by A. J. Lake
Also available in the DARKEST AGE series
BOOK ONE:
THE COMING OF DRAGONS
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Epilogue
Prologue
The walls of the cave were of stone and ice, but fire blazed at its heart. A deep crack snaked through the rocky ground, its dull red depths pulsing in time with the rumbling that filled the air. At the heart of the cave, molten rock had escaped from the earth below, pooling in a hollow filled with glowing fire. And over the hollow, red-lit in the gloom, was a great slab of black basalt, forming a makeshift anvil. The clang of a hammer mingled with the growling of the earth, and made the black rock shake.
The smith, a short, barrel-chested man, struck tirelessly at the strip of metal before him. He might have been fifty: his thick hair and beard were grey, but his powerful build and bright eyes suggested that he had lost little of his strength. He glowered down at his work, hunching jealously over the glowing strip before him.
The hammer’s clangs became higher and sharper, then mere taps, as the metal faded from brilliant white to red, and the smith took a step backwards, letting out his breath in a great sigh.
‘Is it done?’
A young woman stepped forward from the cavern’s edge. She could have been a part of the cave’s ice and shadow: slender and black-haired, her skin almost as colourless as the white shift she wore – but her face was bright with eagerness.
The smith raised his lined face and looked full at the woman for the first time.
‘It’s shaped,’ he said heavily. ‘You’re resolved on this?’
‘Yes!’ Her voice was fierce.
‘It’s time, then.’ The smith knelt for a moment by his primitive forge. On the ground, scratched in the basalt of the cave floor, was a rough circle a few arm’s-lengths wide, and in it lay an intricately wrought metal gauntlet. He raised the gauntlet as delicately as if it were glass, turning it in his hands with a craftsman’s pride. Even in the dimness, out of the fire’s glow, the gauntlet seemed to glitter, its hundreds of tiny links reflecting the light like fish-scales. The smith sighed again, and slipped the gauntlet on to his right hand, where it fitted like a second skin.
He got to his feet and picked up the still-smoking sword, his shoulders tensing as if it were unexpectedly heavy. He stood for an instant breathing deeply – then raised the blade in the air and stepped into the stone circle.
The woman crossed swiftly to join him. As she entered the circle she began to chant, low at first but raising her voice to a shrill keening, her eyes fixed on the firelit blade. The song came to an end, and she bowed her head. At the same instant the old man lowered the sword so that the point brushed her chest, above her heart. He hesitated, and she reached out with both hands to grasp the smoking blade and pull it towards her, one sharp tug that lasted for ever and less than a heartbeat.
There was a sudden hissing sound and the woman’s face contorted in agony, though it was the old man who cried out, still holding fast to the sword’s hilt. Her blood ran down the blade, falling in red drops on to her white dress. The two faced each other across the circle, surrounded by wreaths of steam from the hissing blade. Gradually the woman’s face relaxed, and now clear light was welling from beneath her hands, stealing along the sword and spreading like frost along her bare arms. The light filled the stone circle till it blazed like the sun, sending shadows fleeing to the distant ice walls. The woman was calm now, smiling faintly. She seemed suddenly transparent, as if the light shone through her.
There was a rush and clatter of footsteps, and a man burst into the cave.
‘No!’
He was young by the sound of his voice, and desperate, though hardly to be seen in the blackness around the sword’s glare. He hurled himself towards the circle – and staggered back as if the dazzling light were a barrier. He beat at it with his fists, soundlessly.
‘Please!’ he howled. ‘Take me instead!’
From inside the circle the woman turned her head to look at him, her smile touched with regret. Her body seemed transfixed, and strangely insubstantial in the unravelling light. When she spoke it was barely more than a whisper.
‘You could not … Can only be me.’
She was shimmering now, her skin wavering into motes of light. Only her eyes stayed fixed on the unseen figure for a moment longer, dark and clear.
‘Goodbye … my love …’
The sword’s light was dying, and she faded with it; her body drifted into smoke that swirled briefly around the still-glowing sword. Then the sword itself began to disappear; motes of light sinking into the surface of the blade and vanishing; the blade becoming insubstantial. Once again the cave was lit only by the dull glow of the fires under the earth; even the molten rock beneath the forge had retreated, leaving the great slab of stone dark and bare. And the two who remained had no words for each other: the young man sobbing on his knees, and the old one, staring in disbelief and terror at his empty right hand.
Chapter One
I knew even then that the fiery light in the north meant war. But I could not know how much that war would take from me. [The Book of the Sword]
Elspeth screamed.
A remembered agony shot through her right arm, and with it a sense of overwhelming grief and loss. In the blackness behind her eyelids the vision persisted – the young man kneeling, head bent; the old man staring horrified at his bare hand, both bathed in red light. And the scene stirred memories of her own: of another fire-lit cave; a metal gauntlet found in a sea-wracked chest, and the sword that had sprung so unexpectedly to her own hand. In her strange dream, she knew she had seen the forging of the crystal sword – the blade that was as much a part of her now as her own arm. But who was the young woman – not so much older than Elspeth herself, perhaps – who had played such a willing part in the painful ritual, and had disappeared?
Her arm still throbbed; hurting worse now than it had in the dream. Elspeth suddenly realised that both her arms were pinned painfully to her sides, and she could not feel her legs at all. Was she in prison again? Had the sorcerer Orgrim recaptured her? But surely she and Edmund had escaped, had defeated Orgrim. They had been feasted by the King of Wessex himself … hadn’t they?
A gust of cold stung her face, and she opened her eyes … to find nothing but freezing mist, whipping around her in an unseen wind. She might have been back on her father’s ship, carving a path through a winter blizzard – were it not for the way she was gripped, feet dangling, her arms clamped to her body by two great, scaled talons.
Memory scorched back: the dragon! It had ripped the roof off the king’s hall; seized her and Edmund … Elspeth’s heart was suddenly knocking so hard that she could hear it, and there seemed no air to breathe. Biting down on a cry of panic, she peered desperately through the greyness for any sign of Edmund. But there was nothing. The suffocating fog pressed against her on all sides, and she was entirely alone.
No. Never alone.
The voice filled her head and ran t
hrough her nerves like lightning. Her arm was throbbing again: looking down, she saw the familiar light of the crystal sword in her right hand, pale and indistinct at first, but growing stronger, more brilliant as she watched.
Beneath her, as if dispelled by the sword’s light, the fog had begun to clear. Elspeth could see land far below: an indistinct expanse of white and black glimpsed through swirls of mist. A moment later the last of the mist had gone, replaced by clear blue sky and the dazzling rays of an early morning sun. The dragon had been flying inside a cloud, Elspeth realised. Below her now was a landscape of ice and snow, barred with soft light. To one side lay a swathe of stippled darkness that might be a forest; to the other, the sun was just showing its face between mountains white with snow, their tops pink-lit by the dawn sky.
I am with you until our task is done.
What task? Elspeth wondered. What was she expected to do, in this alien land? Did the sword have some plan for her, even now? The blade’s glow in her hand seemed to pulse, like the heartbeat of a living thing, and a sudden suspicion seized her: the sword wanted me here.
What are you doing to me? she demanded. Did you bring me here?
The voice in her head was silent.
Answer me! she insisted.
This is where we must be, the voice said at last. But not like this – not carried in the dragon’s claws. And a sudden terror filled her: the sword’s fear that, after all, the great plan would fail – if Elspeth could not free herself.
‘What plan?’ In her exasperation, Elspeth had spoken aloud, but the wind whipped her words away before her ears could hear them. At that moment the beast holding her banked, tilting her sickeningly sideways as it veered towards the mountains, and she saw Edmund.
He was hanging limply from the dragon’s other front claw, too far away to call to, even without the whistling wind in her ears. From this angle she could see little but his white-blond hair and the once-fine blue cloak, now hanging around him in tatters. His head hung down as if he were unconscious, and what she could see of his face was as pale as his linen shirt.
There was a flicker of movement in the air above him, and Elspeth’s gaze flashed in alarm to the great blue-scaled foreleg that held him. It was as thick around as an oak, double-jointed like a lizard’s and folded back against the great barred underbelly that filled the sky above her. The sheer size of the creature that held them made her shudder afresh, but there was something moving there, something small and fast, even higher up. She twisted her neck painfully, scanning up and along the blue-black mass to where it joined the body … There. A tiny brown figure was clinging to the dragon’s shoulder. No, not tiny: a grown man, with a rope around his waist and a sword in his belt – who looked down and jerked his head in greeting.
Cathbar!
She had no time to wonder how the captain came to be there. He had passed his rope right around the dragon’s great forelimb: his perch was precarious, but he had both arms free as he signalled her. He pointed to the snowy ground far below, making opening and closing gestures with one hand. Then he drew his sword.
Elspeth understood him at once, and her first response was: No! He could not attack the dragon in flight! The fall would kill them, all three. But Cathbar was gesturing again, his face impatient. She looked down again. They were much closer to the ground than before. The black clumps below were recognisable as trees; she could even see the snow on their top branches. But Edmund still dangled unconscious from the dragon’s claw – how could he survive?
Cathbar pointed again, straight ahead this time. She followed his gesture – and suddenly understood. They were heading for the mountains. Jagged cliffs of grey stone loomed ahead of them: there would be no surviving that fall. And if they did not fight – if the dragon were allowed to take them to its master … whoever that was. Orgrim had been blinded and driven mad, so who summoned Torment now? One thing was for certain – this was no friend or ally who had sent the dragon to snatch them from Beotrich’s hall.
She forced her gaze back to Cathbar, and nodded once.
Smoothly, without a moment’s wait, the man swung himself into the hollow of the dragon’s shoulder and stabbed upwards. The first stroke brought barely a shudder to the claw holding Elspeth, but a low rumbling began to shake the air around her. At the second stroke a great convulsion whipped Elspeth through the air like a fish on a line. White earth and blue air whirled around her while above the great throat pulsed with an agonised roar. Out of the corner of one eye she saw a tree-like limb flailing through the air; saw Edmund, released, drop like a wounded bird.
She had time to breathe a few words of a prayer for Edmund’s life before another convulsion shook her. Bucking and plunging in the air, she saw the fight in flashes: a gout of black blood oozing from the dragon’s chest; Cathbar, the rope only holding his feet, leaning dangerously far over the beast’s shoulder as he tried to strike closer to the throat. Then the great head swung round, cutting off her view.
For an instant, as the dragon tried to reach its own chest, Elspeth caught sight of its cavernous mouth; the smoking pit of a nostril, and then the huge eye filled her sight. She could swear the eye focused on her, filled with a cold and terrifying hatred: you won’t escape me!
‘Sword!’ she whispered desperately, and the sword seemed to writhe in her hand, pulsing in rhythm with her own blood. But she could not move her arm to lift it. The claw gripping her was clenched so tightly that she could hardly breathe.
The dragon had found the source of its pain. The great head snaked upwards, sending a jet of blue flame along its shoulder. Cathbar hurled himself out of the way, his clothes burning; the scorched end of the rope whipped through the air as the dragon drew its head back to swat him into the sky. Before her vision was cut off Elspeth caught one last glimpse of him, lunging forward for a final blow.
The dragon screamed – and the talon gripping Elspeth slackened its grasp. Her arm was so numb she hardly knew how she moved it, but she managed a wild swipe at the limb above her head. Below her she saw Cathbar falling, a trail of blue fire following him like the tail of a comet. And then she was plunging after him, rolling over and over in the air, the sword flashing and the wind whistling about her, until the world went white.
Chapter Two
They came to my door in winter: three of them. By their manner, and their height, I knew they were of the Fay.
They knew that my mortal father had been a smith, before their people stole me – and they called me by the name the Fay had given me: Brokk, the dwarf, because I was so much shorter than their people. They spoke, too, of things I had thought the Fay would want forgotten: how they cast me out when I grew up, the iron in my blood proving too strong for them; and how I took with me their fairest daughter as my wife.
– What do you want of me? I asked them.
– We need you to forge a sword, they said.
Edmund opened his eyes on a dazzling pale-blue sky. Uneven white walls rose all about him and cold stung his face. His hand clenched in something soft and freezing: snow! He was lying on his back in snow – deeper than he had ever known in his life, for he seemed to have burrowed into it. Where was he?
He tried to sit up and pain shot through him, followed by panic as the walls of snow began to collapse. A soft, heavy mass poured down on him, and he scrabbled to get free, flapping both hands frantically above his head as the stuff covered his face. The rest of his body was covered by the time he finally got his head clear, coughing out the snow that had found its way into his mouth and nose. He was in a white wasteland, stretching as far as he could see in one direction; bordered by dark trees in another. Straight ahead of him, the sun was rising between bare, jagged mountains. It was all so strange that for a moment he simply lay there, just looking.
And then he saw the dragon.
It came at him out of nowhere, a giant, sinuous shape, its scales glittering blue-black in the pale air. He recognised it at once: Torment. Torment, the enemy of men, who had set
him on this strange path when it destroyed Elspeth’s ship and her father … and now it had plucked him out of the king’s hall in Venta Bulgarum, when he’d been so near to home. He remembered the sickening lurch up into the dark; the despair that had gripped him. Had it come back to finish him? The creature swooped low, only a few feet above him it seemed: he could feel the malice in the vast, cold eye. The eye itself seemed damaged in some way, streaked with black, but Edmund would never forget the threat of that stare. Terror caught in his throat, and he dug his hands into the snow as if he could cover himself again.
But the dragon did not strike. With a sound like a thundercrack, the great wings whipped down, and the long body rose into the sky in a rush of wind. The creature flapped away towards the mountains, huge and ungainly, with one foreleg hanging awkwardly down. In a few heartbeats it had vanished among the peaks.
The relief that flooded Edmund made him too weak to move for a while. He gazed at the mountains, his eyes swimming in the cold and the strengthening light of the sun. Dawn. It had been evening when the dragon took him and Elspeth, the lamps not long lit. So they must have been flying all night – and judging by the countryside, they’d gone north, far north. This land was wilder even than his father’s stories of Hibernia. But why had Torment dropped him here? And was Elspeth here too?
Elspeth! He remembered now the creature’s trailing leg and scarred eye. Elspeth must have got loose somehow, and used the crystal sword. Please, gods, let her have jumped safely herself; let her still be alive … He pulled himself half out of the snow, sending a spray of flakes into the air as he fought to get free. His legs were numb, and the rest of him hurt fiercely, as if he were bruised all over. He ignored the dull ache, dug down into the snow with his hands to free his legs and hauled himself up. The snow crumbled beneath him as he rolled into a sitting position, rubbing at his legs and wincing as the feeling came back in little hot stabs. It was hard to stand up; his knees kept buckling and the snow offered no purchase, but he managed it at last, shivering as he cast about him for any sign of movement.