by Matt Forbeck
They didn’t have long. None of us did.
“Go ahead,” Danto said, looking me in the eye now. “It’s now or never, isn’t it?”
“I’m okay with never.”
“Make it now.”
Belle and Moira glared at each of us in turn. Moira got tired of waiting for me to say something and poked me in the side.
“I was pretty young,” I said, launching into it without preamble. “Because my father taught there, I’d been a part of the Academy since I was a kid, but taking classes there was something entirely different. There was a lot of pressure to succeed, to fit in.
“I didn’t feel it much, mind you, but others did. One student in particular had a hard time of it. She decided to turn to illegal means of improving her test scores.”
“Celia?”
I nodded. “We’d started dating. She was the first girl I really fell for, but I could tell she was struggling. I’d tried to tutor her, but it wasn’t enough, so she turned elsewhere.”
“To dragon essence.” Moira gave me a sad look.
I agreed with a grimace. “I didn’t know it at the time, but I should have recognized the signs. Like I said, I was young.”
“And she got caught,” said Belle.
“She did. They found the stuff in her room. Not a lot of it mind you, but any bit is enough. They pressured her to tell them where she’d gotten it from.
“The Academy has been fighting against dragon essence forever. Any use of it is cause for immediate expulsion. Celia had worked so hard to get into the place — her parents had sacrificed so much for her to become the first wizard in their family — and she’d blown it badly.
“She was grasping at straws. She even tried to kill herself. When she failed at that too and wound up in the Academy’s infirmary, the school insisted that she tell her where she’d gotten her supply. If she could to do that, they’d be willing to forget this one-time transgression, to erase the crime from her record.”
“She told them it was you,” said Moira.
Belle gaped at her. “How did you know that?”
Moira blushed, something rarely seen on her, shameless as she could be. “It’s what I would have done.”
“She did,” I said.
“But it wasn’t true,” Belle said.
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Then why did you take the blame for it?”
I glanced back at the Academy stabbing out from Wizard’s Way behind us. “I was suffocating there. I’d been at the school too long already, even though I was only in my first year. I didn’t mind leaving. Not so much.”
“So you did that for her?” Moira said. “You always amaze me, Max. Too bad it didn’t work out between you and that girl.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” I leaned back into Belle, who wrapped her arms around my chest and held me close. “I think it worked out all right.”
“Still, you went through all of that for a girl.”
“Not just for a girl,” Danto said. “A girl and her supplier.”
Belle and Moira gasped. “It was you?” Belle said, an infuriated edge in her voice. “You let Max take the blame for what you’d done?”
“Actually, I insisted,” I said. “Once I found out myself. Celia had already named me as her supplier at that point.”
“And you didn’t just turn and point the finger at him?” Moira gawked at Danto.
“They offered me the same deal as Celia. Since they didn’t find any dragon essence on me or in my room, they figured I had to be getting it from someone else and passing it along at a profit. They told me if I gave up my source, my record would be cleared.”
“And you passed that up?” Belle said.
“I’ve known Danto since I was a little boy. He and my father used to be best friends. He was the uncle I never had.”
“I promised him I’d stop,” Danto said. “And that I’d leave the faculty too. And I did.”
Moira narrowed her eyes at him. “You were still using last week!”
“Don’t get high and mighty with me,” Danto said with a scowl. “You sold me that stuff.”
He turned toward Belle. “And you too. I know where she got it from. She always said it was from the Gütmanns, but I knew better.”
“And he did stop,” I said. “He stopped supplying it to others. That was my condition.”
“You didn’t insist he stop using?” Belle said.
“I asked him to, but I knew better than to depend on an addict’s promises to quit. To his credit, though, I think he’s kept his word about the rest of it.”
“I have,” he said, his voice trembling. “I’ve taught over a dozen apprentices since then, and I’ve not let a single one of them near a drop of the stuff.”
“But they’ve seen you using,” Belle said.
Danto straightened his robes. “If anything, I served as an excellent example of the horrors of consuming dragon essence, I think.”
Moira couldn’t help but giggle at that. “I suppose you did.”
“Wait,” Belle said. “And that’s how you got Danto to join us in our tomb-robbing trips.”
“Adventures.”
“Whatever. I never did understand why he was willing to join us. I had chalked it up to a mid-life crisis.”
“I didn’t think elves got those,” said Moira.
“We recognize the phenomena in others.”
“Once I left the Academy, I was at loose ends,” Danto said. “I wouldn’t have joined you if I hadn’t wanted to.”
Belle arched an eyebrow at the wizard. “And the fact that you owed Max for saving you from a cell in the Garrett had nothing to do with it?”
He gave her a sheepish grin. “Maybe a little. And he was still my honorary nephew, as he said.”
Belle leaned forward again and kissed me on the cheek. “You, Max Gibson, are an amazing man.”
I brought my head around to give her a proper kiss, one last thing before we landed at the Stronghold Gate. Our lips met, soft and warm and sweet.
“I love you too.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Forget it,” Benno Bricht said. “We all have our roles to play here. We completed ours when we built the Great Circle. It’s up to the Guard to defend it from there.”
“Because the Brichts always play so well with the Guard,” I said.
I should have watched my mouth. There I was, standing in the heart of the Stronghold, the center of the Brichts’ influence, though, and I couldn’t help it. Benno’s hypocrisy — combined with the fact that I had nothing to lose at this point — prodded me on.
Benno leaned over the horseshoe-shaped table at which he sat, most of the rest of the dwarf leaders arrayed to either side of him, and snarled at me. “What is that supposed to mean?”
I cast an eye to my right and speared his nephew Henrik with my gaze. The sawed-off bastard — a fat, greasy pig with a dark and lanky beard — jerked in his seat at the sudden attention. What I could see of his face flushed in anger and embarrassment.
“Let’s stick to the matter at hand,” I said, still staring at Henrik.
Henrik and I had never had any direct dealings before, but I knew all too much about him. He was murderous and reckless and had a taste for the blood of those who dared defy them, no matter who they might be. A while back, he’d hired Kai and his cousin Sig as muscle for him for those times when he wandered outside of the Stronghold, paying off guards to ignore various indiscreet acts of the Brichts’ little kingdom under the mountain.
The two orcs had witnessed Henrik murder a guard in a fit of rage. And then another. And another. Still, they’d been loyal and kept their mouths shut.
Then Henrik had murdered Ames, one of our friends from our adventuring days, and he’d managed to pin it on Sig. Thinking they had their killer, the Guard had been unsurprised to later report that Sig had killed himself in his cell — by stabbing himself in the neck. I’d considered going after Henrik myself for that, something that
hadn’t interested Yabair and the rest of the Guard, but the bastard had been untouchable at the time.
How times had changed.
Henrik sneered at me now. “If you got something to say to me, Gibson, go right ahead and say it. You don’t have the Guard around to protect you and your kind anymore.”
I stalked toward his side of the table, and the fat bastard started to sweat. “You think that because the Dragon’s gone, all rules are off? The rules never applied to you anyhow, did they? You made sure of that.”
I leaned over the table and glared into Henrik’s dark and beady eyes. “The trick here, sunshine, is you’re right. There aren’t any rules for me now either. Before I might have worried about what the Guard might do if they found me standing over your bloody corpse with your heart in my fist. Now? I don’t think they’ll care.”
“You don’t scare me.”
The sweat streaming into his eyes told me otherwise, but I let it slide. I turned back toward Benno instead. “My point is that the old rules don’t apply. The deals are broken. The compacts are dissolved. The only thing that matters now is that the Ruler of the Dead’s army is knocking down that wall you supposedly built so well, and if we don’t figure out a way to band together against her, she’s sure to slaughter us all.”
Benno squirmed in his chair and shot his nephew an uncomfortable glance before he returned his full attention to me. Belle, Moira, and Danto stood with me, as did Johan. I wondered if I’d just given him cause to regret that, but he hadn’t even tried to edge away.
“My people feel safe here in the Stronghold,” Benno said. “We built this place to withstand attacks by the mightiest armies, even one composed of the dead. Why should we risk ourselves — our families, our children — to lend aid to the Guard now?”
Belle stepped forward. “We are all citizens of Dragon City now, no matter what factions we may have belonged to before. If we cannot forge an alliance among our own people —”
“The Guard is already doomed,” Benno said. “They as much as admitted so when they destroyed Goblintown. The Ruler’s army will overrun them soon. To stand with them is nothing less than suicide, and I cannot ask my people to take part in that.”
“You have the weapons,” I said. “You’ve been stockpiling them for centuries. What you lack is the will. Your people were once proud warriors. Now you’re saddled with sacks of shit like that.” I jerked a thumb at Henrik, and he yelped in protest.
“What?” I said to him. “You want to challenge me to an honor duel? You don’t have any to fight over.”
Henrik went for his pistol, which I’d been expecting. I had mine out and pointed at the center of his skull before he managed to clear leather. He froze, his hand still half inside of his jacket.
“Stop it!” Benno said at the top of his capacious lungs. The walls of the Core echoed with the reverberations of his voice. “Put your weapons away. Now!”
I complied, keeping a wary eyes on Henrik, who didn’t move his hand from his coat.
“I said now, you imbecile,” Benno said to his nephew in a tone so menacing I almost felt sorry for the little bastard.
Henrik withdrew his hand and put it on the table in front of him.
“I’m not going to argue your point,” Benno said, returning his attention to me. “Nor am I going to change my mind. Excellent arguments aside, my people feel safe here. They will not follow me or anyone else into battle.”
“Even if the Ruler of the Dead revives the Dragon under her control?”
Benno and the other dwarves at the table blanched at this thought, all except for Henrik, who was still red-faced about how I’d treated him. “That can’t happen,” Benno said. “It’s impossible.”
“I assure you that it is not,” Danto said. “If the Ruler’s army retakes Goblintown — I’m sorry: when — the Ruler will have access to the Dragon’s corpse. It’s not hard to guess what she will do with it.”
Benno went even paler than before. Even Henrik’s outraged color faded a bit.
Benno stroked his beard. I half expected him to call some kind of closed-door meeting and kick me and the others out while he discussed all of this with his compatriots. He knew, though, that we didn’t have the time for that kind of talk. Decisions had to be made now, or they would be made for us by default.
He started to shake his head from side to side, and I thought that we’d lost him. “All right,” he said with a weary sigh. “You have our support, but I don’t know what good that will do you. We don’t have enough able-bodied dwarves in the Stronghold to make much of a difference. We couldn’t use even half the weapons we have stored here.”
“You get them ready, and I’ll find people to use them,” I said.
Benno allowed himself one last dark smirk. “At least we’ll die on our feet,” he said. “If there’s any honor in that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The reception we received in the Dragon’s Spire was even colder than the one we’d gotten in the Stronghold. I tried to tell myself that part of that had to do with the altitude, but I knew the real reason.
“We do not truck with assassins,” an elf said to me when we landed on the front shelf of the Dragon’s Spire. He wore a plain robe and had shaved his head clean, both of which were unusual choices for an elf, but I ignored that for the moment.
“Greetings to you too, Paolo,” Belle said as she led Moira, Danto, and me off the carpet. “I see you’ve finally found your own voice.”
The elf spun on Belle, and Spark — who still sat perched on my shoulder — dug his talons in as he braced for an attack. “That’s not nearly as amusing as you seem to think it might be, Bellezza,” Paolo said. “My father died only two days ago, and you dare to come here to mock his fate.”
“His father was the Dragon?” Moira said to Belle.
“He was the Voice of the Dragon!” Paolo said. “He served the Emperor faithfully for centuries and without fail — right up until this human killed him.”
“I had nothing to do with your father’s death,” I said. Technically, that was correct. It had been Kells who’d killed him with a barrage of bullets from his palanquin-mounted machine-gun. “I had nothing against him.”
Paolo snorted at me and turned to stride back into the Dragon’s den. We followed after him, not bothering to wait for permission we knew would never come. The place was colder without the Emperor’s internal furnace warming it to a sweltering heat, but the pool of lava sitting at the far end of the massive mountaintop chamber kept the temperature balmy enough. Only a dozen or so elves stood in the cavern, each of them staring at us with glassy eyes rimmed with red.
“Where is everyone?” Belle asked.
“They’ve returned to their homes to be with their families and prepare for the end,” Paolo said. “Some of them have decided to petition the Wizards Council for passage from here, but most have decided they will simply wait to die instead.”
Spark leaped off my shoulder at that moment and rose into the air, circling around the top of the chamber. For much of his short life, this had been his home. He had spent that time here with his father, resting next to him in the middle of the chamber on the half-melted horde of precious coins and gems that had once served as the Dragon’s bed.
I miss him.
I didn’t know how to respond to that. I turned to Paolo instead. “You destroyed Goblintown.”
“You assassinated the Emperor.” He walked toward the lava. The other elves moved to join him, gathering near the heat. The glow from the molten stone colored them a hideous red.
An elf lay sprawled there on the floor, staked down by hand and foot. He was dead, a knife in his chest. I recognized him as Oscuro Selvaggio, the last scion of one of the most powerful families in the Elven Reaches. Moira recognized him and gasped.
Moira had been involved with Oscuro’s sister once, right until she’d turned up dead at his hand. He’d been a thorough ass for every moment I’d known him, and I didn’t think a
nyone would mourn his loss, his mother included. I had to resist the temptation to kick him in the ribs for good measure, as pointless as it seemed. Then I had to put a hand on Moira’s shoulder to keep her from doing the same — or worse.
“With the Dragon gone, we must dispose of our own dead,” Paolo said, glaring at me.
“You going to eat him yourself?” I said.
“We will immerse him in the lava to remove him from the influence of the Ruler of the Dead. Then we will each do the same for ourselves.”
“Wait.” I held up a hand. “What?”
“You set up a suicide pact?” Danto said. Belle’s jaw dropped in horror, and she recoiled from the lava.
“Call it what you will,” Paolo said. “We are resigned to our imminent deaths, and we prefer to exit this life on our own terms.”
“The first time someone comes to town to challenge you, and you don’t even make them kill you?” I said. “You just roll over and take care of that little detail for them instead? What a bunch of cowards.”
Paolo pointed at Oscuro’s body. “Every one of us has lived for centuries. We’ve anticipated all possible outcomes, and our choices in this scenario are clear. We can preemptively remove ourselves from play, or we can wind up like the horror laid out at your feet.”
Moira stepped forward and pulled the knife from Oscuro’s chest. The elf lurched toward her, gnashing at her with his teeth. Only the bonds holding him by his arms and legs kept him from grabbing her and tearing her to pieces.
Moira let out a squeal and leaped back, the knife still in her hands. She goggled at Oscuro’s corpse as he opened his eyes and glared up at her. Then the dead elf threw back his head at an impossible angle — I heard his neck snap as he did it — and laughed.
I recognized the voice. It belonged to the Ruler of the Dead.
“So good to see you all again,” she said through Oscuro’s mouth. “I don’t think I’ve had the chance to properly thank you for paving the way for my victory here. I couldn’t have done this without you.”