“It’s a dragon you fools!” Erik yelled and knew the man heard him because he looked up.
The froksman held out his hand to his companion and the bald man took it and pulled himself up onto the animal.
“Do you want to lead her all the way to Gol-Durathna?” Erik yelled.
“There’s no such thing as dragons!” the man yelled over the din of frightened people, more earthquakes shaking South Gate, and the people so out of control that the city guard began running through the streets clubbing people and trying to maintain order. “You’re the fool!”
The two Durathnans tried making their way through the street, and were able to push past people, but slowly. They caught the eyes of several eastern soldiers, who made their way towards the pair just as Erik and Nafer did. At that same moment, another quake caused the ground to roll as if it were a sheet Erik’s mother was laying over a bed. The buildings on either side of the street creaked, the wood and stone cracking, many of them crumbling and tumbling to the ground. People screamed as they found themselves buried under the rubble and now, the city guard seemed more interested in saving themselves than trying to maintain order.
The next shock caused the ground to crack, the earth swallowing buildings and people alike. Erik looked to the south and, as thunder rumbled and the ground rolled uncontrollably, he saw an explosion, flames and smoke billowing up into the air, seeming to almost touch the sun.
Her roars and crashing of buildings were now so loud that Erik ducked and the people around him covered their ears. To them it was just a noise, but Erik understood.
I will reduce the lands of men to rubble. I will make you pay for your treachery.
Chapter 46
She felt it. It was close as she soared over the land, reveling in the feeling of the air passing over her. It had been so long since she had flown so high, watching men—like insects—below her scream and run, listening to their pitiful and futile cries for help. Fire Beard, the dwarf came into her mind, and she snarled. His last act, his last fruitless spell before he died, was to put her to sleep, causing her to go into a hibernation that lasted a thousand years. All for nothing. Soon the scroll would be hers, the spell would be hers, she and her mate would reunite, they would raise their son, control the others of her kind—hidden away like gutless fools—and destroy the world, bringing shadow and fire that would last an eternity. She would be a goddess and her mate would be a god.
She laughed and belched out a ball of fire, consuming a whole village below her. Watching them burn excited her, and a part of her wanted to stop and consume their flesh. But it was too close to stop. The spell. The scroll. That fool of a boy had lost it … that much she knew. The voice reading the spell wasn’t his. But it didn’t matter. She would make him pay. He had injured her, and he had evaded wolves, killed several of his kind. He still didn’t have the scroll, but she could feel him … they were close to it. She could smell him, an odor that would be forever imprinted in her mind.
By the demon gods of old, how many men had populated the world? When she had last flown above the world, they were scarce, fractionalized. Now, there were so many of them. She belched and destroyed another village. They were like ants. There were millions of them. As far as she could see. At every corner of the world. The elves. The dwarves. Giants and gnomes. They were bad enough. But these men … they were a disease. If she hadn’t been asleep for so long, they would have never grown this powerful. They would have never grown so numerous. It was no matter. Soon, they would all die. They would satiate her hunger and then her and her mate would rule again.
She saw a city, far away. It was new and hadn’t been there when she reigned before. It was gigantic by the standards of men, so many of them. And they were there, that wretched boy and the fools who had stolen the scroll.
She dove towards the ground and flapped her wings. The earth below her cracked and split as she doused every open space she could with flame. She screamed, and the weaklings that fled her wrath fell to the ground, dead from only the sound of her voice as she landed and vomited fire. Everywhere she looked, the land burned, and she reveled in the heat before she turned her head skyward and spit into the air.
She was growing stronger by the moment, and her powers were increasing. Not just her body, nor her breath. She remembered a spell and cast it in her mind. Two giant golems—mounds of dirt and stone and mineral shaped like giants, with heads and bodies and legs and arms—rose up from the ground, as tall as buildings, and followed her. She conjured a different spell, and a black cloud formed over a small village. It flashed so brightly, even she had to turn away, and lightning spilled from the cloud, consuming the whole community. Within the flutter of a fly’s wing, the village was gone—every building, every animal, every person. She roared and cast yet another spell. Wherever someone had fallen dead, wherever someone lay buried within a league of her, whether they had recently fallen or buried in some village cemetery for years, they rose. Their flesh fell away, and ligaments tightly bound their bones together as she commanded them to march.
****
Erik could see her. The smoke that trailed behind her blotted out the sun, and the morning light turned deep red, as if blood had painted the sky. Most of the buildings at the beginning of South Gate were gone, and she and her new minions were coming closer, two gigantic golems in her wake followed by the growing skeleton army. The golems looked like mounds of rock and dirt, but they had heads and bodies and legs and arms. One had a tree growing from its scalp as if it had been formed straight from the earth. Whichever way she turned, they followed, as if they knew what she sought and were helping her look, and Erik knew what it was she hunted.
“What kind of man would follow a dragon?” Erik asked.
He looked to where the bald man and the froksman were.
“Do you believe me now?” he yelled.
The bald man looked at him. Fear filled his eyes. It wasn’t the kind of fear that a man had when he was about to die, either. Erik had become accustomed to that look. No, this was the look of a man who was frightened beyond death. This was the look of a man who was fearful for his people, his family, his children.
“Give me back the scroll,” Erik said, walking closer to the two Durathnans. “She doesn’t care about you. She only cares about the scroll.”
There was something about the scroll—or on the scroll—that the dragon desired. Perhaps it was more of a driven need, but the scroll was powerful and dangerous, and she wanted to keep it out of the hands of men, and have it for herself.
“Give it to me!” Erik screamed.
As the light from her nearby shadow dimmed even further, the bald man gave Erik a look of uncertainty mixed with, for a moment, confusion. How did this young man, who looked like he hadn’t seen twenty summers, know what this mythical creature wanted? But it was a look that was short-lived. He turned to the froksman, a look of resolution and anger in his face, but the froksman hissed and shook its head. With a brief nod of understanding, the man reached into the front of his belt, the froksman waiting behind him and holding the reins of two horses that would rather be somewhere else, and retrieved the scroll case, showing it to Erik.
“Never,” he said in Westernese. “It goes with us to Amentus, where it will be safe and away from the evil that has consumed the east.”
As the man turned to join his comrade, the air now grew blisteringly hot, and the space between Erik and the two Durathnans became hazy and distorted. A hot wind, greater than any fire or furnace, blew against his face and all sound stopped, as if Erik had gone deaf. He knew what was about to happen. He remembered.
A pillar of flame erupted from the dragon’s mouth and consumed the space where the bald-headed man used to be. Anyone, anything, that was within a dozen paces was gone. Everything but the scroll case, which lay on the ground where the man once stood. But how?
Erik looked over to see the dragon, her wings flapping, holding her head high above what used to be South Gate. People ran
about as the two giant golems around her, as tall as three-story buildings, crushed people with their feet. And the soldiers that followed her, the skeletons, struck out at any people who ventured near, their bones seemingly as strong as Dwarf’s Iron and killing indiscriminately.
As he wondered how to reach the scroll, Erik considered his dreams had been different. These walking dead were not those who came to him in the nighttime, but nonetheless, they indiscriminately killed anything they came across.
Erik heard a horn blow as both the city guard and the regular soldiers of Fen-Stévock organized in front of a gate in the city walls. At least a hundred men stood there, ready to charge the dragon as she landed. Erik could sense her mocking laugh, and in a single breath, every soldier that had stood there, ready to fight, was gone. He saw the froksman run to the scroll case, but she knew he was there too. She knew it was there. Her tail whipped through the air, a crack of thunder following it, and struck the froksman. He flew through the air and landed somewhere among the ruins that was once South Gate. She stared at the scroll, and Erik’s dagger stabbed at his hip.
Grab it! Before she gets it!
Erik knew that if he ran for the scroll, he would be dead before he took two steps. But just then, black clouds formed in the sky above him and two bolts of lightning struck the ground where skeletal soldiers marched and attacked. Bones flew everywhere as both the dragon and Erik turned to see the Messenger of the East leading his Soldiers of the Eye.
Andragos’ hood was pulled back, and he didn’t look like Erik had expected. He didn’t know what he expected—a skull? A withered old man? A monster?—but this was just a man, with pale skin, straight, black hair, and handsome, masculine features. He lifted his hands, muttered something, and another bolt of lightning struck one of the earthen giants, the one with the tree growing from its head, and as the tree trunk and leaves caught fire, the thing crumbled to the ground, nothing more than dirt and rock again. Then, a bolt struck the dragon. It seemed to startle her more than harm her, and she tossed her head into the air and roared a fiery scream, but it was just the distraction Erik needed. He ran for the scroll case and scooped it up before pushing it into his belt.
The dragon breathed against the wall of Fen-Stévock as her skeletal minions and the remaining golem turned their attention to the Soldiers of the Eye. A pile of melted, molten liquid lay where a wall a hundred paces high and made of black stone and iron once stood. Then, she looked at Erik.
You!
Her deafening voice rang through his head as the spines along her back seemed to bristle and her wings rattled. A dozen more of the city guard marched against her, on the opposite side of Erik, and she disposed of all of them in another single breath.
“Run, Erik!” Andragos yelled, and even though he was a hundred paces away, his voice echoed over the din of the battle and the screams of the dying. Erik turned, but a wall of flame blocked his path.
You didn’t think it would be that easy, insect?
Again, there was laughter in her voice. A sickening mirth mixed with a deep hatred, something Erik couldn’t even describe. It was as if the dragon’s voice portrayed her hatred of life itself, of all of creation. Nafer ran to his side, mace readied in both hands. What good would it do? Another of Erik’s friends would now lose their life because of him. He would lose his own.
Again, there was a sudden silence, and Erik knew what was coming. He braced himself for the pain and the heat of death as he felt the explosion that said the dragon had breathed. Erik turned away and futilely shielded his face with a hand as Nafer stepped in front of him, ready to take the full force of her attack—as if that would help either. As images of his family flashed through his mind, he felt the intense heat, hotter than ever before, but there was no pain, no death.
He opened his eyes to see fire spraying all around him and Nafer, some invisible force blocking it from touching his skin. He turned to see Andragos, his eyes glowing a brilliant white as he chanted something, looking in Erik’s direction. The fire stopped, and Andragos fell silent, almost collapsing before one of his bodyguards caught him.
As Erik looked around, the dragon roared with anger and whipped her tail, destroying men and her own skeletal soldiers alike. The whole of South Gate was now destroyed. What was once a city in its own right had gone, crushed and burnt in a matter of moments.
“Erik.” The voice was Andragos’, but it was little more than a whisper.
Erik turned to see the mage, standing on wobbly legs. His eyes had returned to normal.
“Read the scroll, Erik,” Andragos said.
“But …” he began to reply.
“Read the scroll,” Andragos insisted. His voice sounded strained and weak. “It is our only hope.”
Erik looked at the scroll case for a moment, remembering how he felt when Patûk Al’Banan had read it—the darkness, the evil. He pulled open the cork and removed the scroll, unfurling it. Even staring at the page made his stomach turn. The symbols on the page were no language he was familiar with, and he began to wonder how he would be able to read it, but then the ink moved and undulated until they formed letters from the Westernese alphabet. He still didn’t understand the words, but at least he would be able to read them. He heard the sucking of breath again, the rattling of giant dragon wings.
“Hurry, Erik,” Andragos urged him as skeletal soldiers made their way towards Erik.
Erik began to read. He had no idea what he said, but the world around him darkened. He felt distant as if he were outside his body watching himself. The ground began to shake as he chanted something in a language that sounded evil.
The Shadow Tongue.
He felt a tingle at his hip.
As the skeletal warriors reached the man and dwarf, Nafer swung his mace, crushing skulls and shattering bones. Erik read as quickly as he could and, as his eyes moved down the scroll, the rattling of wings, the sucking in of hot breath, even the march of skeletal soldiers and the golem stopped. Whatever magic had knit the warriors of bone together failed, and they all crumpled to the ground. The golem slowly crumbled until it was nothing more than a hillock of dirt. And the dragon paced back and forth, in front of Erik.
She eyed him as she paced, but every time she tried to breathe fire, all she could do was gag. When she tried to fly, it was as if some invisible rope kept her tethered to the ground. When she lunged forward to snap, some magic wall stopped her from reaching Erik. The spell was controlling the dragon.
As it paced in front of Erik and Nafer, the whole of Fen-Stévock’s city guard formed in front of the remaining city walls, led by Andragos’ Soldiers of the Eye. Erik stared at the scroll and the words in Westernese began to change again, back to an ancient text that seemed to crawl across the old parchment on its own volition. Something felt wrong.
“The spell is incomplete,” he said to Nafer. “We are missing two elements that complete the spell.”
“What do you mean?” asked Nafer as he warily watched the still pacing dragon.
“It provided directions—a map and an explanation of what it did—but there is a sword,” Erik said, and he felt his dagger tickle his hip, “and a crown.”
The spell won’t hold her for long.
“Erik, fall back into the city,” Andragos said, his voice even weaker.
Erik shook his head and drew Ilken’s Blade.
That won’t do you any good. Unsheathe me.
“I know you are a powerful weapon,” Erik said, “but this is a dragon.”
Nafer looked at Erik with a cocked eyebrow. He hadn’t realized he was speaking aloud.
Trust me. Tell your dwarvish friend to stand behind you and unsheathe me.
Erik sheathed Ilken’s Blade.
“Nafer, get behind me,” Erik commanded.
The dwarf looked at him for a moment, looked back at the dragon—who still paced and fought against the invisible shield that held her back—and smiled.
“Erik, what are you doing?” Andragos’ urged
as Nafer stepped behind Erik.
The force that held the dragon back began to lessen as Erik saw a spark in her nostrils as she breathed. She was able to spread her wings, and she roared, even though it sounded muffled. Erik could sense indignation coming from the dragon.
I will make you suffer.
Her voice cut through his mind with searing pain like a sudden headache. She sounded truly livid.
I will make you suffer. I will melt your skin from your bones but keep you alive while I burn all you love. I will force you to watch them scream in before I trap you in a world that is in between this one and death.
She sucked air into her mouth and this time was able to blow fire against whatever invisible force held her at bay. She was gaining strength, and the spell was weakening. Erik held his hand ready by his side while he continued to stare at the dragon, holding her evil gaze.
“Nafer, give me the dagger I carry on my hip.”
As Nafer drew the dagger and handed it to him it was as if the small weapon infuriated her even more. She roared and beat her wings against the invisible force field and blew hot breath into the air, each time, the spell wavered and weakened until it finally dissipated completely.
The dragon looked first to the gathering soldiers in front of Fen-Stévock’s walls. With a single breath, she obliterated a quarter of the men standing there waiting to attack her. Rocks flew over the walls, fired from siege engines within the city, but a single flap from the dragon’s wings sent the missiles back into the wall, cracking stone. Gigantic bolts tipped with tar-smeared, burning blades sailed towards the dragon, but she breathed again, incinerating the arrows mid-air and melting the tops of the wall where the siege weapons had once sat. Then, she turned her attention to Erik.
The dagger felt different in his hand. It was changing, like it always did, but this time was different. Erik didn’t know how, but it felt different. That familiar tingle wasn’t there, and as the dagger shifted, it sent a shock up his arm. Normally, the transition to some other form was instantaneous, happening in a quick flash, but it was as if the dagger took its time. The blade elongated, as did the handle and crossbar, so that his dagger looked like a sword. When it was finished changing, it looked much like Ilken’s Blade, but only golden, from hilt to tip. All of the jewels that had been set within the handle were still there and all of them—the differing shades of a rainbow—glowed with an indescribable brilliance.
Breaking the Flame Page 33
