by James Maxey
"If your power is as great as you wish me to believe, prove it now," Ragnar said to Burke.
"Don't make me do this," said Burke.
"Think of Anza," said Ragnar.
Burke grimaced, his eyes locked onto those of the prophet. Suddenly, he barked out, "A-seven!"
A powerful spring in the cellar uncoiled with a twang. The bar stool next to Ugnan splintered as a long, sharp iron rod sprang six feet into the air. Ugnan looked over at the rod, only inches away, his eyes wide. "It missed," he whispered. "It's true… my faith saved me."
Burke sighed. "Sorry Ugnan. It's not divine will, just bad memory. It's been, what, twelve years since I built the grid?"
Ugnan looked confused.
Burke looked down at his feet, cupped his hands to make a fleshy megaphone, and shouted, "A-six!"
Dealon turn away as a pained shriek tore from Ugnan's lips. His twitching body lifted into the air and his sword hit the floor with a clatter. Blood splattered the ceiling. Ugnan's eyes remained open as he lifelessly slid down the spike.
"Alas," said Ragnar. "Ugnan's faith was weak. But my faith is strengthened. Perhaps Kanati the machinist is long dead. The Lord has delivered us a man who matches his talents. Join me, Burke. Together, we cannot fail."
"What I did to Ugnan I can do to every man in this room," said Burke. "Even you."
"You didn't kill me, though you could have. You know that should I die, the men outside this tavern will run wild."
"True," said Burke with a sigh. "The only thing worse than an army led by a fanatic is an army led by no one at all."
Burke stared into the eyes of the naked prophet. His hand rested on a second lever beneath the bar. Dealon wondered what intricate machinery that lever would set in motion. Yet the look on Burke's face was one familiar to him. It was the same expression Dealon often saw in the glass eyes of the chess-monkey, the look his own face wore when he was in check and any move he made was going to cost him dearly.
Burke's fingers slipped from the handle.
"No one else," he said. "I'll join you if no one else from the town is taken."
Now it was Ragnar's turn to stare as he silently contemplated his opponent's offer. He studied the twisted form of Ugnan, standing like a fleshy scarecrow, supported by the steel rod. Ugnan's blood pooled around the prophet's bare feet. With a look of satisfaction in his eyes, Ragnar turned to Burke. "Agreed."
Burke relaxed. He crossed his arms and said, "You've picked up a fair little army with this 'join or die' tactic. Do you have any other plans up your sleeve? If you had sleeves, that is?"
The prophet smiled, his yellow teeth gleaming amid the dark tangle of his beard. "It's not by chance we travel the Forge Road."
Burke nodded, as if Ragnar had just explained everything.
Chapter Nine:
Fever Dreams
Bitterwood dreamed of fire. He fled down corridors of flame-wreathed stone in Chakthalla's castle, holding his breath to avoid the deadly smoke. He emerged into a courtyard to find his home village, Christdale, ablaze. All the wooden buildings glowed apple red, yet were still intact; the black cinder bodies of women and children stood in doorways, beckoning to him. He stumbled through the inferno of the village, his lungs aching, blisters rising on face, to arrive at the church he'd built board by board with his own hands. The structure collapsed in a spray of bright sparks. As the burning walls fell away, stands of living trees were revealed. It was the temple that had stood in this village long ago, the temple of the goddess.
He peered through the smoke into the heart of the temple, toward the statue of the goddess. In Bitterwood's youth, the goddess had been a wooden carving, immobile, but in this dream she was walking toward him, a voluptuous female form with skin of rich mahogany. Where her hair should have been there were gouts of flame, slithering together like glowing snakes, flicking their tongues in evil hisses.
The fire spread across her polished skin as she drew closer. The goddess stumbled, her glowing arms stretched toward Bitterwood, as if begging him to catch her. He tried to run, but couldn't move as the goddess fell against him and his own skin caught fire. In his panic, he jerked his eyes open.
He was lying under a stone outcropping. A small, pathetic campfire sputtered at his side. White smoke drifted from the coals and wrapped around his head like a cloud. With every breath the acrid stench filled his lungs. He was under a heavy wool blanket that smelled like manure. He was awash with sweat. The breath that passed between his shivering lips was hot and dry as a summer wind. He tried to wipe the sweat from his eyes. The hand he lifted was barely recognizable as his own; it was a yellowish gray streaked with purple. Bitterwood tried to wiggle the swollen fingers and they didn't move. He dropped the limb limply to his chest.
Glancing around the shelter, he couldn't see Zeeky or Poocher, but the boy he'd saved was near, leaning up against Killer's massive body. Both were sleeping. Killer's legs were covered with brown bandages. Bitterwood tried to speak, but wound up coughing. The intended effect was the same. Killer and the boy opened their eyes.
Bitterwood licked his dry lips and whispered, "W-where's Z-Zeeky?"
The boy shrugged. "Gone," he said.
"G-gone where?"
"Dead Skunk Hole," the boy said.
Bitterwood nodded, as if the boy's words made sense. Then he closed his eyes and slipped back into dream.
The first dragon Bitterwood had ever killed had been a sky-dragon. The beast had been flying overhead, little higher than the tree tops. Bitterwood had been practicing with a bow since the fall of Christdale, never wanting to again be unprepared to defend himself. Bitterwood hadn't needed to defend himself from this dragon. The sky-dragon never even glanced down as it passed. Bitterwood had been, quite literally, beneath its notice. Bitterwood could have ignored it and continued his training. Instead, he'd made a lucky guess as to how far ahead of the beast he needed to aim and loosed the shot. The beast had yelped a single word-"What?"-when the arrow caught in its breast, then spiraled through the air as its damaged chest muscles tried to maintain its flight. It crashed at neck-snapping speed.
Bitterwood had stood over the dead dragon a long time, trying to feel something. Guilt, perhaps, for killing a creature that had nothing to do with the deaths of his family. Or, satisfaction, at least some small flicker, that his shot had found its target and the population of dragons was now reduced by one.
He'd felt nothing. Intellectually, he was aware he'd just killed a fellow intelligent being, capable of thought and speech. Until this moment, the only large thing he'd ever killed had been a deer when he'd hunted with his brother Jomath. He'd felt some small twinge of remorse looking down at the deer, though that emotion had changed to satisfaction when he'd later dined upon a steak cut from his kill.
Remembering that meal, he'd cut the dragon's thigh free from the body and left the rest to be picked over by buzzards. That evening, he'd roasted the thigh over a fire. He could still smell the aroma of dragon fat as it dripped from the leg and sizzled on the coals below. He remembered the way the tough, chewy meat played upon his tongue, the gushes of smoky grease. He could still be warmed by the glow that filled him after that meal as he stretched out under the stars, his belly full.
To this day, there was no sound more satisfying to his ears than a startled dragon yelping, "What?"
Deep inside his dream, Bitterwood was aware of his nostrils twitching. He was keenly tuned to the smell of dragons, the way their hides stank of fish, the way their breath smelled of dead things. His nose served as an extra eye, alerting him when dragons waited in the dark, unseen. His lids cracked open the barest sliver.
A dark red shape loomed at the mouth of the cave. Then it was blotted out by a second shape, scaly like a dragon, but shaped like a woman. The woman's face drew closer. Did he know her?
"Recanna?" he mumbled before his eyes closed again.
"He's burning up," the woman said, pulling the blanket and taking away a fair number of scabs with it. The smell of
rotting meat wafted through the air. The woman audibly gagged. "By the bones," she said softly, strange words from a human's lips. It was normally an expression of dragons.
"That's a lot of pus," said a deep voice. Bitterwood recognized the timbre of the sound, the bass formed by a belly wide enough to digest a man. A sun-dragon. Was he still dreaming?
He opened his eyes once more. A sun-dragon peered into the small cave, his eyes glowing green in the firelight. Bitterwood was certain that he was looking at a ghost: Albekizan, coming to claim his revenge. Yet, despite the similarity, this dragon was younger than the king. Bodiel? No, Albekizan's youngest son was dead too. Who was this?
This dragon didn't seem to be watching him. His eyes were focused above Bitterwood. Bitterwood tilted his head to find the woman he'd glimpsed kneeling over him. He flinched as her fingers probed his wounds. Yellow fluid oozed beneath her fingertips as she applied pressure. She closed her eyes. Bant struggled to recall where he'd seen her before. Her helmet was familiar… it looked like the one the wizard-dragon Vendevorex had worn.
"J-Jandra?" he asked. It had to be her. She looked different since their time together in the Free City. Older, somehow, though only weeks had passed.
"I'm here," she said. "What the hell did this to you, Bant?"
"Dragon," he mumbled. "N-never seen one like it."
"I can't believe you're still alive." Her voice sounded distant and distracted. Her eyes were closed, flickering back and forth under the lids. "I've never seen so much infection."
"I-I've felt w-worse," he said.
"You'd lose your left leg if I weren't here," Jandra said. "Still might. This is going to take some work."
She said something else a moment later, but her voice seemed far away, lost beneath some hiss, like the fall of a hard rain. Was it raining? He couldn't see anything beyond the veil of black mist that slid across his vision, blotting out Jandra, the dragon, and the fire beside him.
All pain left his body as he slipped into cold, unending darkness.
He woke sitting in the peach orchard of his youth. It was springtime. Everything was blooming, the world was pink and fresh. Recanna was lying at his side, her head in his lap. It was a warm day, and the only sound in the world was the faint hum of bees working through the blossoms overhead.
He was young again, eighteen perhaps. His hands were calloused from labor, but unscarred by battle. He looked at them, wondering why he'd expected them to be any different.
He nudged Recanna. She stirred, sitting up, brushing her long dark hair from her face.
"Did I fall asleep?" she asked.
Bant started to say yes. He stopped as he remembered why his hands should be scarred.
"You died," he said. "Dragons killed you. Dragons killed you because of what I'd done."
She nodded, looking as if she, too, were searching her memories. "Yes," she said. "I remember now."
The breeze that washed over them was warm and scented by the clover of the nearby fields. Bitterwood swallowed hard. Nothing hurt inside him for the first time in memory. "Is this… is this heaven?" he asked, softly.
"Do you believe in heaven?" she asked.
"No," he whispered. "I haven't believed in anything for a long time."
"Then where will you find me?"
"I don't… I don't know."
He raised his hands to wipe the tear that trickled down his cheek. As the back of his hand touched his face, he woke.
"Recanna?" he said, sitting up, looking across the dark room toward the female form that sat near the fire.
"It's me," the woman answered. "Jandra. Can you see me?"
He rubbed his eyes, then blinked several times. Suddenly, Jandra popped into focus. "I see you," he said.
"Good," she said. "I was worried your fever might have damaged your vision. I tried to repair some of the fine blood vessel damage I found there, but I'm still new at this. I worried I might do more harm than good. But I thought I was doing it right because I discovered something strange about you."
"What?" he asked.
"You already had nanites inside you. They were dormant, like they were left over from repairing you before, but they already contained programming for restoring tissue. I just had to reactivate them. Did Vendevorex ever heal you?"
"No," said Bitterwood. "I don't know what a nanite is."
"And no one has ever cured your injuries before?"
"I didn't say that," Bitterwood said. "A long time ago, after the fall of Conyers, I was healed by a green-skinned woman. She caused my hands to grow back after they'd been bitten off by a dragon. To this day, I don't know if she was an angel or a devil. Since she worked her magic, I've been faster and stronger. My vision is as sharp as a sky-dragon's."
"Hmm," Jandra said.
Bitterwood stared at his hands. They were wrinkled, calloused, and scarred. Yet, they felt whole. The decaying purple sausages that had sat at the end of his arm were wriggling fingers again. It wasn't just his hands that felt restored. He tossed aside the blanket, which was now clean. Beneath, he was naked. All the wounds inflicted by the long-wyrm were healed. His body was covered by a hundred smooth crisscrossing scars, but he felt fine. All traces of the fever and weakness were gone.
"I'm sorry about the scars," Jandra said. "Once I got rid of the infection and repaired the deep structure damage, I simply accelerated your body's own healing systems."
Jandra wasn't looking directly at him as she spoke, averting her eyes from his nudity. Bitterwood grabbed the blanket and pulled it back over his lap to hide himself.
"You must command the same magic Vendevorex used," Bitterwood said. "He healed himself after being gutted. He should have died."
"He did die, later, in the Free City. I'm not sure how much you know about what's happened since I left you."
"Not much," Bitterwood said. "I've been traveling with Zeeky… Zeeky! Where is she?"
"Missing," said Jandra. "Her brother said she went into the mines."
"That fool girl," he grumbled. "She'll get herself eaten. Why didn't you go after her?"
"I've been saving your life," she said, looking hurt by his scolding tone.
Bitterwood looked around for his clothes. If Zeeky had gone into the mines, he'd have to go after her. "Where did you put my-?"
"Here," Jandra said, lifting a folded bundle of leather and linen. "I took these off because I didn't want to get the fibers entangled in your wounds. I repaired them as best I could. Nothing fancy. There wasn't much to work with."
She tossed the bundle to Bitterwood. He caught the familiar fabric, recognizing at once the linen shirt and buckskin pants he'd worn for so many years. He couldn't recall the last time they'd been so completely free of blood stains. The tattered blanket he'd worn on his journey had been fashioned into an actual cloak, complete with a drawstring hood.
"I didn't know you were a seamstress as well as a witch," he said. He took a sidelong glance at her. "You've changed your hair again." Her long brown locks hung freely past her shoulders from beneath the silver skullcap. In the Free City, her hair had been black, and barely shoulder length. Her clothes also caught his attention, as it looked like dragon hide. The material clung to her body in a way that seemed part of her. Elaborate flourishes of feathery lace around the cuff and collar seemed more appropriate for a palace than for a cave in the wilderness. "Your clothes look like something that peacock you consorted with might have worn. What was his name? Pet?"
Jandra frowned. "Pet wasn't my consort. I don't appreciate being judged simply because I want to wear something nicer than rags."
As she spoke, Bitterwood sniffed the air. "It's not my imagination. There was a sun-dragon here."
"Hexilizan," said Jandra. "He likes to be called Hex."
"Ah. The disgraced first-born."
"You've heard of him? I lived in the castle all my life and didn't know who he was." She turned her back to him. "Put your clothes on so we can go see the others."
"I know Albek
izan's family well," said Bitterwood, unfolding the bundle. "He had six sons and four daughters. Only two of the sons survive-Hexilizan and Shandrazel. Lancerimel followed the Dragon Road beyond the Cursed Mountains and never returned. The other three I killed… though only Bodiel's body was discovered."
"Don't brag about that to Hex," she said. "In fact, before we go further, I want to lay down some rules. Back at Chakthalla's, you gave me your word not to kill Vendevorex, and you kept it. Now, I want your word that you won't kill Hex. He's my friend, and I won't have him become another notch on your bow."
"I don't carve notches in my bow," said Bitterwood, struggling to pull his pants over his thighs. The buckskin had tightened. "It would weaken the wood."
"You know what I mean. At Chakthalla's castle, you didn't take sides. If it had scales, you put an arrow into it. But all dragons aren't alike. Hex has done nothing to hurt you."
"You know nothing of the real world, girl," Bitterwood answered, finally getting the pants up to his waist. Despite the snugness of the buckskin, Bitterwood could tell he'd lost weight during his time of fever. The skin of his belly lay tight against the muscles beneath, all hint of fat eaten away in an effort to keep him alive. "As Albekizan's son, Hex trained in the art of hunting humans. Your so-called friend has feasted on the meat of slaves he's brought down. No dragon is innocent."
"Sun-dragons' reputation for eating humans is vastly exaggerated," Jandra said. "Most of them eat the same stuff people do-fish, beef, bread-just a whole lot more of it."
"Foods produced by human labors, which the dragons steal. You don't know that because you've led a sheltered life, protected by a dragon who treated you as affectionately as some men treat their dogs."
"I'm not naive," said Jandra. "I've killed dragons. I've killed humans. Nothing about my life is sheltered anymore."
Bitterwood silently pulled his shirt on, weighing her words as he laced the front closed. Jandra was forever corrupted by having been raised by a dragon. However, he knew he wouldn't be alive without her. She would also be helpful in finding Zeeky. Despite being a witch, she seemed to have a kind heart. Finally, he sighed. "What is it that you want of me?"