The Dragon Thief (Sorcery and Sin Book 1)

by Justin DePaoli

  Maren bit down hard on an approaching grin, smothering it. If all he needed to fully unite the West behind him was to falsify some evidence… well, he’d have evidence by the bucketful. Maren O’Keefe might have lacked morals, religion, and values, and he ran low on kindness, honesty, and respect—but if there was one quality he ran in excess of, it was guile. The former traits might make you a good person, but the latter makes you a powerful one.

  Maren departed Aven’s stronghold and arrived back at Valios five days later. He summoned Tullus to his chambers, hopeful he had uncovered another tasty morsel of information.

  The steward entered, clutching several rolled-up papers to his chest. “Sir,” he said, opening his arms and letting the parchments spill out onto Maren’s desk. “Jules says this is everything.” He nervously wrung his hands. “She, um, risked a lot.”

  “And she was paid well,” Maren said curtly. “Thank you, Tullus.”

  The steward opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it. He gave an awkward not-quite-bow of his head and scurried off.

  Maren slipped a knife under the dried wax seal of each letter. Most of the messages were boring affairs—personnel correspondences and requests for aid from struggling vassals. But there was one letter that Maren read again and again.

  On the twelfth read, there was a knock at his door. “May I come in?”

  The voice was Lady Aylee’s. Maren hastily gathered up all the letters and stuffed them in the pockets of his coat. “Of course,” he answered.

  Lady Aylee walked in. Her eyes were baggy and droopy, and her skin looked dirty, as if she hadn’t bathed in weeks. Yellow stains smudged her cerulean dress.

  She wrapped herself up in a hug. “Have you heard anything?”

  “I’ve been on a hunt,” Maren said. “Remember?”

  She sighed. “I mean before that. You’ve heard nothing? Nothing at all? Not one rumor?”

  “Have you?”

  She shook her head morosely. “No. I have not. Maren, the Council must act soon. We had a riot yesterday. A small one, but it’s a sign of things to come. A temporary custodian to the throne must be named. It will quell the peoples’ worries and allow us to act authoritatively. Right now, nothing is getting done because no one on the Council can come to an agreement. There needs to be a singular voice.”

  And this is how it begins, Maren thought. “Whose voice are you thinking that should be?”

  She chewed her cheek, shrugging. “I’m not sure. Someone on the Council, certainly, but… a vote is needed. I’m calling a meeting tomorrow morning. Help me convince them—for the good of Valios.”

  Maren stifled a laugh. For the good of Valios. Do you take me for a bloody idiot? “Tomorrow morning, then,” he said, smiling.

  Lady Aylee inhaled deeply. “If you hear anything by then… please do tell me. I think you and I are the only ones responsible enough to handle this crisis.”

  “Of course,” Maren said. “Maybe Lavery ran off, hmm? And tonight he’ll rear his head around, sorry and embarrassed, and all will be well again.”

  “I hope that’s the news we receive. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Maren, if nothing else turns up.”

  The door shut behind Lady Aylee, echoing throughout the square room. Maren took a moment to compose himself. He withdrew the letter he had read twelve times. He read it once more, then held it above a hot candle.

  The parchment curled and shriveled as flames raced across it, devouring the ink and erasing every last word.

  This was not the evidence of Lavery Opsillian’s disappearance that Maren needed. And so, for all intents and purposes, it did not exist.

  Who were the Eyes of Aleer, anyhow?

  Chapter Seven

  He hadn’t felt wind like this since the days before his death. It wasn’t your average mountain wind that sweeps down from the high peaks and howls through the gorge. That’s the kind of wind you expect—the cold and lonely sort, a whistling reminder that it’s only you and a bunch of rocks.

  This was a different wind. It gnawed through his newly gifted flesh and chewed unrelentingly into his bones. It was bitter, but more than that, it carried with it an ominous mood. It was, to be perfectly accurate, a kind of wind that chases you through a forgotten forest at night, rustling the leaves and bending the branches so you can’t hear the footsteps behind you.

  One knows when the gates of Silderine open. There’s a palpable feeling in the air, a tenseness that pricks the hairs on your neck. His hair was pricked. His arms were pimpled. It likely did not help that he was still naked.

  Whoever bore him into this world again, he could not be certain. Though he had his assumptions. There was a purpose for his return, though, and that purpose did not include being cut down by the Daughters of Silderine once more.

  The evening turned to night and night went away and became morning. Nothing changed, besides the sun and moon swapping places. The wind still felt wrong, the gorge remained desolate and lonesome.

  He found himself traveling through an area of the Spigatoon Mountains known as the Gulf. The mountain range mostly went by common nouns—a gorge here, a valley there, a plateau over a ways—because few people had explored the unforgiving terrain and even fewer bothered to section off its tumultuous landscape and stick labels to the parts and pieces.

  But the Gulf was, supposedly, the harbinger of hope. Beyond its eighty-mile stretch lay the descent off the Spigatoon Mountains. Most who found themselves on the shoulders of the mountain would welcome such an escape.

  He did not. The mountains provided him protection. They offered him predictability. With reddish-copper walls climbing high to either side, the Daughters of Silderine could only approach him from the south or north. The east and west were effectively blocked off. Still, the Daughters would overwhelm him. They’d come ten, twenty, thirty strong. An advantage of terrain and foresight of where your enemy will strike does a whole lot of nothing if they’re coming with swords and you’re fighting with clubs.

  But life does not exist within a vacuum of bad circumstances or good ones; for each favorable situation, there exists a painfully troublesome one, and vice versa. The counter to this man’s conundrum with the Daughters’ show of force lay before him in a small mountain village.

  More a hamlet, really. A smattering of buildings bridged the Gulf’s widening path, with houses and walkways anchored into the mountain face. The roofs were made from woven bark and the walls from clay and rock and mud. A single windmill stood on a jutting plateau of stone twenty feet in the air, its blades spinning laggardly.

  A family of goats spotted him first, followed by the women milking the goats. An old man sitting on a balcony stood, warily putting his hands on the banister and looking out. His eyes were creased, suspicious. All the eyes were creased and full of suspicion, from the little boys who partially hid behind stable pillars to the sweaty men chopping wood.

  One of the wood splitters wiped his brow and set a course for the stranger. This village didn’t see many visitors, and those who did pass through were usually atop a mule or horse, and they had plenty of supplies to see them on. The man who stood at the edge of the village proper looked like he’d been dug up from six feet beneath the ground. He was gaunt looking, had matted hair and a pale face. And his eyes weren’t quite right. No, not quite right at all. Eyes came in shades of blues and greens and browns, the villager knew, but not grays. This man’s eyes looked as though they had a thunderstorm brewing within them.

  “Whaddya want?” the log splitter asked, his knuckles white from holding so tightly to the busted hilt of his ax. “And why aren’t ya wearin’ linens? At least put some damned skivvies on.”

  The pale-faced man began chewing and licking his teeth. It’d been a long time since he had spoken to another. “Rest,” he said, sounding out each letter. He smiled inwardly; still had that coarse bite to his voice.

  “What’s your name?”

  Now that was a tricky question. He had lots of names, s
ome that had expired upon his death, some that had been renewed upon his return to this world. His birth name would satisfy the answer, but he worried that… no, it was an illogical worry. No one would remember him; time washes away memories like the sea washes away the sand.

  “Gynoth,” he said.

  “Hells kinda name is that?” the logger splitter asked. “Where you from? Why’re you up here?”

  Gynoth shrugged. “Traveling.”

  “Without somethin’ to fill your belly and wet your throat?”

  “Ran out,” he said.

  A strained voice called from the village. “Got a pilgrim on our hands?”

  The log splitter turned. “Says he needs rest, Matriarch. He’s out of supplies.”

  The strained voice came from a hunchbacked, liver-spotted man who required the assistance of another villager to shuffle across the way, toward Gynoth. He had no hair and looked like he hadn’t had a decent meal in years; his body was wasting away.

  “Now, what’s your name, son?” the apparent Patriarch asked.

  “Gynoth.”

  The villager assisting him slid a hand beneath his elbow and said, “He’s right here, Patriarch.”

  The Patriarch lifted his chin and squinted in the direction of Gynoth. A milkiness glazed over his eyes, and he poked his head forward to get a clearer view. That’s when his lips quivered and the few teeth that remained in his mouth chomped against one another like a gelid air had settled in his bones.

  “I… don’t… want you resting here,” he said, shaking his head violently. He pointed a trembling finger at the log splitter. “Get him milk and bread… and then get him out!” He blindly slapped at his handler and mumbled something before being led back to the village.

  The log splitter sized up Gynoth. “Don’t move, understand? I’ll get your supplies, but don’t you move. You’re not welcome here, whoever you are.”

  “Pity,” Gynoth remarked. He watched the log splitter with aloofness as the man trekked back to the village, shooting a cautious eye behind him every few feet.

  In the days of Gynoth’s prior life, there had existed a bounty of sorcerers and necromancers and all sorts of wielders of magic. And they knew, as everyone did in those times, that the physical world they existed within was merely an overlay. It was a permeable bubble, and if you were so blessed with the necessary knowledge, you could reach beyond the bubble, through the bubble—and tap into the elements, or the light, or the darkness, even life itself… even death.

  Gynoth recalled a time when he could do so without so much as closing his eyes. But it’d been a while, hadn’t it? Better to concentrate fully, he figured. And so he released his thoughts and cleared his mind. Tranquility overcame him as he envisioned his fingers as the roots of a tree, tunneling deep beneath the earth in search of water. He could sense an overwhelming and all-encompassing malevolence nearby.

  He grasped that malevolence, and he wrenched it out from its plane of existence, bringing it briefly into his own.

  There were screams then. The kind of screams that will curdle milk fresh from a goat’s nipple and weigh you down with the heaviness of dread.

  Inside the village, people ran. And they cried. A roiling rot climbed the walls of their homes and snaked through their soil, bursting upward and outward, covering floors and ceilings and grass and rock in red, infectious boils.

  From the boils erupted a noxious gas that blanketed the mountain village like a pernicious morning fog. The screams became fewer as limp bodies piled up outside and inside.

  Moments passed. There was pure silence in the Gulf. The boils retreated and everything looked as it had been: fresh and pristine. Except the small, makeshift graveyard that sixty dead villagers had created.

  Gynoth walked into the village, blood trailing from his nose. His head felt like a knife was being stabbed repeatedly into the mushy bits of his brain. He’d have to build up his tolerance again, but first… there were matters to attend.

  The first villager he came upon was the log splitter. Gynoth crouched before his body, scarred with pustules and open ulcers. Removing the violet gem from his pocket, Gynoth touched the man’s face and a fleeting warmth burned into his palm. An educated savant might say the sensation comes courtesy of blood that’s still warm in a fresh corpse. But the truth—well, isn’t it always a little more disconcerting and unsettling?

  It wasn’t blood. It was the wake of the man’s departing soul. And if you catch it quick and you follow it like Gynoth did, it will lead you to a place where some say no living man should ever venture. Gynoth never did consider himself living or a man, though. He transcended life itself.

  He chased the man’s soul to its final resting place, where the deceased are supposed to exist in peace. But the poor villager, he would not know such peace. He felt himself being dragged back through the cosmos, ripped from the realm of the dead.

  He gasped for breath, though he did not need it.

  “Calm,” he heard. “Be calm.” And suddenly he felt calm. He felt at ease, despite his skin beginning to slough off the bone.

  If the man had been birthed anew by restorative sorcery, his flesh wouldn’t have rotted away, and his mind would have remained his own. Gynoth, however, was a man of death, not life.

  “I am your god,” Gynoth said, crouched over him. The log splitter accepted this claim as the gospel. This man was his god. And he would do anything for his god.

  Anything.

  Chapter Eight

  Lavery brushed Mala’s mane as Adom washed her down with a bucketful of creek water. Her chest had been white and frothy, and she’d looked very tired, so Elaya had called a halt to their travels, wary of losing a horse to exhaustion.

  “Will she be okay?” Lavery asked.

  Adom patted Mala’s head. “She’s a strong girl. Been with us for fifteen years now, and I expect her to be here for at least another fifteen. She’ll be fine.”

  Satisfied with this answer, Lavery gave Mala one last goodbye stroke of her mane, then wandered over to a small fire. Elaya sat before the crackling branches and sizzling pine needles, by her lonesome.

  Since waking up from his dizzying spell of unconsciousness, Lavery had learned he’d been kidnapped by a bunch of mercenaries. They didn’t seem like bad people, though. Still, they had swords and daggers and knives. And those things, he knew, weren’t for show.

  He walked up to the fire, stared down at Elaya and asked quite bluntly, “Are you going to kill me?”

  She cocked a brow and sipped a skin of water. “I’m not in the business of killing little boys.”

  “But you kidnap them.”

  She chuckled. “Fair enough. I’m not going to hurt you. No one here will hurt you.”

  Lavery played with his fingers. “Baern says you’re going to set us free. Is that true?”

  “Soon,” she said. “I promise.”

  He walked around the fire pit and took a seat beside Elaya. He felt oddly comfortable around her. Despite the fact that she was a mercenary and had kidnapped him, she seemed nicer than most of the Opsillian Council and certainly kinder than Maren O’Keefe.

  “Why did you become an assassin?” he asked. “My father once told me assassins were people who were down on their luck and they had no choice but to kill for a living. Is that true?”

  “Not for every assassin, no.”

  “What about you?”

  Elaya stabbed a branch into the fire, shooting flames into the sky. “Well, I’m not an assassin. I’m a mercenary. But it is… somewhat true, I suppose. I didn’t come from a very good place, you know. I had few opportunities.”

  “Were you poor?”

  “No, but I was born in Silderine.”

  Lavery’s mouth formed an O. “You’re a Daughter?”

  “Was,” Elaya corrected him. “I’m not anymore.”

  “Oh. Did you kill Wraith Walkers?”

  That question would have likely been much more impactful had Lavery known he himself was a Wrait
h Walker. But Baern had yet to inform him. The old man claimed now was not the time.

  “They tried to make me,” Elaya said, “but no, I never did.”

  “What about necromancers? Did you ever see one?”

  “No.”

  Lavery frowned. He’d read stories about necromancers and how they could raise the dead. He desperately wanted to know if that was true. “I heard Daughters can sense sorcery. How? Would that make them sorcerers themselves?”

  Elaya didn’t have a good answer to that. Daughters were told from when they were young that they were born to vanquish sorcery, but she now knew that wasn’t true. When she’d fled Silderine, her ability to perceive sorcery—or sin as the Daughters called it—had weakened until it no longer remained whatsoever. She’d long wondered how that was possible, but preferred not to dwell on it too long. The possible answers were… unsettling.

  “I wouldn’t become a mercenary if I was born a Daughter,” Lavery mused.

  Elaya tilted her head to one side, her interest clearly piqued. “And why is that?”

  “It’s a noble profession, hunting magic wielders. They’re not normal, you know.”

  “Hmm,” Elaya said, pursing her lips. “Do you know what they do to Daughters?” Lavery shook his head. “They beat them. They torture them. They make them bleed and burn them with fire. All by the age of seven. If the child can’t handle the pain, she’s killed. Sometimes quickly, by being tossed off a cliff. Sometimes slowly, by starvation. It depends on the mood of the enforcers.”

  Lavery’s pupils looked like wet pebbles as his eyes widened and his mouth opened in horror. “But… why—that can’t be true. The capital kingdoms wouldn’t let that happen. My father wouldn’t have allowed that to happen! He would have declared war on Silderine.”

  “Ask Baern. It’s true.”

  Lavery wore a look of betrayal, as if the good world he had thought existed had forsaken him. “Why would they do that?”

  “The Twin Sisters said it separates the wheat from the chaff; that the strong rise to the surface. Have you ever wondered what happens to those who aren’t women in Silderine?”