by Shae Ford
“Sleep well, young man.”
And for the first time in a long while, he did.
Chapter 31
The Myth of Draegoth
“Your Majesty? Are you all right?”
The darkness peeled back and the worried face of a guard came into focus. Rough fingers pressed against Crevan’s neck. He knocked them away. “What are you doing in here?”
“The Seer called us. He said you were in danger.” The guard held his spear protectively over his chest as Crevan got to his feet.
He had good reason to be afraid.
Their screams were distant now, but Crevan still remembered the faces of the men he’d slaughtered in his chambers. They’d come crashing in, blathering something about trouble in the seas …
No, not only trouble … disaster. Treason! He remembered it, now: the chancellor’s promise of an alliance had been a trap — a ploy to murder his final ruler. Countess D’Mere’s panicked message still rang clearly through the fog of his memories. She’d barely escaped with her life.
The High Seas had joined with Titus. Crevan’s vision had gone red at the sight of the gold medallion tied around a stinking, gore-soaked bag — redder still when he’d torn the medallion away and the severed heads of his envoy rolled out.
He’d hardly been able to read the sealed note the guards handed him, hardly been able to grasp the fact that all his plans for Titus had just crumbled out from under him. The red cloud enveloped sight, and he knew no more.
Now as he glared around the room, he saw an empty goblet laid a few stones from his boots. The chair near the hearth was toppled over onto its side. He must’ve drunk his liquor too quickly — that was what had caused the sudden darkness … that was when his latest bout of madness had begun.
The Firecrowned King had come to him again. Flames had spouted from between its teeth and its skeletal face waved in the heat. Crevan had swallowed the contents of his goblet as quickly as he could and shut his eyes tight. But he’d found no peace.
No sooner had the Firecrowned King vanished than the Dragongirl’s face rose from the darkness. Her hands reached inside Crevan’s gut, twisting his innards about her fingers while her eyes burned green. The last thing he’d seen were the fangs that had sprouted from between her lips — sharp and glistening as they stretched for his throat.
A handful of guards crowded around him, now. Worry marred their features. The deep lines worn into their brows were arched in pity. Crevan’s eyes swept away from them and directly onto Argon the Seer.
He stood calmly before the guards, dressed in blue robes. Blood matted the bits of his long gray beard that sat beneath his nose. His deep eyes were swollen and red-rimmed. But Crevan didn’t care. Seeing Argon made his anger boil all over again.
“You’ve disturbed my peace, Seer.”
“My apologies, Your Majesty,” he said with a slight bow. “I thought I Saw you in the presence of an enemy. But it appears I was mistaken.”
The presence of an enemy? Crevan’s mind turned back. The vision of the Firecrowned King had been so potent … he could still smell its charred bones and see the hollow caverns of its eyes. He felt the heat of its breath.
It wasn’t impossible, then. If the Seer had sensed the specter’s presence …
No, no — it was madness! A vision brought on by the red mist and nothing more. Crevan wouldn’t be tricked. He wouldn’t let the mist take him …
But what if … what if it hadn’t been madness at all? What if the Firecrowned King had truly sat before his hearth? What if it’d given Crevan everything he needed to defeat his enemies, to reclaim his throne?
With his last hopes lying in ruin, he was finally mad enough to look.
The guards stood warily as Crevan turned. “Come with me, Seer — and the rest of you follow.”
He marched out of the throne room with Argon at his side and the guards close behind. It was a number large enough to protect him, but small enough to be … dealt with, afterwards. They wound quickly through the brightened halls of Midlan. Servants ducked out of their path, guards stood at attention. Crevan felt their curious eyes flick across his back.
He led them down a narrow hallway and stopped at its end. A golden shield hung on the wall before them. It bore the black dragon of Midlan on its front, but the crest was backwards. The dragon’s head faced the wrong direction. It was a small detail, one that likely went overlooked by most. But Crevan had noticed it immediately.
“What is this?” Argon had been about to reach for the shield when his fingers recoiled sharply. “It bears a warning, Your Majesty. An old magic guards this place.”
“How old?”
“Centuries.”
Crevan rolled his eyes. “Impossible. A spell dies with the mage who cast it. No magic could last for centuries.”
“There are ways, Your Majesty,” Argon muttered, gazing at the shield.
But Crevan ignored him. “Stand aside.”
He muscled his way past Argon and gripped the shield at its bottom and top. Then with a grunt, he moved it. The shield turned like ship’s wheel. His arms strained against the centuries-old rust that coated its hinges. When the dragon had turned so that it was upside down, a loud click echoed down the hall.
“Swords drawn and ready, men,” Crevan said as the wall slid open. “If any of you try to run, I’ll have the Seer blast you into the under-realm.”
The soldiers drew their swords quickly, muttering to one another as the wall slid away. Their whispering only grew louder when they saw the mass of trees that stood in the opening the wall had left behind.
The trees grew thickly, their leaves unfurled and full. The vines that draped down from their tops hung between them in a thick, tangled web. Some bore the scars of Crevan’s first visit. He could still see the years-old marks of his sword in the thickest branches.
He’d charged in so foolishly, so unaware of the horror that lay just beyond. This time, he wasn’t going first. “Clear us a path,” he ordered, and the soldiers obeyed.
They slashed their way through the vines, grunting while they worked. He knew when they made it to the other side because their voices suddenly fell hushed.
“Kingdom’s name,” one of them gasped.
Crevan snapped his fingers. “Come, Seer.”
Argon hesitated, wincing when the shackle around his wrist glowed hot at the command. Finally, he could stand the pain no longer. He clutched his robes tightly and followed Crevan through the trees.
This chamber was one of Midlan’s greatest secrets: a space of land the size of a small village hidden in the very center of the inner keep. The ground was covered in a thick layer of grass; trees squatted here and there, their trunks bulging over their roots. But in between the wilderness were ruins left by men.
Shells of houses, bits of road, the crumbling limbs of enormous statues — all were the ghostly remains of an ancient city. They jutted up from the earth like shattered bones through flesh. The ruins must’ve laid undisturbed for quite some time: a large tree had sprouted up boldly through the center of one house, knocking its roof aside.
“What is it? Some sort of … courtyard?” one of the guards muttered.
A man at the front of the line ventured a few steps ahead before coming to a stop. He stood, frozen, a hand wrapped tightly around his sword. “Kingdom’s name — it’s a graveyard!”
There were dozens of them, dozens upon dozens. Pale stone chunks cleft from the ruins, shaped into rounded markers and arranged in perfect lines across the grass. They filled the deep shadows beneath the trees, spreading ever outwards, like ripples in a pond.
The pale stone markers shone white in the moonlight. Argon planted his hands on one of them, tracing over its smooth surface with his fingers. “It has no name, no writing of any kind. There must be hundreds …”
“This castle was built on the ruins of another,” Crevan said. “Monsters once ruled these lands. When the first King defeated them, he razed their city and buil
t his keep atop its ruins.”
“Draegoth,” a wide-eyed guard whispered to his fellows. “It does exist.”
Crevan had doubted the legend as much as anybody. Except for a very vague passage in the Kingdom’s history, there was no other mention of the monsters called draega. So Crevan had grown up believing all of Draegoth was a myth.
Then one day, as he’d been exploring Midlan’s tunnels, he’d come across these ruins. There’d been no doubting what they were. He supposed the draega’s powers had been so great that the first King had wished to strike them even from the pages of history.
The moment Crevan saw the countless lines of graves, he’d known the land was cursed. He felt the spirits of the ancient dead. He felt the land trembling with their cries for vengeance. And so he’d fled through the door and shut it tightly behind him — swearing never to return.
Now he stood on the edge of Draegoth once more. A full moon hovered overhead. The pale light cast from its skin did little to illuminate the tangled land around them. There were plenty of shadows ahead.
“Go.” Crevan shoved the nearest guard, forcing him into the backs of his companions. “Move quietly.”
They did as they were told.
The soldiers crept across the graveyard with Argon and Crevan following at their backs. Tangled branches grasped at them; the earth was damp from a heavy rain. A slight breeze toyed with their senses: it made the vines swing and the ruins whisper strangely.
“Your Majesty.” Argon’s sleeve slid back from his arm as he pointed upwards. “There are symbols written across the sky.”
All Crevan could see were stars. “What do they say?”
“It’s an ancient tongue. I can’t understand all of it, but it looks to be a ward. They are powerful symbols, Your Majesty.” Argon tugged on his beard. “Make no mistake — whatever lies in these ruins was meant to be bound for eternity.”
A cold chill raced down Crevan’s spine, but he forced himself to press on.
The soldiers’ heads swiveled on their necks; the rattling of their armor was hushed. They’d been walking for several breathless minutes when the whole line came to a halt.
“What’s that?” One of the men spun to Crevan. “Your Majesty — do you hear that? It sounds like … a song.”
Crevan didn’t know what sort of hunter lurked among the ruins. But the Firecrowned King had said that even the Dragongirl would fear it. He wasn’t going to take any chances. “Ready your spells, Seer.”
Argon drew his Seeing stone from the folds of his robe. The stone rose into the air and its marbled black surface glowed a pale blue. It hovered before them as Argon and Crevan stepped to the head of the line.
At the next breath of wind, Crevan heard it: the hum of a man’s voice filtered softly through the air. It rode the wind, rising and falling to match the whisper of the trees.
Crevan signaled for the guards to move forward — silently. The blue glow of Argon’s stone dulled as it floated ahead of them. The man’s song grew louder with their every step. His voice stroked their ears with cold, chilling fingers.
“Spirits,” one of the guards said. “Spirits of the de —”
Crevan’s sword swung back and stopped a hair’s breadth from his throat.
The guard clamped his mouth shut.
They moved quietly towards the song, picking their way around the undergrowth until they came to a thick grove of squatting trees. The singing drifted out from behind the wall of their limbs.
One of the guards crept close to the vines. After a moment, he signaled that he couldn’t see anything. Crevan gave them a silent command, and the soldiers nodded. They braced themselves for a count, knuckles white about their weapons. Then with a cry, they charged.
Crevan burst through the grove behind them. Argon’s stone shot above the trees and belched rays of blue light from its middle, illuminating a creature that hunched alone near a white stone marker. The creature moved like a shot from a bowstring — a man-sized flash of furry brown that darted for the trees, easily outstripping the guards.
“Stop it!” Crevan bellowed as his men sprinted ahead. “Don’t let it out of your sight!”
Argon’s Seeing stone fell from the sky and crashed down among the trees. Rays of bright green light burst through the foliage, knocking the guards backwards.
“The creature’s been hit!”
Tangles of vines and men passed in a blur as Crevan shoved his way to where the stone had fallen. When he saw the creature’s body crumpled upon the grass, the stone lying beside it, he let out a roar.
“You killed it! You worthless Seer —”
“It’s not dead, Your Majesty. The creature’s only been petrified,” Argon said calmly as he joined them.
“I don’t think it’s a creature at all, Your Highness.” One of the guards had edged close to the crumpled body. He reached down and snatched quickly at the fur over its head.
“Impossible,” Crevan breathed.
What he’d thought to be a monster was actually a young man. He was dressed head to toe in a strange garment — one that looked to be made up of the furry skins of rats. There were dozens of them: stitched together side-to-side and head to rump. The brown, black, and gray bodies formed a full set of clothing, complete with a thick fur cloak.
The young man’s fingers were curled slightly; his legs raised one over the other, as if he’d been struck mid-run. His face, though frozen in shock by Argon’s spell, was remarkably handsome. The crop of his hair was dark like a forest man’s, but his skin was strangely pale. Crevan took a step closer and balked at the color of his eyes.
They were a cold, furious blue. Flecks of white drifted in a burst from his pupils — like caps of ice across the northern seas. There was the same strange mix of danger and allure in his stare as there had been in his song.
“What is he, Your Majesty?” Argon said.
Crevan wasn’t sure. Was this what the Firecrowned King had sent him into the ruins to find? Was this the hunter he’d spoken of? This — this, child of a man?
Red mist clouded his eyes when he realized he’d been tricked. He grabbed the young man by the front of the shirt, enough rage coursing through his limbs to rip him in half. But just before the madness could take hold, something caught his eye.
A half-moon of wood peeked out from behind the young man’s cloak. Crevan dropped his body on the ground and cast the cloak aside, revealing the wooden medallion that hung around his neck.
There was a symbol carved into the medallion’s surface: a pair of trees sprouting from the same root. Their trunks wound together like a braid until they met at the top, their foliage bursting in a single, indistinguishable bloom.
Crevan’s hand shook as he flipped the medallion over. When he saw the image carved into its back, he laughed. It was a wild, booming laugh — one that echoed across the graveyard and made his men take a hasty step back.
“What is it, Your Majesty?” Argon said. Even he sounded worried.
Crevan ripped the medallion from the young man’s neck and stuffed inside his pocket. “Have the beastkeeper send word to Countess D’Mere — I plan to meet her in the swamps.”
The Seeing stone rose from the ground and shot off towards the castle. “Done, Your Majesty,” Argon said. His eyes went back to the young man. “What about —?”
“Take that whelp to Ulric,” Crevan said, motioning to the guards. “He’ll keep an eye on him while I prepare for the journey north.”
Argon watched as the guards hoisted the young man between them, a strange look on his face. “Ulric…? But Your Majesty, there’s no need to trouble your archmage with so small a task. Why don’t you allow me to look after him?”
Crevan thought about it. “I suppose that makes more sense. A worthless task for a worthless Seer. Take him to the tower, then.”
The guards marched away, but Crevan held Argon back. “Once they’ve delivered the whelp, send them to Ulric. He knows what to do.”
Argon’
s gray brows rose high. “But —”
“The longer a man lives, the more secrets he tells. I’ve discovered that the only way to keep their mouths shut,” Crevan said quietly, “is to blast them to pieces. As for you … you’ll never speak of this place to anyone. People can’t know that the ruins of Draegoth exist.”
Argon’s shackle glowed red-hot with the command. He had no choice but to nod. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”
Crevan smirked as he marched away. The mist of his madness had lifted. His mind was sharp. He strode from the ruins, arms swinging beside him — moving with all the ill-intentioned haste of a rogue fresh out of prison.
He wouldn’t have to wait much longer. The hour was nearly here.
Soon, the Dragongirl would trouble him no more.
Chapter 32
In the Counsel of the Mountains
When Kael woke the next morning, his mouth was stuck in a smile. He’d felt no pain as he’d fallen into bed. Now as he woke, he could feel the twinge of his busted lip against his smile. But his wounds didn’t bother him. They couldn’t bother him. Even when he rolled over and saw Gwen scowling at him from the hearth, it did nothing to shake his mood.
“My brother’s lost his marble.”
“Well, that was bound to happen eventually. He only had one to begin with.”
The world turned sideways and Kael found himself dumped upon the floor — buried beneath a small mountain of pelts and a heavy mattress of goose-stuffed skins.
A hollow thud shook the planks as Gwen dropped the bed onto the ground. She dragged him out from under his covers by the heel. “He’s hidden it somewhere, and he says you’re the only one who knows where to find it.”
Kael wrenched his leg out of her grasp and rolled onto his feet. “Well, I don’t have time to find it. Why don’t you ask …?” He ripped the covers off the cot and realized that the lumps he’d thought were Griffith weren’t actually Griffith at all: they were a rucksack and a set of Baird’s ragged clothes.