It seemed that the Signifier himself had finally decided to enter the battle.
***
Chapter 19: Dragon Fury
Tyrcamber looked skyward and saw the dragon’s fire rip into Duke Hulderic’s men-at-arms.
The Keeper and her apprentice had destroyed the two green dragons and their umbral elven riders with the sort of grim efficiency that told Tyrcamber that the two women had fought powerful flying creatures before, and they had been good at it. Neither dragon rider had likely faced such a powerful foe, and together Calliande and Antenora had made short work of the umbral elves and their mounts.
The Signifier would be a far more difficult challenge. He might have served as the Valedictor’s standardbearer, but he was nonetheless a powerful wizard, and his red dragon was far stronger than the mounts he had given to his umbral elven retainers. The Signifier swooped and spun over the battling armies, unleashing blasts of fire from his mount and lances of dark magic. Both the Keeper and her apprentice cast spells at the Signifier, but the red dragon was nimble enough to dodge around their attacks, and the Signifier was powerful enough to deflect the spells that drew too close.
They had been winning the battle, but with the Signifier’s fury, they were starting to lose.
“We need to force that dragon to the ground,” said Ridmark, his soulblade flickering with white fire. Tyrcamber felt the immense power of the magical weapon. He also sensed something like rage from the sword. He suspected that the soulblade was alive at least in some sense, and it hated dark magic with an intensity that no human mind could fully grasp. “Otherwise it’s going to rip our army apart.”
“A pity we have no ballistae,” said Bishop Caius from where he stood with Prince Accolon. “We might have been able to shoot the dragon down.”
“An oversight,” said Ridmark with a grimace. “That shall have to change.”
“Sir Tyrcamber,” said Daniel, his voice quiet and solemn. “It might be time.”
Tyrcamber sucked in a deep breath, but he nodded. He was always reluctant to use the ultimate power he had gained during the siege of Sinderost and the horrors he had faced there. It had come at a steep, steep cost, and using it exacted a price from his mind. But he had used it many times in the campaigns after the defeat of the Valedictor, and it seemed he had no choice but to use it again.
Not if he wanted to stop the Signifier and defend the Empire. When he had first become a sworn knight, long ago (and it seemed even longer than it really was), he had vowed to defend the Empire and its people from all foes. Back then, Tyrcamber had dreamed of glory and renown, of winning a place for his name among the great heroes of the Empire. But that had been a long, long time ago, and ten years of war had ground him down. He had seen too many friends die, seen too many destroyed villages and towns, had seen too much death and fire.
Mostly, Tyrcamber just wanted to rest. To close his eyes and not see the horrors that crowded his memory.
But the vow was still there, and he would do what was necessary to defend the Empire.
Tyrcamber sheathed Kyathar, the sword’s fire going out as he slid the weapon into its scabbard.
“I will deal with the Signifier’s dragon,” said Tyrcamber. “I may need your help once I force the Signifier to the ground. He is a potent wizard.”
“You’re going to deal with the Signifier’s dragon by yourself?” said Ridmark. “Without your sword?”
Angaric chuckled, and Tyrcamber felt a mixture of amusement and annoyance. Angaric knew what was about to happen, and no doubt he would enjoy the reactions of the men of Andomhaim.
“Aye,” said Tyrcamber. “Please do not attack me. This is going to look a little strange.”
“Now there’s an understatement,” said Angaric.
Tyrcamber drew in a deep breath and reached for the Malison within him.
It had filled him, changed him, altered him forever. Tyrcamber had half-hoped that it would not work in this world, but the changes the Dragon Curse had wrought within him were irreversible. The raging fire of its power was part of him from now until the day he died.
Golden fire erupted from Tyrcamber, and he felt himself start to swell and change.
###
“We had best back away,” said Sir Daniel as golden fire engulfed Tyrcamber Rigamond. “Quickly, now.”
The goblins and ogres had fallen back in disarray, driven back by the ferocity of Ridmark’s attack. That left a clear space around them, which was just as well because Tyrcamber started to get…larger.
Ridmark had seen this happen before, only in reverse. Golden fire had consumed a dying dragon, and when it faded, the creature had shrunk back down to its original form. But now the golden fire blazed from Tyrcamber, and he expanded.
When it cleared, Tyrcamber had vanished.
A golden dragon stood in his place.
The dragon was huge, over fifty feet from snout to tail, the great black wings like sails. A row of white spines rose from the dragon’s back and tail, and its claws and fangs were like ivory blades. The dragon’s scales were like plates of golden armor, and its eyes were a harsh, glowing gold.
“What the bloody hell?” said Kharlacht.
Duke Hulderic and some of the other men of the Empire had called Tyrcamber a Dragontiarna Knight. Tyrcamber had seemed reluctant to explain the title, and Ridmark hadn’t pressed. He had assumed it was an honorific of some kind, or maybe a rank within one of the Imperial Orders sworn to the throne of the Emperor.
Clearly, there was to it than that.
“He can control it, can’t he?” said Ridmark.
“Aye, Lord Ridmark,” said Daniel. “Usually, the Malison transforms a man into a dragon, and the man loses himself and is enslaved to a dark elven lord. But sometimes a man masters the transformation and the Malison and can change between human and dragon at will. The Dragontiarna Knights have been the champions and defenders of the Empire, and they have won some of the greatest victories in our history. Sir Tyrcamber is the first Dragontiarna Knight in decades.”
Before Daniel finished speaking, Tyrcamber leaped into the air, his wings flapping, and shot towards the Signifier’s red dragon like a golden arrow.
###
Memories blazed through Tyrcamber’s mind, all of them dark and filled with blood and fire.
His dragon form was as comfortable and as natural to him as his own body, and he knew how to get full advantage from his wings and claws and molten breath. He was as familiar with the weapons of his dragon form as he was with his sword and the Seven Spells.
The price of that knowledge had been immense. When the Malison had taken hold of Tyrcamber, and he had started to transform for the first time, Rilmael had taken him to Guardian’s Isle and brought him to the Chamber of the Sight. There Tyrcamber had experienced a vision of his fate, of what would happen to him when the Malison took him.
It had taken about an hour.
But inside Tyrcamber’s mind, it had lasted tens of thousands of years.
Over and over again, he had been transformed into a dragon and been enslaved by the Valedictor, becoming the dark elven tyrant’s personal mount. For centuries Tyrcamber had helped the Valedictor enslave and conquer the Empire and war against the xiatami and the dwarves and the jotunmiri outside the Empire’s borders. And after centuries of enslavement, Tyrcamber had been slain.
But he had woken up in the Chamber of the Sight, and the nightmare had begun all over again.
The vision had lasted an hour, but to Tyrcamber, he had relived the same torment for tens of thousands of years. Madness took him, despair and mania and a dozen different forms of insanity. But in the end, his mind had passed through to the lucidity that existed on the other side of madness, and he had learned to control the Malison.
He ruled the Malison, and the Dragon Curse did not dominate him.
In the end, Tyrcamber became a Dragontiarna Knight, and he killed the Valedictor and saved the Empire. It had only cost him…well, everything. One man
had gone into the Chamber of the Sight with Rilmael, and another had come out. Sometimes he thought his life before the Chamber was a distant memory, and that his life within the vision had been a dream. Or maybe he was hallucinating now, and he would wake up to be the Valedictor’s slave once more.
No. This was real. Tyrcamber had ripped the Valedictor apart with his own talons. And the men struggling against the goblins and the ogres below, they were real. Those real men would die if Tyrcamber did not act.
He hurtled towards the crimson dragon and opened his jaws, fire blooming over his fangs.
At the last instant, the Signifier saw the danger and dodged, his dragon arching higher into the air. Tyrcamber’s fire missed, but he had angled his attack, so the fire swept across his foes. Dozens of goblins and ogres went up in flames.
The Signifier gestured and cast a spell, and another lance of dark magic shot from his hand, shadows and blue fire twisting together. Tyrcamber dodged around it, and he felt the deathly chill as the blast of dark magic passed close to him. He banked and swept back towards the Signifier, and more fire sprayed from his jaws. This time he managed to clip the crimson dragon, and the beast roared in pain. Tyrcamber supposed the red dragon was much as he had been in the vision, insane with pain and rage and horror. He felt pity for the man or woman the dragon had once been, but that would not stop him from killing the creature.
Indeed, during the long centuries of his enslavement to the Valedictor, Tyrcamber would have welcomed death.
Their duel continued in the sky. Tyrcamber clipped the red dragon with his fire a half a dozen times, and his foe did the same to him. He felt the searing pain where the fire burned through his scales to char his flesh, but he ignored it. Tyrcamber knew pain, had known nothing but pain while in the vision, and he knew how to ignore it. Or how to accept it and make it part of himself.
The Signifier’s magic was more dangerous than his dragon. The dark elven lord put considerable power behind his spells, and if one of those lances of withering force struck Tyrcamber, it would kill him.
But he knew how to fight in this form, how to dance through the air as gracefully as Sir Olivier flew atop Thunder Cloud. It helped a great deal that the Keeper and Antenora continued their attacks. Tyrcamber didn’t understand the source of their magic, the white fire that charged their spells and made them far more potent against creatures of dark magic, but the Signifier could not ignore those deadly attacks. Every time Calliande or Antenora struck, the Signifier’s dragon had to dodge, or the dark elven lord himself had to cast a warding spell.
Tyrcamber used those moments of distraction not to attack, but to move closer. He spun a spiral around the red dragon, and moment by moment, he drew nearer.
Then, at last, he was in position.
Tyrcamber folded his wings and dove like a thunderbolt, and his full weight and strength slammed into the back of the Signifier’s red dragon. The crimson dragon roared in pain and rage as Tyrcamber’s talons punched through its scales and sank into its flesh. They both plummeted to the ground and landed hard, but Tyrcamber was on top. The Signifier was thrown from the dragon’s back and landed with a clatter of his blue armor. The red dragon struggled to get its legs beneath it, but before the creature could rise, Tyrcamber’s head shot forward with the speed of a striking serpent.
His jaws closed around the dragon’s neck at the base of the skull and clamped shut. The burning taste of dragon blood filled his mouth, and his jaws snapped the red dragon’s spine. The crimson dragon’s cry of fury dwindled to nothing, and the massive body went limp beneath Tyrcamber.
Already golden fire flowed up and down the slain dragon. The Malison released its hold in death, and the dragon’s body began to shrink down to human form. Tyrcamber turned, seeking the Signifier, intending to unleash a blast of fire that would reduce the dark elven lord to charred bones and greasy ashes…
The bolt of dark magic caught Tyrcamber on the side with terrific force.
Blue fire and shadow blazed over his body, filling him with a terrible chill, and the sheer power of the impact flipped him off the dead dragon even as its body shrunk. Tyrcamber landed hard on his back, his wings pinned beneath him, the spikes upon his spine stabbing into the earth. The pain filled him, and he tried to embrace it and rise, but his stunned body refused to move.
The Signifier strode towards him, a massive double-headed axe of blue dark elven steel in his hands.
It was the first good look that Tyrcamber had gotten at his foe. The Signifier wore armor of blue dark elven steel, fashioned of overlapping plates that covered his entire body, lighter and stronger than normal metal. His winged helm was of similar design as Tyrcamber’s, but blue instead of golden, and his eyes were bottomless pits into the void.
“The Dragontiarna,” spat the Signifier in the dark elven tongue. Tyrcamber had learned that language after thousands of years of listening to the Valedictor rant and rave at his vassals with every setback. “Rilmael’s pet freaks. The Guardian isn’t here to save you now. This is a new world, and the power of the Dwyrstone shall open other worlds to me. They shall be mine, and you will not stop me.”
Tyrcamber started to gather the strength to roll over, but the Signifier had been casting a spell as he walked, and the dark elf flung out his arms, the axe in his left hand. A haze of shadows roiled around him, and then exploded in all directions, rushing to cover hundreds of yards. It was like a cloud of black mist, and it was thick enough that it dimmed the light of the sun overhead.
It washed over Tyrcamber like a torrent of ice water, and he found his strength stolen away, found that he could not move. The Malison filled him with mighty power, but the Signifier’s strange spell stole away his strength and left him exhausted and trembling. Around him, Tyrcamber saw both the men of the Empire and the goblins and ogres collapse, overcome by the dark magic.
Tyrcamber had to get up. He had to get up right now.
The Signifier walked towards him, axe in both hands and raised for the kill.
***
Chapter 20: We Shall Be As Gods
Ridmark watched the ferocious duel between Tyrcamber and the Signifier with half an eye.
But most of his attention went to the battle raging before him. With the Signifier’s attention turned to his own defense, the momentum of the battle had turned back towards the humans. Ridmark cut down goblin after goblin, and the men of the Empire and his own men-at-arms were advancing while the gnolls loosed howling cries and hammered down their foes. He had left Sir Longinus in command of the horsemen on the left flank, and the mounted men had charged into battle. There weren’t many horsemen, but the goblins were not prepared to receive a cavalry charge, and the horsemen slashed through them, wheeled, and attacked again.
Ridmark felt the momentum of the battle swinging in their favor.
The momentum increased further when Tyrcamber pounced upon the back of the Signifier’s dragon, throwing the creature from the air and to the ground with a mighty crash. The ground shook with the impact, and a cry of dismay went up from the goblins and ogres. A little more, Ridmark thought, and they would break and flee. Even as he fought and killed and defended himself, part of his mind considered their next move. If Tyrcamber slew the Signifier, the surviving goblins and ogres would likely flee. Would they spread out and attack the countryside, raiding villages and freeholders? Some of them might, but most likely the bulk of the creatures would retreat through the rifts to their homelands. Perhaps it would be better to let them go and close the gates behind them, though they would have to allow the men of the Empire to return home first…
Then the momentum of the battle changed direction again.
There was a whooshing sound, and a dome of shadows expanded out in all directions from the dying red dragon. It passed through both the humans and the goblins and the ogres, and everyone it touched collapsed. The battle came to a sudden, confused halt as the dome of shadows overpowered nearly all the combatants.
“What the devil is
that?” said Angaric.
“I’ve seen this before,” said Ridmark. “It’s a powerful spell of dark magic. It overwhelms anyone it touches, leaves them awake but helpless.” He stared into the swirling black haze, and he saw the golden form of Tyrcamber lying prone and helpless on his back, his limbs twitching. “The Signifier must have cast it.”
“Can we break it?” said Daniel.
“Calliande can,” said Ridmark. “But it will take her a few moments.”
And before that, the Signifier would likely kill Tyrcamber.
“Can our soulblades protect us from the shadows?” said Accolon, peering towards the writhing dome.
“Aye, but your soulblade won’t be able to do anything else,” said Ridmark. “It will be like trying to walk upstream against a powerful current. You’d be easy prey for the Signifier.” Which meant Ridmark knew what he had to do next. “When the dome of shadows goes down, attack with all our strength. The goblins and the ogres will be dismayed, and if we hit them hard enough, we can break them.”
“What are you going to do?” said Kharlacht.
“I’m going to kill the Signifier,” said Ridmark.
He strode towards the dome of shadows, concentrating on his link to Oathshield, on the power locked within the sword. A few heartbeats passed, and Ridmark’s full attention was on his soulblade and his link to the weapon.
Then the power of the Shield Knight unlocked, and the sword blazed with white fire. Sheets of white flame rolled over Ridmark and hardened into blue plate armor that encased him from head to foot, including a full helm with a visor that nonetheless did nothing to block his vision. Power flowed through the armor, and it made Ridmark far stronger and faster than a normal Swordbearer, and it was nearly impervious to physical damage or magical attack.
This was the power of the Shield Knight, and it made Ridmark all but invincible.
Dragontiarna: Knights Page 28