Dark Moon Rising (The Prophecies of Zanufey)

by A. Evermore

  Goblins were an annoyance and a constant danger to the Kuapoh frequently hounding them, stealing food and causing injury, sometimes even death, though this was rare. All Kuapoh children were taught how to wield a weapon and protect themselves from goblins as soon as they could walk and though Asaph was not a Kuapoh, he was treated and taught as one. But still, over time Asaph had learned to hate the goblins for their merciless cruelty to all beings, even amongst themselves, and he feared them just a little.

  The fear that had initially frozen him to the ground soon left as he watched them torture the bear. The chain was wrapped tightly around the bear’s neck and the other end tied around a large jutting rock. The goblins danced just beyond the reach of its powerful paws, each sneaking closer to the bear when its back was turned to try and jab it with a spear, only to run back with a howl when the beast whirled to face them.

  One of the goblins got lucky and sunk his spear tip into the bear’s side. The bear howled in rage and pain, drowning out Asaph’s own howl when he too felt the needle sharp pain in his side. He pulled up his shirt but there was no mark there. The pain faded but not for the bear and bright red blood trickled down thick brown fur splattering brightly upon the grey stone ground.

  The bear panted heavily, its shoulders sagged as it lumbered wearily. Asaph wondered how long this game had been going on, Goblins had remarkable stamina. Another spear struck the weakened bear and Asaph doubled over with a gasp and clutched his belly. When the pain subsided he looked again but there was no mark. The bear reared with a howl and stood up to a massive height on its hind legs. All the goblins fell back screaming in terror. Realising the chain still held the beast they began to creep forward again.

  Each spear or knife that struck the bear also struck Asaph and soon even the bear’s helpless rage began to seep into his body making him shake. The bear’s indignation and powerless fury were overwhelming, emotions far more complex than any he had yet felt in his short young life.

  He and the bear had somehow connected in a way he did not understand. It would be some time later that he learned he shared a similar link with all great beasts of Maioria and it was linked to the Dragon Blood flowing in his veins. The bear’s agonised howling and the goblin’s screeching became a throbbing din in his head and he felt close to passing out from the overwhelming rage.

  ‘Stop!’ a shrill ear-piercing cry exploded from his lips, the consuming rage blotting out all fears for his own safety.

  The goblins whirled to face him, seven pairs of yellow eyes and one pair of brown all focused upon him. Everything was frozen in momentary silence. His body trembled in fear under their piercing glare but inside he boiled with rage.

  The silence shattered like a mirror as everything burst into motion. The goblin’s rushed towards their new toy, eyes alight with glee, mouths grinning rows of little yellow teeth. The bear reared and roared again on two feet and Asaph stood his ground as fear and rage battled for control.

  His eyes caught the bear’s and rage won. Try as he might, to this day Asaph could not remember how it had happened. In his mind’s eye a giant golden sleeping Dragon formed. It seemed to slowly open its eye but it must have happened in flash given how quickly everything unfolded.

  One brilliant sapphire slit vertically in half by a black pupil looked directly at him, an eye almost as big as his body. It raised its massive head to look at him with two sapphires and then Asaph was rushing towards those eyes through no will of his own. There came a great whooshing sound and his head and body spun dizzily. He felt himself filling upward and outward, as if with air except it was solid and strong.

  He blinked as the disorientation receded and found himself looking down from quite a height at seven trembling goblins. He knew to the core of his being, without ever seeing his reflection, that he was a Dragon, that Dragon was in his blood and always would be and now he had become one he had fulfilled the other part of his being.

  Asaph was too furious to wonder at what had happened and that anger was molten lava rumbling in his belly. It pressed forwards urgently and he let it rise up his neck and spewed it forth as fire from his mouth and nostrils. The howling goblins scattered but three were caught in the liquid fire and instantly incinerated. The rest fled, screaming in terror, forgetting their weapons and the bear.

  Asaph wanted to follow them, to pick them up in his great claws and eat them, but a part of him recoiled in horror at what he had done. The desire to kill drove him forwards but the compassion in his heart made him stay. He hesitated in confusion as the goblins disappeared into a crack in the rocks just beyond the treeline. He turned away from the smoking ashes of the ones he had slain, unable to deal with the strange emotions within, and looked at the bear who was watching him with wary unblinking brown eyes.

  ‘I will not harm you,’ Asaph spoke in a voice that was deep and booming in the stillness and black smoke trickled from his nostrils. The voice startled Asaph and he learnt that day that Dragons could indeed speak. The bear was as still as a statue. Asaph wondered for a heartbeat if it had died but then a furry ear twitched.

  Asaph slowly reached forward a giant golden claw as thick as the bear’s foreleg. He paused for a moment as the sun emerged from behind a cloud and fell upon his scales. They glimmered and shone like polished gold in the sunlight and his great heart skipped a beat. He almost chuckled aloud for at the moment he felt a touch of a Dragon’s desire for the shiny yellow metal.

  The bear did not move as Asaph hooked a claw into one of the iron rings about the bear’s neck. At his touch the iron chain broke as easily as if it had been made of straw and he wondered at the tingling sensation at his claw-tip. He had barely touched the chain so had a little Dragon magic broken it? He noticed also that the bear’s wounds, though mostly shallow, had stopped bleeding. As the chain clinked and rattled to the floor the last tendrils of his rage disappeared and with it went the Dragon.

  In a blink Asaph had shrunk into a boy, his powerful muscles gone, his ancient magic gone. He looked at his small hands, somehow more shocked to be back in his human form than when he had become a Dragon.

  Another mind touched Asaph’s, soft as a feather brushed against the skin, and he felt a wave of sincere gratitude come from the bear. After a moment the bear turned and limped away, each step becoming a little stronger as he reached the edge of the trees. With one last look back at the small boy he disappeared into the woods leaving Asaph very much alone, fear and awe at what he had been, what he had done, suddenly a great burden upon his small shoulders.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Great Sword Of Binding

  Only three times in total had Asaph fleetingly become a Dragon, the shift happening in a blur, the Dragon form lasting no more than a minute the next time and less than that for the last. It always came when he was really angry and now he was a man and had better control of his anger, it didn’t come at all. Luckily he had always been alone; he couldn’t bear to think what would have happened had he not been.

  The Kuapoh always spoke of ‘Evil Shape shifters’, Succubi and Incubi in the form of spectres lurking in the forests, ready to take on the form of an alluring woman or man and lure their victims close enough to infect and possess their body. Asaph had never seen one but the stories were enough to make any child afraid of straying too far into the forests without their parents.

  Dragon form aside, even his foreign origins aside, there were other things that set him apart from the other children and he quietly knew it was linked to the Dragon Blood in his veins. He could see well in the dark, smell fear, and sense the feelings of animals. If he unfocused his vision he could see the soft glow that were people’s auras. The ability to see auras was quite a gift to the Kuapoh. Gharupoha, the oldest shaman of the peoples, was excited when Asaph described what the old shaman also saw. Few people could see auras and none without training, so his ability was quite a gift.

  Asaph smiled even now at the pride he had felt then, it made him feel accepted by the tribe, eve
n valued. For though the Kuapoh treated Asaph as one of them they did not look the same. Like Draxians the Kuapoh were tall but not as heavily built. Their skin was paler compared to a Draxian’s ruddy complexion that tanned easily in the sun.

  A Kuapoh’s fine hair was anything from dark brown to pale yellow but a Draxian’s thick locks were always any shade of reddish blond, until it turned white with age. Most Kuapoh cut their hair but Coronos kept his long and tied back at the nape in the Draxian fashion. Asaph, somewhat confused, kept his somewhere in between at shoulder length.

  Coronos was always bemused by the Kuapoh’s passive demeanour, particularly apparent in big gatherings, for though they were honourable and trustworthy as any Draxian, they were always calm and contemplative and no voices were ever raised. On Drax, any important gathering would always be a heated discussion with hands waving and voices raised. Such was a Draxian’s fiery spirit.

  Asaph always wondered at those differences and whether he would fit in more with Draxians or with the Kuapoh. Would he ever see home, real home? He let out a long quiet sigh. Surely Coronos missed home but whenever Asaph broached the possibility of leaving to see more of the world Coronos was quick to remind him how their survival had depended on these gracious people who had taken them in, sick and destitute, all those years ago. How they had shared everything with them, without asking for return, and nursed them back to health.

  In turn the Kuapoh depended upon their skills, Coronos as a physician and Asaph as an excellent tracker and hunter. They were needed here. Asaph wondered if Coronos argued the point too much and secretly desperately missed his homeland so far away, but Asaph never pushed the subject.

  ‘Another nightmare, my son?’ Coronos’s voice drifted down to him, thick and heavy with sleep.

  ‘I’m sorry, I did not mean to wake you,’ Asaph replied in Draxian, looking over at the older man and cursing himself and his nightmares on seeing his father’s weary face.

  ‘On the contrary, I was having my own nightmares and am glad to be awake,’ Coronos said, wiping his eyes and propping himself up on a pillow. ‘Funnily enough it was about your mother, again,’ he added, motioning to the ring in Asaph’s hand, ‘I wish I could change the past but I cannot.’

  Asaph gave a half smile and turned back to stare at his mother’s ring. ‘Speak to me of her again; I love to hear about her, so young was I when I lost her.’

  ‘And I never tire of speaking about her,’ Coronos sighed. ‘Your mother, the great Queen Pheonis of Drax, Queen of the mighty Dragon realm of the north,’ Asaph smiled as Coronos indulged in his singsong storytelling voice and opened with the usual lines, ‘and she was more than just a leader loved by her people for she was a Dragon Lord possessing the ability to become a Dragon at will.’

  Asaph could feel Coronos’s searching eyes upon him. He held his breath praying that the dreaded question: “Has the Dragon come to you?” would not be asked again, forcing him to lie a thousandth time. He did not feel strong enough to deal with that question and doubted he would be able to deny it today. Already his skin prickled with the pangs of guilt and embarrassment. He had openly denied his Dragon form for so long that he wondered if he could ever admit it to Coronos; he just could not say that, yes, he too was a Dragon Lord, like his mother.

  Nevertheless, he felt the truth boiling away within him and knew one day it would come out. So he sat there staring at his mother’s ring, refusing to look Coronos in the eye, silently thanking the glowing embers in the fire for hiding his reddening face.

  Coronos blessedly continued. Asaph silently let go of his breath, suddenly feeling painfully alone with his secret. Eventually Asaph lost himself to Coronos’s words becoming a young boy again as his adopted father recounted for the hundredth time the story of his mother. Her face drifted before him, a face he found fiercely beautiful with copper coloured skin, sparkling blue eyes and red hair the colour of the setting sun. For a moment he could feel the glory of flying over the high towers of castle Drax, the exhilaration, the freedom and the power was all his as he lived them again through his mother’s memory.

  ‘Your mother, Queen Pheonis, had the Dragon gift; a rare powerful gift that crops up where the Goddess chooses; amongst the rich and poor, the royal and the peasant, seemingly without any pattern and careless of any bloodline. If no heir to the throne possessed the ability, and it must be said again that few heirs did,’ Asaph met Coronos’s eyes unblinking, ‘then the people would choose another with the gift to reign for none other than a Dragon Lord could rule Drax and keep peace between man and dragon. That was how it had always been.’

  ‘I was not a Dragon Lord,’ Coronos said wistfully, his eyes glazed as if lost in the past, ‘but I had been a good Dragon Rider and honoured to be leader of the Legion of Dragons and protectorate of the Queen and King and all the peoples of Drax. Your mother and father were my closest friends and in time I became advisor to them.

  ‘No matter how terrible the fall of Drax was and what befell your mother and father, you must know the truth, always seek the truth, you must never be afraid of the truth,’ Coronos looked at Asaph, the low light of the embers cast everything in an orange glow making the shadows dance around them like imps.

  Though Asaph had never known his mother, through The Recollection, he knew her more deeply than any child could know their parent. When he first learnt about the fall of Drax and the death of his parents, Asaph joined the millions in his hatred of Baelthrom and the Maphraxies. It was a terrible hatred that burned within and threatened to consume him. The Immortal Lord had taken all and left him with nothing. He let go a long sigh as Coronos spoke again.

  ‘The beginnings of the Dragon Lords are shrouded in mystery; history tells us that long ago humans and Dragons fought each other in ceaseless bloody wars. Legend tells us that our beloved Feygriene, the Sun Goddess aspect of the Great Goddess most revered by Draxians and Dragons, took pity on her children and chose for human and Dragon to be bound together, forever ending the bloodshed between them.’

  ‘The last battle fought between human and Dragon unfolded upon the great mountains of the north still called to this day, The Grey Lords. It was there that Qurenn the warrior and Slevina the Dragon Queen fought bitterly from sunrise to sunset. As the light of the setting sun cast them all in crimson, they mortally wounded each other. They lay utterly spent and dying side by side, their life’s blood mingling together as it spilled down the frozen mountain.’

  Asaph listened intently, lost in the past, envisioning again the moment of their making. In his mind’s eye he watched Qurenn and Slevina die and he too died with them.

  ‘As Dragon blood mixed with human so did all that was in it; their essence, their history, their memories, their passion, their love. All that they were was shared between them and in their dying state a new understanding was born. Those soldiers that had seen the battle unfold struggled to reach them, though when they got there it was too late. But those valiant men and women were blessed with a new understanding and from that day the gift was formed. Their children were the first of a new being born, all were Dragon Lords, and their blood was a mix of human and Dragon.

  ‘With their lives Qurenn the Courageous and Slevina the Dragon Queen ended the Great Dragon Wars and saved the lives of thousands, giving birth to the legend. The sword Qurenn slew Slevina with became the symbol of the binding; its new red pommel was forged from Slevina’s blood and it was named the Sword of Binding.’

  The sword flashed clearly in Asaph’s mind straight from The Recollection, blotting out all other thoughts. His heart lurched at the sight of it, it always did. The sword was a symbol of his origin, of all the Dragon Lords’ origins, and to the core of his being he knew that the sword belonged to him. Asaph remembered a dream he had of the sword when Coronos first told him of the tale of Qurenn and Slevina, he had been a young adult then, barely into his teens, but he never forgot the dream.

  She, the same dark-haired girl that plagued his dreams nightly, had held
that great sword out to him as she sat atop a horse blacker than the night. Her face was cold and hard but beautiful like a snow-covered forest. He had stared up at her, his heart pounding with fear and wonder as she offered him the sword. Coronos’s voice drifted down to him again.

  ‘Here let me show you,’ the older man said and reached over the other side of the bed. From under the mattress he pulled out a light grey velvet pouch that was worn in places. He glanced about him cautiously and then slipped out a grey-white crystal orb the size of a man’s fist. Asaph had seen the Orb of Air many times before and knew it was always hidden about Coronos’s person somewhere, but rarely did his father use it. The hairs on Asaph’s arm rose, he could feel the potent magic locked within it and it drew him closer like a magnet.

  ‘Look,’ Coronos said, and whispered words that Asaph did not understand. Coronos spoke in ancient Draxian rune-speak and had admitted once that even he only knew a few of their names. The hairs on Asaph’s arm rose and fell in waves as the magic in Coronos’s words swirled around him.

  That energy suddenly drew into the orb. As they watched, white clouds swirled within it. Slowly a sword formed in its centre, long and thin and glinting in the light. Asaph’s heart began to pound as he looked upon the blood red pommel and the shining metal, memory and desire stirring his emotions.

  Coronos murmured again and swirled his hand over the orb, the barest trickle of magic moved to do his bidding, and the clouds surrounding the sword darkened. The sword now hung suspended point downwards in a circular room lit only by the dim glow of the red pommel and the grey-blue of the blade, proving it shone with its own enchantment.

  ‘The great sword is hidden deep within the fortress of Drax, or was. Only myself, and the King and Queen ever knew where it was and how to find it.’ Coronos said. ‘It remained hidden in secret and so as the years passed, the Sword of Binding became myth and many forgot about it, doubting even its very existence. But it mattered not, for peace remained between Dragon and human under the rule of the Dragon Lords in Drax.’ The orb grew dim at a motion of Coronos’s hand and became the soft grey-white of swirling clouds once more.