by D Mickleson
“Your duty is to your people first,” hissed the harsh voice. As Triston stood listening, he found the hairs rising on the back of his neck. That voice. It spoke to him out of his past like the return of a childhood nightmare, though he would have sworn he’d never heard it before. “We must stand and fight. To leave this thing in the hands of a madman would be a bitter betrayal and indeed, an indelible stain on the house of our fathers.”
Triston breathed in sharply and the voices fell quiet. Our fathers? Who—?
“Triston! Come in!” said Stentor, peering around the doorframe. “What do you mean by lingering at the threshold, son? Come. There’s someone who would see you.”
Triston stepped tentatively into the room. The king was standing behind a high-backed chair, a glass of brandy in his hand and a look of suppressed horror on his face. Before him a hooded figure sat in a matching chair. The glow of a dying fire nearby failed to illuminate the face beneath the cowl. Triston, not daring to take his eyes off the seated person, felt dread grip his heart and squeeze with icy fingers. He wasn’t breathing.
“There you are at last, dear boy,” growled the high, raspy voice. “I’ve been looking forward to this so much since our last parting.” The figure lifted two gnarled, black-blotched hands and pulled down the hood.
“No!” he shouted, stepping away and shaking his head in denial.
Stentor narrowed his eyes. “Now see here Slendrake. You ought to show more respect. My sister has . . . suffered much. A terrible injury, that’s all. But she’s still the same person on the inside I assure you—”
“On the contrary brother, I find his pained outburst touching. He obviously feels for my shame in this wretched condition, and for that I thank him.”
Triston could only gape. The woman who had murdered his father, who had tried to feed him to a manticore, who he believed good and dead, now stood before him, smiling.
If such a look could be called a smile, for the Seer was horribly changed. Her once breathtaking face was scarred and blackened. Clumps of mangled skin dangled here and there, open sores oozing with yellow bile. She was burned almost beyond recognition, but she was very much alive.
Triston turned his head from side to side, wishing he could run, never to see that wretched face again. But horror rooted him to the spot.
“This boy, brother,” she said, hobbling over to him and placing a damaged arm on his shoulder, “volunteered to escort me to Luskoll and we became fast friends on the way. He’s quite a little hero. And I have exciting things in store for him.”
“Very well,” said Stentor, glancing at the Seer, then wincing and looking hastily at Triston. “Triston, if you would sit down—”
“There’s no more time for talk, my king. I will explain everything to him while we work.”
“As you say then, sister. But I haven’t rescinded the ban on sorcery within the castle. When you find the Relic, you will bring it here unused.”
The Seer bowed her haggard body painfully to her brother, then turned to Triston. “Dear child, your king needs you. I need you.” She patted his chest, raising crooked, slimed lips to his ear. “We know how gifted you are, like your father. Now come. Follow me.”
The hooded nightmare led him to the armory, Triston following with leaden feet. Each beat of his pounding heart demanded that he draw steel and run her through. That, or turn tail and put as much distance between himself and her as the besieged isle allowed.
But he did neither. To slay the king’s sister in cold blood was a death sentence for himself, and that was no revenge. And flight? He might find a way down into the catacombs and through the underwater tunnel off the island, but one thing held him back: to flee now was to surrender the Relics of Power to the two people he least wished to possess them. No, his churning insides notwithstanding, he would remain.
The Seer’s shuffling feet halted before a sword rack. She gazed up at a stained-glass window in whose vivid panes a sea monster reared a scaly neck above a storm-heaved sea. “Now,” she croaked, keeping her back to him—why did she feel so secure? Didn’t she know how much he wanted to kill her?—“tell me what you see.”
Triston could scarcely take his eyes off her long enough to take in the colored light above them. She had killed his father. She had doomed him and his mother to poverty and loneliness. She was the reason for all his suffering. Maybe a death sentence was worth it after all. He placed a hand on his sword hilt.
“Tell me!” she shrieked suddenly.
“I see a monster.”
“Ha!” she barked, turning slowly to face him, once again removing her hood. Triston felt his lunch shift uneasily in his stomach. “Does your handiwork displease you?”
She stepped closer, and Triston began to imagine he could smell the gaping sores, a rancid, putrid odor. He gagged. “Ha!” she laughed again. “Babes wail when they see me, and little girls cry.” She put on a baby voice, cooing, and the sound, mixing with her rasping breath, sickened him. “Are you going to cry too Triston? Awwww. I may no longer be pretty, but I assure you my brother is right—I am still the same on the inside. NOW TELL ME WHAT YOU SEE!”
Triston mastered himself at last, staring back at his enemy coolly. “Why should I?”
She stepped even closer, her breath hot on his face. He took an involuntary step back, colliding with a table on which many shields were stacked. One fell to the floor with a clatter. “Because if you don’t help me,” she spat, “if we don’t work together, he’ll get it, and neither of us wants that, now do we?”
“And why do you need me?”
“Ha!” she cried again, and a wild light danced in her sunken eyes. “Not too sharp after all.” She shut two livid, blue-green eyelids. “How I let you . . . how you managed—never mind! Listen!” And now her words began running together, her voice became urgent.
“I’ve heard your story from my brother, how you say you found the Relic. I know you’re a liar, boy, and I don’t doubt the tale is riddled with falsehoods. But one thing became clear to me at once: the magic guarding Magog’s Fury is ancestral, that is to say, tied to the hereditary line of the Dragonslayer. I’ve heard of such things before, enchanted heirlooms which can only be passed down the bloodline. Of course,” she went on more slowly, her eyes shining with desire, “once the magic is awakened, anyone who possesses the enchanted artifact can use it.”
Triston had been backing away from her along the table, scattering a few more shields, but now he stood frozen with astonishment. “So I am descended from Willbrand. I wondered, because only I could enter Magog’s tomb.” The Seer made a guttural noise of disgust. “Your descent was obvious from the first, you worthless lump. What do you think Slendrake means in Old Corellian? Dragonslayer, of course. Now, I know old Alfie took you down to the archives, and he must have shown you the Chronicle of Sir Athant. ‘The one with the Dragoneye.’ That’s you, dimwit that you are, and no one else. That means only you can find the Serpentaugrum.”
Triston shook his head. “But that’s not right. The Chronicle said the bearer of Magog’s Relic is the one with dragon eyes. I hate to break it to you—you didn’t take it all that well last time—but I still don’t have it. I did, not before, when you asked me, but after that. Before now.”
“Idiot. Shut up! You had it but Sarconius took it. But you awoke the magic. He may wield the dragon’s brute strength while he holds the dragonbone, but only you, the true bearer, can see with Magog’s eyes. The charm is bound up with your life.”
She stared off above his head for a few moments, her mutilated features contorted with regret. “I didn’t realize back then when I—you’re poor old father. When the hemlock wine did its job, the Relic must have just vanished from wherever he’d stowed it. Poof! Magog’s spirit must have returned to his bones, awaiting a new heir to claim mastery. You.”
Overcome with fascination but at the same time trembling with fury, Triston spoke in a growl more harsh than hers. “And you expect me to help you find another Re
lic? After what you did! After . . . my father . . . and my mother widowed, and after everything else! I’ll die first.”
The Seer put on a show of yawning, the ooze from her running sores stretching across her mouth’s cavity like the green webs of a venomous spider. “Don’t be tiresome. You want the Serpentaugrum as much as I, but NEITHER will get it until Sarconius is dead.”
“I’m going to find it and use it to kill both of you.”
The Seer cackled and spit bubbles formed at the edges of her lips. “That’s the spirit!” she said, lifting a blackened hand to caress his cheek. Triston made a sudden swipe at her face with the back of his hand, but his blow was driven wide by some unseen force. He raised his hand a second time, eyes blazing. The Seer’s throaty laugh rang in his ears. “Weak. All too weak. And most of my powers gone. But come now, boy. Tell me what you see in this window.”
Triston took a long, calming breath, trying to force his screaming emotions to grow quiet. He needed to think. He needed a plan. After a few moments in which only the Seer’s wheezing breath could be heard, he opened his eyes and glared up at the stained glass. “So . . . I’m supposed to see with . . . with dragon eyes, am I?” he mused out loud, doing his best to pretend the person he hated more than anyone in the world was not standing a few feet away. “And what did the Chronicle say? ‘When I see the leviathan locked in the vault then I’ll know I’m close. Does that about sum it up?”
“Locked in the vault! No no no no no! Old Alfrich was weak in his Corellian,” she said scornfully. “I always read it, ‘trapped in the deep,’ or maybe ‘abyss.’”
“But ‘abyss’ could mean the sea, and we’re talking about a sea serpent. How could he be ‘trapped’ in the sea? He lives there. And almost every image of the leviathan in the castle includes water one way or another. We’ll be looking forever.”
She smiled wryly. “You begin to see the problem. I spent years searching this castle, studying each image, all for naught.” She began to poke his arm. “And. We. Have. Hours. So focus! I’ll take you around to the grandest, most striking depictions, and you see what you can see. Only—you must have some idea what it means by Dragoneye?”
“I have no idea.”
The Seer’s eyes bulged at this. She looked like she wanted to strike him. “But you are the bearer! Think, boy!”
“OK, just listen. When I found Magog’s tomb I perceived his spirit from afar, but no matter where I go in this castle I can’t feel anything. Are you sure—”
“Donkey’s ass! You felt Magog because you’re bound to him through your bloodline. It won’t be so easy this time. Only with the Dragoneye do you stand any chance. Now, look at this window. Use your heart, not your human eyes. What do you see?”
Triston gazed into the light, letting its multihued brilliance wash over him. He imagined the stream of rainbow light pouring onto his face was washing him of all his hatred, fear and anger, leaving him free to feel—what?
He was weary. So weary. And bound without hope to an eternity of enslavement. And what a use of his spirit! The master was doing the thing he hated above all, the ancient ritual he detested. So foul, so unnatural.
Someone was reaching out to him, another spirit from inside the castle. Not her. A human this time . . . .
“Well! What did you see? Speak young fool, before the black tide overruns our feeble defenses.”
Triston opened his eyes and looked at her. “I felt him, Magog I mean.
The Seer’s eyes widened. “And the Serpent?”
Triston shook his head. “Not here. Take me to the next likeness.”
Lord Arsis Sarconius lay slumped against a pile of pillows, a wet towel wrapped around his forehead. The flagship’s cabin was cramped and stuffy. As he listened to the creaking of timbers and tight-bound ropes on the deck above, he longed to rise and go ashore.
Alas, no. The forcing of the Seagate had nearly destroyed him. As much as he loathed admitting it, his aging bones were recovering more slowly than would a younger man’s.
He must have the Serpentaugrum, but how to win through the defenses? The defenders meant nothing. A blast of dragon breath would scatter them like dust. No, his struggle was with steel and stone, and—curse the lot of them, those wretched halfmen. The ancient gate was likely imbued with resistance to sorcery. The thought of challenging the legendary tenacity of the dwarf-tempered steel barring his legion’s entry to the citadel brought a groan louder than the heaving planks surrounding him.
But there was no time to lose. He’d already wasted precious days in Wyrmskull acquiring Magog’s Fury. He’d lost another in vain pursuit of the boy. Now the eye of one he feared, the only one, was turned westward with mounting impatience. The looting of Whitecastle was supposed to be over and done with. The plan—to swoop through a wide-open Seagate and seize the Relic within before the defenseless king knew what hit him—had failed. Badly. And now he was left with an all-out siege on his hands, a waiting game which might persist for weeks.
Sarconius did not have weeks. He had hours. If Commander Civitas were to find out that there was no insurrection against King Stentor, that this was no rescue mission to oust a usurper and put the rightful king back on the throne, all was lost. If Stentor even showed himself on the walls to rally his men . . . .
Sarconius sat up, swooning with dizziness at the sudden motion. He had to act. Now. But how?
Perhaps the dragon power might be used to tear up the stone walls? The feat would probably take him three or four uses with long rests in-between. He breathed in and out slowly as he pondered this. Certainly it could be done, eventually, but by the time the castle was breached he would be too weak to enter, too weak to claim that which he sought. Civitas would find Stentor alive within, or worse, he’d find the Relic and take it for himself. No, the legion must be used to tie down the Corellian army and prevent escape. But he alone would deal with Stentor. He alone would find the Relic.
But how?
Sarconius leapt to his feet, struck so suddenly by such a terrible, such a wonderful thought it was like a lightning bolt directly to the brain. Of course that was the way. He was in possession of a Relic of Power now! How could he have been so thoughtless? The greatest gift a Relic could give, the ancient evil for which they’d all been hidden ages ago, and he nearly overlooked it! He shuddered to think what his master would say if he knew of the near blunder. A very great magician like his master might animate dozens of them at a time, but Sarconius needed just one for now.
But there was no guarantee. He had to be sure. Before he acted, he had to know. He closed his eyes, sending his thought over water, over land, over a stone wall. All the while he chanted in the ancient tongue, chanting words few had ever heard, and fewer still understood. The dark one had taught him this spell, a gift from him to whom he owed all, the one to whom he had given all.
The shadow of his thought flitted into the citadel. It darted here and there looking for a resting place. Beating hearts drove back that shadow, and on cold stone it found no resting place. His darkness needed—there, and again, there. Many were here, down in a crypt beneath the castle. But these were very old, bodies long ago lost to the corruption of decay. He needed fresher meat.
And there it was. So fresh the warmth had scarcely left it, the blood had yet to drain. In his spellbound state Sarconius could give no whoop of joy, but a gurgling exhalation escaping from his throat signaled his ecstasy. Yes, this one would do nicely.
His eyes snapped open. He dashed across the cabin in three strides to ring a bronze bell, all weariness forgotten.
The servant answered with commendable alacrity. He would not use this one for the ceremony. “Bring me my spellchest from the hold below. I need sage and nightshade. And send in a different servant, that fat one I think. Tell him he will perform an essential service for me. Then go ashore and alert Commander Civitas to forget his tunneling. He must be ready to storm the castle through the open gate in no less than six hours. Now repeat that back to me.”
When the servant had backed out of the cabin with a groveling bow, Sarconius stood still for a few moments, tense but flushed with expectancy. The fleshthrall would be animated within the hour, but he would send no command just yet. He needed time to regain his strength. Then he would be ready when the gate swung open.
TWENTY-TWO
THE ONE WITH THE DRAGON-EYE
But the loftiest craft was birthed by Athant . . . the dragonbone and the serpent-eye none withstood, and these were ever one . . . Peace reigned long years . . . Then came the Necromancer, whose sorcery surpassed all others. War kindled anew.
—excerpts, Vanished Histories, hidden fortress of Tharzule
Triston idly turned the puzzlebox in his hands, admiring the way light from a nearby candelabra glinted in its jewel-ensconced sides. With a twist of the upper row, the figures realigned. The formerly jumbled shapes now stood out as everyday objects, a battleaxe, a dwarf maid, three ships with bent sails . . . .
“Fool! You won’t find the Serpentaugrum concealed in a dwarf toy. Now come here.”
He put the box down on an ironbound chest beside him, then made to join the Seer beside the huge, bronze sculpture of the sea serpent that dominated the middle of the Royal Treasury. But suddenly he stopped, holding his hands to his temples and wincing.
The pains were growing worse. The dragon was wrathful, suffering in silence, impotent to stop the Meridian sorcerer. The more Triston tried to see with Magog’s eyes, and the stronger their bond became, the louder came the distant echo of the dragon’s voiceless rage.
“It’s him again, isn’t it? The dragon. You must see as he sees, but you cannot lose yourself in him. You must keep your human mind or you’ll be of no use whatsoever.”