Bitterwood da-1

by James Maxey

  “You’re free to go. My family must come first,” Bitterwood said.

  Jandra looked toward the Free City then back toward the castle. Lanterns and torches were being lit in the windows and balconies. She suddenly felt perversely homesick. Oddly, she didn’t feel as worried about the residents of the Free City as she thought she should. Deep in her heart she took comfort from a single fact: Vendevorex was inside the Free City and he was here to stop the genocide. Vendevorex wouldn’t be there without a plan.

  “Okay,” she said. “Fewer guards in the palace makes it easier for us,” Jandra said. “We might get the information you want before whatever is happening in the Free City unfolds. Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” Bitterwood said.

  Jandra rose and once more cast the circle of invisibility around them. They headed toward the castle where she had lived a lie for so long.

  JANDRA HAD NO problem leading Bitterwood past the handful of guards remaining in the castle and up the steps to the king’s hall. From here they could descend through the High Biologian’s door into the library.

  “Look there,” Bitterwood whispered as they passed near the throne pedestal.

  Following his outstretched arm, she could see a quiver of arrows and a bow hanging on the wall high above the throne. A few red feathers caught the pale moonlight.

  “That’s the bow Pet took from the armory,” Bitterwood said. “But those three arrows are mine. Where did he get them?”

  “I don’t know,” Jandra said.

  Bitterwood looked lost in thought. At last, he said, “When the sky-dragon tackled me in the window at Chakthalla’s castle, I lost several shafts. He must have found them. Perhaps this convinced Zanzeroth that Pet was me.”

  “Pet’s bought you a second chance,” Jandra said. “When this is done, you’ll help rescue him, won’t you?”

  Bitterwood looked at her, his brow furrowed. His voice gave no clue to his feelings as he said, “Let’s move on.”

  Jandra nodded. They moved toward the library door. She wondered if it was locked. The point was rendered moot as the door swung open at her approach. Whispered voices met them.

  “It’s time,” one said. “The dark will hide us.”

  “Lead on,” said another.

  Drawing the cloak of invisibility as tightly around them as possible, Jandra took Bitterwood by the arm and rushed forward past the three figures who entered the corridor. Even in the dark she could recognize Metron… and Shandrazel? Why was he here? She had never seen the third dragon. She and Bitterwood slipped into the library seconds before Metron closed the door. Quickly, they made their way to the rooms where the slave records were kept. Her heart sank as she stepped inside. So many rows of files. So many slaves.

  “It could take all night to search,” she said.

  “A night or a year, you’ve done your part,” Bitterwood said. “I’ll search alone if need be.”

  “No,” she said. She had made a promise and intended to keep it. “Let’s get started.”

  “ARE YOU SURE this is wise?” Androkom asked, slowing to allow Metron to catch up.

  “Positive,” Metron said, his voice strained with the effort of climbing the stairs. “Blasphet may be mad but I understand the source of his madness. He holds no grudge against us.”

  “Still,” Androkom said, “do you know how many dragons this monster has killed? It’s not like he’s ashamed of it. He calls himself the Murder God. This would argue against an alliance, I think.”

  “Monster or not, Blasphet is currently the king’s closest advisor,” Metron answered testily. “It’s not too late to turn back if you’re afraid.”

  “We’re not frightened,” Shandrazel said. “While I question the usefulness of this visit, my uncle is no match for me, physically, should he attempt to betray us.”

  At last they reached the main floor and the star chamber. Metron entered without bothering to knock.

  Blasphet awaited them, standing before a dying fire in the room’s lone fireplace. He stirred the orange coals with a long iron poker, then placed a heavy copper caldron onto the hook above the coals before turning to greet his guests.

  “Welcome, fellow conspirators,” Blasphet said, and bowed ceremoniously. “Especially you, dear nephew. My, you’ve grown in the years since last I saw you.”

  “Do not refer to me as a conspirator,” Shandrazel said. “I take this path out of love for my father and the kingdom.”

  “Ah! Nobility. I’m glad to see Albekizan’s bloodline has produced a scion that possesses a touch of my own idealism,” said Blasphet in a sincere tone. “You fill me with hope for the world, Shandrazel.”

  “I take it you received the note I sent you?” Metron asked.

  “Yes,” Blasphet said as he walked to the balcony doors. He closed them, sealing the room. “Now we can be assured of privacy.”

  “Is it true?” Androkom asked. “You have a poison that can temporarily paralyze a foe, but otherwise does no harm?”

  “Indeed,” Blasphet said. “Such a poison would be a perfect way to assure you of a captive audience from my brother, wouldn’t it?”

  “It’s not my preferred approach,” said Shandrazel. “But Metron insists it’s the only way to speak to my father without him immediately going for my throat.”

  Blasphet stared at Shandrazel, studying his eyes. Shandrazel didn’t turn away from the stare and met his gaze. Shandrazel noticed a family resemblance in the sharp, well-bred lines of his uncle’s face, despite Blasphet’s discolored hide and bloodshot eyes. It was like looking at some dark reflection of his father.

  Blasphet asked, “You still think you can use reason to persuade him?”

  “I hope so,” Shandrazel answered.

  “Truly, your idealism exceeds my own,” Blasphet said.

  “How is this poison delivered?” Androkom asked. “Via drink?”

  Blasphet shook his head.

  “The blood, then?” Androkom asked. “An… an injunction. Injection, rather.” The young biologian’s speech was slightly slurred.

  Metron swayed on his feet. He mumbled, “Blasphet, I… I…” The elder biologian raised his talon to rub his brow.

  “Yes?”

  “I feel… light-headed. The exertion… of the stairs-”

  “No,” Shandrazel said, noticing his own breathing growing shallow. “I feel it too.”

  Suddenly the High Biologian’s eyes rolled beneath his lids and he toppled sideways. Shandrazel moved quickly, reaching out to catch the aged dragon in his arms before he hit the stone floor.

  “The air…” Androkom said, leaning against a wall to steady himself.

  “Is it too warm in here?” Blasphet asked. “I would open a window but that would let the poison out.”

  “Betrayer!” Shandrazel shouted, letting Metron slide to the floor. He leapt toward his uncle, his claws outstretched. But the air seemed too thick, slowing him, as if he were moving through water. The room swayed and where Blasphet should have stood he found only a wall. Shandrazel collided face-first with solid stone.

  “Feeling a little disoriented, nephew?”

  Shandrazel turned around, his legs trembling.

  Androkom now sprawled across the floor, as unconscious as Metron. Blasphet had moved back to the fireplace, once more stirring the coals with the poker.

  Shandrazel rushed forward, fighting the fog in his mind to focus on the target of his uncle’s throat. He opened his jaws wide.

  Blasphet suddenly possessed supernatural speed. He drew the poker above his head, then chopped it down between Shandrazel’s eyes in a blur.

  There was a flash of light, a crash of drums, then darkness. The darkness broke with pale red light as Shandrazel opened his eyes once more. He was on the floor, looking across toward Metron’s slumped body. The High Biologian’s silver-tinted scales seemed surrounded by tiny halos. Why was Metron on the floor? Shandrazel’s head throbbed with distant pain. He braced himself with his claws and slowly ros
e. The floor was spinning as if on a giant turntable. He could vaguely hear someone saying, “You’re as hard-headed as your father.”

  Another crash and the floor raced up to meet him. Everything grew silent and still.

  “WAKE UP,” THE voice said.

  No. Shandrazel ached too much to open his eyes. He pulled the blanket of sleep more tightly around his mind.

  “Wake up!” the voice repeated, and this time the demand was met by a strong poke in Shandrazel’s gut. Shandrazel tried to twist away from the pain but couldn’t move. The rattling of chains provoked his curiosity more than the voice did. Then he remembered. Blasphet! His eyes jerked open.

  “Ah,” Blasphet said from somewhere near. “You’re back. Good. The dosage affected you more than I would have guessed. You barely stirred while I was strapping you in.”

  Shandrazel tried to turn his head toward his uncle’s voice but couldn’t. His head was held fast by cold, hard bars. He shifted his eyes and flexed his limbs. His whole body was trapped in a narrow cage in which he lay flat, his wings pinned behind him with crossbars trapping his limbs, allowing not even a wiggle. The cage was suspended so that he faced downward. Below him sat a huge pool of black liquid. He noted that the cage bars weren’t metal but were fashioned from thick rods of glass. He would have little trouble breaking them, if only he could get some leverage.

  To the side of the pool he could see a wheel around which was wrapped a sturdy chain. Blasphet stepped into his field of vision, standing beside the wheel, grinning. On the other side of the pool Androkom was chained to the wall, his body slumped over, a stream of drool dripping from his mouth.

  “I designed this for your father,” Blasphet said. “But you’ll do fine for practice. This way I can work out any kinks before I try it on my dear brother.”

  Shandrazel growled. He tensed and released every muscle of his body, struggling for even an inch of movement. The cage began to sway, but only barely.

  “I’d love to stick around,” his uncle said. “Alas, I’m pressed for time. With this device your death will take hours.”

  Blasphet turned the wheel. It clicked once and the cage dropped a fraction of an inch.

  “The pool beneath you is acid. This device allows me to lower you into the pool using precise measurements, then raise you to examine the results. I’ll do a detailed drawing at each step. It should make for fascinating reference material, as the interior of the body is revealed, layer-by-layer. Practicing on you will allow me to get the subtleties worked out for your father. I have this marvelous vision of dissolving his eyelids without touching the eyes,” Blasphet said. “It probably won’t work, but what is life without a dream?”

  Shandrazel kept silent, contemplating his possible actions. His silence prodded Blasphet into talking further.

  “This acid cauterizes wounds, so you could live for several hours once we begin. Who knows? I might spend days on this project. Will you still be alive when we reach your heart? Oh, the suspense!”

  Shandrazel relaxed his entire body. He tried to allow slack to build in the cage. Unfortunately, some mechanism took up the slack. He managed only to immobilize himself further.

  Blasphet looked disappointed. “This is the point where you’re supposed to scream, ‘You’re mad!’”

  “Will you prattle on like this the whole time?” Shandrazel asked. “If so, could you dissolve my ears first?”

  “I may be able to accommodate you,” Blasphet said. “For now, I must bid you farewell. Your father has some business cooked up at dawn, which fast approaches. I believe he plans to kill Bitterwood. I must attend. It’s important I remind him how shallow and meaningless his vengeance will be.”

  Blasphet raised his claw in a gesture of farewell, then turned and vanished from sight. A few seconds later, Shandrazel heard the rattling of a key in a door, then footsteps fading into the distance.

  When he was certain his uncle was gone, he said, “Androkom?”

  Androkom’s eyes opened and he sat up. “I’m awake,” he said. “I didn’t want him to know.”

  “Have you already thought of a way to escape?” Shandrazel asked him.

  “No. You?”

  “Not yet,” Shandrazel said, trying to turn his head. “My field of vision is limited. Tell me everything you see.”

  “You, mostly, the pool and the wheel.The chains holding me, of course. There are two pairs of manacles, one for my wings, one for my legs. They run through iron rings in the wall. They look well made. There are a few lanterns on the other side of the room. My tail’s free but I can’t reach anything of use.”

  To demonstrate, he pulled himself as far from the wall as the chains would allow and thrust his hips forward, his tail snaking between his legs and stretching out about a yard across the pool.

  “Can you touch my cage with your tail?” Shandrazel asked. “If we can get it swaying enough to bang the ceiling, perhaps we could break the bars.”

  Androkom stretched, but his tail failed to reach the cage by several feet.

  “Just as well,” Androkom said. “If we did break the bars, you’d only plummet into the acid. There’s not enough distance for your wings to catch the air.”

  Shandrazel stared into the acrid ebony fluid beneath him. The stench made his nostrils water. He rubbed his snout as much as he could against the cool, smooth glass. The motion pulled one of the delicate feathers that adorned his snout free. It drifted slowly downward. Against the perfect blackness of the pool, it seemed to fall forever, into a void, until it touched the surface. Then, with a hiss, it vanished into nothingness.

  “HERE!” JANDRA SAID, raising papers over her head. “I can’t believe it! After all these hours!”

  Bitterwood rushed to her side and snatched the papers from her hand. The cover page read: “An Inventory of Human Slaves Captured in the Village of Christdale.”

  The first page contained a list of male children. He recognized the names, but one name was missing. What had happened to Adam? He turned the page and saw a list of names of women, and beside each was marked their fate. The widow Tate: dead in transit. His neighbor’s wife, Dorla: sold to a noble dragon from the Isle of Horses. Then Recanna! Ruth! Mary! All had a “K” marked next to their names.

  “What does this mean?” he asked, pointing at the mark. “Please tell me it doesn’t mean ‘killed.’”

  “It means ‘Kitchen,’” Jandra said, looking over his shoulder. “They weren’t sold at auction, but were kept by Albekizan to be put to work in the kitchens.”

  She took a closer look at the names next to Bitterwood’s fingers. All this time they’d searched for the name of his village; he hadn’t told her the names of his family. Her mouth went dry.

  “You can’t mean…” Bitterwood’s face broke into a look of joy. “They’re here! My family is within these walls!”

  Jandra didn’t answer. She turned away from him. Perhaps the names were only a coincidence. Perhaps this was a different family. Perhaps…

  Bitterwood turned around, the smile falling from his lips. “What?”

  “It’s… I knew them,” Jandra said, still with her back to him.

  “Knew? What happened to them? Why won’t you look at me?”

  Jandra spun around. “Because they’re dead! Every human who worked in the palace is dead. Albekizan ordered them killed in retaliation the day after you killed Bodiel.”

  The papers dropped from Bitterwood’s hands, fluttering to the floor around him like dying leaves.

  ZEEKY WOKE TO the sound of voices from below. She had run to the closest building she could find after the dragon dropped her, and spent the day hiding in the attic, waiting for things to calm down so that she could sneak back to the barn.

  But during the day, more residents had arrived in the Free City, and it was her bad luck that out of hundreds of empty buildings, some of the new arrivals had picked the building she hid inside to make their home.

  It was dark outside. What time was it? Something
about the smell of the air hinted that it wouldn’t be long now before the dawn.

  The words of the men speaking in the room beneath her were difficult to make out until she heard a now familiar name: Kamon.

  “You can’t mean it,” the first voice said.

  “I saw him with my own eyes,” said the second. “I would have killed him then but he was surrounded by a dozen Kamonites.”

  “I’ll stand with you,” the first voice said. “As will my brothers. Kamon will pay for his poisonous lies.”

  The conversation was dropped suddenly as a loud bang shook the house. Someone had kicked in the door.

  “Humans!” a dragon snarled. “Wake up! You must go to the square! Albekizan will address you!”

  The men raised their voices in protest until a whip cracked, silencing them.

  Suddenly, the trap door to the attic flew open and the beaked head of an earth-dragon popped through, looking straight at Zeeky.

  “Get down here,” he commanded.

  There was no exit save for the hole the dragon was stood in. Luckily, she was small and dragons were slow. She leapt forward over the dragon’s shoulder, sliding down his spine as he uselessly grabbed behind his back, trying to catch her. She grabbed his tail, swinging her feet down to land in a running position. But her feet stopped just inches from the floor. The full weight of her body hung by her collar. She twisted around to see a second earth-dragon holding her at arm’s length, looking at her as if she were some awful bug.

  BLASPHET WHEELED OVER the scene below. It was early morning; the sun was just peeking over the eastern horizon. All of the residents of the Free City had been gathered in the square, packed in tightly by the guards that stood in thick columns in the adjoining streets. They looked groggy, disoriented. Blasphet’s research had taught him that humans were most sluggish and compliant in the predawn hours. Apparently, his brother knew this as well.

  Toward the front of the crowd, a large platform had been hastily erected overnight. The platform was surrounded by dark-green, heavily armored earth-dragons-nearly the entire unit of the Black Silences-separating the crowd from the platform by rows three dragons deep. On the unpainted boards of the impromptu stage stood Albekizan, looking too smug and satisfied for Blasphet’s comfort.