by James Duvall
There was no amount of silver that Grimlohr could offer to balance out Cedric's expectations for the captive dragon, but Grimlohr's loyalty could not be measured in silver or gold. Whatever oaths tied him to the night seeker, they were likely to be fulfilled in bloodshed long before they were forgotten. Grimlohr could see the story playing out in the furrows over Cedric's eyes.
"It would interest you to know that he killed a man," Cedric said.
Grimlohr nodded. "I am sure he has, knowing the road he has taken. I know his character and I am sure it was not without reason. I will still have him returned to me, blood on his claws or no."
Cedric hesitated, running his finger down the columns of numbers. "Mm..."
"I am prepared to make an offer," Grimlohr said at last.
Cedric snapped the book shut and extended his hand to Grimlohr. The raven-haired man shook it firmly.
***
Late in the night, Joshua found himself ushered into a small wagon. The roof was low enough that he had to duck to get inside. Grimlohr nodded at him from a seat at the small dining table jammed into the corner. He had a small glass of wine and stirred it with a fingertip in a manner that made Joshua think of a claw twisting a little vortex into a shallow pool.
"I am sorry for the late hour," Grimlohr said, "but I came as soon as I learned where you had gone."
Joshua nodded numbly, taking the seat across from him. "How did you know I was gone at all? I wasn't even due back in Arcamyn for another week."
"In my travels I have met less than twenty seekers, and among them I can count only two night seekers. Perhaps one, depending on how you look at things," he said, rubbing his stubbly chin. "It is strange to look at you and see him. Of course, the illusion is removed as soon as you open your mouth and speak. Speaking of speaking," Grimlohr said, and fished Joshua's amulet out from his bag.
"I imagine so. Thank you" Joshua said and put it on. He replayed the few conversations he had shared with the dragon whose form he now possessed as best as he could remember them. The memories had faded with the passing of time. Events that had taken place less than a year prior seemed lifetimes away. Just a few short days among many had been shared with the Cabor.
"I barely knew him..." Joshua said distantly. It sounded like a confession. The skin he wore belonged to another.
Grimlohr got up from his seat and selected a bottle from the wine rack. "Favor a glass?" he asked, swishing it around. Joshua shook his head, so Grimlohr poured him a glass of water and then scooted back into the seat across from him. He popped the cork and filled his own glass half-way.
"I knew him well enough," Grimlohr said, swishing the wine in his glass. He took a whiff of it and then sipped a bit down. "He was a simple mind, and that's not a bad thing. The world needs his sort. He had a simple, uncomplicated loyalty, unfailing unto the very end."
Grimlohr took a deep draft from his glass. "Quite admirable," he said, wistfully.
"Do you miss him?" Joshua asked, careful to avoid a certain tone.
It didn't matter; Grimlohr could see straight through him. The soft joy of nostalgia drained from his face, leaving behind a hard-set jaw and cold and calculating eyes.
"When one serves as an adviser to royalty, hard decisions become a fact of life. The hypothetical terrors that people amuse themselves with become a stark and unbending reality. What I do is not a game, it is not simple, and it is not forgiving. Inevitably, and sometimes often, death will visit one of my number. I do my duty without regret or fear, Joshua. When the final hour comes, and it will come, I would not have them die for nothing, and surely not for my folly. Do you understand?"
Joshua nodded mechanically, feeling frozen to his seat. "I didn't mean to imply..."
"You wanted to know, and now you know," Grimlohr answered. "I am not here for your safety, Joshua Woods. Do you think that Syrrus believes she is safe? No doubt she has told you stories from the War of Ashes."
Joshua shook his head. He knew that one day he might return to Arcamyn and find she was gone forever. Perhaps one day Rickthicket would be standing there waiting for him, clutching that little red hat in his tiny hands. Or if things were particularly bad he might just leave a note on the garden shed. His stomach turned at the thought. Was that all he had to look forward to coming through the portal? "Why are you telling me all this? Why did you come find me at all? Surely you have more important things to do."
Grimlohr nodded deliberately. "I came because Syrrus asked me to."
Joshua finally looked away. "She did?"
"She did," Grimlohr echoed in affirmation. He stole a look out the window. "The hour is late. Very late indeed."
Joshua followed his gaze into the night and wondered if perhaps he could tell what time it was by the height of the moon in the sky. "I'm wide awake..."
Grimlohr grinned a rakish grin. "Not that sort of hour.”
"Then what do you mean?"
"Draggus Morphial has marshaled his forces. He has an army of golems set to descend upon Camden and Arcamyn's young king has yet to realize they are intended for him, not Fendiss or Banida as the ralian has no doubt promised him. He has let his fear guide him and it is shortly to be his undoing."
Grimlohr sighed, wistfully. He slouched into his chair as though he had let a heavy weight off of his shoulders. "It is far too late for him. No doubt we will soon hear of his death."
Joshua's eyes widened at the revelation. He had never met Arcamyn's king, nor had he ever heard a kind word spoken about him from the odd circle of friends he had established in his visits, but there were a great number more people in Camden than just King Isaac. "Shouldn't you warn him?"
Grimlohr shook his head slowly. "No, he has already been warned by his own advisers if they have any sense in them at all. If they do not, then there is no amount of help I could offer him to shield him from the blindness he so embraces."
For a while Grimlohr stared pensively into his wine. The little cabin was quiet and Joshua found himself scrambling for something clever to say but the prospect of a kingdom sitting on the precipice of destruction seemed like an impossible problem to be solved by a singular young man. At last Grimlohr lifted his head and tried to force a smile.
"Though I applaud your thinking in looking to save them. No doubt their military will put up quite a fight. If they are fortunate they may outlast Draggus's forces. Even he is not without limits. But for now we should focus on our own survival. I have had to move Princess Talya, yet again. We had been hiding with Lord Genjolmar of Hal'Galma, but alas I grew less and less able to trust him. His elder son died when Venarthiss took power. Venarthiss made an example of him, for wearing an Alter and deigning to speak out against him in the form of a man. When his remaining son was taken from him, my heart broke for him. I left with Talya that very evening. I could not tempt him with the possibility of using her as ransom for the young drake."
Joshua nodded slowly as his thoughts turned to his sister. She had already been robbed of both her parents and now had also lost her brother. How long had it been since she'd moved away from Ashcrest? He wasn't immediately sure why she had come to mind in this particular moment until he realized that he knew the look on Grimlohr's face all to well. He had a furrowed brow and a distant look in his eyes that spoke of bad memories, miles away. A quietness pervaded his words as he picked them each with slow, deliberate care as though he felt certain they would be remembered. This was the face of a man that could only offer no solace but false hope.
Joshua had seen it so many times after the search for his parents had been called off. Though he had been young at the time it was not hard to understand that this meant almost unequivocally that his parents had died somewhere in the Rockies. All that was left was to wait for the snow to thaw in the spring and hikers to come across the unfortunate couple. He remembered how it felt when he had in turn worn that face to deliver the news to his little sister. She knew, too, what it meant, and that it was all the young boy could do to deliver the pronouncem
ent of death in such a manner so as not to strike her with the gravity of it all at once.
"Did he die?" Joshua asked, his voice a mere whisper, full knowing the answer. In his mind's eye he could imagine the man he had never met, watery eyed and pleading for his son's life, at the mercy of the monster that had already taken one child from him. All of his righteous indignation and the baleful fury of his heart drowned out by his desperation to have his family restored to him.
"Garrodar wanted to make a name for himself," Grimlohr said. The ice in his wine glass clinked quietly as he set it on the table. "He was going to avenge his older brother and take back the throne from Venarthiss. He had little support, I'm afraid. Most saw these things as the angry rantings of a drake of barely twenty years. There was never any real hope that Venarthiss might spare him, once he was taken. Sadly, I believe Garrodar shall instead be remembered for his death at ralian hands. No doubt Venarthiss turned him over to be used in Talya's stead. Already the third Sorrow has begun," he said, and drained what was left of his glass of wine. "I could see the fires popping up all over as I flew over. The forest is alive with lights, and these lamps are the harbingers of death."
"There have been other Sorrows?" Joshua asked. As the evening progressed, Grimlohr's usual guarded expressions and carefully chosen words had been replaced with a sort of bald-faced honesty that it felt in some regards as though he were speaking with a different person entirely. The mantle of ambassador and adviser had been set aside. In the many months he had known Grimlohr back at Sangor's Retreat he had never seen the other dragon bare himself so plainly and he thought the man might actually proffer a straight-forward answer for once.
"Yes, the second being the city you came through from the Cold. It was once the gateway between Arcamyn and Fendiss. No doubt chosen to symbolize the forsaking of that old alliance. Kalthiress, the Forgemaster, is their god and he is fond of such symbols. Had it not been for the first Sorrow, you would not have been brought to Arcamyn, and were it not for Erlo's poison, you would still be a human man, taking classes at the university. You could not go back to that now, I think. I am certain Syrrus had no qualms in telling you so as well."
"In a way, you were born of the first Sorrow, forged into a great weapon by evil's own doing." Grimlohr remarked, a certain zeal shining in his eyes. He appraised Joshua's reaction before whispering, urgently. "Would it not be fitting to turn that weapon against those that created you?"
Joshua shifted uncomfortably in his seat, feeling that he was fast losing control of the situation.
Grimlohr charged on, uncaring. "A dragon and then a city, drawn across worlds, all to pay tribute to the Forgemaster and send cracks rippling through the boundary between Ryvarra and the Cold. Now come the Forgemaster's own creations, pouring into our world through the thin boundary of magic. This world is about to be reborn in fire, Joshua, and I would see that it is us, and not Ralia, that emerges from the ashes."
Joshua nodded slowly, sneaking furtive glances at the door. His world in shambles, Grimlohr's mind had clearly suffered. He spoke with the eloquence of a diplomat, but the content of his words felt more in tune with a lunatic on the sidewalk carrying a hunk of torn cardboard with "The End is Nigh" painted on it. His guest was feeling the nagging instinct to put distance between himself and the dangerously disturbed.
"Look, the fires have reached the caravan," Grimlohr said, pointing out the window. It was just then that Joshua became aware of the soft glow that had been gradually filling the little cabin for the last few minutes. It streamed in through the one open window as though someone had started a bonfire just outside. He turned his head slowly, stiffly even, with his teeth clenched tight.
A burning caldera opened among the tents and carts of the campground. It was filled with liquid fire, churning and rolling with the tumultuous fury of a river coursing through its rapids. It had seeped up out of the ground in a few meager seconds, consuming the earth and presumably anything that had been left in that unfortunate locale. Flames danced across the surface and singed the trees high above, driving back a ring of spectators back to what they all seemed to agree was a safe distance.
Grimlohr descended the steps of the little apartment on wheels and strode through the crowd with such confidence that a path simply formed for him through the throngs. Somewhere between the ever-widening ring of humanity and the edge of the pool, Grimlohr the man flowed so seamlessly into the sleek form of a night slayer that it felt to Joshua as though the man had never been a man at all, and only appeared to be so by some trick of the light.
Feeling not nearly so graceful or confident in his abilities, Joshua stopped short of the sweltering heat to shed his alter. Even as a seeker he could feel the heat against his scales as he came up alongside Grimlohr and looked into the churning lava.
Raw excitement lit up Grimlohr's face as he reached out over the pool with a black and golden claw. Dust, shimmering with a light of its own, fell from his outstretched talons and sparked against the churning tempest. The spell gathered slowly and steadily until the little particles of magic fell like a heavy snow.
"What are you doing?"
Grimlohr turned his head skyward and reached up, seeming to beckon to the stars. He pulled at an unseen force, gathering it into his onyx claws, and then flung it across the pool. The spell became visible then, dozens of bright pinpoints of light like little falling stars. They burst against the surface but seemed to have the opposite effect as Joshua had expected. The pool began to calm, the churning waters stilling and the heat abating.
"Leaning against the door," Grimlohr declared, finally looking up at him. His golden eyes shone with zeal in the dark as the pool's light burnt out. The magma darkened and hardened. Cracks ran through it as the broken earth cooled and pulled apart.
Suddenly the dragons were lit once again as the stone glowed from within. Lava poured out through the cracks with renewed tenacity. It spilled out onto the ground, leaving little rivulets of fire in its wake. Joshua took a few big steps back, uninterested in testing just how fireproof a seeker was.
Grimlohr lifted his head and looked to the crowd. There were maybe forty men, with more arriving to investigate the late-night spectacle. Most were reluctant to meet the black dragon's gaze, finding something apparently more interesting than a pair of dragons somewhere in the dirt around their boots. He muttered grimly as though all around him he could see only dead men. He had assessed their odds and found them poor. There were not soldiers. Were they to stay and fight, many would lose courage as the first of the Cold's nightmares poured through, and then it would be a massacre. There would be naught left to do but say last rites and scatter some ashes, and ashes would be all that would remain once the Forgemaster's creations had plied their trade.
"Joshua, we will have to guard their escape," he said to the seeker in a low voice. "It is the only way."
Joshua looked down at the swirling lava. "Escape...?"
"The fire you see here is a portal into the Cold," Grimlohr announced. The dragon's booming voice stifled the crowd and all eyes turned to him. Even Joshua found himself taking a step or two back. "In a few minutes it will be burned all the way through, and the Forgemaster's armies will pour through into this world. Ride east to Tavyn with all haste. Send a rider to warn them of the peril. Go now, and go quickly!"
No one moved.
“Go!” Grimlohr bellowed. “The hounds of hell are at your back!”
Men scattered, shouting and running for their horses.
Joshua flinched at the command, feeling ashamed. A swift rider, that was a seeker's role in the army of dragons. Though his kind was swift of wing, he could barely hold steady while aloft, and his landings had a tendency to culminate in him sliding on his chest and dirtying the otherwise white scales found there.
Grimlohr circled around to the other side of the fire and looked at Joshua through the rising flames. "Do not let any of them escape!"
Joshua watched as the merchants went for their weapons
and their horses. Ordinary men might have balked at the absurdity of the black dragon's story, but ordinary men had not ridden across the Plains of Desolation, nor found a dragon laid low by the beguiling elixirs of the Cold. Cedric Carrowin's men broke and ran, for perdition's fury marched at their backs and they could feel the rising heat.
When the portal stilled, the first of the Forgemaster's creations clambered out of the Cold. It was a gargoyle, short and fat with heavy leathery wings that seemed to have no hope of ever lifting such a creature into the air. It lifted its head into the air, hissing. Magic lanced through the night in graceful arcs like a swipe of the black dragon's claws. Dark and deep sapphire in color, the spell was nearly imperceptible as a passing breeze until it sliced the gargoyle into pieces with a sound like a sword whistling through the air. It fell to rubble, flesh turning to the stone it was born from. Dozens more crawled out behind it, clambering over their fallen brother like an army of gray stone ants.
Joshua stood still, watching the nightmarish creatures emerge in wide-eyed terror. He did not want to believe what he was seeing. A quiet voice whispered to him to fly away. He was not very good at flying, but he could outpace the gargoyles by simple virtue of what he was, what he had become. All around him he saw fearful men with terror in their faces. They would not survive without him. Dragon or human, he would not be a coward. The nightstorm crackled within him, and the air around him grew cold.
Motion in the corner of his eye seized his attention. A gargoyle had lunged over its brethren and now charged toward the ill-prepared merchants, their ramshackle ranks holding pitchforks and spears that trembled in their novice hands. Joshua fired himself at it like a missile, a pump of his slender wings propelling him even faster as he covered the distance in the blink of an eye, wings shedding magical light like the tail of a comet. The creature had no time to prepare, feeling only the rush of cold wind before the night seeker's fury tore deep swaths in its back and drove it chest-first into the ground. The gargoyle squealed in agony, its lithe claws scrabbling for freedom. Joshua seized it by the neck and yanked. Silence.