by David Adams
“What are you doing here?” I asked, taking in a deep breath, trying to fight through the exhaustion and work my mind into finding a solution. What could I do against a ghost?
“You must have known I had some way of communicating with my minions in this city.”
Honestly I had not considered this. I doubted very much that Pergru, with his steadfast dedication to his duty, was working for my father. Was it something else? Some hidden scrying device?
I would have to worry about that later. For now, I was in no danger. This image wasn’t a ghost. Just an echo of him, a projection sent to talk.
“It’s my city,” I said, speaking finally, with strength that surprised even me. “You don’t own this place. You never did. And you won’t, either, you monster.”
“Monster?” Contremulus stepped forward, ghostly feet passing through the floor. “Is that what you think I am?”
“What else could you be? You walk in darkness. You reanimated yourself as the living dead, a dracolich, a perversion of the natural order. You kill innocent people.” My hands balled at my sides. “And you cut me. Tortured me, for days, months. You tied me to a pyre and tried to burn me. All for nothing.”
“Not for nothing.” Passion sprung up in his voice in a way I had not heard before. “Everything I do has a purpose, Ren of Atikala. Everything I do has a reason.”
“Then tell me the reason!” I spat the words. “Tell me why! Why do you do this?”
“I will answer your question with a question.” Contremulus’s eyes drifted to the sword at my belt. He walked over to it, gliding across the floor. “How are swords made?”
The process was long and complicated. I said nothing.
“Raw iron is dug from the deep earth,” said Contremulus, extending a hand to stroke, incorporeally, at the weapon, passing through the sheath harmlessly. His actions were performed with a reverence I did not understand. “Then it is refined. Processed. Hardened. Charcoal is rubbed in to do this…but when you harden metal so it cannot bend, you risk it breaking. It is a delicate balancing act, strength versus flexibility.”
I would never fight for him. Strangely he had never asked that of me. “Am I your sword?” I asked, baring my teeth. “A weapon, half created?”
His face lit up. “More than you know.”
Rage flared in my heart. So many words, cryptic dung that he spun over and over. I’d heard the same when I was in his “care,” and the inflection he used brought it all back.
We must take in pain and burn it as fuel for our journey, he had said.
Fuel. Fuel for a forge. A forge for steel and blades.
“Tell me!” I roared, and magic surged within me. Flames shot from my fingers in a wide cone, scorching the stone of the room, passing through his empty body. “Tell me what you mean! No more games! No more lies and misdirections! Speak plainly and be done with it!”
Contremulus seemed amused. With a slight incline of his head, folded his arms behind his back. “As you wish,” he said. I waited, seething, and then he spoke. “What do you know of we liches?”
Tyermumtican had told me both a lot, and simultaneously, not much at all. Acts of great evil had preserved Contremulus’s body, and some dark magic kept his soul from passing on to…wherever souls went now that the gods were dead. Instead it was kept in a phylactery, a magical vessel of great power. He had used some fragment of my essence to power it.
“I know you became one to bring your mate back to life.” I remembered the image of her I had seen in Northaven, a beautiful gold dragon swimming in a lake. Of Contremulus, smiling so genuinely. “To buy yourself time enough to perform the ritual on her. The process had to be tested.”
My answer did not please him. A dark cloud came over his face. “Speak not of her,” he cautioned.
His discomfort emboldened me. “Her name was Ophiliana,” I said, taking a step towards Contremulus. Ssarsdale’s spies had done their research, poured through ancient tomes, searching for his name. They had found much. “Ophiliana the Goldheart. I know of her, Contremulus. Whispers of her kindness echo throughout the world, reaching even my ears. Of how she laid barren egg after barren egg—“
“Stop,” cautioned Contremulus, his words weighted with anger, but he was just a projected image.
Do not taunt dragons was a common saying amongst kobolds—Yeznen said it fairly frequently—but I ignored my people’s wisdom. “I know how she died in the wastes of Northaven,” I said. “Cut down by the church of Tyranus, by humans worshipping a dead God, struggling and kicking against inevitable fate. High Priest Praxis drove a dragonbane blade through her body.”
“You anger me, Ren of Atikala,” said Contremulus, dark smoke writhing around his ghostly form.
I was pleased. “Excellent,” I said. “Anger is the first emotion you will feel now that we are at war, Contremulus. Contremulus, the dead dragon pretending to be alive. Soon you will come to know fear, and then pain. Then nothing. You will feel my blade soon enough.”
My comment drew a dark glare. “What threat is a sword to a dragon?”
“Tyermumtican feared men and their weapons.”
Contempt splashed across his human face. “A dragon fearful of fleshlings. Pathetic. Unworthy of the name. This Tyermumtican…I know of him. Small. Pitiful.”
I realised, perhaps, that I should not have mentioned my friend by name. Nor used the past tense. Dragons feared little, but other dragons were on that list. “Did fleshlings not slay your beloved Ophiliana?” I asked, trying to distract him.
“They did,” he said. “But such things are in the past. You will prove to be the vessel that is her rebirth.”
I squinted at him. “How so?”
“Your soul is strong,” he said. “And you carry my blood. A phylactery is a soul-container; the only thing that can hold a soul is another soul. Yours…serves my love now, bound to her. You will allow her to live again.”
“So,” I said, “our fates are intertwined. Your mate and I. If I die…”
He snorted, a laugh threatening to escape. “If your mortal flesh expires, a little more of your soul essence filters back into her growing phylactery. Normally it would take a great deal of death, of killing, for such things to be effective, but since you can come back to life…since it has a particular strength to it…well. Your soul is special.” He leaned forward, shadows falling over his face. “But first, like iron becomes steel, you must be hardened. Tested. Strengthened. I will send challenge after challenge to you, as I have done already.”
“I’ve beaten your challenges,” I hissed. “Your undead wizards. Your human minions, attacking both the outside and from within. I’ve met every force you’ve thrown at me. My Darkguard have burned the lands around Ssarsdale—your army cannot survive without food, and now all your soldiers can fill their bellies with is ash.”
“Indeed you have,” said Contremulus. “My spies confirm it. Not a single grain of wheat remains. You’ve outdone yourself.”
“I have,” I said. “And when we meet in the field, only one of us will see the next day.”
He only smiled wider.
“You aren’t testing me,” I said, fighting to deny him this victory. “What I do, I do for myself. I forge my own destiny. I am fighting you, not playing into your hand. I am beating you.”
He regarded me with dispassionate eyes. “Tell yourself whatever you wish. Continue to fight me. I desire it. My love’s soul-container must be unbreakable. I cannot risk losing her again. I will not.”
“And what,” I said, “if whatever property that allows me to come back to life foils all your attempts to bind me? What if your mad scheme fails?”
He said nothing, the dark cloud returning, intensified by passions I did not understand. He glared at me. I glared back at him.
“You are not hard enough yet,” he said, finally. “You are softened by concerns. Worries. Doubts. These should be burned away.”
Now it was my turn to suppress a laugh. “Exactly how do
you propose to do that?”
“Do you know what a city on fire looks like?” he asked, golden eyes shining in the dark, his body wreathed in mist.
I didn’t understand. I shook my head. “No.”
Contremulus smiled a wicked smile. “Neither do I.” His ghostly visage faded away, leaving just a wide, white smile glowing in the last tendrils of smoke. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
Contremulus’s words echoed in my mind long after his image had faded.
If he was coming for Ssarsdale, he would have his work cut out for him. To attack Ssarsdale he would have to come underground. We had shown that was impossible. No matter how many humans he sent down into the deep, we would beat him. He would have to come himself, and in doing so would lose many of his advantages—flight, most notably—and his great size, which would normally grant him the ability to crush a kobold with a gesture, would prove to be a significant hindrance.
My father coming here would grant me considerable advantage, so it was with little surprise that the days ticked away without any word. I kept Ssarsdale on high alert. Scouts were sent out daily, patrolling further than we ever had, but they all returned with news of nothing. No humans. No assassins. Nothing.
I kept my guard up. I kept sending patrols. I kept training.
My father was not the kind of dragon to make idle threats.
Day after day. No word from outside, but there was welcome news from within Ssarsdale’s walls.
Although he was still missing, Valen had been formally been promoted to the rank of a junior Darkguard.
There was no ceremony. No large celebration. Simply a footnote in one of the many reports Pergru sent. It was both an acknowledgement of the completion of his expedited training, his obvious and growing skill with the blade, and his courage in slaying a mighty dragon in front of the whole city.
Slaying my friend.
Objectively I had expected no less, but Valen had killed Tyermumtican. A part of me wanted to reach out and slay him for that. Still did.
So it was with some surprise, and with no small amount of conflicting opinion, that when I retired to sleep one night, Valen stepped out of a shadow like he was born there, his head bowed low.
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you where you stand,” I spat, spittle flying from my lips as I spoke. Ten thousand ways I could kill him flew through my mind. Burning. The sword. Public starvation.
“I cannot give you one,” he said, his voice quiet. “I made a mistake.”
Fury bubbled within me. “Forgetting to sharpen your sword is a mistake,” I said. “Murdering a friend—my friend—is something different.”
“Am I not your friend too?” asked Valen.
“I don’t know what you are. You are the child of a friend, someone I trusted. I was with you when you hatched. I saved you from Northaven, brought you here, tried to teach you…” My voice cracked, weakened. “I tried to teach you good.”
“And I learnt,” said Valen. “I learnt to be a Darkguard. To defend our people. I learnt to follow you unquestioningly, which is why I’m here, submitting to your judgement.” He turned around, so I could see. “I am unarmed. If you wish to execute me for what has happened, I will not resist.”
I should.
I should have killed him. I had a chance. A chance to cleave him in half with Incinerator and burn him to ashes. I felt like the ghost of Tyermumtican was crying out to me, imploring me to stay my hand. And for reasons that I did not understand, I listened.
“I don’t want to kill you,” I said. “Nothing can bring back Tyermumtican. All we can do…is learn from this and try to move forward.”
He stepped forward, and he hugged me. I hugged him back. We stood there in silence, enjoying the quiet.
Then he put his right hand on my backside.
“What are you doing?” I asked, my tail flicking his hand away.
“You’re standing the wrong way,” said Valen, inclining his head as he looked up to me, his face scrunched in confusion. “You need to turn around. Mating is traditionally performed with the female’s back to—”
I gave Valen a firm shove away and glared at him, anger rising within me. “No.”
“But—”
Fire roiled in my gut, threatening to spill out, a dangerous prospect in a cloth tent surrounded by paper. Smoke poured from my hands and nose. “Valen, shit of the dead Gods, I thought you came here to apologise!” Anger. Anger so hot I nearly, very nearly, let the magic spill out and burn him to embers. I calmed myself with a deep breath. “You overstep your boundaries, little one. So very far.”
“I apologise,” he said, crouching onto the stone and kneeling, dipping his head low. “I…misunderstood your intentions.”
His genuine confusion, in turn, confused me. “How could I possibly give you the impression that I—that impression?”
“I am an adult now,” he said, keeping his head low. “I had assumed that, since you spoke so fondly of my father, and you had not picked a mate, you were waiting until I was old enough.”
“You are a child.” I ran my hands over my face. “Old enough to work, yes, but…but not anything else. Not with me at any rate.”
“Technically I am. Technically—”
“You are my child.” I sucked in air between my teeth. “As much flesh and blood one could ever be. Valen, I will never mate with you based on a technicality. Nor, can I imagine, any other reason in the foreseeable future.”
He nodded humbly. “Again, my apologies. I will not raise the matter again.” He hesitated. “Mother.”
“Good.” I tried to smile, but I could not. I could only look at him with cold impartiality. “Stand.”
He stood, waiting my next command.
So robotic. So…practised and formal. He had been trained well. How much of the Valen I had known on the surface remained there?
What was he, anymore?
“Cut off your right hand,” I said.
Silence. He stared at me, eyes wide. “You cannot be serious.”
“I have never been more serious in my life.” I drew Kurdax, my dagger, and turned it in my hand, passing it to him hilt first. “You laid this hand upon me without my permission. You shed the blood of my friend. As punishment for your actions I, Ren of Atikala, Supreme Leader of Ssarsdale, order you to remove your hand, and then give it to me. The same punishment, or worse, is given to any who harm me or my subjects.”
“How will I be your assassin then?” Valen cupped his right hand in his left, protectively. “I am not a sorcerer. A warrior needs both hands.”
“I have plenty of assassins,” I said. “I need a skilled blade a lot less than I need my child to understand a very important, very painful, lesson.”
Valen turned Kurdax over in his left hand, staring down at his right. I could not imagine what was going through his mind. Perhaps he considered the notion that this was a test. A test of loyalty. Some kind of joke or punishment, as though the fear of being maimed were enough to make up for driving his blade into the spine of my dragon friend.
His eyes met mine. I didn’t waver or hesitate.
So, with hands that shook so much they almost could not complete the task, he cut. Dragging the weapon across his wrist, cutting in deep, sawing back and forth, the blade quickly bloodying. Four quick slices, back and forth, and the limb went limp, hanging by a flap of skin.
He cried. Sobbing, wailing, his hand shaking as he did the deed. Loud enough to be heard, loud enough that I almost, as the fifth stroke was made, relented. But I didn’t. I needed this done. Tyermumtican’s blood had to be repaid with blood.
Valen’s right hand flopped onto the ground. He pressed his stump under his left arm, squeezing tightly. His chest, the stone floor of Pergru’s quarters, soaked through with blood.
“Pick it up,” I said. “Give it to me.”
Wheezing, whimpering, Valen crouched, picked up his own severed limb with two fingers. He could scarcely bare to touch it. He held it out for
me, and I, slowly and deliberately, accepted it. The fingers curled in my grip, as though some fragment of his spirit were trapped within, trying to claw at me, destroy me for severing it from its owner. Blood dripped onto the floor, black and coppery.
He said nothing, crying pitifully, staring down at the ruined length of his arm.
“This is the price of your misdeed,” I said, tossing the hand into the corner of the room and pointing a finger at it. Searing heat roasted the limb, blackening it, shrivelling it away into ashes.
Valen looked away, unable to meet my gaze. “What am I going to do now?” He asked, his tone wavering as he spoke. “How can I serve my community without a hand?”
“Talk to Pergru. See what task he has for someone of your…limited capabilities.”
His whole face distorted, scrunching up like a dried fruit. “Why don’t you just kill me?”
“Because…” I didn’t have a good answer, so I simply told the truth. “Because you’re my son.”
The pain of the admission, in the context of what I had just done, wounded me in my deepest core. I took a piece of cloth from Valen’s armour and used it to bandage his stump.
“See Pergru,” I said, “and I’ll make sure he’s kind to you.”
Cradling his severed hand, still crying, Valen left, leaving me alone.
No sooner had he gone, however, the door to my quarters burst open. I twirled around, drawing my rapier with one smooth motion.
Ilothika stumbled inside, her feet without their typical grace. She practically fell at the door, gasping for air. Her body was caked in dirt, her feet swollen and bruised. Even from across my quarters I could smell her, dirty and unwashed. I could smell rot, too. Death, uncleaned.
“What news, assassin?” I asked, lowering my weapon. “I’m surprised you would show your face here after what you did to Ivywood.”
“Northaven,” she gasped, her voice scratchy and raw. “Burns.”
