Dragon Wars

by Carina Wilder

  In August Lord Ramsey’s troops gathered on his family’s lands and Dunbar amassed an enormous army at his family’s own castle. They said that the air smelled strongly that month of the sea, because of rare crosswinds floating in from the north and east.

  That was it. That was all she had to go on: a salt water scent and the month and year.

  Lily could only hope that it would be enough.

  5

  Graeme

  Graeme was seated alone on a patch of grass, shaded by the lone tree which stood in a small, secluded courtyard. Normally the space served as a garden for the castle’s kitchen, attended only by servants seeking out fresh vegetables for the evening’s meal, but on this day the young Dragon Lord had made his way there, hoping to conceal himself from his father or any other reminders of his responsibilities as a leader of their species.

  Ridiculous to think that Conor and Lily were so very far away, so inaccessible. Graeme lacked access to whatever system of time travel his father had employed, and he had never managed Lily’s gift for leaping. Besides which, his mates could be anywhere by now; scattered about through time and space, pulled towards family and duty as he had been. They might even have been turned against him, as his father was trying to turn him against Conor.

  He pulled at a stray blade of crabgrass as he considered his father’s words, feeling more like a scolded child than a trained warlord. Even as a toddler he’d never encountered such an acute sense of having been beaten with a rolled-up newspaper, but somehow now his father’s words stung bitterly, as though they were a reproach for his daring to feel love. And loved.

  It was as though, in bonding with Lily and Conor in his own way, he had defied all the rules of dragon-kind and had mated with the enemy in a deliberate sort of sexual mutiny.

  Lily, of course, was father-approved; she was his chosen mate. But it seemed that the elder Lord Ramsey had hoped to find them another dragon, or perhaps a dire wolf, to be their third for the Rituals.

  And yet, why was Conor an enemy, aside from some genetic twist of fate? He was a good man—protective, kind, intelligent, caring. Conor had none of the brash impulsiveness of many of the shifters that Graeme had known during the course of his life. He was an excellent partner for Lily, and would no doubt make an excellent father.

  Father.

  It was that thought, above everything else, that prodded unrelentingly at Graeme’s chest. That he might never have the chance to raise children with the woman he’d grown so attached to, or with Conor. While their future had never been certain, the one thing that each of them had known was that they wanted to remain together for eternity, or at least for as many years as they managed to survive in this mad world. And now it seemed that Graeme was being ordered to take down the man who would have been the other male parent to his young.

  The choice before him was riddled with ugliness: If he defied his father he would lose his title, his very family, his land. Worse still, the battle would go on without him; the dragons would be out for nothing short of a pile of dead shifters scattered about a battleground, carrion for vultures. This was their notion of triumph, of victory.

  Perhaps if he led the dragon army himself, some lives could at least be spared. Maybe it didn’t have to be a bloodbath, even if the fight couldn’t be prevented altogether.

  “Look at me, going soft,” he said out loud. “As though I’ve lost my urge to kill. Military impotence.” He snickered at the thought. Perhaps if a man had enough love in his life, he became immune to violence.

  But it was the simple truth; he had no desire to take on an enemy he’d never met, let alone the one that he had met; not only that, but one he knew intimately. It seemed a pointless war now, one fought for the vanity of power-hungry fire breathers. Graeme knew from firsthand experience that by the modern era, the dragon would become an invisible entity. It was politicians who would rule the world alongside hidden warlords with powerful weapons.

  Dragons would become a myth; a shadow of the past. And as far as he was concerned, they should remain that way, alongside the Beorn and the dire wolves. A legend, a secret to be shared in the privacy of pubs under the cobblestones of Scotland over ale and laughter.

  “There you are.”

  Graeme winced when he heard the voice. Another piercing blow to his chest. He rose and turned to face the woman who had swaddled him as a baby, fed him and sung to him through his youth.

  “Hello, Mother,” he said quietly as he stood to accept her embrace. To the red-headed, rosy-cheeked woman who hadn’t seen her son in decades, this was a moment of happy reunion, but as she flung her arms around him the returned hug was half-hearted, filled with a sorrow that she could feel in his every muscle.

  “I’ve missed you so very much,” she offered as consolation.

  “And I you, of course,” said Graeme. “Forgive me for not seeming ecstatic to see you. There are various items weighing heavily on my mind, that seem to be pushing every other emotion out.”

  “I understand, Graeme. Come,” she said, taking his hand. “Sit with me a moment.”

  She seated herself casually as he had done, under the shade of the tree. When her son had been a young child she’d told him the occasional tale of knights and dragons in this place, which was perhaps the reason that he felt at home, safe and protected here. And already his mother’s very presence was stripping him of some of the worry that ate at him.

  “You came to ensure that I would follow the right path,” he said, his eyes locked on hers, suspicious that his father had sent her to reason with him.

  “Of course. A mother wants nothing for her child but for him to follow the right path,” she said, “but she must accept that it isn’t always the one that she would choose.”

  “Father wants me—no, demands—that I fight, train dragons, go to battle against the people who have become my family. I know that it’s my duty. But it pains me more than I can possibly express.”

  “Yes, well, your father understands loyalty and duty very well because it’s never been difficult for him to follow the rules of our kind. I am a dragon, as was your second father, the one who died when you were so young. There has never been a conflict in our world, in our happy home, since we’ve always followed the rules without incident. And so don’t be too hard on him when he sees the world in shades of black and white. This is the only world he knows.”

  “In my world, there are a multitude of colours,” said Graeme, thinking of Lily’s fiery coat, streaming blazes of flame which occasionally seared with a blinding heat, turning her almost white. And of Conor’s bi-coloured eyes, so bright and filled with life and humour.

  “Yes. Your world is quite a different one. And so you must lead as you see fit. But lead you should, Graeme.”

  “And if I don’t want to? What if I were simply to leave and refuse to fight?”

  His mother looked at him for a moment, silent, the corners of her lips quivering as though unsure of whether to show sadness or laughter. “I refuse to answer such a question. However long it’s been since last I saw you, whatever you’ve been up to, I know my son. He has never walked away from a fight and never will.”

  “I have walked away once,” Graeme said, recalling the dash in the Edinburgh alleyway which led them into the city’s Vaults.

  “And no doubt you did so to protect your mates.”

  “Yes,” he admitted.

  “For selfless reasons. For the greater good.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “No but, Graeme my lad. You are still that man. You know in your heart, I think, that the only way to protect your mates or anyone else now is to lead the dragons in battle.”

  “You think that I should slaughter the Beorn? That I should kill Conor? That I should forsake my bond?”

  His mother laid a hand on his. “I didn’t say that,” she said. “I would never ask such a thing, of you or anyone.”

  Graeme closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the tree, taking in the scen
ts around him, the fresh air, and as he breathed deeply a voice echoed in his mind. It was hers; the voice that had raised him from birth.

  Do what you know must be done, it said. Use the powers you’ve gained to finish this battle.

  “Mother?” He spoke the word aloud, his eyes opening wide as his head shot forward.

  “I didn’t say a thing.” She sat quietly, a docile smile on her face, her eyes still fixed on his.

  “No. I suppose you didn’t,” he replied. “I must have imagined it.”

  6

  Conor

  The castle’s interior revealed itself more and more impressively and ornately as the Roc shifter guided Conor through its hallways. It was far from the grey, grim building that he’d seen in the twenty-first century; much more splendid, as the huge subterranean chamber had proven with its rows of beautiful armour on proud display.

  The walls and ceilings in the multitude of large rooms must have taken decades, or even centuries, to complete, Conor thought, with stone masons perpetually at work creating art which would have surrounded the Dunbar clan of generations past with images of glorious victories and happy events such as wedding ceremonies, depictions of Rituals and powerful shifters of every sort.

  Well, almost every sort: dragons, of course, were largely absent, except in the occasional depiction of a powerful bear taking one down in a moment of absurdly triumphant violence.

  “Was this place torn down and rebuilt or something before my time?” Conor asked as they walked. “It looks…rather different from what I’ve seen.”

  “Something like that,” the other shifter said. “Part of your family’s truce after the war was an agreement that the castle would be redesigned more simply, stripped of all the embellishments that represent wealth and power. The castle’s outer structure remained more or less the same, but the interior was gutted, made more humble, to suit your enemy’s desires.”

  “They wanted it to look more like the walls of a prison, I suppose,” said Conor.

  “Yes, I suppose. The Beorn were powerful and noble when they came down from the North, you see, from prestige and wealth of their own. For a time your kind lived undisturbed, gathering lands and allies. It was when they came here that the dragons became concerned and the first of many conflicts arose.”

  “What happened?”

  “They—the dragons—rose up and attacked, of course. It’s what they do. Burned the Beorn houses in the North. That is one reason that we now live contained in buildings of stone, you know. They aren’t entirely dragon-proof, but they’re far better than wood.”

  “But we chose to move down here, to their territory,” said Conor. “Don’t you think the dragons felt invaded?”

  “They offered us no choice.” The other man’s voice was filled with bitterness. “They greedily stole the lands which your kind had possessed, forcing your kin to move farther and farther south. It is by no fault of your ancestors that the Beorn have ended up here. And even if your kind lived thousands of miles away, the dragons would find you and try to kill you. They will never be satisfied until any threat is wiped from the earth.”

  Something about the story didn’t entirely add up, but Conor took care not to speak too much in defence of his alleged enemy. A plan was beginning to form in his mind, and it relied on the absolute trust of his new allies, and this man most of all.

  “Tell me, what is your name?” he asked as they walked, evolving his tone into a friendlier one. “I can’t keep calling you ‘Roc’ in my mind. Surely there is a better moniker.”

  “Kormag,” said the man, smiling. He pronounced the name as one might say Cormack. “At your service,” he added, turning to Conor and bowing low.

  “Well, Kormag, I must admit that I don’t entirely know what to make of you. I hope that doesn’t offend you. And I do hope that we can become friends.”

  “It doesn’t offend me at all,” said the man as he began to walk once again. “You are currently at odds with your feelings. I understand that. But know this: you will never find a servant more devoted to our cause than I am. There is nothing that I want more than to rid this world of its tyrants.”

  Tyrants? thought Conor. No, Graeme was no tyrant. But, as Kormag had said, if Conor didn’t take on the role thrust upon him, someone else would. And that shifter might be a true tyrant; cruel and vengeful. The only way that his world stood a chance was if he found a way to turn the tides on this conflict, to protect his bond with his mates, and to ensure that the dragon and Beorn lines would thrive in the centuries to come.

  Kormag seemed genuine, if difficult to read. He wasn’t like the Beorn shifters that Conor had seen in the courtyard. They were soldiers; subordinates, followers. This man, it seemed, had his own agenda. He spoke of the nobility of all shifters who weren’t dragons, but something in him struck Conor as immovable in his own views, like an enormous rock that had protruded from the earth for centuries.

  He would never believe that a dragon could exhibit nobility or goodness; his hatred ran through his veins, cold as ice and unrelenting. And his attitudes would never change. Here was a man who’d been raised on the notion that dragons and their kin were the purest form of evil, and he would never grow to understand how a man such as Conor could love two of them, because he had no interest in such understanding. To him they were hateful creatures, worthy of nothing but being wiped off the face of the earth.

  Beyond that, however, his mind greeted Conor’s with little. Where Conor’s was occupied with thoughts of Lilliana and how he could possibly find his way to her in spite of the obstacles in his way, Kormag had no apparent attachment, other than to his cause.

  Conor’s own cause was blurry yet in his own mind. He wanted Lily; he wanted to find Graeme. He wanted all of this to end peacefully, and yet he couldn’t yet see the way to that conclusion. All he had to live on was hope—the hope that they would find their way to one another. But a peaceful, happy life would only come with the institution of peace between their species.

  And so he would conceal his intentions from Kormag and everyone else, which would be relatively easy, as he didn’t yet know them himself.

  The Roc shifter showed him to rooms with lavish tapestries, beautiful, ornate pieces of armour and weaponry on display, and paintings that must have been worth a fortune at any period in history.

  Everywhere they went, shifters milled about, some on guard duty, others working in various ways. No one seemed idle or relaxed; it was as though everyone were in a constant state of preparation for what was yet to come.

  They wandered up a curved marble staircase to the second floor, where Kormag showed Conor to a large bedroom at one end of a long hallway.

  “These are your quarters,” he said.

  A huge canopy bed stood at the center of the room, and the sole window looked out to the north, revealing beautiful, wild hills which rolled into the distance, unmarked by footprints or roads.

  “Won’t anyone be annoyed that I’m to sleep here? Surely this belongs to someone important…” began Conor, his fingers digging into the mattress as he examined it. He couldn’t help but think of Lily as he did so, wondering when he would see her and if she would make her way to this bed.

  “It was meant for you from the start, Lord Dunbar, and everyone knows it. You have always been meant for this room, this castle, and this war. It is, and has always been, your destiny.”

  7

  Graeme

  Graeme searched the deepest reaches of his mind in an attempt to sort out the dilemma which he now faced. If he refused his father’s demands, he would lose his parents. If he agreed to combat the Beorn, he would be taking up arms against Conor and his kind, and every other conceivable variety of shifter, alienating them and creating a permanent chasm between species.

  Dragons against the world.

  It was a war that his kind could and would win, he knew already. He’d seen it; he’d read about their victory. But at what cost would such a win come? Entire species struck dow
n, their lines ended. Dragons ransacking the land, killing humans as well as shifters.

  How could a man go on living, knowing that he’d been responsible for that outcome? How could he ever expect to receive the love of Lilliana or of Conor, who would feel nothing but utter betrayal; that was if the latter even survived to feel anything at all?

  He wandered the castle’s halls in endless silent steps, a mental war raging within.

  It seemed that his parents had chosen to leave him be, at least for a little. Whether it was out of kindness or strategy, he didn’t know. But he knew that they would expect a response, and soon.

  Thoughts of Lily circled his mind as he tried to pin down the image of her face, her beautiful body, her eyes filled with kindness and mischief. He missed her as one misses nourishment—in their short time together he’d learned to need her presence, and to allow himself the need, the craving for her, which he had once considered a weakness in males.

  But she was no weakness. She granted him strength, both physical and emotional. She was a drug, sustenance for a weary man.

  And, in his own way, so was Conor.

  Graeme missed him, too. They could always speak for hours about every conceivable topic, and the men had learned so much from one another. Conor had told him tales of the twentieth century’s history and Graeme in turn filled the other man in on the true history of Scotland and England: the one not covered in books. Of dragons and knights, of warriors and druids.

  But now Conor was nowhere to be seen, disappeared as though Graeme had awoken from a dream to discover that he’d never quite been real.

  “Where are you, brother?” he asked the air, his jaw clenching as he strode forward down a dark hallway.

  Closer than you might think.