Immortal Defiance

by Laura Maybrooke

  Krath nodded. “Common sense would dictate it so. Grom will punish your followers for their defiance. You fight to liberate Caeryn from slavery, but the people of this continent will end up in conditions far worse than before once he is through with them.”

  She pounded her fist on the table. “No. I will not accept that.”

  “And yet nine centuries and the tens of thousands who perished would say different. I do not fear for myself; he cannot kill me. He and I could battle, but it would be useless. My precaution has nothing to do with my own self. I have not fought him these last six hundred years, since the invasion, as it would have only meant death. Had I continued to resist the demon and his armies—do you think I would have been the one to pay the price?”

  Dulcea said nothing. Krath continued his speech in a dark, merciless tone.

  “You have guessed what happened to my progeny. They are among the ones who had to pay for my actions in blood. The demon cannot destroy me. Instead, he will take out his fury on those that he can, and experience has shown me I cannot protect them. You hope to save your people. It is a noble wish, but those who are important to you will only end up dead because of it.”

  His ominous prediction was unsettling. Was Grom too powerful? How was she ever to defeat him? Even the concept of it was off-putting, but what if Delbin had been right to betray her? Had she been blind until now? What if she was leading her followers into their deaths and submitting to the Sarusean rule was the only way to save them from the demon’s wrath? Was Krath right?

  She twined her arms around herself, sighing. “Forgive me. I need a moment to digest this.”

  “I understand.” He stood up. “Would you care for a stroll while you consider it?”

  Dulcea nodded, her thoughts consumed by her recent confusion. She got up, and he offered her his arm, leading her away from the table. Krath took her to a small sitting room on the ground floor of the castle’s westernmost tower. A door close-by led outside to the ambient lighting of the graveyard garden, and a set of stairs nearby connected to the dungeons underground. Dulcea chose a window seat to sit on, gazing out into the dark of the night for a while before turning back to face Krath.

  “Has the Goddess of Death engaged anyone else against Grom these past fifteen hundred years?”

  “Not that I know,” Krath said. “A part of her own immortality rests within me. She cannot reclaim it without turning me mortal, and while I continue to exist, the Lady of the Dead is powerless to raise another in my stead. I am as much her slave as she is at the mercy of my actions. The situation is pleasing to neither party, but she is not willing to release her grip on me. I mean, what are millenniums to a goddess?”

  “Something makes no sense… An old Lavean text unearthed in the library of Sraeyn’s capital speaks of a warlord named Grom. It says he attacked Lavea with a great army around the turn of the fifty-seventh century, but a dragonlord commanding the black Errai Clan defeated him. The text would have you believe he drowned with the rest of his troops when their battle fleet sank, but Lady Pendralyssa, my—”

  “His ship sank, yes.” Krath’s interrupting smile was sarcastic. “But as if that would stop him.”

  Dulcea stared at him. Her breath caught in her throat. A nameless premonition grabbed her.

  “What happened to the Black Dragonlord who fought him off?”

  “You are looking at him.”

  ---

  Dulcea felt like an hour passed before she could talk again, so great was her surprise, but it could not have been more than a few moments at most. Krath waited without complaint, observing her shocked countenance for any lessening of her inner turmoil.

  Krath had moved to sit next to her. Dulcea was not sure when; she had no recollection.

  “I think you should know…” His cool fingers pressed against the sheer material of her sleeve in a comforting touch. “The revelation now is not accidental, I invited you here with the specific purpose of sharing it with you. I wanted you to know the truth behind Grom’s reign and to tell you about myself and the black dragons. I felt we might then perhaps understand one another a little better.”

  She pressed a hand to her chest. “This is difficult to grasp. You are the Black Dragonlord?”

  “Yes. For a long time now.” He resumed his feet and offered a hand to her.

  She got up. “Are we… going somewhere?” Dulcea frowned but took his hand for courtesy’s sake.

  “I would like you to meet a friend.”

  A sudden realization shot through her. “… A dragon friend?” Nervous excitement fluttered in her veins.

  He nodded, leading her to the alcove where a winding set of stairs disappeared below ground. The long hallway at the stairs’ end had walls of rough-hewn stone, lit by the occasional lantern. The rock felt icy and damp to touch as she brushed her fingers against it. A musty smell permeated the air. Another staircase at the far end of the corridor, past some storage rooms and underground cellars, led to the actual dungeons. The masonry there was cruder, and faint, pale amber light shone through from behind several of the heavy, iron-fortified wooden doors that led into individual prison cells. Dulcea shuddered and hurried her steps a little.

  They soon came to a large, open cavern. Krath lit a torch and took it with him, advising caution as he guided her onto a narrow ledge. The rough, uneven walkway went around the vast chamber and then plunged into the depths of the grotto. The drop was at least seventy-five feet high, Dulcea estimated, and well over a hundred in places. A cold gust of wind blew down from somewhere above her, howling in the stone rafters of the cave’s dome-like ceiling. Dulcea shivered in her thin dress. An exit to aboveground lay somewhere above their heads, hidden by the night.

  It got warmer the further down they descended. Soft firelight penetrated the darkness of the cavern at its bottom, the phosphorescence of the slimy plants that grew on its walls adding their own to the fire’s gleam. Slim stone pillars and stalagmites reared up from the earth, disappearing into shadows far above. Dulcea gazed around her in wonder, noticing dozens of wide passages and stone-carved walkways. At the grotto’s bottom was a large, shallow pool of water, supplied by an underground stream that ran a meandering path through the cave. The air smelled sulfurous, hinting at the waters’ origins.

  A black dragon bathed in the pool, almost invisible in the shadow of a high wall. Despite the light’s disturbance to her night vision, Dulcea could discern his handsome form. His scales gleamed metallic, his mane was pure white, and his silvery horns were long and twisted in shape. The dragon turned his head to consider them, flexing his crimson-tinged wings, and Krath walked to the great beast, setting his hand on the bridge of his nose. The dragon’s flame red eyes closed in content recognition.

  “He is pleased to meet you,” Krath said. “Come say hi to Flokhtan-Hwan Saranis, my lady.”

  Dulcea went to them, no fear in her heart and only after a moment’s hesitation. The black dragon was magnificent—sleek and less colossal than the golden ones. She bowed her head to him in reverence, and as he responded in kind, she ventured to touch his scaly form, petting him with an experienced hand. The vampire caught her eye over Flokhtan-Hwan Saranis’s head and smiled. Dulcea looked between him and the dragon.

  “Be acknowledged, Lord Krath, rider of the black dragons,” she said with affected formality.

  “Be acknowledged, Lady Dulcea, rider of the golden dragons,” he said in the same tone.

  The words came to her almost on their own, like a forgotten echo of some near dead custom. At one time in the past, she thought, dragonlords had greeted one another in these exact words, expressing equality.

  The lore and fate of the other dragon clans was little known to her. Books did not reveal much, and it was not a topic that Amparo Darksun preferred for discussion. The dragons were secretive about their affairs. She knew about the High Kings’ alliance from the olden days, long before the war. That had been the peak of the Age of the High Kings, but the fabled alliance h
ad corrupted. When Grom’s armies had attacked, the dragonlords were no more.

  They stayed in the cavern for a half an hour before returning aboveground. There Krath took her to the same sitting room they had vacated earlier, the decorative little fireplace having been lit and tended to embers in their absence. It was warm in the room, and Dulcea felt glad for it after the coolness of the cave.

  He smiled at her. “You must have some questions. Let us see if we might satisfy your curiosity.”

  Many things needed an explanation. An undead dragonlord? It was the strangest thing. When had Krath gained the black dragonstone? It had been in his possession at least since an indeterminable year of the early fifty-seventh century. The ancient text found in Vyronh’s grand library placed the Lavean encounter in the spring of 5612. That was around forty years after his vampiric birth. Could it be that he had been the Black Dragonlord even before his death, and that was why the dragons still followed him? Maybe that was why the Lady of the Dead had chosen him?

  It kind of made sense… but not entirely. According to legend, the black dragonstone had belonged to kings of Lavea for generations. He was of an ancient royal house, but history spoke of kings, not a single monarch. Or was it all purposeful, a part of some elaborate plan? The black dragonstone, where was it now? How could he speak to his dragons without it? Dragonstones were most often attached to something prominent: swords, scepters, crowns, amulets… yet nothing on his person showed his status.

  She scrutinized him, her brow furrowing in confusion. “Where is your dragonstone?”

  He shrugged. “Gone; stolen from me a long time ago. I lost it because of an oversight, but it is of no consequence. The one who took it gained nothing from it. I know the stone’s location, but retrieving it is nigh on impossible. It matters not. The Errai Clan remains mine to command.”

  “I am not sure I understand…”

  “Forgive me. I do not mean to confuse you, my lady, but it is all I will say on the subject. I have been the Black Dragonlord for a long time now, long enough to have learned to speak to the dragons without it. The stone is useless to me. I would not even know what to do with it anymore, even if I could somehow recover it.”

  “How did the dragonstone end up in your possession?”

  She expected his uncle’s death had gifted the stone to him, years prior to his own demise.

  “The previous holder of the black dragonstone was my uncle, King Vingmar. Your countenance tells me this does not surprise you. The truth is, I killed him to become a dragonlord myself.”

  Dulcea fought to check her surprise and disdain at the words.

  She bit her lip. “I seem to have misjudged you, my lord. I thought you were an honorable man.”

  Yet there was something false about her own words, something she recognized at once.

  The red dragons were mad; it was the most Amparo Darksun and his clan mates would say on the matter of Grom’s rise to the status of a dragonlord. That explained why the Pyros Clan had fallen under the will of S’Aruse’s monstrous king. The red dragons had no sense of wrong or right, of honor or nobility. Something had sent their descent into madness into motion a long time ago, and Grom had reaped the benefits of it. Now the Pyros could no longer tell friend from foe, and the Golden Clan viewed them with pity. They had become what Amparo so feared as the fate of all dragons.

  Slaves. Weapons of mass destruction. To kill them would be an act of mercy.

  The other dragon clans, though, Dulcea knew from her own experience, had ever only obeyed those who were above mortal greed and ambition. Their opinion held steadfast, and they only listened to those they deemed worthy. Flokhtan-Hwan Saranis, or Saranis the Black as was his favored moniker, and the other Errai she had seen down in the grotto had not been insane. There was nothing to suggest the relationship between the vampire and his dragons was not one of mutual affection. Dulcea felt flummoxed.

  Krath snorted. “Is doing our duty immoral? I cannot deny what I have done, but what choice did I have? The Lady of the Dead demanded that he die. My homeland was facing destruction; he could not have prevented it. It was the better alternative that I take the stone for myself than risk having it fall into Grom’s hands. I did not know at the time that he was the Red Dragonlord.”

  The vampire let out a short, sardonic laugh then, finding something humorous in his own statement.

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” He grinned. “An undead champion for the living…”

  She scoffed. “Aye. The gods’ sense of humor never ceases to baffle me.”

  His gaze was intense as it locked with hers. “Saranis the Black and his kin have forgiven me for the manner in which the black dragonstone came into my possession. They know why it was necessary.”

  “Yes, it would be useless to lie to them about your motivations.”

  “Not only useless, but impossible,” he said. “They see straight into what is in your heart.”

  “This picture does not flatter you, but at least it does not cast you in a completely villainous role.” She sighed, thrumming her fingers on her thigh. “It… cannot have been easy for you.”

  “To kill him was a great crime.” Krath’s voice was rough, almost foreign. “Him whom I had sworn to protect, in whose place I had vowed to die. I never imagined he would one day need protection from me!”

  “… At least you drove Grom away that time.” She gave him an uncertain smile.

  “Which time do you mean? Our first encounter?”

  She nodded. “Yes. That shipwreck in the early fifty-seventh century. If you had failed to stop Grom from setting foot in Caeryn, this country might have no history to defend.”

  “You are mistaken. It was not our first confrontation,” Krath said. “The first time he and I met was on the Fields of Bannefor. The place exists no more. That was three years after my death. The death of all of my uncle’s sons in the war had brought me my crown and an army to oppose the demon, but it was useless. I failed. I could not save my homeland, but at least it bought my people some time to escape. The land of my origin is nothing but ash and snow now.”

  “What…? Wait, what?” Confusion twisted her features. “But Lavea isn’t…”

  “I am not talking about Lavea. It is not the land of my ancestry.”

  Dulcea blinked. “I do not understand. You said you were kin to them.”

  “Kin, I am, yes, but sometimes people migrate. Even entire cultures. I mean, isn’t that how the Mist Elves came to inhabit Caeryn?”

  “… What are you saying?” Dulcea crossed her arms.

  “That it is to S’Aruse, my lady, that the Laveans trace their roots,” he said. “And I among them.”

  Chapter 23

  A Promise of Friendship

  Eight days later, on the eve of a full month of their acquaintance, Dulcea realized nothing was the same anymore. Krath was still a daily visitor, sitting with her for a few hours each evening, but all their interactions held an undercurrent of expectation that had not been there before.

  The reveal of his Sarusean origins had been a jolt and a disturbance at first, but she now saw it as nothing more than a part of his history. He deserved no judgment for it. The Mist Elves were refugees from S’Aruse in the same way that he was, and in this war, they were as Caerynian as anybody else.

  The Northern Sarusean Archipelago had been home to him for three decades—Caeryn, however, for over fifteen hundred years.

  After their disastrous defeat at Serpent Rocks twelve days prior, the Saruseans had switched tactics and reorganized their forces along the river. This had resulted in a chain of small outposts built in haste on the northern shore, prompting the Caerynians to multiply their own defenses. By the twenty-second of the month, dozens of outposts dotted the countryside, manned by an ever-growing number of men. Dulcea hated the sense of urgency that came with two contending forces both building for war, but she was helpless to do anything about it.

  Meanwhile, the tide of the battle had turned to heavy offen
se.

  It was the first serious attempted breach of the river in over two months, since the Sarusean forces had fled across the River Sithra earlier in the year. The battle raged for a half a fortnight, until the evening of the twenty-sixth in Strawberry Moon. Exhaustion ate at her vivacity, and Dulcea thought herself terrible company when she returned to camp each evening, but Krath endured her reticence with great persistence.

  It had been easy enough to hate the Saruseans before her strange friendship with Krath, but now she understood better. It was not their ambition to seek a new continent to conquer but that of their demonic king’s. They were as much victims as the people of Caeryn.

  Krath’s words had made Dulcea worry, despite her struggle to remain positive. Was she on the path of destruction, fated to meet the creature who would see them all to their graves?

  Dulcea fisted her hands. No, it was ridiculous. She had worked too hard to fail now.

  “It will only get tougher, the closer you get to the end of the war.”

  “That is… kind of commenting on the obvious, don’t you reckon?” Her smile was melancholy.

  Krath shrugged. “Sometimes, we need to hear it said aloud to understand it.”

  “There is nothing I understand so well as my own mortality.”

  They stood side by side in a corner of her tent, their gazes fixed to a beautiful star chart pinned to the fabric of her tent wall. It was one of the few courting presents that Dulcea still liked to admire before retiring to bed each night. The embroidered stars on it shone with a faint, silvery glimmer. It was a rare, expensive gift item, received from a prestigious House with the wealth to buy an enchanted engagement present for her. An enchantment to please an enchantress.

  “I was wondering…” She tilted her head, staring at the star map. “What are your thoughts on astronomy?”

  “It is an intriguing discipline,” the vampire said. “But not as important as some would have you believe. Many kings treat their astronomers like sages, but I am not superstitious. The stars will still be there tomorrow, regardless of my opinion. The sun will rise, and nightfall arrives each evening, no matter if I believe they do. Astronomy as an art has potential, but all these soothsayers and diviners should stay out of it.”