When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by K. Scott Lewis

  Life always finds a way.

  She would endure this… whatever this was. She still had yet to penetrate Klrain’s purpose, and the haze of confusion that clouded her mind most of the time made it difficult to discover a way to undo him.

  I am the Dragon of Life. I will persist. I will endure. I will devour those who threaten my offspring.

  She saw Sidhna hovering at the edge of the light outside the portal to the birthing chamber. Koorla did not like the dead feet walking this close to her womb, so the vampire did not enter. Outside this chamber, however, Sidhna was safe. She did not need the mollusk skin-suit that Graelyn wore, which told the tower she belonged there, for her dead body did not trigger Koorla’s immune system.

  Graelyn knelt and caressed the smooth surface of the egg one last time before she walked out of the birthing chambers to greet the vampire.

  “You stink,” Sidhna said.

  “This whole tower stinks,” Graelyn replied. She couldn’t help but feel pity and affection for the woman. It was Graelyn’s fault she had met this fate, and now the vampire was just as much a prisoner as Graelyn was.

  They walked out of Taer Koorla together through the streets between the living, round buildings. Towards the edge of the town, just inside its border beyond which the kranoch beetles lay in wait, flowed an underground stream of clear water. Graelyn waded out into its center. The water reached her waist, and she knelt, submersing herself beneath the cold surface until the stream washed away the stink of Koorla’s clinging slime.

  She emerged from the water clean. She knew it wouldn’t last, but it was one of the few pleasures left to her. And it made it easier for Sidhna to feed.

  Graelyn offered her wrist freely to keep the vampire alive. She felt responsible for the woman and didn’t begrudge her some of her blood. She owed her that.

  Sidhna took Graelyn’s wrist and held it gently to her lips. Her fangs extended, and she pierced the seelie’s skin swiftly and painlessly. Graelyn sighed in contentment as the vampire’s venom filled her veins. This was her other pleasure.

  Sidhna never drank much. She needed only little, and she had long since stopped wanting to gorge herself on the seelie woman. Graelyn knew that Sidhna understood the personality of Aradma had been hidden away, concealed by the Black Dragon’s darkness, and that she fed upon the being who had once cohabited within the sidhe’s spirit, asked to subsume her, and then abandoned her.

  Graelyn wondered for a moment if she should feel saddened by the loss of the lesser personality. Aradma, a seelie girl full of herself, had thought herself whole and complete even when the greatest part of her mind, the dreamwalker, had lain beneath the surface unnoticed. Perhaps it was better that such foolishness had been brushed aside.

  “I’m sorry I brought you to him,” Sidhna said suddenly. She pricked her thumb with one of her fangs and used the drop of blood to heal the two tiny wounds on Graelyn’s wrist. “I thought…”

  “You thought Athaym was another spark of me,” Graelyn finished for her. In ten years of this water and blood ritual, Sidhna had never apologized for anything.

  The vampire queen nodded. “When I met him, I thought what I saw in him was the depths of you, even greater than the piece of you that had come into my spirit as a child.”

  Graelyn embraced her. “It was I who came to you. It was I who abandoned you. I am sorry. What we did to you all was a violation of the worst sort. We did not incarnate. We possessed. How arrogant—”

  “You did what was necessary,” Sidhna interrupted her. She looked around, suddenly fearful. Graelyn understood. Athaym seemed to have a sense of knowing… everything. One could never tell when it was safe to speak.

  There are no secrets in the Dark, for the Dark is the keeper of secrets. An old Surafian saying.

  “You should have overwhelmed me,” Sidhna told her. “I was but one life. The world has suffered for both my petulance and your compassion.”

  Graelyn’s embrace tightened, and then she released the vampire, placing her hands on Sidhna’s shoulders and gazing intently into the undead’s red eyes. “What’s done is done. You may have been petulant, but I was a coward. My brother and sister are dead, and he still lives.”

  Sidhna stared at Graelyn for a long moment, and a welling of blood pooled around the edges of her eyes. “I’m afraid,” she said. “I fear him more than anything, but if I can help you break free, I will.”

  Graelyn touched her cheek tenderly. “When the time is right.”

  The Dragon of Life—though trapped in the elf body—still looked ahead in terms of thousands of years, and even thousands of years on top of that. She would end Klrain, not only for vengeance—vengeance was demanded for the deaths of Eldrikura and Archurion—but also for Life itself. Life would endure, and Life would change. And it may be that victory over the Dark required the sacrifice of mortal life to Athaym’s forces. If she had to, she would transform Klrain’s favored people, the troglodytes, against him. It would take ages, and all other life might fall before them first. But Life would prevail.

  I am the Dragon of Life. I will endure, I will survive, and through Time, I will triumph over him.

  She had always felt a special kinship with Eldrikura. Of the four Archdragons, the two sisters had the longest view. Eldrikura, because of Time… and Graelyn because of what was possible in Life through Time.

  The two elven women walked back to Taer Koorla. There was nowhere else to go.

  Graelyn climbed the tower alone and found Athaym staring at Taer Koorla’s brain in the top central chamber.

  “I’ve always failed to understand the human fascination with patriarchy,” he mused. “The lines of power are always matrilineal.”

  “What have you done to my daughter?” she asked. She saw the face of Naiadne neatly tucked away and framed by the brain folds, staring dumbly into the open space of the room. The girl’s eyes wandered unfocused and milky-white, clearly unaware of anything in front of her.

  “She will be fine,” Athaym responded. “She will emerge from this a new being and join your line to Koorla’s.” He pondered for a moment. “Seelie women bear only seelie daughters, yet are fertile with all races. I wonder what kind of seelie a troglodyte seed would produce…”

  Graelyn trembled. She didn’t know where this emotion came from, for she had never felt particularly attached to Naiadne. She suspected it must be vestiges of the Aradma persona that hadn’t yet finally dissolved.

  “I will kill you,” she threatened.

  Athaym’s voice dropped low and quiet. “You already intend to kill me. You’ve tried for millennia. But you won’t. That will change, this time. You will see the truth I offer, and you will accept it. You are the Green Dragon; truth has always been your nature. You won’t be able to help yourself, and our siblings aren’t here anymore to hide the truth from you.” Then his voice returned to its normal level. “In any case, that’s not my purpose for Naiadne.”

  “Why do you need her?” she asked. Athaym was right. Graelyn, mother of druids, had always known that seeing the inner nature of something meant seeing the truth of its being. Nature and truth were inseparable, just as Life and nature were inseparable. If Athaym was able to prove the truth of his vision, she would accept it. She always submitted to nature’s reality.

  She shuddered with a twinge of fear that he might be right, that he might one day show her something irrefutable, and her perception would change… and that she might indeed one day give herself to him.

  “To bring Dis back to me,” Athaym answered her question.

  “You’re the Lord of Dark. They will bow to you regardless. Why do you need her?”

  Athaym arched an eyebrow. “I do not have the strength I once had, Sister, and now Yamosh rules Dis. For me to court the demon lords away from him, the forms must be observed. There is a nature to the Dark, and Dis is a city built in the Dark. They will not abandon the dark god in favor of me alone, as I am now… but they will be enticed by a nation of sorcerers,
as they were with the first Artalon.”

  “A nation of sorcerers…”

  Athaym nodded. “Troglodytes cannot channel. They cannot bond with demons of the Kairantheum. They have no faith, and they have no despair. Our daughter will change them. Taer Koorla will become a sorceress through her and will link all the towers from all the broods across the Underworld. She has your potency. The lines of power are always matrilineal. Through her, you will deliver me a troglodyte horde and a demon army when we take the surface. And you will provide me revenants.”

  “Revenants?”

  “Through the power of your blood.”

  Graelyn crossed her arms.

  “Godless people, without faith or hope to feed the gods. The dark parts of the Kairantheum, I can control. The light parts, the gods, I cannot. We will starve them. You and I will rule. You and I will be gods together.”

  “No,” Graelyn replied simply.

  “You cannot stop it,” he stated calmly. “A Turning of the age is upon us. You know what that means.”

  A Turning. Yes, she knew. Each age ended and began with a fundamental shift in consciousness of the people of Ahmbren. Mortal sages long thought that a Turning was a thing that happened of its own accord, and the minds of people changed because of its influence. She knew better, as did Klrain. It was a change in people that precipitated a Turning, not the other way around. Like the truth behind the gods, it was mortalkind that determined its own fate. People were simply unaware of that fact.

  They must awaken and stop surrendering their wills to superstitions.

  “Do not lie to me,” she chastised him. “You may have bound my will to yours, but do not insult me. I know ages are not preordained by fate. There is nothing that is ‘upon us.’ If a Turning is to happen, it is because you intend to drive it.”

  He did not respond. A moment of silence passed between them. Then she added, “If you want me to serve you in this, you must use the bond to compel me. You have the power now to bend my will to yours. Is that not what you want?”

  He tensed for a moment before he met her eyes. “I have the power, yes,” he agreed. “But you will come to me on your own before the end. This is what I want. You will choose me.”

  “And why would I do that?” she asked. “I am the Dragon of Life, Klrain. You betrayed us long ago.”

  “No!” He shook his head. “You betrayed me! The three of you betrayed the truth of who we are. You bowed your head to the delusions of mortals. The gods must be destroyed.”

  “We would have managed the gods over time,” she said, “without needless death. Archurion co-opted their faith and the Church of Light. He would have guided them to rationality.”

  “Too long!” Athaym hissed.

  “You forced our hand,” she accused. “You wanted the quick way, the easy way. You wanted to defeat the gods by killing their worshippers.”

  “And I will,” he promised. “The gods endure because people of faith keep feeding the Kairantheum. It will stop. And you, dear sister, will help me in order to preserve Life through the Turning. Yes, I will drive a new age. But you know that if I do so alone, the Dark will consume all life through me. Our brother and sister are dead, and there must be balance. I have not lost myself to the Dark so far that I forget this; it is not my wish to destroy the world we rule. With you by my side, Life and Dark will join and Ahmbren will continue.”

  A bitter taste touched Graelyn’s tongue. She grimaced.

  “I’m giving you a way out,” he told her. “I know you care even for the troglodytes. They are living beings, and they and the seelie could have a place in the new order.”

  She shook her head. “I cannot help you in this.”

  He shrugged. “You will. Once you realize that my victory is inevitable, you will. To preserve life.”

  She felt a cold pit in her stomach. “Why are you so certain of victory?” she challenged. “You’ve done nothing but lurk here in the shadows and spy on the surface.”

  “Soon,” he assured her. “Soon I will have my armies joined together to my purpose. Dis. The Underworld. And revenants. The heavens, the depths, and Ahmbren herself.”

  He stepped up close to her and looked deep into her eyes. She felt a sudden fear, and then he kissed her lips. She tensed and did not respond, but the dark bond kept her from shrinking away.

  “Dear Graelyn,” he whispered. “I will win because the other Archdragons are dead. There is no one left who can oppose me.”

  The brain in the room quivered. Graelyn turned her attention away from Athaym and back to her daughter.

  Framed in the folds of the brain, Naiadne’s eyes now focused intently on the two of them. She lifted her head and pressed her face forward. The floor of soft tissue pulsed, and then the elf girl slowly rose out of its surface until she stood free, covered in a thick yellow sheen.

  Clusters of nerve fibers covered her body in narrow filaments. Long thin strands of clear cilia grew from her neck behind the base of her ears and lay on her shoulders. They pulsed with a strange light.

  She gazed upon the both of them, and Graelyn felt a chill in her dark bond.

  “Father, Mother,” she addressed them. It was her voice, but it did not come from her lips. Her mouth remained closed, unmoving. Her voice rang all around them, echoing fourfold as the larynx doors vibrated in unison, their song shaped into words by hidden chambers in the tower’s body. “I have awakened Taer Koorla to the Dark, and we are yours to command.”

  Athaym nodded. His eyes slightly tightened in pleasure, but no smile touched his face. “Come. Let us reach out to the towers across the Underworld and call all the troglodyte broods together.”

  22 - Dragon Fire

  I have changed.

  Tiberan touched his fingers to the base of the stag horns sprouting from his forehead, the visible sign of the god whose worship Keira had embraced. He did not feel any more faith in the gods, and he was somewhat disconcerted by this sign of Keruhn’s faith in him. There was no telling what this might mean in the end. Why had he accepted the mark?

  Because when Keruhn spoke, his words rang true. Nevertheless, Tiberan chastised himself. The feeling of truth meant nothing. Feelings could deceive you. They could kill you. Well, there was nothing he could do about it now.

  The god has faith in me.

  He wondered if this was how things were meant to be.

  Such speculation is useless.

  His sons, Eldrian and Jossin, played in the snow with the dragon Kreen. The eggs had hatched the first summer after hiding them among the Glavlunder hearths, and in nine years they had grown to the size of large horses. What’s more, they could speak both the language of magic and all the languages of mortals.

  Sun spilled off of Kreen’s reddish-orange scales, the color of volcano’s fire. It was a new hue for dragons, and not one that Tiberan recognized from his memories. This did not surprise him, however, for he understood that dragons were highly sensitive to the magical currents of Ahmbren, especially while forming in their eggs.

  Both Eldrian and Jossin were full seelie boys as far as Tiberan could tell. Their skin tones were rosy, with Jossin being a slightly reddish hue. Eldrian, eight, had their mother’s black hair, and Jossin, six, wore his father’s blond on his head. They each had the long, sweeping ears of seelie, and Eldrian was nearly as tall as Keira was now… at least, when she wore her human form.

  Keira crouched beside Tiberan in her wolven body. Had she stood tall, she would nearly have equaled his height. She breathed calmly, and little puffs of frost drifted from her wolf nose. Her blue eyes, so uncharacteristic of a wolf, shone with serenity as she watched their children play together.

  Kreen had flown far and brought back thick branches for the front of their house. He puffed on them until they ignited, and the heat of the fire melted a ring in the snow and ice. The warmth felt good on Tiberan’s face, and he knew his sons appreciated it.

  Tiberan let his hand fall into the thick fur on Keira’s neck. Becaus
e of the warmth of the dragon fire, he didn’t need his gloves. His fingers sifted through her thick black mane, and he scratched her neck affectionately. He touched her mind through the link they shared when she was shifted.

  This won’t last, Keira said through their bond. Even in his mind, her wolven voice held that richly seductive silkiness. He felt her grin. There will be time enough for that later. I’m being serious. Dragons mean power, and someone will come looking for them. The same person who sent the troglodytes for their eggs.

  “They are not eggs anymore,” Tiberan mused.

  Kreen seemed to hear him. The dragon raised his head and met Tiberan’s eyes. Tiberan had never bonded any of the dragons—they were too intelligent for that—but Kreen seemed particularly fond of him.

  Cloudpaw approached from the snowy plains, dragging a walrus from the shores of the Western Ocean. They had made their hearth just out of sight of the shore, less than four hundred yards away, and over a thousand miles west over the Ice Plains from the Ice Mountains. Ghost followed beside him with a rather pleased expression on his face. They had both grown older but had already lived far longer than their natural lifespans. The link Tiberan had forged with each of them was one of Life, and it stretched their years far beyond what they would have been.

  I brought this one down, the great cat told them.

  And then he made me carry it, Cloudpaw complained.

  Tiberan laughed aloud, and his sons stopped their play to look up at him. “Well, at least we will eat well this night!”

  Keira was right. This moment was precious in time. In a different age, they could have lived out their lives in this way, hunting and raising their sons. In time, at a Hearthmoot in years to come, their sons would find wives among the Glavlunders—and he was sure they would have no shortage of interested hearthmates—and then he would have grandchildren. What more could he ask for? He had a good woman who loved him, whom he loved in return. He had his sons, and he watched them grow from curious babies into the promise of men to come. We have Hearth together, he thought.