by Clare Smith
The last thing he wanted to do was hurt them or even leave the life he now lived, so he hesitated, taking a step back and shivering with something more than the cold. He’d never wanted to come to this place, but in the last few weeks he’d found a new purpose, and had started to settle down and feel as if he belonged here. However, the time had come to decide his future, only he wasn’t certain if he wanted to leave it all behind and become something else which was so totally alien to everything he knew.
He would have turned away then, but the memory of flying through the sky with the wind under his wings and the absolute freedom rooted him to the spot. How could he give up such a wondrous thing and spend the rest of his life with his feet tied to the ground knowing what it was to fly? The longing to be free would surely send him mad, and then they would cage him and smother his will as they had already tried to do. There was no option really, he had to answer the call, so he stepped through the gates and closed them quietly behind him.
The driveway was dark but he didn’t mind that. He’d walked its length enough times to know that as long as gravel crunched beneath his feet he would eventually arrive at the house. Before he reached it he could see its looming shadow, and almost jumped when a light came on illuminating the steps and the double doors.
For a moment he thought that the police must have arrived there ahead of him and was about to run in the opposite direction, but then he remembered that Joe had been concerned about security and had set up an outside light which was movement sensitive. He’d never seen it work before as it had never been dark enough, but now he was grateful for its light. It guided him up the steps and lit up the door lock so he could get inside.
Next to the door was the switch for the mobile lights, but he didn’t need them as the two long windows on either side of the door let in sufficient light for him to see where he was going. Quickly he crossed the hallway to the far room which had been designated as the armoury. It was a shambles with the broken racks standing at crazy angles and the swords, which he’d so carefully sorted, labelled and displayed scattered across the floor.
He’d almost forgotten about the fight which had taken place in there, and was surprised that it had caused so much damage. Carelessly he broke through the yellow and black tape that he assumed had been placed there by the police to stop anyone entering and went inside. He knew the layout of the room well so it was easy to follow the course of the battle and to stop where it had finished.
The sword was there where it had dropped from his hand, and he picked it up almost expecting to feel different when he held it, but it felt as it had always done; comfortable and vaguely familiar. There was something else which he’d come for, so he turned in a circle until he found the javelin still embedded in the wooden stand where it had stuck after he’d thrown it at the intruder. He could clearly remember the way holding it had made him feel, and was reluctant to touch it, but when he gripped the end and pulled it free, it was quiescent in his hand.
He started back towards the office and didn’t even hesitate when the light from outside, which was on a timer, went off leaving him in darkness. The light switch for the office was just inside the door and when he turned it on the sudden brightness dazzled him. It was too much for his needs so he placed the two weapons on his desk, turned on his computer, angling the screen away from him, and flicked off the main light.
There was still a bit too much light, but he knew that by the time he had everything he needed and was settled, the screen would go into sleep mode and there would be darkness. Now there was only one thing left to do, so he sat at the desk, took the key from his pocket and unlocked the draw. If he wanted to change his mind and stay, this was the time to act because, after this, he would be committed and his life would never be the same again.
He thought about what that meant for a moment and those he would leave behind, but knew that his mind was already made up and there was no going back. Slowly he unlocked the draw and drew out the circlet. He knew what it was now and who had worn it, and as he held the victory wreath to him, he could almost hear the roars of adulation as it was placed on his head.
Closing his eyes he could see the consort and the dragon he’d become and as the light from the computer flickered out he smiled and waited for the dragon spirit to take him away.
*
Poddorrin pushed the mound of parchments to one side and gave a sigh of weariness. It was all very well discovering the rolls of parchment, but before they could be of any use they had to be translated and read. Even then there was no guarantee that what they contained would be of any use. In fact, so far, not one parchment had revealed anything apart from more lists of dragon names and their comings and goings.
Even the very first one he’d chosen, which he’d been certain was something special, had turned out to be just a description of dragon lineage. The information bored him so much that his mind kept wandering and he’d started to imagine things. Only yesterday he’d been here working on the scrolls when someone had tapped him on his shoulder and had called his name. Of course when he looked up there was no one there, but the shock had been enough to make his heart miss a beat.
He’d returned to studying the scrolls, but the sheer boredom had sent him to sleep where he had the weirdest dream. When he woke again he had been stiff and sore and couldn’t bring himself to read another word, so he’d gone for a walk instead. He wondered if the dragon watchers had ever felt the same when they wrote all this down, although he doubted it. They were a different breed of men with far more patience than he had, and apart from that, they had live dragons to watch which must have been reward in itself.
All he had was a pile of old parchments and a collection of objects which he’d found in the cave. They had been on the shelf or in hidden alcoves which the dragon tooth key had revealed to him and must have meant something to the Dragon watchers of the past. To him though they looked like a pile of junk, although he knew they weren’t, as he’d experimented with one or two pieces.
His experiments had resulted in him catching fleeting glimpses of those he sought, although he’d never actually been able to call another dragon spirit to him. The only time he’d had any level of success was when he’d used the Moonstone Blade which Rabayan had stolen. Then he’d clearly seen the young warrior and had almost been able to reach out and touch him, but unfortunately the blade hadn’t worked so well with the others.
He was certain that what he needed was something the two strange men had used to fight and had drawn blood, like the Moonstone Blade had, but he’d tried every weapon amongst the objects he’d found and still nothing had produced the result he was hoping for. It was almost as if they only had a small part of the knife’s strength and somehow needed to be boosted. That thought gave him an idea. He’d tried using the Moonstone Blade and another weapon at the same time, which hadn’t worked, but what if he used two weapons together?
There was nothing in the scrolls to suggest that it would work, but it was worth a try, and doing something practical had to be more interesting than reading another list of dragon flights. Excited by the prospect of doing something different, he left the scrolls where they were and hurried to the long shelf where he’d stacked the Dragon Watcher’s collection of strange objects. He’d already studied each of the odd assortment of items and still didn’t know what most of them were.
The weapons amongst them were obvious and he’d put those to one side. That still left the array of different coloured stones, carvings in wood, bone and metal and bits of broken pottery. Any one of them could have been significant, but on the other hand they could be there just because someone liked the shape of them. For a moment he thought of taking a few of them with him and trying them out, but then decided that would distract him from his main purpose.
He had problems enough finding the right combination of weapons let alone adding another random element to his experiment. His difficulties were further compounded by not knowing how many weapons he would need
to hold to call a dragon spirit to him, or even if his idea would work at all. For a moment his resolve wavered, but then he decided if he did this logically, he must eventually come up with either the right combination of weapons or conclude that his idea had been a waste of time.
Carefully he gathered the weapons together making sure that the sharp edges were pointing away from him and carried them to the clear area at the front of the cave. When he had them in some sort of order he sat with his back to the cave wall and picked up the rusting knife and the cleaver which he held in each hand, whilst thinking about the man in the dark palace and then the assassin. Nothing happened, so after a minute he tried again with the knife and the sword and then the axe head, and then each of the other weapons in turn.
When there was no response he started all over again using the cleaver as the anchor and rotating the other weapons around it. By the time he’d finished with the axe head he was getting despondent, and came to the conclusion that if the sword didn’t work he was going to give up. He held the sword in one hand and tried each of the shorter blades but with no success. Holding the heavy sword was making his arm ache, so he placed it across his knees before moving onto the longer, more cumbersome weapons.
Next he tried the long hatchet with the broken handle and tried to imagine the assassin moving swiftly through the dark streets of his strange city. He waited for a few moments and then sighed in disappointment as nothing happened. Becoming resigned to the likelihood that his idea had been a daft one, he picked up the short throwing spear and thought about the other man.
The image came to him in an instant. He could see him now, stalking his prey, but not in the dark palace where he’d seen him before. Instead he was running across the bloodstained sands of an arena with the crowds screaming his name.
Poddorrin’s eyes snapped open in shock, and beside him the image of a young man in strange clothes began to form and solidify. He gave a gasp of surprise as the figure waivered slightly and then he stood, letting the sword slip from his knees. The clattering of the sword hitting the ground made him look down, and when he looked up again he almost fell over in surprise.
There were two of them now; the one that he’d called and another who looked like something from a nightmare, with a hideously scarred face and wearing a sinister, dark robe. In front of him the figure distorted as if he was seeing it through a heat haze, and he could smell the sulphur and brimstone on the man’s breath. The man took a step forward and reached out to him with blackened, claw-like hands, and Poddorrin knew that if the figure touched him he would burn like a torch.
Without hesitating he threw the spear so that it pierced the man’s chest making him disappear in a flash of bright light and flames. Poddorrin turned away from the searing heat using his arms to protect his head until the flames had died away. When he looked back again he expected the one he had called to have materialised but he had gone too.
*
Kallawassian woke with a start, his heart pounding so fast that he could feel it banging against his ribs, and the cold sweat which ran down his body making him shiver uncontrollably. He rolled out of bed and tried to stand, but his legs were so weak they wouldn’t hold him upright and he staggered against the wall. Breathing heavily he tried to take a step forward but it was no good, his knees were like jelly, so all he could do was to slump back onto the edge of his bed again with his head in his hands.
For several minutes he sat there until he brought his ragged breathing under control and his heart had returned to its normal rhythm. Once the feeling of vertigo had subsided sufficiently for him to be able to focus on the far wall, he stood on shaking legs and took a tentative step forwards. Despite their weakness his legs didn’t buckle beneath him, so he staggered across to the table where the wine jug stood, swallowed down a large goblet full of the blood red liquid and collapsed into the chair.
The cause of his distress had been a dream, or more precisely a nightmare, although even that title didn’t do it justice. It was worse than that; it had been real because, whilst he’d slept, someone had tried to rip the dragon spirit from within him. What’s more they had almost succeeded and if it hadn’t been for the exceptional strength of his self-will, his spirit, which made him what he was, would have escaped.
He had it back inside of him now, bound tightly to him and under his control, but he could still feel it fighting to be free. It wasn’t the first time that the dragon spirit had tried to escape him, in fact over the last few days he’d felt it stir more than once, but never before had it left him so completely. He shuddered at the memory of being torn apart, scoured out and left as an empty shell, still alive but not complete.
It seemed strange to him that this should happen now that he’d left the Dragon Tower behind. There the dragon spirit had been restless, although it should have felt at home in the place where the great dragons had once come to pay homage to their queen. He’d put that down to spending too much time standing at the archways at the top of the tower trying to imagine what it would be like to fly like a dragon, and that had made the spirit inside of him long to be free.
Clearly he had it all wrong, and it wasn’t the influence of the Dragon Tower which was causing the disturbance, but something else that he hadn’t taken into account and was of vital importance. With shaking hands he lit the small lamp on the table and looked around searching for something which would explain what had happened. The room he’d taken at the inn, which was the best they had, was untidy and cluttered and not at all conducive for working things through in a logical manner.
If Plinkassian had been there with him he would have put it into order in no time, but the boy had left him to fend for himself. For a moment he felt a small stab of guilt that he’d been the cause of the boy leaving, but it was only a fleeting thought as it had nothing to do with dragons. Now if he’d brought Snap with him, his dragon might have told him what was going on, but he’d left him behind guarding the Devil Fire, so that just left Peck.
The bird, which was perched on the back of a chair with its feathers ruffled, opened its beak to make a comment and then decided against it and snapped it shut again before turning its back on him. Clearly it had been disturbed by the dragon spirit’s unrest but wasn’t prepared to tell him the reason why it had tried to escape. He sighed in resignation, knowing he wasn’t going to find answers looking around this untidy and unfamiliar room.
What he sought had to be part of his dream, and whilst he was reluctant to live the nightmare again, he really had no option. Fortunately his years of training and study had given him an unsurpassable memory and the superior skills needed to analyse events in detail. With a deep breath to steady his nerves he closed his eyes and went back to the beginning of the dream.
He’d been in his workroom berating a young and sulky looking Furno for his stupidity when, by some curious twist of his dream, he’d been transported to the side of a mountain. It was a barren and unpleasant place full of rocks and boulders, where the wind moaned and made him shiver. He’d never been anywhere like it in his life, but someone had called him there and he had gone willingly enough. The voice had still called to him, so he’d followed it until he’d come to a wall of stone.
The stone should have prevented him from moving forward but in an instant he was on the other side of the wall and standing in a cave where a man sat holding a sword and a spear. Beside him was another figure who he couldn’t make out clearly because his image wavered as if he wasn’t quite there. He reached out for the one who had called him there, but his sudden appearance must have startled the man holding the weapons, because he shot to his feet and threw the spear with all his force.
In his dream he’d tried to move out of the way but the spear had ploughed through his chest, piercing his heart, and the dragon spirit within him had broken free. He remembered the pain and screaming his defiance and refusing to release the dragon’s chains. Then he’d arrived back in his bed, sweating and shaking but whole again. He was sweating
and shaking again now, as if he’d only just woken from his nightmare, but at least now he knew what he had to do. Searching for Plinkassian would have to wait, because if the dragon spirit was going to be his forever, then he had to find the man in the cave and kill him.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Catalyst
Chang’an and the Fire Mountains
The wall around the compound was much higher than it had been when he’d first climbed over it. He’d been just a boy then, but he’d shown them how easy it was to get inside so work had started the following day to make it higher and stronger and had continued ever since. That wasn’t the only challenge he faced. Inside the wall the compound would be heavily guarded, as his brothers waited in case the Ban Long attacked to take back the spirit which had been stolen from them.
As well as that he guessed that Cheum, who now wore the Master’s robes, would take unprecedented precautions. He’d always been a cautious man and would almost certainly break with tradition and have guards posted inside his pagoda against the time when the Ban Long became desperate and sought their revenge. It was definitely going to be more difficult to get into the Master’s pagoda than it had been when he was a boy, but he had one thing on his side; they thought he’d left Chang’an and wouldn’t be expecting him.
From the shadows of the building opposite the east wall he stood and stretched, easing the tension from his muscles. He’d been waiting and watching the compound for the last hour, and whilst there was a slight stiffness in his calf where the Ban Long’s knife had pierced the muscle, the rest of him felt supple and relaxed. That was thanks to the monks who had bound the wounds which had reopened during his confinement and escape from the enemy’s assassins, so they hardly bothered him now.
