The Ruin of Kings

by Jenn Lyons

  A crescendo of screaming sounded behind me, and someone shouted, “My god! It’s on top of the ship!” You can give credit to the dragon that I didn’t look. The dragon had me. You cannot turn away from such a creature. It will either vanish or it will destroy you.

  Teraeth must’ve looked away though, and Juval must’ve thought he had an opening. I really don’t know what the Captain was thinking.

  I guess he was acting from blind panic.

  I heard a scuffle, a grunting noise, the slick scrape of metal. A second later, I heard the unmistakable, unforgettable sound of blood gurgling from a ripped throat.

  “Idiot,” Teraeth muttered.

  Then the lady fair walked over

  The carnage of bloody fears

  Red, yellow, violet, and indigo

  She said, None of you I’ll have!

  My love you do betray

  Red, yellow, violet, and indigo . . .

  The dragon’s keening changed in pitch. I felt the dragon’s song against the surface of my skin, the echo in my eardrums, the vibration in my bones. It was a physical shock, a tangible ecstasy.

  He was singing.

  The dragon was singing with me.

  Then she flew up to the sky

  And she’s there to this day

  Red, yellow, violet, and indigo . . .

  Behind me, more shouts, more screams. The kraken scattered men on the deck as she tried to rip open the hold. There was a loud cracking sound, like a giant snapping trees for firewood.

  And on a clear night you can

  Still see her veils wave—

  “Thaena!” Teraeth screamed. He tackled me as the mast fell right across where I’d been standing.

  And, since I’ve never mastered the trick of singing with the wind knocked out of me, I stopped.

  The dragon didn’t like that at all.

  He launched himself into the air, screaming with ear-shattering rage, gigantic wings spread wide against the glaring sun. That titanic creature crossed the distance to the ship in less than three seconds. I’d underestimated his size. He might’ve fit in the Great Arena in the Capital City, but only if he tucked himself up and rolled into a ball like a house cat.

  The Old Man glided over us, his shadow a silken cloak sweeping over the ship. He smelled of sulfur and ash, the hot stench of the furnace and melting iron. As he passed, he idly reached out with a talon and plucked up the kraken still clinging to the deck. Great chunks of wood went with her. The dragon tossed the Daughter of Laaka into the air like a ball of string and breathed glowing hot ash at her.*

  I’m sure you’ve heard stories of dragons breathing fire, but believe me when I say what this one did was worse. That was not fire as you find in a kitchen or forge, not the sort of fire that happens when you rub two sticks together, or even the magic flame sorcerers conjure. This was all the ashes of a furnace, of a thousand furnaces, heated to iron-melting, white-hot strength, and blasted out at typhoon velocity. The heat melted, the ash scoured, and the glowing cloud left no air to breathe.

  She never stood a chance.

  The dragon gulped down the charred mass of twisted flesh before it could fall back into the sea.

  Then he banked and came back around to deal with us.

  Teraeth stood up. So did I. The ship started to list, and worse still, Khaemezra and Tyentso came up on deck. I didn’t think the two magi would show themselves unless the situation was truly grim, and dealing with the dragon had become more important than keeping the ship afloat.

  “Oh god. Relos Var,” I whispered. “Relos Var will come now.”

  “We’re close to the island. If we can reach it, we’ll be safe. It’s consecrated to Thaena; he won’t dare show himself at one of the seats of her power.”

  “Will singing again help?”

  “Probably not. Let’s just hope you put him in a good mood.”

  “What happens if he’s in a good mood?”

  “He flies away.”

  “And if he’s in a bad mood?”

  “He turns us all to cinders for daring to wake him from his nap.”

  I looked around. “If he’s going to destroy us, he’d better hurry. The ship’s sinking.” Ripping away the kraken had opened gaps in the hull. The ship was taking on water.

  Teraeth dragged his eyes away from the approaching dragon and looked at where The Misery was beginning to go down. “Oh hell.”

  “I want him.”

  The dragon’s voice was loud and echoing, yet not an animal sound. The dragon didn’t speak with the reptilian hiss I expected, but a grinding elemental noise that mimicked speech.

  “Give him to me and I will save your craft.”

  “Yeah, but will you promise to feed me every day and give me lots of care and attention?” I muttered.

  “He likes you. That’s good,” Teraeth said.

  “Yeah, I feel really loved.” I looked toward the back of the ship. “Taja, I hope those people can swim.” I leaned backward to keep my balance.

  Juval’s body slid slowly across the planks. Tyentso also began to slip. Teraeth reached across and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her tight against him for balance. She gave him an odd look, but didn’t protest.

  “You may not have him. He is important to me,” Khaemezra said. I stared at her, then back at the dragon. Her voice—

  “I won’t hurt him, Mother.”

  “I said no.”

  I looked at Teraeth and mouthed, “Mother?”

  The assassin’s mouth twitched. “Everyone calls her that,” he said.

  I shook my head. It wasn’t just a figure of speech. Not with that voice. I’d never heard a voice like Khaemezra’s—until I’d heard a dragon speak.

  “Give him to me or I will—”

  But their haggling had taken too long. The Misery had suffered too much in our flight. A second crack, much louder, sounded as the center of the ship splintered and broke in half. The bottom half slid into the ocean. The top half fell backward to smack against the water. I felt a moment’s sensation of weightlessness as the deck dropped from under me.

  The water rushed over my head. Sound vanished, then returned as a dull roar. As the ship sank the vast pull of current sucked me down, trapping me in spite of my efforts to swim free. No matter how hard I tried to swim up, the light faded, a dim glow drawing distant.

  The water felt warmer than I expected, but perhaps that was just glowing heat from the stone around my neck.

  My body wrenched upward as a gigantic claw plowed through the sea. Enormous talons formed a cage around my body. The last moments I remember were the sharp scent of lightning and ocean water, and the colossal eye of a gigantic black dragon, scales dripping with kelp, gazing at me. What I remember most vividly was that the eye was not the yellow glow of the Old Man’s, but blue. Or maybe green.

  Or maybe no color at all, except by reflection.

  18: WHAT JARITH FOUND

  (Talon’s story)

  An ornate sword worked in red metal decorated the sturdy wrought iron gates of the Milligreest estate. The wide, perfect lawn of green grass lapped up against dueling yards, stables, and a horse-riding ring. Any flowers were confined to low decorative strips that could neither trip a guard nor hide an intruder. Palm trees lined the main strip of road like soldiers at attention. The main house was surprisingly undecorated: a plain, three-story building of red-orange plasterwork, with a crenelated top and towers at the four corners. It seemed more fortress than palace: there were no proper windows, and only a single, massive front door. The damn thing even had arrow slits.

  His escort left him in the care of another group of soldiers, who brought him to the main gate and the custody of yet another group of soldiers. They led him through the front door and into a courtyard filled with fountains and flowering orange trees.

  Kihrin was told to wait and left there, alone.

  The courtyard ran through the heart of the building. All three stories looked out onto it, with railings on the
second and third stories, and wide archways on the first. Braided reed chairs and tables in the center of the courtyard created an area for informal gatherings. The wall closest to the front door was flat and devoid of windows, but someone had, long ago, painted an elaborate mural over the plaster surface.

  Kihrin rubbed his sweaty hands on his multicolored trousers and looked at the mural while he waited. The epic painting featured armored Quuros soldiers fighting the Manol vané, who fought back with bows and magic. Kihrin blinked as he realized the Quuros were losing. Losing might have been too mild a term.

  It was more like the Quuros were being slaughtered.

  “Kandor’s Bane,” a young woman said. “Painted by the great master Felicia Nacinte* on request of Laris Milligreest the Fourth. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  Kihrin looked around, and then up. A girl his own age stood on the second-story balcony, looking down at him.

  She was dressed in a stable-boy outfit of dirty ochre kef pants and a short, cropped, and tightly laced vest that might have been fine white linen before she rolled around in the mud. Her long black hair hung in twin braids wrapped in matching dark gold ribbons a little lighter in color than her liquid-brown eyes. Her face was smudged and, despite the blooming bruise on one cheek, lovely. In Kihrin’s semiprofessional opinion, she would grow only more so as she grew older. Given a few more years, she would be able to make a man fetch or roll over as easily as he suspected she could draw the curved sword that hung from her belt.

  “Very impressive,” Kihrin agreed, “if you like battle scenes.”

  “They’re the best kind. Anyway, that’s not just a battle scene. That’s the most important single event in my family’s history. Did you know we’re descended from Emperor Atrin Kandor?”

  He looked at the painting again. Kandor was there, or at least there was someone wearing a lot of armor with a crown on his head. He’d been shot straight through his chest by a black arrow and was in the middle of dropping a great glowing sword from his hand. Urthaenriel, the Ruin of Kings.

  “I didn’t know that, no.” He turned back to her. “Didn’t he get most of the Khorvesh dominion killed?”

  “That was a long time ago.” She leaned out over the railing. “Does your father know you’re dressed up like a street performer?”

  “Yes, he does. Does your mother know she shouldn’t put your hair in braids like that? People might think you’re a girl.”

  She laughed outright. “You’re bolder than I expected. I thought you’d be more of a fainting maid, but you meet me in the practice yards and I’ll show you how much of a girl I can be. I bet I beat the pants off you.”

  Kihrin was hardly in the mood for flirting, but he couldn’t let the line pass without comment. “Careful there. I might enjoy that.”

  She blushed then, although it wasn’t with any real shame, and the laughter didn’t leave her pretty eyes. “If you didn’t enjoy it, I’d say we were doing it wrong,” she finally said, a little hesitantly, as if she were just learning this flirting business and hadn’t quite finished memorizing all her lines. Then the girl sighed. “Damn it all. Father wouldn’t approve. It wouldn’t be proper.”

  “I somehow doubt you only do what’s proper. Not wearing that outfit.”

  “Eledore, aren’t you supposed to be practicing?” Captain Jarith asked as he entered the courtyard through a side door.

  The young woman grimaced and sighed the quiet complaint of the born martyr. “I was just—”

  “Now, Dory.”

  “Yes, Jarith,” she muttered, and retreated into one of the side passages. She did, however, stop to wink at Kihrin before leaving.

  Jarith shook his head. “It’s a good thing I rescued you. If I’d come in fifteen minutes later, she’d have you down by the practice yards, betting sword hits against your clothes.”

  Kihrin smirked. “Most men would fight to lose in a situation like that.”

  “Yes, but I doubt the High General would be happy to find a minstrel’s son from the Lower Circle playing sword games with his pride and joy. That would be unhealthier for you than an encounter with a demon prince.”

  Kihrin’s mouth felt dry as the Wastelands. “That was the High General’s daughter?”

  “Yes, it was, so don’t get any ideas. It hasn’t quite gotten so bad that I’m literally fighting off marriage offers, but I can see the day coming. I think when I marry it will be a commoner, just so I can hear the screams of rage from all the royal mothers who have been angling for me like fishermen with poles.”

  Kihrin felt stupid. “You’re a Milligreest too?”

  “Do you really think I’d have made Captain so young otherwise? Nepotism is alive and well in the Capital City of our great nation,” Captain Jarith said with surprising bitterness.

  “Crap.” Kihrin grimaced. “I really stuck my foot in it, didn’t I?”

  “So deep I should fetch you a shovel.” Despite his words, Jarith smiled. “I must admit she was dressed like a stable boy. I should take it as a compliment that you could see past the grime enough to think her pretty. Better than the men who only want her because of her father’s connections.” Captain Jarith gestured, the sweep of his hand taking in the manor. “My family is in a strange situation. We are not royalty, but so many of our family have held high office, as Voices of the Council, generals, or the like, that we might as well be. Those who want power court us, even though we have our distressing Khorveshan ways.”

  Kihrin shifted awkwardly.

  “Yes?” Jarith asked him.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  Jarith chewed on his lip for a minute. “You did a brave thing with that demon, and another brave thing asking me to look for that slave girl. I suppose I don’t want you to think too ill of us.”

  “Why would I?” Kihrin paused. “Morea’s sister? Talea? You’ve found out something?”

  “I’m very sorry.”

  Kihrin ground his teeth and looked away. “She’s dead?”

  “She might as well be. She was sold to a man who counts torture as one of his favorite sports. His slaves don’t meet happy ends.”

  “I could buy her.”

  “You don’t have enough money.”

  “You don’t know that.” Kihrin crossed his arms over his chest and bit down hard on the urge to explain how he spent his evenings.

  Jarith sighed. “Yes, I do. Because it doesn’t matter how much money you have. You don’t have enough. You could be a prince of a Royal House and it wouldn’t matter. Darzin D’Mon is the kind of man who would invite you over with an offer to return her to you, and then torture her to death right there just to see the look on your face. He loves breaking spirits. It’s my shame to think that the same blood flows through his veins as mine.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He is my cousin.” Jarith Milligreest shook his head. “We’re a proud family, and our history—” He gestured at the same mural. “We have lived and died in service to the Empire. He is a blight on my family’s honor, but at least he doesn’t wear the Milligreest name. Unfortunately, I can’t make him free a slave he owns by law. If he wishes to kill her, the law says he may.”

  “It’s not right. He can just murder her, and you’ll do nothing?”

  “She’s not legally a person and thus it is not legally murder.” Jarith shook his head. “I am sorry. If there were anyone else who had bought her, I could use my father’s name to apply some pressure. However, if I ask after her, it would mean her death. My cousin loves me as much as I love him. He’d do it out of spite.”

  Kihrin shut his eyes and clenched his fists, tried to force down the taste of bile and hate. He looked up at the mural, at the fallen, twisted bodies of Quuros soldiers, dying as pawns in a game they did not understand and probably had wanted no part in. That hadn’t spared them.

  Jarith clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Come. We have a pleasant library, and good strong ginger brandy, and after the day you’ve had I think you cou
ld use the latter. I will leave you there to wait until my father is ready to speak with you.”

  Kihrin nodded, and allowed Jarith to lead him inside.

  19: DREAM OF A GODDESS

  (Kihrin’s story)

  I woke, alone, lying on a reed mat in a cave full of the wet sound of water dripping off rock . . .

  Wait, no.

  I’m getting ahead of myself. I should tell you about the dream. Although I suppose it wasn’t a dream. Technically speaking, I don’t dream anymore. I haven’t dreamed since I was gaeshed. My nights are black, filled with nothing from the moment I close my eyes until I open them again in the morning.

  So, this couldn’t be a dream. Not really.

  But in between almost drowning and waking up again, I experienced something like a dream.

  It wasn’t a hallucination, that’s for certain.

  My ears roared, a rhythmic sound, advancing and receding to the fury of my heartbeat. For a moment, I thought the noise was my heart. I smiled, because it meant my heart was beating. I was still alive.

  Believe me, realizing you’re still alive when you should by all rights be dead is a pleasure that never grows stale.

  Then I remembered the dragon. I opened my eyes, spat out sandy grit from my mouth, and looked around. I lay on a beach, facedown, with the deafening crash of waves hitting the rocks and shore behind me. The sand underneath my fingertips was an odd, fine black, glittering, as if someone had pulverized onyx. In the distance, I saw rocks offshore, thick white mist, and the bright green of jungle forest on the other side of the beach. The jungle rose in the distance, climbing the sides of a mountain, its top obscured by thick clouds.

  The beach was empty, save for me. Then I reassessed my opinion: a girl waded through the white foam of the waves.

  The child looked no older than six. Her gathered Marakori shift trailed into the water as she bent over and examined rocks. Her tight mass of bright silver cloud curls glinted in the sunlight.