Key of Living Fire (The Sword of the Dragon)

by Appleton, Scott

  Everett led him down the dusty streets between rows of houses, some falling apart, some well tended. The contrast was everywhere, a reminder that something dark seemed to rule this underground world.

  The city awoke as they walked. A sprinkling of Dewobins in the cavern’s high reaches, which provided only moderate light, were soon joined by a multitude more. The pink birds soon glowed in such numbers that the city filled with their warm light. Women and children emerged from many of the houses, their faces sober. They formed a line that grew into a mass of bodies marching with lunch pails in their hands. They marched to a pink structure that loomed behind the rows of houses. A bong sounded, and Dewobins veered from the main flock high above, spinning to the building and out of sight as if entering through its roof.

  “What is that place?” Ilfedo said to Everett as a gap between buildings again revealed the long pink structure.

  Everett paused to follow Ilfedo’s pointing hand. He glanced at the building. Unsmiling, he said, “After breakfast I will show you.”

  Turning down a side street, they faced a fountain encircled by the road, which was surrounded by a thick carpet of green lawn. They stepped onto the lawn and Ilfedo, curious as to how grass could grow in a place such as this, reached down. But his fingers brushed moss, a soft and thick moss. As he straightened, Everett pointed sideways across the lawn to another street with only a few homes, but one stood out from the rest. It was large and surrounded by a white picket fence. “That is our mayor’s residence. At some point soon you will be expected to dine with him. I’m sure the leaders of our city will want to learn more about you, as there is a prophecy concerning the return of a Lord Warrior to Dresdyn. But I will save the telling of that for another time.”

  They crossed the lawn into a village of shops. The smell of baking cakes and muffins, of bread and cider, rolled off the low rooftops. Women and men stepped in and out of various storefronts, some sweeping dust off the steps, others carrying out clothing and tools. Most of the clothes were pink, though a very few were shades of yellow, white, or black.

  In front of a bakery that read “Not-so-mundane Meals,” Everett paused and laughed. “The owner here is a friend of mine who will gladly fill our bellies with delicious food for a reasonable cost!”

  The pair entered the bakery, and Ilfedo ate his fill of close-to-mundane food. During the meal Everett hinted that he wanted to show Ilfedo around before the city council could object. There were things he wanted to show him that they would not appreciate. Continually Everett praised the baker for the breakfast. Ilfedo came to the conclusion that either these underground dwellers had too limited a selection of foods, or Everett did not know a good thing when he tasted it. Nevertheless, he thanked the baker for the meal and followed his willing and straightforward guide back into the streets.

  Across from the village lay the city square. Everett stood at its edge and pointed to the square’s corners. Stone monoliths twenty feet high corkscrewed toward the cavern’s epicenter from each corner. The statue of a lightly armed swordsman rose from the square’s center. Ilfedo crossed the moss lawn and peered up the statue’s base at the lithe figure. The man’s eyes were close together, and the sword in his hand had a green blade.

  “Quite an impressive piece of sculpture, don’t you agree?” Everett asked.

  Ilfedo ran his fingers along the base’s face until they trailed in the words inscribed thereon. “In memorial forever in our hearts, Brunster Thadius Oldwell.”

  “Oldwell founded our city.” Everett sighed. “He is a hero to all of us, a saint to some, and an enigma to the rest. It is said he was an original Lord Warrior from our ancestors’ long-lost homeland. But for those of us who follow the holy prophets’ teachings of the Creator, Oldwell is the atheist whose example misdirected our youth, and whose soul now lingers in torment until the final day of judgment.”

  The square’s only other occupant was the city hall. It was a large building constructed of part stone and part wood. The stonework buttressed the building’s corners and base.

  As Ilfedo was gazing upon all these things, Everett shuffled toward the road. “Come with me. I need to show you something, before the time to do so escapes us.” He led him down the street in front of the high steps to the city hall, then turned him up another that angled away from the square. Over a row of collapsed rooftops he glimpsed the enormous pink building. They rounded a corner, and on a dead-end street they stood gazing over a field of rich green moss to the structure set in the field’s midst.

  Ilfedo looked down at the little man. “What is that place?”

  Pink silk draped thickly from the factory ceiling where a couple of thousand glowing birds threaded strands from each others’ beaks. Everett led Ilfedo across the tiled floor, between rows of spools as large as men. Young girls fed the silk strands from the ceiling to the spools, pumping turntables beneath the spools to slowly spin them. Monotonously they wound the silk around the spools into a natural thread. Young boys mopped the floors, and others slid the filled spools away from the girls’ stations, and others guided empty spools into place. The girls began the process of filling the fresh spools.

  Ilfedo frowned as he looked about. The place would be wondrous to behold if he could stop seeing Oganna’s face on every downcast child in the factory. He turned in fury upon the little man. “What is this?”

  “These are the children of the poor in Dresdyn. By the city council’s decree they work here to provide for their families.”

  Ilfedo felt tension build in his voice. “Where are their mothers and fathers?”

  “Their fathers have been conscripted into the city guard and sent into tunnels on the far side of our city. They fight to safeguard us from a race of black beasts that sometimes encroach upon our territory.”

  “And their mothers?”

  Beckoning for Ilfedo to follow, Everett led him across the hard floor down rows of spinning spools. Children bumped into him, cursing him as they passed. “Look out where you are going. Gee, no help. We is working here!”

  Everett led him through a door at the long room’s end. As he opened the door and stepped aside, Everett pinched his nose. Ilfedo stepped into a stuffy room almost as large as the first one. Yet here the Dewobins screeched as women stuffed nets full of them onto butcher blocks. There were several hundred women carving the tiny birds for meager morsels of meat, or plucking the feathers that they stuffed into pouches at their waists. A gelatinous red coating layered the stone floor.

  “These are the mothers of those children?” Ilfedo pointed at the door through which he’d come.

  “They are,” Everett said, “and you will find only the poorer citizens of our city in this place. West of here, beyond the house of Elhandra—the prophetess you met yesterday—lie the homes of our military officers, statesmen, and the more successful businessmen.”

  Ilfedo shook his head. “Is there no other way for the poor people to feed their families?”

  “Oh, you have misunderstood.” Everett shuffled over to a woman. She held a struggling Dewobin in her hand and a butcher’s knife in the other. Everett lifted his hand up to her shoulder and touched it. She looked down at him and he said, “Emily, turn your face to the stranger.”

  The woman did, and Ilfedo judged her to be in her midthirties. She had long brown hair, green eyes, and handsome cheeks. A smile would have made her look beautiful, but a shadow lay under her eyes, her cheeks were sunken, and her dirty lips formed a weary frown.

  “You look tired,” Everett told the woman. “Take your children out of this place, at least for today. Go home. Rest and refresh yourself.”

  Her eyes widened. “Wh-why do you tempt me with such a thing? Do you not think I would if I could? If I don’t work, my husband will be left in some distant tunnel. The city council decreed it.”

  “Ah, yes, there is the truth of this matter.” Everett left the woman and gazed at the bloody factory around him. “These people are not here by choice, Ilfedo. They, like
their husbands, have been conscripted. The women to butcher birds and the children to collect Dewobin silk.”

  Ilfedo looked around the room again, then down at the little man. “This is how they pay their dues to your government?”

  Everett sighed and led Ilfedo back into the threading room. “This is how the life of the city is maintained. The Dewobins provide for all but a few of the things we desperately need in order to live: food, clothing, and commerce.”

  A flame of anger grew in Ilfedo’s heart as the children moved to and fro throughout the building.

  Two finely dressed women emerged from another door. They didn’t notice him as they walked down the rows of pink spools. They caressed the Dewobin silk and smiled at each of the children. But a few boys, in the process of moving a spool, tipped it against a table. The pink threads frayed and snapped, and one of the women darted to the scene. She frowned and slapped each lad on the face.

  “What?” Everett’s face reddened, and he bolted toward the woman. “How dare you touch that child!”

  But Ilfedo grabbed the little man by his pink robe and held him back. “Your people have a prophecy,” he said as he drew his sword. Flames roiled from the hilt, covering the blade, and every face in the room riveted on him. A voice spoke from the sword, a voice so soft that he thought only he could hear it. “When darkness has fully fallen, and the spirits of the children are weak, then let their Lord Warrior speak. Let him bind and shackle, hew and spear. His arm is against them, his arm is for them. The Lord Warrior comes to doom them . . . the Lord Warrior comes to save them.”

  Everett’s eyes widened, and he pointed at the sword. “Did you hear that? It spoke the words of Elhandra! I heard it. Your sword speaks.”

  Ilfedo stepped toward the woman who’d struck the children. He had their attention. He must now act, say something that would change what was going on in this place. But what could he do? These were not his people. They had their own leaders, their own decision-makers. He was but a stranger with a magnificent sword. Frustrated, he let the power of the sword fill his arm as he smote the nearest spool. The spool toppled into another one, and that one fell after it. One by one the spools knocked into each other. Some of the children screamed and froze at their stations, but a group of boys and girls gathered around him, clinging to his legs.

  The stone door through which he had entered the factory now lumbered open, and a woman stepped through. She wore a ragged pink dress. The Dewobins splashed an aura around her, and she smiled at him with her soft gray eyes.

  “Elhandra, how did you come to be here?” Everett asked.

  But the prophetess had eyes only for Ilfedo. “Hail, Lord Warrior, and welcome to Dresdyn! Long have we waited, waited for you. Our dark world is not for the Creator’s children, yet here we walk. Let us walk again in the light; guide us out of this dark world. The dead will rise to slay us. But you, Lord Warrior, have come to save us. Now go! Bind and shackle, hew and spear, free and release. For this is within your power, and to your will the loyalties of this people will be drawn.”

  The cluster of children around him doubled as the prophetess stepped forward. Her eyes stared deep into Ilfedo’s until she was only ten feet away from him. Then she lowered her gaze to the floor and knelt before him. “I have waited for you a long time, my lord. Ask whatever you desire of me, and I will obey.”

  “He has come to free us?” one child said, and another echoed it. The mob of children began to chant, “Free us! Free us!”

  He gazed upon Elhandra, and she smiled back at him. “You have the power to effect great change among us.” She stood and placed her hands on the children’s heads. “Free them!”

  Ilfedo found himself striding out of the factory, several hundred children dancing after him. When he had exited the building and stood on the moss lawn, the children gathered as an army around him with Elhandra in their midst and Everett standing a short distance off.

  Crowds gathered on the nearby streets as thousands of glowing birds shot out of the open factory door. Ilfedo went to each door around the structure, and strengthening his arm with the sword’s energy, he opened them. Very soon hundreds of women emerged from the factory and stared at their children dancing before him.

  “Go to your homes,” Ilfedo commanded. “The factory is closed for today. Do not fear for your husbands, yourselves, or your children. I will deal with the corruptness I have seen in this city. The full responsibility for shutting down the factory lies with me alone.”

  A few women glanced at each other, then turned to reenter the factory.

  Ilfedo blasted the doors with Living Fire. The doors slammed shut, and the flames sealed them. “Go to your homes,” he said. The children cheered, and the crowd of them mixed with that of the women. Eager young hands took their mothers’ and led them down the streets. The lawn emptied, leaving him with only Everett and the prophetess. What had he done? This was not his fight. The dragon ring constricted around his finger and he winced.

  But Elhandra stepped up to him and lightly touched his arm. “I look forward to becoming your friend, Lord Ilfedo of the Hemmed Land.” The Nuvitor cooed on his shoulder.

  Everett shuffled toward him.

  Ilfedo sheathed his sword.

  “Word of your deeds will spread as a flood through our streets, now that you have defied the will of the council. They will surely summon you to give an account of your actions, and I do not trust them to reveal certain things to you. Come!” He led Ilfedo behind the factory and onto the streets.

  “What is it you want to tell me?” Ilfedo asked.

  But the little man trudged up another street. Elhandra walked beside Ilfedo. She was so light on her feet that she might as well have been gliding. There were fewer homes in this section of town and no ruins to speak of. The scent of fresh moist moss rose from the gaps between buildings, lending a clean scent to the air.

  Elhandra laughed and glided ahead, catching up to Everett. “My dear, dear monk, where do you think are you taking us?”

  Everett glanced up at her with furrowed brow. “The Records Library. Where else will he learn more about the history of our people, or of the prophecy?”

  She put her arm across his chest, and he stopped as she pointed down a side road. “The Records Library is that way.”

  His face seemed to light up, and he chuckled as he gestured Ilfedo to follow him in the new direction. “She is right, I’m afraid. I was taking you in the wrong direction. Come! We have much to do before the council discovers where you’ve gone.”

  The slight musty smell of the ancient book caused Ilfedo to pause his reading to sniff it. When Elhandra had showed him the library, he had marveled that the books did not get moldy. This underground world felt a bit damp to his skin. But she had pointed to strips of what appeared to be leather hung on the walls. The skins were from some mighty beast that had long ago been hunted down and slain by the city’s inhabitants. They did not know what sort of beast it was, but the skin absorbed the moisture from the air and seemed never to get wet.

  Ilfedo gazed again at the thick pages of the book he was reading. Hemran’s Lament, a book of prophecy.

  Lord God, I will speak a word to this people, for they trust that their Lord Warrior shall in due season return. Surely I say, the Lord Warrior shall return. Beware, thou, that the world has forgotten. Weep, for he led you to this place and taught your children to fear neither God nor man. As a flower budding on dry ground, you will wither. This dark world is not for the Creator’s children, yet there they walk. In time old, in time forgotten, his children walked in light. But no more.

  Let the dead rise and slay them. May the desert winds drown them in sand and lay their land in ruin. Call from the ashes the souls of the damned, those cursed by the Lord forever. When darkness has fully fallen and the spirits of the children are weak, then let their Lord Warrior speak. Let him bind and shackle, hew and spear. His arm is against them; his arm is for them. The Lord Warrior comes to doom them; the Lord Warri
or comes to save them.

  Ilfedo gently closed the leather-bound volume, and a small cloud of dust rose from the pages. He was sitting at a large stone desk in a round room with high blue marble columns and high-rising shelves piled with parchments, scrolls, and books like the one he’d been reading. He turned the spine so as to read the worn gilt letters. Hemran’s Lament. According to Everett and Elhandra, the people of Dresdyn regarded this particular book with reverence, for it alone contained the prophecy that confused them by giving them both dread and hope for the future.

  He set the book aside and lifted another two volumes from the far end of the desk. These were in better condition, having neither the wear nor the weight of the Hemran’s Lament. Their titles read Extant Records on Our Lost History and Oral Historical Traditions.

  The first book contained diagrams of winged contraptions, some more farfetched than others, for achieving human flight. Its author claimed to be relating only what his grandfather passed on to him in oral tradition as it related to human flight. The rest of the text dealt with partial documents transcribed because of their pertinence to Dresdyn’s history. It spoke of a race of humanity forced to leave their technologically advanced society and of the few Lord Warriors who had led their exodus. By perusing its pages he’d gathered an overview of the city’s origins.

  He glanced from one book to the other, then at the other material piled around him. Surely a library such as this should be taken out of this place and preserved in a clean vault, such as the vault in the city of Gwensin that held the Hemmed Land’s scrolls. If he had the time and the resources at his disposal, he could begin an analysis of the material, comparing it to the texts of the Hemmed Land. But now was not the time.

  Carrying a stack of books higher than his head, Everett walked up to him. The little man set the books on the floor by Ilfedo’s chair and let out a heavy breath. “I believe these materials will be the most useful in your attaining the status of Lord Warrior in Dresdyn. The city council would rather you didn’t know so much about us, but as the books of the prophets teach us, truth sets people free.”