‘Um, no, I don’t know. He never mentioned the portal. But he went to Aralansia using his orb when he was trying to escape Baelthrom. It was all unintentional. Somehow, he travelled back in time. When he got there he met Ayeth—the being that will become Baelthrom.’
Issa found her tongue working even when she tried to stop it. Domenon’s questions were so perfectly directed she found she could not deny him anything. Even when she wanted to hold back she couldn’t. The wine dampened the panic as she spoke and she soon found herself finishing the third glass. Domenon continued to ask her questions and the answers flowed easily out of her mouth.
The wine was relaxing but with it came tiredness. At one point she suddenly felt her head drooping onto Domenon’s shoulder. She lifted back in embarrassment.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, noting how slurred her words had become.
‘On the contrary,’ he said, and placed a supportive arm around her shoulders, making her blush.
She realised how close together they sat on the chair now, so close that even their thighs were touching. Domenon seemed not to notice at all. She suddenly felt very hot, most probably from the wine, and loosened the neck of her armour wishing she had changed into her lighter seer’s robes. Domenon had already taken off his tunic and rolled up his shirtsleeves.
‘So, Freydel has met this Ayeth, and he hopes to somehow stop him becoming the monster Baelthrom. Very interesting.’ He topped up Issa’s glass and she felt herself swaying. She wanted to slump back on the chair but Domenon held her close, supporting her. He didn’t seem to want to let her, but why? Her thoughts were scrambled and vacant.
‘I know you’re tired, I am too, but I’d love for you to tell me all about what Sheyengetha said to you, especially about your parents,’ said Domenon. His smile filled her vision and his face was very close, sometimes coming into focus so she stared into his dark grey eyes and then his features would blur. ‘You see, I’m certain I’d remember your parents if only I knew a little more. You’d like me to remember who they were, wouldn’t you?’
Issa found herself nodding and then her head sank onto his shoulder. A cool strong hand gently lifted her chin and held it.
‘Just a little more talk, then we can all go to sleep,’ he said, his breath brushing her cheek.
She nodded and felt herself slumping even more against him. All she wanted to do was lie down. Domenon’s presence beside her was equally intoxicating and she found herself wondering what it would be like to kiss his lips.
‘My parentss casst a Web of Forgetting to protect all of Myrn,’ she began. She no longer cared what she said. Domenon was simply asking polite questions and there was no reason not to answer them. Not to speak would be rude, especially when he was being so nice to her.
‘They knew it wass wrong but they did it to protect me and all of Myrn from Baelthrom. Then they fled sso no one would ever remember them or where they had gone.’
She finished telling him everything she knew about her parents that Sheyengetha had told her.
‘Thank you, Issa,’ Domenon said, smiling deeply. He held her cheek and lightly kissed her forehead.
‘I shhhouldn’t,’ she slurred, now struggling to speak at all but too wine-filled to feel any panic. ‘Asssaph wouldn’t be happy,’ she said then wondered why she was talking about Asaph at all. He wasn’t here. She felt very confused.
‘And what about Asaph?’ asked Domenon keeping his face close and his hand on her cheek, half supporting her head. ‘What is he planning?’
‘He hass gone to get the Ssword of Binding. With it he will awaken the dragonss,’ she sighed.
‘I don’t think he will do that,’ said Domenon coming closer. ‘It would be too dangerous.’ His lips almost brushed hers.
She nodded. ‘It’ss too dangerouss.’
‘Just a kiss,’ Domenon whispered. ‘It won’t hurt anyone.’
Issa nodded. Who could it hurt? Domenon’s other arm wrapped around her waist pulling her close against him. She was glad he did because she found she could no longer support herself at all.
His lips brushed hers and she tingled all over. Was there magic in his kiss? He kissed her fully, his lips soft and then firm, gentle but dominating. She found herself swimming in a strange desire, completely at his mercy. She tried to look into his eyes but all she saw were swirls of grey and something blue forming in the swirls.
He released her lips and she gasped as he kissed her neck, each kiss making her tingle. When he kissed her lips again, she stared into his eyes and saw the same ice-blue dragon she had seen when she almost drowned in the bath. Everything swirled around her and she lost herself in the dizziness.
24
Sacrifice
AS the daylight faded, the prison cells grew totally black.
The darkness didn’t last for long—soon an ominous red glow bloomed in the chamber beyond the wall. Asaph could hear voices murmuring and imagined the repulsive priesthood in their red robes gleefully gathering for the evening’s atrocities.
Leaper didn’t even look up and stayed with his head bowed onto his knees, eyes staring behind into nothing. He seemed depressed and broken. Asaph fought against the despair. The sword was here; just knowing that gave him some strength.
The despised chanting began. The rage grew in the pit of Asaph’s stomach and he held it there, honing it. In his head he sang the Fire Sight over and again, protecting his mind with it from their awful dark dwarven words.
He willed for them to take him, but the first victim was a child from the furthest part of the cell. The young boy screamed and wailed all the way. Asaph shouted but quickly found his temples pounding and his throat closing as dark magic subdued him.
Tears streamed down Asaph’s cheeks. The absolute helplessness of the child and his inability to do anything were crushing. He focused on both his anger and the Fire Sight, pretending the chanting wasn’t there, pretending the child’s wailing was just the wind howling. Now he knew what was happening it was ten times worse. He could feel the black magic of the priests, the vortex, the evil beings that came out of it all around him, even though he couldn’t see them.
He glanced at Leaper. The man still had his head on his knees but it was turned fully away so he couldn’t witness anything. A subtle tremble of his shoulders told Asaph he was awake.
Asaph took a deep shaking breath when the screams ended and he murmured the Fire Sight out loud, praying to Feygriene to shine her light on this dark evil place. When the robed priests appeared, their hoods covering their faces, their sickle knives swinging from cords at their waists, he said it even louder. They paused, pointed at him and turned to his cell. His door opened with a great screech.
Asaph grinned up at them, defiant, the rage boiling within him. They smiled, almost tenderly as if he were a poor sick child, their lips stained red. Cold hands gripped his bare shoulder and he shook them off, ready to fight. They grabbed him roughly and dragged him up. He tried to head butt or ram his shoulder into them but his body sagged, he was too weak and slow and the priests were horribly strong.
The rage within him faltered and fear began to gnaw at him. Their magic had made him weak as a child. He doubted he could stand or lift his arms even if they hadn’t been bound. He couldn’t walk since his feet were tied and so they dragged him along the floor. His knees scraped along the stone and he soon felt blood.
He glanced at Leaper. The man was staring wide-eyed, reflecting the terror he’d dare not allow himself to feel. Asaph winked at him wanting to say he’d figure something out, but only a strange mumble came out. He had never felt at the mercy of something before and nothing he had experienced had ever been more terrifying.
Asaph stared ahead of him. The chamber they dragged him into was smooth and circular with a high, plain-domed ceiling. Lanterns stood around the edges and they burned a strange dark red, casting everything with a red glow. Red for blood, he assumed. Was this the Mother’s Chamber? Had the once most sacred place of the Temple to th
e Goddess now been turned to evil?
There were so many robed priests and priestesses present that his befuddled mind couldn’t count them all. At a guess, there were around thirty faceless people robed in red, hands clasped in front or behind their backs, all eagerly watching him with faces that were utterly pitiless. He wondered if the Oracle or Cirosa were amongst them. Cirosa would recognise him if she were there. If he told them he was a Dragon Lord, they would spare him—spare him for some other evil. I will die here rather than become a Dromoorai!
In the centre was a man-sized grey stone altar. It was covered in blood from the previous victim. Thin channels snaked over it all joining up to lead to one spout at the end where blood still dripped. Asaph retched, but his stomach was so empty nothing came up. Instead, his body convulsed. Their chuckles of amusement made him growl and struggle weakly. Two more priests grabbed his legs and he was swung into the air and dumped on the stone slab, almost winded. The child’s blood was still horribly warm beneath him and he tried to arch his back away from it, tears filling his eyes.
He kicked out his legs sending a priest flying into the others. A fist smashed into his face as three more grabbed him and roughly tied him down. More priests loomed beside him, raining blows upon his face and head until his senses spun. Unable to fight, he had to take it. His lip split against his teeth and he coughed and snorted blood from his nose.
As the beating abated, he realised the constant growling he could hear was coming from his own throat.
The priesthood clustered close and the chanting began. Asaph strained and fought against the bindings with all the strength he could muster. The rope tying his right hand snapped. He lunged up, grabbing the throat of the nearest priest through his hood. The rage boiled up, and he gripped with all his might, crushing, yanking, shaking and growling. The priest’s eyes bulged and rolled back. Asaph yanked downwards with all that he had, feeling flesh tear and warm blood flow over his hand. He became aware of savage blows pummelling on his body and head as priests and priestesses tried to pry his grip off, but it was too late. The priest crumpled to the floor, dead.
A palm struck Asaph’s forehead. Immense agony flowed first through his brain and then his entire body. He arched his back and screamed. The pain flowed through him in a series of never-ending waves. He felt his bones bending from the agony of it.
After an interminable amount of time, the pain receded. Asaph shook and gasped, sweat rolling off his body, stinging the cuts and bruises that covered him. They tied him back down again and he could find no strength to fight them. His eyes were swelling from the beating, making everything fuzzy.
He felt a mind before him, a familiar, twisted, dead mind. Dead brethren. He peered through the bleariness at the huge Dromoorai now standing at his feet. The Dromoorai’s eyes blazed red as it held the Sword of Binding, point downwards, in its gauntleted fists.
Asaph took great breaths as he stared at the sword. Its dragon blood pommel glowed even deeper and darker in the red light, the silver-blue sheen of the blade almost shimmering with its own aura. Help me! He screamed in his mind at it. The sword had called to him to save it, now it could help him, surely?
The chanting crescendoed. Asaph’s eyes were forced from the sword to the spinning black hole appearing several feet above the Dromoorai’s head; a dense black shadow that was darkness itself. It was opening to another dimension—his dragon self could sense that much.
“Like ravens, dragons, too, can travel to other dimensions,” Coronos had said to him one night in Castle Carvon. As soon as he had said it, the Recollection had opened in his mind and he knew it to be true, though he didn’t know how it was done. Just as they could go to the Dragon Dream, dragons could also travel to the Murk, though none ever did. They could even go to the Land of Mists, if invited, and to any fairy world, if they knew where the entrance was.
He had longed to try such travel, but now he stared into that spinning hole above him he wanted nothing to do with other dimensions. It leads to the Dark Rift, the dragon part of him whispered. All of these sacrifices fed whatever was in the Dark Rift. In exchange, power would be given to the priesthood. Evil power.
Shadows flowed out of the centre of the spinning vortex in long, indistinct blobs. Asaph swallowed the rising panic, determined to show no fear. The sword would do something, it had to. If he didn’t survive, it would be trapped here forever. He was its only hope.
The Dromoorai turned and walked from Asaph’s feet to stand on his right. It raised the sword up, its point hovering without wavering above his chest. After hundreds of years locked away, it still looked wickedly sharp. How funny it seemed that he would be killed by his own sword, by his own kind.
He spat at the Dromoorai. It did nothing. Its eyes simply continued to blaze that awful red. For the first time, Asaph realised the Shadow Stone amulet on its chest was not burning brightly. Was Baelthrom not watching this? Oddly, if he had been, Asaph might have been recognised, he might have been spared. Not even the Immortal Lord can save me, he thought bitterly. Why wasn’t Baelthrom watching? Perhaps he had grown bored with these sacrifices. Perhaps they were just too unimportant.
The chanting rose to deafening levels making him feel woozy. He suspected the Under Flow was surging all around him and was thankful he couldn’t feel or see the black magic directly. The shadow blobs came closer, growing and elongating. A cold wind blew right through his soul, making goose-bumps rise and his body shiver. Never ceasing their chanting, the priests and priestesses drew their sickle knives. They gleamed in the same manner that their eyes gleamed within their hoods—hungry and bloodthirsty.
Asaph began to struggle; but he was bound so tightly he could barely move an inch. A shadow hand reached for him and brushed against his chest. Deathly cold stole through him making him gasp. A piece of his soul drained away; a piece of vital energy. He instinctively panicked and fought violently, his mind scrambling to remember the words of the Fire Sight.
‘I thought you dumbed him?’ hissed a priestess.
‘I did. This one is different. Stronger,’ said a priest.
‘We can’t do it again now, it would interfere with the Dark Rift connection,’ hissed another priestess licking her lips. ‘Just get on with it. Kill him as we cut him, the blood will still flow.’
A knife plunged deep into his ankle and he screamed and bucked, feeling the binding come loose under a spurt of slippery blood. Another dark shadow passed a hand across his stomach. Daggers of ice filled his belly and he tried to double up with the pain even as hot blood flowed freely from his foot.
The one who had cut him was desperately trying to catch it in her cup as he kicked and thrashed. Too desperate to wait, she gulped whatever she had got. Her eyes widened as if she’d discovered something about him through the drinking of his blood. He kicked again, snapping the bindings that held that foot.
‘He’s a dra—’ she began, but Asaph smashed his foot into her chin, whipping her head back with a sickening crack. She crumpled, her cup of his blood spilling over her.
‘Kill him now,’ screamed a priestess, commanding the Dromoorai who had remained motionless beside him. In response, it lifted the sword higher and brought it down hard. Asaph had no chance to move or free his arms. The sword glinted, moving in terrifying slow motion as it descended.
The point pierced his flame mark.
He didn’t feel any pain. Instead, a cold rage flooded through his body filling him with the strength of ten men. Rage came directly from the sword and mingled with his own fury. The Recollection burst open—but it was far more than that. The lives of all dragons and Dragon Lords entered Asaph’s mind, poured into his spirit, all at once, as though the entire Recollection was being fully installed into him in a single moment. It filled his heart, his blood, his mind, and his soul.
He reached into the Recollection and called out to the minds of those dragons still upon Maioria. The calling was involuntary; it came straight from his soul and was filled with all the p
ower of the great Sword of Binding.
Asaph was suspended in time as the sword embedded in his flame mark and the Recollection filled his mind. The sword went no deeper into his body despite the entire might of the Dromoorai pushing down on it. In this state, Asaph could see and feel magic, and the Under Flow filled the room and flowed out of the vortex.
‘Dawn Bringer,’ a female voice whispered, the words reverberating around him.
Feygriene filled him. Golden light burst from his hands and then his entire body, surging up and surrounding the sword. The golden light turned to golden flames and engulfed the darkness of the Under Flow. Brighter flames burned directly from his body as if he were the sun. The feeding shadows fled back into the vortex. The golden flames followed them, illuminating the dark, and Asaph glimpsed briefly into the place from where they had come. In his expanded state, he didn’t so much see as feel what was there.
There were beings and worlds, many of them, but each was wrong and twisted. Distorted consciousnesses fed remorselessly upon each other—like the priests and priestesses around him fed upon their own, even children, with no feeling. Hopelessness, vengeance, hate and rage filled that place—a place of no redemption. The One Source of All was far away, and no benevolent god or goddess trod there.
Asaph did not belong. Repulsed, he pulled away. He never wished to see that place again. That is what will become of Maioria if we fail.
He glanced at the priests and priestesses surrounding him, each momentarily frozen in time so that not even their robes moved. Lost and fallen. This barbarism and evil is what will become of us all if we fail. Evil will spread through us and turn us against each other until we consume ourselves.
The vortex flared and snapped shut. Time was still frozen. Asaph flexed his arms and legs, snapping the bindings as if they were made of paper. He pushed his chest up against the sword, forcing the Dromoorai which was still pressing down on it, back.
‘My own sword cannot kill me!’ he roared.
Dragons of the Dawn Bringer: The Goddess Prophecies Fantasy Series Book 5 Page 30