Black Dragon of Amber Book Two: The Road to Amber

by Barbara Bretana

  “A noble war well fought. You must have the luck and backing of the Unicorn,” he said. “Not many survived those. I fought at sea in Magnesia.” That was the sea battle between Eric and Julian at the end of the war. Not many had survived that encounter, either. “Your men will leave tomorrow morning for the Citadel.”

  He pointed to a map laid out on the table showing the bay, the port city of Topaz and a vast expanse of forest, some plains and mountains that rivaled the Rockies. Some said plainly that their elevations were unknown and warned of wyvern nests, harpies and other dangerous beasts of the air. The scale suggested that it was a week’s journey to the foothills if the forests weren’t impenetrable.

  “Flying legions tried, magic was tried. In the end, it was only betrayal from within that breached her walls, by the Red Witch herself. She turned on her mentor, Jax and slew him. The king wants us to do the same but this time, we have to rescue and retrieve a dragon.”

  “He’s mad,” one of the men, snorted. “Ain’t no such critter!”

  “Oh, there is,” General Cathorian, said. “I, myself have seen it. Giant, black and it speaks. I believe it is the Black Dragon of Amber and our king wants it back. Those of you who are afraid may opt out but know this, if you stay and win, each and every one of you will reap such wealth as to be a royal Lord yourself.”

  “Can’t spend good coin if you’re dead,” another mumbled.

  “If you do not wish to join, you may leave but you will serve elsewhere until your term is up,” the General added. Four men walked out leaving Corwin, Pire, Rouen and three others, two were brothers and the third an able swordsman.

  “Can any of you track?”

  “I can,” Corwin said briefly. “And I know a few basic spells, protection mostly. Swords and hand-to-hand. My friend is a Sergeant-at-Arms and the other a mounted archer.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Loest and the parish of Phelan,” Corwin said naming the district near Amber and across the sea from Arden.

  “I’ve been there. The view from the lighthouse on the headlands is breathtaking.”

  “Yes, it is but it’s not in Phelan,” Corwin said dryly at the General’s attempt to test him.

  “Do you know Orlean of Phelan?” The General sighed. “I miss that Amberian brandy that he served in his tavern.”

  “Good news then, General. Captain Carron of the Roger has brought in a shipload of it.”

  “Wonderful. I’ll see to it that some is delivered to the Palace. Now, Sergeant Gleener will see to your equipment, horses and the like. Mess hall is open until first moonset. I would suggest you get your affairs in order and then, some rest. We leave at dawn, first light.”

  “We? You’re going with us?” Corwin questioned.

  The General gave him a wry look. “Of course. Since I’m the only one with Dragon experience.”

  “Do you know how to control the beast, General?” The Prince was curious.

  “No, but I’ve fought one before. I was at Cabra, also.” The General stared at Corwin for the blink of an eye and said, “Dismissed,” walking out before the men did.

  *****

  Roelle and Marcus had followed Stacks’ directions to the inn just around the corner from the library and found it clean, comfortable and cheap. The innkeeper was a tiny woman as wide as she was tall with webbed fingers and orange hair. Her eyes and skin were burnt orange and she smelled of the same heavenly scents as those emanating from her kitchen. She took the pair up to their single rooms and held the door open. “Bed, wardrobe, hot and cold water closet, dresser, table and chair,” she announced. “Fireplace runs on bluestone or oil. You want oil, it’s four taler more a night as I have to get the boy to carry up the kettle. Rooms come with breakfast and dinner, lunch is on you or for another taler, and I can make sandwiches and beer. No gambling and no wenching in the room. There are establishments for that on Doxsee Street. No boys in the rooms either,” she said to Roelle. “You be wanting a lady’s maid, that be extra, too. Weekly rates are cheaper than days. Monthly rates are the best. We have the best food, ale and quiet in this quarter.”

  “We don’t know how long we’ll be here,” Marcus shrugged. “Maybe a week and maybe just a few days.” He gave her enough for three days and she was satisfied. Marcus shut his door and stretched out on the thick mattress covered with down blankets. Tucked his hands behind his head and thought about what the librarian had told them.

  He pondered the star riddle, with Roelle’s aid they had partially decoded some of the rhyme but couldn’t get any further until they read the original papers that were locked in the Palace archives. Since they heard that King Luke was mounting an expedition to track Raven down they thought they had a better than average chance to break in and find the scrolls.

  Marcus had no desire to risk Roelle’s life so he did not tell her when he was leaving; he simply got up in the darkest part of the night, dressed in his darkest clothes and climbed out on the roof via his window.

  Topaz was laid out in a grid system built around a central hub so all roads led to the Palace. Most of the main thoroughfares were still busy, early morning deliveries of goods, drunks and off-duty soldiers coming and going. If it was true that a modern city never slept, the same could be said of Topaz.

  Marcus was a Mage-in-Training and he had several spells that could mask his presence. The trouble was, another mage (or sorceress) could feel those spells and know another wizard was approaching. He used instead a stealth charm that masked his physical body and let him climb the rooftops like a ghost. His own natural skills at climbing the heights were only enhanced so it was with some shock that he looked up and saw the gargoyle flying silently overhead. He froze on his perch of what was the Palace East wing of the outer ring. Silently and unmoving, he watched from under his hood as Murphy circled in long lazy spirals before gliding slowly off. He let out the breath he had been holding and waited for ten minutes more just to ensure it wasn’t a trick.

  The marble under his thin-soled slippers was cool and slick. He wiped his suddenly sweaty palms on the folds of his cloak before he stepped off the cornice and onto a downspout.

  Once back on the ground, he was lost. There were a maze of buildings with thousands of rooms, corridors and gates, all of which were guarded by tall heavily armed and stalwart men.

  ‘Like cut out cookies,’ he grumbled. ‘All cut from the same mold.’ He wasn’t worried about them spotting him; he was more concerned about tripping a ward or rune across a doorsill. Still, Marcus and Raven had spent nearly six months wandering Amber’s palace grounds together and had never been caught. Luckily, he had the foresight to ask for a map of the Palace and had made a copy as well as memorizing the route he needed.

  The archives were kept close to the Queen’s old suites, heavily guarded but Marcus was nothing if not ingenious. He researched the old papers on construction and found several hidden ways on a three hundred-year-old blueprint that wasn’t on the more modern versions. To Marcus, that meant secret passages. The only problem was finding the entrances on the other end.

  As he slipped down one hallway painted in a dull red that showed blackish in the dark, he felt the tingle of old magic and paused at a pedestal on which rested a particularly ugly figure of a man in torment. Behind it was a tapestry and when he lifted it, he saw a blank wall with a strange crack. To the touch of his hands, it slipped inside itself and opened to reveal a narrow tunnel. He didn’t hesitate but climbed in and heard the door grind shut.

  The darkness was absolute, the silence heavy. The air smelled of age and dust. He lit a Wyche ball and squeezed his way down trusting in fate and the luck of Unicorn.

  Chapter 17

  The Healer Bremer was the only person that I saw besides Jasra and the servants. All of them tiptoed around me as if I were some deadly disease that would poison them in some horrific manner. As if I could care less if they did anything to me.

  Bremer bullied me. In my more lucid moments, this amused m
e, the fact that an old man could bully a forty-foot Dragon. Jasra wanted me to transform but the Healer had forced her to reconsider, citing reasons:

  1.) He needs less food at this size.

  2.) He can be cared for inside the keep.

  3.) It takes less pollen to keep him under control.

  4.) It’s easier to treat his wounds at this size.

  5.) Finally, he can be destroyed easier if need be.

  Not that I was an agreement on any of them but my attitude was that of despair and detachment.

  Jasra had warded the tower chamber with a major spell that had taken her two days and three nights to perform. She hadn’t allowed me to be in the room, nor the healer. Instead, we had been banished to his room, lower on the first floor of the tower. It was a round room filled with herbs and potions, smelling very much like Roelle’s Solar and Apothecary. He had many books in there, too. I felt a pang of nostalgia and wondered where my two friends were.

  “Raven, how do you feel?” Bremer asked. He’d carried me and the basket up the fifteen flights to the top and placed me on the perch built just for me. I didn’t know why they treated me like a hawk; I would’ve preferred a stone outcrop to sprawl on. I felt different. Stronger. Spread my wings and preened. Felt the fire deep in my belly and smoke puffed out through my nostrils. I roared. Or at least, I tried to. It came out more like cat’s growl.

  “Relax,” Jasra said and smiled. I settled down, all four talons clinging to the perch and tightened my grip. The hawthorn stick crushed beneath me and broke in two. My wings kept me aloft, three feet of thin membrane and sharp spined bone flapping furiously. Dragons were aerodynamic gliders, not birds.

  “I would say the spell was successful,” Jasra gloated. “Dragon, find a place to roost.”

  I settled to the floor and walked over to the fireplace, climbed the stone with claws and feet to perch upon the slates of the mantelpiece. I looked down at the four corners of the room.

  “What did you do, Jasra?” Bremer was curious.

  “I brought a piece of Amber here and planted it inside this room. As long as he’s in here, he can draw on the magic of the land and remain strong. I’m not sure if it will extend beyond the tower but I believe it will. How do you feel?” She turned to me.

  “I feel hungry, mistress,” I replied and opened my mouth to show her my teeth. “Strong and hungry.”

  “Do you think you can fly and carry me, Dragon?”

  “No. My bones still ache from the last flight. I need more time to heal,” I replied.

  “You may hunt the Citadel for your food. Take what you will.”

  “Anything, Mistress?”

  “Anything. Human or animal. Vermin, bird or pets.”

  “I do not eat of the flesh of humans, mistress,” I shook my head.

  “If I order you?” She insisted.

  “I would become a mindless beast that no one could control.”

  “But you have the eaten of the humans, Raven,” she said coolly. “I fed you Dieterhof’s heart.”

  I said nothing, just barely felt the sudden pang in my stomach at the horror of the thought. To consciously eat of humankind would turn my mind into a thing, no longer vaguely human. I would become one of the Chaos Spawn.

  I wished desperately for help from my father. “I can’t,” I whispered. “Even you could not bend me to your will then. I would burn, ravage and destroy this whole Shadow until not one human life remained. Only me and a pile of ashes.”

  “So you say,” she snorted.

  I fixed my eye on her. “Read the Grimoire of the Blighted Void and you will learn why there are no more dragons.”

  I tucked my head under my wing and went back to sleep. For once, my dreams were unknown nor did I visit with my mother in Amber at the Unicorn’s Bower.

  *****

  “Wakee, wakee,” Jasra chirped and banged on the wall so that it startled me awake. I nearly fell off the mantelpiece and screeched at her; she stood back and admired my voluble curses. “Are you done? Good, it’s time to test my potion not my patience.” She gestured and I felt myself bound, a hood on my face and leather straps around my rear feet. Hooded and jessed like a falcon. Though I struggled, I could not remove them.

  Carefully, she folded my wings against my body and carried me…somewhere. I heard the door open and close, she mounted stairs and though my senses were awash in sounds, scents and even a kind of sonar, I could feel and see nothing. “Speak your words, Dragon,” she ordered.

  “The hood and jesses?”

  “They’re spelled to grow with you.”

  “I can’t fly if I can’t see,” I pointed out.

  “True. But trust me.”

  I snorted. Smoke puffed from my nostrils. “Gigantum alternus,” I said and in the space of that blink, I was back to my regular size. I felt Jasra climb onto my back and where there had been a hood, now was a harness onto which she could hang. My head rose and I stared in awe.

  I was literally on top of the world, on a mountain crag covered with snow and on a tower that rose some twenty stories above that. Murphy had taken me to the Hoover dam and I’d been amazed at how full size semi-truck trailers looked like matchbox toys but here, even with my Dragon eyesight, I could barely discern houses. Rivers looked like thin ribbons of blue.

  “Can you fly?” I stretched my wings, arched my back and moved everything finding nothing other than soreness as if I’d overextended the muscles. I leaped and nearly unseated her as I dived off the flat roof. I caught a thermal immediately and she laughed in sheer delight. Gestured, spoke a spell and I was suddenly blinded. In panic, I dropped a thousand feet before she pulled me up. “Listen,” she said urgently. “Listen to the sounds that are coming into your nostrils and the skin on your wings!”

  I could feel the tingling and the moment I shifted over to that sense, images appeared inside my head; like infrared pictures. I could actually see the images given off by everything that produced heat. When I gave off ultrasonic squeaks, they pinged back at me and my brain interpreted the clicks into decipherable pictures. “Like a bat’s sonar,” I was amazed.

  “Like what?” She asked guiding me into a broad turn.

  “It’s what they use to find food, each other and home. Echolocation.” I could see the heat signature of a large beast below me and recognized the two hearts and four stomachs of a snow ape. “I’m hungry,” I announced and felt the pull of firestone below me.

  “What do you eat in this form?”

  “Anything I want. Is there any creature you do not want me to eat, Mistress?”

  “Nothing.”

  “There is a clan of snow apes below. Do you care if I eat one of them?”

  “Well, they are part of the defense of the mountain. Perhaps not.”

  I shuddered to think of anyone foolish enough to try to sneak past those critters. They were 600 pounds of pure mean with teeth like a great white. I could kill one but I sure as hell wouldn’t want to take on more than one at a time.

  Scanning, I banked towards a gap in the mountain and dropped into a small valley lined on both sides with silver Firs. They were the only trees hearty enough to survive above the frost line. An eagle buzzed me and I ignored it, locking onto a herd of Ibex only these were four times larger than I had ever seen with horns like a Texas steer.

  They scattered as I dropped on them but I didn’t even miss a beat as my rear talons picked up one a piece, spearing them through the heart with my main claw. The rich smell of blood and meat made my stomach growl and I yelled a roar that echoed down the valley setting off a series of avalanches that made the ground tremble.

  I could’ve eaten on the wing but Jasra told me to set down on the small outcrop of blue granite just outside the valley. I glided in, let go of my meal and grabbed the rock with claws and wingtips. Folded my wings straight up in the air so that she could dismount and when she stepped nimbly off, wrapped them around my prey.

  She watched me tear them to pieces and swallo
w whole without chewing. I offered her the heart and liver but she declined. When the edge was taken off my appetite, I scratched at a boulder, turning it over to unearth a sizable deposit of firestone into my gut and the special chamber that processed it until it was full. Burped and picked at the offal stuff between my teeth.

  “Finished?” She asked sarcastically.

  “No, Mistress. That was just a snack. I’ll have to eat a dozen stags or two cattle.”

  “Horses?”

  “Well, no. I don’t like to eat horses. I like horses,” I protested.

  “I didn’t realize dragons were so picky,” Jasra sneered.

  “Well, I’m not really a dragon, Mistress. I’m really just a teenage boy. Or I was before I died.”

  “Really? Tell me,” she ordered and I told her my story. “You murdered your master?”

  “Yes, Mistress. I had to. He was going to hurt my dad and grandfather and the King. I couldn’t let him do that and I couldn’t live with myself after I killed him. So, we died together.”

  “If you try that on me, Raven, I won’t make you suffer. Instead, I’ll go after your father, your grandfather and your uncle. I’ll hurt everyone and everything you love.”

  I reared up and spread my wings, opened my mouth wide and the sun glinted off my very large teeth. “I cannot harm you, Mistress; I am bound to you by the powder and your spells.”

  “You do not give me your mind,” she pouted.

  “No. Just my will. My mind is my own and unless I become wholly Dragon, it cannot be yours. Of course, if I lose the spark of intellect that makes me Raven–the Dragon, I become Raven–the beast and no one can control me. If you think to try that, read your archives back to the time of the Dragon wars–they nearly destroyed both the Courts and Amber. There have been no Dragons seen since then, over a millennium ago.”

  “Are you ready to leave?” She asked changing the subject.

  “I must eat more. Will you stay here while I hunt?”

  “Am I safe?” She countered.

  “Safe from all but wild dragons,” I returned. She laughed and told me to go. I left her there, returning only after I had eaten my fill.

  Chapter 18

  After a meal of epic proportions, she mounted up and had me fly north towards a Kingdom that had little commerce with Khafra as the huge Mountain range separated the two kingdoms and was nearly impassable for an army to travel over. There were no passes through or at least, none that she knew.