Dragon Bones (The Dragonwalker Book 1)

by D. K. Holmberg

  A shout sounded behind them. The battle had started.

  There were screams, and the sound of metal on metal rang in the air. Fes looked over to see the priest sitting rigidly in the saddle.

  Alison nudged him. “Our task was to get him safely to the north. From there—”

  “We can’t leave them.”

  He didn’t dare slow his horse. If he did, they would be set upon even faster. The rear of the procession had taken the brunt of the attack, but it wouldn’t be long before the rest of the attackers reached them.

  “If you want to get paid, we need to keep him safe.”

  Fes glared at her for a moment. She was right, but that didn’t make it any better.

  “Grab his reins,” he said, hating himself.

  When Alison grabbed the reins of the horse, the priest shook his head. “I can’t leave them. They need—“

  Alison jerked him forward. “They have their own protection. You have yours.”

  They kicked their horses at a faster pace and streaked away. As they did, Fes glanced back to see the merchants under attack. Their guard engaged, but the soldiers were skilled, and they attacked in unison, quickly overwhelming the caravan. There was no way that the merchant guard would be able to suppress the attack.

  “Come on,” Alison urged.

  Fes tore his gaze away.

  Thundering hooves chased them, and he glanced back. A cluster of riders made their way after them. He considered turning to face them, but all it would take was a stray arrow to end him.

  “Hurry,” Alison urged.

  They raced off, putting distance between them and their pursuers, and eventually saw no sign of them. The priest still sat rigidly in the saddle, and every so often he would turn back, almost longingly, but he said nothing.

  When it seemed no one followed, they stopped. A haunted expression remained fixed on Talmund’s face. “We shouldn’t have left them. Not like that.”

  “We didn’t have any choice,” Alison said. “If we would’ve stayed, we would have been overwhelmed the same as the rest of the merchants.”

  It was harsh, but not untrue. And Fes should have seen it too.

  “But the Bayars—”

  The image of the attack and the slaughter of the merchants flashed into his mind. If the attackers were thieves, they didn’t seem as if they intended to leave anyone alive. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  They guided the horses to a stream and allowed them to drink. Fes climbed out of the saddle, looking around them. The landscape here was flat but otherwise fairly green. Clumps of trees grew, and there was still no sign of the distant mountains. When they neared them, they would be closer to finishing their task, but they had a month or more before they got there. It was possible that they might be able to make it more quickly, but there were limits to how fast the horses could go. And now that they no longer had the merchants for protection, it was down to himself and Alison to protect the priest.

  The priest had a somber expression, and he rested one hand on the side of the horse as it drank from the stream. Day had begun to fade, and the sun was hazy overhead. Wind gusted, carrying the smells of grass and earth.

  “I saw the way they attacked,” Fes said. “Why were they slaughtering them if they were only after money?”

  “There are evils in the world,” the priest answered, as if that were enough.

  Fes looked over at Alison, but she merely stared at him blankly. “Did Horus expect this?” He turned to the priest. “Did you?”

  That might explain why he had offered to pay so much. Fes should have asked more questions and been prepared for the possibility that there was more to it than he had seen.

  Neither answered.

  “Why drag me along? If what you needed was protection, there are better ways of arranging that.” Mercenaries could be hired for relatively cheap. He’d seen it often enough in Anuhr. Carter always kept a crew hired for various jobs, so it was possible.

  “You will be more than capable.”

  “And we need to move quickly,” Alison said. “A larger group couldn’t have done that.”

  Fes stared at them, practically unable to believe that Alison would be so cold.

  “Wait here,” he said.

  He climbed into the saddle, which seemed to stir Alison more than anything else. “Where are you going?”

  Fes turned his attention to the east. “I’m going to see what happened after the attack.”

  “We know what happened,” she said.

  Fes looked over at the priest. “If there are attackers out there, I want to know what we have to avoid. Wait here.”

  “No promises.”

  “You don’t want to do this without me, so wait here.”

  He galloped off, heading directly east. He rode the horse hard, keeping low and clinging to the stallion’s neck. It was late in the day when he found the remains of the caravan. Flames consumed wagons, leaving most of them completely destroyed. Nothing remained other than the charred remnants of the brightly colored tarps. He found fallen bodies, burned the same as the wagons.

  Everything was destroyed.

  Fes dismounted and began to wind his way through the destruction. So many lives lost. It sickened him. It shouldn’t—he’d seen people die often enough, especially living where he had in the city—but he couldn’t help that he hated seeing a scene quite like this.

  It made no sense. Why destroy the entire caravan?

  And how?

  The ground still steamed in certain places, and he meandered carefully through, not wanting to burn his boots. His cloak hung too low to the ground for his comfort, so he pulled it up, keeping the hem from dragging across the scalding earth so that it didn’t ignite.

  One of the bodies was less burned than the others. Fes approached carefully and turned away. It was a merchant who he recognized. Not the one who had identified him in the tent, but still it was one he had seen in the market.

  The entire Bayars family lost.

  They had come to the city to trade, no different than any other merchant hoping to strike wealth while in the Great Market. And they had found devastation instead.

  Near what would have been the head of the procession, he came upon a flash of maroon. That was different than the clothing that the merchants wore. Maroon was the color of the empire and the emperor.

  The emperor wouldn’t have had anything to do with this, would he?

  Not from what he’d seen. It had been men in dark clothing, not the colors of the empire. Had they come to protect the merchant caravan, only arriving too late?

  Fes rolled the man over. He had a long sword still gripped in his hand, holding onto it through his dying moments. His face was charred beyond recognition, but there was no questioning the style of the blade or the cut of his clothing. A leather cloak twisted about him, making it difficult for Fes to fully determine, but that had to be what this was. This had to be the emperor’s men.

  Fes looked at the burned remains of the wagon with a new light.

  Fire mages wouldn’t do this, but what other answer was there?

  He crouched, trying to piece together what he knew, but there wasn’t enough for him to go on. The caravan had been attacked and, from the looks of it, soldiers of the empire had come to intervene, but had not been enough. Anyone willing to risk the might of the empire was reason to be careful.

  Could it have been an arm of the rebellion?

  Maybe he should have listened better when Azithan was speaking about the rebellion, but he was more concerned with what the next job would be and how much he would get paid.

  Fes had started toward his horse when he saw a flash of blue.

  It came from near one of the wagons. There wasn’t much of the wagon remaining, only traces of what had been the wheels and twisted remains of what appeared to be a metal box. The box had been opened, and the contents splayed across the ground.

  Fes hurried over to it. He leaned down, examining it, and realized with a s
tart that it was the inert dragon pearl that he had seen in the market. The necklace that it had been attached to was gone, but the pearl itself remained intact.

  Fes picked it up and nearly scalded his hand. The pearl remained too hot for him to safely handle.

  He slipped his hand inside his cloak and grabbed the pearl. If it burned his hand through the cloak—or somehow burned the cloak—he would have to leave it, but it didn’t.

  He examined it. It was mostly black, though there were streaks of blue within it that seemed to catch the fading daylight. That was odd. He wondered what the colors meant, if anything.

  He slipped the pearl into his pocket, turned away from the dead, and headed back to Alison and the priest. There was more to this job than he had anticipated. While the priest and Alison might not have expected this kind of trouble, they hadn’t been surprised by it.

  It was time for answers, but would they give them to him?

  Chapter Seven

  It was late when he found Alison and the priest. Fes hadn’t been sure whether they would wait for him and had been a little surprised that they had. They remained camped near the stream and had built a small fire that crackled softly, consuming branches and leaving a trail of smoke that drifted into the night.

  “That will be noticeable,” he said as he jumped out of the horse’s saddle.

  The horse quickly tried to abandon him, going to the stream to drink. Fes let go of the reins at the water’s edge before changing his mind and rushing over to grab them. If the horse decided to bolt, he wouldn’t have anything to ride.

  “We haven’t seen any sign of movement since you left us.” Accusation dripped with her words. “You’re lucky we waited for you. And I think we’re safe enough here.”

  “You didn’t see what I did.”

  “What did you see?”

  Fes took a seat away from the fire but near enough that he could see what they were doing. “The caravan was destroyed.”

  “Destroyed?” Alison chewed on dried meat, staring at the fire rather than looking up at him.

  “They were burned. Everything was burned. The whole thing was destroyed. There were empire soldiers there too, but they were dead.” Fes let the words hang in the air for a moment. “Why destroy the wagons? Is it because of what you’re after?”

  Talmund sighed. “If what I’ve been told is true, we are after an item that could change many lives.”

  Fes chuckled. “That seems awfully dramatic. I thought we were coming after something that would be worth fifty gold or more.”

  “And wouldn’t it be worth fifty gold—or ten times that much—for something that has the possibility of changing the lives of everyone within the empire?”

  “And what is that?”

  The priest studied him for a moment. In the faint firelight, his eyes seemed to dance, flickering with the flame, moving more vibrantly than what Fes would have expected. It was almost as if the flames were inside him rather than only reflected in his eyes.

  “Tell me about yourself, Fezarn.”

  The change in topic startled him, and Fes stared at the priest for a long moment. Had Horus given the priest his full name? He hated it when people did, mostly because his full name was a reminder of everything that he’d lost. His parents had called him Fezarn, as had his brother, and when they were all lost, he had become Fes. It was less painful that way.

  “That has nothing to do with what you’re after.”

  Talmund leaned forward, practically leaning over the fire, and fixed Fes with a hard expression. “On the contrary, it has quite a lot to do with what we are after. And why you’re here. What can you tell me about yourself?”

  Fes glanced from him to Alison before shrugging. “What’s there to tell? I’m an orphan and was raised in the slums of the city.”

  “Until you caught the attention of Azithan?” the priest asked.

  “Until he abandoned us for the fire mage,” Alison said.

  Fes ignored her. “What does it matter to you?”

  “I am someone your master has sought to suppress.”

  Fes laughed bitterly. “I don’t think Azithan cares so much about the dragon priests.”

  “I believe he cares far more than he admits. Azithan searches for power. You have seen it.”

  “He’s a fire mage,” Fes said, shrugging. It didn’t matter that he acknowledged that now, especially as it seemed as if the priest already knew. The fire mages used the ancient dragon relics to draw power, using the magic stored within the bones to fuel their spells. “And this isn’t about Azithan.”

  “Perhaps not to you.”

  “Neither Azithan nor the emperor would have attacked the caravan. The temple has more real artifacts than anything the Bayars might have.”

  “I’m well aware of the stolen artifacts the fire mages possess,” he said, reaching beneath his cloak and pulling something out.

  Fes’s breath caught. It was his dagger.

  “It was a job. I’ve been working for Azithan for a while now. He pays well, and—“

  The priest cocked his head, a half smile on his face. “Are you under the impression that I’m somehow angry?”

  “I’m under the impression that you don’t care for Azithan.”

  “And why should I?” the priest asked.

  Fes stared at him for a moment before laughing to himself. “I suppose that you have no reason to.”

  “There is no reason to, and if you truly understood the empire, you would recognize that there has been a battle waging between the empire and people like myself for far longer than most realize.”

  “A battle? With the priests?” Fes shook his head.

  “Where do you think your fire mage friend’s magic comes from?”

  “Everyone knows where it comes from. And why the fire mages have it. Without them—”

  “Yes. The empire would have fallen to the threat posed by the dragons. Only, what if that’s not entirely true?”

  Fes glanced from Alison to the priest. “Is that what this is about? I have no interest in being a part of your plan to overthrow the empire, regardless of what you might pay.”

  The priest smiled. “And how would I be able to overthrow the empire? This is about finding something of value. That is all.”

  “Then why this line of questioning?”

  The priest spread his hands out in front of him. “To get you to ask different questions. Nothing more.”

  “Such as what? About myself? That’s what you’re asking about, after all.”

  “Why won’t you tell me about your family?”

  “It has no bearing on this task,” Fes said. He didn’t talk about that with anyone, and certainly not with some strange dragon priest that he had been hired to escort north. He wasn’t going to share anything with someone like this. Those were his secrets and his shame.

  But then, Azithan had suspected the priest wanted him for his other talent, that which allowed him to find dragon relics. Could that be what Talmund was after?

  “Then tell me about this knife.” The priest tapped the dagger on his lap, and Alison leaned over, her eyes widening slightly.

  “He has your dagger?” Alison asked, cocking a brow at Fes. She chortled loudly, the noise of it far too loud in the night. “You lost a dagger? Oh, that’s just wonderful. I would never have suspected that you would lose something so precious to you. I know how proud you are of those stupid things.”

  “They’re not stupid,” Fes said.

  “They’re not always practical, either. What good is a stone blade when metal won’t be damaged quite as easily?”

  “What good is it? The good in it is that the blade never needs sharpening. The good in it is that it doesn’t break. The good in it is that—“

  “Only a few people have them,” the priest said.

  Fes turned his irritation from Alison and looked over at the priest. “What?”

  The priest nodded, handing the dagger over to Alison. “Dragonglass is rare. Th
e fact that you have them—and didn’t sell them—is part of the reason I wanted you to accompany me.” The priest twisted the dagger in his hand. He had a strange familiarity with the blade. “There have long been rumors that the ancient Settlers possessed such knives.”

  It was Fes’s turn to laugh. “The Settlers? As in the Dragonwalkers?”

  The priest nodded. “They called themselves by a different name, but yes.”

  “What did they call themselves?” Alison asked.

  “A name that has been lost over the generations. The Settlers remained even after the dragons were slaughtered, their blood seeping into the earth and the dragon fields. The people who lived there, those known as the Settlers, inherited something unexpected. They have a connection to the long dead dragons, and that connection grants them power that others do not have.” He nodded at the dagger that Alison still held, twisting it in her hands. “Blades like that are a marker of that connection.”

  He said the last softly, and he looked over at Fes. There wasn’t any hint of an accusation. There was nothing other than curiosity.

  “You never wondered why the tasks that your master assigns you are tied to dragon relics?”

  Most assignments had been about the dragon relics, but how would Talmund know? “Why should I wonder? Dragon relics are valuable to the empire and fire mages in particular. But why are they valuable to you?”

  “The Priests of the Flame search for a different reason.”

  Fes chuckled. “I’ve heard of that reason. Can you really believe that bringing the dragon bones back together will somehow resurrect the dragons?”

  “What I think is of little consequence. It is what will happen that matters.”

  Fes looked over at Alison, shaking his head. “Do you see that? Do you see what Horus has gotten us into?”

  Alison shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. What I want is to have enough money to not worry.”

  It was the same reason Fes had. The same reason he and Alison hadn’t worked out when they had been together before. “And he paid his twenty percent, otherwise I wouldn’t be here, but is this really what we want to be doing?” Alison looked away, and Fes turned his attention to the priest. “I will get you north. I will ensure that you find whatever it is that you’re after, but I’m not getting caught up in your belief that the dragons will somehow return. Even if they did, what would that change?”