The Dragon Lords: False Idols

by Jon Hollins

  “Come,” she said.

  And they came. She could feel them coming. She could feel them leaping off roofs, fence posts, perches beneath bridges. They left their food scraps and their young. They left their prey. They left everything. For her. For her command.

  She was with them as they swept over the crowded streets, over the unfamiliar thermals of the crowds. She was with them as they ignored the scents of food and danger. She was with them as foxes launched themselves out of hidey-holes and snatched them from the air. She was with them as their bones crunched. She was with them as they soared. She was with them as they raced toward her, toward her command.

  “Hold,” she told them as they drew close. They arced and wheeled. They flocked in the streets just beyond the bowl. More were still coming, racing to catch up. Vinter was a vast city. It had many birds. Pigeons, and hawks, ravens and crows, sparrows, starlings, kestrels, owls, even a few harpies and one lone phoenix. They came for her.

  She could hear the disturbance they were causing growing on the far side of the building she was crouching in. She could feel too the birds’ awareness of the people looking up. Some of them wanted to flee. But they could not. Her will held them.

  Was this how Quirk felt when she commanded fire? This heat flooding her? This power welling up? How did she ever let go?

  They were still coming, birds from beyond the outskirts of the city. Birds who had roosted in the fields and the farms beyond the city walls. But she was also still aware that her small, paltry body was squatting uncomfortably in a dingy apartment, and that it could hear the chanting rising. There was no more time.

  “Now,” she told the birds. And, “Obey.”

  They swept over the roofs and into the sky above the bowl like nightfall. The sound of their wings drowned out even the crowd. They saw the dragons and they wanted to flee but still she would not let them.

  “Obey.” She was the word, and the word was her will, and her will was the birds’ will, and they obeyed. They shit themselves in terror, but they obeyed.

  The crowd gasped. They thought this was part of it. But through the ears of the birds, Lette thought she heard a slight quaver in the chanting of the figures in robes. A slight tremor of uncertainty. And they did not know, she thought, those men and women out there. This was magic not performed in the living history of Avarra. Indeed, if it had ever been performed it was lost in the origins of the gods. How had the dragons even gotten a hold of such a thing?

  But now was not the time for such musings. Now demanded all of her attention. The birds were wheeling, struggling against her. There were eyes everywhere, and the birds wanted to flee from them. The eyes of the crowd stretched wide, staring up at them. And the eyes of the dragons, fiery and terrible, flashed in the skies. The birds’ hearts hammered in their chest. A few came to stuttering halts—the combined pressures of fear and her divinely reinforced will too much for them to bear—and dropped from the sky like macabre rain. Dragons clawed at others in irritation.

  “Higher,” Lette willed, and the birds wheeled up, past the barking, snapping jaws of the confused dragons. The crowd gasped.

  Lette closed her eyes tighter, screwing them up. She could feel sweat standing out on her skin, her breath coming ragged. The power thrumming through her was becoming hotter, more abrasive. She felt as if she were chafing her mind. She grit her teeth.

  The birds didn’t want to do what she told them to do. It was unnatural behavior. Their instincts screamed against it. And so she bore her will down upon them. She stamped their resistance out with her heel.

  And as the crowd gasped, slowly the whirling cloud of birds formed letters in the sky. Milling, squawking bodies fluttered back and forth caught in the prison of Lette’s will. And grunting as she did so, Lette forced the bodies of birds to form the message she and the others had agreed upon. And written in the sky, for all of the people gathered below to see, was a single, simple message.

  Written in the sky, in the bodies of living birds were the words, “What the fuck, people?”

  66

  Dangerous Subversives

  “We can’t beat them in a fair fight.”

  Five days ago, that was what Will had said to them all. And Lette, still waiting for him to kick all her passion aside with idiot words about Cois, had hung on everything he said.

  “So we are making it unfair,” said Balur.

  Will shushed him with a hand motion. He was obviously getting to that.

  “People have to lose faith in the dragons,” he said. “That’s how the dragons defeated the gods. They made people lose faith, then they stole their power, forced a fight, and took the heavens.” He was pacing in a circle. “Except it was easy for them. The gods had pissed on the people for millennia. Nobody truly wanted to worship the gods. We just didn’t have any choice. The dragons, whatever their other faults, gave people a choice.”

  He looked around the little copse of trees. They were gathered in a circle around the charred remains of last night’s fire. Barph was lying on his back feigning sleep.

  “We don’t have that luxury,” Will went on. “The dragons are new. People are excited. They saw the dragons kill the gods. They know deep in their bones that the dragons are powerful.”

  “Are your pep talks always this good?” asked Afrit.

  “Give him time,” Lette said.

  “It just means,” said Will, “that if we’re to break people’s faith in the dragons, we can’t do it by physically attacking them. And we can’t do it by pointing out what cruel arseholes they are. The gods tried the first of those two, and we’ve tried the second. It doesn’t work. So we’ve got to think of something different.”

  Afrit looked to Quirk. “Okay, I know I’m supposed to be patient, but how much stating the obvious do we have to get through before we move past this preamble?”

  Quirk patted Afrit’s knee indulgently.

  Will pointed to Balur. “Why don’t you respect me?” he said.

  Balur puffed out his cheeks. “There are being so many reasons. You are being so weak and fleshy. You are not aware of at least five different ways I could be killing you without even standing up. You cannot be lifting more than I would be expecting of small girl child. You are complaining almost incessantly. You are not being half as funny as you think you are.” He took a breath. “You—”

  “Okay.” Will cut him off. His smug grin had evaporated. His eyes rolled up, as if he were searching his eyebrows for inspiration. Then a sly look sidled onto his face.

  “Okay,” he said to Balur. “What do you do when I tell you to do something?”

  Balur shrugged. “Mostly?” he said. “I am laughing in your stupid face.”

  Will’s grin was very broad indeed. “Exactly,” he said. “Exactly that.”

  The crowd was not laughing. They were staring up at the birds in confusion. There was angry muttering in some quarters.

  Lette grit her teeth harder. A headache was mounting in her temples, like hot blades pressed into her mind. She forced the birds into the next message.

  “I mean, seriously?” the birds spelled out.

  The dragons were still circling below. But there was disorder in their ranks now. Some were flapping wider, arching their necks up. They were wondering what was going on. They didn’t know this magic either, Lette thought. They had thought perhaps this was part of it. But now they were catching on.

  She only had limited time.

  The next change of words brought a cry from her lips. The birds were fighting this. The brutal force of her will was killing some of them, overriding their need to keep their hearts beating, their lungs pumping. The letters were growing thinner. Though it would be nothing to when the dragons’ indignation and rage finally caught up with them.

  “You chose these fat fuckers,” spelled out the birds, “over us?”

  And there it was. The first big lie. The first big swipe at the dragons’ power base. The first suggestion that the true gods of Avarra were not
as dead as advertised.

  The dragons roared, screamed their rage.

  Lette released the birds with a gasp, collapsed backward into the cool, dark space of the abandoned apartment. It felt like Balur had punched her directly in the temple.

  The dragons broke ranks, billowed up into the sky, screaming great exhortations of flame. The birds fled, shrieking, scattering in all directions. A few fell flaming down into the crowd below, tiny parcels of cooked meat, but to most people, Lette knew, it would be as if the dragons were clawing impotently at so much smoke that eluded their grasp.

  67

  Flora and Fauna

  Will watched the crowds desperately. He was perched up in a temple tower a few blocks back from the dragons’ bowl of devastation. He wished he could be down there in the thick of things. He wished he could feel the pulse of the crowd’s thoughts. So much of this depended on nuances.

  He thought the people were all looking at each other. He thought they were confused.

  Ask questions, he prayed. Though who he was praying to, he no longer knew. Be skeptical. Please.

  It was his turn now. Lette had struck the first blow well, just as he had known she would. He had to be quick. There had to be no breaks.

  Still he hesitated. So much depended on this. If he screwed it up …

  Gods, he was screwing it up already by taking this long. He closed his eyes and took a breath.

  “Grow,” he said. And with everything he was, he committed to that thought.

  He could still hear the sounds of confusion down in the crowd. He could still hear the roaring and snapping of the dragons up in the sky. But order was slowly returning. The people had come here with certain expectations. They didn’t know what had happened, but perhaps it was just some strange aberration. Maybe? Perhaps. They could find a way to excuse this.

  Will pushed harder. The timing of this had to be so precise. He had to catch them just as they thought it was over. He was moving too slowly. “Grow, you fuckers,” his whole being yelled.

  Then there was a shout from the crowd. A group near a building directly opposite him. A group at the periphery of events. It was a shout that became a scream. Will risked opening his eyes.

  Dust was exploding out from the building behind them. Chunks of stone spattered down. A shutter crashed to the ground. The façade was lost behind a cloud of dust.

  And everyone was staring. Everyone was holding their breath. Even the dragons hesitated.

  The dust began to clear. People saw.

  Vines were racing across the surface of the building, darting shoots of green curling up around windows and doors, spreading in great sheets across the stonework. Leaves were slowly spelling out a message in letters thirty feet high.

  “These overgrown iguanas?” they said.

  The sound from the crowd was not quite a gasp. It was close, but the initial shock of outrage was ebbing away. The crowd was slowly realizing that something very strange was going on. And it was not what they had come here to see. But it was not as solemn and po-faced as what they had come here to see either.

  If he was lucky, thought Will, if he had gauged this just right, then people were realizing that they were here to see a show.

  “Bloom,” he said.

  In a field of green letters, white and pink flowers erupted. A thousand tiny blooms opening their petals as one. A golden mist of pollen sprayed out.

  “Even that bloated blubber monkey, Theerax?” the flowers spelled out.

  Will was going to twist the knife in Theerax’s side very specifically if he could.

  There was a roar from the heavens. Will smiled. From the dervish of dragons spiraling above the crowd, a single lithe shape peeled away. Flame trumpeted from its vast jaws. Take it personally, Will whispered to himself. Take offense.

  It suddenly became apparent to the people standing in the crowd below the wall, and to those on the roof above, that Theerax was about to collide with considerable force into the wall that was busy insulting him. They screamed, tried to thrash away from it. There was nowhere to go. The crowd was packed in too tight. Some of those perched on the roof tumbled out of sight as the crowd gathered there rippled and spasmed.

  With a bellow of rage Theerax smashed into the wall. The building disintegrated. Stone and bodies flew. People howled. Theerax screamed hatred, his heavy head snapping into the ruins, coming back out with a mouthful of brick and vines.

  “Grow,” said Will to the world.

  The crowd gasped almost as soon as he had finished the thought. They were catching on faster now. And there, spelled out in leaves on a wall directly opposite the first piece of offending graffiti, were written the words, “Missed me, you dullard.”

  The silence of the crowd was almost a palpable thing. The reality of the situation was beginning to sink in. Someone was truly mocking these dragons. This great and serious ceremony had become something else entirely. It was not an aberration, and it was not a mistake. This was a design. There was a hand guiding this.

  Theerax became aware of the crowd’s focus, spun around. His bulk was vast. People were scrambling and screaming to get away. That’s right, you bastard, thought Will, become the villain.

  Theerax roared, and launched himself at this new offense. The crowd screamed and scrambled away.

  Now, Will thought, it really starts.

  “Go,” he said to the world, to its plants. “Grow. Bloom. Blossom. Spread.” He willed the words into being.

  And the vines grew. Even as Theerax raced across the open bowl, his wingbeats sending bodies crashing to the ground, Will sent the vines racing off around the walls surrounding the bowl. They ripped up through brick and stone, clutching desperately to ancient mortar, spilling words and insults as they went.

  “Catch me if you can,” he spelled around the circle.

  Theerax bellowed, smashed into Will’s first insult, saw the new words, and went howling after them. He bathed the wall in fire, scorching the leaves to ash even as new ones grew ahead of them.

  “Looks like you could use the exercise,” Will forced the leaves to spell. He was sweating now. He was at the limits of his control. He wanted to close his eyes but he had to keep on top of what was happening, keep the timing right.

  Theerax howled, beat his wings faster.

  “A real god could do this,” Will managed. He was barely ahead of the dragon. His vision was starting to blur. He couldn’t afford to lose this. It had to be perfect.

  Theerax’s roar flattened bodies to the ground. They rolled clutching bleeding ears. The dragon ripped through the air like a shaft from a bow. Flame washed up and over the walls of the buildings. People were running, screaming, yelling, diving for cover.

  “Now,” Will said to the world. “Now. Grow you bastard.”

  Theerax wiped the last words from the walls, howled in bitter triumph.

  The tree exploded from the ground ten yards in front of him, lanced for the heavens. The dragon’s howl of victory became a screech of surprise. He tried desperately to pull up, straining with his neck, his vast wings fluttering.

  It was not enough. His massive head smashed into the branches that were still spreading out into the sky. He ripped halfway through them before his body bucked, and his massive scaled arse was flipped up into the air by his own colossal momentum. He described an ungainly, squirming circle, then landed on his massive back on the tree’s far side.

  Silence. Not even the yells of the people running for cover could be heard. Not the calls of the dragons above. Not even the billowing of the dust in the wake of the fall. The silence was perfect.

  And then Will heard it. And it was the greatest sound he had ever heard. Greater even than his own name, whispered on Lette’s exhaled breath as her body embraced his.

  It was the sound of an idiot braying out a single laugh.

  Whoever it was, he tried to stifle it almost as soon as it was out. But then it came again. A bright snort of merriment. Because Theerax—laid out on his ba
ck, legs clawing at the sky, wings tangled and twitching—looked like an absolute ass.

  For a moment that was it. Just that one man. Everyone else was too stunned and too horrified. And Will’s heart, up in his throat, fell down toward his toes, and it was looking to drop-kick his balls on the way down.

  And then someone else laughed. And another. Not many, and not loud, but a little. Chortles, and smothered snickers. And it was enough. It was a start.

  It was, Will knew, the beginning of the dragons’ end.

  68

  Insults and Injuries

  Balur blew out his breath slowly. Theerax was just lying there. Just lying there. The dragon was out cold. This could be being his moment …

  He knew what the plan was. He knew what he was supposed to do. “Taunt the dragons,” Will had said. “Make them look ridiculous.” But, Balur thought, what is looking more ridiculous than me spilling your guts upon the ground?

  Anyway, he was being pissed at Will. “Find high ground,” Will had said. “Hide somewhere out of sight,” Will had said. Not once had Will said, “And once you find a nice place, for example in the buildings surrounding the large amphitheater the dragons have been creating, then I shall be sending a dragon to smash it all and bathe it in fire.” If he had been saying that, then Balur was pretty sure he would be having a lot fewer burns than he had right now.

  He pressed a hand to his side. “Heal,” he said. And yes, he did know that he could heal his wounds now, but still …

  So fuck Will, and fuck his plan.

  Balur gripped his sword in one hand and the lip of the windowsill in another, preparing to fling himself down into the fray.

  And then he reconsidered.

  Gorrax landed in the center of the crowd. And when the golden dragon had been fighting Firkin—Barph, he supposed—outside of Vinter he truly hadn’t gotten a sense for the scale of the beast. Gorrax had to be at least as large as the red brute that Balur had killed in Kondorra. The sun glistened off his scales like liquid fire. His eyes blazed. Bodies twitched beneath him where people had failed to get out of the way. He turned and his great barbed tail obliterated lives.