Veil of the Dragon (Prophecy of the Evarun)

by Tom Barczak

  Veil

  of the

  Dragon

  Book I

  of the

  Prophecy of the Evarun

  Tom Barczak

  Gossamer Press

  114 Harvard Dr. Norman, OK 73072

  Veil of the Dragon

  Book I of the Prophecy of the Evarun

  Copyright © 2012 by Tom Barczak

  Gossamer Press

  Kindle edition,

  May, 2012

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this e-book or portions thereof in any form. Please purchase only authorized editions. Uploading and distribution by any means without permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

  Book Design, Cover Design, Cover Art, Interior Illustrations and Maps by Tom Barczak.

  Published in the United States of America

  Related works by Tom Barczak:

  Awakening Evarun

  (Part I of VI)

  Kindle

  Awakening Evarun

  (Part II of VI)

  Kindle

  Awakening Evarun

  (Part III of VI)

  Kindle

  Awakening Evarun

  (Part IV of VI)

  Kindle

  Awakening Evarun

  (Part V of VI)

  Kindle

  Awakening Evarun

  (Part VI of VI)

  Kindle

  For Olivia, Nicholas, Maxwell and Julian.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my Muse, for never letting me down.

  Thank you to Cas Peace and Pat Smith for your thorough and selfless editorial help, through both the beginning and the end.

  Thank you to Robert Ferrier for noticing the Hero in the Journey.

  Thank you to the Norman Galaxy of Writers.

  Thank you to OWFI.

  Thank you for every single one who’s read Awakening Evarun.

  Thanks to Steve, Vannoy, Brenda and countless others for a gift I can never explain or repay.

  Thanks to Andrew for your constant support.

  Thank you to Bill Bernhardt for taking the time to teach.

  Thanks to J.S. Chancellor, Doug Brown, Walter Rhein, Jenny Hilborne and David Alderman for being willing to share what you’ve learned.

  Thank you to Janet Morris, for taking me under your wing and showing me how to fly.

  Thank you to the Irredeemable Order of Hellions. You’re not a biker gang. But you could be.

  Thanks to Boynton Williams and Associates, for allowing me to keep my day job.

  Thank you to my family.

  Mostly, thank you to God, for allowing me the privilege of doing this.

  Chapter One

  A Summons

  Chaelus, Roan Lord of the House of Malius, awoke from death to the hands of a child.

  Void shattered to azure flame. A warrior’s call carried out on a child’s voice. “Take my hand now and rise, Chaelus. Death cannot take you.”

  Chaelus succumbed beneath beating waves of nausea. The fires of fever tore through him. Light burned through the edges of his lifeless eyes. A firm arm held him. Water erupted as the chill of the grave melted to a lesser cold. His legs caught against stone. The arm stiffened to protect him. The warmth of a labored breath brushed past his skin as he was lowered to firm ground.

  The child’s voice whispered, “You’re safe now, but you’re sick. You’ve been poisoned. The blood of the Dragon flows in your veins. Your fever is the Dragon’s call. It will pass, but until it does, give it no heed. It strengthens with the attention you pay it. The fire within you will soon die.”

  The azure flame descended to shadow.

  ***

  Chaelus opened his eyes to a failing dusk.

  The chill of hard ground bled through the thin cloak around him. Shaking, he pulled it closer.

  A sliver of a boy sat near, leaning against a tumbled pale milestone. Holding a small branch, he toyed with the dead leaves around him, pushing them away, his head held down, his thick blond hair hanging loose over dark eyes, his voice soft but aloof with the imperious tongue of Gorond.

  “You’re no longer dead,” the boy said, “save to everyone you know.”

  Chaelus eased himself upright. His eyes burned. “Who are...?” His voice stuck thick and painful upon his tongue. “What are you?”

  The boy raised his head. “My name is Al-Aaron.” He smiled and his dark eyes deepened. “I’m a Servian Knight, and I’ve waited long for your return, Chaelus, Roan Lord of the House of Malius.”

  Al-Aaron stood, brushing the soil from his leggings. “But we must hurry. We’re but a day from your House. It’s been three since your death. It won’t be long until they realize you’re gone.”

  Chaelus sputtered. “What’s happened to me?”

  “You’ve fallen, and you’ve been raised. You were dead, but now you live.”

  Chaelus struggled through the fog of his thoughts and the maze of memories that lingered. The boy was right. He’d died. The plague of the Dragon’s Sleep had claimed him. Or so he’d thought. Either way, his young brother Baelus sat upon the throne now.

  Chaelus tried to stand but his legs collapsed beneath him. “Then you must help me return.”

  “Baelus won’t return the throne so easily, and you’re still too weak. You can’t go back. Not yet.”

  Al-Aaron gestured to a small sack on the ground near where he’d been sitting. “There’s food for you here. It’s only bread and dried fruit but it will give you strength.”

  A horse whinnied nearby. Chaelus felt relief at the dim sight of Idyliss tethered to a tree beside them. Al-Aaron lifted a bundle from her back and dropped it to the ground. Murky light reflected off the bronze hilt of Sundengal lashed upon it; the sword that had once belonged to his father.

  Al-Aaron turned away. He stroked behind the mare’s ears. “These are the things you brought with you to your death. Take what you need, and we’ll bury what is left.”

  ***

  Chaelus’ healing flesh pressed pale against the leather binding of Sundengal’s hilt. The black marks of the Dragon’s Sleep upon his hand had faded. New sunlight danced across Sundengal’s blade, but the weight of the blood it bore still remained.

  Al-Aaron, silent through the night though never sleeping, stirred on the back of Idyliss behind him.

  Chaelus returned Sundengal to her scabbard as he drew in Idyliss’ reins with his other, still trembling hand.

  The sun rose beside them, cresting above the horizon like a phoenix as they moved north along the narrow ridge. Its light burned beneath the crisp and still darkened sky.

  A man and a boy.

  Student and teacher, Al-Aaron had told him.

  Chaelus turned back again to Al-Aaron and the bundle of furs that concealed the boy’s blade. To be a boy and a Servian Knight seemed difficult enough, despite the gossamer bound blade he carried. Forbidden to shed the blood of man, the sword remained the symbol of the order to which Chaelus’ father had once belonged - and its heresy as well.

  The heavy weight of Sundengal pulled at his side, even more than the armor he wore.

  In the valley below, the worn and pitted bleached stones of the happas - the ancient road left behind by the Evarun – wound northward away from the Roan kingdoms, through the borderlands of the Northern March, and away from his throne.

  He raised his hand to his head, to the funeral markings he bore there, a black crown etched upon his shaven brow. The runes show
ed him as a victim of the Dragon’s Sleep, but from what the boy said, it was from another death altogether that he’d been raised.

  A chance to reclaim what he’d lost.

  “My strength has returned,” Chaelus said. “So must I.”

  “You won’t be welcomed,” Al-Aaron replied, his voice weary. “If we’re fortunate, your brother will think only your corpse has been stolen. If you return, I assure you you’ll be dead again before you reach your white tower’s gate.”

  Chaelus smiled at the irony of the boy’s words. “I’ve already died once. It should be nothing to do so again.”

  Al-Aaron’s moment of silence drew tangible, his gaze distant, stretching across the valley below. A sad smile crept to the corner of his mouth. “Then there’s something I would show you first.”

  He touched Chaelus’ arm and his voice softened to the thick whisper of one who’d just awoken. “Look out. Tell me what you see.”

  In the dawning light, dark shadows and mist still filled the valley. Stunted copses released birds into the rusting sky. Rings of burial mounds, like the one from which Chaelus had just been raised, rose from the valley floor.

  “Wizard Mounds,” Chaelus answered. “The Gorondian Empire called them cenotaphs in their texts. They’re little more than empty tombs.” In the shadows of the copses, fresh turned earth revealed where one of the mounds had been disturbed. “So that’s what we use them for now.”

  “Then you know only a shadow of their purpose,” Al-Aaron said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Al-Aaron turned back to the valley. “Take us there. I’ll show you.”

  Stands of birch studded the steep slope of the hill that led down into the shrouded valley floor. Thick, tall grasses sprung up through the growing mist around them as Chaelus led them down. Idyliss struggled against their steep descent, until it leveled out at last into a morass of mud and water that clung to the mare’s hooves.

  Al-Aaron remained silent.

  Chaelus continued what seemed to be blindly forward through the thick wet grass, not entirely certain what the boy intended for him to see. He stopped when he heard at last the reassuring clap of the happas beneath Idyliss’ hooves. He led her carefully upon it, if only to escape the dampness for a moment. The raised outline of the ancient road reached between the copses ahead.

  Chaelus turned to Al-Aaron. “Teacher.” The word sounded awkward, tumbling unbidden from his lips. The weight of it hung upon the lingering mist not yet burned away by the morning sun.

  Al-Aaron replied distantly, his eyes focused somewhere beyond Chaelus, down the length of the road. “Follow the happas. It will lead us there.”

  With the slope of the hill behind them, the stands had withdrawn, leaving open grasses, but the scattered copses stood thick with shadow. They were old, and beneath them, the sodden mounds of the cenotaphs began to appear. The air fell still as they passed beneath the first bent shadows of the trees. Idyliss slowed without Chaelus’ urging.

  The mounds were no more than a man’s stride in height, and three in width. Some had collapsed upon themselves, stagnant water filling the deep depressions at their centers. One copse, denser and older than the rest, stood at the center of the circle of mounds. Beneath its gray trees spread the surface of a dark and fetid pool, the ground descending toward it reluctantly. As they drew near, a chill reached out from the water’s edge, crawling across the air to meet them.

  The sky darkened.

  Chaelus reined in Idyliss, suddenly restless. “The shadow of the Dragon passes.”

  Al-Aaron looked up at the gathering clouds. He let himself down, leaving the happas, and passed over a line of ancient stones concealed amidst the grasses. He halted at one of the nearest mounds.

  Chaelus followed, dismounting and leading Idyliss beside him. The air grew stiff and foul.

  “It’s an ancient place,” Al-Aaron confided. “Its roots lie deeper than anything the Keepers of Lossos can teach; deeper than those of the Gorondian Empire that fell.”

  Chaelus slowed and tied Idyliss’ reins around one of the low entangled branches.

  He remembered the scent of flaxweed smoke, which the Lossons burned to ward away the stench beyond their walls, mingled with parchment and ink, and his last days in exile before being summoned back to the aid of his father’s House. The only knowledge that remained the Lossons kept safe within their walls. The Gorondians took their secrets with them.

  “Then you speak of a time that’s lost,” he said.

  “Not by all. Not by the Servian Order. I speak of a time before the Expulsion, before the Giver brought about the Dragon’s fall a hundred years ago. Chaelus, suppose you wanted to convince someone of something, something you knew to be untrue. Tell me, what’s the best way to tell a lie?”

  “To hide it in truth.”

  Al-Aaron smiled. “Yes.”

  Al-Aaron knelt beside the mound, pulling a small knife from beneath his belt and stabbing it down into the moss and turf covering it. Pulling on the knife hard, he cut a square into its surface. Flattening the knife like a spade he lifted the sod gently and set it to one side. He wiped the blade and returned it to his belt. Leaning back from his work, he asked, “What do you see?”

  Chaelus leaned over where the boy had dug. Beneath the short grass lay rich black soil. A hand’s width beneath the surface, smooth black stone glimmered. On it, small things moved, trying to find their way back into the deeper places of darkness.

  “The stone of the cenotaph.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “No.”

  “Then look deeper, but not with your eyes. Place your hand there. See the truth beneath the stone.”

  Chaelus knelt. His hand shook as he held it above the cenotaph. The familiar burning of his fever pressed again inside of him. He felt its warmth beneath the markings on his brow. He looked to Al-Aaron, who nodded.

  Chaelus reached down.

  The cold touch of the stone seized him like ice. His body grew heavy and slow. The world before him shivered. A shadow drifted from the mound, from deep beneath its forgotten stones. Black wings stretched out from it, like the Dragon waiting in the ice water of his tomb. And like the Dragon, a familiar voice whispered to him.

  “The Blood of Malius.”

  Chaelus’ fever consumed him.

  “Chaelus.”

  His own name struck like a mallet and he fell backwards, landing hard against the ground. The whispering voice of the Dragon echoed inside of him, its breath a part of his flesh.

  The harsh light of dawn blinded him. The shadow of the cenotaph passed away.

  Al-Aaron’s hand reached down to him through an azure glow which held like a fire about the boy. Chaelus reached out to it, but the light faded at his touch. His breath parted from him.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  Al-Aaron took Chaelus’ hand. “It’s the world as it is. It’s the truth that waits for you beneath the lie.”

  The menace of the mound and the black stone beneath it dimmed in the sharp morning light.

  “It was from a cenotaph deep beneath your father’s House that I raised you.”

  “My tomb,” Chaelus said, his voice drifting.

  “Did the Lossons ever teach you why the Gorondian Empire fell?”

  “The Gorondians were wizards. They were consumed by their own dark magic.”

  Al-Aaron tightened his mouth as silent thoughts fought within him. He breathed out. His gaze grew long again. “They were seduced by the Dragon,” Al-Aaron said. “Eventually the Dragon came to possess all of them. With the cenotaphs the Dragon consumed their flesh, and the flesh of their people, keeping them alive only to appease its unending hunger, until only the suffering of their spirits remained.”

  He looked up at Chaelus. “The Dragon of legend is real. It lorded over the Pale many times before and has returned to do so again. Its voice is one you know well. Its whisper seduced you as you took your father’s throne. Just as it whispered to
your father, so it whispers to your brother Baelus, just as it whispered your own name now.”

  Chaelus closed his eyes. Against the burning tapestry of sunrise beyond them floated the silver mask with the child’s face that had whispered from behind his throne since before he was born, the mask that veiled a face he’d never seen, and whose whisper had summoned him to his grave.

  “Magus,” he said.

  “Magus is no man. He’s the Dragon made flesh.” The slow smile returned to Al-Aaron’s face. “His wrath was unequaled when he found I’d stolen you from him.”

  The nearby copse whispered as sunlight breaking through the branches lit upon the surface of the still and fetid pool. Voices and visions swirled about Chaelus, threatening to consume him but for the one question Al-Aaron hadn’t yet answered.