The man before him no longer wore the armor of a kingsrider. He no longer looked like Captain Machous. His hair was dark, his face was clean-shaven but scarred by an ugly pockmark, and his skin was the color of rusted iron. His mouth twitched in a baleful smile.
Some primitive instinct of survival filled Kublan, and he lunged for the silken sash hanging beside the bed. The strange man tried to stop him, but the king grasped the sash with both hands and clung with all his might as he tumbled from the bed.
A clamoring of bells rang out in distant chambers and echoed through the halls. The cacophony was followed by the sound of voices and hurried footfalls of boots and bare feet on stone floors.
The Raven to the King bounded down the spiral stairway three steps at a time. Built for defense, the column was narrow, steep, and twisted tightly downward. The Raven slid his shoulder against the wall to keep from falling.
He had been preparing for bed when the king’s alarm sounded. He was still mostly dressed, and since his quarters were directly above the king’s, he was the first to arrive. The heavy oak door strapped with iron was closed. He hesitated out of habit, then grasped the ornate ring and pulled. It hardly moved, and he knew the interior iron bar had been slid into place, locking it from within.
“Your greatness?” The Raven knocked three times then slapped the door with an open hand. “Your greatness?”
Three watchmen and a pair of night maids arrived and formed a loose semicircle behind the Raven. Two of the men carried poleaxes, while the other carried a short sword.
“Gracious king!” The Raven raised his voice and pounded on the door again, this time with a fist. “Are you all right?” He tried to peer through a tiny crack in the door without success. He put his ear to the wood and pounded again. “Can you hear me?”
The grating sound of iron sliding on iron was unmistakable. Someone was pulling the iron bar aside and opening the door from the inside.
“Stand ready,” the Raven whispered, and the watchmen took a battle stance and prepared to use their weapons.
The dull clank of iron was followed by the rasping protest of hinges as the door opened partway. Light from the sconce on the opposite wall fell on Orsis-Kublan’s face as he leaned into the narrow opening.
“Are you all right, m’lord?” Relief rushed through the Raven upon seeing the king.
“I am,” the king answered. “I was caught in a dream. I am embarrassed to have troubled you with such disturbance.”
One of the night maids stepped forward. “Shall we come in, m’lord, and attend you? Or perhaps fetch wine from the kitchen to help you sleep?”
“No, no,” Kublan said in a surprisingly strong voice. “I must get back to bed. Go now. All of you.”
“I will help you back into bed, m’lord,” the Raven said, worried by the king’s behavior, and started through the door.
“I can do it myself,” the king said and started to close the door.
The Raven stopped it with his hand. “Let me sit with you a while, then. I am worried that—”
His words were cut off as the king—with surprising strength—yanked the door shut with a thud.
Inside the king’s sleeping chamber, Drakkor slid the iron bar back into place and lowered the latch. He returned his stone to its secret place and trembled through the wave of pain that always came.
He crossed to where he had blocked the garderobe door with a heavy chest. He pushed it aside and opened the door. Huddled on the floor, eyes closed in fear, His Greatness Orsis-Kublan looked anything but omnipotent. It was evident the once infamous king had never experienced such humiliation and shame. He was nothing but a pathetic old man afraid for his life.
Drakkor dragged him back into the chamber and propped him up against the footboard.
“Who are you?” the king demanded in a trembling voice. “By what evil power have you—”
Drakkor waited silently, until he saw the realization in the old man’s eyes.
The king drew in a sharp breath. “You are Drakkor, the Blood of the Dragon!”
Drakkor squatted before the king. His eyes were cold, but a laugh rumbled in his throat like distant thunder. Scornful. Mocking. “What I was, I am no more. From this hour, I am the Prince of Dragonfell, and the bandit Drakkor, whom your mighty kingsriders could not kill, shall be my enemy as well as yours, and I shall be your chosen champion and savior.”
Kublan’s face wrinkled in confusion. “But why do you not kill me now? If it’s a slow death you intend, you shall be denied,” he wheezed. “I am old, and my body is weak and—”
“Because the death of a king brings chaos, and the age of chaos is not yet. Also because only a king has the power to forge an alliance with the Prince of Dragonfell and secure a confederacy with the dominions of Dragonfell.”
“I would never—” The king twisted his head toward the door and yelled out, “Watchman! Help!”
Drakkor gripped his throat with his fist and cut off his words and his breath.
“There is none who can save you but me. You have seen the power of the dragon’s blood. Even a king who claims the favor of the gods can die—a snake in his bed, or poison in his cup, or by the dagger of a kingsrider whose face you have mistaken.” Drakkor relaxed his grip on Kublan’s throat.
“No,” the king choked, but there was no energy in it.
“Tomorrow, I will stand at your side and you”—he lifted the king’s chin—“will do all that I require of ‘His Greatness Orsis-Kublan, Omnipotent Sovereign and King.’”
“No! I would rather die!”
“Oh, you will not die. If you disappoint me, it is not you, but the one most precious to your heart who will suffer a drawn-out death.”
Terror filled the old king’s face and a great sob of despair escaped his throat. One word quivered from his lips. “Meesha.”
Tonguelessone stared at the king with unblinking eyes as the hulk of darkness hovered over him. She’d been awake in the bedroom adjacent to the king’s when she saw the ribbon flutter by the door. It was attached to the cord that hung by the king’s bed and, when he pulled it, it alerted her that he needed her help. By his command, she was never more than a breath away. She had hurried to the door and peeked through the crack in the door. What she saw filled her with disbelieving dread.
The nursewoman had seen the magic of the king’s cult of mystics and the mysterious workings of their dark arts. She had beheld strange rituals performed by the high pontiff. She had seen many frightening things. But nothing she had seen or imagined compared to what she witnessed in the flickering light of the king’s private chamber.
Fear for her own life was swallowed by a greater fear for the king whose life was hers to keep. She knew she should run for help, but who would believe the demonic sorcery she had witnessed? How could she ever describe the image now etched into the darkness behind her eyes?
She held her breath and screamed a silent prayer to her secret God of gods.
EPILOGUE
The pelting rain slowed to a drizzle, but by then the bottoms of the cages were a foul pudding of mud. The creatures’ coarse hair was soaked, and the stench saturated the damp air—rotted fish mingled with an odious trace of sulfur. The smell of the creatures was noxious to most men, but not to Jákkol. It was the fragrant miasma of vengeance.
Jákkol was the son of Ormmen of House Romagónian, and but for a single act of violence, his father would be king and he the crown prince destined to sit the Peacock Throne. But it was not to be. His grandfather had been dragged from the throne by the rebel, Orsis-Kublan, and murdered in the public square.
Jákkol fought to keep the dark dreams that haunted him by day at bay but “What might have been” was never more than a whisper away.
The inner rage came again. Contain it. Control it. Save it. The day of vengeance is coming.
He n
arrowed his thoughts as he always did to escape the foul mood that came when he allowed himself to dwell on the way fate had cheated him. He replaced it with his expectations of the future. It helped to clear his head .
What might have been may yet still be, and vengeance will be mine. The mantra echoed in his head like an incantation. It brought him back to the moment.
Jákkol breathed deeply of the acrid scent that hung in the air. His vision of vengeance was bright as the morning sun.
In the warren of cages below, a bald brute of a man scrunched his nose in a useless complaint. He was called Beastman, his real name having been long forgotten. In handling Jákkol’s creatures for so many years, he’d become something of a feral beast himself.
The creature at the end of the pole he held wanted to rip him apart and devour his flesh. The hardwood shaft was fastened to a serrated iron collar around the creature’s neck. The noose could be tightened, loosened, or released by a leather thong that ran to the end of the handle.
The beast growled at its captor, teeth bared. A thick squamous skin the color of dead moss stretched over the creature’s skull. The forehead between the bulbous eyes was a flat horn of armor. Patches of bare hide showed were no hair grew or where it had been chafed away by the rusted iron bars of the cages.
Ugly lumps of vestigial flesh and bone protruded from the shoulders, a remnant of something horrid and unimaginable. The beast’s shoulders quivered as if the grotesque knobs had once been wings and the creature was trying to fly.
Jákkol looked down at his creature and his Beastman matching their strength and fieriness against each other. In some strange way his affection for them was the same.
Beastman used the pole to force the creature through a chute of iron rails lashed to saplings. The channel sloped downward from a warren of iron cages hidden among the boulders at the end of a narrow gorge. Fractured walls rose from the floor of the ravine.
The beast’s back stood as high as the Beastman’s chest. It twisted its massive head and attempted to bite the bald man’s throat despite the spiked collar around its neck. A wreath of crusted blood marked its neck beneath the iron collar. In the rain, old scabs melted and ran in rivulets of dirty red.
The creature’s eyes rolled back in mindless rage. The sockets were a wrap of slime and wrinkled flesh below a flange of bone and heavy brow. The eyes were black and fractured yellow. A transparent membrane flicked across the black-and-yellow orbs—the eyes of a reptile. They dilated and diminished to the cadence of the creature’s angry snarls.
Jákkol owned hundreds of such creatures. The alpha males were isolated in an alcove on the north side of the ravine, confined by an iron fence that spanned the narrow opening between the walls. The he-dogs were separated from the she-wolvves, which were caged with their pups. Many cages held frolicking young whelps, weened from their mamas and fighting over the daily ration of venison or fowl thrown into the cages.
Mating pairs and birthing bitches were loosed in the natural enclosure that opened to the meadow at the far end of the gorge. There were natural dens there, among the caves and fallen trees.
“He-dogs,” “she-wolvves,” “pups,” and “whelps” were convenient words to distinguish age and gender, but they were not a wholly accurate description of what the creatures actually were.
How these monsters had remained undiscovered for so long was a mystery. That Jákkol found them in a place that most believed only existed in legend was cause enough to recognize the gods. He didn’t. He had no use for the gods, old or new.
The only cause that mattered to Jákkol was his crusade of vengeance.
His Greatness, Orsis-Kublan, Omnipotent Sovereign and King, will meet my creatures soon enough.
The rage of the primitive creature swirled up in a piercing howl.
How soon will my father and the old warrior arrive? And what of Maharí? Why has she gone silent?
The howl came again. Jákkol smiled as the sound rippled through him in a wave of warm affection. His savage predators would soon do his bidding with mindless obedience. His ferocious horde of dragonwolvves was nearly ready. His long-awaited war of vengeance against the Peacock Throne was about to begin.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Chris Schoebinger, who put the core idea into my head and whose persistent encouragement helped me find my way to the Kingdom of Kandelaar where I met some remarkable people.
Thanks to the team at Shadow Mountain whose support makes it possible: Heidi, Lisa, Richard, Malina, Derk, Karen, John, Ilise, Sarah, Madeline, and Isaac. Thanks to Jay Ward for the cover art.
And as always thanks to the smartest woman I know, Sheri Dew, who persuaded me to turn my screenplays into books and make some movies of the mind.
And finally to Jack Stone. Thanks again for your patience. I will get to your incredible adventures as soon as I can. What happened to you in the Amazon is beyond belief!
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