by James Duvall
Anthony's lip curled in disgust, hot blood helping him to overlook the quiet part of his brain that called for tact. “I do! Perhaps you should explain to the young king what 'enemy' means. He seems to have become confused.”
Tamlin's expression soured and he straightened up to full height. “That was dangerously close to sedition, Sir Graham. Remember your vows.”
“I will not hear of treason while this man stands next to you as a brother in arms,” Anthony growled. “He is a blasphemer and a murderer.”
“Then it will please you to hear you've been reassigned,” Tamlin said, returning to his seat behind his desk.
“Reassigned?” Anthony asked. He could feel his fists tightening of their own accord.
“The southern front, Banida,” Tamlin said, pushing a map toward him. Anthony snatched it up stared at it.
“This is outrageous! I have an exemplary record. You're sending me off to some forgotten outpost over a dead thief?”
“I'm afraid its much bigger than that,” Tamlin said dryly. “This is hardly about you at all. The fact is you are a decorated officer, and a war hero at that. Things have not been going well on the southern front. Banida's somehow tamed the golems and they've been turning them against our troops and the outlying cities. I need someone reliable down there to oversee the men. We've got twice as many deserters this month than the last. As if that weren't enough we've got representatives from the border towns lined up for days to beg King Isaac for assistance. Soldiers, money, grain, and everything else under Ryvarra's sun.”
The weary look in Tamlin's eyes was telling. Graham searched through the papers looking for the reports. It was just as the general had said. “Banida has golems... How?”
Tamlin shrugged and shook his head. “Yes, and its causing unrest. You've been cooped up here in Camden too long, Anthony. I don't want you getting old and rusty on me. You can do good there, without ruffling the feathers of every ralian dignitary that comes through town. We're after peace here, Anthony.”
“And him?” Graham asked, glowering at Richard.
“I will deal with him,” Tamlin promised, but Graham did not feel reassured.
Chapter 26
Deep Anger
Ashcrest, Colorado
For scholarship's sake I will record my findings in this travelogue. Today we are admitted into the Kingdom of Calderr for the first time in twenty-three years. As per Ambassador Prynn's requirements we have not pressed anyone on the matter of the calamity that caused the kingdom to shut its gates. None will list specifics. I find it a strange and curious thing that such people of science would be as superstitious as sailors, but everywhere I find it is so. They call it 'When All the Lights Went Out.' I had hoped to learn more of it before our audience with their king tomorrow.
~The Travelogue of Alirus Beldin, Adviser to King Tygus the Second.
Once again Joshua found himself in the old converted weather station and once again Deputy Amanda Carrington was waiting for him. Driving down the long mountain roads gave them time to catch up, and Joshua recounted the details of his trip, leaving out the bits where Syrrus had implored him to return to Arcamyn as her traveling companion.
“So your teachers were a talking rat and a sadean girl?” Amanda asked, looking at him like a parent might a toddler who was introducing his imaginary friend.
“Yes, that's about it, though I don't think he'd like being called rat,” Joshua speculated. “Also, you hired a dragon to teach 'Earth for Beginners' at a public library so I don't know if you can really be casting judgment on odd teachers.”
Before Amanda could answer the radio hissed and beeped. “Amanda, are you done up at the hill?”
Amanda plucked the mouthpiece from its cradle. Joshua looked on in unabashed curiosity. He had never seen her handle a call before. The strange nature of their relationship
“Yeah Charlie, we're done, go ahead.”
“Logan got a call from Orlus, but he's running late. Any chance you could swing by there?”
Before Amanda answered, she cast a sidelong look at her passenger that made Joshua feel like he did not belong.
“Yeah I got it,” she said and dropped the mouthpiece back into its cradle.
“Roger that. Thanks.”
“Change of plans,” she announced stiffly. Her hunched shoulders said 'don't ask questions.'
Joshua considered the conversation for a moment, his mind lingering over that odd look of worry she'd given him. “What does that mean?”
“We have to watch what we say over the open radio. This could be bad. Means Logan responded to a call and didn't check in.”
“Does that happen often?”
Joshua searched her face for some clue. The answer read loud and clear: No.
“He probably forgot,” she said stiffly. Joshua could tell she was trying to convince herself this was the case, but probably did not believe it.
Amanda pulled up to the curb in front of Orlus Gavrinno's driveway and leaned over to say “Wait here” to Joshua, but he was already out of the door.
“Where you think you're going?” she asked instead, glaring icy daggers at him across the top of the squad car.
Joshua pointed toward the front door. “In there. We're in a hurry, right?”
Amanda narrowed her eyes and shook her head scornfully before starting up the walk with one hand on her pistol. Both of them knew she could do very little to stop him from coming.
There was nothing special about Orlus Gavrinno's house. Only the police cruiser parked in the driveway set it apart from its neighbors. The yard had been recently mowed and potted plants sat atop short little stools on the front patio. The door was ajar, and over Amanda's shoulder Joshua could see only darkness through the crack.
All of the lights were out inside. The stink of blood was unmistakable. Orlus lay dead on the kitchen floor in a dark pool that was already beginning to thicken. Nearby was Logan Grey, slouched against the wall like a discarded rag doll. Amanda hurried to his side and put her fingers to his neck.
“He's alive,” she whispered, then looked to his belt. “His sidearm is missing.”
“Officer down, repeat, officer down, 1032 Birchwood,” she whispered into her radio.
The heavy thud of a dresser being overturned in the adjoining room caused both of them to jump. Amanda crept into the hall like a panther closing in on her prey.
“Police! Throw down your weapons!” She announced as she kicked the door open. In answer there was a crack like thunder. A bullet tore a hole in the wall. The next splintered the door jam and scattered debris.
“Get to the car,” Amanda barked, never taking her eyes off the doorway.
“I'm not leaving,” Joshua said. Amanda stole a glance toward him. The look in his eyes must have betrayed his thoughts because her eyes went wide in alarm.
“Joshua don't you even think about it,” she shouted, but the thinking part was over. Joshua's draconic frame charged past her, widening the already ruined doorframe as he caught briefly and clawed his way inside.
Everything seemed to slow down from the moment he made it through the door and locked eyes with the man that had just killed Orlus Gavrinno. Behind him, Joshua could hear Amanda shouting, but he couldn't make out the words over the thundercrack of the pistol. Each shot coughed sparks from the smoking muzzle. As he closed the distance he could feel the sudden pressure of a bullet's sting against his scales. It ricocheted off and left a heavy ache behind. Scales fell like deep blue raindrops.
Joshua lunged as he hit the gunman, lifting him off the ground. The gunman's body slammed into the wall hard enough to break the plaster. Joshua seethed, looming over his prey with his teeth bared and his jaws parted in a cold growl. The killer began to writhe beneath his heavy paw, trying to roll free. In a desperate bid for freedom the killer lunged to the side, enduring the pain of the dragon's claws scraping along his back as Joshua reached after him.
The killer sprang up, digging something out of his pocke
t. He held it up in front of him like a grenade with the pin pulled.
“Stop! Stop!” he called, scrambling backward until he was up against the wall. Joshua, however, did not recognize the danger and lunged against him with one paw on the wall to steady himself and the other on the killer's chest, holding him against the wall.
Joshua had a moment to consider just what it was Amanda was saying as the cold light of teleportation magic embraced him. “Stop! Get back!” That was what she was yelling. She was still yelling it as both Joshua and the suspect vanished in the blink of an eye, leaving behind an acrid cloud of smoke and a bedroom that looked like a war zone.
***
Joshua found himself floating in a void that seemed to go on forever. Magic thrummed vigorously all around him, crackling like lightning as it arced through the air, if it even was air. The featureless plain shuddered. Magic tendrils crackled again, all blinking on and off in tandem once, twice, three times, and then there was only darkness. The emptiness opened opened up and and dumped Joshua out. Suddenly he felt an upward rush of icy cold air. The lights snapped on all around him as though he had just opened his eyes, though he had never shut them. A dim aurora filled the sky as the ground rushed up at him.
Joshua flared his wings, trying desperately to catch the wind as the ground drew swiftly near. The nightstorm raged through him, freezing the moisture in the air to little bits of snow as a cold wind rushed from his wingsails like a jet engine. It was a rough landing, only one leg at first. He caught the ground much too quickly and it slipped out from beneath him. He shut his eyes tightly as he crashed onto his chest and slid across the uneven ground through a sea of thick white mist.
The dust was still settling when he opened his eyes. He was relieved to find himself relatively in one piece. His side was smeared with blood, still oozing from between two scales where a third had once been. A sharp pain in his wing drew his gaze up to a small hole where a hot bullet had ripped through only seconds before. Thick, foggy mist rolled by, coming up to his snowy-scaled chest. The nightstorm felt stronger here, stronger than he had ever felt it. Cold energy pulsed within his soul. Thunder growled close to the surface.
“Stupid beast, do you see what you've done?”
Joshua looked up. The killer was sitting on a rock catching his breath. He threw the emptied gun aside in disgust. The sound of metal against rock was the only sign that it had not simply been devoured by the mist it disappeared into. “We've sank. We are both dead men.”
In the glow of the Cold's aurora, Joshua could almost make out the man's face. He squinted in the gloom, taking a few steps toward the now unarmed killer. It was a face he could never forget, one of the last he had viewed through truly human eyes. Shock came first, a cold crackle through his heart. The sting faded, leaving only numbness. Rage.
“Erlo Stolge...” Joshua said, feeling his throat go dry. This was Erlo Stolge, it had to be. He would never forget the ralian's face. Those wicked yellow eyes, boring into him. His sneer, his smell... Joshua forced down a growl, but he could feel his jaw quaking and his muscles tightening as he curled his claws into the unseen soil.
“What of it?” he sneered.
A feral snarl rolled off Joshua's tongue as he opened his muzzle to speak. He started toward the man with steady, deliberate strides but broke into a full gallop as he found he could not close the distance fast enough for the fire raging inside. There in the Cold, where the magic ran thick, Joshua Woods found his rage.
Joshua's eyes brimmed with wild, reckless hate. Cobalt light surged within the bright sapphire pools like volcanoes of ice ready to erupt. The very air beneath his wings thrummed with energy, crackling and sparking like fireworks until the moment he lunged across the rock and caught Erlo Stolge in the chest. He carried him to the ground with a roar that would send the even the greatest dragonslayer running. Beneath the sea of white, Joshua could feel Erlo struggling beneath his claws. Ignoring his own pain he pumped his wings to blow back the mist so he could look his prey in the eyes.
“You...” the dragon said. He groped for words but all his beleaguered mind could find was rage. It roared in his chest like a fire consuming him from the inside out. Sparks of deep blue crackled from his mouth. “You murdered me!”
“You look alright to me,” said Erlo, forcing a nervous chuckle.
Joshua could feel Erlo trembling, the rapid rise and fall of his chest. Their eyes locked as Joshua seethed, cold saliva drooling from his bared teeth. Erlo had the faraway look of the condemned, looking well past those deadly jaws into the yawning void waiting to snatch up his wicked soul. Joshua grit his teeth and growled again. It was a low, guttural sound that shook the ralian to his core as the mist started to close back in on him. In the heartbeat before the wispy white coffin closed around him, the dragon struck. His jaws closed around soft flesh and tore savagely. Hot, sticky blood flowed like a fountain. Again he struck and tore, freeing a spray of hot blood across his muzzle.
For a few seconds there was nothing else in the world but a palpable sense of victory. The body that had once been Erlo Stolge, that had once murdered him, fell into the mist and disappeared, out of his life forever.
The euphoria surged and fell as quickly as a roller coaster's first giant drop.
Horror-stricken, the dragon looked down where his forelegs plunged into the soft white mist. Though the mist covered the grisly scene, he could feel the warmth and weight of the dead man against him. He took a quick step back, letting the unsettling presence slide away.
Guilt. He could feel it sinking into his heart, weighing him down like a millstone about his neck. A man lay dead at his feet. By his doing. Blood, oh the blood. He could taste its metallic bitterness in his mouth, smell it on his nose and feel it trickling down his throat and chest, hot and sticky. The air was thick with its pungent odor. He lifted a paw from the mist and shook it off, sending little droplets of scarlet to vanish into the mists. His entire body trembled as he took a first step, careful to avoid the corpse. He half-walked, half-stumbled away until he felt his paws splash into a pool of cold water.
Joshua buried his head in the cool mist and drank deep from the pool, washing the blood from his palette. The water was clear and sweet, and he splashed it over his paws and onto his throat, letting it thin the blood and clear the air. The intoxicating draught numbed his senses, bringing peace to his stinging wounds and aching bones. Bruises were forming, broad and deep, where his scales had saved him from Erlo's second attempt on his life. Every motion brought protests of pain. Willingly he succumbed, lowering his head to sleep a dreamless sleep, bewitched by the pool's spell.
Chapter 27
The Sundered Lands
Fort Sundor, The Cold
We were taken to the citadel of silence, where the monument stands to all of those that died in the calamity. The obelisk was made of onyx and many walls stood arrayed around it, at such a height as the average man could see over them. Of course, most Calderrians are shorter than we panthers, but my scribe assures me it is so for humankind as well. There was a man among the walls and he worked tirelessly, adding names to the spaces were none had yet been carved. He was dressed in formal clothes, the robes of a priest of Ilsador of humble rank and station. He would not speak to us, only stayed true to his task. All the while we were present we were required not to speak out of respect for the dead. Only after we had departed to return to our hotel was I able to ask our guide as to the nature of the man's task. As I had predicted, the names were those that had died in the calamity. The priest was also not a priest at all, but a former soldier who was present when all the lights went out. For five years he has attended to his task, and our guide says that it will take him another 17 months to finish scribing every name known.
~The Travelogue of Alirus Beldin, adviser to King Tygus the Second
The stained glass windows had once been the pride of the little church on the corner of Farrier and Baker. For two weeks the days and come and gone without a sunrise. There
was no sunrise in the Cold; only the soft, pervasive aura that came off rivers of magic that arched overhead, bathing the ground in what felt a lot like a full moon that knew no end. The darkened windows was a small tragedy, just another ripple in the larger disaster that had been the fall and reclamation of Sundor Tower. Imre stood in the chapel looking up at them. He could barely make out the prophets and parables. On sunny days the windows seemed to almost glow with magic and they dappled the chapel floor with colorful light. Now there were only pools of light around a dozen or so candle stands.
Finding a moment of inspiration Imre fetched another bundle of candles from the cabinet and put one behind each window. When he was done he hurried outside to look at his handiwork. On the Cold-darkened streets his breath emerged in misty puffs and the lamps had all been lit. Above the door the stained glass window was illuminated again, colorful tiles illustrated Sacrys and Dakrym standing back-to-back, guarding the souls of the righteous dead as they passed into Ilsador's Kingdom.
It was a small, simple change but once again the Church of Ilsador stood prominent in Sundor Tower.
“May this be a beacon to all that are lost in darkness...” Imre said in quiet prayer.
Gradually he became aware that one of the passersby had stopped and was looking up at the stained glass windows. He turned to introduce himself but the words caught in his throat when he realized it was a werewolf that had stepped out of the darkness.
“Peace,” she said, holding up a silver amulet of Sacrys and Dakrym.
Imre took a deep breath, nodding slowly. Yes, this made sense. In the Cold his parishioners would be less conventional. All souls were welcome in Ilsador's Kingdom.
"That's a clever idea," the werewolf said. When Imre only stared at her she pointed up toward the windows. “The candles.”