When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by K. Scott Lewis

  She knelt down to speak at Flolum’s height.

  “Dear king,” she said. “I knew your ancestors, the gnomes who built Artalon, and before them the flight of bronze dragons who became mortals themselves. I did not understand then why they chose for their children to be gnomes, and dragons no longer, but I do now. I was the first of the greens. Now I am an elf, as will be all of my children. Please, trust me in this. I do not wish to rule the world. Let me pass.”

  He sighed.

  The sultan gazed upon her green footsteps. Then he turned and looked at the green growth over all the tower sides, as if seeing them for the first time. He turned back to them and met Anuit’s eyes. “You are the Queen of Dis,” he conceded. “I can feel your authority flow through the shadow. You have redeemed the Dark.”

  The four remaining sidhe captains suddenly drew their wands, calling upon the mercurial words of magic. Before Aradma could react, a flash of orange scales rushed by with a wolven woman riding atop, and then a stream of fire bathed the four sidhe. They shrieked for a brief instant and then were no more. The dragon landed, and Keira sat on Kreen’s back, saying in a gruff voice, “It’s clear.”

  Athra alone stood her ground.

  “Athra,” a voice called out from behind her. She turned, and Aradma followed her gaze. A naked man, with stag antlers twice the size of Tiberan’s, stood in the entryway to God Spire. “Athra, let them pass.”

  “Keruhn!” Athra replied. “How? Why now, after so long?”

  He nodded to Tiberan. “That one’s mark inspired enough faith in the people here, I now have the energy to stand before you. Let them pass. I would speak with them before they enter.”

  Athra considered and then nodded. “I don’t know your plan, my son, but you have always been wise and have kept my values close to your heart.”

  “The closest of all the gods,” he agreed. “The greatest hope for mortalkind has been civilization. Now their greatest hope lies in these four. Let go, Athra. I know you see it. Civilization must be freed to grow beyond us, even beyond you. Life must carry it forward.”

  Athra paused. The light in her eyes pulsed. Finally, she said, “This is what Nephyr saw when she said she had faith in me.” After another long moment, she nodded again and moved aside to clear the path. “I surrender my purpose to mortal freedom,” she said.

  “I’ll order the other sidhe to clear the tower,” Tallindra suddenly chimed in. “I’m the only remaining nobleborn here. They will have no choice but to obey.”

  Aradma nodded. “Let’s go,” she said.

  The four approached Keruhn, leaving the worldly sovereigns behind.

  “I cannot stay long,” Keruhn said, “but there are things you must know. The gods have allowed you this far because of my mark. They are confused, and the people are with you. But inside, they will challenge you. Your only hope is to reach the top.”

  Aradma looked up into the sky, considering that all of them could take to the air.

  “I think,” mused Tiberan, “I think we need to climb the tower.”

  “Why?” Aradma asked.

  “A hunch.”

  Keruhn nodded. “You will be tested. It will shape your choices.”

  “Why?” Aradma asked again.

  “The path that can be told is not the true path,” Keruhn replied. “Wisdom grows from the seed of experience. It is necessary you know the truth of your selves before you sit upon the Stag Throne. To use Artalon’s power in ignorance would be folly.”

  “Yes,” Aradma agreed. She knew the truth of his words. “Yes,” she said again. “I am greater as Aradma than I was as Graelyn. Say what you have come to tell us.”

  “It was I who inspired the gnomes to create Artalon,” the god said. He pointed to his empty eye socket, which seamed to gleam with the light of constellations. “When I traded my eye to Nephyr for wisdom, I saw our true nature as spiritual constructs within the Kairantheum. It is out of balance, and without Artalon, it will grow ever more destructive as gods tear at each other, eventually pulling this planet apart. Our only hope for a way out was to give mortals a choice. A free choice to decide the fate of the gods.”

  “We choose balance,” Tiberan stated.

  Keruhn shrugged. “That is not for me to judge. Before I withdraw, there is one last key. The Stag Throne must be awakened with life.”

  The three of them looked at Aradma. “Our fate is in your hands,” Arda said.

  “Why Life?” Anuit asked.

  Are we talking about the same thing? Aradma wondered.

  “Because life is what I seek to preserve,” Keruhn replied. “It is the fullness of all elements, acting as one. I am Ahmbren’s shepherd, and all mortalkind my flock.”

  “Keruhn,” Tiberan said, “what is it you placed inside me? You said there was more than your mark.”

  Keruhn smiled sadly. “At one time, I was conceited to think I would… no, I can say nothing more lest it influence your choice.” He turned to go, but at the last moment, he said, “Welcome home, Tiberan.”

  Then the god faded.

  The four companions linked hand in hand, Anuit, then Arda, then Tiberan, then Aradma, and entered God Spire.

  37 - The Great Rite II

  The halls of Artalon lay thick with pregnant silence. The four companions moved forward, saying nothing as their thoughts turned inward.

  The silence gave rise to a low hum. Aradma felt the seal within her flare, surging Life through her link. From their gasps, she surmised the others felt the same.

  She saw their energies. Tendrils of Light whispered off of Arda’s form, touching the walls and spreading out through the tower. Anuit’s Dark shadow misted over the floors, sinking into its seams. Little sparkles of starlight winked around Aradma, setting off tiny growths of clovers where they touched. And Time itself seemed to vibrate, violet hues condensing and fading through the air. And through it all, the golden streams of the Kairantheum flowed, binding the elements together until they mixed into a blue pulsing light that suffused the halls. Artalon is at the very nexus of the Kairantheum! We stand in the center of divine thought.

  “It is us,” Tiberan said. “The tower… it knows we’re here.”

  “Not just the tower,” Arda replied. “It’s the center of the entire city. All the towers are connected to the disk, and it’s all one piece. No seams—”

  “—or welding,” Anuit added. “One complete, magical—”

  “—talisman,” Aradma finished. “Artalon awakens, and the closer we rise to the focal point, the more it will do so.”

  ARTALON’S TIME IS AT HAND.

  The voice trembled through the walls, ringing through the zorium so loudly that Aradma knew those outside could hear it as well.

  “Keruhn,” Tiberan whispered. “The god is still with us.”

  YES. I AM WITH YOU, MY CHAMPIONS.

  Champion. “I don’t like the sound of that,” Aradma murmured softly to herself.

  “We must go forward,” Arda whispered.

  They continued. As they walked, time and space seemed to stretch thin. Her friends felt so far away, even as they were close to her. Movement slowed, and a pressure fell over her mind, slowing thought and pulling at her to drift away from this place.

  BE NOT AFRAID. LOOK WITHIN AND KNOW YOURSELF.

  The blue light of the combined elements thickened, and the crystalline mesh of the Kairantheum grew dense until it coalesced around them, and the walls of God Spire fell away…

  The world shifted. Aradma stood at the top of Moon Rock in the Vemnai jungle. The orange spire rose high above the treetops under the night sky, blanketed in green foliage. Keruhn stood skyclad beside her, primal and alluring.

  “I am still in Artalon,” Aradma said. “This is not real.”

  “The first is true,” the Horned God agreed. “The second, you know to be false. Do you remember this night?”

  Aradma watched her younger self stand naked in the moonlight, trembling and sweating. Her younger self
took a deep breath and retrieved her troll clothing from the ground, the dinosaur-skin cholis and loincloth, and the jeweled harnesses that had been purchased in Kallanista. Her younger self transformed into the white falcon and flew into the night sky.

  “Yes,” Aradma said. “I had just challenged Soorleyn. I learned a goddess could lie. She believed that Graelyn was her daughter, and I her granddaughter.”

  “And yet, the Moon Goddess didn’t lie,” Keruhn replied.

  Aradma considered this. “No,” she finally agreed. “She believed it, utterly. Because her worshippers believed it. Because of the Kairantheum.”

  “The gods were just as trapped by religion as the Matriarch’s cult,” Keruhn said, echoing the thoughts in the druid’s mind.

  “Yes,” Aradma agreed. “I didn’t understand the ‘how’ of it then. But I understood the ‘what.’ I knew then their culture was built on lies, and I had to free them of it somehow.” She regarded the Horned God for a moment. “At the time, I had no thoughts to leave Vemnai. I had found a home there.”

  “Until he came.”

  “Tiberan,” she affirmed.

  “Yes,” he acknowledged. “But there was more before that. More lies.”

  Aradma’s face softened in sadness. “Yes. By me.”

  The world shifted. Aradma and Keruhn stood outside a thicketed wall of foliage, summoned and shaped to protect the couple within. The muffled moans of a younger Aradma and Odoune filtered through the thicket.

  “This was not one of the lies,” Aradma told the god.

  “I wouldn’t presume to say otherwise,” the god replied. “You acted in the truth of your being when you took him to you.”

  “Fernwalker was conceived on this day.”

  “This single act, this Great Rite, broke the Vemnai culture.”

  “They had long forgotten the truth of their beings. Odoune helped me discover my own, and I brought him to his in return.”

  “Against his will.”

  Aradma sighed and pressed her lips together. “Yes. I forcefully opened his awareness. He needed it. They all did.”

  “And who were you to make such a decision for him?”

  Aradma turned her head and met the god’s eyes. The empty socket held the glitter of starlight. She didn’t have an answer.

  The world shifted. They stood in the Matriarch’s bedchamber. The younger Aradma and the Matriarch moved together, limbs intertwined, gasping in their lovemaking. The Matriarch’s face—Oriand’s face—opened in serene ecstasy with her lover’s intimate touches. The younger Aradma’s face held more nuance in the opened lips and lowered lids of physical pleasure, but also… guilt.

  “This was a lie,” Keruhn accused.

  “I loved her,” Aradma protested.

  “You know better.”

  Aradma sighed. “Yes. I loved her, but not as she loved me. And Odoune was left to his own to open the minds of the druids.”

  Keruhn snorted. “And their bodies.”

  Aradma closed her eyes briefly. “Yes,” she admitted. “I wanted to save Oriand from herself, but she was locked away more deeply in her religion than Odoune had been. I knew I did not return her love in the same way. And by then, Tiberan had come.”

  “You knew you loved him.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Odoune?”

  “The first time was not a lie. Had I gone to Odoune after Tiberan came, it would have been.”

  “Yet you continued with the Matriarch.”

  “I had to. I did have affection for her. It wasn’t all a lie.”

  “No,” Keruhn agreed. “But this is not the truth of your being, and I’m not speaking because she is a woman.”

  “I know,” Aradma replied softly. “By now, intimacy was a pretense, a subterfuge to keep her from guessing something was wrong. It was no longer honest affection.”

  “And…”

  She sighed. “And I knew I was pregnant.”

  “And you never told Odoune! He loved you, Aradma! You concealed his own daughter from him! Aradma, what is the truth of your being? Cruelty? Selfishness? Self-righteous assumption? Are these the truths of your being?”

  She cried out. “I know! I acted to enlighten him, with no thought to consequence! I didn’t think about the Matriarch and the secrets afterwards, and I was unprepared for Tiberan. I saw the truth of Odoune’s being, but I never saw the truth of my own.”

  “And now? What is your own?”

  “Integrity,” Aradma replied. “And every time I have broken faith with myself and failed to act in favor of delay, until I’m forced by circumstance to react, I’ve sinned against my integrity.”

  The world shifted.

  “We are done, you and I!” Hylda declared, venom in her voice.

  Aradma blinked. She stood in front of the dwarven woman, between her and the younger Aradma.

  The dwarf turned on her horse and left, racing off to try to get to Attaris before he might perish saving Kriegsholm from Covenant vampires.

  Grief overwhelmed Aradma and she wept. Her younger self stood looking after the dwarf, troubled and gripped by the uncertainty of going to save Attaris—who might not need saving—and leaving her daughter unprotected.

  “I didn’t know then that I would never see her again,” Aradma said.

  “Hylda was taken by vampires on the road. She never saw Attaris again.”

  Aradma’s eyes moistened. “He had to kill her himself.” She wiped the tears from her cheeks with the backs of her hands.

  “You did go after him,” Keruhn observed.

  “Yes, but it was too late. I didn’t go until Fernwalker talked sense into me. My own daughter, whom I wanted to protect.”

  “Why did you not go with Hylda?”

  Aradma shook her head in sadness. “I had forgotten the truth of my being. I was too attached to my little world. I lived in fear.”

  “Is it wrong to be attached to your family? To those you love?”

  “No!” Aradma stated vehemently. Then, more gently: “No. I will always choose my daughters’ lives first. But Fernwalker wasn’t in danger. I wrapped myself in the comfort of home and closed my eyes to the world’s truth for fear I would have to become involved. I pretended the world’s problems were for other people to deal with, and I could stay home with Fernwalker and ignore everyone else’s lives.”

  “You snapped out of it,” Keruhn observed. “Hylda’s and Fernwalker’s words—pardon my saying so—convinced you to pull your head out of your ass.”

  “Yes, but it was too late for her.”

  Keruhn nodded. “So what have you done to give Hylda’s death purpose?”

  “I…”

  She felt shame. Not much.

  The world shifted. The younger Aradma stood before King Donogan, stripping him of his sovereignty through the Church authority granted to her by Rajamin.

  “You acted here,” Keruhn said. “You thought to slow the Covenant by splitting the kingdom into self-sovereign city-states.”

  “But at what cost?” Aradma reflected. “Rajamin placed a piece of Athra inside me. It later jumped to the construct and brought her into the world. I wonder if this,” she gestured to the de-coronation, “would have been necessary if I had taken an active role sooner.”

  “For someone with your power and insight,” the god agreed, “you’ve been exceedingly passive. Then what?”

  The world shifted. Aradma stood outside her house in the foothills around Windbowl. She saw her younger self dive from the sky as the falcon and then enter the home. A quick argument with Oriand, and then…

  “I went to the basement,” Aradma said. “I tried to give Athra her body.”

  Sidhna’s mist shot from the sky and solidified. The vampire stood naked, reflecting Malahkma’s countenance with red-scaled serpent skin and snakes instead of hair.

  Aradma watched as the vampire tore the house apart and then descend into the basement. She heard the cold voice of Athra’s Jewel.

  And then A
thaym stepped out of the woods. He crossed the garden to the broken house and descended the steps. He reemerged carrying the younger Aradma, with Sidhna following behind him, having lost her red serpent skin and appearing as a sidhe once more.

  Kaldor arrived, and Aradma watched the scene unfold as Rajamin snuck behind him and stabbed him in the back. Then Oriand did the same to Rajamin.

  “Kaldor told you to wait,” Keruhn said.

  “She threatened my daughter. How could I have done otherwise?”

  “You didn’t think. You went off on your own again.”

  “I…”

  “Sidhna was Malahkma’s creature. Malahkma is a goddess of the Kairantheum. You had three allies who could all turn it against her, who could have added their strength to your attack on her in Artalon. If only you had brought them with you. If only you had involved them earlier. This failing is both yours and Kaldor’s.”

  Aradma hung her head. “Attaris,” she said. “Suleima.”

  “Even Rajamin,” Keruhn added. “You held yourself separate from them, but it was not a separation born of understanding. It was born of fear.”

  “You are right,” Aradma conceded, “and I am ashamed.”

  The world shifted. Aradma stood at the top of Artalon, just outside the throne room. She must have been walking the whole time.

  She looked inside. It was different than the throne room she remembered. Instead of its golden and red halls and grand decorated ceilings running to sunlit balconies at either end, it was a small chamber. The true throne room, she realized, brought back into phase with the world by the presence of the Four Seals.

  The room was contained by the pitch of the void. There was neither window nor balcony. The only discernible solidity to it was the midnight-purple floor, textureless and without depth. A blue hairline ring encircled the chamber’s floor, the only detail that allowed her vision to focus on the floor’s surface.

  In the center she saw a familiar silhouette. Her heart sank as she realized the secret of the Stag Throne.