by Aaron Pogue
I started to struggle to my feet but a drake leaped from the darkness and landed with all four talons on my back. I slammed hard against the stone again, breath driven from my lungs. I wheezed a cough and clung desperately to the tiny fragment of my mind I still controlled.
The monster laughed again. It brought that terrible head close to me until I could feel the puffing heat of its breath, and it spoke into my agony. You are a diverting puzzle, it said. And you are useful bait. But do not dare imagine you are any more than a plaything. You will be food for my drakes before three moons have set.
"Why?" I asked. The word sounded shrill in my own head. "Why do you want me at all?"
The head rolled to one side. A flash of curiosity from the monster broke across my mind like a wave off the sea. You don't know? Because you stole from me. No one steals from me and lives.
I frowned. I turned my eyes back to the mountain of treasure and shook my head. "I have...I've stolen nothing from you."
The monster reared until it towered above me. Even the vastness of the cavern seemed strained by the dragon's immensity. It roared until the very air grew heavy with the sound. Then it slammed down hard enough I could feel the shock of it through the stone, and with no warning at all it burst the bubble of sanity I'd built within my mind.
But there was no pain. There was no screaming fury. There was just a moment's perfect clarity as it seized my thoughts. My perspective shifted as the monster dragged my awareness up and out of my body. I'd done the same once before, when I was still new to the wizard's sight, and now as then I hung some distance above my body and looked down on me.
I did not burn with the bright red light of other men. I did not glow noonday bright, like the wizards I'd seen. There was a thread of red, a cocoon of pure white light, but the power of my life was tainted, dimmed, by a bed of absolute blackness that suffused me. All three energies washed together, roiled, and left me cloudy and indistinct—but also unique, unlike any power I had ever seen.
And then the vision vanished. I fell into my mind again, into my body, and the monster was barely there at all. Instead I felt the full weight of my fear, the vast inventory of my injuries, starving hunger and burning thirst—all the angry complaints of a body dragged far beyond its limits. And over it all, I felt a devastating understanding.
"Vechernyvetr," I thought. The black dragon that had spared my life and stretched that blackness behind my soul.
He belongs to me, the monster said, sparing my mind by its own restraint. I had no strength left to hold it off. By whatever trickery you have stolen his power, you have stolen it from me. Better for you if you had stolen more, for I can snuff you out like a pale ember.
The monster turned away from me, its enormous tail flicking casually through the air above me with force enough to raze a city's walls. It climbed back to the top of its hoard, turned once in place, and settled down almost like a cat. It ended with its head resting on a spill of silver coins just above the stone floor and fixed baleful eyes on me.
But you will make poor bait if you are dead, it said. So rest. And heal. I have use for you yet.
I heard a beating of wings, felt the blast of air, and then a nightmare swarm of dragons came to tend to my needs.
5. In the Dragon's Lair
There was no real sense of time in the dragon's lair. I felt hunger and thirst and exhaustion in waves, and none of them was ever satisfied. The dragons brought me meat too charred to recognize, and I devoured it despite the toothmarks and the dirt. They allowed me to leave my hole to drink from the pool that tasted like sulfur and ash. Apart from that they kept me in my cage and under watch.
At first I tried my best to sleep—too exhausted to fight them by any other means—but I could scarcely rest in the heart of such a den of monsters. They scraped and thumped. They hissed and roared. Fire blasted and gold spilled. From time to time an adult dragon would dive into the pool with a screaming splash that sent heated water spilling all the way to my prison. Then the water would steam and hiss while the dragon rumbled a purr loud enough to shake the stone floor.
It was a place of constant motion, an endless battle of primal forces, and every moment of it a stark reminder how small I was. Even the drakes were larger than me, fast and strong and fierce. The adult dragons could have carried me in one talon, and the huge red monster loomed over it all like a mountain.
That monster was the worst. The rest of the beasts ignored me, even when they served me, but any time I fell beneath the monster's eyes I could feel its attention on me. It washed into my mind from time to time, too, pouring hot and slow like molten iron, pooling behind my thoughts and memories. It tore me from my dreams, it shattered my careful exercises, it always came without warning. Every time I had to fight to keep from screaming. I had to fight to keep my sanity.
It spoke to me too. It taunted me. Such a pretty girl, it said, the first time it ripped me from uneasy rest. I have seen that girl somewhere before.
I only lay on my side on the cold stone, eyes straining wide and heart hammering, and fought to raise my defenses. While I did, the monster washed among my memories. I saw Isabelle again as I'd seen her in my dream, begging me to come back home. That memory dissolved, replaced with one of her riding with me out to the ruined fortress, telling me about her lands. And then one of her walking with me in her father's garden. Of her listening in fascination as I tried to describe life at the Academy. Of her waiting, bold and beautiful, outside the door to the king's study on the day we first met.
Those memories crashed against my will, bright and clear, more precious to me than all the treasure in the monster's hoard. I wanted to wrap them around me and get lost in them, but I could feel the writhing thread of the monster's malicious curiosity as it dredged them up, one after the other. It was looking for her. It was studying her.
So I fought my favorite memories. I forced them away along with the dragon's presence in my head. It took every last gasp of determination, but in the end I won the battle. I built my corner of careful, empty control and watched the memory fade away like a dream. Then I blinked my eyes clear and rose to stare up at the monster.
It rolled its shoulders, acres of leather wing rustling uneasily, and then it turned its head away. I can find her when I need her, it said.
Before I could answer, it lashed out at me. With nothing but its will, striking only in my head, it buried me beneath an agony as bright and hot as forgefire. I screamed and screamed and screamed.
Some time later I felt its attention come pouring over me while I was washing my face in the bitter pool. This time I was better prepared, and I raised my defenses quickly. I knelt there, unmoving, waiting for the attack to begin, but for a long time nothing happened. The monster hung dark and heavy in the back of my mind, but it made no other move.
At last I growled deep in my throat. "What do you want of me?"
Only what is mine.
I started to rise, to turn and face the monster, but it hit me with a stab of perfect agony in the back of my left knee, and I fell hard to the stone floor. The first pain began to fade, but another stabbed down just beneath my left shoulder blade, as though someone had pinned me to the earth with a broadhead spear. Behind that came pain in the arch of my right foot, then stabbing sharp across my throat. Blackness hovered before my eyes, but I never passed out.
The pain went on and on while the monster toyed with me, and behind all the agony I felt its interested curiosity. It was amused, and patient, and pleased.
When at last the monster tired of me, I crawled back to my hole. I dragged the stone back over its top and lay broken in the darkness. In time exhaustion overwhelmed the lingering pain, but I held sleep at bay. I pressed myself up into a crouch and carefully erected the walls within my mind.
It was easier without the monster hammering at them. Weariness slowed me, but I could not afford to sleep. I could not maintain my concentration asleep, and after the monster's meticulous torture I dared not let it have com
plete control. I mastered my fragile emotions. I mastered my body's pain and my mind's exhaustion. I mastered the hunger and the sapping sick warmth of this place. I closed my eyes in the darkness and focused on my breath.
And then it was there again. A whimper escaped me as I felt another presence in my head. I tried to lash out at it, throwing every shred of my will at the intrusion, but all I got for my effort was a flash of amused surprise and condescending pity. Then a voice of stinging authority shouted, Get up!
I frowned. Without really meaning to, I slipped into my wizard's sight and flexed invisible muscles. The stone door to my prison drifted aside. I felt a tearing pain in my legs and back, but it was nothing against the agony the monster had thrown at me before.
Get up! the voice commanded again, and I obeyed. I rose and heaved myself up out of the pit. A handful of drakes turned baleful eyes my way and began moving lazily toward me. A few always followed me like old retainers whenever I left my cage. I spotted the gold dragon too, banking out of its high, gliding halo to swoop down closer. That one seemed to keep a careful watch on me.
But this time I had no more idea what I was up to than my watchers did. I moved slowly, my body still protesting at the pain it had recently endured, but I moved unstoppably across the smooth stone toward the wide pool. Out of habit I knelt down at the pool's edge, cupped a hand to the acrid water and raised it to my lips. Then I heaved a great breath, and some force shoved me hard from behind.
No, no force outside. My own legs, my own strength hurled me forward into the water, and I hit its surface like one of the fiery adults. I half expected to feel the heat and hear the angry boiling hiss of the water, but there was only cold darkness. I looked with my wizard's sight and saw the deep, uneven bowl of earth cupping the billowing sheets of water. An impulse drew my eyes toward the outer wall, tracing down and down, deep beneath the surface, searching for some seam, some outlet, some escape I hadn't found before, but there was none.
And then that same force that had flooded my mind took control again. It used my will, reached out through my wizard's sight, and grabbed several threads of air from the cavern above. It wrapped them around me like a cloak. I took a breath of captured air, then that other will pressed out and down against the water, and I sped to the surface like a piece of cork. I just had time to prepare myself before I was thrown out of the water. I landed on the hard stone, stumbled once, then caught myself and turned.
The drakes were there—that handful that had come to watch over me, and dozens more. They gathered around me as they had that first night, and the dragons screamed on the wing above me. The gold adult flashed past just above my head, hissing like an angry snake. The huge red monster, too, had turned to watch, to stare. Its massive head hung low over the pool, barely a pace away from where I stood, eyes fixed hard on the depths. Fire boiled in the back of its throat, and when the monster roared, every beast in the cavern took up its cry.
I could feel their rage, their hatred for me, but not one among them looked my way. They all stared at the water. For a moment I froze, overwhelmed by my own curiosity, but then I heard the voice one more time. Go! Stupid human. Move now, Daven!
And once again the thing took control of me. I had a moment's understanding, in the tiny part of my mind still left to me. A moment's recognition. The voice was not the monster's. Not that monster's anyway. It was another's. And now it threw me into a reckless sprint, straight at the hard stone wall of the cavern. Fear bubbled up in my chest, but it could not reach me in my cocoon of calm.
A thousand filaments of air still wrapped me head to toe, and that other mind flexed my will to reshape them at every footfall into cushions beneath my feet. I went a dozen paces over hard stone without making a sound, and then as I reached the wall the air unraveled around me. Though I did not guide it, I saw the shape of the plan one heartbeat before I struck the wall. My will stretched out toward the numberless grains of earth energy that combined to make a mountain of solid stone.
I saw how easy it would be to exert authority over them, to make them bend and spread and wash around me just like water. I imagined myself diving through a mountainside as easily as I had dived into the cooling pool, swimming through the earth and out to safety. But in my wizard's sight I could see three hundred paces of earth and stone between the cavern and open air. And I knew what the dragons did not—I knew the physical cost of altering that much reality. I hadn't enough strength to shift one pace of earth around me, let alone a whole mountainside.
But the presence in my mind had full control. I scrabbled frantically to stop it, to extend the barriers of my concentration, to stop my churning feet, to catch a breath. I panicked inside my own head, and it gained me nothing. The dragon threw my body at the stone wall, through the stone wall, into the stone wall.
I felt pain like a thunderclap in every inch of my body. It was the weight of a mountain pressing down on me from all directions and my body screamed in agony. Darkness hit my mind like a hammer, and ringing through it I felt a sudden flash of surprise. And then annoyance. And then a fire bubbling up through my stomach and catching in my heart.
I felt heat like a geyser blast upward into my mind, out through my limbs, and suddenly the darkness was gone. Suddenly the pain was gone. Not just the weight of the mountain, but the agony of days of torture, the fatigue and hunger and fear. All of it evaporated beneath that blazing heat, energy and power raging through me, and then I began to move again.
I looked out through the mountain and saw the Chaos blackness waiting for me there. No...not blackness. I'd called it emptiness before, the void in reality that marked a dragon's presence, but now that I had tasted of its power, I understood. I recognized it. The thing was darker than reality, stronger than eternity, the perfect endless authority, and everything else went pale around it.
There were more like it behind me—a great and terrible swarm of them—but this one was mine. I grinned a cruel snarl and sprinted through a mountainside as though it were open air. I planted one foot inside the mountain, and the next on nothing, and ran on over both of them like crossing the village green.
A cliff fell away beneath me, a hundred paces down to a stony dell, and beyond that a sun-seared mountain range stretched out toward the sea. But there in the air before me was the black dragon Vechernyvetr. I could feel him in my mind, could feel the bond we'd made between us, and the night-black flood of power he was pouring into me, through me, as I took another step on empty nothing and flung myself into a leap over the great depth to land right at the base of his neck.
"You came for me!" I screamed in my mind, even as the dragon beat its huge wings and hurtled itself away and down. "You've saved my life again. That monster—"
Pazyarev, the dragon said, bitter in the back of my head. He is powerful. And cruel.
"Not just one. He has an army." I twisted in place, clinging tightly to the dragon's neck while I tried to orient myself. I found the narrow cave high on the mountainside a moment before a pair of dark green dragons shot through on the wing. They turned opposite directions, moving fast, and it took only a moment before one of them caught sight of us.
Instead of giving chase, it banked away, but a moment later a roar like an earthquake shook the mountain beneath me. Then the cave mouth erupted, spewing dragons like hornets from a hive. The whole great swarm came out, speeding toward us like arrows.
"An army," I thought again, watching in awe as they flew in something resembling a military formation. Vechernyvetr beat his huge wings, neck outstretched and flashing over the earth faster than any racehorse, but the monster's swarm streamed after us. "They obey it. All of them."
No, Vechernyvetr said. They are him. Pazyarev is an elder legend, one of the strongest among dragons. He has a swarm of nearly two thousand bodies.
I barely listened. My attention was on the creatures trailing us. Some of them were larger than Vechernyvetr. Some of them were catching up. I should have been afraid, but I could still feel the fir
e of the dragon's power blazing through me, and it burned fear for fuel. Instead of worry I felt anger and exhilaration. I focused on the dragon closest on our heels, the smallish green that had first spotted us, trailing maybe a quarter mile behind us and closing fast.
My lips peeled back. I let go of Vechernyvetr's neck with one hand and pointed it toward the green. I remembered a stone I had thrown in the Teelevon. I had no cobblestones here, but I did not need one. The dragon power was raw reality. I narrowed my eyes and looked out through the wizard's sight.
I could not hurt them with a wizard's magic. Magic was man's construct, and it drowned against the depthless infinity of a dragon's nature. But now I had that nature in my hands. I tapped into the rush of power, stretched out my will, and summoned a bolt of pure earth energy in the air between us. I saw the dragon's surprise, saw it swerve in shock, falter mid-flight, but it was coming on fast and it took no more than a thought for me to send my bolt hurling toward it.
I shaped it as it flew. A shapeless ball stretched into a spear-tipped blade that plunged into the beast just left of its breastbone and tore out the back, black with blood. The monster had half a mile to fall, but my attention was already roving, searching for another. I saw the gold beast that had watched me so closely, and I set my jaw.
"Go slower, Vechernyvetr. I will answer for them."
I admire your hunger, he answered. But you are a fool. You slew one. Pazyarev will throw a thousand against us and suffer us a fate far worse than death.
"Let him try," I growled. "He has never seen anything like me before." My spear trailed along behind us half a mile back. I had trouble controlling it any farther away than that, and the dragons seemed to know it. The fastest of them hung just far enough back that I couldn't touch them.
I grinned. With a thought I broke the paces-long spear into half a dozen splinters. They drifted apart into a loose line at the full extent of my reach. I watched the chasing dragons as they shifted and bobbed, trying to keep wary eyes on Vechernyvetr and on the strange structures hovering so much closer to them.
