by Arthur Slade
Dragon Assassin 4
Bitterwaters
Arthur Slade
Dava Enterprises
Copyright © 2019 by Arthur Slade
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover by Zhivko Zhelev
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Created with Vellum
Contents
1. Above Bitterwaters
2. A Good Use for Words
3. Floating
4. The Shadow
5. One Too Many Times Back to the Well
6. Trapped in Amber
7. A Place to Rest
8. The Symbol
9. A Revelation in the Cold Room
10. The Crunching of Bones
11. The Warm Waters
12. Not Caves
13. Pain Thrice Over
14. What the Sparrow Said
15. A Word of Power
16. A Need to Know
17. An Inopportune Time
18. The Domed Room
19. That Which Was Sworn
A Note From The Author
Book 5 Chapter 1 Preview
Also by Arthur Slade
About the Author
1
Above Bitterwaters
We would die before I fulfilled my promise to Brax.
When we were halfway across the Bitterwaters, his wings began to freeze. Chunks of ice formed along the bony edges, getting thicker each moment. Most of the ice would break off if he folded his wings in or flapped them harder, but it was obvious he was tiring.
There wasn’t anything I could do from my perch on his back, other than huddle in my cloak and hold tight with my slowly freezing hands. Every once in a while I’d reach out and brush off the snow nearest me.
I’d long since lost the feeling in my toes. I had bought thick mittens, a scarf, and three sweaters at a northern Akkadian village (all of which I was wearing). They had been the last clothing from a merchant who'd sold the rest of his stock to Akkadian soldiers marching east. Since it was the end of his wares he'd charged me double.
It was a good thing I had that extra layer of warmth, or my fingers and the rest of me would have long turned into icicles. I could only wait helplessly, expecting us to plunge into the waters at any moment.
The Bitterwaters, a sea legendary for causing the deaths of thousands of sailors, was a wasteland of water and ice that stretched forever in all directions. The ice hadn't formed in large enough chunks to land on. I’d lost count of how many hours we’d been in the air. The sun was shining somewhere far behind us, but not directly here. If the rumors were true, the sun never shone on Bitterwaters.
Brax made no complaint, but he was not one of those rare dragons with fur—he had scales and nothing else to keep his blood and organs warm. Flying made that blood move, but the wind and cold took its toll. Ice had frozen over his empty eye socket and he didn’t bother to brush it away.
The joy of being in the air had long since been frosted out of me.
So had the fear of where we were going. Few mortals had traveled across the Bitterwaters to the Land of Beasts and lived to tell the tale. There weren't even maps. Only stories of boats returning with burnt sails and oars broken and most of their crews dead.
The Land of Beasts, or “that horrible place beyond Bitterwaters,” was mostly believed to be part of the shared imaginations of crazed sailors. A dreamed-up place. Except it became quite real when the occasional dragon made its way across the water and burnt down a village or two.
It became even more real when one of those dragons decided to go back.
And this mystical, dangerous land that Brax himself called Drachia was where he was carrying me.
To kill someone he wouldn't name.
It was almost hard for me to believe it had been less than two days since I'd flown my separate way from my friends, Megan and Thord. And seen my brother fly on the back of a giant swan, unconscious and blind in one eye, toward the west. That had all happened a hundred years ago. In a land that no longer seemed real.
Only the cold was real now.
A crack indicated that another section of ice was falling off Brax's wings.
“Can you fly with that much ice stuck to you?” I asked.
“I have no choice.”
“Was it this bad when you crossed the first time?” The scarf over my face muffled my voice.
“It’s colder now. And I didn’t have a passenger weighing me down, so it’s taking twice as long. Have you ever considered losing weight? You could start with your head.”
I bit back my reply, not that it was all that clever. He was not in the mood for talking and I wanted him to direct every bit of energy toward staying aloft.
I did the only thing I could—reached out and brushed away snow and ice as far as my arms would reach on either side. At least I was helping in some small amount, and it kept me warmer. Though I nearly slipped off more than once with the effort.
Again, there would be no hope of rescue from the Bitterwaters. I’d fall into that bone-chilling cold and freeze into a block of human ice and then sink to the bottom.
After at least another hour—or five minutes, because time had perhaps been frozen itself—I spoke again.
“Does the sun ever shine here?” I asked.
“No, child, it does not. They say this is where the tears of the moon fall. Thus the ice.”
“Who are they?”
“People from Woden—simpletons like your friend Thord. But that isn’t the moon’s tears below us. It’s death.”
“That Woden tale is a way of explaining things with a story.”
“I know that, Carmen!” he snapped. “I’m angry with everyone and everything right now. It’s the only emotion that keeps me going. Now be quiet for a long time because I need to concentrate.”
There was another large crack as a ragged chunk of ice broke from the tip of his right wing. But there were ever-growing sections of ice in the center that forced his wings to droop. If I had a pole I could have reached them.
Slowly, my eyes closed. I could not slip into slumber. My hands would unclasp and I would fall.
But my eyes didn’t care about that. They were getting tired. And sore. I kept them closed for several moments.
Or longer. I wasn’t sure because I felt like I was in a dream, and in that dream I was getting warmer and warmer. Someone had lit a fire in a hearth and I was under several layers of blankets.
No. My mind was tricking me. But when I tried to open my eyes, I failed. The frost had iced my eyelashes together. I wiped at them with a rime-covered mitten but still couldn’t see. There was another cracking sound. And another.
Then silence.
I stopped rubbing at my eyes and listened. There were no more sounds of the ice cracking, though the wind had picked up enough to make the hood of my cloak flap.
Wait! That wasn’t wind. We were going faster and my position had shifted so I was leaning forward.
Which meant we were falling straight down.
And I was blind.
2
A Good Use for Words
This time I smacked at my eyes, worried I’d be driving icicles into them, but the ice cracked away as fear burned its way through my system. I could see!
Brax’s head was lolled to one side, his wings encased in ice and we were dropping like a frozen solid chunk.
“Brax!” I shouted, banging on his neck and snapping several icicles. “Brax, wake up! We’re falling.”
But he didn’t reply, nor did he move his head. The only thing saving us was that his wings were locked into position and were at least stopping us from aiming straight down.
“Brax!” My voice was hoarse. The ice and water were getting nearer and nearer. I had nothing heavy to hit him with and his head was just out of reach.
I forced my frozen hand into my haversack, came out with the first heavy thing I had, stretched the full length of my body and smacked him across the top of the head, breaking away chunks of ice.
He didn’t open his eyes.
I hit him again. And again. Only on the third hit did I realize I was smacking him with my copy of Bartum's Revenge. I grabbed with both hands, pinching my legs together to keep my seat, and whacked the top of his skull as hard as I could. The force of the blow knocked the book from my hand and it went flying and flapping down into the waters below. Maestru Beatrix would kill me if she ever learned about that.
“Did you hit me with a book?” Brax whispered. "A book!" And then his eye widened. “Oh, no!”
He desperately tried to move his wings, but either the ice held them in position or his blood and muscles had frozen. He turned his head and tried to blast flame across his wings, but only smoke came out. Was it too cold for fire to work?
With a crack one wing broke free of the ice and he flapped it, but with the other still frozen he could no longer control our flight and we spun in a maddeningly fast circle, so I lost track of where we were in the air. We were going down, though, and I held on with every last bit of strength in my frozen fingers, my cloak flapping.
“Break the ice on my wing!” he shouted. “Reach! Reach!”
I stretched as far as I could, smacking with my hands, hitting it hard but the frozen layer wasn’t breaking. After several more blows it cracked and a large part broke away from his wing.
“There!” I said. “There!”
It was too late. We were arcing straight down. “Not enough,” he said. “Hold on. Hold on!”
We edged closer and closer to the water, his legs and tail hitting the surface and spraying up more freezing water. We couldn’t climb because he was exhausted, and the ice that remained on him was too heavy.
I was too heavy.
And if I couldn’t break the ice, there was only one way to lighten his load. Perhaps he could save himself.
All I had to do was let go, and one of us would live.
“Sorry, Brax,” I whispered. “Goodbye.”
I stared at my hand, willing it to unclasp, but it wasn’t obeying my commands. Then finger by finger I could release my grip. One finger. Two fingers. Three.
My dragon eye flashed.
“Do not let go!” Brax commanded. And I did not know if he was reading my mind or had somehow sensed what my plan was. “If you let go, I’ll kill you! Now brace yourself, this is going to—”
He didn’t finish his words because we hit something hard and cold and full of snow. I was thrown from his back and sailed through the air and at any moment I expected to fall into Bitterwaters and sink to my death.
3
Floating
I didn’t hit water.
Instead, I skidded across a solid and unforgiving landscape, rolling and smashing into several sharp immovable objects, flailing out my hands to slow my movement. It was a long battering time before I came to rest in a soft and cold place.
It was too cold to feel pain, but I was certain my body had bruises and maybe broken bones. I opened my eyes to whiteness.
Absolute whiteness. Flakes of snow were falling on me, settling on my outstretched arms, coating my hair, tickling my eyelashes. It was beautiful.
And mesmerizing. I slowly, slowly sat up. The moon looked down on me with her one glowing eye. I felt I should just lean back and stare at that big, beautiful moon. The goddess that was the moon would watch over me.
No. I was getting too cold. My brain was freezing and my mind failing in this frigid bitter air. Brax was somewhere in this whiteness.
I couldn’t stand, so instead I crawled with my right hand held out, trying to find him. I whispered his name.
It wasn’t clear where I had landed—whether this was just a large chunk of ice, but it felt solid and didn’t appear to be moving through the water. I discovered a stone-like pillar about twice my height that stuck out of the whiteness. Snow didn’t cling to it, which I found rather odd, but if there was no ice and no snow, then I might climb to my feet and more readily search for Brax.
The stone was warm to the touch. Which let me know two things. One, it was not a natural stone, and two, I had lost my mitten. But I gripped my clawed fingers on the pillar and used my waning strength and whatever will hadn’t been knocked out of me to pull myself to my feet, leaning against the pillar.
At that same moment it pulsed and let out a low noise that reminded me of the lowing of a bull. Was I correct that the ground was shaking?
“I do wish you hadn’t done that,” a voice rasped.
I couldn’t see the source. Other than the column I was alone, the snow settling around me.
Then a blinking eye appeared in the whiteness only a few feet away. A tiny fluff of steam floated out of two small holes.
Brax was almost at my feet, splayed across the ground and already blanketed in snow. Only his eye and nostrils were visible.
“Brax!” I said. I took a step toward him, but my leg was unsteady, and I fell so I landed right beside his head. “Brax.”
“Yes, it’s me,” he whispered. His lips were barely moving. “I’m not dead. Yet. But I need to sleep.”
“You can’t sleep,” I said. “The cold will kill you.”
“Yes, there’s that,” he rasped.
“Where do you hurt?”
“That’s the funny thing, I don’t hurt at all. Everything is warm and tingly and I am floating. Floating. I don’t need wings anymore.”
“No. You’re not floating. You’re on solid ice,” I said.
“Yes. Land. Land. We have made it to the edges of my homeland. So close and so soon to be dead. A shame to die here.”
“Don’t say that,” I said.
“Just telling the truth, like I always do,” he said. “You know me. So truthful. And still floating.”
“You aren’t floating.” I wiped the snow from his snout. “What can I do to help you?”
“Nothing. I need to heal. But I will freeze before I heal so I will be dead. But then I’ll be dead before I freeze, anyway.”
“You’re not making any sense.” I had cleared away the snow from his head, knocking the ice covering his blind eye. “What are you talking about?” I decided it was best to keep him talking. Maybe I could build a fire, though there wasn't any sign of wood nearby. “You won’t die before you freeze. In fact you won’t die at all.”
“How wrong you are, Carmen. That object you leaned on. It’s… it’s… it’s a warning stone. It’s calling someone here.”
“Is that what the noise meant?”
“Yes, Carmen Crow, yes, it would have been triggered by passing over it in the air perhaps—I tried to avoid them. But touching it will set it off for certain, as you now know. They spread out over the northern borders.”
“But who is coming?” I asked. “Maybe they’ll help us.”
“Help us? No. Someone or something will be here, and then that someone or something will kill us. Well, me for certain. You it might toy with then kill. Or keep you and eat you later. I don’t know, it’s hard to say. I guess it depends on what mood the thing is in and when it last had lunch. Are you sure I’m not floating?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean am I levitating above the ground without flapping my wings?”
“No, you’re not! And I mean who is coming?” I looked around but again there were just snowflakes.
“It doesn’t really matter.” His v
oice was slowing down. “It doesn’t. Because I can’t do anything, see?” Nothing happened.
“See what?”
“I tried to move my wings. To flex a talon. And my traitorous bits did not obey. But… but since I’m floating, you could get on my back. Yes. That would work.” His voice drawled. “You. Get. On. And push and we’ll float away from here. Just. Push. Really. Hard. South we should go.”
“That won’t work. You’re not floating.”
“Oh,” he said. “I seem to have problems with the thinking.”
“Well, get your thoughts together." I tried not to shout this. "Tell me what is coming.”
“I. Don’t. Know. For sure. It could be…”
He closed his eye and lowered his head.
“Brax, who is coming?” I said, as loudly as I could.
But he made no answer.
Instead someone cleared his throat behind me.
“I am coming,” a high-pitched voice said. “I am coming. Well, correction, I am here. And by rule of law, Braxas Andorium, by the decree passed by your father the king marking you as an outcast never to return upon pain of death, well, I sentence you to death.”
I turned. The person speaking had to be invisible.
4
The Shadow
“Is he awake?” the voice asked.
“No,” I said. Brax hadn’t responded. I was looking left and right and above me, but nothing was visible in the thickness of the falling snow.
“I gave that great big speech, which I have been practicing for months on the chance he would return, and he doesn’t even do me the courtesy of staying awake?” The voice continued to be high-pitched and that made me think I was speaking to someone who wasn't all that big.
