by Matthew Lang
“Duin certainly distracted Xavier,” Esmeralda said grimly.
Adam looked down at the twisted body of the first person he had ever tried to kill. Then he ran to the corner and threw up his lunch.
“Sir Adam?” Esmeralda asked. “Are you unwell?”
Adam shuddered, gratefully taking the waterskin Duin offered him to clear the taste of bile from his mouth. “I’m not used to this real battle stuff, all right?”
“You fought well,” Esmeralda said. “You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Except the part where I’ve just been instrumental in killing someone?” Adam suggested.
“If you had not been, we would be dead right now ourselves,” Duin pointed out.
“I know that,” Adam said. “But that’s cold comfort, don’t you think? I mean, is this the life of a quest? Ride, travel, eat whatever crap you can find, kill people, and move on?”
“No,” Duin said stiffly. “That is trying to stay alive when—”
“I know, I know, sorry. I’m being a shit,” Adam said. “I’ve never…. I’m not coping, and you’re here for me to lash out at. Just… give me a bit of space, all right?”
Stiffly, Duin nodded and turned away, walking back toward the central light to help the princess tend her wounds—and to have his own scrapes checked over. Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, Adam sat down on a fallen stone block beneath the still-protruding dragon bones. Part of him wondered how safe it was, tempting fate by sitting so close to a recently collapsed wall. Part of him didn’t care what the risks were. Shortly, Esmeralda came over and joined him, her usual grace marred by a slight limp.
“He means well,” she said softly. “And if he hadn’t—”
“I know,” Adam said. “I know, I know, I know.”
“But he’s forgotten what it’s like if you’ve never…. It’s a different world, even for me.”
“I know.”
Esmeralda sighed. “I am sorry, Sir Adam. Goodman Duin and I will find somewhere else to be for a while. He says you were in Fernando’s study earlier? Come find us there when you are ready.” She looked up at the vacant eye socket of the dragon skull. “Legend has it that Lord Fernando thrust Wyrmbane into the heart of the dragon Khaled,” she said. “It’s strange, but I almost wish Xavier had brought through more of the skeleton before you defeated him. Of course, we could all have died if you had not acted when you did. But I fear we have no hope of retrieving the sword now. So much for the grand quest.”
“What happens now?”
Esmeralda smiled sadly. “I do not know. But we will have to work something out. Xavier was right about one thing—even if I can be a leader, it does not help much if there are no people to lead.” Esmeralda reached out as if to pat his shoulder, then pulled her hand back. “But those are my troubles, and I should not burden you with them.”
ADAM HEARD Esmeralda’s footsteps move away from him, pause, and then continue, almost as if she’d stopped to pick something up. With the sound of her footsteps receding up the corridor and the pad-pad-pad-swish of Zoul’s six-legged gait following, Adam was left in the silence of the dead. There was little blood, most of it having been consumed by Xavier’s flames, along with the bodies of Darius and whichever lizard it was that had attacked him. Indeed the entire room smelled more like a burned roast than an abandoned mortuary. Absently he wondered if he should close Xavier’s eyes or possibly move the necromancer’s sprawled form into a more dignified pose. Everyone deserved dignity in death, and in giving that to Xavier, Adam could demonstrate that he was the better person. Of course, that would require him to actually be a better person, which he wasn’t. He considered giving Darius some dignity in death, but he couldn’t actually bring himself to touch the body. Or rather the ashes that had once been the body. Had once been Darius. Bile rose in his throat, but there was nothing left to throw up.
When his stomach stopped heaving, he climbed back up the rubble pile to stare at the bones. Unlike the fossilized bones of dinosaurs he had always been fascinated by, these bones weren’t the smooth black of fossils. These were the heavily stained brown of old bones buried in the dirt while various creepy-crawlies ate away the flesh one scale and muscle fiber at a time. He pushed at the lower jaw with his foot, the reptilian V of the bone as long as his torso, and the entire maw easily big enough to swallow him whole. He reached down, plucked one of the large fangs from its socket, and turned it over and over in his hands, looking at the grooves in the still-sharp teeth that in other circumstances could probably be sharpened further into a serviceable blade. Looking at the rest of the skull, he noticed the eye sockets were big enough for him to fit his head into, and in a fit of pique, he clambered up farther and attempted to stick his head in. Then he revised his estimate of the size to nearly big enough to fit his head into.
Adam had assumed the dragon had been crested, just like Zoul and the other lizards were. Thinking back, he couldn’t recall if the dragon Khalivibra had a crest or not. Somehow he’d been too busy focusing on other things when he’d seen her—like the great wings, sharp teeth, and the running away really fast. The blackened spike he had taken for a crest-bone was actually the pitted blade of a sword, and reaching under the skull, Adam closed his hand over the hilt of an ancient weapon. Yanking hard, he tumbled to the floor, falling flat on his back and narrowly avoiding cracking his head open.
The sword itself was a bit of a let-down, the blade scarred and rusted from its unexpected burial, and even if the years of grime was cleaned off, Adam doubted it would be battleworthy again. The hilt was in similarly bad shape, the corroded metal of the grip flaking in his hand, although at one point, it must have had leather wrappings over it, slender as it was. The crossguard had been gilded, which hadn’t tarnished, but some of the coating had worn away, exposing the steel below to the ravages of the elements. The pommel, however, was as brilliant and beautiful as if it had just been crafted. It was an ovoid chunk of jade, only slightly smaller than Adam’s fist, and it gleamed in the light, a deep green worthy of any emerald, and little veins of paler green that made Adam think of the posters for the Alien movies. The stone itself was semitranslucent, and in the light of the stone bowl, it almost appeared to have a light of its own.
As Adam sat up and turned the sword over, lifting it high to get a better look at it, he felt that there should have been something more at that moment. If he’d been a real hero on a real adventure, there surely would have been. Some sense of awe or reverence for the blade, or for the people who had invested so much of their hope in it. How proud they must have been to see it raised in the hand of their Lord Fernando, and how they must have exalted as he thrust it into the brain of the dragon Khaled, killing it. How profound their despair as the death throes of the mighty beast destroyed their home and their lord, forcing them to flee to the mountains of the south. Adam should have felt something more than the cold of adrenaline draining from his system. At the very least, there should have been an uplifting, inspiring soundtrack swelling behind him as he raised the sword experimentally, surprised at the lightness of it. It felt as though the blade itself was no weightier than the plastic toys of Adam’s childhood, which he had brandished as he ran through the corridors of his parents’ house to the cries of “Don’t run indoors, Adam!” trailing after him. It was with these plastic blades that he had slain the monsters of his own imagination, and on one or two occasions, the evil villains represented by his childhood friends. Even then, at the back of his mind, battle music sounded as each fight reached its climax, and he could almost hear the ringing of the trumpets and the crash of the drums. At least, he could have heard it then. Now there was nothing except a chirp from Zoul causing him to drop the sword back onto the floor.
“Zoul! How many times have I told you not to do that!” Adam scolded, retrieving the blade and scrambling to his feet.
Zoul made a dismissive sound and butted Adam with his head.
“Okay, just the one and with the qualifier of ‘when in
battle,’” Adam said, reaching out to rub at the ridge above Zoul’s eyes. “Well, just don’t do that when I have a weapon in my hand, all right?”
Zoul chirped agreement, his tongue flickering out of his mouth as he gazed at his rider with unblinking reptilian eyes.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Adam asked. “Didn’t Esmeralda take you with her?”
Zoul chirped again and then scuttled back toward the door. Halfway there, he turned and stared at Adam once more, lowering his head until it was resting on the ground.
Adam grinned and bent to retrieve both Wyrmbane and his own modern sword. “All right, I get the message,” he said as he followed the lizard back to Lord Fernando’s mystical study.
When Adam walked into the room, his eyes went straight for Duin, who stared at him, one hand holding the remnants of a torn book and one with a sheaf of paper that Adam thought were crumpled pages. For a long moment something crackled through the air between them, broken only by Esmeralda’s cry.
“You found it!” she said, rushing to Adam’s side.
“I’m not sure it’s any good, though,” Adam said, laying the ancient weapon on one of the cleared tables. “I mean, look at it. I don’t think it’s going to be much use even if we can clean it up—and I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any idea how to forge weapons—even if the forge wasn’t buried under a ton or two of unstable rubble.”
Looking toward the back of the room, Adam saw that the movement of the dragon skeleton had affected other rooms and more rubble had fallen in, and the forge was now buried completely.
“But you found the sword,” Esmeralda breathed, her eyes shining as she looked at the ancient relic with the reverence Adam had not felt clear on her face. “If I can work out what Fernando did to enchant it, perhaps we can….”
As Esmeralda spoke, she reached out and gripped the blade, then lifted it up, only to stop as the pommel stone fell off with a thud and rolled its way toward the edge of the table.
“Oh my,” Esmeralda said, dropping the blade with a loud clatter and a shower of rust.
Adam reached out and grabbed the stone just as it would have tumbled off the edge and onto the hard ground below.
“Whatever glue held that together must have failed,” Adam said, looking at the narrow top of the ovoid where the egg-shaped stone had fit into the rest of the metal hilt. “I guess it’s a wonder it survived this long in any case.”
A tremor shook the building, and Duin glanced nervously at the ceiling. “That’s a mystery we should discuss somewhere else, I think. I’m not liking the sound of that.”
“That’s just dirt moving,” Esmeralda said, waving her hand dismissively. “We’ll be fine if we get up top, and I need to sleep.”
“And what’s the plan for when Khalivibra arrives?”
“What? She’s coming?” Adam asked, jumping out of the chair.
Duin shrugged. “Do you really think Xavier didn’t tell her we were here? Or that she won’t care that he’s stopped reporting in?”
Adam groaned. “Just how good at this mind-reading thing is she?”
“I don’t know,” Duin said. “But do you want to risk our lives on the hope that the answer is ‘not very’?”
For a long, tense moment, they stared at one another. And then there was a flurry of activity as Adam pocketed the pommel stone and whistled for Zoul.
“Where are your mounts?” Duin asked.
“We made camp in the north,” Esmeralda said. “They should still be there.”
“Go,” Duin said. “Adam, can you get the bowl in the barracks?”
“On it,” Adam said and ran out of the room, Zoul close on his heels.
They caught up with Esmeralda just as she was exiting the great hall, and Adam swung her onto Zoul almost without the lizard slowing. It proved to be a short ride over firmer ground into the fringes of an evergreen forest, the heavy pine trees casting long dark shadows in the surface light. The small camp had been constructed much the same way as the camps they had built in the rainforest, with a sleeping platform high in the branches, and only the broken tethers and the odd piece of beetle carapace gave away the location. Adam’s stomach sank, and he reined Zoul in to a walk when the great lizard chirped happily, crest rising in excitement. Then two heads poked out from the shadows below the sleeping platform, and Adam sighed in relief. Esmeralda was already scrambling down to greet her mount, and Duin was climbing the tree to gather any supplies that had been left behind.
Soon they were packed and mounted—Esmeralda on her lizard, Anu, and Duin on Darius’s former mount, Hele. This time Adam had ensured he knew their names. “Are we going back to Aergon?” he asked.
“No,” Esmeralda replied, her eyes scanning the horizon. “We must travel to Duin’s people.”
Adam stared in shock at Duin, who appeared to be having trouble controlling his new steed. “You have people?”
“Duin is not the first to survive being cast to the sun,” Esmeralda said.
“That’s not the point,” Adam said, turning toward Duin. “You lied to me. Why?”
“Because Xavier could not know,” Duin said. “I’m sorry, Adam. I wanted to tell you. I really did.”
“And what else don’t I know?” Adam asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Adam, we don’t have the time.”
“Take the time,” Adam said through gritted teeth.
Duin pointed back over Adam’s shoulder. “No, I mean we really don’t have time.”
The impact as Khalivibra barreled into the keep shook the ground, great talons tumbling masonry blocks from the walls as fire set the peat of the marshes ablaze. Khalivibra’s cries echoed through the marsh, although whether they were of rage or disappointment, Adam couldn’t tell.
“North,” Duin said shortly, reaching out to the reins of Esmeralda’s steed, the princess already clutching the strange milky stone she used in her shielding magic. “We’ll have to hurry…. I don’t know how long she can protect us.”
Caught somewhere between terror and anger, Adam hurried to keep pace, and they slipped deeper into the darkness of the forest, leaving the dragon behind.
THE CLOUDS continued to drift past without showering them with rain, and they made good time scrambling through the pine needles on the forest floor. Adam kept looking behind to see if the dragon’s fire would catch the forest, but luckily it appeared the sodden ground of the swamp was preventing too much damage, or at least, if the peat had caught fire, the flames hadn’t spread north to the forest—and Adam hoped the prevailing westerlies would keep it that way. Esmeralda was near comatose when they finally stopped to rest, the white stone falling from her fingers as they helped her off her mount. In the pine forests, Duin and Adam constructed tents from branches and the oilskin, rather than one of their treetop platforms.
“Slasherclaws?” Adam asked.
Duin shook his head. “They only hunt in the rainforest.”
“What are the dangers here, then?”
Duin shrugged. “Spiders and scorpions, mostly. The wild lizards don’t usually bother us here.”
Us. Suddenly everything came crashing back, and Adam worked on in silence until it was time to cook up the meal of tree serpent and pine nuts. “Tell me about your people?” he asked finally after Esmeralda had retired to the tents.
Duin sighed. “There is not much to tell. Others have survived here, and they—we—have a stronghold of sorts in the trees to the north. Boolikstaad, it’s called. We’ve learned to live off the bounty of the forest—such as it is—and try to find those exiled from Aergon, but it is a difficult journey—as you know.”
“And how does Esmeralda fit into all of this?”
“She cared,” Duin said simply. “She disagreed with sending children to the surface, and she started riding topside with her guard to give them supplies.”
“How did she manage that without getting caught?”
“She left caches of goods in the forest f
or the Children of Selune in advance, either on pretense of a joy ride or a trip to gather supplies. As long as she was guarded, she could do as she chose, and so we began to speak with her.”
“And Xavier?”
“Esmeralda suspected he was working against her father, the king,” Duin replied. “You would need to ask her for the details of that. All I know is that she believes it possible to kill the dragon, restore the golden city, and return Selune to our skies, and end the curse of the Children. The elders of Boolikstaad agree with her, and that is why I’m here.”
“They must hold you in high esteem to give you such an important mission,” Adam said.
“No, I’m just expendable,” Duin said, wrapping his arms around himself.
“How so?”
“The elders don’t trust Esmeralda entirely, so they refuse to send someone valuable to them—and it’s no secret that I… will not be contributing to the next generation.”
Something unlocked deep in Adam’s chest, and he breathed easily for the first time that sleep. “So… you’d still be willing to come home with me?”
“Are you sure you still want me with you?”
Feeling slightly weak at the knees, Adam crossed the camp and sat down next to Duin, then wrapped his arm around him. “The thought that you might be staying here… that was the scariest moment of my life.”
“Scarier than facing Xavier?”
Adam pretended to think about the question for too long a moment. “Yep,” he said eventually. “Not quite as scary as thinking I was going to die at the kanak village, though.” He kissed Duin’s furry temple. “Thank you for coming back for me.”
Adam felt Duin’s fingers firmly grasping his own. “You would come back for me.”
Adam smiled into the forest gloom. “Always,” he said. “Bed?”
And for one sleep, that was all that needed saying.
