by David Estes
Sixty-Two
Unknown location
Bane Gäric
Bane, Killer of Kings, Destroyer of Empires, Bringer of Peace, knew the man would eventually try to kill him.
Even as they sat across from each other breaking bread, drinking wine, he could see it in Chavos’s red eyes. The man no longer called himself “the Beggar,” for one. No, he insisted on reassuming his childhood name—Chavos. That was a bad sign. A beggar might need what he had to give. A Chavos, well, he didn’t know what a Chavos might need.
In truth, Bane didn’t know much about people, considering his upbringing had been limited to a cold cave and a man named Bear Blackboots. A man who, he was now beginning to realize, wasn’t exactly who he had pretended to be.
Bane had finally found the man hiding in the vast archives of Citadel, the northernmost Calypsian city. He was hidden among the stacks, muttering under his breath, searching thick tomes, his fat fingers brushing the pages with unexpected tenderness, as though caressing a lover’s hair.
Bane, for some reason, felt disgusted by the man he’d once called Father. For a long time, he considered stealing up behind him, slitting his throat, ending his mutterings.
But he didn’t. Something about it didn’t feel right, and Bane had learned over the course of the last few months to always trust his instincts.
After all, they’d gotten him this far—six dead rulers with still four to go.
“Can you pass the butter, my friend?” Chavos said, gesturing toward a silver plate set between them.
“Of course, my friend,” Bane said with a smile. Rather than hand it to him and risk being touched by the plague-riddled man, he slid it across the floor.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Bane hated that he couldn’t seem to convince anyone of his mission, the justness of it, the rightness. He was ordained by the Western Oracle, wasn’t he? He was created by her. Surely that should mean something. Where others saw only a trail of blood and corpses in his wake, he saw a glowing red path to peace. The rulers of the Four Kingdoms had become far too bloodthirsty, drunk on their power. He was simply the equalizer.
Why couldn’t anyone seem to see that?
The urge to slash open the man in front of him rose bitterly in the back of his throat, but something stayed his hand.
It was need. Pathetic human need. For companionship. For a friend. Even a false friend felt better than none at all.
And so he smiled and ate, waiting for that inevitable moment when one of them would need to kill the other.
Sixty-Three
The Southern Empire, Calyp
Roan Loren
Roan Loren, having grown up under the vicious glare of the Southron sun, knew better than to attempt to cross the Scarra on his own. Instead, after parting ways with his furia escort on the banks of the Spear, he swam across, taking a few moments to wring out his sodden clothes, and then turned directly south, following the arrow-straight river toward its end: the Burning Sea.
The Burning Sea suited its name well. In the brightness of midday, it appeared to be not water, but a roiling, ever-shifting bed of flames, stretching from horizon to horizon. To the west was a burnt wasteland that eventually reached the towering red-rock spires that were home to a large colony of vulzures, the bloodthirsty sky hunters known to scoop up small children, sinking their claws into the scruffs of their necks.
To the east, the land angled southward, forming the narrowest portion of the desert, brown and sun-speckled. Here, along the coast, the Scarra wasn’t nearly as formidable. The winds were cooler, and the sea provided plenty of food in the form of crabs skittering across the wet rocks. Roan, of course, wouldn’t eat any living thing, instead relying on the bare rations afforded him by Rhea Loren before she sent him away.
Rhea Loren, he thought. My sister, the tyrant.
He shook his head, still in disbelief that he was back in the empire of his childhood. How had everything gotten so turned around? he wondered. Then again, at the same time there was a certain symmetry to it all, like his life had come full circle. At least that was what he told himself, because if fate had brought him here, then perhaps he could still find a way to achieve his goals—namely, find the ancient sorceress known as the Western Oracle, or locate her son, a man who now went by the name Bear Blackboots. And if he could do that, then maybe he could still save his friends, Gareth Ironclad and Gwendolyn Storm.
Friends. That word seemed like a lie. Because what he felt for each of them went far beyond the bounds of friendship. With Gareth, his love had been like a vial of poison turned over abruptly, spilling its contents, which turned out to be the sweetest wine. With Gwendolyn, the love had grown more slowly, building like a storm on the horizon: roiling clouds, pattering rain, strikes of lightning, rolling thunder.
Gods.
Each love was different in a thousand ways, but the same in one; and that one was what drove Roan now. If his sister wanted the Western Oracle or her son, he would give them to her to save those he loved. But perhaps Rhea would get more than she bargained for.
The evening faded into morning, and Roan stopped to eat and sleep. The sun was too harsh, forcing him to travel at night—risking a deadly sting from a scorpion or a poisonous bite from a snake—and take refuge under the sparse vegetation during the day.
He rose again when the sun set, continuing this pattern for two days, until the landscape began to change, his passage cutting sharply toward the east, where a narrow stretch of land jutted out toward the sea.
Where he saw a remarkable bridge, a long, curving scythe of stone connecting the desert to the peninsula known as Calyp.
My home.
He strode forward, unafraid.
Though it had seemed a much shorter distance, it had taken Roan the better part of the night to cross the windswept bridge. It was a harrying experience, each breath of wind threatening to blast him into the roiling whitecaps churning far beneath.
As expected, dark-skinned Calypsian soldiers blocked his path at the end of the bridge, the final gatekeepers to Calyp. They were frowning at him—at his dusty but pale skin, his blond-streaked hair, his pale-blue eyes. A foreigner, their expressions said, even as their hands closed on the weapons hanging from their belts. Only one of them was a guanero, his bulky frame resting atop a scaled guanik, the beast’s pink tongue flicking restlessly from its black lips.
He was the one who spoke first: “You’re a long way from home, westerner.”
“I grew up in Calypso,” Roan said. He held out his hands in a gesture that said I’m unarmed and harmless.
The guanero laughed without breaking his stare. “And I am Empress Raven Sandes. You’re no more Calypsian than a gray-skinned Dreadnoughter.”
“I didn’t say I was Calypsian. Only that I grew up here. I’ve lived in many places, including, most recently, the east.”
Although Roan had been expecting a reaction, it came far swifter and more powerfully than he was prepared for. Weapons screamed from their scabbards, rough hands grabbed him and slung him to the hard ground, and he found himself staring at the tip of a sword, which hovered a finger’s breadth from his eye.
“Something I said?” he managed to quip.
“Why were you living in the east?” the guanero man said, his voice even, all humor sucked from it.
Roan’s strategy had made sense up until now. Apparently even mentioning the word “east” could get you a sword through the eye. He chose his next words more carefully. “I was a prisoner,” he said. “The Ironclad’s took me captive. They thought I was a Calypsian spy.”
The man’s gaze narrowed. “How did you escape?”
“I didn’t.”
“They let you go?”
“Sort of. Let’s just say I earned their trust.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I have information.”
“Information about what?”
“Remove your sword and I’ll tell y
ou.”
The man bit his lip, considering. Then, slowly, he drew the blade back. Not all the way, but far enough that Roan felt like he could breathe again. “Speak.”
“I know all about Ferria’s defenses. I’ll save the details for Empress Raven.”
The man’s lips curled as he showed his teeth. He shoved his blade downward. Roan flinched as the steel bit into the cracked ground just beside his face.
“Come with me,” the guanero said, hefting Roan up by his collar.
Sixty-Four
The Southern Empire, Calypso
Raven Sandes
Nestled beneath the shadow of the three massive pyramids, all of Calypso, as well as many of the outlying villages, had gathered for the testing of the dragonia. This was remarkable as Raven had explicitly asked that it be kept secret.
Rumors and gossip swirl like winds upon this land, she thought.
If nothing else, the testing was a welcome distraction. She’d scarcely been able to think of anything but the words of the message delivered a day earlier.
Stop war or Whisper dies.
It was those five words that had shaken her awake in the middle of the night, her entire body trembling. She’d thrust the covers away, feeling suffocated, cold beads of sweat forming on her forehead and running down her spine. Frantically, she’d rushed from her room, bursting through the tinkling barrier of threaded guanik bones and into Whisper’s quarters. At first, she’d thought the bed was empty, so small was her sister’s form beneath the sheets. At first, she’d thought, oh gods, what have I done? but then she saw her chestnut hair spilling out, saw the rise and fall of her sister’s chest beneath her coverings. Raven had stood there for a long time, just watching Whisper sleep, just enjoying the aliveness of her. And when she’d finally left, sleep had been impossible.
Still, now, outside amongst her people, the air of excitement was contagious, and she felt herself leaning forward in anticipation. The threat on the note was still there, somewhere in the back of her mind, but she managed to lock it away, at least until she had more time to consider the source.
It was hard not to be down there with the dragons, considering she was almost a dragon master herself given how much time she’d spent with the dragonia as a child and as she’d reached womanhood.
But she was empress now, and needed to separate herself from individual pursuits, and that included day-to-day monitoring of the dragons.
That being said, it was nearly impossible for her not to think of them as her children. The dragonia numbered twelve in total, as they always did. Six male, six female. No one knew exactly why that was, except that each generation of mates only bore two eggs each. Their parents were well past their prime, having descended into madness as their long lives wore on. Some of them had even grown a second head, or, in rare cases, a third. The thought made Raven sad—she hated the way the dragons, like humans, deteriorated with age. Not their bodies, which never stopped growing, but their minds.
She shook away the thought as she spotted Heiron, the largest male of the brood, with his dark, sleek scales and insatiable love of cured bacon. He had been the only dragon that had passed the last testing. Screams burst from the crowd as he snorted a gout of flames from his snout, so close to them that they could probably feel the heat. He wouldn’t hurt them, of course; he just had a sense of humor.
Raven chuckled, watching Rider and Shanolin begin the testing.
First were flying challenges, each dragon beating its powerful wings, kicking up dust and small stones, commanded by their masters to perform various tasks. Hover in place. Rise at sharp angles, bursting through clouds. Swoop down sharply, brushing the ground without crashing. Fly in formation. Other, more junior dragon masters rode them as they performed, and Raven found herself envious of them—it had been over a fortnight since she’d been able to fly.
There was Siri, the red-backed female covered in spikes, the smallest but most agile of the brood. She’d long been Raven’s favorite, her temperament as prickly as her hide, and yet easily subdued by a belly rub and brace of roasted coney. Beside her was Cronus, the dragon usually ridden by Shanolin. The hot-tempered beast was almost as large as Heiron, his grey scales shimmering like silver plate. He obeyed none of the dragon masters but Shanolin, a fact that had always frustrated Raven. No dragon master should have that kind of power. In the center of the formation was the bacon-loving Heiron, Rider’s steed of choice. The enormous male struggled with the flying exercises—his own girth getting in his way—but he still managed to pass.
In fact, all twelve of the dragonia performed extremely well during the flying portion of the testing, each passing. This was no surprise. Flying was to dragons what walking was to humans.
Shanolin and Rider marked each dragon’s scores on a large board, a line drawn for the passing mark.
Next, they began fire-breathing, which had been the only part of the testing Raven’s sister, Fire, had ever really shown interest in. Raven’s mouth suddenly felt dry at the memory, and she wished Whisper were here. Her sister, however, still garbed in all black, had refused to attend, calling the event “a farce of epic proportions.”
Fire-breathing involved the destruction of various objects, from as small as human dummies, to as large as huge stone structures meant to represent enemy buildings or walls. The larger dragons, like Heiron and Cronus, tended to dominate the destruction of the larger structures, their fires as hot as the sun, oceans of eternal flame, while smaller dragons, like Siri, could form more precise streams of flame, capable of obliterating a smaller object from great distances.
Again, the dragonia as a whole performed well—only one didn’t pass. Raven realized that at some point she’d folded her hands together, her dueling grips locked together in a sweaty embrace so tight it was beginning to ache. Slowly, she released them, though her fingers continued to throb.
Was Whisper right? Had she unintentionally agreed to a war if the dragonia passed the testing? As the dragons continued to perform at a high level with each new phase of the examination—ground battle, aerial battle, defense against projectiles, etc.—her unease grew.
And then it was over. Raven was biting her lip so hard she could taste blood. The crowd was roaring, whipped into a frenzy by the monstrous beasts’ performance. The dust began to settle as Shanolin and Rider completed the final tallies, taking into account each dragon’s performance in each area of testing.
Raven saw the moment Rider realized the truth, her dark cheeks paling.
They’d passed. Not just Heiron, who had, once again, achieved the highest score.
All of them.
They’d all passed.
Before Raven could consider the ramifications of such a surprising result, a messenger approached, marching up the steps and whispering something to Goggin. The large man turned toward her, raising an eyebrow in question: Can I let him through?
She nodded, immediately recognizing the young messenger who had delivered the last message. As he approached, his hands holding out another scroll sealed with red wax, her blood ran cold.
The wax, as before, was marked with a sickle.
Sixty-Five
The Southern Empire, Calypso
Roan Loren
As he dismounted, Roan added ‘ride on a guanik’ to his mental list of Things I Never Want to Do Again. Gingerly, he rubbed his backside, wondering whether he should use his lifemark to heal the numerous bruises. He opted not to, remembering how easily Gwen had discerned his power from just such a frivolous act. At the same time, he wondered whether he would ever be able to sit down again.
Stretching, he scanned the streets of Calypso, surprised at the swell of nostalgia he felt, as if being reunited with an old friend—not that he had any of those, of course. This wasn’t just the place he grew up, but the place he’d found himself, the place that started it all. A strange urge to aimlessly wander the streets, haggling with nut roasters and other merchants, tugged at him, but was swiftly chased away by the
guanero’s firm grip on his elbow, steering him toward the palace gates.
A barked command by two more mounted guanero, and the gates were hauled open by enormous guanik pulling chains.
Inside, the dusty ground was marred and churned by hundreds of guanik footprints. Thick columns set with mosaic tiles of many colors supported a wraparound shelter that offered protection from the harsh sun as one made their way from the gates to the palace entrance. At that point, there were a dozen more pillars, each a work of art. Not gaudy, but beautiful, tasteful, the tiles hand-cut and individually set within the mortar, each placed at the perfect angle to catch the sunlight, giving them the appearance of sparkling drops of dew.
Roan wondered whether anyone ever appreciated them anymore. He suspected not. From his experience, Calypsian royalty were like that, aloof, arrogant to a fault, not of the people, but above the people.
He hoped to use this weakness against the empress.
Inside the atrium, the art continued. Each sandstone wall was inlaid with tiles, forming images from Calypsian life: the guanero astride their guanik, marching through the streets; an empress standing atop one of the pyramids, kneeling in prayer to the gods; the Unburning Tree, radiant, gods-blessed.
Roan looked away, focusing on the alternating black and white tiles beneath his feet. They turned left, the open-air corridor providing a stunning view of the pyramids, which rose like perfectly formed mountain peaks stabbing at the sky. In the red afternoon light, their shadows stretched long and thin, dark fangs splitting the Southron peninsula to shreds.
They turned left again, and the guanero stopped, holding Roan back by tightening his grip. Before him was a broad area ending at three steps and a small dais. Atop the platform were four chairs—thrones. The one in the direct center was the largest and most impressive, scaled like dragon’s hide, the maw of a winged beast rising from the back.
The dragon throne, Roan thought.
