The Dragon Prince

by Rex Jameson

  “You have witnessed the power of the paladins,” Godfrey said. “They are not mere stories spread amongst barmaids and traveling swindlers. The paladins are the only force in Nirendia that we know of that can kill demons.”

  Ragnar nodded with his brother Olaf. Cassandra stared into the pale face of her mother.

  “The paladins should be reinstated,” Cassandra agreed, “but they are not the only force that can kill demons.”

  “Who else is there?” King Ragnar asked.

  “Our libraries tell of another group,” the princess said, “the dark elves. They fight beneath the earth, keeping the demons at bay.”

  “The dark elves are our allies,” Godfrey said, “and we will surely call on them.”

  “The elves are on the brink of annihilation,” she said. “We can call on them, but they have been losing their fight for millennia. The paladins too are small in number and near extinction. Surdel needs a new force if it is to survive.”

  Godfrey looked at her with genuine curiosity and maybe even hope. He waited for her to finish her thought. Jeremy walked beside the throne, completely oblivious of the trail of royal blood he tracked through. Her brothers stared at her too.

  “Regent,” she said, “with your permission, I would ask that the royal library be opened to me. No more restricted sections. No more banned books and scrolls. I have found some small, ancient knowledge there, in tomes long removed illegally by someone else from the forbidden section. I need full access. I’m sure there are more.”

  “You think our salvation lies in a book?” Ragnar asked.

  “I don’t know for sure,” she said, “but I have found mention of books left to us by the elves. Long ago, they tried to share knowledge with us, and because we shunned magic, we stowed these gifts deep within the archives to be forgotten and lost.”

  “There is wisdom in you, Princess Cassandra,” Godfrey said, “and I believe you are correct. We cannot rely solely on the thousands of elves who hold their line in the darkness below Uxmal. And the paladins are too few to be our saviors. The armies arrayed against us are numerous and their power too great to fight alone. We need new powers of our own.”

  “So you will open the library to me?” Cassandra asked.

  Godfrey motioned to his aide Gerard Bastille, who stood stoically and silently against the door to the Lord General’s tower. “Give word to the guards that the princess and a staff of her choosing have full access to all floors and chambers of the royal library. Not only will the guards give her access, but they must help her find what she is looking for. Any and all aid will be rendered to Princess Cassandra, whenever she demands it.”

  Gerard saluted sharply, opened the door, and then left.

  Godfrey descended the stairs toward Cassandra. He reached out to her and helped her gently lay her mother down to the floor.

  “We do not have time to grieve,” Godfrey said. “Not now. You have a job to do. The fate of the kingdom may rely on you finding the elven knowledge that you’ve heard of. We’re depending on you. Go.”

  “But—” she protested, reaching toward her mother.

  “There is no time,” Godfrey said firmly, “and if you do not find what we need, there may never be time in the future. Our fate is in your hands, Princess. Go with haste.”

  She straightened her curly red hair with her hands to calm herself. She pushed herself forward and stood confidently before him.

  “I’ll find it,” she promised him and then turned to her brother Ragnar. “I will not let our kingdom fall!”

  8

  Of Blood and Cleansing Fire

  Julian Mallory ran his fingers down his face, wiping the thick, warm blood from his eyes. He kept his lids closed as he shuffled through soft lumps and jagged bones sticking out from scattered entrails and limbs on the ground. The smell of the fresh blood was so intoxicating that he sometimes fell over and giggled as his sister Jayna caught him in her arms.

  Had he been by himself, without her by his side, he probably wouldn’t have embraced his plight in quite the same way. But with her, he didn’t care who thought he was evil. He didn’t worry if he’d gone too far. He wrapped himself in the depravity of his thirst like an alcoholic with a drunken friend. She made him worse, and he loved her all the more for it.

  “Careful, love,” she said. “Perhaps we should retreat back to our estate for a while. I think we’ve terrorized this city long enough.”

  She turned him away from the gates of Shirun, and he chuckled. He looked back over his shoulder at the city. For the past two weeks, he and Jayna, freshly created vampires, had crawled up the walls and into the city. They snuck into the homes of rich and poor alike, eviscerating and maiming the inhabitants and sucking them dry of their precious organs and liquids. They gleefully laughed as they left each home and broke into another, clearing whole neighborhoods in a night.

  By the third night, people began waiting outside of their houses, frozen in fear. He bypassed these wretched creatures and stared at them ominously to further cement their dread. The next day, more people stood outside, possibly gossiping with other doomed citizens that he and his sister wouldn’t hurt people who stayed in the streets. This was, of course, a fantasy. There had simply been too many people to kill in too short a time, and terror gave him a different kind of high than killing and consuming.

  Julian and Jayna allowed the rumors to foment for a few more days, and at night, the streets became packed with men, women and children, shivering in their night clothes. Jayna teased the men with her long nails, and Julian sniffed at the necks of the women and children. They continued the game for another night, and then on the seventh day, when the streets were so crowded that they could no longer squeeze between people, they gave up the charade. They moved like hurricanes amongst the crowd, shredding limbs from torsos indiscriminately and lapping up the fresh carnage. The ensuing stampede crushed hundreds against stone walls and wooden buildings. Julian spent the next two days cleaning up the scene and draining every last drop from the hopelessly maimed with his lover.

  For the past week, they hadn’t needed to crawl over the walls and into the city. They simply stood in the field in front of Shirun and waited. The people came to them, crying and begging the Blood Lords for mercy, and it came—in a way. He relieved them of their fear and terror. Their entrails and bones waited on the ground for the dogs and the vultures. These poor creatures, these terrorized denizens of Shirun, were finally at peace.

  He felt a tug at his mind. Demon Lord Orcus called him toward Perketh. Julian had resisted the urge for three days. The intoxication of the blood orgy distracted him enough, but the call had grown more determined and demanding.

  Julian figured he knew why Orcus wanted him. The remnants of the Necromancer’s army remained obstinate and resisted Julian’s master’s demands for subservience. If Orcus wanted him there, that meant the demon lord’s patience had finally run its course. Orcus had tried to fight the rebellious ghouls with his own undead and even offered them a prominent place in his army. But they refused him like Julian had refused to heed his master’s call while he terrorized Shirun. Perhaps their resolve and defiance had strengthened the same feelings within him. There was some small, rebellious part of himself that screamed for autonomy and freedom.

  But he could hold out no longer. He felt the disease within his body pulling him toward his master, and he dreaded the call—for fighting the undead held no reward for him. They had no blood—at least, nothing appetizing. Julian loathed their smell. He hated the taste of their rotten flesh in his mouth and the way the stench lingered on his own skin and clothing for days. He avoided the undead on purpose. He was not so invested in understanding their betrayal as his master was.

  He wondered if Jayna felt Orcus’ calls the same way he did. He wondered if her playful attempts at turning him back toward home were actually responses to this different creature, who held her heart in a more primal manner.

  He finally succumbed to the fierce
beckoning. He watched the surprise in the people’s faces as the two vampires left Shirun. The humans had been so desperate—so ready to die—only to find him and Jayna retreating from the field, leaving them with mutilated friends and loved ones. The people had wanted the fear to end, but they had obviously never dreamed that they could escape with their lives. He didn’t know what to feel as the realization that those who remained might actually survive for the day. Maybe pity. They wouldn’t stay alive for long. He’d be back and hungrier than ever.

  He and his lover flew through forests and across houses at an unholy speed. They skirted Perketh a few minutes later, proceeding farther north. He felt the danger before he saw the lightning strikes, but the warnings were nothing compared to his master’s irritation. The link Orcus and he shared was filled with purest loathing.

  Julian watched a hammer falling to the ground as if in slow motion. He saw the beads of sweat glistening through the man’s visor and smelled his pungent body odor from a thousand feet away. A couple dozen other delicious paladins pounded the ground in a crescendo of strikes and echoes of holy Light. Julian’s feet slid to a stop, and he admired them as they toiled away so slowly and with such vigor. The paladins obliterated dozens of his master’s minions per minute.

  Orcus leaned into his staff, disappointment deeply etched into his face. He turned to Julian as Jayna finally caught up.

  “You two certainly took your time,” Orcus said. “I hope you’re proud of yourselves.”

  “I was held up in Shirun.”

  Jayna giggled as Orcus turned back toward the paladins.

  “While you were bathing in the blood of peasants, gorging yourselves on nobodies,” Orcus said, “our real enemies have been smiting our forces for a week. The paladins are unlike anything I’ve seen from her before. The last war… it’s been so long since she’s had this kind of fight in her… this planet must hold something she truly wants.”

  “Is this what the Necromancer gives them?” Julian asked.

  Orcus seemed to contemplate the question as he watched a woman touch her swords together, forming a bubble of arcing holy Light that consumed a dozen large, undead minions. The green flame in their eyes died out like a flame smothered in water, and they fell to the ground.

  “I’m terribly vexed from all sides,” Orcus said. “Her general moves with her behind the mountain to the north. My true rival moves underground to the northeast, waiting for who knows what, before he decimates the elves. I should be dominating this world in both of their absences, but here before us, these humans wield a power they should not possess—”

  “We are here now,” Julian said, embracing Jayna by the shoulder.

  “And then there are those forces that truly perplex me,” Orcus said, biting at his lower lip. “The free-willed undead to the south continue to hold out against my calls. Could they resist Demogorgon’s gaze as my own undead do? Farther south, your human subjects are consumed by fire from beasts beyond the ocean.”

  “I’m told he is impeded by—” Julian said.

  “When I turned you,” Orcus said, menace and disdain dripping from his black gums, “I told you that a foreign prince had arrived to the south with dragons. What impediment, exactly, do you think a flying dragon has? Time? Old age? A bit of wind?”

  Julian nodded in recognition that his argument was unsound. He prostrated himself. He knew his people were dying to the fires, but he feared returning there. When Orcus had turned him, Julian demanded that his own people in the Mallory State be safe from the Lord of the Undead. It was only after the disease set in that he realized the cruel truth: his hunger meant that no person was safe while he was around, not even the very people he had bargained to protect. It was one thing to consume the subjects of Vossen; it was another to betray the memory of his own father and ancestors. But Julian knew that these last morals and ideals would crumble over time. Nothing could stop the hunger, and he knew that when his last vestige of will broke, Orcus would stand over him, laughing.

  “My Lord,” Julian said, “let us make amends to you here. Let us attack these paladins and drive them before you on spikes.”

  Orcus grunted and turned back to the spectacle of the light show. He paced before them, watching half-a-dozen more undead stumble into the deadly storm.

  “I’ve never seen anything like these men,” he admitted. “I’ve seen deathknights. I’ve seen darkness and fire. I witnessed her when she went full dark after the death of Maddox a lifetime ago, but these men… I do not know their limits. I do not know how closely they approach her fury and power, but if you get too close, you and your beloved may die in the attempt.”

  “I thought you said you were the Lord of the Undead,” Jayna said, a wicked grin beneath her red hair. “Just bring us back.”

  “There are states of death and destruction that are beyond my repair,” Orcus said.

  Jayna ignored his warning and rushed forward. She knocked undead aside as she dodged the spiny fingers of lightning with her superhuman speed. Julian ran after her, his own quickness and stamina dwarfing hers. She closed the gap to the paladin line in seconds. She ducked between lines of holy energy and rammed a man so hard that he flipped over his compatriots. Her claws dug into the shoulder pads of a nearby paladin as he swung at her, forcing him to topple over instead.

  She was on top of him in an instant, but Julian felt the coming danger like a premonition. He watched the female paladin touch her swords together and marveled at the raw power growing from the point of contact. The wave of Light touched Jayna before he could reach her, and her body recoiled against it like a hammer against rubber.

  She flew over his head, and he grabbed her just as the boundary of the sphere of holy Light hit him. His skin seared off, and he cried in pain along with Jayna as they bounced off trees and scattered undead. He held onto her, and her skin stuck to his fingernails. They impacted the ground and rolled for several yards, Jayna yelling all the way. As they came to rest, she stopped screaming, as if she might have passed out.

  “Are you OK?” he asked.

  She screamed in gut-wrenching agony. Her skin crisped and hung from her body. He pulled her to him as he pressed her flesh back to her face.

  “I’ve got you,” he said, “but we have to consume to recover. You have to regain your strength.”

  His master bent down and stared at Julian from inches away as Jayna squirmed.

  “Wounds like hers require immediate healing,” Orcus said, his eyes full of judgment. “Her abilities are weak in comparison to yours. She’ll need something with impressive vitality to replenish herself. I hear there are massive beasts to the south. Reptilian creatures twenty-five-feet-long from snout to tail. Their hearts are probably as big as your torso—perfect for regenerating muscle and flesh. Perhaps you’ll finally go there now. Perhaps you have a reason other than my direct orders.”

  Julian nodded. Orcus had won. Julian would meet the Dragon Prince. He just hoped he might postpone entering his family grounds for as long as possible. “We’ll go now.”

  Orcus smiled and nodded in agreement. “Bring me one.”

  “A heart?” Julian asked. “Do you also heal by consuming?”

  “No. This is just taking too long. Bring me a dragon.”

  9

  The Other General

  The Necromancer Ashton Jeraldson had never been this far north. Every town seemed to have shale roofs, even the farms appeared rich, and everyone looked at him like he was a vagabond.

  Not that they were wrong. He belonged nowhere. He was no longer a blacksmith’s apprentice in Perketh. He hadn’t seen Clayton or anyone from his hometown in the better part of a year. Ashton had lost his undead army long ago. He hadn’t seen the paladin Cedric Arrington or the dark elven prince Jayden in so long that he found it difficult to remember their faces. He was a wanderer traveling with the strangest and most untrustworthy of cohorts. His only companions now were the demon lord Mekadesh and the reanimated corpse of Frederick Ross, the mos
t famous tournament champion in Surdel history.

  To top off his drifter persona, most of his clothes—a well-worn leather jerkin and breeches—had been stolen off a clothesline by his durun companion during their flight from the capital and the terrible deeds committed in the throne room. The only thing he still carried on him that he had owned in Perketh was a brown cloak that he wrapped around himself to keep the frigid afternoon at bay.

  Ashton watched the swirling black energy leaking from the joints of the shining armor of Frederick Ross. Since the murder of King Aethis Eldenwald, his party had moved east from Kingarth and through Estwick, hugging the contours and veins of the great mountain Godun that rose from the center of Surdel. Mekadesh said little, and Frederick said nothing at all.

  The day was gray and overcast. Rain dripped down his wool cloak and hood, draining from his face and blond hair to the slick stones below on one of the well-maintained roads. Water overflowed the nearby creeks into the green grasses of hills and meadows. Faces peered out at him from the finely painted houses, many looking at the woman in regal clothing walking ahead of him. She was golden-haired now, a mirage of the dark creature that she turned into in his dreams and waking nightmares.

  Ashton alternated between periods of self-loathing and determination. He knew Mekadesh was not quite what she seemed, but he couldn’t tell if she was aiding the people of Surdel at all or only helping herself. He wanted to think that everything he had been through had a purpose—that he wasn’t just a man who could raise the dead or a demon, if he was careless or hoodwinked as he had been with Frederick. If he’d known the foul blackness that resided in the man’s soul, Ashton would never have agreed to it.

  He kept thinking of the apocalypse that Mekadesh had warned him about during his imprisonment in Kingarth. The advance of demon lord Orcus. The impending doom of Demogorgon, the so-called Prince of Demons. He wondered if either of them was actually worse than this “Holy One” sometimes seemed to be.