some days you need a healer, some days you need a warrior. But each and every day, you need a farmer.”

  — From Tiviar’s Histories

  Damien – The Nest

  THE OLD WATCHTOWER stood at the centre of the outpost, protected on all sides by a thirty-foot wall. Elevated upon a knoll, the Nest was a solid advance garrison at the fork in the Crucidal Road, or at least it had once been.