Throne of Dragons

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Devin stood over the forge, channeling magic, focusing. So many times now, that magic had flared and burst out, caught only by the wards that Master Grey had put in place. He had felt so close each time he tried to work with the star metal, yet each time he reached for the traces of the magic that sat within him, it seemed to slip and twist, too powerful to rein in.

“This time,” Devin said, breathing the words aloud to the steel, to the world, turning them into a kind of prayer, a chant. “This time.”

He focused himself, feeling the magic within, heating the forge. He pushed that magic into the star metal as he heated it, making it glow first red, then gold, then white. Devin took it from the forge, striking it as it cooled, each blow of the hammer against the anvil sending flares of power through it.

He was doing this, he was actually doing it!

Before, he had tried to force the metal to do what he wanted, but it didn’t work like that. He had to coax it and guide it, letting it flow into position under the weight of the magic. Devin kept going, kept working. He lifted the blade, quenched it, sharpened it. For a guard, he used a piece of what looked like bone, sitting on the bench, already cut for that purpose. He wrapped the grip in strips of leather, and set in place a pommel that held glass that looked like an eye staring out at the world.

By the time he was done, Devin was sweating, and not just from the heat of the forge. He could feel the effort the magic had taken now, leaving him weak. He stood there staring at the finished sword, the blade blue-black where most would have shone, the balance elegant. Devin cut it through the air, feeling the thrum of something more than muscle behind the blow.

He looked around, wishing that Master Grey were here to see this moment. Master Grey had not shown his face here again, though, had not been there to answer any of the many questions Devin had for him now. He was off about some unfathomable errand of his own.

Devin set down his tools, hearing the ring of steel against their brackets. He shut the forge down, setting the sword in place on a stand, wanting nothing more than air now that he had completed his task.

He ascended the stair from the cavernous depths of the forge, wondering if he might find a way to visit Lenore. It seemed impossible, though, that the castle guards would simply allow some peasant smith to visit the princess in her rooms, whatever connection he claimed to her brother.

Her brother. Devin’s heart tightened at the thought that Rodry was lost. The news was all around the castle, and he didn’t know how to respond to it. The thought of everything that had happened… why had Master Grey insisted that Devin stay behind when he could have helped?

Devin came up out of the castle’s depths, blinking in the sunlight, trying to get a sense of how long he’d been down there this time, working with a metal that seemed not to respond the way iron or steel might have, that needed magic even to soften it. He looked around at the open square of the courtyard. It seemed so much fuller than it had before, horses hobbled there since there wasn’t enough room in the stables for all of them, soldiers moving back and forth as they carried messages or ran errands. There were courtiers here and there, standing out in the finery of their clothes.

The whole castle felt as though it was caught between states, no one quite knowing what was going on. Where before, everyone had seemed to move around the castle with purpose, about a hundred different tasks that made the place as a whole function, now there were servants standing as if waiting for commands, and soldiers sitting idle, practicing with blades or playing dice.

Devin stretched out his aching muscles, looked up toward the sky to guess at the weather, and his gaze fell on the battlements. There, walking out along them, Devin saw her: Lenore, accompanied by only a single maid!

He looked around for a way to get up there, saw stone steps, and hurried up them. From the top of the wall, he could see out over Royalsport, see the presence of extra soldiers down below, encamped around the castle now that they had returned. On another day, he might have stopped and breathed in the air there, looked down at the hustle and bustle of the city. Instead, he had eyes only for Lenore.

He rushed forward along the battlements, dodging past a guard making the rounds of them. Lenore was just ahead, staring out over the city, her sadness palpable even from here.

“Lenore!” Devin called out.

Her handmaid was turning toward him, moving to block the way.

“Her highness wishes to be alone,” she said, raising a hand to stop him.

“No, it’s all right Orianne,” the princess said. In amongst the sadness that seemed to fill her features, Devin thought that he caught the briefest flash of a smile. Her handmaid stepped back to let Devin pass, but she still gave him a look suggesting that Devin had best not do anything to harm the princess.

Devin moved closer to Lenore. She looked tired, as beautiful as ever, but as if everything she had suffered had drained something out of her, leaving her hollow, empty.

“Devin,” Lenore said, managing a faint smile. “It’s good to see you.”

“I’m glad you’re safe,” Devin said. “I… I heard about Rodry.”

Lenore bit her lip, tears springing to her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Devin said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. It was just… he was good to me.”

“He was like that,” Lenore said, leaning back against the battlements. “He was always so generous. If you were his friend, you were his friend for life. And he was brave, too. I wish he’d been a little less brave. Maybe he’d still be alive.”

“I think, to get you back, he’d do it all over again,” Devin said. “And if he didn’t…”

He stopped himself before he said that he would. There were things he probably wasn’t supposed to say to a princess. Devin wasn’t sure what all of them were, though, and that just made the whole thing more complicated.

“I know,” Lenore said. “Would you… would you sit with me a while? It seems like people have been avoiding me since I got back.”

Devin nodded. “If I’d thought they would let me through, I would have come to your rooms. I’m glad I spotted you out here.”

“I’m glad too,” Lenore said.

They sat together on the edge of the battlements. From here, it was possible to see the whole of the city, and some of the lands beyond, the fields stretching out in gold and green, out toward the forests in the distance.

They sat there, and for the first minute or two, they just sat. Devin wasn’t sure what to say. He wasn’t sure what someone like him could have to say to a princess, or what to say to Lenore after everything she’d lost. It felt as if all he could do was be there.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a minute. “I’m not very good at this.”

“You seem to be doing fine so far,” Lenore said. “Most of the people so far have either told me how sorry they are, or gone on with making plans for my wedding. My mother is grieving over my father, Vars is… Vars, Greave is missing. It’s not a time when my family is exactly going to gather around me.”

“If there’s anything you need,” Devin said, “just say it, and I’ll do it.”

Lenore looked surprised by that, and it occurred to Devin that there probably were many things that he could do for her.

“Thank you,” she said. “I think most of the people around here are mostly thinking about what I can still do for them.” She paused for a second or two. “My husband-to-be definitely is.”

“Is everything…” Devin stopped himself. “Sorry, I was about to ask if everything was all right.”

Lenore smiled wanly. “Almost nothing is. You wanted to do something for me? Tell me about how things are going for you. Tell me about something normal.”

“I’m not sure that there’s much that’s normal about it,” Devin said. “I have been spending every day in a forge in the cellar, trying to get metal that refuses to respond to anything but magic to turn into a sword, and I’ve… I’ve finished it, only to just realize that it was going to be either your father or your brother I was due to give it to.”

“Does that mean you’re going to go?” Lenore asked.

Devin shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve finished, but I don’t think Master Grey is finished with me. As for leaving… I don’t want to do that.”

“I wouldn’t want you to either,” Lenore said. “The metal you’re working with responds to magic? So Master Grey is helping you?”

“He…” Devin wasn’t sure what to say, how much to reveal even with someone like Lenore. “There are spells woven all through the forge. He isn’t there anymore though. I’m not sure where he’s gone.”

“Who knows where sorcerers go?” Lenore said. “When we were children, we would have lessons with him sometimes, and it always felt as though, for every one thing he told us, there were another dozen that he didn’t.”

Devin nodded at that, thinking of everything that he’d found in Master Grey’s rooms, the things that he’d found in the man’s journal. Was any of it true? Was he really the one who had the potential to change the world?

Right then, he realized that, for a minute or two, none of it mattered. It was enough that he was here with the princess, enough that, for a few moments, everything seemed to be at peace. They sat there with one another while below, the castle continued to whirl and bustle, and even though they didn’t say anything, it was enough.

“We need to go, your highness,” Orianne said after a while.

Lenore sighed and rose. “I know.” She turned to Devin. “I have enjoyed this.”

“Me too,” Devin said.

“Are you serious about me being able to ask you for anything in the coming days?”

Devin nodded. He knew it was an easy thing to say, but he meant it. And in that moment, he knew what he had to do with the sword. Rodry had intended the sword as a wedding present, so he would see it given to Lenore. It was the least he could do for his former friend.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

King Ravin stood on the deck of his flagship, sunlight shining from his armor, and knew that the world was his to take. It was the feeling that he woke with each morning, and the one that he lay down with each night: the certainty that he was not as other men were, that he, of all of them, was the one able to reach out and have what he wished from the world.

Around him, his soldiers stood in careful ranks, nestled at the heart of a fleet of galleys and cogs, the flagship large and broad sailed, dark wood painted with red shapes that might have been intended to signify the blood of his foes or the fire of a world torn down. He’d had it built, as he’d had all the rest of it built.

“How long until the island will come into sight?” Ravin demanded of the closest sailor.

The man fell to his knees, head bowed. “An hour or less, Majesty.”

It was a wonder to Ravin that his men could chart these things so precisely. Not because the skills seemed impossible, but because his men had learned them so quickly and so well. He had built a body of sailors willing to go beyond the sight of land, just as he had built all the rest of it.

He had planned for this, planned for all of it, almost since the moment when he had taken the throne.

He could still hear the whisper of his father’s last breath, caught in surprise, a dagger plunging into him that was so thin it barely left a mark. Another dozen daggers had risen and fallen that night, killing the others his father had sired, and their mothers, and those who might support them.

Ravin turned to the sailor. “Do you know what the most powerful weapon for a king is?”

The man looked shocked that his king would ask such a question. “No, Majesty.”

“It is the ability to plan more than his enemies, to know more than them, to set things in motion knowing how they will turn out.”

The sailor stared, but then, such men probably had little experience talking to their betters. King Ravin didn’t mind; it was still better than talking to the courtiers who prattled round him, promising this or that, flattering and scheming.

“I have been planning this since… well, since before I became king,” Ravin said. “Becoming king was only a part of it, and that took enough planning. It is not enough to kill those who stand in your way, of course. One must arrange things to have control afterwards, forge alliances, or at least the appearance of alliances.”

Ravin drew the man to his feet. He looked up into the tangle of lines and sails above. Men clambered among it, swaying with the rest of the ship as it rolled from side to side. “Consider the… rigging, I believe it is called?”

“Yes, Majesty?” the man said.

“Such a complex web of ropes, each with a purpose, each moving in a specific way. If they tangle wrong, the progress of the ship is impeded. Disaster might follow.”

“Yes, Majesty,” the sailor agreed, although Ravin could see that he didn’t understand the point.

“Now imagine that it was a thousand times more complex, and that any slip among it would result in disaster, not just for a single ship, but for an entire nation,” Ravin said. “That has been my life. Do you know that I was not initially meant to be a king? That I was least among my father’s children, destined for little more than death when another ascended?”

The sailor nodded. “I… have heard the stories, Majesty.”

Ravin laughed. “Stories. I had the stories written. A king must look a certain way, be a certain way, and I took care to be all of it. I found which friends to make, and which to offer the appearance of friendship for as long as they could be useful. I learned when to be generous, and when to be cruel. I became king.”

The sailor had settled into step beside him now, close as a confidant on a tour of a garden, except that they were walking the deck of a ship, among an armada of them, the promise of their foes’ land somewhere in the distance.

“From the moment I became king, I knew that it was not enough,” Ravin said. “My father thought it was, was content with his hunting and his gaming and his drinking. Oh, I affected to enjoy these things, of course; a king must appear as people expect, but I knew that people need more: they need purpose.”

“Purpose, Majesty?” the sailor asked.

“Without it, they fall into bickering, into conflict, although they do that well enough anyway,” King Ravin said with a laugh. “But give them a common goal, and they will work together. In this case, to reunite the kingdom that once was, north and south together. I have known that it was my purpose for almost as long as I have known that I was destined to be king.”

“As you say, Majesty,” the sailor said. It was as close to a disagreement as men dared around him.

“You don’t agree? Speak freely.”

“Just that you speak of all of this as if it is set by fate.”

“It is set by my will,” King Ravin said. “And by the care that I have taken. Can you imagine what it took to build up my Quiet Men and send them across the river over years? To create a navy in a kingdom that has never known the need? To lure my foes’ forces south by daring to take their princess in the one time she would be vulnerable?”

“I cannot, Majesty,” the sailor admitted.

“Of course you cannot,” King Ravin said, but it was not cruel. It was simply the way that things were. “Just as I am sure that there are things of the sea that you must know, and I have never heard.”

“Your Majesty is too kind,” the sailor said.

“I have rarely been accused of that,” King Ravin said. “You became a sailor when you were young, didn’t you?”

The sailor looked at him in surprise that he might know that. Ravin always found it amusing that small people would think that he wouldn’t know more than them.

“Your parents were killed as my army moved to put down rebels. They were not traitors, but they were there, and violent men strike as they wish.” Ravin watched the man’s eyes, saw the shock there, and the anger rising underneath it. “That is why, a year ago, you contacted certain people within my capital city. You believe them to be rebels. In fact, they are the puppets of a certain nobleman who even now resides in my dungeons.”

The sailor started to move away, taking a hesitant step back.

“It is why you have a knife in the small of your back, ready to reach for,” the king said. He looked levelly at the sailor. “Well, what are you waiting for, Togan Marr? I thought you said that you were prepared to die to rid the world of me?”

The sailor hesitated again, and King Ravin was bored with him now, so he nodded to two of the soldiers there. They grabbed the sailor, exactly as Ravin had ordered them to an hour ago. They lifted him, and with a lack of ceremony, flung him over the side of the ship, to be consumed by the waters below.

Ravin stood at the prow, now, waiting as the fleet grew close to the Isle of Leveros. It was beautiful in its way, the monastery spreading out over it rich with weathering and the patina of age. The fleet came close, not stopping, but slowing a little so that the boats that had taken the island for him could come out with supplies, reports, news. Flickers of light came, reflected from mirrors, in codes Ravin had devised himself for the purpose. Even so, he waited for a servant to approach, bowing low before he gave the king the news.

“The island is secure, my king,” the man said.

“I know that,” King Ravin said. “And with the island taken, the way is clear. What else?”

“News from the mainland,” the man said. “Our people brought messages across. The enemy’s forces have taken the bait and headed south.”

Ravin waited in silence for the man to tell him something else, something useful.

“Prince Rodry is dead,” the man said. “As is King Godwin.”

“You’re certain?”

“The prince crossed the bridge and succeeded in rescuing his sister, but was slain. King Godwin fell in battle at the bridge.”

King Ravin allowed himself a smile. All was going as planned.

He continued to stand there, watching as the fleet around him progressed toward the Northern Kingdom. He stood there watching, planning, working out every one of the steps to follow as clearly as he might have done when crouched over a gaming board.

It was nearly sundown when he saw it in the distance: a thin sliver of land appearing on the horizon. It grew, the land of the Northern Kingdom becoming closer by the second. King Ravin stared at it hungrily.

Soon, it would be his.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Renard stood partway up a volcano, in front of a sheer rock wall that had to be fifty feet high, surrounded by the masked forms of the Hidden. Ahead lay the wall, and somewhere beyond that, an item that was both valuable and dangerous enough to draw him into all of this. He suspected that a more self-aware man might have seen that as some kind of metaphor for his life, but Renard had always made a point of dodging self-awareness the way he dodged watchmen’s arrows.

The volcano itself was probably only a small one as such things went, but even so, it towered over Renard, stabbing up into the sky like a broken dagger thrust at the heavens. Around him, there were pools that steamed with water that stayed hot with the place’s heat, while thin slivers of burning orange high above said that this was not the sleeping giant that he might have wished for.

“The mausoleum sits above,” Void said. “There were stairs once, but now a man must climb to the entrance. Within, there will be defenses to prevent grave robbers.”

“And I’m to get past them and get to the item you want,” Renard said.

“Yes,” Void said. He passed Renard a bag. “Your tools.”

“Thank you. Just one question.”

“No questions!” Wrath snapped from the side.

“This is kind of an important one: what does the item actually look like?”

“We believe it to be an amulet,” Void said, while Wrath looked at him with undisguised hate. “Worked with dragon designs, no bigger than a man’s hand.”

Renard nodded. “And what about—”

“You are trying to delay,” Verdant said from his other side. “Delaying will not work, nor pleading, nor anything else. Begin your work, thief, or I will fill your flesh with vines that expand through it.”

Renard had no doubt that she could. He swallowed. “All right.”

Renard focused his attention on the wall before him. It was vertical, but craggy and gnarled. Aside from the spots that looked glassy and sharp, the climb did not look difficult. Wrapping his hands in lengths of cloth to limit the potential for damage, Renard threw himself at the cliff and set off upward.

He’d climbed many things over the years: trees, walls, once an ornamental trellis when an angry husband had returned unexpectedly. This rock face was one of the easier ones, and Renard scampered up it almost as quickly as walking it.

Above, he found an entrance that made him stop: three blocks of carved stone formed a doorway, while the door itself was made from slabs of granite, carved with two dragons standing sternly. There was a lock set into it, and Renard fished out his picks. He was about to set to work when he spotted the second hole next to the obvious lock, one of the dragons’ claws giving way to reveal it. In the main lock, Renard saw the point of a dart gleaming. He set to work on the hidden lock instead, and soon the door snapped open.

Within was a tunnel, set on each side with niches that held stone caskets. Each was carved in a language Renard didn’t know, but it was thick with cobwebs. Renard took out a small lantern, lighting it so he could see his way as he went deeper.

The second trap almost caught him, buried as it was under layers of dust. Ordinarily, Renard would have spotted the shift in the floor from cobbles to black-and-white tiles, and would have been instantly suspicious. Now, his foot touched one before his mind registered the shift, and he threw himself back on instinct as a pendulum like blade scythed down from the ceiling, right through the spot where he had stood. He lay on his back panting, before forcing himself back to his feet.

He ignored the swish of the blades, ignored the floor that had triggered the trap. Access was the key. People who set traps like this wanted to be able to come and go if they needed to, which meant that there always had to be some way to disarm what they had put in place. He looked closely at the surrounding walls, examining each in turn, searching until he found a lever. Renard didn’t pull it, but kept looking until he found the lock beside that lever, the sphere that would drop otherwise to release poison, or fire, or acid.

He disarmed it and set off, deeper into the complex. He came out into a large, open space, filled on every side with mausoleums and tributes to the dead. There was no roof in this space; it seemed to have been lost in some long ago eruption, or perhaps there had never been one. Perhaps this had always been a place where the sun could shine down on a floor patterned with a map that was not the world as Renard knew it. There was no Slate in that map, while Sarras to the west looked green and wholesome, alive, not devastated by fire.

There was another doorway at the far side of the room, this one outlined in what looked like gold rather than stone, with strange gouges on it, as if something had tried to get in there. Somehow, Renard knew that what he sought would be there. He set out across the floor…

A roar from above him made him look up in a terror that was so old it seemed to be baked into his bones. A shape sat above him, perched on the lip of the open space, and even though Renard had never seen a creature like the one that sat there, stories and pictures and more all told him what it was: a dragon.

How could there be a dragon? There had been no dragons seen in the kingdom in years. Terror flooded through Renard, and he forced himself to stare at it solely because he wasn’t a man who gave in to terror… well, not often. He swallowed and stared up at it.

It was huge, and it was terrifying, blue scales gleaming, other colors seeming to flicker across them like a rainbow after a storm. Then the great mouth opened, and Renard realized just in time what was about to happen.

He flung himself down among the tombs as flames licked over his head, rolling between two, keeping low as he darted past another. He saw a blue form plunging down toward him, and he went flat again, great claws missing him by inches.

He was down there when he saw the bones and the corpses laid in one spot on the floor, a clear space among them just large enough for that huge form to curl up in sleep. Its nesting site! Why would a dragon nest here of all places?

The dragon landed, stalking through the tombs. Its jaws snapped out, taking the remains of a charred cow, obviously hunted on some farmer’s lands. It gulped them down, then tossed them aside, and Renard took a moment to move sideways, away from the creature’s path.

To his astonishment, it went to the door, clawing at the frame as if trying to fit through. It couldn’t, too large by far to fit through there. That meant that soon, it would turn its attention back to Renard, and it would find him. Even if he weren’t ripe from riding too long, it would scent him, and find him.

He needed a distraction. Crawling among the tombs, Renard searched until his hand found a discarded bone. He threw it, and the clatter of it among the stone of the rest seemed to be enough. The dragon’s head snapped round, and its bulk shifted as it turned, following the sound, led by its hunger.

Renard moved in silence, hurrying down between the tombs, keeping his head low and scurrying for that doorway. He was a big man, but now he made himself small, knowing that one glimpse, one sound, might send a dragon’s fire burning after him.

Renard felt the pebble beneath his foot, felt it give and scatter. It bounced from the nearest of the tombs, making a faint clunk as it did so.

Renard was already sprinting when the fire came behind him. He dove through the doorway, ahead of a spurt of flame, and there were golden doors there, open and hanging back against the wall. Renard slammed them, hearing the click of yet another lock. It didn’t matter; he wasn’t getting out that way. He heard the dragon’s claws scrape against the door, but it held.

Renard breathed a sigh of relief, and dared to look around the room. It was smaller than the one beyond, but it seemed that every surface was gilded, or painted, or both. Scene after scene showed dragons, intertwining, fighting, flying. Where there must have been a hundred tombs in the room beyond, here, there was only one, standing at the center of the room, the figure of a man in full armor worked into its surface with its hands clasped over its chest.

Those hands held something, and instantly, Renard knew that it was what the Hidden had sent him to find. It was an octagonal amulet, small enough that it could have fit into the palm of his hand, if only barely. There were runes around the edges, each one filled in with a different color of gemstone. The amulet’s heart was a single scale, and Renard could guess from the scratching on the door what kind of animal it had come from.

He reached for the amulet, and stopped, but there seemed to be no traps here, no tricks or threats. There was only the amulet, to take if he wished.

Renard lifted it, and the moment he did, he felt two things at once. The first was almost overwhelming. He felt the dragon outside the room, felt a connection to it that he could have reached out and touched easily. He felt… inexplicably, he knew that it was young, grown impossibly quickly on the magic of the world, filled with power. A name came into his head: Alith. More threads of connection reached out, stretching into the far distance. Renard could see now why the Hidden had wanted this: with something like this, they could reach out to a dragon, control it, use it.

That thought was almost enough to make him drop it, and not just because the knowledge of it seemed to fall into his head almost like a stone falling into a pool. Renard was a man who was used to flickers of memory coming out of nowhere, but that usually had to do with remembering the day after too much drink. This… the sheer enormity of what it represented was too much, the things a man might do too great.

He could also feel why they had sent him, rather than coming for it themselves; from the moment he touched it, something seemed to leach into him, pulling at all that made Renard who he was. Again, the knowledge was simply there. Wear this amulet or hold it for more than the briefest time, and someone would find their life force drawn from them.

He threw it from him, but it made no difference. It seemed that the pull of energy into the amulet merely slowed, rather than stopping. It was no more than a trickle, but left long enough, even a trickle would prove deadly.

The only question was what to do now. By rights, he should find another way out of this mausoleum, descend the volcano, and hand the amulet to the Hidden. Feeling it now though, feeling the power within it, Renard knew that he couldn’t do that.

Keeping this amulet would kill him.

Yet he knew, then and there, even though the hordes of the world come after him, he would not give it back.

It was his now. His greatest theft of all time.

All he had to do was escape.