The Coming of Dragons: No. 1 (Darkest Age)

by A. J. Lake

  ‘The lock opened itself,’ Elspeth whispered, between chattering teeth. ‘I only touched the glove, and then it was on my hand. I never meant to –’

  Aagard silenced her with a gesture. ‘What you meant and what it meant,’ he murmured, ‘are worlds apart.’

  His words made no sense to Elspeth. ‘I can’t put it down!’ she cried. ‘It sticks to my hand, look! Can you not take it from me?’

  Aagard took a step backwards, spreading his hands in denial or helplessness.

  Elspeth pleaded with him, ‘But I can’t –’

  She heard the boy cry out, ‘Look! It’s changing!’

  Elspeth glanced down. The sword’s glow had begun to fade. As she watched, both sword and gauntlet became insubstantial, the blade thinning to the faintest edge in the air. A moment later there was only a shimmering haze around her hand and arm. But she could still feel the echo of its weight, and the lingering press of the hilt in her gloved hand.

  ‘It’s gone,’ said Edmund.

  ‘No,’ said Aagard. ‘It has returned. It will not leave till its work is done.’

  Elspeth stared at him. The pressure in her hand was easing. She flexed her fingers and rubbed at her palm, glad to feel skin and sinew, not jointed steel.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she demanded. ‘Will this happen again?’

  There was concern in Aagard’s face as he looked at her, but something else as well – a spark of excitement.

  ‘It cannot be chance,’ he murmured. His gaze flickered from her to Edmund, and he seemed to come to a decision. ‘Come sit with me, both of you. There are matters we must discuss.’

  ‘I have never seen the sword before,’ Aagard told them when they were seated by the fire, drinking soup from wooden bowls, ‘but it was in my care for eighteen years, when I served in the King’s Rede of Venta Bulgarum.’

  Edmund felt a stirring of curiosity. The red cloak made sense now.

  ‘The King’s Rede?’ he echoed. ‘You were a king’s counsellor?’

  ‘I was liegeman to Beotrich, King of Wessex.’ The old man’s face was sombre. ‘My lord the king still lives, but the Rede – his council of trusted advisors – has been disbanded.’ He sighed. ‘There were seven of us: thanes and scholars every one. One of our responsibilities was guarding the royal treasures, chief among them the crystal sword.

  ‘The chest that held the sword had been passed down through generations, sealed and protected by sorcery. No one in living memory has been able to open it.’ He glanced at Elspeth, but she avoided his eyes, staring down at her bowl of soup. She was using her hand normally, although from time to time Edmund saw her stroke the bowl as if seeking comfort from the rough wood beneath her fingertips.

  ‘But everyone knew the legends and the prophecy,’ Aagard continued. ‘The crystal sword was once used to rid the kingdom of a great evil. If the realm was ever in desperate need, it was said that the chest would open, the sword would reappear – and a new hero would rise to bear it.’

  Elspeth looked up sharply. ‘Then why did it come to me? I don’t want it!’

  ‘Maybe in part because you do not want it,’ Aagard replied softly. ‘No one who tried to open the chest has ever succeeded. I tried myself, just before the two of you woke up. I know as much of the runes that bound the lock as any man living. Yet I failed.’ He looked from Elspeth to Edmund.

  ‘The last person who wanted the crystal sword has ruined an entire kingdom with the strength of his twisted desire. His name is Orgrim, and I knew him when I was in Venta Bulgarum. He was the youngest of the King’s Rede, and yet the most valued by King Beotrich.’ Aagard’s face clouded. ‘Orgrim was not a Wessex man like the rest of us. He came to Venta in an exchange of hostages five years ago. Such were his talents, and so great his devotion to our king, that we all agreed to admit him to the Rede.

  ‘Orgrim soon began to show interest in the prophecies of the crystal sword. He asked the other Redesmen about it, but we knew little more than the stories themselves. So he began to read, hoping to find the knowledge he sought in voices even older than ours. He borrowed books of ancient lore from us and devoured them with tireless eyes. Only one book we held back. Our leader, Thrimgar, had a volume of necromancy, which he felt was too dangerous to show to anyone.’

  Elspeth looked blankly at Aagard.

  ‘A book of spells,’ Edmund whispered to her.

  ‘Like weather charms?’ Elspeth was still puzzled.

  ‘It was the spellbook of an old and powerful sorcerer,’ Aagard explained. ‘Such magics have the power to do great evil as well as good. Foremost among them was the power to summon dragons … One day this book went missing.’

  Now the old man’s face was dark; his voice low with remembered anger. ‘Thrimgar and I found Orgrim kneeling by the chest, the book of spells open beside him. He had filled the room with smoke, and there was blood on the lock of the chest. He said not a word when he saw us, but ran from the room. We summoned the council that day and agreed to ask King Beotrich to expel Orgrim from the Rede, for betrayal of his trust and the use of black magic. But when we came to the king, Orgrim had already dripped poison in his ear.’

  Aagard’s voice shook. ‘King Beotrich accused us of treason. He said that Orgrim had uncovered a plot among us to overthrow him, that the Rede was dissolved, and that we were under arrest. Orgrim held the king in his thrall so completely, he would not listen to anything we had to say. He ordered soldiers to lead us away, but they were good honest men and knew the accusation was false. One of them allowed Thrimgar and me to escape; I never heard what happened to the other four.’

  ‘And the chest?’ Elspeth prompted.

  ‘We dared not leave it there! We carried it with us when we fled, and swore to guard it till death. I wanted to bring it here, but Thrimgar insisted that the sword was sacred to Wessex and had to remain in the kingdom. When I left, two years ago, Thrimgar went into hiding with the chest at Wareham. But now, after all, he has sent it away. Which means some danger must have come that was beyond his powers to protect the sword. If Orgrim still has the book of spells, he can summon evil far beyond the compass of our good magic.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Edmund said. ‘What does Orgrim mean to do with the crystal sword, if not to use it to defend Wessex and his king?’

  ‘I do not know precisely,’ Aagard said. ‘And I will not try to guess. Some evils are best not spoken of before they appear.’

  ‘But,’ Edmund persisted, ‘why would Beotrich take this man’s word over yours? You had all been the king’s men from birth. You said Orgrim was an outsider, some foreign hostage?’

  Aagard stared into the fire. ‘It is one of life’s bitterest lessons,’ he sighed. ‘And one that you will both learn before all this is finished. Evil comes in many guises, and when it puts on charming ways and handsome looks and clear-eyed youthful wisdom, it is the most treacherous of all.’ He turned to them, a deep sadness in his eyes. ‘We all admired Orgrim. Every one of us. He was brave as well as wise beyond his years. But there was more than that. Orgrim had a skill that no other in the Rede possessed, and that made him the most valued advisor of all. When he told the king that he had uncovered a plot, he did not need to say that he had heard rumours, or found evidence. He said that he knew. That he had looked through our eyes and felt our treachery.’

  Edmund shivered. He wanted to hear no more of this story.

  Aagard’s gaze burned into him as he said, ‘Orgrim was a Ripente.’

  Edmund lay on the straw pallet, watching the firelight flicker on the roof of the cave. A few feet away, he could hear Elspeth restlessly curling and uncurling. He felt sorry for her, and curious too: the gods had marked out a cruel destiny for her, to have lost her father and now to suffer this new pain, as real as knife wounds from the way she had looked when the light shone from her hand. But how could a sword appear and then vanish? And if Aagard was right, why would this fabled weapon attach itself to an unskilled girl?

  Suddenly E
dmund’s own misery overwhelmed him. Why was he worrying about this girl he hardly knew, when his troubles were just as bad?

  He could not be a Ripente; it was unthinkable. Aagard’s story about Orgrim had made it clear what they were: a race of vipers, of traitors. To be a Ripente was to be without loyalty: who had told him that, Edmund wondered? Not his father. He could not remember either of his parents ever mentioning the subject to him. Loyalty and duty were the watchwords of their lives. How could their child be one of the faithless ones?

  Edmund shut his eyes tightly, longing for mindless sleep.

  He dozed unhappily, and found himself in a strange place. A dream but not a dream. He was standing on a pebbly slope beneath a wide, cloud-filled sky. There were tussocks of brittle sea holly. Behind was the sound of the surf, more gentle now as it rose and fell on the shingle where small boats had been hauled up. A gull shrieked above him, and ahead, up the slope, someone was chopping wood.

  Edmund followed the sound. Over the hill’s brow he saw the walls of a small settlement, a dozen thatched houses around a rough green with fish-drying huts and workshops. A dog barked and the smoke of cooking-fires drifted from the roof-holes. Someone was grinding grain, by the sound of it. It could be a fishing village in Edmund’s own kingdom.

  As he drew closer, an unaccountable fear gripped him. He found himself running in terror towards the first house, knowing something dreadful was about to happen. Before he reached it, a sheet of fire roared up the thatch. Smoke billowed round him in black choking gusts and the straw spat and crackled, showering him with sparks.

  Suddenly there were people everywhere, fleeing in mindless panic with their beasts – a pig, some scorched hens, women screaming, babes howling, angry man-shouts. Edmund stumbled over a bleeding child, then collided with a shrieking man, his hair alight. He saw the fire whip up a fishing net hung out to dry. Then all was lost in the smoke and Edmund fell to his knees on the open ground between the drying huts.

  There was nothing he could do to help these people. Three more homes were already blazing up like sacrificial pyres.

  Viking fiends! Edmund cursed. He cast round for a weapon, surprised that the yellow-haired hordes had reached this far west. There had been fewer attacks on his kingdom this winter, and he and his mother had thought the invaders had been distracted by raids to the far north-east.

  And then Edmund saw them.

  They were not straw-haired Danes. These men were mounted, two dozen riders clad not in mail, but in tunics and breeches of fine, dark cloth. On their heads, tight domed helmets gleamed like knife blades in the sun. Each one held a shield with a silver boss – a single silver sphere on a black field. The four at the front brandished long swords while the others carried torches. They rode purposefully, the leaders striking down any man, woman, child or dog in their way; behind them, the others set light to the thatch of every building they passed. When a man broke free of the burning village, the soldier at the head of the column yelled an order, and instantly a horseman wheeled his mount and turned in pursuit.

  Edmund cried out to warn the man, but in an instant he was following too. There was a familiar galloping motion beneath him; he was riding, and in the corner of his eye he caught a glint of metal: a raised sword. Surging through his horror came another feeling – a cold, ferocious pleasure.

  The fleeing man had tripped on a boulder and gone sprawling. Edmund bore down on the crouching figure, his sword-arm held high. He could do nothing to stop it. He was caught behind the eyes of the killer, swooping towards his prey.

  And although Edmund fought to break free as the sword drew back to strike, it was hopeless. He could not even close his eyes as the blade fell.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Edmund. Wake up!’

  The boy was thrashing and moaning in his sleep. He looked so defenceless, Elspeth thought: his arm so pale beneath her sun-burned hand! He was small too, considering her father had said that their shy passenger was about her age. Her heart twisted. Thoughts of her father had kept her awake most of the night, and her eyes felt bruised and raw. So did her right hand, which still twitched and throbbed. When she had finally dozed, she had woken almost at once, her hand clenched on an invisible hilt. Yet when she touched her palm there was nothing there, only a prickling feeling as if something was lying in wait beneath the skin.

  By the time a dim oval of sky showed at the cave mouth, she had only one thought.

  Medwel, Aagard had called the nearby settlement. The villagers might have seen the shipwreck, might have combed the shore already for whatever the sea had washed up. And they would take in any survivors, he had said.

  I don’t need to wake the old man, she decided. If I leave now, I can be there by sun-up, ask about the Spearwa, and then, at least, I’ll know.

  But she was nagged by an odd sense of responsibility towards the boy. Her father had promised to see him safely to Gaul. And so if there was no news at Medwel – Elspeth’s mind shied from the thought – she must take him to the nearest port and find him a boat to Gaul. That would be the right thing to do. Then she must look out for one of the many shipmasters who knew her, and work her passage back to Dubris.

  She shook the boy again.

  ‘It’s nearly morning,’ she whispered, glancing across the cave to where Aagard lay. ‘Come on – we need to find a port.’

  Edmund gave a great shudder then jerked upright, wild-eyed. ‘Murderers! Stop him … stop …’ His voice was a strangled croak.

  ‘Hush!’ Elspeth hissed. ‘Calm yourself. You’ve been dreaming.’

  Edmund’s eyes focused on hers and his breathing slowed. ‘Did I cry out?’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry. It was just a nightmare.’

  ‘About the storm?’ she said quietly.

  ‘No … I … I don’t remember now,’ he said.

  But Elspeth could see by the pinched look on his face that his dream was still playing itself out behind his eyes. She scrambled to her feet.

  ‘I’m going to Medwel to get news of my father. If there’s none there, I’ll head back east. I thought you might come with me. I can set you on your way to Gaul.’

  ‘No,’ Edmund said, and he spoke so sharply that Elspeth frowned: did he not trust her to finish her father’s business? She opened her mouth to object, but he said more gently, ‘We can’t go without speaking to Aagard. We must thank him, at least.’

  Elspeth flushed guiltily. In her rush to be gone, she had forgotten her manners. ‘I’ll leave him my scaling-knife,’ she said. ‘In thanks for the lodging. He knows I must find out what’s happened to the Spearwa!’

  ‘But you must come back here!’ Edmund pressed her. ‘How else will you find out about the sword?’

  ‘I don’t have a sword!’ she snapped. ‘It’s gone, and I want no more of it! Aagard can conjure it again for someone else.’

  ‘I fear he cannot do that,’ said a voice. Aagard stood above them, looking ghostly in the dawn light. He shook his head, his brow furrowed with concern. ‘Edmund is right, child. The sword has chosen you, and it will not change its mind. Nor do I have the power to take it from you. But if you stay here awhile, I can at least help you to discover its purpose, find out why it has returned – and why it has chosen you to bear it.’

  As soon as Aagard said this, Elspeth felt the tingling in her right hand, the press of the hilt in her palm. She made a fist to crush it, and glared at the man.

  ‘The sword needs to choose someone else!’ she cried. The old man looked so kindly at her that Elspeth’s eyes pricked with tears. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she mumbled. ‘You’ve been good to me, and I have little to repay you. I’ll give the sword back … for how can I use it? I’m a seafarer not a soldier.’ She wiped the tears away. ‘And I have to find my father. If he’s not in Medwel, I must return to Kent and tell the people in Dubris what has happened.’

  But Aagard was turning to Edmund. ‘And you?’ he prompted. ‘Are you set on going also? Your gift is no more welcome, but if you wish to stay
here, I will help you with it as much I can.’

  Elspeth frowned. What gift? What did the boy have? She saw Edmund stiffen, his pale face translucent with strain. When he spoke there was a hint of the old haughtiness, though his tone was polite.

  ‘Thank you, sir. I am most grateful to you. But I must leave too. I have family in Noviomagus. They will think I am dead when news of the shipwreck reaches them.’

  Aagard sighed. ‘I wish I could change your minds,’ he said gravely. ‘I fear you are going into more danger than you know. Your destinies will follow you both no matter where you go. But perhaps it is best for you to return to your homes first.’ He walked across the cave to two big storage jars. Elspeth saw him scoop a handful from each into skin bags. ‘We had better stock up for the journey,’ he muttered, half to himself. ‘I’ll go with you as far as I can, but from then, your gods and your God will have to watch over you.’

  *

  The sun was a bright line on the horizon as they descended the coastal path to Medwel. Aagard took the lead, neither age nor the rocky track slowing his steps. On their right hand the sea spread below them, calmer now and lapping at the sand like the tongue of a patient dog. Already the last night’s storm seemed beyond belief, as hard to recall as a distant nightmare.

  Aagard had given Edmund and Elspeth a bag each of dried fish and barley bread and their blankets from the night before. When Elspeth tried to give him her knife in payment, the old man had waved it away. Edmund had felt deeply ashamed because he didn’t even have a knife to offer. He gritted his teeth. Nothing was the same since he set sail on the Spearwa.

  I should have told Aagard about the dream. It seemed so real – the village, the fire, the soldiers, the callous slaughter, that man I killed – Edmund’s heart banged against his ribs as the sense of savage joy surged once more in his mind. Gods save him! It was the same feeling he’d had looking down on the foundering Spearwa. The same flood of cruel pleasure when he’d watched through the dragon’s eyes …