by D Mickleson
The room was small and unadorned, its bare walls not built, but seemingly cut into the living rock. In the center was a stone casket, lidless, sturdy but austere as the room housing it. Triston approached the casket reverentially, knowing who must lie here. The human frame was indeed pathetic after the dragon, though this man had been very large, a giant even for a tall race.
The Dragonslayer.
But Triston gave no further thought to the dead man’s bones, distracted by the object he bore in his bony fingers. It was a crown of breathtaking beauty. Its base was dragonbone, nothing else but fire shone with its own inner light. But by some lofty craft, a sheen of pearl covered the whole, softening its glow while casting off delicate rainbow hues into the air. An exquisite filigree of gold, shaped and glowing like flames, ran between inlaid jewels. Triston didn’t know their name but thought they looked like purple diamonds, sparkling eternally in the crown’s inner light.
This, surely, was Willbrand’s Coronal, a legendary masterpiece of style and finery, a priceless historical artifact. Here was something he could take with him easily without fear of drowning in the pool. This crown alone must be worth ten trips for the rest of the hoard. Here, surely, was Magog’s Fury, the Relic of Power.
Triston reached into the coffin and lifted it.
Or at least, he tried to. He gave a second tug, but the thing wouldn’t budge. Willbrand appeared to be holding it in a death grip. Triston grabbed one bony arm and yanked hard. The entire skeleton shook and rattled, but the arm held stubbornly fast. Angry now, Triston shook the other arm, cursing. The room seemed to be growing hotter and his sweat came in little rivers down his brow. He needed to get to water fast before he became seriously parched.
“Willbrand, you don’t need it anymore! Just give it up!” The bones creaked and groaned in answer, but the white fingers gripped their treasure as tightly as ever.
Triston grabbed one bony phalange and prepared to snap it off, but a sudden thought stopped him. His father had possessed the Relic maybe, but no account ever said anything about a crown. Trinian may have entered this very room, but he had left greedy Willbrand’s treasure in place. He must have, or the fingers would already be broken. His father had been a man of honor, of this Meria had assured him over and over while the townsfolk spread their gossip. Trinian would have considered it a disgrace to take a treasure from a dead man, even a treasure as priceless as this.
Reproaching himself, he dropped the stubborn hand and turned his back on the casket. A second glance around the room told him what he already knew. There was nothing else of value here. If the crown was not a Relic of Power, he would find none in this room.
He made to climb out, but a sudden voice stopped him, the same deep, dry voice he’d heard before from far below the earth. “Will you not take the Coronal?”
Triston struggled up into the skull and hurried out of the dragon’s jaws. “No, dragon,” he said over his shoulder as he sped away.
The dragon sighed again, this time with a long exhalation of despair. The earth trembled beneath Triston’s feet and he fell.
“Then I am yours, human,” came the voice.
Lying on his back facing Magog’s skull, Triston saw the glow leap from it straight into his hand, straight into the dragonbone he still held. The bone flared with living flames, but his hand remained undamaged and unhurt.
He rose slowly to his feet, his eyes on the burning spike. It crackled and sparked with life while all else was dark and silent. He could still see the dragon’s fierce eyes, but only in the light of this dragonbone. Magog’s skull no longer shone with its own light. The moment Triston left that place, the dragon’s head would be lost in utter darkness.
But Magog would not be there. As Triston stared at his flaming hand, seeing each vein, even each bone-joint clearly in the burning light, as he watched fire dance inside and outside his flesh, he knew. He had no doubt.
He was holding the spirit of Magog within this dragonbone.
The storm’s gloomy remnants were gone, and in a sky ablaze with stars the waning moon shone brightly. Brightly and stained with blood.
Triston stood beside the pool, staring north up the hill where the crimson glow seemed to hover like a death shroud. A little way ahead, standing on a high outcropping, a tall silhouette was watching the sky in perfect stillness.
Triston climbed up and stood beside the figure, the dragonbone sparkling in his hand.
“Triston! I thought you were dead. I tried to follow but I never found any opening. But I couldn’t find your body so I didn’t know what to—wait, you found something. What is that?”
“What is that?” Triston asked, pointing up the hill toward the red light.
Alden followed his gaze. “I think—Triston, it’s Wyrmskull. Wyrmskull is burning.”
FOURTEEN
MINDLORD
We was lined up for battle, all hootin’ ‘n hollerin’ ‘gainst the rebel filth. Then before I know’d it I gutted Jervis ‘cross his belly. And him my best friend ‘n all. Then I stabbed captain in the neck.
–Imperial Archives, Final Testimony Preceding Execution, Vol. 224, prisoner 142382
“So let me . . . get this straight,” Alden grunted, his breath coming in ragged gasps. “There was treasure . . . but you just . . . left it lying there?”
“I got what I came for. Besides, Magog doesn’t care for gold anymore.”
Alden gaped. “Wait—what?”
They were clinging to a steep outcropping which jutted up from the hillside overlooking Wyrmskull. From his high vantage, Triston watched dim, shadowy figures running pell-mell down the smoke-shrouded streets. Their looting and burning meant little to him. But when the axe-wielding mob found a stray villager hiding behind a barrel down one alley, and dragged the wretch out into the street screaming and pleading, and tormented and slew him, and laughed all the while, then his heart’s wrath burned ever hotter. The heat seared in his chest painfully as if he’d swallowed a blazing coal, and he marveled that he still lived.
Magog’s Fury. Is that what he bore? If so, the name was well-chosen.
“Catch your breath. This isn’t going to be easy.”
Alden stared incredulously. “We just sprinted up the whole damn hill.”
“Well, we’re only getting started.”
“Where’d you put your new toy?”
Triston patted his chest where the dragonbone lay hidden beneath his tunic, bound tightly to the same leather cord as the map. When the pain first came he’d thought the bone was searing his skin, but on closer inspection the fiery artifact was only mildly warm.
The burning was inside his chest.
“It looks like nearly all the survivors are barricaded in the Fighter’s Hold,” he said, “and we’ve only got the one sword. You sure you can cut our way in?”
Alden gave Triston a disbelieving scowl. “Hey, it’s me. But this treasure business ain’t over. Listen, I’m not sure, but I think only you can get in there.” Ignoring Triston’s quizzical look, he pressed on. “Here’s the deal. We tear up this horde first,” he said, nodding sideways toward the Wildmen, the flames dancing wildly in his eyes, “and tear up the dragon’s hoard after that.”
Triston winced at the mention of the dragon’s gold.
“What?” demanded Alden a second time.
“Nothing.” He wasn’t sure if the reaction was his or the dragon’s. “Look, about the treasure . . . .” He shook his head. Bearing the dragon’s wrath was beginning to feel like riding a bucking stallion with nothing to hold on to.
“What?”
“I’ll try,” he finally answered. Alden was staring at him intently. After a moment, Alden swore under his breath, gave him one last scowl, then flipped around on the rock-face. Using his boots as brakes, he slid down and disappeared into the tall grass at the base of the palisade. Triston followed hard on his heels.
One toss of their Luskoll rope, looped at one end, and they were scaling up and over. Triston tried hard
not to think about how it would feel to slip and impale his groin on one of the palisade’s sharpened beams as he cautiously mounted the wall. Together they leapt into the blind shadows behind the tannery, which was unharmed and still very smelly.
For good or ill, Traven’s family was gone. The two young men pressed on toward the village square, creeping forward through whatever shadows the night provided, and sprinting where the ubiquitous flames made stealth impossible. Wild laughter sounded here and there, mixed horribly with women’s screams and—so Triston believed—far off voices of children crying for some loved one to come and wake them from this nightmare. Rushing footsteps and collapsing buildings echoed all around. But though now and then a silhouette rose up, dark and faceless in the copper haze, no one moved to halt their progress.
They reached the square, bursting out of a side-alley and skidding to a halt, amazed.
Triston first noticed the light, brazen, livid, broad as the noontide sun. Every rut in that grassless acre and every sweaty and soot-covered face was clearly visible, for the wooden heart of Wyrmskull was all ablaze.
He saw Sarconius on the far side. Robed in flowing crimson, he watched the rape of Wyrmskull with eyes which gleamed with—Triston felt it even from afar—expectancy. Something marvelous was about to happen. Sarconius was sure of it.
Milling around the Meridian lord was a host of squat axemen, leather-clad perhaps, but decked with leaves and twigs so they resembled walking stumps. They shouted and cheered in a guttural tongue, embracing one another by standing face-to-face and grabbing the other’s head, shaking it while growling.
One building remained. Alone in Wyrmskull impervious to fire, the stone Fighter’s Hold stood three stories high like an island in a storm-tossed sea. A flimsy barricade of overturned carts surrounded the Hold, the mangled corpses of villagers and axemen strewn thickly about it.
There appeared to be a lull in the fighting. The villagers no longer defended the barricade, seeming to prefer the shelter of the stone walls for a last stand. For their part, Sarconius and his jubilant axemen, while celebrating as if the battle was already over, no longer pressed the attack. Why they waited Triston couldn’t guess.
All this he saw in an instant, but there was no further time for wonder. At that moment a resounding tumult overwhelmed the besieger’s revelry. All eyes turned, and Triston was grieved to see the ancient inn collapse in a flame-wreathed heap of groaning timbers and shattering glass. A triumphant clamor rose up from the axemen, but Triston lowered his head. Unhappy as he had been, the Dragon’s Rest had nevertheless been his home since his mother died, the second home to be burned to the ground that summer. As his thoughts turned to his mother, the fire in his heart enlarged and the heat burst outward into every fiber of his being. Surely his body would ignite and collapse at any moment, just like the inn—
“Come on! Now’s our chance while they’re distracted,” came a fierce whisper nearby. Alden was tugging at his arm. “Trist, stay with me. Here we go.”
They ran, the Fighter’s sword in Alden’s upraised hand leading the way. Heads turned in their direction as they passed within the Farthian ranks. Alden ignored them, only slowing to fell those unfortunate enough to stand directly in their path. Some of these made as though to embrace them, not realizing their mistake until Alden’s lightning strike sliced their throats. Others stared with suddenly widening eyes, trying to raise axes with hands and arms they didn’t yet realize had just been severed. Most had no time to react, only grinning stupidly as Alden ran them through, blissfully ignorant that their life was over.
In seconds their blood-streaked charge took them right through the wild horde to the barricade. Clearing an overturned cart with a nimble bound, they reached the oaken doors, closed fast against them. Alden drove all his momentum into a shoulder thrust, but the solid wood held fast.
“Bloody hells! Haven’t they set watchmen in the windows above? OPEN UP!” he shouted, banging the unyielding barrier with his sword hilt.
Triston hadn’t taken his eyes off the axemen. The element of surprise was gone, and now they closed in, grim and silent, heedless it seemed of any archers in the Hold. Indeed, no shaft flew as the invaders pushed past the barricade and bore down on the trapped men.
Each second held what seemed hours of thought for Triston as he watched approaching death. He felt no fear; there was no room in his heart for anything but the ever growing burning.
“Ah!” said Triston suddenly, fixing his gaze on the nearest foe. Squat, even for a Farthian, the man was leering up at him with a gurgling laughter in his throat and gnarled fingers upraised, drenched in blood.
His brother’s blood.
This realization, not the man’s grotesque appearance, had caused Triston’s exclamation. He couldn’t imagine how he knew it, but he had no doubts. Cloaked by chaos and night shadows, this man had repeatedly stabbed his own brother just minutes earlier in some narrow alleyway. In fact, now that he thought about it, Triston knew why he’d done it. The man, Olfthar, was the younger by two years, and set to inherit nothing when their ailing father finally succumbed to the shakes. It wouldn’t be long now.
Then, like the opening of a floodgate, a rush and babble of thoughts and feelings poured into his mind from all around. Every voice was different, but few thoughts were unique. Here and there a man longed to return to the shadowed peace of the Wildwood, where wife and child anxiously awaited his return. For those who had never left the forest, nearly all of them, a vague but pervasive fear prevailed at the lack of trees. But overwhelmingly, each heart pounded hatred of the villagers and exultation in the hopelessness of those trapped in the strange stone tower.
Perhaps five seconds had passed since they reached the door, a lifetime it seemed to Triston. Out of the corner of his eye, Alden saw him swaying like a drunkard. He had scrunched up his face and was holding his hands to his ears.
Alden felt a stab of pity. Approaching death did that to some people. He’d seen it before. You never knew who would break until the moment came. He gave up pounding on the door and stepped in front of his tortured friend, pointing his blade at the closest enemy.
“You die first,” he said with a smile.
“STOP!”
Triston heard his own voice rumble like thunder and felt a sudden release of Magog’s pent-up wrath.
The Wildmen halted to the last man. Those at the forefront of the advancing throng fell backward like leaves in a wind, their swinging axes flying from suddenly limp fingers. With an abruptness that dropped Alden’s jaw, nearly the entire force simply sat down at his feet. Those who resisted jerked weirdly then toppled like felled trees.
“What the hell is going on?” Alden murmured, more alarmed now than ever.
Triston became aware that his vision was dimming and felt his balance reel. As the darkness grew, he wondered why he hadn’t just opened the doors himself. As soon as his thoughts turned there, he felt them, knew each fiber of wood. With a flick of his mind they ground inward against a makeshift rampart of piled tables within.
Suddenly he felt a new mind approach, fierce and wild with joy. Sarconius was drawing near. Then the stone threshold rushed up to claim Triston and night descended.
“Blowed if I know how you two got in. Trusted Grunden and his men to block the door but that just show’s you, got to do it yourself to get it right. First lesson I learned when they made me Chief years ago. Ah well, won’t be long now no how. Why they don’t just attack and end it I haven’t the foggiest. Bloody Wildmen hootin’ and growlin’ like beasts. Curse the Farthians. A real nightmare, and not how I would have it end if I had my way.”
“We don’t have to die today, Chief. Wait—Grunden? What about Captain Brand?”
“Dead, isn’t he? Died defending the barricade while the women and kids got in. A lotta good men went down there. Won’t be long now for the rest of us. Having you gives us a glimmer of hope, Ald m’boy, but it’s not enough. Not by a long shot. Ah, Traven, send those two back t
o the cellar with the rest of ‘em, will you? No Arloon, stop. Fighters only up here.”
“Alden! You’re alive! Oh Ald! They say we’re all gonna die! But now that you’re here—”
“This is my last day in Wyrmskull, Kara. I’m sorry. We’re through. You’d better go back to the cellar.”
“Don’t you tell my daughter what to do! Sweetie don’t cry. I told you he was no good for you. Kara, wait! Now see here, boy—”
Triston lay and listened to the dreamlike voices. They were familiar to him but he couldn’t place their names or faces. Something was happening, of that he was sure. Something important. He willed his memory to work but his will was weary, wavering. He needed to wake up, get up now. They needed him, he knew it. The urgency grew, and there was the heat. Less now than before, but growing, always growing. Only he could help . . . . Somewhere a girl was sobbing frantically. He lay and listened, and the sound slowly drew him back from the pit he’d fallen into. He sat up. The weeping was far away, below them. Many small voices were weeping.
“There he is! Told you he’d pull through.” Alden was at his side, deep relief in his voice. “You fainted. I pulled you in and bolted the door myself. Seems we fought our way into a bit of a bind. Most of our fighting men are lost.” He leaned forward and whispered, his blurry face inches from Triston’s. “Can you—can it—help? What you did back there—”
“The hero rises. The dragon stirs,” croaked an unpleasant voice behind him. Triston craned his neck, blinking, willing the image to come into view. “You cannot tame the dragon, boy. You can only hope to ride him for a while before he consumes you.”
“Get your old man out, Traven. He’s raving mad,” boomed Gorbald from somewhere off to the right. “You were better off asleep, Trist-lad.”
Triston stood up and looked around. His vision focused a little. A man—Traven? Yes, Traven the tanner, was dragging a struggling graybeard from the room. It was a large room. He’d been here before, perhaps many times. High-backed chairs lined the walls surrounding a vast, oaken table. Men sat or slumped against the wall, many bloodstained, all weary. Some slept while others sat red-eyed and tense.
