The Captive Flame
( Brotherhood of the Griffon - 1 )
Richard Lee Byers
The Captive Flame
Richard Lee Byers
Prologue
12 ELEINT, THE YEAR OF THE DARK CIRCLE (1478 DR) -14 HAMMER, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
Ananta woke. From a nightmare, surely, although nothing remained of it but a choking sense of dread. Heart pounding, she took a deep breath and looked around the dark cave.
Two luminous red eyes looked back from the entrance.
The body in which they were set was big enough to fill the space and occlude the night sky behind it. Rattled as she was, Ananta had to remind herself that the newcomer’s hugeness wasn’t cause for alarm. To the contrary. It likely meant the creature belonged in this place.
She rose and bowed. “Hail, my lord.”
“Good evening.” The dragon’s sibilant voice was surprisingly soft for something so huge, virtually a whisper, and to her surprise, she’d never heard it before. “Do you live here all alone? I couldn’t sniff out anyone else.”
“I’m the only guardian, yes.”
“Well, that has its good side. There’s plenty of room for both of us.”
She blinked. “My lord?” she asked.
“Come outside and we’ll discuss it at a more comfortable distance.” He backed out of the entrance.
Ananta wrapped herself in her cloak, glanced around for her staff, then hesitated. A dragon would surely recognize the length of carved blackwood for the weapon it was, and might conceivably take offense.
She picked it up anyway. The staff was the symbol of her office, so from that perspective, it would be disrespectful not to carry it when palavering with a wyrm. And in any case, she didn’t know this particular dragon, and she sensed something strange about him. Or was that merely the residue of her nightmare still jangling her nerves?
The ledge outside the cave was spacious enough for several dragons to perch there comfortably. A thousand stars glittered overhead, and the crags rising all around looked like broken teeth. The air was cold with altitude and the coming of autumn.
Up close, the newcomer smelled of combustion. His scales were dark, although Ananta couldn’t make out the true color in the gloom, and mottled with specks and streaks. His dorsal ridge looked black as ebony.
Ananta felt even more wary and uncertain. Her duties had given her abundant opportunities to study the shapes and markings of dragons, but she’d never encountered one like this.
The stranger’s smoldering eyes widened, and she realized he was examining her as intently as she was scrutinizing him. Taking in a head, scales, and talons rather like his own, but married to a wingless, tailless, bipedal frame not a great deal taller or heavier than a human’s.
“You’re one of the dragonborn,” he whispered.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Interesting. The world truly did change while I was away.”
“Away, my lord?”
The stranger stretched his gigantic batlike wings, then folded them again. “Perhaps I’ll tell you the story later. For now, let’s attend to business. I need a lair. Something roomy yet defensible. Where do you suggest?”
Ananta hesitated. “My lord, the word lair suggests permanence.”
“Indeed it does.”
“Perhaps my lord is unaware that Dracowyr is the common ground where the dragon princes hold their conclaves. No wyrm makes his home here.”
“Customs change, Guardian. I’m about to turn this place to a higher purpose.”
“I fear I’m not making myself clear. My master, Prince Skalnaedyr, would wish me to treat you as an honored guest. But you can’t lay claim to Dracowyr. The princes already have.”
“I suspect you have a way of contacting them, or at least of summoning this Skalnaedyr. Get him up here, and I’ll explain the situation.”
Ananta took a deep breath-and a firmer grip on her staff. “The greatest ruler in Murghom won’t come rushing just because you want him to. With all respect, my lord, I fear you may be ill. And since you refuse to behave as a guest should, I must also ask you to leave.”
The dragon snorted, intensifying the sulfurous stink in the air. “Or you’ll make me wish I had? All by yourself? And you claim I’m addled.”
“I understand the strength of dragons, my lord. But it was a circle of dragons who gave me the might to defend this place.” She drew a tingling surge of power from the staff into her body, then took another deep breath and blew it out again.
As it left her mouth, it became a spew of dark liquid so prodigious that her body could never have contained it. The acid spattered the front of the dragon’s body and, sizzling and smoking, ate into it. Holes opened in the membranous wings. Scales and flesh on the wedge-shaped head dissolved, exposing the bone beneath. One shining scarlet eye melted, and the wyrm jerked in pain and shock.
Ananta brandished the staff. Invisible force slammed down on top of the dragon, squashing his body against the ledge. Bones cracked.
But then, despite the harm he’d taken and the power still pressing down on him, he lifted his head. He spat his own breath weapon, and smoke and embers filled the air.
The vapor blinded her and seared her, and she hissed at the sudden stinging. At the same instant, she heard a dragging sound. The dragon was crawling despite the magic shoving him down.
She hurled darts of green light at the noise, and the missiles vanished into the smoke. The sliding sound continued, proof that the new attack hadn’t incapacitated the dragon either. Worse, the reptile would haul itself clear of the zone of pressure in just another moment.
Ananta wouldn’t have believed that anything, even a dragon, could weather the punishment she’d just meted out. She felt a pang of fear, then strained to quash it and think instead.
She shouldn’t stay where she was, not with the smoke blinding and choking her and the drifting sparks burning pocks in her scales. Better to retreat back into her cave, where her colossal opponent would have trouble getting at her. Praying that he couldn’t see her any better than she could him, she backed in that direction.
Cold stabbed into her torso like a knife. The magical attack staggered her. Insanely fast and silent for a creature so enormous, especially one with broken bones stabbing out of its leathery hide and with limbs twisted askew, the dragon lunged out of the smoke.
She only had an instant to react. Somehow that was enough. She drew warmth from the staff to melt the frigid pain from her body, then heaved the weapon high. When she swung it at the dragon’s head, it boomed like a thunderclap.
The blow crumpled the left side of the reptile’s face. Ananta felt a surge of elation, for surely the pulverizing impact had driven shards of bone into the wyrm’s brain. Surely he would finally collapse.
In fact, he faltered for an instant. But then he struck. Like a door coming loose from its hinges, his lower jaw no longer aligned with the top one properly, but his fangs still clashed shut on the blackwood staff. He yanked it out of her grasp and, with a toss of his head, sent it spinning over the cliff.
He raised his foot and whipped it down, catching her beneath it. He crushed her flat against the limestone shelf and ground her as her magic had ground him.
“I’m in considerable pain,” he said, his soft voice garbled, “and your blood would help me heal. I’m also curious as to the taste, as well as annoyed with you.”
She struggled to cling to her courage. “Do your worst.” She had trouble speaking too, in her case because he was squashing the breath out of her.
To her surprise, he lifted his foot off her. “Don’t tempt me. Do you have a way of communicating with your master?”
&nb
sp; Warily, waiting to see if he’d stop her, she stood up. “Yes.”
“I hope it doesn’t involve the staff, because I’m not giving it back anytime soon.”
“No. Skalnaedyr taught me a ritual.”
“Then it’s time to perform it. In one of the larger caves, where we’ll both fit comfortably. I believe there’s one over there.” He jerked his head to the right. “After you.”
She felt ashamed, allowing him to order her around. It seemed like a betrayal of Skalnaedyr’s trust. But it would be suicide to continue resisting without the staff.
So she built a little fire in a depression on the cavern floor, then cast the sharp-smelling incense into the blue and yellow flames. She chanted the incantation, invoking the Binder, god of knowledge. The first line was the same as the last, and she repeated the spell over and over without a break, meanwhile visualizing Skalnaedyr.
Until suddenly she saw him, as clearly as she could see her burned and battered vanquisher or the shadows dancing on the walls. An immense blue dragon with the horned snout and big frilled ears characteristic of his kind, Skalnaedyr was soaring above the dark waters of the Rauthenflow.
My prince, she said, speaking not aloud but mind to mind, an intruder has come. He seems deranged, but he defeated me in battle. He wants to see you. She wished she could go into more detail, but the magic only allowed for brief messages.
I’m coming, Skalnaedyr said, and with that the contact ended.
“I spoke to him,” she told the stranger. “He’s coming. But he was flying over the river, probably near his city-”
“So it might take him a while to reach an earthmote floating five miles above the Great Wild Wood. I understand.”
“Understand that it gives you time to run away. You’re strong, and you bested me. I acknowledge it. But you’re not strong enough to best the mightiest wyrm in Murghom.”
“Then we’ll hope it doesn’t come to that.”
With that, they settled themselves to wait, and the dragon set about sliding the protruding ends of broken bones back under his hide. The process looked painful enough to make Ananta wince.
But the stranger never flinched, and it soon became apparent that his efforts were simply facilitating an extraordinary recovery. His body made popping and scraping sounds as his bones knit back together. His twisted limbs straightened. New flesh seethed forth to seal his wounds, and new scales grew to cover it. A new eye glowed in the socket her breath had emptied.
By then her little fire had burned down to embers, and the mouth of the cave was gray with dawn light. The dragon retreated several yards deeper into the chamber, and then Ananta was all but certain what manner of creature he was.
Not long afterward, a familiar voice deeper than any dragonborn’s called from the ledge outside. “Ananta! Are you in there?”
“Yes, my prince! Be careful! The stranger is a vampire!”
“Yes, I am,” her captor said. “So it would be inconvenient for me to come out into the daylight. Will you come inside instead? Your servant can attest that I haven’t set a trap.”
“I wouldn’t care if you had,” Skalnaedyr answered. “I don’t fear anything you could do.”
Head lowered and wings furled tightly to fit through the opening, the dragon prince stalked into the chamber. The smell of thunderstorms surrounded him as the stench of burning clung to the intruder, and he crackled as he moved. Sparks danced on his blue and indigo scales. Together, he and the vampire all but filled the cave, spacious though it was.
Skalnaedyr stopped short when he took a good look at the other reptile. Not out of alarm, Ananta was certain, but in surprise. “You’re not even a true dragon!” her master exclaimed.
“Now, that’s unfair,” the vampire said, a trace of humor in his low, insinuating voice. “I may have started out as a lowly smoke drake, but I’ve earned the right to call myself a dragon many times over, if not the veritable savior of our race. Karasendrieth never liked me, but surely she told the story even so.”
Skalnaedyr blinked. “You claim to be Capnolithyl?”
“Brimstone, to my friends.”
“The songs and stories say you perished in the final battle.”
“Killing the undead and making it stick is a notoriously tricky business.”
“Well…” To Ananta’s surprise, Skalnaedyr seemed flummoxed. “If you are who you say, naturally I honor you. Still, Dracowyr belongs to me, and Murghom has no room for another dragon prince.”
Brimstone snorted. “I don’t aspire to rule one of your little city-states, and I wouldn’t seek to make my home in your territory without a good reason. After my allies and I destroyed Sammaster, I embarked on a search for long-lost secrets. I found one.”
“What was it?”
“The answer to every dragon’s prayers.”
*****
The short man had simply knotted a red kerchief around his neck. The woman beside him wore a white tabard with the shape of a scarlet sword stitched to it. The youth on the other side of her sported the most elaborate costume of all, a vermilion robe with voluminous scalloped sleeves to suggest wings and a stiffened cowl shaped to represent a horned, beaked head with amber beads for eyes.
All three marchers smiled and beckoned, urging Daardendrien Medrash to join their procession. And he hesitated.
Because the celebrants with their torches, banners, drums, and martial hymns belonged to the cult known as the Church of Tchazzar. They worshiped the red dragon who had once ruled Chessenta and allegedly presided over an era of pride and plenty. Now that times were hard, they prayed for his return.
But like most of the dragonborn of Tymanther, Medrash hated wyrms. Well, more or less; he himself had never actually seen one. But the creatures had oppressed his people for centuries, until his ancestors finally won their freedom by force of arms. To say the least, it would feel peculiar to participate in the veneration of any dragon’s memory.
Yet Medrash was one of the ambassador’s retainers. It was his duty to win friends for Tymanther, not give offense. And besides, since coming to Luthcheq, he’d discovered that human culture interested him. Here was a chance to experience another facet of it.
So why not? He nodded and stepped forward, and-slightly to his dismay-his new friends grabbed him by the hands and conducted him to the front of the march. He hadn’t expected to take such a prominent position, but perhaps he should have. With his russet scales and reptilian features, he was as potent a symbol of Tchazzar as any of the placards and badges. It was what had attracted the marchers to him in the first place.
“Draw your sword,” urged the woman in the tabard.
Again, why not? He pulled the blade from its scabbard and flourished, tossed, and caught it in time with the beat of the drums and songs. For a warrior who’d studied sword play ever since he was old enough to stand, such tricks were easy enough.
They were fun too, as was the procession as a whole. The attitude of the onlookers helped. Some cheered or sang along with the hymns. Others watched with tolerant amusement. Only a few scowled, shouted insults, or turned away.
When Medrash took a break from brandishing his sword, the woman in the tabard wrapped an arm around him, squeezed him tight, and held on thereafter. He wondered if she could possibly be excited enough-or have such exotic tastes-as to want what she seemed to want, and how to decline gracefully if she did. Then a sudden sense of vileness knifed through his feelings of bemused good cheer and well-being. It was like a spasm of nausea, except that his guts had nothing to do with it. He only felt it in his mind.
He faltered, and his companion peered up at him. “What’s wrong?” she asked, raising her voice against the clatter of the drums.
“I don’t know,” he replied. But maybe he did.
For he wasn’t simply a warrior. He was a paladin, pledged to virtue and granted certain abilities by Torm, his god, and the esoteric disciplines he practiced. And there were old stories of paladins sensing the presence of extraordin
ary evil, although it had never happened to him or any of his comrades.
On the other hand, maybe he was simply overexcited himself. He certainly didn’t see anything amiss on the night-darkened avenue the parade was traversing, a cobbled thoroughfare whose several gymnasiums, baths, and schools of fencing bespoke the Chessentan enthusiasm for physical culture and military arts.
He took another step, and the feeling of revulsion seized him again. But this time it was directional. Whatever it was that was so sickeningly wrong, it lay somewhere to the north.
Medrash told the woman, “I have to go.” He disentangled himself from her arm and-ignoring the several marchers who called out, imploring him to remain-jogged down a side street.
The boulevard he’d just forsaken was relatively straight, probably one reason the cultists had chosen it for their parade route. The cramped little streets, alleys, and dead ends in which he now found himself decidedly were not. From what he understood, the layout of Luthcheq was labyrinthine even by human standards. Maybe that was one reason people called the place the City of Madness, an old nickname its citizens employed with perverse and jocular pride.
In any case, the frequent turns, combined with the darkness and his relative ignorance of the city, disoriented him. One moment he was facing the towering black slab of a cliff that stood at one end of Luthcheq, and the next-or so it seemed-he was striding down the slope that ultimately ran to the River Adder. He might have despaired of finding his objective, except that pangs of loathing recurred periodically to guide him on.
They were becoming weaker and less frequent, though, as if a new talent was becoming fatigued. Or as if the spirit who’d decided to inspire him was losing interest.
Please, he prayed, if this isn’t just my imagination, take me the whole way. Whatever’s wrong, give me a chance to set it right.
Another stab of hatred made his muscles jump. This time the source was overhead.
He looked up. A shadow hurtled over him and the street in which he stood, springing from one rooftop to another. It was gone so quickly that he had no idea who or what it had been.
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