Dragon Secrets

by Christopher Golden

  “Come to me!” Verlis roared over the beating of his wings.

  Timothy and Ivar ran to the Wurm as the constable’s voice shrieked above the confusion.

  “Kill them! Kill them all!”

  The air was filled with blasts of deadly magic, and although the boy had nothing to fear from the bolts of hazardous energy, he worried for the safety of his friends. The Wurm beat his wings, creating gale force winds that helped to keep their attackers at bay.

  “Grab hold of me,” Verlis growled, and Timothy and Ivar did as they were told.

  The constable and his deputies were almost upon them, enchantments that were surely meant to murder crackling at the tips of their fingers.

  “Hold tight,” the dragon roared.

  Verlis tensed his powerful legs, then sprang from the floor, his wings lifting them into the air with incredible speed and taking them up through the ceiling with a thunderous crash. But the dragon did not stop there, continuing on his destructive path, breaking up through the next section of ceiling, and the next, and the next after that. Argus Cade had put wards in place to protect his house from fire and from attack, but there were no spells in place to prevent their escape. Timothy’s father had never imagined anything would have to crash out of his home.

  Timothy could hear the cries of dismay from the soldiers somewhere far below them, the sounds of angry voices growing smaller and more distant as Verlis propelled them through the roof of the old house, escaping into the open air.

  Clutching the dragon’s waist for dear life, Timothy opened his eyes to see that they soared far above August Hill, the fabulous city of Arcanum spreading out below to the emerald green ocean. If he hadn’t been so frightened he would have thought this to be one of the most breathtaking sights he had ever seen.

  Ivar wore a similar look of sheer wonder, the patterns on his flesh expanding and changing at a breakneck pace as Verlis continued to flap his leathery wings, taking them higher and higher still.

  “Where are we going?” Timothy yelled, hoping to be heard over the rushing air, fearful that the dragon would take them up farther into the frigid, near airless atmosphere.

  “Take your hands from me,” Verlis instructed.

  Timothy glanced down. “I don’t think so.”

  “You must in order for the spell to work,” said the Wurm. “Hold fast to Ivar.”

  Carefully Timothy did as Verlis asked, moving his grip from the Wurm. He started to slip, but Ivar grabbed hold of him with one hand, while with the other he clung tightly to the Wurm’s scaly torso.

  The Wurm extended his arms, his talons moving about precisely in the air above him. Timothy heard the start of a spell, a magical incantation spoken in the guttural tongue of the Wurm race, and watched in wonder as a black rip in the very fabric of the sky tore open above them. Then he knew where they were going.

  “I take you now to the land of my people,” he heard Verlis bellow. What had first appeared as a tear in the sky above their heads was now more a yawning black mouth, opening wide to swallow them whole.

  Draconae, Timothy thought, holding tightly to Ivar. We’re finally going to Draconae.

  Chapter Eleven

  Constable Grimshaw let loose a roar of frustration. His body shook with his anger, and it took him several seconds to settle down and remember that he was not alone. His deputies surrounded him, scattered around the foyer of the Cade estate, obviously at a total loss as to what to do with themselves now that the boy, the savage and the filthy Wurm had escaped. The mages who served Grimshaw fretted in awkward silence, looking everywhere but at their master, shifting from one foot to the other, apparently unable to decide what to do with their hands.

  “Go,” he said through gritted teeth. With one hand he waved them away. “Search the entire house. If you find wards that are too powerful for you to break, call for me. Look for any hint as to where the criminals might have gone. It’s likely they’ll try to go to the Wurm’s dimension, but we may be able to stop them before they do.”

  They responded instantly, disappearing into the depths of the home that had been built so long ago by Argus Cade. Grimshaw was confident they would rather be anywhere other than in his presence. Nor did he want them nearby. He tried to cultivate a calm, confident persona, but he felt ready to explode. It would be best if his subordinates did not witness any more of this. The boy had beaten him, for the moment, and the constable did not like being bested … but it was particularly infuriating when it happened in front of others.

  He was humiliated.

  It occurred to him that the deputy constables who were there at the house with him, who had witnessed his embarrassment and loss of control, might be better turned to other duties. Far from Arcanum and the Parliament. Far from anyone who might hear of the scene that had just unfolded. After all, Constable Grimshaw’s reputation was at stake.

  The more he thought about it, the more he thought perhaps even that was not enough. Perhaps it would be best if his deputies were to be eliminated in a more permanent fashion. Grimshaw was going to have to give the idea some serious consideration.

  While the deputies were searching through the house, the constable wandered about the foyer, his cloak swishing behind him and his boots clicking on the floor. He frowned deeply as he studied the alterations that the Cade boy had made to this part of his ancestral home. There were sconces on the walls that had been rigged to burn with hungry fire rather than magical ghostfire. Dangerous, but the boy was clearly unafraid of the voracious nature of such flames.

  Grimshaw sniffed, attempting to dismiss from his mind the thoughts that were rising there. He was beginning to think that he had underestimated Timothy Cade, that the boy was an adversary who could prove to be a very long-term thorn in his side. All along, the constable had assumed that the defeat and destruction of Nicodemus had been a fluke, that the boy had gotten lucky.

  Now he wasn’t so sure.

  He listened for a moment to the sounds of his deputies moving through the house, their footfalls echoing down from the upper floors, and he nodded in satisfaction. If there was anything to be found—

  A low hiss interrupted his thoughts. Grimshaw turned toward the familiar sound and saw the ripple in the air that signified the passage from one dimensional space to another. With a sneer he raised both hands, bruise-purple light flickering from his fingers as he prepared to execute Timothy Cade and his allies.

  But it was not the boy returning. He realized this the moment he saw a form beginning to coalesce on the third step of the grand staircase in the foyer. A moment later the transition was complete. There, upon that step, was a hugely fat mud toad, its yellow eyes shining sickly.

  Grimshaw’s upper lip curled as though he had just sipped curdled milk, and he reached up and tugged at one end of his mustache. He was loyal to his master, but he despised the toad. It stank like rotting vegetables, and though it had no voice of its own, there was something about its features that suggested it disdained him.

  Him!

  If it had not been his master’s familiar, Grimshaw would have cast a hex upon it that would have turned it inside out.

  Now the mud toad’s mouth opened, and a single, long croak escaped from its foul innards. And then another voice echoed from its throat: the voice of his master.

  “Argus Cade was a clever mage, Constable Grimshaw,” came the voice from inside the toad. “He was suspicious, and I believe that are many things he learned, or at least was curious about, before his death. His study is on the third floor. Go there and search every crevice, every nook. If he kept records or journals, they may be magically hidden, and they may contain secrets I would not like to have discovered.

  “Go. Search.”

  This was punctuated by a loud croak from the toad that sounded more like a belch, and then, with that hiss of dislocation, the air shimmered and the toad disappeared.

  “Damned toad,” Grimshaw muttered as he stormed up the stairs, his cloak flapping in his wake.

>   Moments later he found Argus Cade’s study. There was a ward at the entrance, but Constable Grimshaw had not achieved success in his field of expertise without becoming a master of shattering such wards. It was among his specialties, along with torture, interrogation, and immobilization.

  His arms ached as a result of the spell required to break into the deceased mage’s private sanctum, but it was an almost pleasant feeling. Grimshaw stood in the center of the room, with his arms crossed, surveying the shelves that were empty save for a few old, yellowed manuscripts, three tiny bottles of tincture, and a display case that appeared ancient enough to date back to the days of the Wizards of Old. Magical archaeology had been one of Argus Cade’s passions. There were indentations in the fabric inside the case that indicated there had been talismans or artifacts of some kind within, before the study had been cleared out.

  Grimshaw frowned. Maddox. The Order of Alhazred’s current Grandmaster—a situation that was about to change—had been Argus Cade’s primary apprentice and acolyte. Someone had cleaned out Cade’s study, packed away his belongings, and organized his manuscripts, and Grimshaw felt certain the job had fallen to Maddox. But if the professor had found anything suspicious, surely it would have come to light by now.

  Perhaps he had not looked hard enough.

  Another of Constable Grimshaw’s skills was in the magic of discovery.

  With a deep sigh he threw his head back and stretched his arms out. A low chant began in his chest and rose up into his throat. He huffed air out of his lungs, grunting the words to the chant that were painful to utter. An icy chill gripped him and fingers of cold ran up and down his spine and up the back of his neck. His hands felt frozen, as though they might shatter like icicles at any moment.

  The constable shuddered, and then he doubled over in pain. Gritting his teeth to avoid crying out, he held the spell inside him for a moment, and then he stood up straight. His wrists twisted with a flourish. He exhaled a plume of icy blue breath that crystallized in the air. It joined with a draft of cold air that swept off his hands and began to scour the study like the north wind itself, whipping through the room and across shelves, searching for a cache.

  On the far side of the study, above a high-backed chair and a lamp of ghostfire, there was a mirror whose silvery spell-glass shimmered, awaiting a mage whose reflection it could provide. But the mirror was more than that. As the frigid air and icy crystals of Grimshaw’s spell struck it, it froze instantly. The surface turned white and translucent, and then it simply shattered. Shards of ice showered down upon the ghostfire lamp and the high-backed chair, revealing a niche in the wall, and a set of thin books bound in leather.

  Grimshaw grinned and strode across the room to pluck one of the books from its hiding place. He opened it and found within that the writing was as crude as the manufacture of the books themselves. Argus Cade, an archmage, had written the words with his own hand rather than through magic, and the books themselves had been crafted by hand. Why the mage had gone to such lengths he could not understand … and then the constable realized why the old man had done such a thing.

  The boy. The boy could not have read the journals if they had been magical devices. If the words had been written with a spell, they would have disappeared the moment Timothy Cade touched them. Argus had written these journals for his son.

  A broad smile formed upon Constable Grimshaw’s face, and he grabbed the rest of the journals, slipping them into a magical pocket inside his cloak, where he could have hid the entire house if he’d had a mind to. If his master’s secrets had been in jeopardy from the existence of these journals, Grimshaw had just ensured that they would not be a problem in the future. His master would be pleased.

  But that was not the reason for Grimshaw’s smile. His mood was considerably improved by the knowledge that these were the personal communications of Argus Cade to his freakish offspring, and now the boy would never see them.

  Perhaps the day had not been a complete waste after all.

  In fact, even the boy’s escape was not of enormous concern. After all, Grimshaw still had Leander Maddox in custody, along with Timothy’s familiar and that ridiculous metal man.

  The boy would be back.

  And Constable Grimshaw would be waiting.

  Timothy’s only experience with traveling between dimensions had been through the door that separated the Island of Patience from his ancestral home. But his father had been a powerful mage and had carefully constructed that passageway—a passageway that he hoped Constable Grimshaw would not discover. It was a well-traveled path between worlds, and perhaps because of that, passing through it caused no discomfort whatsoever, only a momentary feeling of disorientation.

  Once, while he was growing up on Patience, Timothy had been climbing a Yaquis tree and fallen from its upper branches. The impact when he struck the ground had cracked several of his ribs and stolen the breath from his body. He had lain there, unable to breathe, trying to gasp for air, his eyes bulging out, and had been certain that he was about to die.

  Traveling through dimensions using the spell Verlis had cast to bring them to Draconae was much like that experience.

  They tore through the fabric of reality on Draconae, intruding into that world with enough force to create a loud noise, almost an explosion of air. Ivar fell to his knees, breathing deeply as though to avoid throwing up. Timothy wished he was that fortunate. For his part, he went down on his face, jittering as though he had been struck by lightning, and barely managed to roll over and stare up at his friends. His hands flailed as he gestured to them, trying to indicate to them that he could not breathe. His face felt warm. Blackness began to seep in around the corners of his eyes and his chest felt as though Verlis were sitting on it.

  He began to think the blackness would claim him, then Ivar knelt beside him. The Asura had recovered almost immediately, and now he lay one hand on Timothy’s chest and bent to stare into his eyes.

  “Calm,” he whispered.

  Timothy felt a peacefulness spreading through him. For a moment he was frightened, thinking that this was his body’s surrender to death. Then he found himself able to inhale, and he drew in a long, grateful breath of the air of Draconae.

  And he began to choke.

  It was several anxious moments before he had steadied his breathing and gotten the coughing and choking under control. The air was thick with the smell of smoke and burnt things. As he got up on his knees at last, Timothy frowned, wondering why Verlis had not been there to help him recover from the dimensional jump.

  Then, as he rose, Timothy saw the reason.

  They were on a steep mountainside. A tiny stream ran down from much higher up the mountain. In the distance were thickly forested areas, with dark-hued trees whose leaves were the color of drying blood. Built into the mountainside were shadowy openings, the mouths of caves, but Timothy could not tell if they were natural or if they had been dug into the stone and soil.

  All around them was a circle of devastation. The ground was charred black from fire. In some places embers still burned and smoke rose in swirling eddies. The dead husks of trees, now just withered fingers pointing accusations at the golden sky, dotted the blackened landscape.

  Verlis stood, wings folded tightly against his back, and stared up the ravaged mountainside. The Wurm shook his massive head from side to side, as though by simply denying it he could erase the horror that was laid out before them. Suddenly he let out a hitching gasp, and his wings spread. With three sharp beats of those broad wings he flew like a dagger through the air above the burnt ground and landed among a group of squat, twisted tree husks. Their charred branches jutted in all directions.

  Then he saw the dead trees for what they were. Timothy hissed air in through his teeth and hugged himself.

  Ivar moved to stand beside him, one gentle hand resting on the boy’s shoulder.

  “It’s terrible,” Timothy whispered.

  The Asura nodded grimly, and uttered one, simple wor
d. “Wurm.”

  Long ago Ivar’s tribe had been mortal enemies of the Wurm. Though they would eventually both become the victims of the cruelty and prejudice of mages, at that time, their hatred for each other had been even greater than the mages’ hatred of both of their tribes. In his childhood Ivar must have seen the results of an attack by the Wurm. But Timothy never had. He wished he could make the memory leave his mind.

  For the small cluster of twisted, gnarled, blackened trees that Verlis had landed in were not trees at all. They were the charred bodies of members of his tribe, Wurm who were probably his friends, perhaps even his kin. The vestiges of their wings and their bones jutted upward like those dead trees.

  There was a civil war here on Draconae. But from the look of it, Timothy was wondering if it wasn’t already over.

  Slowly he walked across that ravaged landscape and joined Verlis. The Wurm furled his wings against his back again. When he glanced up from the corpses, there were tears of liquid fire sliding down his leathery face. Plumes of flame shot from his nostrils.

  “One of them is Gavlor, the brother of my father. The others… the others are burned so badly I cannot identify them. My family was encamped here. My mate. Our children. All of my compatriots. All of those who wished to live in peace, to avoid the hateful, spiteful philosophies of Raptus and those like him. That was all we wanted. Peace.”

  Timothy nodded, but found himself unable to speak any words of comfort. In his heart he felt the weight of terrible guilt. If Verlis had not helped him to defeat Nicodemus, he would never have been captured. If they had been able to come back to Draconae sooner, this horror might have been avoided.

  “Friend Verlis,” Ivar began softly, “I grieve for your kin. But there are few dead here. The others of your clan might yet live. There may still be a chance that they could be saved.”