Dragon Secrets

by Christopher Golden

  Hannuk grabbed him by the hair and hauled him backward. Timothy cried out in pain as the Wurm slammed him to the searing stone floor.

  “I told you,” the Wurm grunted, “my assignment was to keep you alive. And I mean to do so. If you are broken and bleeding when you are presented for your execution, Raptus will not mind.”

  Timothy froze. He felt the heat from the Wurm’s breath and pressed his eyes shut. Fear and sadness filled him, but he refused to let the monsters see it. When he had gotten control of himself again, he slid backward, ignoring the scorching heat of the floor on his palms, and sat up. Hannuk moved out of his way, and Timothy rose to his feet. The warriors who had come to take him were wary now, and enraged, but Timothy could see in their manner that they would not damage him. Raptus was the one to decide his fate.

  “The time has come,” Hannuk said, and then he gestured for the warriors to take him.

  The armor-clad Wurm each took one of his arms and shuffled him to the mouth of the cave, to the ledge overlooking the roiling lava below. Timothy glanced up at the golden sun, and then he felt the forward momentum, the second of free fall as they launched themselves out of the cave. There was a jarring tug as they spread their wings, and then they were flying upward with him.

  A roaring cheer echoed off the interior walls of the volcano’s throat. Gushing jets of fire blew out from nearly every cave, and then the Wurm showed themselves, crawling out across the rocky walls and, clinging by their talons, watching the spectacle of the boy whom their leader was about to slaughter. There was a low, humming sound, and it took Timothy several seconds to realize it was a sort of chuffing, grunting noise that came from the throats of all of the Wurm, a sound of their pleasure.

  Level with the rim, in the center of the space above the volcano’s fiery heart, a cluster of armored Wurm hovered like carrion birds, beating their wings and swaying in the updraft from the inferno below. Some of them had swords, others the spiked ball-and-chain combinations he had seen the day before. Several had no weapons at all. One that Timothy could see had glistening green-black energy spilling from her eyes and pooling around her fingers in midair. The female Wurm were just as hideous as the males and, if anything, they looked more dangerous. Their talons were longer, their snouts thinner, but with fangs that jutted downward over their lower jaws.

  At the center of this group, though slightly higher in the sky, a single Wurm beat his wings, hands crossed in front of him as though he were completely at peace. Twin jets of dancing fire swirled upward from his nostrils in long plumes with every breath he took. Though he was clad in the same blood-red armor as the other warriors, there were black stripes on his chest plate that looked like claw marks, and his head was covered almost entirely by a black helmet, horns jutting up through holes.

  Raptus, Timothy thought. It had to be him.

  The young man expected some kind of great speech. He thought that Raptus would address his people, the way the leader of the mages would have done. But the Wurm were not mages. Their customs were not the same. Raptus only waited patiently while the two warriors beat their wings and carried Timothy up toward the cluster of Draconae’s leaders.

  They brought him before Raptus. Two additional warriors flew up below him, each of them grabbing one of his legs so that four of the monsters held him, one by each of his limbs. They pulled his arms and legs out straight so that he was completely exposed, completely vulnerable. Timothy could barely breathe for the fear in him. His eyes burned with tears that demanded to be shed, but he denied them. He would not cry. They were the villains here, and he had done nothing wrong.

  Quickly he surveyed the walls of the volcano, searching the cave openings and the ledges. He thought he could see Ivar far below near the mouth of a cave. It was not difficult to identify him, as the Asura was the only other creature in the Wurm city who did not have wings. Ivar was in chains.

  From off to his left there came a roar of pain and misery. Timothy hung his head to the left, twisting around enough so that he could see Verlis. He was also in chains, hanging upside down from an outcropping in the wall, dangled above the boiling lava by his bonds. His wings had been pinned together with black spikes that pierced them.

  Timothy felt as though he might vomit.

  Then the four warriors who held him pinned in midair pulled on his arms and legs again, and pain wracked his body. He let out a shout and snapped his head around to glare at Raptus.

  The Wurm general only watched him with the same passive expression he had shown all along. Another twin spurt of liquid flames danced up from his nostrils with a long exhalation. The black metal helmet Raptus wore had slits for his eyes, but Timothy could see only darkness within, as though there were no eyes there at all, and it made his legs weak.

  He was going to die.

  “No,” he whispered.

  Raptus snickered. “You spoke? Your last thought, then?”

  His voice was low and rough, like stones grinding together. Timothy only stared at him. Raptus nodded and then he raised both hands. The Wurm had been cheering for his execution, but now they fell silent. Their leader, their general, lowered his left hand but kept the other raised. His talons shone in the light of this world’s golden sun. Timothy tried to picture his father’s face. Tried to comfort himself with the knowledge that he would soon see his father again. He only prayed that his spirit could travel between dimensions, that his ghost could join his father’s, regardless of what world he was on when he lost his life.

  Raptus swooped from the sky, darting downward.

  Timothy blinked, following his path. The general flew at blinding speed around the circumference of the volcano. He dove toward the bottom of the city, then circled on his way back up. Raptus was not cheered by his fellow Wurm. All of the citizens of Draconae’s city were silent, as though it were part of a ritual. And perhaps it was. They watched him circle, whirling up and up and up. He passed the place where the warriors held Timothy and continued upward as though blown by the updraft of the volcano. Finally, when he soared up above the rim, Raptus stopped, stretched out his wings, held out the talons of his right hand, and swooped down toward Timothy.

  At first Timothy flinched, turning his eyes away, knowing those talons were going to pierce his chest and tear out his heart.

  But then he realized he had to look. He would not turn away from his death.

  Raptus sliced the sky, dropping toward him.

  Timothy’s anger boiled over.

  “You have no right!” he screamed. “What have I done? Only a savage takes innocent lives!”

  The general’s wings spread, tipped up, and he stopped himself only inches from Timothy. The boy could feel the heat of his fiery breath, and it stank like a garbage pit. Now he could see the eyes beneath that black metal helmet, and he understood why he had not been able to before. They were even blacker than the metal. Blacker than the blackest heart. Dark with hatred.

  “Innocent?” Raptus growled, his wings beating slowly to keep himself aloft.

  He darted backward, stretched out his arms, and addressed the city around him, all the creatures who thrived in the volcano’s throat. “Innocent?” he screamed.

  The roar that shattered the silence of Draconae was deafening. Timothy gritted his teeth and refused to let himself be cowed by it. If he was going to die, it would not be in silence. It would not be in surrender.

  “If I am not innocent,” he called, “then before you execute me, at least tell me my crime.”

  At this, Raptus seemed almost to forget the city around him, to forget the Wurm that were his followers, his soldiers. He flew nearer to Timothy again. Hunched over in the sky, as though prepared to rip into the boy at any moment, smoke curling from his maw, the general glared furiously at him.

  “Your crime is that you are a mage. You are a traitor, like all of them before you.”

  Timothy shook his head. “Not all. Alhazred and his lackeys twisted the truth and manipulated the mages. He used you, and w
hen he couldn’t use you anymore, he used Parliament. What they did was wrong. Horrible. But you can’t blame an entire race for the actions of a few The Parliament of Mages represents all the mages of the world, or most of them. But that doesn’t mean the whole world knew what Alhazred was doing—how he planned to double-cross your people. The history of Terra isn’t written that way. I don’t think even the Parliament knew. Not most of them, anyway. You can’t blame all mages for the actions of one evil man and his followers.”

  The Wurm tilted his head to one side, and for several moments he only stared at Timothy. And then Raptus began to laugh, a terrible sound that spilled liquid fire out of his jaws, drizzling it down into the long throat of the volcano, where it would merge with the molten lava far below.

  “You are a liar. And even if you spoke the truth, it would not matter. The world was taken from us. We will take it back. And every mage shall bear the punishment for what we have suffered.”

  Timothy swallowed, his throat ragged and scorched from the heat. But he had one last gambit. “All right,” he said. “If that is what you have to do. Even so, you cannot punish me for the crimes of mages.”

  “Why not?” Raptus scoffed. “Because you are a boy? Your age means nothing.” He raised his talons and with a subtle change in the angle of his beating wings, moved closer.

  “No,” Timothy said. “Because I’m not a mage.”

  Raptus paused and stared at him.

  “I have no magic at all. None. I can’t cast spells. I can’t touch magic and it can’t touch me.”

  “You lie,” Raptus snarled.

  Timothy shook his head slowly, his arms and legs still held taut by the warriors who carried him aloft. “Test me. Attack me with magic. Cast a spell on me.”

  Baring his yellowed fangs, Raptus gestured toward the female Wurm Timothy had noticed before, the sorceress whose green-black magic was pouring out of her as fluidly as the fire spilled from the others. She nodded to her commander and raised a single finger. A tendril of sparking, snaking energy arced through the air toward him and struck his chest.

  Green-black light spread across his shirt for a moment and then was gone.

  The sorceress Wurm’s jagged brows knitted together, and now she brought both hands up. With her talons contorting, she seemed to sculpt the air into a sphere of crackling power. With a flick of her wrist she sent it surging toward him, growing. Timothy could feel the tug of its presence, as though it were creating its own well of gravity as it passed through the air.

  The destructive sphere evaporated just before it reached him. Timothy heard a grunt of relief from both of the warriors who held his arms. They had been in mortal peril a moment ago, and he had saved them from severe injury, possibly even from death.

  “You’re welcome,” he muttered.

  Raptus held up a hand, and the sorceress lowered her head and glided away on her wings to a perch upon the wall. The spell had drained her, apparently, and she needed to rest.

  Then the general stared at him, black eyes glaring from beneath his helmet.

  “It isn’t only that the magic cannot touch you. Your presence disrupts it.”

  “I am not a mage,” Timothy insisted.

  “Perhaps not. But you came here with Verlis, himself a traitor, and a filthy Asura. Mage or not, you have declared yourself an enemy of Draconae.”

  Timothy had no answer to that. He might have said he was an enemy only of the citizens of Draconae who wanted bloodshed and violence, and a friend to those who wanted peace. But that would not have kept him alive. Not for another moment. There was a time for valor and dignity and a time for using his head. Something was going on in Raptus’s mind. The general might still consider him an enemy, but Timothy’s words and his invulnerability to magic certainly had made Raptus hesitate.

  At length the general pointed at the warriors who held Timothy. “Bring him. Follow me.”

  Timothy felt a surge of relief begin to rise in him, but it receded an instant later as Raptus flew down to look him in the eye once more.

  “You live for now. I think I may be able to make use of you. And if I am mistaken, I will simply execute you tomorrow, instead of today. I was so looking forward to holding your little black heart in my hand.” Raptus nodded to himself, smoke pluming from his nostrils. “Perhaps tomorrow I will have the pleasure.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ivar held his breath as he watched Timothy being brought before Raptus for execution. If he had had more time he would have been able to help, but it was too late for that. There was not enough time, and Timothy was too far away. The Wurm held him high up in the air, almost to the rim of the volcano. His young friend would have to rely upon his own wiles and upon luck. Fortunately Timothy had a great deal of both, a fact proven when Raptus apparently abandoned plans to execute the boy. Ivar watched in fascination as the commander of this Wurm city led the way, flying up and over the rim, out of the volcano. Perhaps a dozen of his warriors followed, two of them carrying Timothy with them, his legs dangling beneath him.

  Time, Ivar thought with a satisfied nod. The boy had just bought them some time. But he did not know how much, and so he could not waste another moment.

  Since he had been taken captive by the Wurm, Ivar had been tortured and chained with heavy metal bonds. He had been forced to work, mining heatstone from a quarry that had been tunneled into the side of the volcano wall. Hours of this labor had passed, and he was tired and sore, but he barely noticed his own discomfort. His attention, throughout his brief time in slavery, had been spent observing. He had taken note of every aspect of the Wurm city that his eyes could see, including the comings and goings of their warrior class. Not all of the dragon-kin were warriors. There were families here. Teachers. Laborers. Artists. All of the Wurm had some innate magic, but those who had studied and honed their skills were the city’s sorcerers. And then there were warriors. All of the Wurm were dangerous, but not all of them were used to combat. Most would have learned in their lives to rely upon the warrior class to do their fighting for them.

  Ivar was pleased.

  Now that Timothy had been removed from the situation, it also made his own course of action much clearer. With the boy in a cave under guard, and Verlis hanging from the outcropping far above, bound and motionless, the Asura had had difficulty devising a course of action that would allow them all to emerge alive.

  But with Timothy gone, the course was clear.

  Ivar had been marched out to a wide ledge deep in the volcano to watch the spectacle of his friend’s execution. Now that Timothy’s life had been spared, the trio of Wurm that had alighted upon the ledge grumbled to one another in disappointment and took flight, soaring on the scorching air that vented upward from the churning, molten lava below. That left only a single Wurm, the one who was in charge of supervising the mining operation—the very same Wurm who had already tortured Ivar dozens of times.

  The heat from the volcano made it nearly impossible to breathe. Ivar ignored the discomfort, the pain and tightness in his chest, and turned back toward the tunnel where he had left his quarrying tools. The ledge was rough beneath his bare feet and had his skin not been far harder and thicker than a mage’s, the heat would have burned him horribly. His senses were attuned to everything around him, the eddying of the blistering breeze that wafted up from the volcano, the location of the dozens of Wurm that darted across the air above him, and—more importantly than anything else—the grim lumbering presence of the Wurm behind him. The creature snickered derisively as it noticed that he was returning to his work.

  “All the stories I’ve ever heard about the Asura talked of your tribe as fierce warriors, as proud and dangerous and clever. As always with legends, the reality seems a pale shade of the whispers.”

  Ivar paused and turned slowly to gaze at the ugly, monstrous visage of his captor. It amused him to think that the Asura were legends to this generation of Wurm. Though many of the older creatures would still remember the confli
ct with the Asura, it was so long ago that they had obviously allowed themselves to think the tribe’s reputation had been exaggerated. Clearly they did not consider Ivar a threat. He was in the bowels of the Wurm city, surrounded by sheer rock walls, and he had no wings. He had shackles on his arms, but there was a long chain between his wrists so that he could still work. Where could he go? One warrior. The last of his kind.

  He did not respond to his captor’s antagonism.

  “Get back to work,” the Wurm snarled, and raised the whip. It came whistling down toward his face.

  Ivar reached up and snatched the end of the whip out of the air. He leaped at the Wurm, ignoring the astonishment etched upon its features, and slipped the whip around its neck. With a snap of his wrists, Ivar wrapped his chains around the Wurm. In a single, swift move, he dislocated both of his thumbs and tugged his hands free of the shackles. Then he pulled the chain tighter, snapped the shackles together, and trapped the creature’s wings against its back. It would not last, but it would take several seconds at least for the Wurm to free its wings from the chains.

  Silently Ivar shoved the creature off the ledge. It tumbled end over end, struggling against the chains as it fell into the molten, churning lava below. Wurm were fire beasts. Their hides were thick and difficult to burn. They had furnaces in their bellies. But even that heat was nothing compared to the heart of the volcano. The Wurm would not resurface.