The Drinnglennin Chronicles Omnibus

by K. C. Julius

  But the battle was not yet won. A new wave of warriors had at last appeared on the horizon. They were too far away for Borne to see them clearly in the desert haze, but their oversized helmets looked strangely out of proportion to their bodies, and they were all of an unusual height.

  Strangely, the Jagar didn’t take new heart from the reinforcements’ arrival, but instead broke into a chaotic retreat, many running not back toward their fellow combatants but west, toward the sea. A few simply charged onward to their certain deaths at the hands of the Companions.

  It didn’t make sense, any more than did this second army’s failure to advance and join the fray. As Borne was trying to puzzle out why, the distant figures disappeared back below the rise.

  Borne wheeled his droma. Most of Nalè’s defenders were harrying the fleeing Jagar, but more than a few had already abandoned the chase. The whole encounter had been bizarre, and over almost before it had begun. The tribesmen’s force had been recklessly small and had broken after offering only token resistance. He had lost no men, and the Olquarian dead numbered only a score. As Borne followed his victorious men back to camp, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the Jagar had been sent out with the sole purpose of testing the strength of the Imperial Army.

  While the bodies were being attended to, he visited the wounded of his company, then went to the hazar’s tent to share his misgivings about the whole encounter. Kurash, spatters of blood dotting his face, did not look happy to see him, and offered Borne no invitation to sit. Borne, undeterred, proceeded to air his concerns.

  When he’d finished, the hazar glared at him in silence, then raised a flask of raki to his lips and drank deeply. After sloshing more of the harsh brandy around in his mouth, he spat it on the carpet.

  “The Jagar learned their lesson today,” he growled. “They know now they’re no match for the Companions.” He extended his leg, and the sultry beauty who warmed his bed scurried over to remove his dusty boots. “They won’t trouble Nalè again.”

  Borne dropped onto a pillow opposite him, determined to be heard. “Then what was the point of today’s battle? The Jagar must have known they were outnumbered before they ever took the field. Why did they choose to throw themselves at death nevertheless?”

  Kurash shrugged. “They’re a stupid, primitive people. Perhaps their new vaar kindled in them a ridiculous hope that the riches of Nalè were ripe for the picking. It is not the first time these barbarians have attempted to steal what is ours.”

  Borne folded his arms. “What of the reports of the vaar’s vast armada? Why wasn’t it brought to attack us on two fronts?”

  Kurash didn’t bother to veil his lack of interest. He pulled the woman at his feet onto his lap, then reached beneath her thin robe to fondle her breast. “These reports of the vaar’s ships are only rumors spread by fishermen. No one credible has seen them.” He tugged the slave’s gown off her shoulder. “Our work is done here. I’ll give the Companions a few days to rest and revel, then we will return to Tell-Uyuk in victory.”

  “But you saw them—the second army on the far dunes. We don’t yet know their strength.”

  The hazar scowled. “We witnessed their cowardice, which is all we need to know. When they saw my mighty Companions in action, they shat themselves.” He wrapped his free hand in the woman’s hair and pulled her head back to nuzzle her neck. “Now, as you can see, I have other business to attend to.”

  * * *

  The day after the battle, Kurash stayed in his tent, leaving Borne to assume command of their combined force. He kept the troops at battle readiness, but there came no new attack on Nalè, and the scouts he sent out to the west returned unscathed to report no sighting of the enemy. It seemed the Jagar had retreated deep into the interior of the Lost Lands.

  Borne knew Kurash was impatient to return to Tell-Uyuk, but he couldn’t rid himself of the suspicion that the Jagar were only waiting for the Companions to leave before advancing on Nalè once more. Although he couldn’t convince the hazar of this possibility, he did manage to force Kurash to a compromise, after reminding him of their imperial master’s expectation that the two commanders act in accord. The hazar and the bulk of his army would march ahead back to the capital, but they would leave one company of Companions behind under Borne’s command. Once Nalè was sufficiently fortified against another Jagar attack, the Gralian herald and the remaining army would return to Tell-Uyuk by sea on the ships that had brought the cannonry.

  Borne, of course, understood that Kurash intended to turn this arrangement to his own advantage. When the hazar returned to Tell-Uyuk, he would no doubt take full credit for the success of the mission. But Borne didn’t care. He had his own agenda. Before he left Nalè, he planned to do a little reconnaissance.

  Chapter 10

  Halla

  When the scratch came on Halla’s door, she was only halfway through her daily training routine. Bria was early this morning.

  Halla put aside the broom handle she used as a fighting staff as an unfamiliar girl entered the solar, carrying two buckets of water.

  “Where’s Bria?”

  The girl looked startled. “I don’t know who that is. They told me I was to serve you from now on, until…” She looked down at her slightly swollen belly.

  Realizing what might have prevented Bria from continuing to serve her, Halla crossed the room in two strides and grabbed hold of the young å Livåri’s shoulders, heedless of the water sloshing onto the floor.

  “Where’s Bria?”

  “I swear, I don’t know!”

  Dread charged through Halla’s veins, and she gave her captive a frustrated shake. “Where do they take the women to deliver?”

  Terror lit the girl’s dark eyes. “The hatchery.”

  Halla had passed this dome-shaped structure many times on her outings with Lash. When he’d told her its name, she’d assumed it housed the fowl that fed the city. Now she knew better.

  She reached toward the pocket of the girl’s thin shift. “Give me your key to the lower door.”

  The girl batted ineffectually at Halla’s hands. “No, please, I can’t! They’ll kill me!”

  If the maid hadn’t been breeding, Halla might have desisted, but she’d learned from Bria that pregnant women were safe from all physical punishment in this gods- forsaken city. Even the few who attempted escape were spared the lash.

  Her fingers dipped into the pocket, but the girl twisted away and lunged toward the open window. Halla saw the glint of metal drop over the sill.

  With a roar of fury, Halla raced out of her solar and up the stairs, taking them two at a time. She burst through the vaar’s door and stormed to stand before him at his table.

  “Take me to the hatchery,” she demanded, slamming her fists down on the wood. Now.”

  The wizard’s eyes took on an amused gleam. “Really? Because you’ve learned your childhood playmate has come to term?”

  Stunned, Halla pulled back.

  The vaar tilted his head with an indulgent smile. “Surely you’re not surprised I knew about you two?”

  “Take me,” she demanded.

  The vaar leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, his expression slyly speculative. “Yes. Why not?” He cocked his head, as if listening to something only he could hear. “But we’d best make haste if you’re to witness the birth.”

  He was on his feet and around the table so swiftly Halla saw only a blur until he was gripping her wrist. Then they were whirling down the stairs of the tower under the cloak of his shadow, out through its door and whisking along the wide streets, coming to a halt before the hatchery.

  With a flick of the vaar’s fingers, the doors before them opened and he pulled Halla through them.

  Halla drew a sharp breath when she saw the ring of yellow flames encircling a high bed at the center of the hall. Bria lay naked upon it, her da
rk eyes bulging from their sockets as she struggled against the ropes binding her hands and feet. Shrill, strangled sounds escaped through the rough stick thrust between her teeth, and bright blood streaked with something black and viscous stained her legs.

  With a cry of horror, Halla lunged for her suffering friend, only to be jerked back by the vaar’s iron grip.

  “I said I would show you,” he cautioned, “but you are not to interfere. If you attempt to do so again, we will leave at once.”

  Halla swallowed the bile rising in her throat. Her friend’s belly was now grotesquely swollen, and bruised purple by a web of distended, broken veins beneath the surface of the taut skin.

  “Bria! Can you hear me?”

  Bria, wracked by a spasm, thrust her hips clear off the bed. In a frenzy, she rolled her head from side to side. Her thrashing dislodged the stick from her mouth, and her agonized screams were more than Halla could bear.

  “Let me go to her!” she pleaded. “I beg you!”

  But the vaar held her fast. “You said you wanted to watch. It will be over soon.”

  He raised his chin to the shadows, from which an old hag emerged. She shuffled to Bria’s side, then raised the curved blade in her bony hand.

  “What is she going to do?”

  Before the vaar could answer, the crone swung the knife down and dragged it across Bria’s belly, ignoring her shrieks, then plunged her hands into the bloody incision.

  “Don’t!” Halla sobbed. “You’re killing her!”

  Bria’s screams cut off abruptly as the hag wrestled the baby out of her severed womb, then lifted it for the vaar to see. Except it wasn’t a child. It was a huge egg, dripping with blood as black as ink.

  Bria’s lolling head and wide staring eyes told Halla she was beyond pain.

  With a sob, Halla wrenched free of the vaar’s grasp and stumbled to kneel at her friend’s side. “I swear by all I hold holy,” she whispered as she gently closed the dead girl’s eyes, “I‘ll find Vesel, if he still lives. And I’ll avenge you and Ilie—I swear it. I’ll avenge you all.”

  The vaar’s cold hand fell hard on Halla’s shoulder. “Your promises are in vain, Halla of Lorendale. You’ll avenge no one. You’ll draw your dying breath here in Drak Icar, just as this breeder did.”

  * * *

  “It was a mistake to let you watch the birth.” The vaar lifted a piece of fruit from the plate between them and began to pare its yellow skin. “Your distress can’t be good for the child.”

  “Distress?” Halla eyed the knife in his hand, then forced herself to lift her gaze. “You knew exactly what you were doing when you took me to witness that horror.” When she lunged, the knife disappeared, and she was slammed back into her chair by an unseen force.

  “You do persevere, don’t you?” the vaar said. “I admire that. A mare with fight breeds brave stallions.”

  “You’re breeding aberrations in these women in exchange for their lives!” Halla hissed. “What did the å Livåri ever do to you?”

  A look of genuine puzzlement crossed the vaar’s face. “My need of them has nothing to do with any offensive actions on their part. It’s what they are, and what they can provide me with, that determined their fate.”

  “What of your own fate?” Halla retorted. “You live alone in this horrid gods-forsaken place with only your misbegotten creatures for company. You’ve created nothing with the gifts you’ve been given, nothing that improves the world. Even a worm leaves behind good soil. You leave only ruin. You disgust me.”

  The vaar continued to pare his fruit, but Halla noted the bright spots of color blooming on his high-boned cheeks.

  Touched a nerve, have I? She smirked at him, hoping to touch a few more. “I’ve heard it said you’re one of the virtuosi, but I’ve met a truly great wizard before, and you bear no resemblance to Master Morgan.”

  The vaar’s mouth slackened, and a dangerous glint appeared his eyes as he slowly set down the knife. “I defeated that fool Morgan utterly—left him a broken shell. And you have no idea who I am.”

  “You mean, besides a cold-blooded killer? Yes, I do. You’re Lazdac Strigori.” Halla swept a disdainful gaze over the austere chamber and forced a laugh. “And yet look where you ended up—in this hellhole, with nothing but brutes for company.”

  Halla knew she was playing with fire, but she didn’t care. If she had it in her power to wound this repulsive man, she would wield whatever weapon was at hand.

  “You impudent—” Lazdac raised his hand to strike her, a dark vein pulsing at his temple, but then stopped himself. A slow smile curved his thin, cruel mouth. “You have, at most, five months. Five months to dwell in the comfort I’ve allowed you, protected as you are by the bastard in your womb. But after that…” He grasped Halla’s chin with iron-cold fingers. “What your Lurker friend endured today is nothing compared to what you will suffer. Five months,” he repeated, pressing harder on her bruising skin, “for me to contemplate the most satisfying way to extend the torment of your death, once you’ve given birth and I no longer have need of you.”

  Although her heart was pounding, Halla willed herself not to look away from his terrifying gaze.

  After a long moment, the vaar dropped his hand and wiped it carefully on a piece of fine linen. “In the meantime, you must keep up your strength, my dear,” he said, his tone eerily pleasant. He poured a goblet of wine and pushed it toward her. “Now. Shall I tell you what I have in store for the world, since you won’t be here to witness it for yourself?”

  * * *

  Lazdac spared her nothing. All through the day and long into the night, the vaar kept Halla in his solar, at one moment singing his own praises, the next railing against the injustices done his family.

  Halla had heard the tale of Rendyl Strigori before. The first and last of his name to sit the Einhorn Throne had used dark magic to force the dragon Chaos to bind with him, and then ordered the dragon to murder Lindic, the king who’d been entrusted to his care from the time he was a boy.

  “Ever since Rendyl,” the vaar lamented, “we’ve been maligned and forbidden the honor—rightly ours—of serving on the Tribus. My brothers and I sought to change this, and became the greatest wizards of all time, yet still we were passed over. Those who wronged us will soon suffer my just wrath, and then there will be no need for a Tribus!”

  The dark wizard went on to catalogue the meticulous steps he’d taken in preparation for his victory—the alliances he’d built up, the conflicts he’d instigated, the betrayals he’d incited in Helgrinia, in Albrenia, and even in Drinnglennin. But it was clear that he considered his work at Drak Icar to be his crowning achievement thus far.

  He detailed all that he’d gone through in order to create the drakdaemons, his long years of experimentation to find the perfect balance so that the primal reptilian instinct that made them the perfect weapons was tempered by enough intellect to follow explicit orders.

  “The first prototypes were uncontrollable,” Lazdac admitted over a late-night supper in which only he partook, “and they had to be destroyed.” He shook his head at the memory. “Such a waste! But when I discovered I could breed them on å Livåri women—a stroke of brilliance, I might add—it cut the gestation time by a third. The offspring maturate at an accelerated rate as well, and now my creations can breed at the age of two years.

  “Still, up until the time of your arrival, I’d been grappling with a significant flaw that hinders their perfection.” He sat back, and his malevolent smile turned Halla’s blood to ice. “Which is why I’m so grateful to you.”

  Halla couldn’t keep herself from rising to the bait. “Because?”

  In answer, Lazdac drew a chain over his head. Hanging from it was a tiny enameled box, which he opened to reveal a quantity of glittering dust. He took just a pinch and sprinkled it on the bloody meat before him.

 
“There is a prophecy,” he whispered, as he cut off a bite of flesh and brought the knife to Halla’s lips, “about mingling the blood of kings and dragons.”

  Halla pushed the blade away, hoping he wouldn’t note the tremor in her hand. “There are no more dragons.”

  Lazdac brought the knife forward once more. “You are no dissembler, Halla of Lorendale. You know as well as I do that the beasts have revealed themselves. It was very, very foolish of them to do so.”

  The scent of the raw flesh made Halla’s stomach churn, and she turned her head away.

  “With my drakdaemons, I can defeat even dragons, and it shall give me great pleasure to do so, since the foul wyrms were the root of the Strigori ruin. And now that I have you… or rather, the fruit of your womb—Look at me.”

  Halla did as he commanded. He pressed the meat against her teeth, and fearing he would slice through her lips, she took it.

  “That’s better,” he said. “Now eat it.”

  Halla chewed savagely, trying not to choke on the rusty taste of the flesh. After she swallowed it, she asked, “Are you poisoning me?”

  “Don’t be a fool!” The vaar tapped one of his long nails on the tiny box. “You’ve been ingesting this in every morsel you’ve eaten since your arrival in Drak Icar. It’s been a drain on my remaining stores, but provided you bring the child to term, my investment will reap the highest rewards.”

  Halla looked down at the shimmering powder. “What… is it?”

  Lazdac’s cunning smile widened. “I see I have your full attention at last. But I’m afraid I can’t answer your question. It’s nothing to concern yourself with. The powder is for the child.”

  Halla’s hands instinctively covered her belly. “You’re poisoning my baby?”

  The vaar raised his thin brows. “Your baby? You and the bastard in your belly have belonged to me since you set foot in the Lost Lands. But no—I’m not poisoning anyone.”

  “Then what will this powder do to the child?”