End Times in Dragon City

by Matt Forbeck

  He’d turn up when I needed him. He always did. That helped make up for the times when I didn’t want him around at all.

  I didn’t see Danto anywhere either, but I’d expected that. He’d either be in his tower or at the Academy, and they were both shielded from magical scrying.

  So was the Sanguigno estate, I discovered, when I went poking around up there for Belle. I didn’t imagine that she’d go back there to enjoy a tearful reunion with her parents — who’d sold her out to the Dragon’s appetite in the first place — but I wondered if she might try to gather some of her things or even just sleep in her own bed. If so, I had no way of knowing.

  As the day wore on, I could feel the tension mounting throughout the city. The random zombie attacks came more often. Most times, people dispatched the shuffling bags of evil without too much trouble, but it wore on their nerves to do it.

  These minor clashes provided a preview of what would happen if the Ruler of the Dead’s army made it over the wall, only then it would be a hundred — no several thousand — times worse. I saw that realization dawning on the faces of the people who put these creatures down, and it set them on a razor’s edge.

  Fires erupted in a few different spots around town, especially as the sun fell behind the mountain’s western edge, plunging the city into shadow while the sky still shone blue. On a regular day, the Guard would have responded to these and put them out with their wands. Today, though, they ignored them, keeping their focus on the Great Circle. It fell to the people in those neighborhoods to take care of the blazes instead.

  As the shadows lengthened and swallowed Dragon City whole, the walking dead emerged from the forest. They massed outside the Great Circle and began to moan, then wail, then howl. They not only scratched against the wall, they beat on it with their hands, their arms, their legs, their heads. The awful noise rose to such a horrifying volume that I could hear it all the way up in my cell.

  This built to a thrumming crescendo that seemed like it might break over the wall like a tidal wave, bringing terror and death along with it. No longer was it a question of if the Great Circle would be broken but when.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I used the crystal ball Alcina had given me to reconnoiter the enemy forces, and what I saw out there on the other side of the Great Circle made me wish the Dragon was still alive.

  As they had yesterday, the zombies used each other to form fleshy ladders, each crawling over the ones below to reach higher and higher up the wall. Their wailing slowed them down a bit, but they had all night to get it right and were in no hurry. The wall would fall before them, just as surely as even mountains crumble with the passage of centuries.

  This time, though, the guards atop the wall were ready for them. As the creeping carpet of dead flesh reached about halfway up the wall, a captain of the Guard — a dark-haired elf I didn’t know — gave the signal. Dozens of guards took the cauldrons of oil they’d brought up there during the day, fitted them between the crenellations, and tipped them over the edge of the wall.

  The thick and brackish fluid oozed down the outside of the Great Circle, coating its surface as it went. When it reached the zombies, it flowed down onto them as well, and the ones near the top lost their already tenuous grips on the cut stone there and tumbled back down the swelling slope of the dead.

  A cheer went up from the Guard, but it didn’t take long for that sense of triumph to subside. The zombies learned fast enough that they could cling to each other far better than they could to the wall, and they soon showed that this would be enough. Only moments later, they were ascending again, and they reached the halfway mark of the wall once more.

  The same captain of the Guard gave out a shout then, and the guards who had tipped the oil over the edge now appeared with torches. They pitched them over the edge, and their flames caught in the oil and spread fast, racing along the surface of the wall until they collided with the closest of the dead.

  The blaze engulfed the creatures, devouring them. For a moment, the front line of the zombies disappeared in the flames and black billows of smoke that rose from their baking bodies. The guards atop the wall cheered once more, although with a bit less triumph this time. They’d had their hopes raised and dashed too many times already, and they wanted to see how this latest gambit of theirs played out before they indulged in any honest exultation.

  The fire kept burning there, creeping down the towers of the dead. One by one, the creatures on the top succumbed to the lack of flesh still attached to their bones. Not having anything left to move their frames with, they toppled backward and fell into the ravenous horde below, starting new fires there where they landed.

  The guards cheered for real after that, but the captain in charge of the city’s defense didn’t waste any time with celebration. He ordered his snipers to open fire while support teams brought up new barrels of oil, taking care not to run afoul of their compatriots’ torches. The air filled with the staccato crackling of scores of rifles blasting down at the zombies at once, a rolling thunder so loud it drowned out the creatures’ howls — which had turned from hungry to horrified.

  The zombies fell back then, the fire chewing through their dried and ancient flesh as if they were made of paper. The bullets knocked more of the burning corpses back down into their lower kindred, spreading the fire even faster. The creatures retreated under this blistering onslaught, searching for some kind of protection but finding none at hand.

  I cheered along with the Guard now, pumping a fist into the air, not caring if I attracted my jailers. So what if they took the crystal ball from me? I’d seen everything I wanted to. From here, it would only be a matter of time before the Guard routed the Ruler of the Dead’s army in full. I didn’t need to watch them mop up the stragglers.

  Or so I’d thought.

  A great cry went up from the wall, one not of triumph but dismay. I stared down the mountain through the window in my cell, but all I could see was a long wall of smoke roiling up from the Great Circle’s blazing facade. I turned back to the crystal ball to see what was happening, and the sight robbed me of my breath.

  The smoke was so thick that it was hard to penetrate now, but I nosed my viewpoint around until it pierced the smoke and could see the Great Circle from high above the other side of it. The guards in the Day Tower had been able to spot what I could now see, and they must have relayed the terrible truth to their fellows atop the wall.

  The zombies had abandoned the wall, but they hadn’t gone far. To extinguish the flames, they’d moved as fast as they could shamble toward the cataract of the Crystal River as it forked and came cascading out through the massive grates that sat on the shoulders of the Great Gate. They soaked themselves in the waters rushing there and where the river took up its course again in the land below, snuffing out the fires and leaving them soaked through to their charred bones.

  Once the last of the blazes had been put out, the bloated corpses turned toward the wall once more. Before they had avoided the Great Gate because of the waterfall there, but this time they went straight for it.

  I’d never seen the Great Gate open. It stood at least forty feet tall and was made of solid stone. Although it was shaped like a pair of massive doors set into a pointed arch, it had been more of decoration than a functional way to get in and out of the city. At the Academy, they’d taught me that the doors had been enchanted in a joint effort between the Wizards Council and the Brichts who built the wall. The doors could be opened when necessary, but only by magic. Because of the walking dead that roamed the countryside, it had been hundreds of years since this had happened.

  The Great Gate held steady as the zombies hurled themselves against it and started climbing once again. The Guard moved to greet them, concentrating their positions atop the stretch of the wall’s walkway that served as a bridge over the waterfall and the gate. At the captain’s command, they poured the oil down from the crenellations again.

  The water washed away much of the oil this tim
e, keeping it from adhering to the stone, much less the zombies. The guards tossed torches down on to it, but most of them went out before they even reached the oil that was there, doused by the waterfall’s spray.

  At a new order from the captain, the guards standing over the Great Gate swapped out the clips in their rifles for ones that had been painted bright red. At his command, they fired a barrage of these new rounds all at once.

  The bullets exploded into flames wherever they struck, knocking back the zombies they hit and even igniting small fires along the wall. These were far smaller than they’d been before, though, and none of them caught and spread.

  The zombies were too wet now to catch fire from anything less than a direct hit. That might be enough to take them out one at a time, but even the Guard didn’t have enough enchanted bullets in its armory to account for every zombie in the Ruler of the Dead’s sprawling army.

  The Dragon might have been able to scorch the creatures from the wall by baking them whole with his fiery breath, but nothing short of that seemed like it could manage it. I wondered where Spark was and if his flames could try to cut through that wetness.

  On one hand, I didn’t want him to get close enough to that battle to find out. There were too many ways for him to get clipped by an errant bullet or spell, not to mention being torn to pieces if the zombies somehow managed to get their hands on him. On the other hand, the Guard was running out of options. If they didn’t come up with some way to stop the zombies’ march soon, I couldn’t see how the Great Circle would last through the night.

  More than anything, I wanted out of my cell so that I could help. I couldn’t stand to stand there and watch the tragedy play out below me. As much as I might have hated the Dragon, I loved his city — my city — and I couldn’t bear to see it torn to pieces and devoured by the dead of another age.

  I stuffed the crystal ball into my pocket and started for the door. I was about to call for the jailers when I heard the sound of heavy boots striding up and stopping nearby in the hallway outside. I hauled up short and waited.

  The door unlocked with a loud, heavy clunk and then creaked open. Yabair stood framed in the open doorway. He frowned and then spat on the ground between us.

  “You have a lot to answer for, Gibson.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “What are you doing here?” I said to Yabair, astonished that he would bother with me right now. “Don’t they need you down at the ramparts with everyone else?”

  “My cousin Maurizzio has things well in hand at the moment,” the elf said with a sneer of unveiled disgust. “I’m here under his orders.”

  “The Ruler of the Dead’s army is knocking on the Great Gate, and he sent you up here to deal with me?”

  Yabair snorted. “You’ve always had an inflated opinion of your importance, Gibson. My business here is to gather the Garret’s resources for the battle. We can’t waste valuable people and weaponry here when they’re needed in the Village.”

  “Then what are you doing talking to — ?” I cut myself off, then headed for the door, trying to shoulder past him. “Let’s go!”

  He put up a hand and blocked my way. “That’s my business. My visit with you is purely for pleasure.”

  I stepped back and gave him a hard stare. “Hey, look, I know I date elves sometimes, but you’re really not my type.”

  He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He stood that way for a moment, then relaxed and looked at me again. “Thank you,” he said. “For making this easy.”

  “What?”

  “We are letting all of the prisoners out of our precinct houses scattered about the city. In exchange for their freedom, they get the chance to die next to us in battle.”

  It struck me as odd that this was exactly what I was hoping for. When he put it that way, it didn’t seem like such a smart play. Still, it had to be better than waiting for the zombies to find me here after they’d already killed everyone else I’d ever cared about.

  “And for those of us in the Garrett?” I said.

  He shrugged. “They’ve been deemed too dangerous and unpredictable to be released. Maurizzio fears far more trouble from them than they would be worth.”

  I fought the urge to throw a punch at the elf. It might have made me feel better to try it, but that would have faded in an instant. As fast as Yabair was, he’d beat me senseless in seconds.

  “That’s insane,” I said. “You need all hands on this one, no exceptions. What’s the harm? If those people get killed in the process, that makes for that many fewer unpredictables you have to house here when it’s all over, right?”

  I saw that this line of argument wouldn’t move him.

  “All right, forget the rest of them. They’re twisted sickos. Murderers, thieves, and worse. You’ll spend every minute they’re out there checking your back, right?” I glared deep into his eyes. “But take me.”

  Yabair’s face showed no expression at all. I took that as permission to continue, whether he meant that or not.

  “You know me, Yabair. I’m good in a fight, and I’m reliable. I love Dragon City as much as anyone, and I’m willing to do whatever I can to put a stop to the Ruler of the Dead.”

  He grunted at that, so softly I almost didn’t hear him. “You are an excellent example of someone who talks far better than he acts. You claim to love this city of ours, to care about its people. But what you did to the Dragon put us all in mortal danger. It may well wind up costing every one of us our lives.”

  He strode toward me, expecting me to retreat until he backed me up against the opposite wall. I didn’t budge an inch. Instead, I held my ground and met him nose to nose.

  I never did intimidate easy.

  “All right then,” I said. “Then give me a chance to redeem myself.”

  Yabair’s eyes grew wide, and he took a step back, standing on the cell’s threshold. “You honestly think there’s a way to make restitution for what you’ve done? You murdered the most irreplaceable person in the world, and you think you can somehow take his place, even for an instant? You couldn’t even stand in for his shadow.”

  “I’m not doing anyone any good in here.”

  “You’re staying put,” Yabair said. “You’ll remain here with all the rest of the scum of the city. You can root for us if you like. You’d better, as we’re your only hope.”

  He considered me for a moment before he continued. “If we succeed, we’ll manage it on our own. If we fall, there’s nothing you could have done that would have made a difference. Don’t flatter yourself by trying to convince me otherwise.”

  “What about the dragonet?” I said. I wasn’t quite ready to share Spark’s new name with Yabair yet. “Couldn’t he be some kind of help?”

  “He’s an infant. Were he a human, he’d still be in diapers. What good do you think he could be against that army out there? Honestly?”

  “So you’ll just let him die with the rest of us?”

  “If we can locate him, we’ll place him with the Wizards Council. They’re preparing an escape craft, and they’ve reserved a spot on it for him. Alone.”

  “I can help make that happen.”

  “Of course you can.” The elf gave me a pitying look. “But we’d require the actual heir, not your imaginary friend, wherever you might be hiding him in here.”

  I tapped the side of my forehead with my finger. “I can speak to him. Telepathically.”

  Yabair stifled a revolted gasp. “That’s not possible.”

  “Why not? He’s imprinted on me, right?”

  Yabair put a hand over his face and steadied himself for a moment. “Sometimes you’re so infuriating that I forget how impossibly ignorant you are. Each dragon has one voice — and only one — at a time. They communicate only with and through that person and no one else.”

  “So what’s the problem?” I said. “That’s me for him.”

  “A dragon’s voice is always an elf. Always. To choose a member of any other race — a
person who would inevitably expire before the dragon — would mean risking being without a voice.”

  I had a hard time wrapping my head around that. “Couldn’t the dragon just pick another voice if the voice died?”

  “It’s never happened. Ever.”

  This wasn’t adding up. It took me a moment to realize why. “But I heard the Dragon’s voice in my head too.”

  “You heard the dragonet’s voice. Or so you claim.” He pronounced each word with great care and precision, as if he were speaking to a young and stubborn child.

  “I heard them both. Right before the Dragon died.”

  “Right before you assassinated him.”

  “It was self-defense.”

  “And we can see just how effective that’s been so far.”

  “I know what I heard.”

  “Did you hit your head during that fracas down there, Gibson? Or are you simply a pathological liar?”

  This wasn’t getting me anywhere I wanted to be. “All I’m saying is that I can speak with the dragonet. You should let me. For his sake, not mine.”

  Yabair scoffed at me. “Don’t start pretending that you care for the heir now, Gibson. Or is it only because you killed his father than you’re angling to make sure you’re in the dragonet’s good graces? Perhaps you see an exalted position for yourself in the new regime?”

  “What regime?” I said. “You just told me that Dragon City is done for.”

  “All is not yet lost,” Yabair said. “Maurizzio has rallied our forces at the Great Circle, and if that fails, we still have other options.”

  Something about the way he said it made me feel like someone had walked over my mother’s grave — or the Dragon’s stomach, which I suppose amounted to the same thing. “What’s going to stop those zombies from marching all the way up to the Elven Reaches once they breach that wall?” I said.