The Dragonswarm

by Aaron Pogue

  My eyes snapped open, and I met Lareth's startled gaze. "It's mine," I said. "This place is mine. Now let us make it strong."

  14. Behind Strong Walls

  After a moment, Lareth's voice quavered in the darkness. "Could we just give it light?"

  Still drunk on the feeling of home, I nearly borrowed Chaos to make a flame. I stopped myself just short and forced the stain of offered power back into the depths of my awareness, then turned my eyes to Lareth.

  "You trained under Seriphenes," I said.

  He frowned above his green flame, but after a heartbeat he nodded.

  "He had a test," I said. "He asked me to make light."

  The wizard's jaw dropped. "Well...well, yes...."

  "Show me," I said.

  He shook his head. "That relies on the memory of shape," he said. "It needs a lingering power, an occasional flare of torchlight or sunlight to recall. This place...."

  "This place has you scared?"

  "It doesn't you?" He trembled and craned his neck, staring into the empty darkness. "Can't you feel the weight of it? It's like a blindfold, like manacles, like...." He shuddered again, top to toe. "It is like being buried alive."

  I didn't meet his gaze. Instead I looked around, because I did not understand at all. "Can you still not see the shapes of energy?" I asked. "I...I feel at home here. I cannot say it more clearly, but even apart from that I need only look at the lines of power—"

  "I see no lines of power," he said. "That is what I mean. This place is blind to me. It's black and empty; it drags at my eyes and leaves me feeling hollowed out and helpless." He dropped his head. "Please, my lord. Let us go from here."

  "Would it help to know why, at least?"

  He met my eyes for a fraction of a heartbeat, then looked away. "I think I know," he said. "That is how a dragon looks."

  "Calm your heart. There are no dragons here."

  His eye flicked up to mine again, and he held it this time. He released a heavy breath. "Are there not, my lord?"

  I smiled. It tasted sad and bitter, but it was a smile. "I am not a dragon, Lareth. Not exactly."

  "Not exactly," he said wryly. "But it was not so hard to face you when you let me hide from reason."

  "You'll grow used to it in time," I said. "I'm not a dragon, but there are similarities. This place will be my lair. That army is my brood. And you. And Caleb."

  He straightened his shoulders and focused on something far off. His voice took on the lecturing-hall tone. "And yet...you're not a dragon. I have seen your power. There is eerie Chaos there—"

  "But lifeblood, too," I said. "And some small amount of wizardry. And everything I've taken from the men who call me lord."

  He nodded at that, a new curiosity in his eyes. "You can blaze like a bonfire," he said. "But how do you use it?"

  I opened my mouth to answer him honestly, but then I hesitated. He had shown no sign of madness, not since he had met at the tower's mouth, but this man was not my friend. This, though...this was something I needed to discuss, and no one else I had could help me here.

  At last I shrugged and told him openly, "I don't know. I don't know how to use it. I grow less tired, I think. I do not thirst, perhaps? But what is that? The power around my soul seems so much stronger than that."

  "It is," he said. "And I have seen you use it. On the steps outside the tower. I watched you waved aside these tons of earth—"

  "No," I cut him off. "No, that's a power I received from the dragon blood. I can reshape the raw reality with will."

  "But there's a cost," the wizard said. "There always is a cost. In mind or in body, in power or in precious stones. There always is a cost."

  "It used to make me tired," I said, as I had told Caleb the night before. "But that has changed."

  He nodded in sudden understanding. "I see. I see. And now I understand. You pay the price of power with the strength of all those lives."

  "I what?"

  "You burn it up, you spend the blazing lifeblood so you don't have to spend your own."

  "I do not like the sound of that."

  He shrugged. "It is a power. Like all powers, it has a purpose. But yes, I saw it happen. I saw your glow diminish when you pushed the stone aside."

  "It did?" I felt a sudden panic, fought it down so I could see, and looked on myself with the wizard's sight. And then...perhaps? Perhaps I did not burn as bright as I had done before. I couldn't say. The fire wasn't gone as I had feared, guttering like the stub end of a candle. I breathed a little easier at that.

  "But you could see me? You could see my power?"

  He snorted. "You burn brighter than the sun. I could see you from half a world away."

  "You should be able to work magic in my lair," I said, worried. "You are my brood."

  "Perhaps in time," he said. "Perhaps I have to feel at home, and right now I only want to leave. But you have far greater concerns. You must learn the limits of your power."

  "You've barely finished telling me I blaze like the sun—"

  "Yet still you need to know. There always is a price." He was lecturing again. "I do not understand the shape of all the powers you now wield, but every student who has ever passed through the Academy's halls learned this: Before you work your will, you pay the price. It can't be dodged, it cannot be put off. Learn your limits, every nuance of your power, or one day you will burn yourself to ash to light a candle."

  I looked away, the heat of my shame burning in my face. The Academy had taught me that. I'd heard the words, at least. But these last days had been so wild, my power so unnatural, I'd never stopped to think. I'd never tried to apply the neat and ordered rules the Masters had tried to teach me.

  But I had once summoned light. I'd done the spell that Lareth had described, when first Vechernyvetr had me cornered in a narrow cave. It had been months since I had even tried to work the wizards' forms, but now I closed my eyes and felt my way through once-familiar patterns. I quieted my mind and focused my attention and shaped my will.

  Where Lareth saw only darkness, I saw every thread of power in this place, every stain of human of will, every memory of light. I saw the ghosts of candles and torches and great hearthfires. I saw the sunlight and the moonlight that once had graced the unworked earth. All around me hung a light that was, a light that had been, a light that could be. By will alone, by strength of my desire, I called it forth.

  And there was light. Not by my will alone, but by the ready answer of my lair. The earth itself, the tower, seemed eager to comply. I saw the flare of power behind my eyes, and then I blinked and looked for the first time with ordinary eyes on my domain.

  "Smoke and shadows," Lareth breathed. "It's beautiful."

  I could not even catch my breath to swear. The ruins around the tower were so aged and crumbled they could easily have been mistaken for natural rock formations, and I had expected to find the same in the tower. But now, beneath the clear white light of my wizard's working, the floor of the FirstKing's tower seemed almost untouched by the ravages of time.

  The floor was of cut stone, polished smooth, and the ceiling hung fifteen feet above, supported every ten paces by a heavy stone pillar. Even with the unnatural light, the far walls were all lost in the distance. There was not a wall to break the sprawling hall, only here and there a fine-carved pillar. And just behind my throne, a staircase hewn of stone and chased with silver twisted up into the mountain overhead.

  I heard Lareth suddenly catch his breath, and when I looked at him he seemed more afraid, not less, to have the light to see. I asked, "What's wrong?"

  "Look at the size of it," he breathed, as though a word too loud might bring it crashing down. "Did you not see the mountain overhead? There are no walls. There's only little pillars, and they look like sticks beneath that weight."

  I hid my smile and left my throne to stand before him. "You must trust what you can't see," I said. "And trust that I can. I can see every single stone above and underneath. And all of it is won
derfully made. Do you understand? More than a thousand years it's stood like this, with all that weight above, and never changed."

  That stopped me, even as I said it. I turned to stare hard at the eerie throne, and then down at the flagstones underfoot. They looked like hand-carved blocks, but to my wizard's sight I saw the cracks were carved right in. The mortar was of one piece with the stone, a texture carved to look like binding clay.

  The man who made this tower had worked with powers like my own. The FirstKing, our great and holy hero, had built this place with no magic made for man. My jaw fell open, I gaped at nothing, and behind me Lareth whispered, "What? What is it you see?"

  "We're safe," I said. "That's all." I set aside the sudden understanding to consider more closely later, then turned to Lareth.

  "Can you see the magic in the air? Can you see the working of the light?"

  He focused for a moment, then gave a nod. "I can. That's odd—"

  'That's your domain," I said. "Nothing else is in this place, but that is wizard's work. Can you bind it for me? Can you keep it there?"

  He grinned. "I can do more than that," he said. "You've seen my sigil fire."

  "The green flame?"

  "Indeed. It is a working all my own, and it will let you bind this light to burn forever. To turn it on or off at just a word. To light this room, but not the one above. Not one among all the Masters of the Academy could give you that. It's mine alone, and I will teach you how."

  He burned with pride—not at the power to break a crown, not for lives or fortunes stolen, but for a spell to light the dark. I smiled across at him. "You will," I said. "But not right now. Just bind this spell for me."

  I was already past him, breaking to a run toward the door. He took some scurrying steps after me and called, "Wait! Where are you going?"

  "To fetch my deathly shadow," I yelled back. "I've left him worrying too long."

  I made my way out into the courtyard, then, and caught my breath at the sight before me. Men were hard at work, some stripped to the waist in spite of the winter chill. The boundaries of a stone wall were beginning to appear within the rubble spilled all around the tower. And as they cleared out the foundations, they revealed a shape as much a part of legend as the Tower of Days. The storied walls of Palmagnes had made a triangle with a peak pointing south and the tower at its center. Legend named them five paces thick and ten paces high, and the structure my men were uncovering could easily match those dimensions.

  The courtyard itself was already stripped bare—stones of all sizes were needed for the walls, and the thick brush and vegetation that had grown in the rocky crags for the last thousand years had burned in an hour to give my soldiers lunch. The low mound that had filled the gateway gap was gone now, too—larger stones stacked in neat piles on the cleared courtyard, smaller rubble gathered in a pile near the eastern wall.

  I'd cleared the tower's porch and a path across the courtyard perhaps thirty paces wide, but the guards had already done much more. The north wall stretched more than a mile east to west, and when it was done the north courtyard would be large enough to house a small village. That nearly seemed accomplished, with the neatly-ordered picket lines for horses and mules just west of the now-clear gateway. Beyond them the supply wagons stood in even rows, set out like the blocks of a little town.

  And to the east the camp was setting up, clearing ground to pitch two thousand tents and lay the fires and station guards. Wagons trundled toward the eastern wall, their beds filled up with gathered stone. Here and there a soldier passing on some errand would stoop to snatch an errant rock and toss it in.

  Caleb stood upon the wide stone platform and watched the men at work. I came without a sound to stand beside him, and he never turned his head. But as I stopped half a pace behind him, he grunted. "You're right. There'll be room enough for all of them. But not tonight. Not unless they want to sleep on heaps of stone."

  "They could make beds inside the tower."

  He scoffed. "They're not as mad as you. It wasn't wise to go in there. My lord."

  I smiled. "It's safe enough." Before he could argue the point, I turned on my heel and headed back toward the tower. I snapped, "Come! That's an order, General." A moment later I heard his footsteps following after.

  He followed me through darkness and into the light, and as he stepped beneath the ancient arch of the outer doors, he stopped to stare around the sprawling room. He showed no signs of awe, no gasp of surprise. He took three long steps into the room, and then I saw his eyes narrow as they picked out the distant shape of the throne. "That gold?"

  "Some gold," I said. "Some silver. Marble, too."

  He nodded once. He turned to his right and traced the gentle curve of the wide, arched stairs climbing into shadows up above. He looked up, considering the high ceilings with his eyes for a moment, and then he met my gaze. "Not bad."

  "We'll make kitchens and a barracks on the floor above," I said. "There are the shapes of walls and rooms up there. But we can spread our beds down here for now."

  "How large is it?"

  "Eighty paces, end to end. Pillars here and there, but mostly clear."

  "That's massive," Caleb said. "You could house an army in this place."

  "I intend to."

  He met my eyes. "Very well. I'll spread the word." Some motion caught his eye and he turned to watch Lareth moving among the distant pillars, muttering to himself as he bound the light in place. Wherever he went the pure white light took on a very slightly green glow.

  The old warrior met my eyes again. "How much of this is his work? How much is yours?"

  "He's only working on the light," I said. "The rest is...call it mine."

  "I'm thinking of the work you did outside. The way you waved and cleared the rubble from the courtyard. It took a hundred men with carts and mules more than an hour to do what you did with a word."

  "I have my tricks."

  "I'm thinking of the walls," he said. "We have two choices. You said you meant to rebuild Palmagnes. Those walls are more than a mile long. We have the stone—Haven knows we have the stone—but it's rocks and mud as much as quarried blocks. And we have many hands, but it will take us weeks to build those walls higher than your head."

  "Unless I help," I said, guessing at his purpose.

  He shrugged. "Or we could scale back. We don't need a full square mile inside the walls, especially if you mean to house the men in this tower."

  "It's true," I said, but I let my reluctance shade my voice. I wanted no half-measures for my home.

  "But either way, we'll need your help," Caleb said. "These men are not building walls I'd be proud of otherwise. Two thousand men can work fast, but they aren't masons."

  "I see."

  "And I'm no architect, come to that. We'll need your help—"

  I glanced back over my shoulder to the distant shape of Lareth, thinking again of prices. But what worth was there in power if it went unused? The FirstKing had bent reality to make this place, and now I would spend my strength to spare my men. It could not cost too much. Not for my lair.

  "Come with me," I said. "You'll have your walls."

  I led him at a trot back down the tunnel and out into the early afternoon. Once more I met the noisy dance of so many men hard at work, five thousands hands all bent to make my stronghold more secure. I drank it in like hot spiced wine and shared a grin with Caleb.

  "Watch," I said. Then I closed my eyes and slowed my breath. I looked out with my wizard's sight, but it was easier now. It was magnified. New senses I had felt upon my throne revealed to me the crumbled stone, the strong foundations, and every life sworn to my service. My reason reeled at the enormity of it, but without strain at all I could hold the whole of the fortress in my mind in exquisite clarity.

  And there within the heart of it I stood. I looked down upon myself, upon the huge bonfire blaze of human strength. It echoed now out through the stronghold's grounds, but still the heart of flame was me. Lareth said tha
t fire had diminished when I worked raw reality, but it looked no smaller now. I felt no weaker. Still, I would use care. I'd watch. I wouldn't use too much.

  But even as I promised caution to myself, a grin curled at my lips. It was not the monster's cruel glee, not the vicious dragon spirit that had seized me more than once before. This was my very human curiosity sharp with the thrill of imagined glory.

  "You'll have your walls," I said again, no more than a whisper, and then without releasing the wizard's sight, I opened my eyes and looked out with human sight as well. North of the tower, to the walls. I stretched my arms out at my sides, palms up, and my grin grew. I grasped the threads of earth.

  I didn't even have to try. They were already there, within my power. The same new senses that showed me my domain placed every stone within my grasp. I raised my hands, and thunder rolled across the fortress grounds as stones groaned and stretched and moved.

  All around the tower, in all directions, the walls rose with my gesture. A tiny motion of my hands, but as I went I melted the myriad imperfect powers of rock and mud and fashioned bricks into a solid piece, perfect living stone, five paces thick and now a pace above the earth.

  Men who had been working on the rubble dove aside, crashing to the ground. Gravel and dirt rained off the top, and shouts of fear rang out within the noise. Three thousand men at once stopped what they were doing and looked toward walls where none had been. And then they looked to me.

  I felt their attention wash over me, and I threw back my head and laughed. Just look what I had done! I'd watched, as well, and Lareth had been right: I'd dimmed in power. But just a fraction. I was still a living blaze, and consider what I'd wrought! No mason in the world could have made a foundation so strong, not with perfect materials, and I had made it from weathered stone and sludge.

  And now they were watching me. My men. Caleb, too, with more emotion than I'd ever seen him show. Astonishment and hope and admiration. I laughed louder and jerked my hands above my shoulders, and four miles' worth of wall stabbed up two paces into the sky, all seamless, shining stone.