“Leave,” Specter said.
The girl nodded, gathered a heavy animal skin coat, and left. As soon as she was gone, he lifted his hands, an ancient incantation running through his mind. The two drained bodies levitated and caught fire. Within moments, they were nothing but ash to merge with dust and dirt on the upswept wooden floor. No trace. Stangar was a long way away for a normal man, weeks, months even, but he was no normal man. A shadow traveled faster, much faster. He pushed his hands forward, slipping through the cracks of the window as if smoke, and then he was gone, traveling in the shadows … towards Stangar.
29
“To Erik Dragon Fire,” Turk said, lifting a mug of ale.
Everyone at the table—his companions and some of the dwarves who had helped save them—lifted their mugs and took a hearty drink of either strong, dwarvish ale or spiced wine.
“So,” Erik said, “what should I expect from this baptism?”
“We do not speak of it,” Yolli said.
“A warrior is sworn to silence,” Yora added, patting the place on her breast where her brand sat, “but know this, it is a great honor and if you survive …”
“Survive?” Bryon asked, cutting Yora off.
“Not everyone who goes through the initiation process lives,” Yolli said in all seriousness.
Erik took another drink of his ale, thinking of the dead, grassy plain and the red sky and the black mountain range.
“How did you do it?” Nafer whispered to Erik. It was perhaps the twentieth time. “Look Erik, they are saying my arm wasn’t actually broken, but you and I both know it was. And I could feel the ártocothe poison coursing through my veins, burning me from the inside out. There is no simple cure for that.”
Erik wondered if he should finally tell. It was not as if he could not trust Nafer. Even when it wasn’t invading his thoughts, he could feel his dagger’s presence, like a fellow traveler, always next to you even in moments of silence. But he couldn’t feel it now, beyond hanging from his belt. The normal glow that seemed to surround the weapon was gone as well. Erik looked at Nafer, and he knew his face looked sad.
“It wasn’t me,” Erik finally replied. “I placed my dagger on your chest. That’s it.”
“It needed you to take action, and so I still owe you my life,” Nafer said. “I am always indebted to you.”
“And I owe you my life,” Erik replied. “It is what friends … brothers do for one another.”
“Truly,” Nafer said.
Erik took another drink of ale and then met his dwarvish friend’s eyes.
“Demik said something to me before he died,” Erik said. “He said to me, there is no greater love than for someone to lay his life down for a friend. I think, at the time, I didn’t quite understand it, but those words were not only meant for Demik and me, in that moment. I think he said them to explain Befel’s death, and Drake’s death, and Samus’ death, Mortin’s, Threhof’s, and Thormok’s deaths, and any one of our other friends who had died on our journey. When I saw you lying there, saw Bryon lying there, I thought of my unborn child and my wife, my parents and sisters. What Demik said finally made true sense. To truly honor life, and to truly honor the Creator, you must be willing to give your life. So, I don’t know what happened. All I know is that we are family, and, as much as you would give your life for me, I would give my life for you.”
He had meant those words for Nafer, but what he didn’t realize was that by the time he finished speaking, everyone was listening to what he said. Bryon and his long-time dwarf friends stared at Erik.
“Well said, Erik,” Turk said, lifting his mug. “To those who gave their lives so others might live.”
The others lifted their mugs, toasted, and drank.
Erik stood at the edge of an underground lake, torches on poles illuminating the area where he, Captain Khâmuth, Lieutenant Güthrik, his two guards, his friends, and a few other dwarves stood. The water rose just above his knees, and it was cold and dark. He felt goose pimples all over his body and, even though he tried to stop it, he shivered. Captain Khâmuth stood next to him, the water rising above the dwarf’s waist, wearing a red robe, his hair and beard unbraided and falling freely.
“A warrior must first be cleansed with water,” Captain Khâmuth said, lifting his hands to the air, “Then, a warrior must be cleansed by fire.”
Erik looked over to a tall barrel. Steam rose from the top, and he knew that a bed of red-hot coals sat in that steel container. The handle of a brand rested against the edge, the other end shaped in the dwarvish rune for Dragon Fire and turning a golden reddish color. Despite the cold water, he sweated.
“Are you ready?” Captain Khâmuth asked.
Erik swallowed hard and nodded. Firmly but not squeezing, the dwarvish leader reached up and grabbed Erik by the neck and, pulling him backward until he could push on his forehead, the freezing water rushing over his face. Erik tried to keep his eyes closed, but the cold forced them open. Staring up, he only saw black. The dwarf’s strong hands held him there, even as his air began to run out. As the last bubble escaped his mouth, in the darkness of a cavern lake, Erik wondered if he would drown, he opened his mouth—knowing he shouldn’t—to scream and water rushed in and into his lungs.
Erik emerged from the water just as consciousness began to wane. As soon as his face hit the air, he expelled what water had filled his lungs in three, large, heaving retches. He wrapped his arms around his body, shivering violently. He felt disoriented as the strong hands of Captain Khâmuth led him to the shore.
“As a warrior,” Captain Khâmuth said, “we must be accustomed to fear and death,” he added, and Erik signaled his understanding with a look.
If you only knew.
“We must embrace the chill of death and the searing, burning fire of pain,” Captain Khâmuth continued, “so that when our time comes, we welcome it with open arms, like a long lost friend, and we are prepared to meet An when our time in this world is done.”
Captain Khâmuth nodded to the two attendants watching the barrel full of red-hot coals. One of them extracted the brand. The iron glowed white; it was so hot. Erik felt his pulse quicken.
“You will receive no medical attention,” Captain Khâmuth said. “This is the test, and, if you survive, you will be a true warrior. When the fever comes, you will take a journey. Survive the journey and rejoin your brothers. Fail on your journey and meet An tonight. Are you ready?”
Erik nodded, still shivering. The attendant with the brand stepped forward, took careful aim, and pressed the white-hot iron against Erik’s left breast. He was told not to scream, and he obeyed. He clenched his teeth and embraced the pain. As he felt his skin melt and smelled burning hair and flesh, he fell to one knee.
He knew the brand had been removed, but he still felt the pain of fire.
“It is done,” Captain Khâmuth said. “By this time tomorrow, we will know if An has selected you to be a warrior.”
Erik looked up to see everyone in attendance. He felt proud and smiled, but then everything went black as he passed out.
30
Erik opened his eyes and stared at a red sky. He couldn’t tell if the orb hanging there was a sun or a moon, but either way, it glared down at him. Sweat collected around the collar of his shirt in the hot air as a wind fluttered through the tall, brown grass around him; it felt like the heat from a blacksmith’s furnace. He breathed fire, the searing air burning his lungs. He sat up, looking around. He stood. He knew this place. He recognized the distant range of black mountains, the black clouds and the purple lightning dancing over the rocky peaks.
He looked behind him. The hill with its weeping willow tree was not there, and that made him shiver. Ilken’s Blade lay on the ground, unsheathed, and he picked it up. His shield lay there as well, his new one with the name Dragon Fire inscribed on the front in dwarvish runes. He picked that up as well, and immediately the sky began to darken. Purple lightning now streaked across the sky, above him even tho
ugh the clouds remained over the mountains, and the low rumble of thunder, even from the great distance of the plains, shook the earth.
A flock of thousands of blackbirds, moving together like a giant bed sheet in the wind, flew by, further blanketing the red, dull glow of the land. Erik thought at first that the birds were a simple flock of ravens, but as he squinted and watched them move and flow together, he saw that was a false presumption. Their heads gleamed in the dull light, and he saw there was no flesh, nor feathers, just black, shining bone. Their feathered wings stretched out in tatters, ripped and shredded, and their talons hung slackly below their bodies, long, black claws also glinting in the fiery light. Instead of a tail of feathers trailing their bodies, a tuft of black hair, coarse and stiff, fluttered haphazardly behind them.
As the flock of bird-like creatures passed, Erik stepped forward, in the direction of the luminous thunderclouds. As he stepped, the dead earth below his boots cracked, and suddenly, a great din of buzzing, like the green summer beetles that escaped from the sun in his mother’s rose bushes, rose up and filled the air. Erik dropped his sword and shield and put his hands to his ears as the sound, the chorus of dissonance, grew. He closed his eyes, bowed his head and screamed, but could not hear his own voice. Out of instinct, Erik picked up Ilken’s Blade and swung. At what, he didn’t know—the sound, the red sky, the air, the black clouds. As he swung, he chopped down the tops of the grass all around him. The grass bled, reddish-orange liquid oozing out of the tops he had cut like old milk, plopping to the ground. Where the blood fell, the earth burned black.
The sound stopped, and as a quiet hush settled over the dead plain of grass, a great fluttering echoed and beetles the size of a man’s closed fist shot into the air, their wings quivering, again creating that buzzing, chattering sound. It was a plague of insects like Erik had never seen before. Their heads were those of vultures, with curved beaks of a gleaming black and yellow eyes looking wildly in every direction. Their six legs all ended in talons, and the hairy bristles looked hard as iron. Some fluttered towards Erik, and he instinctively put his shield up and swung Ilken’s Blade again. The bugs he made contact with split in two, sending green puss splashing across his face before the bodies dissipated into black smoke, blown away by thousands of buzzing wings.
In time, the mass of insects simply looked like a spiral of smoke, floating aimlessly in the red sky. In the east, the black clouds of thunder and lightning remained, and Erik saw the veil of distant rain. It had never rained here before.
Time didn’t matter in this place. It never did. It always seemed to just stand still. But he would eventually wake, the dream world around him would grow faint and hazy as his real world came back into view. As Erik marched towards the mountain range, never seeming to get any closer, he didn’t get the sense that he was about to wake up. Another flock of bird-like creatures flew overhead. Maybe this wasn’t a dream … at least, not like any one he had ever experienced before.
A swirl of wind blew dust in his eyes, and after he’d blinked it away, a man wearing a black robe stood in front of him. He knew this man. The black-robed man turned towards Erik, the space underneath his cowl dark and invisible. Erik heard laughing. Carriages. Fire. A forest. That was where he had seen him before. A golden carriage appeared next to him.
“You escort the fallen even in this place?” Erik asked.
“Is there a place I should not?” the figure replied.
“This doesn’t seem like a place where the heaven-bound fallen would reside,” Erik said.
“Sometimes, they lose their way,” the man said.
Erik looked to his left and gripped the handle of Ilken’s Blade.
He recognized the tall, bald-headed, broad-shouldered man who now approached him. He was as he was in life, unmarked by wounds and fire, flesh free from decay. He was the Durathnan who had stolen the Dragon Scroll from Erik. His companion, the frog man, was the one who had killed Demik. Erik felt a lurch in his stomach, a surge of hatred in his heart.
“Not in this place,” the robed figure said. “A hateful heart, and you will never leave.”
“You’ve been here before?” the Durathnan asked, his eyes flitting from the robed man to the carriage.
“Every night,” Erik replied, “in my dreams.”
The man smiled.
“This is an evil place,” he said.
“It can be,” Erik said. “It can be beautiful also.”
“Not with them running about,” the man replied.
“You’ve seen them, then?” Erik asked. “The dead?”
“I have,” the man said. “A lovely bunch of … whatever they are.”
“You are not like them?” Erik asked.
“No,” he replied. “Am I supposed to be?”
“Most everyone I see here is decaying and rotten,” Erik said. “What was … is your name?”
“Cliens,” the man replied.
“And the froksman?”
“Ranus,” Cliens replied. “He was my best friend.”
“You shouldn’t have stolen the Dragon Scroll,” Erik said.
“We did what we were ordered to do,” Cliens said. “We did what we thought was right. And now, here I am. I will never see my wife or children again. I’m doomed to wander this place, forever. Every time I close my eyes, I see fire, feel fire, hear the thundering sound of it.”
“You’ll see your wife and children again,” Erik said. “That’s why he is here.”
Erik pointed to the robed man.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” Cliens said, “that much I know. The train of carriages came for me. But I was so angry I refused to get on board. Ranus did and others who were waiting, but I turned my back on them and walked away into the forest, vowing to seek my revenge.”
“Revenge?” Erik asked.
“Revenge on you. Revenge on dwarves. Revenge on the dragon, the east, anyone. But then they came.”
“The dead,” Erik muttered. “The cursed.”
“You stole my family from me,” Cliens said. “I will never feel the warmth of my wife’s skin, the gentleness of her kisses, the sweetness of her breath.”
Erik thought of Simone.
“And now my family becomes a shadow, memories that fade away with each passing minute like the glow of a hot coal cooling through the night.”
He is the reason Demik is dead. He attacked us.
But he didn’t deserve to die, burned by dragon fire. Was he any different than Erik, doing what he was commanded to do?
“I’m …” Erik stared at Cliens. “We were both doing our duties, what we felt was right at the time, but I’m sorry.”
“I’m scared,” Cliens said.
“Don’t be,” Erik said with a smile. “I watched my brother get onto that carriage. I’ve watched countless friends get on that carriage. You will see your family again.”
Cliens looked at Erik and nodded. The cloaked figure presented the carriage to the man, the door open and ready, and Cliens walked to it. He looked back at Erik and nodded once more before he stepped inside. The robed man closed the door, and the carriage rolled away, quickly fading in the distance.
“What is this place?” Erik asked, facing the cloaked figure.
“You know what this place is,” the cloaked man replied.
“The edge of the Shadow’s realm.”
The cloaked head nodded.
“The Shadow distorts,” the figure said. “The Shadow feeds on despair, anger, hatred, hopelessness, and those emotions will ensure you never leave. Clear your mind, Erik, if you wish to pass this trial. You will see things, evil things, but always follow your heart.”
Erik nodded and looked at the black range of mountains. They looked closer than they were before. He turned back to the cloaked man.
“Is it you?” Erik asked.
“Me?”
“Are you the one I always find under the willow tree?” Erik asked.
The cloaked figure laughed, a sound so
loud that for a moment it drowned out the distant thunder. And then he was gone.
As Erik walked on, it now seemed that he made progress and, eventually, the grass stopped, giving way to a wide space of sand, dotted with a mixture of brown and black pebbles. The mountains now loomed overhead, and he saw they were comprised of a myriad of peaks of jagged rock, each ready and willing to pierce flesh. Erik strapped his shield to his back and began to climb; he didn’t get very far when his hands began to bleed. Holes appeared in his pants at his knees, and they bled as well. The slope was steep, and when he looked down, it looked like the world below was already leagues away. Too far away to turn back.
The lightning had stopped for a time, but then it started up again. Erik felt the hair on his arms and legs and back of his neck stand on end just before a flash, and then immediately after, a thunderous boom rattled the mountainside, bringing debris down upon him. A large rock hit the top of his head as he pressed himself closer to the jagged side, and he felt blood trickling down the side of his face while the jagged protrusions dug into his legs and arms and chest.
The sickening red pallid color of this place seemed eternal. There was no day or night, and Erik soon became disorientated and thought he might have been in this place for days. The air had become so hot his skin blistered and peeled, and the cuts on his body so numerous, blood soaked every part of his clothing. The lightning was so close it blinded him and the thunder so loud, it deafened him. When it started rain, it burned, like boiling water from a kettle.
The ground below had disappeared, and while he hadn’t thought the mountains were that big, he could see nothing else except black rock and distant red sky. As when he walked and got nowhere, the same happened now, and no matter how high he climbed, the sky never seemed any closer.
I could just fall back and let myself go.
No! You must not give in.
He reached up, blindly gripping at one jagged edge after the other. On and on, he forced himself, and his determination seemed to have created a change. Now he made progress, and when he pulled himself up a large piece of rock, he saw the flat top of a tall plateau. He thanked the Creator silently, used what little strength he had left to pull the rest of his body up, and lay there for a long time, eyes closed, and face pressed against the rock, ignoring the searing heat, burning rain, and deafening thunder.
Dragon Sword: Demon's Fire Book 1 Page 21
