The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 12

by Jonathan Strahan

  “Serpent skin and serpent flesh to ward serpent bite,” she hissed. “And if it fails, I shall look very silly, and we can laugh long in the Fields of Swords and Roses.”

  “In the fields of Swords and Roses,” intoned Mikah and Brandgar.

  But there would be no laughing there, at least not on this account, for wearing the flesh of a lizard Gudrun hopped up the stairs, clawed green hands held out for balance, through twenty paces of instant death, until she stood beside the doorway to the night, unharmed. She gave an exaggerated curtsey.

  “And can you do the same for us?” shouted Mikah.

  “The changing-gift is in the heart of the wizard,” she replied, “else I would have turned you all into toads some time ago and carried you in my pack, loosing you only for good behavior.”

  Mikah sighed and pulled on their gloves. They studied the waft and weft of the snow for some time, nodding and flexing their hips.

  “Mikah,” I said, kenning their intentions, “this seems a bit much even for one of your slipperiness.”

  “We’ve each come here with all the skills of lives long-lived,” they said. “This is the test of those lives and skills, my friend.”

  Mikah went up the steps, fully clothed, but still their face and neck and wrists were unprotected. I understand it must be hard to credit, but that is only because you never saw Mikah move, and any attempt to describe it with words must be a poor telling, even mine. Swaying and weaving, whirling at a speed that made them seem half-ghost, they simply dodged between the falling snowflakes as you or I might step between other people walking slowly along a road. In less time than it takes for me to speak of it they had ascended the deadly twenty paces and stood safe beside Gudrun. They stretched idly, in the manner of a cat pretending it has always been at rest, and that no mad leap or scramble has just taken place.

  “Well done!” said Brandgar. “This is embarrassing, Crale. Those two have raised the stakes, and I am not sure how to make a show to match theirs, let alone surpass it.”

  “My concerns are more prosaic,” I said. “I have no powers or skills I can think of to get myself out of this room.”

  “We would be poor friends to leave you here at the threshold,” said Brandgar. “And I fear it would disappoint our host. I have a notion to bear us both across; can you trust me, as I have trusted you, absolutely and without objection?”

  “You needn’t use my affections as a lever, Brandgar,” said I, though truthfully, in the face of the serpent-touched snow, he rather did. “Anyway, I am famous among my friends for having never in my life behaved with any particular wisdom.”

  “Be sure to make yourself small in my arms. Ho, Mikah!” Brandgar threw his wrapped spear up and over the snow, and Mikah caught it. Without taking any further measures to brace my resolve, Brandgar unclasped his cloak. Then he seized me, crushing me to his chest as if I were an errant child about to be borne away for punishment. Apprehending his intentions, I clung to him with my legs, tucked my head against his armored coat, and once again commended my spirit to whichever celestial power was on guard over the souls of fools that night. Brandgar spun his cloak over the pair of us like a tent, covering our arms and heads, blotting out my vision as well as his. Then, shouting some Ajja battle-blather that was lost on me, he charged blindly up the steps. My world became a shuddering darkness, and I vow that I could hear the hiss and sizzle of the venomous snow as it met the cloak, as though it were angry at not being able to reach us. Then we bowled over Gudrun and Mikah, and wound up tangled in a heap, cloak and spear and laughing adventurers, safe and entirely bereft of dignity at the top of the steps. Save for a lingering smell in our clothes and gear, the power of the snow seemed to promptly evaporate outside the grasp of the sorcerous flurries.

  We were all gloriously alive. The light of moon and stars drew us on.

  FINALLY, WHAT AWAITED US AT THE TOP OF THE DRAGON’S ANVIL

  ATOP THE MOUNTAIN lay a caldera, a flat-bottomed cauldron of rock wider than a longbow-shot, and the stars were such brilliant figures of fire overhead that we could have seen well by them had it been necessary. But it was not, for here was the treasure of the dragon Glimraug, and the dragon was clearly much taken with the sight.

  Arched pavilions of wood and stone ringed the caldera, each multiply-tiered and grand as any temple ever set by human hands. A thousand glass lanterns of the subtlest beauty had been hung from the beams and gables of these structures, shedding warm gold and silver light that scintillated on piles of riches too vast to comprehend, even as we stood there gaping at them. Here were copper coins in drifts twenty feet high and silver spilling like the waters of an undammed river; gold nuggets, gold bars, gold discs, gold dust in ivory-inset barrels. Here were the stolen coins of ten centuries, plunder from Sendaria, the Crescent Cities, Far Olan, and the Sunken Lands. Here were the cold dead faces of monarchs unknown to us, the mottos stamped in languages we couldn’t guess, a thousand currencies molded as circles, squares, octagons, and far less practical shapes. There were caskets beyond counting, rich varnished woodcrafts that were treasures in themselves, and each held overflowing piles of pearls, amethysts, citrines, emeralds, diamonds, and sapphires. To account it all in meanest summary would double the length of my telling. Here were gilded thrones and icon-tables, gleaming statues of all the gods from all the times and places the human race has set foot, crowns and chalices and toques and periapts and rings. Here were weapons crusted with gems or gleaming enchantments, here were bolts of silk and ceramic jars as tall as myself, full of gauds and baubles, drinking horns and precious mechanisms. All the mountaintop was awash in treasure, tides of it, hillocks of it the size of houses.

  There was nothing pithy to say. Even getting it down would become the work of years, I calculated. Years, and hundreds or thousands of people, and engineers and machinery, and ships—if we could indeed force the dragon to part with this grand achievement, Helfalkyn would have to double in size just to service the logistics of plunder. I would need galleons to carry a tenth part of my rightful share, and then vaults, and an army to guard the vaults. These riches loosed upon the world would shake it for generations. My great-great-great-great grandchildren would relieve themselves in solid gold chamber pots!

  “Gudrun,” said Brandgar. “Is all here as we see it? Is this a glamour?”

  There mere thought broke me from the hypnotic joy of my contemplation. Gudrun cast a set of carved bones on the ground. We all watched anxiously, but after consulting her signs only briefly she giggled like a giddy child. “No, lord. What’s gold is gold, as far as we can see. And what’s silver is silver, and what’s onyx is onyx, and thuswise.”

  “This is the greatest trap of all,” I said. “We shall all die of old age before we can carry it anywhere useful.”

  “We are missing only one thing,” said Brandgar. “And that is our host, who will doubtless prefer to see us die of other causes before we take any of it. But I am content to let it come when it will; to walk amidst such splendor is a gift. Let us stay on our guard, but avail ourselves of the courtesy.”

  And so we wandered Glimraug’s garden of imponderable wealth, running our hands over statues and gemstones and shields, caught up in our private entrancements. So often had I won through to a rumored treasure in some dusty tower or rank sewer or mountain cave, only to discover empty, rusting boxes and profitless junk. It was hard to credit that the most ridiculous legend of wealth in all the world had turned out to be the most accurate.

  Plumes of smoke and mist drifted from vents in the rock beyond the treasure pavilions, and my eyes were drawn to another such plume rising gently from a pile of silver. From there my attention was snared by a scattering of dark stones upon the surface of the metal coins. I approached, and saw that these were rubies, hundreds of them, ranging in color from that of fresh pumping blood to that of faded carnations. I have always been a particular admirer of red stones, and I shook a few into my hands, relishing the clink and glimmer of the facets.
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br />   The silver coins shifted, and from within them came a blue shape, a yard wide and as long as I was tall. So gently did it rise, so familiar did it seem that I stared at it for a heartbeat before I realized that it was a hand, a scaled hand, and the dark things glistening at the near ends of its digits were talons longer than my daggers. Delight transmuted to horror, and I was rooted with fear as the still-gentle hand closed on mine from beneath, trapping me with painless but inescapable pressure. The difference in scale? Imagine I had elected to shake hands with a cat, then refused to let go.

  “Tarkaster Crale,” rumbled a voice that was like a bolt of the finest velvet smoldering in a furnace. “The rubies are most appropriate for contemplation. Red for all the blood that lies beneath this treasure. The million mortals who died in vaults and towers and ships and armies so that we could take these proud things into our care.”

  The pile of silver shuddered, and then parted and slid to the ground in every direction, displaced by the rising of the creature that had lain inside it, marked only by steaming breath curling up from nostrils as wide as my head. The arms rose, each a Brandgar-weight of scaled strength. I gaped at the lithe body the color of dark sapphire, its back-ridges like the thorns of some malevolent flower, its impossibly delicate wings with membranes that glistened like a steel framework hung with nothing more than moonlight. Atop the sinuous neck was a head somehow vulpine and serpentine at once, with sharp flat ears that rang from their piercings, dozens of silver rings that would have encircled my neck. The dragon had a mane, a shock of blue-white strands that vibrated with the stiffness of crystal rather than the suppleness of hair or fur. The creature’s eyes were black as the sky, split only by slashes of pulsing silver, and I could not meet them; even catching a glance made my vision flash as though I had stared at the sun. I could not move as the dragon’s other hand reached out and closed around my waist, again with perfect care and unassailable strength. I was lifted like a doll.

  “I… I can put the stones back,” I burbled. “I’m sorry!”

  “Oh, that is not true,” said the dragon. Its breath smelled like burning copper. “And if it were, you would not be the sort of mortal to which we would speak. No, you are not sorry. You are terrified.”

  “Hail, Glimraug the Fair!” shouted Brandgar. “Hail, Sky Tyrant, Shipbreaker, and Night-Scathe!”

  “Hail, King-on-the-Waves, Son of Erika and Orthild, Landless Champion, Remover of Others’ Nuisances,” said Glimraug, setting me down and nudging me to run along as if I were a pet. I gladly retreated to stand with my companions, judging it prudent to toss the rubies back onto the dragon-tossed pile of silver first. “Hail, companions to the king! You have endured every courtesy provided for our visitors, and glimpsed what no mortal has for many years. Have you been dispatched here to avenge some Ajja prince? Did we break a tower or two in passing? Did we devour someone’s sheep?”

  “We have come for our own sakes,” said Brandgar. “And for yours, and for your treasure as a last resort. We have heard the Helfalkyn Wormsong.”

  I had no idea what Brandgar meant by any of that, but the dragon snorted and bared its teeth.

  “That is not the usual order in which our visitors lay their priorities,” it said. “But all who come here have heard the song. What is your meaning?”

  “There are songs, and there are songs beneath songs, are there not?” Brandgar removed the leather wrappings of his unused spear. Ash-hafted, the weapon had the lethal simplicity of a boar-spear, with a pyramidal striking tip forged of some dark steel with a faint mottle, like flowing water. “Others heard the song of gold, but we have heard the song of the gold-taker, the song of your plan, the song of your hope. We have brought ending and eyes.”

  “Have you?” whispered the dragon, and it was wondrous to see for an instant, just an instant, a break in its inhuman self-regard. It caught its breath, and the noise was like a bellows priming to set a furnace alight, which may have been closer to the truth than I preferred. “Are you in earnest, O king, O companions? Are we in sympathy? For if this is mere presumption, we will give you a death that will take five lifetimes to unravel in your flesh, and while you rot screaming in the darkness we will pile the corpses of Ajja children in a red mound higher than any tower. Your kinfolk will gray and dwindle knowing that their posterity has been ground into meat for the flies! This we swear by every day of every year of our age, and we have known ten thousand.”

  “Hear this. For long months we sought and strived,” said Brandgar, “in Merikos, where the dragon Elusiel fell, where the wizards were said to keep one last jar of the burning blood that had seeped from her wounds.”

  “We lost many companions,” added Gudrun. “The wizards lost everything, including the blood.”

  “For another year we dispensed with a fortune in Sulagar,” said Mikah, “engaging the greatest of the old masters there in the crafting of black-folded steel.”

  “Twenty spears they made for me,” resumed Brandgar. “Twenty I tested and found wanting. The twenty-first I quenched in the blood of Elusiel, and carried north to Helfalkyn, and have carried here to be used but once. Its makers called it Adresh, the All-Piercing, but I am the one who gave it purpose, and I have named it Glory-Kindler.”

  Glimraug threw back its head and roared. We all staggered, clutching our ears, even Brandgar. The sound rattled the very air in our lungs, and I did not merely imagine that the mountain shook beneath us, for I could see the lanterns bobbing and the treasure-piles shaking. Lightning flashed at the rim of the caldera, bolt after bolt, splitting the darkness and painting everything in flashes of golden-white, and the thunder that followed boomed like mangonel-stones shattering walls.

  “Perhaps it is you,” said the dragon, when the terrific noises of this display had faded. “Perhaps it is you! But know that we are not so base as to tip the scales. Achieve us! Hold nothing back, for nothing shall be held in turn.”

  “This is an excellent doom,” said Brandgar, “and we shall not take it lightly.”

  The dragon flared its wings, and for an instant their translucence hung like an aura in the night. Then with a fresh roar of exultation, Glimraug hurled itself into the air, raising a wind that lashed us with dust and shook lanterns from their perches. I felt something close to sea-sickness, for in the manner of my profession I had blithely presumed we would make some effort to trick, circumvent, weaken, or even negotiate with our foe rather than honorably baring our asses and inviting a kick.

  “Brandgar,” I yelled, “what in all the hells are we supposed to be doing here?”

  “Something beautiful. Your only task is to survive.” He gave me a powerful squeeze on the shoulder, then pushed me away. “Run, Crale! Keep your wits loose in the scabbard. Think only of living!”

  Then Glimraug crashed back down, and treasure fountained in a fifty-yard radius. Brandgar, Gudrun, and Mikah evaded the snapping jaws and the buffet of the wings, and now they commenced to fight with everything they had.

  Gudrun chanted and scattered glass vials from her collection of strange accoutrements, breaking them against the stone, loosing the powers and spirits bound therein. She held nothing back for any more rainy days—seething white mists rose at Glimraug’s feet, and in their miasmic tatters I saw the faces of hungry things eager to wreak harm. The dragon reared, raised high its arms, and uttered darkly hissing words in a language that made me want to loose my bowels. I ran for one of the treasure pavilions, hid behind a stout wooden pillar, and peered around the side to watch the battle unfold.

  Brandgar struck for Glimraug’s flank but the sapphire-scaled worm flicked its tail like a whip, knocking Brandgar and his vaunted new spear well away. Mikah fared better, dashing under the dragon’s forelimbs and heaving themselves into a wing-joint, and from there to the ridges of its back. The whorls of Gudrun’s spirit-mist became a column, bone-white, wailing as it surged against Glimraug’s face and body. It seemed as if the dragon were attempting to climb a leafless winter tree, and failin
g—but only for a moment.

  With a sound like a river rushing swollen in spring’s first melt, Glimraug opened wide its maw and sucked Gudrun’s ghost-substance into its throat as a man might draw deeply from a pipe. Then it reared again, and blasted the stuff high into the air, trailing flickers of blue and white fire. The spirit-mist rose like smoke and quickly faded from sight against the stars, whatever power it had contained either stolen or destroyed. Then the dragon lunged with fore-claws for Gudrun, but with a flash of silver she was safe by twenty yards, and hurling her fire-gimmicks without dismay. Orange fire erupted at Glimraug’s feet, to little effect.

  Now Gudrun sung further spell-songs, and hurled from a leather bag a thousand grasping strands of spun flax, which sought the dragon’s limbs and wove themselves into bindings. Glimraug snapped them in a trice, as you or I might break a single rotten thread, and the golden fibers floated to the ground. Then the dragon’s dignity broke, for Mikah had made their way up into its gleaming mane, and from there stabbed at one of its eyes. The blade met that terrible lens, I swear, but either luck wasn’t with the thief or the weapon was too commonplace to give more than a scratch. Still, neither you nor I would appreciate a scratch against an eye, and the dragon writhed, trying to fling Mikah off. They kept their perch, but only just, and could do little else but hold fast.

  Glimraug whirled and leapt away from Gudrun with the easy facility of a cat, once more scattering delicate objects far and wide with the shock of its landing. It struck at a pile of silver coins, jaws gaping, and took what must have been tons of the metal into its mouth as a greedy man might slurp his stew. Then it breathed deep hissing breaths through its nostrils, and its neck bulged with every passage of air. A glow lit the gaps of the scales in the dragon’s chest, faint red at first but swiftly brightening and shifting to blue, and then white. Mikah cried out and leapt from the dragon’s mane, trailing smoke. Their boots and gloves were on fire.