My name… My name…
He realized he had just forgotten his own name. He began to wonder if he’d ever had one, if he’d ever been anything but a nameless, wretched thing set at the center of a firestorm. An image formed in his mind: a great, burning flower with a skull at its center. A death’s head.
That’s me, he thought then laughed.
Only then did he realize he was holding something. Alternately cold and hot, it frightened him. It hurt him more than the flames did. He tried to throw it away, but it seemed to have become a part of his arm. Red tendrils snaked through it, into his skin, winding up his arm, into his chest. He imagined them flowing into his brain—not tendrils but rivers. Rivers of blood. Blood on fire.
Gods, I’ve gone mad. What am I? Where am I?
He heard someone call his name again. He knew somehow that it was his name, though he could not hear it over the buzzing roar. He knew, too, that the voice should have been familiar. Someone he knew—the voice belonged to someone he trusted. A woman, he thought, but he could not reach her. Every step toward her voice only seemed to lead him in the wrong direction.
He concentrated on the flames instead of running from them. For the first time, he distinguished their color—purple—and something else: the flames were coming from his own body. They were him.
Fear turned to fascination. He stopped running and stared at his hands. He still could not drop the thing he was holding in his right hand, but whatever it was, it no longer frightened him. He studied it. It looked like a span of white-hot fire, slightly curved, a little longer than his arm. The end he held seemed to be composed of tiny twisting dragons.
The woman called to him again. Her voice came from all around him. His panic returned. Though he knew she only wanted to help him, he couldn’t let her see him panicking. He had to free himself first—or at least figure out what he was, what he’d become. He ran again.
But the woman followed. The voice eased in all around him, into his mind, soothing him like water. Slowly, slowly, the buzzing faded. In its place, he saw forests, walled cities, faces he could not recognize. He thought that the visions must be memories, though not his own, and he had the odd feeling that this had happened to him before.
One image commanded his attention. It was a woman, though she was not the woman who had called to him. Her face seemed both strange and familiar. He could not wrest his gaze from her. She had long, tapered ears, violet eyes, and hair the color of a vast, starless sky. And she was naked.
Gods, she’s beautiful…
She turned to face him, as though she’d heard his thoughts. Though she looked young, he had the strange feeling that she was old—far older than anyone he had ever known. She smiled sadly. Then she, too, was surrounded by fire. It surged about her thin, pale body, ferocious but absolutely silent—purple at first, then white. When she opened her mouth as though to speak—To warn me, he thought, though he did not know why—she stiffened in pain.
He tried to approach her, to help her. But suddenly, he could not move. She turned away from him. Wings of white-hot flame blossomed from her naked back. She leapt into the air and was gone.
Moments later, he heard her scream. Darkness flooded his senses, as though all the flames had been sucked from his universe. Pain vanished, but something fell from his grasp. Something precious. A fresh panic filled him. He turned and twisted in nothingness, trying in vain to scream.
A new image flooded his sight. It began as a cold, rocky landscape beneath a starless sky. Then stars burst to life, forming the constellations one by one. On the earth below, bare rocks blossomed into dark grass and deep-purple flowers. The landscape blurred, shimmered, and cleared. And he saw dragons.
They filled this new, alien landscape of dark plains and silver lakes. Some slept while others flew on two, four, even six wings. Some were feathered, others scaled. One with horns that curved like scimitars flew next to another dragon with antlers and broad golden eyes.
Something compelled him to turn his head. He rotated slowly, taking in the whole horizon. More of them dotted the dark, endless plains. Hundreds, thousands, even millions. Far away, a great kaleidoscope of them leapt into the air and passed over the stars like a cloud of moths. Such was their beauty that he wept.
He was still weeping when the storm began. No water fell from the heavens, but he heard great and terrible thunder in the distance. The dragons reared their heads, craning their long necks toward the sound. Many of them cried out, screeching like enormous birds—not in fear, he sensed, but with grief.
Something blinded him. At the same time, a man’s scream filled his mind, the horizon, then the whole world. By the time his vision returned, he saw a great burning shape fall from the heavens, arcing toward the distant horizon. It looked for a moment like a man, flailing in pain. Then it was gone. Everything disappeared. A new horizon of green forests and ash-gray mountains appeared—the same world, but it was older. Much older.
He still saw dragons, but far fewer. Then his vision focused on one in particular. Tiny compared to the rest, covered in scales of alternating brass and silver, with two wings like wind-filled sails, it still dwarfed the creatures hunting it. The hunters, men and women in dark cloaks, carried no weapons. But flames leapt from their hands.
The little dragon screamed and fell. For some reason, it could not fight back. He could do nothing but watch as the hunters encircled it. One by one, they touched it, laughing. And the dragon screamed as the hunters’ touch sucked the fire from beneath its scales and sapped the life from its bones, until its eyes darkened to the color of ash.
Then he was burning again. The old panic returned. He ran. But he had not gone far when the flames parted like a curtain. He saw himself. Small, frail, and bloody, he stooped to pick something off a wooden floor. A sword. Just a sword. But as soon as he touched it, the blade turned to white light. Light turned to fire. He screamed. He tried to throw away the sword. But he heard a woman’s voice—but not the woman from earlier. It was Silwren, telling him what he must do.
At last, he saw her hovering in front of him. Naked, burning but unharmed, she embraced him. His skin tingled as though he were being prodded by alternating jolts of fire and ice. He felt a surprising surge of lust, replaced quickly by panic.
She was not melting into him. No, she was melting into the sword! He cried out for her to stop, but it was too late.
“I’m sorry,” she said then said it again.
He opened his mouth to answer, but a fresh wash of violet flames flooded his sight. The awful buzzing returned. He could not tell whether he was running or being carried. But the sensation did not last long.
As though a veil had been pulled from his eyes, the madness left him. He remembered his name. He realized what he was holding. And for the first time, he saw that instead of a wooden floor, he was standing on a marble walkway, surrounded by corpses.
Shade screamed in victory and wrenched his sword from the body of a dying Sylv. Another came at him—one dressed in the black fighting garb of a Shal’tiar—but Shade burned the man’s legs out from under him, stepped forward, and cleaved the head from his shoulders. Then he stepped through the shattered remnants of the Moon Gate.
The actual wooden gates had already been hacked to splinters, letting wave upon wave of Olgrym through. More Olgrym scaled the walls, scattering most of the Moon Gate’s defenders.
Shaffrilon is ours. Gods, we’ve done it! We’ve finally won.
Shade wept even as the sight of so much blood quickened his pulse to a maddening rhythm. He took a deep breath to calm himself. The battle was far from over. The Sylvs would try to flee Shaffrilon via the walkways that joined the city to the surrounding trees. If they were not stopped, they would regroup and continue the fighting.
Moreover, glancing up at the sky, beyond the endless height of the World Tree, he saw the sky roiling with dark clouds. A storm was brewing. That could slow the fighting and give the surviving Sylvs a greater chance to hide.
Shade resisted the urge to fight his way to the Sorcerer-General’s side. Fadarah could take care of himself. Better he guard the remaining Shel’ai in case Silwren came back.
He had already tried repeatedly to reach Silwren via mindspeak. She had not answered. He could not sense her nearby. Perhaps she and the Isle Knight had already fled. A surge of jealousy brightened the wytchfire smoldering from his fist. That his wife had betrayed her own kind was bad enough, but to think of her sharing company with a Human—
A fresh sound interrupted the thought, rising over even the screams of dying Sylvs. For the first time in his life, Shade heard Olgrym screaming in terror. The bottom dropped out of his stomach. He turned to the other Shel’ai and found them staring back, equal parts alarmed and horrified.
“Silwren?” one gasped, looking to him for confirmation.
“Stay back,” Shade called to the other sorcerers. He started toward Fadarah. Gods, don’t let it be Silwren! He was not sure he could really face her, and kill her, as Fadarah had commanded.
The panicked howls of the Olgrym grew even louder. As far as he could see, their entire charge had ground to a halt. Some Olgrym had fallen prostrate on the battlefield. Others covered their eyes. Still more threw down their weapons and fled, nearly trampling Shade in the process.
Doomsayer passed him, brushing his shoulder. The Olgish chieftain was backpedaling to keep pace with the ranks, but his expression spoke of brutal fascination. Shade remembered that look.
He directed his gaze up the Path of Crowns, but the retreating Olgrym obscured his view. Shade wished he still had his bloodmare so that he might have risen in the saddle for a better view. He spied a nearby heap of bodies and scaled it. Ignoring the dampness of warm blood and the press of cold flesh, he reached the ghastly summit.
What he saw made him wish it was Silwren after all. All the fight and bloodlust drained out of him in an instant. He stared a moment longer then fell with a choking sob. He fell hard, bashing his forehead on a dead Sylv’s armored shoulder, but he hardly noticed. Shaking, he started to crawl away on his hands and knees. Then something stopped him.
A woman’s voice echoed in his mind. “Kith’el.”
Shade froze. Then he straightened. He stood, wiping the blood from his eyes. “Silwren?” he called out weakly. He turned.
By then, nearly all the Olgrym had fled beyond the shattered Moon Gate, but a few remained prostrate. They whimpered like frightened children.
The remaining Sylvs might have killed them with ease, but most had already withdrawn farther up the Path of Crowns. They formed a shield wall so that they could stare, terrified, at the bizarre scene unfolding below.
Shade stared as a familiar red-haired Human made his way down the Path of Crowns. Instead of armor, the Knight wore bloody, singed clothing. With a burning sword, he cut down Olg after Olg. Then he jerked to a stop, as though he had been struck by an arrow. The flames dimmed, still pulsing, and the sword’s bearer looked down at himself as though waking from a daze.
The remaining Olgrym pulled back. Fadarah stood alone. Shade was about to cry out to him, beg him to withdraw. Fadarah charged. Wytchfire flowed from both hands in bright gouts, more furious than any spell Shade had ever seen him cast. The bruise-purple flames flowed over the Isle Knight, completely obscuring him.
The flames surged past where the Knight had stood, even causing the Sylvs massed behind him to cry out and withdraw farther up the walkway. Shade felt a surge of hope. But the flames cleared, absorbed into the sword, and the Knight stood unharmed.
If Fadarah was afraid, he did not show it. The Sorcerer-General stood as straight as a statue while the Isle Knight strode up to him, hefted his burning sword, and cut a blazing swath through breastplate, flesh, and bone. Shade thought the Knight would strike again. Instead, he stepped back, the burning sword held in the crook of his arm.
Fadarah stood a moment longer, wobbled, and fell. His body crashed to the ground and rolled down the marble walkway. Shade screamed in rage and grief then ran to where Fadarah stopped. Fadarah lay on his side. Shade could not see his face, though he saw blood and smoke seep from the great rend in the Sorcerer-General’s armor.
All at once, the silence shattered as the Sylvs broke into a thunderous cheer. At the same time, those Shel’ai Shade had left at the Moon Gate howled in despair and ran to join him. Thunder rumbled, and Shade felt the first drops of rain. Shade came to his senses. He helped the others seize Fadarah by his arms and legs and haul him toward the Moon Gate. As they moved, he glanced at Fadarah’s face. His eyes were blank and wide open, but Shade thought he saw a flicker of movement from one of Fadarah’s tattoos: a weak pulse beneath the taut gray skin of his throat.
Shade expected what remained of the Sylvan army to bear down on them. But even amid their celebration, the Sylvs had drawn no closer, still blocked by the Isle Knight and his burning sword. For his own part, the Knight met Shade’s gaze, his soot-smeared expression unreadable. Shade looked away.
EPILOGUE
Brahasti ignored the claps of thunder, but he could not ignore the mailed fist pounding on his door. Cursing, he climbed off the Sylvan girl and made his way to the door without bothering to dress. “Stay still,” he called over his shoulder. But the girl had already used one hand to wipe the blood from her nose and the other to drag a sheet over her body. He made a mental note to have Karhaati send him captive Sylvs who spoke Common Tongue.
Dagath stood in the hallway, his hollow eye socket illuminated by the lamp he was holding. His good eye blinked at Brahasti’s lack of clothing. Meanwhile, Brahasti grimaced. So far, the mercenary captain had obeyed Brahasti’s orders to keep the socket covered. Apparently, tonight was an exception.
Brahasti considered striking him, even though Dagath was far bigger than he was. “Since you’re interrupting something I ordered not to be interrupted, I trust you have a good excuse.”
“Four men just arrived outside the villa. No sigil. All on foot.”
“Four?”
Dagath nodded.
Brahasti stroked the Dhargothi-style goatee he’d spent the last few months growing. The hair was braided with copper bands that jingled when he touched them. It’s too early for Karhaati to recall me to the front. Besides, he’d send men on bloodmares—and enough of them to haul me back in chains if I refused.
A dreadful thought occurred to him. “Are they Shel’ai?”
“No, General.”
“Excellency. I told you, I’m tired of General.” Brahasti poured a cup of wine. As he turned, he saw that the Sylvan girl had crawled out of bed and armed herself with Brahasti’s favorite weapon—an Ivairian-style shortsword he’d taken from Dagath for some infraction he couldn’t remember. The girl had drawn the sword and, still nude, stepped into a fighting stance that indicated she knew how to use what she was holding.
Brahasti rolled his eyes. “Another damn Wyldkin! When is Karhaati going to send me some baby-soft city dweller to play with?”
Dagath had already drawn his replacement sword—a curved, long-handled sword supposedly taken off a dead Isle Knight. He set down his lantern. As soon as Brahasti stepped aside, Dagath growled and charged.
The Sylvan girl’s eyes widened at the sight of Dagath, but she reacted quickly. Stepping aside, she flicked the shortsword, drawing a bright scratch in Dagath’s thigh plate. The sellsword howled in rage, using his sword’s greater reach to hold the girl at bay while he fingered the deep scratch in the metal.
“Now you’ve done it,” Brahasti muttered. He retrieved a goblet off the floor, filled it from a pitcher of wine, and sat in a chair to watch.
The Sylvan girl was even better than he’d expected. She dodg
ed each of Dagath’s blows as though she were made of smoke. She carved a scratch in Dagath’s breastplate then drew real blood when a well-aimed lunge caught him just beneath one spaulder.
Dagath swore and beat her back. Steel rang on steel. Brahasti watched with growing interest. He wondered if she hadn’t just been playing meek with him, waiting for a chance to strike. The thought that he’d actually been in danger excited him.
Dagath took two more blows, neither of which drew blood, but it was clear that for all the Wyldkin’s skill, she was used to fighting on the open plains. She backed into a table, and Dagath almost had her. She managed to slip past his blade, but the sellsword kept advancing. Gradually, he used his height and greater reach to drive the girl into a corner.
Brahasti took a sip of wine and savored the wild fear he saw in her eyes. He had half a mind to order Dagath to take her alive. Dagath loomed over her, so close that she could only avoid his blade by dodging. She ducked beneath one swing, then another, before Dagath split her open.
Brahasti drained his goblet. “Pity. Now, someone will have to clean my floors.” He stood. “Thank you, Captain. But as I recall, you came here to tell me something.”
Dagath was breathing hard. He wiped his curved blade on his sleeve, sheathed it, then stooped to retrieve the shortsword. As though just remembering his master had addressed him, he turned. “General?”
“Excellency,” Brahasti corrected, with a laugh. “The four men outside. I trust they aren’t beggars, or else you’d have killed them already. So who are they?” And should I be worried?
Dagath blinked. “Don’t know, Excellency. But there’s something strange about ’em. Three are big as houses. Lem and Will fired crossbows at two of them, and the bolts glanced off. Rang like armor, but there ain’t no armor but kingsteel that can block a crossbow bolt at that range.”
Knightswrath (The Dragonkin Trilogy Book 2) Page 40
