The Riders of Thunder Realm

by Steven Lochran

  Joss watched them gravely as they both turned towards the gates. He didn’t know what to say or how to say it, settling for the simplest sentiment he could muster. ‘Thanks.’

  They both nodded over their shoulders, neither of them watching as he turned and drove Azof on into the heart of Vaal.

  The streets were tight cobblestone corridors that were choked with brambles of wild roses, their scarlet petals the only burst of colour among the derelict buildings. They covered every road, every wall, and poured from the rooftops like gizzards off a butcher’s block.

  Unseen crows croaked again from the shadows, while the wind carried whispers of indistinct voices. They swirled around Joss, leading him down the twisting pathways towards a dilapidated library.

  Joss jumped as he saw the dark figure of a woman standing on the library steps. How had she made it inside the city? Was she a traveller who had happened by after the gates had been left open, or was she perhaps another pawn of Thrall’s? Gripping his humming knife, he rode towards the woman.

  All he could see of her face were her cracked lips and her dishevelled hair, which coiled around her throat in a long black tail. She was wearing a simple cotton slip that was torn at the seams, exposing her painfully flaked skin, while in her arms she carried a blanketed bundle.

  ‘My son …’ she said as she rocked the bundle back and forth, shaking loose the seaweed and sand crabs it contained. ‘This is my son …’

  Joss’s heart quickened. ‘Hello?’ he called out to her, and a crow burst free of the bushes beside him, screeching as it took to the air. When Joss turned back to the steps the woman was gone. Azof fretted beneath him. The whispers grew louder.

  ‘Come on, boy …’ Joss said, and guided the animal past the library to the city square.

  As big as the plaza in Dragon’s Tail had been this was easily twice the size, with a fountain at the centre large enough to serve as a giant’s washbasin. And kneeling in the middle of that fountain was a man, his face buried in his long, fine hands.

  Though the fountain was bone dry, the man’s hair and clothes were drenched. He looked to be weeping, his head and shoulders shaking, but Joss heard no noise. It reminded him of the jesters who used to perform on the thoroughfares of Makepeace, miming sadness or joy as the story they were telling demanded it, their emotions as exaggerated as they could make them.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Joss called out to the man from across the square. ‘Do you need help?’

  The man froze. Slowly he pulled his hands from his face, though still keeping them held up in front of him.

  ‘You can take hope from tragedy,’ the man said, ‘and build something new from the wreckage of the old …’

  Joss stopped. ‘Father?’ he whispered.

  The man peered through the gaps in his fingers, then fell flat against the bed of the fountain. Joss had slipped from his saddle and was sprinting across the plaza before he’d even had the thought to move. The fountain’s marble rim kept the man hidden, but there was nowhere he could go that Joss wouldn’t see him. Even so, when Joss reached the fountain he found it empty but for a pool of putrid green water that lapped at the fountain’s walls.

  Staring into the pool, Joss felt his mind fraying like an old rug. He’d always thought the stories of the Ghost City and the Invisible Horde were just that – stories. But there was something … wrong about this place. Crumpling against the rim of the fountain, he wondered how he could possibly find Zeke in the midst of all this madness.

  The crows cackled again as if mocking him, until they were silenced by a sudden, guttural roar. Azof stirred as Joss pulled himself up from the ground. They both recognised that call, and it was coming from the other side of the square.

  Grabbing Azof ’s reins again, Joss took off in the direction of the sound. The uneven tiles tripped him up as he rounded the corner, but with Azof ’s support he stayed on his feet and kept going. There, just past Vaal’s abandoned amphitheatre, was the city’s High Chamber. Its crystal dome was muted beneath the cloudy skies, with a bulky and recognisable figure sitting on its grand steps.

  ‘Pietro!’ Joss called, and the tundra bear raised its head to groan at him in what sounded like relief. Together, Joss and Azof rushed to the chamber steps, overjoyed to find a familiar face among the ruins.

  ‘You have no idea how good it is to see you, boy!’ Joss rubbed Pietro’s neck, the bear’s chest rumbling with joy. Even Azof seemed pleased as he happily chittered away.

  ‘Pietro, where’s Zeke?’ Joss asked, and the bear looked from him to the High Chamber’s belltower.

  The tower stood separate to the High Chamber, looming over it the same way the Spires rose above the Ghost City itself. At the very top of the tower there was a belfry, and as he squinted at it Joss could swear he saw someone moving around inside.

  ‘You both stay here …’ he told Azof and Pietro, his eyes still set on the tower. ‘I have a friend to see.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  AN IMPOSSIBLE CREATURE

  CLIMBING the tower steps, Joss wondered what he would find at the top. Even if Thrall had bribed Zeke, had blackmailed or brainwashed him, surely his honour and loyalty to his Bladebound brethren would win out in the end. After all, they had spent every waking moment together for weeks now. They had ridden together, fought together, broken bread and laughed together. Surely Zeke couldn’t turn his back on all that now. Surely he couldn’t turn his back on them. It was this faint ray of hope that Joss clung to as he came to a small wooden door at the top of the staircase. The hinges creaked as he pushed it open and emerged into the tower’s belfry.

  The cramped space was packed tight with dried branches, all of which had been woven into a giant nest. Zeke was standing on the opposite side of the belfry with his back to the door. His shock rifle was in one hand while a heavy hessian sack dangled from the other. At his feet was a full-grown Questing Bird, the pterosaur’s chest faintly moving as it lay in an unconscious heap.

  ‘You arrived sooner than I was expecting …’ he said without looking over. ‘I’ve already collected the eggs.’

  Zeke raised the hessian sack, then leant forward to dangle it out of the belfry’s open window. Joss jumped in shock. ‘Zeke – what are you doing? Are you crazy?’

  Only now did Zeke look at him. His eyes were red with tears, his lips held bitterly tight.

  ‘I lied, Joss. Thrall came to me on the day of the ceremony. He promised me all I could ever want or need, so that I wouldn’t have to be prisoner to my father’s demands or my family’s legacy. I wouldn’t be the runt of the litter any more. I’d be my own man, with my own choices to make.’

  ‘You – you’ve been trying to sabotage us from the start …’ Joss said, reeling as he pieced everything together. ‘When the Grim Rider attacked. You were the one who let slip that I was carrying the Constellation Key. You were always trying to get us to quit, to go back home …’

  Zeke returned his attention to the sack, watching it sway in the wind as his elbow slackened. ‘Did you know this was the last Questing Bird left alive? All the others are gone. It’s just this one and its eggs. I wasn’t aware of that. Not until Thrall told me. Countless generations, all gone …’ Zeke pressed his lips together, swallow
ed. ‘I’m not like the others, Joss. I’m not like you. I’m no paladero. I can’t live the rest of my life being made to feel like a failure. I won’t.’

  Joss took a step forward. The branches of the nest crinkled beneath his boot. ‘And you don’t have to. We can talk about this. We can work out how to –’

  ‘How to what? Make me something I’m not? No, Joss. I’ve made my deal. This is what has to happen.’ Zeke held his arm firm as he opened his hand and dropped the sack from the window.

  ‘No!’ Joss rushed forward. He knew it was too late to do anything but still he ran, and as he reached the windowsill he was struck dumb. An impossible creature was flying towards him, borne from the Spires and soaring on fleshless wings. It was larger than any pterosaur, despite its body being nothing more than bone, and flames curled from behind its fangs as it unleashed a terrible roar. It was a dragon, or at least the resurrected remains of one, and it was destined for the Ghost City. It was bound for the belltower.

  ‘Zeke, what in all of Ai is that thing?’ Joss asked in astonishment, forgetting for a moment where he was. A hard reminder came in the form of Zeke’s shock rifle, which Joss turned to see pointed at him just a second before it was fired.

  The charge hit him dead in the chest and he was thrown against the belfry’s brick wall, the breath knocked from his body. The last thing he saw was Zeke framed by the window, the dragon at his back.

  The world went black.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  A MORTAL WITNESS

  JOSS was lost in darkness and seething with pain. He couldn’t remember where he was, or how he had come to be here. He could barely remember his own name. Struggling to open his eyes, his surrounds came to him in a blur. This wasn’t where he’d been, was it? There had been a whirling wind and bone-grey skies.

  Wherever he was, it was cold. Dank. In the distance he could hear water dripping. The air around him was thick with the smell of mould. Trying to move, he found himself chained against a rough stone pillar.

  What had happened to him? Where was he?

  Then, in an overwhelming rush of images, he remembered.

  Zeke. Zeke had done this to him. Zeke had betrayed them all.

  ‘Zadkille! Where are you, you dirt-eating pile of muck! Show yourself!’ Joss shouted in rage, his chains rattling as he strained against them. They would not budge. Joss sagged, his back sliding against the pillar.

  His eyes now adjusted to the darkness, he saw properly for the first time the strange space in which he knelt. Once it would have been a grand hall, most likely a throne room, made of dark stone with a ceiling as high as a watchtower.

  But now it was a ruin, broken and crumbling, with everything tipped at an odd angle as if it was all slowly sinking. The floor was smooth and black and bubbled, like some strange concoction of wax and crystal. If Joss had to guess, he’d have said that someone had poured a resin through the twisted halls, leaving it to solidify into a new set of walkways. Just looking around was enough to give him a headache, if he hadn’t already had one from Zeke’s sneak attack.

  He wondered if he should call out again, to demand the traitor’s attention. He had to be somewhere nearby, after all. Joss could hear whispers in the dark, the voices growing clearer as they approached him.

  ‘Awake, is he?’ someone hissed.

  ‘Yes, my lady,’ replied another, his voice hushed.

  ‘Good. The ritual demands mortal witnesses. And your soul is far too tarnished for that.’

  Footsteps echoed down the hall as two figures neared the pillar. The first was no surprise, his stone mask and black cloak now as familiar to Joss as the buzzards that circled Round Shield Ranch in hatching season. The second figure was a woman dressed in white and gold, a laddered veil drawn tight across her face.

  At least, Joss guessed that she was a woman. She was wrapped so heavily in tattered robes it was hard to tell. She carried with her a spiked leash that stretched up into the air and the shadows beyond, from which a monstrous creature now slunk.

  The skeletal dragon had been a bewildering sight at a distance. In close quarters, it was something else altogether. Chunks of flesh hung from its cobwebbed bones, its empty eye sockets glowing hot as it searched the room blindly, its nostrils billowing smoke. It was an abomination, a thing of black magic, and this woman was its mistress.

  The closer she came the more Joss could see the blurred features of her face through her veil. He forced himself to not look away. This was her, he knew. The subject of a thousand campfire horror stories. The woman that Thrall had spoken of back at Tower Town. The Lady of Life Everlasting. The First and Only of Her Name.

  The Stitched Witch.

  ‘Young, isn’t he?’ she said as she looked Joss over, her voice little more than a rattle that had to escape from between clenched teeth. The stench of decay wafted from her in thick clouds.

  ‘The youngest of the four,’ Thrall confirmed. While his age was no secret, it still worried Joss that the masked man knew enough to speak so confidently about him. ‘And the last survivor of Daheed.’

  ‘Really?’ The witch appeared unusually keen to hear this, and leant in closer to run a bony fingertip along the curve of Joss’s face. He could see her eyeballs rolling beneath her veil, could see the tendons in her cheeks and the places in her gums where her teeth burst through. He shrank away from her as much as his chains would allow.

  ‘And he was carrying this.’ Thrall extended his arm to present Joss’s sword-belt, and the Champion’s Blade that dangled from it. Despite himself, Joss tried to reach for it. His chains clattered again as the Stitched Witch stood up, still hunched even at her full height, and pulled the sword from its sheath. The blade caught what little light there was in the room, reflecting the witch’s face.

  ‘Aurum …!’ she breathed, the word seeping from her with wonder.

  ‘Not gold?’ Thrall asked.

  The Stitched Witch chortled, the sound of it closer to a hacking cough. ‘Easily confused for that, yes. I imagine the fools who gave him this weapon had no idea of its true nature. The mystic properties of aurum and its history are both too little understood. That it has come into our possession is a boon indeed, to say nothing of how useful our captive could prove. How fortunate that our unexpected ally saw fit to bring him here.’ The witch sheathed the Champion’s Blade. ‘Where is our young friend?’

  ‘Here, my lady.’

  Joss glared at the corner of the room to see a golden-haired figure standing there. Zeke didn’t even acknowledge him as he stepped forward with the demeanour of a soldier reporting to his captain.

  ‘You have performed a commendable action today. And you will be duly rewarded,’ the Stitched Witch said. ‘Though we have further need of you yet.’

  ‘Really?’ Zeke said, seemingly shaken by the prospect.

  ‘What’s the matter, Zadkille? Selling your soul not as simple a transaction as you thought it would be?’ Joss spoke up, only to be slapped across the face by the Stitched Witch. Her hand was like a branch of thorns, and Joss could already feel the welt rising on his cheek.

  ‘He will only speak when spoken to, if he knows what’s good for him,’ she said, her dragon rumbling
beside her.

  Joss regarded her for a moment, pulled himself back up onto his knees, and spat a glob of blood at her feet. ‘Knowing what’s good for me has never really been a strength of mine.’

  The witch made a dry hacking sound that might have been laughter. ‘Be as insolent as you want, then. You’ll still find that an acid tongue is not enough to dissolve chains.’ She turned to the masked man beside her. ‘Thrall?’

  ‘Yes, my lady?’

  ‘Open the chamber. Show me the beast.’

  ‘At once, my lady.’ Thrall bowed and walked past Joss to the wall behind him, where he took hold of a large wheel. Cranking it, a pair of rusted steel doors slowly lumbered open.

  ‘I’m sorry about all this, Joss,’ Zeke leant in to whisper as he stared at the mirrored black floor, at the vaulted ceilings that hovered at an angle to them. Anywhere but into Joss’s eyes. ‘It’s not personal, you know.’

  Joss scowled at him. ‘Here’s a clue, Zadkille. When you find yourself working for people in black robes and death masks, it’s safe to say you’ve chosen the wrong side.’

  Zeke looked up, his blue eyes wavering.

  With a final and reverberating clang, the doors finally opened to reveal a domed antechamber. Tilted at the same odd angle as everything else, it might have been where the castle’s throne would have once sat. Instead it now housed an altar that had been carved from the same black resin as the floor. And atop the altar, Joss could see the Questing Bird.

  It had been chained up just as he had and was uttering small squawks as it struggled to awaken. Those squawks grew louder and more worried as the Stitched Witch approached the beast.

  ‘Quiet, my dear. There’s no need for concern,’ the witch whispered, tying the dragon’s leash around a hook that jutted from the wall. ‘Soon you will be at peace, reunited with your offspring and all the rest of your kin. And you will have given me the greatest gift of all …’