Stone Dragon (The First Realm)

by Testamark, Klay

  Stone Dragon

  Book 1 of the First Realm Series

  Klay Testamark

  Copyright © 2013 Klay Testamark

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 0615866433

  ISBN-13: 9780615866437

  All rights reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by an electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author.

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to my loving family who gave me support in more ways than I can count.

  Lisa, Ally, Glen II

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  * * *

  The king is dead!

  Long live the king!

  But

  the new king is dead also

  and him the last of the line

  Madness rules the streets of Drystone

  Who there is left to the throne of Brandish?

  Who there is left to lead we elves?

  Dark days approach

  Our enemies grow strong

  An heir must be found

  An heir there shall be

  Know him you will

  by his silver hand

  Ignorant of his past

  Ignorant of his future

  He will deny his fate he will run from his fate

  knowing not that all roads lead to destiny

  Friend to humans

  Friend to dwarves

  Friend even to halflings

  He is kin to dragons

  this heir

  The last of those great beasts shall bow to him

  shall be as a brother to him

  Look you well upon this prince!

  Last of a majestic line!

  First of a new order

  Nothing is the same again.

  * * *

  Chapter 1

  This is how it ends. Two friends in the dungeons and two friends fighting on the wall. And me, bleeding to death in the courtyard while my enemies hovered close.

  I cannot move. I cannot fight. I can only reflect on the chain of events that brought me to this point.

  It isn’t easy being an elf.

  * * *

  “It isn’t easy being an elf,” I said. My companions at the table looked at me in surprise. They were three dwarfs and a human woman.

  “What makes you say that?” said Jodo, one of the dwarfs. “You’re a city elf. You don’t have to mine your own ore—”

  “—or hunt your own food—”

  “—or use magic items. You are magic.”

  I looked at them. “That’s a bit unsettling.”

  “When you’re out in the wilderness with no one else to talk to—”

  “—except your two brothers—”

  “—well, can you blame us?”

  “Okay, so it’s not easy being a dwarf either.” I turned to the woman. Sandahl probably outweighed me by fifty pounds, but she had a pretty face and a chest you could rest your glass on. I gave her my most charming smile and said, “Surely you can see that an elf’s life is a hard one?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Do you deal with chilly summers and dark crushing winters?”

  “No.”

  “Do you live with constant tribal warfare?”

  “No.”

  “Then what’s your problem?”

  “It is a most vexing one,” I said. “Elves live too long.”

  Silence.

  “Oh, this is getting interesting!” said Lodo, the last dwarf. “How is that a problem?”

  “It gives us too much time.”

  “Don’t let a halfling hear that,” Sandahl said. “They don’t have a tenth as much as you do.”

  “And look at them!” I said. “They pack so much experience into a few short decades. A halfling can become a hero, establish a kingdom, and die a great-grandfather, all in less than a century. Dynasties can rise and fall in the time it takes for an elf to reach adulthood.”

  “I’ve always thought a long childhood was a good thing,” said Kodo, the second dwarf. He drank from his tankard. “We dwarves may not live a full thousand years, but we do okay.”

  “What is it—seven, eight hundred years?” I said. I turned to Sandahl. “Humans can live that long, right?”

  “Rarely,” she said.

  “Why not?” Jodo said. “You’ve got that healing factor going for you. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen an old human.”

  “We’re not big believers in dying of old age,” she said. “It used to be that when a warrior grew tired of life he would seek out a dragon and do his best to kill it.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “The dragon usually won, but then the warrior’s clan would declare vendetta on it. Dragon or not, few things can survive that.”

  “I should think so,” I said. “There’s just one human here and I can’t resist her.”

  She giggled.

  “Is that why there aren’t dragons anymore?” Lodo asked. “Humans killed them off?”

  “Maybe in the Northlands,” I said. “That doesn’t explain why they’ve disappeared from the continent. Until elves came to power, they used to be all over Brandish.”

  “So elves killed them off?”

  “No,” I said. “We dealt with them on a case-to-case basis. Maybe it was dwarves.”

  “Us? Inconceivable!” Jodo said, thumping the table. “We are a peaceful folk. Who ever heard of dwarves going up against a dragon?”

  “They were always a, y’know, dying breed,” Kodo said. “Lived for tens of thousands of years but rarely reproduced. Wouldn’t take much to push a species like that to extinction.”

  Everyone looked at me.

  “What?”

  “So you’re saying the problem with elves is they don’t get enough in the bedroom?” Jodo asked.

  “NO!” I said. “That’s not it at all!”

  “I’ve always wondered,” Sandahl said. “I mean, elves stay youthful up until the end, right? And you all look so pretty.” Here she pinched my cheek. “So why isn’t the world filled with pointy-eared babies? Do elves have a low sex drive?”

  “I assure you, madam, my drive is as high as any human’s.”

  She laughed. I pressed on: “What I’m saying is that, since elves live so long, they’re seldom in any kind of hurry. And that’s boring.” I took a drink. “Elves are a shade quicker and a bit more magic. We don’t suddenly go through puberty and we don’t suffer from rampant fertility—but listen, it’s not for me to say which race is better. There is no better.”

  The last line was a bit slurred. I may or may not have drunk too much. I continued:

  “The mouse and the elephant count the same number of heartbeats. A billion and a half beats for both. Subjectively, the elephant lives lon
ger than the mouse—about as long as a halfling—but it seems the mouse lives more intensely. I’ve certainly never seen one look bored.”

  “Are you calling us mice?” Jodo asked. He’d been drinking all night as well.

  “I don’t know. Run after any farmer’s wives?”

  “Why you…” said Lodo.

  “I am not calling you mice. That would make me the elephant, and I haven’t the nose for it. But anyway. A sword is better than another sword if it holds its edge longer. A bow is better than another if it draws more smoothly. But a thinking being and another thinking being? How is one better? For what purpose? You can’t judge us as if we were tools.”

  “Tha’s funny,” said Sandahl. “Because I’d be interested in judging your—”

  “Elves, dwarves, and humans are obviously related!” said Kodo, who was an indignant drunk. “Why are we so differn’t, then?”

  “We’re not,” I said. “Were I a taxonomist I would put the three of you much closer to my family tree than, say, the chimpanzee.”

  All three dwarves lunged. Since we had a table between us, they mostly knocked the wind out of themselves. Jodo managed to draw his axe, but even in my inebriated state I successfully took it away from him. Sandahl pushed them back into their chairs and I tried to calm everyone down.

  “Here is your axe back, my good man. You shouldn’t take offense at what I say. After all, aren’t we practically brothers? And since I am once again paying for this round, please be so kind as to let me finish.”

  I took a drink and continued. “First there’s the long childhood, which is more tedious than you’d think. Then, by the time you’re ready to enter society, they’ve indoctrinated you so thoroughly that you can’t be anything but a model elf. And even when you’re considered an adult, all of the important people in society still have centuries left to live. Is it any wonder that nothing changes here? Being an elf is boring because nobody’s allowed to be an amateur at anything.”

  * * *

  If you’ve never seen a drunken elf, you haven’t lived. Then again, if you’ve ever seen a drunken elf, I congratulate you for having survived. We are by nature a passionate race. It’s one reason we have such long childhoods, to train it out of us. However, all that training goes out the window when we reach age fifty and can finally go to the alehouse. An elf’s first drink is a day to be remembered. Maybe not by him personally, but certainly by everyone else.

  You can always tell a birthday party by the broken glass on the floor and the scorch marks on the ceiling.

  The rest of the night passed uneventfully. My friends and I drank until the dead of the morning. Sandahl and I then took the dwarves home. I staggered along with Jodo, and Sandahl more or less carried his two brothers. Home, in their case, was a rented room in the Old Quarter. Small, but inexpensive and clean.

  Afterward the human woman and I found another inn and… well, let’s just say we weren’t too drunk.

  * * *

  Much, much later I found myself walking to the alehouse. We were still a ways from sunrise and the fog had not yet lifted. It hung all around and made distant lighthouses out of the street lamps. My boots rang upon the cobbles. The sound was large in the empty city.

  The lamps must have guttered, because the lights flickered. I blinked. It seemed like a warning.

  I became aware of another set of footsteps. They were clear and loud, so I looked about. “Hello?”

  Nothing. Just the sound of another walker beating pavement, matching me step for step.

  I stopped and readied a defensive spell, while reaching mentally into hammerspace in case I needed weapons. “Okay, this isn’t funny.”

  The footsteps were closer now—I settled into a fighting stance and prepared to face the enemy.

  An elf came out of the mist. He was tall, and blonde, and very familiar.

  “Dinendal?” I said. I blinked. “Is that you?”

  He looked so much like my best friend. He even had Dinny’s trademark smirk. He came within ten feet and went past, vanishing into the fog.

  “Dinendal!” I hurried after, but he was gone. Had he ducked into an alley? Why hadn’t he spoken?

  I was breathing hard. I leaned against a lamppost to catch my breath. Maybe I was drunker than I thought.

  * * *

  Elrond’s Commonwealth served breakfast, but I was more in need of a hangover cure. Of course, as Elrond the bartender pointed out, I wouldn’t even have a hangover if I’d stuck to elven wines.

  “Maybe I like the variety,” I said. “Come on, Elrond! More wine!”

  “Master Angrod, you’re a wizard’s apprentice. A graduating apprentice. You know at least four hangover cures far more effective than hair of the dog.”

  I squinted at him. “Glass,” I said, raising it. “Empty. This is a problem.”

  “Haven’t you had enough? The weekend is over. Don’t you have errands?”

  “They’ll still be there when I’m done,” I said. I rummaged in hammerspace until I found the scrap of paper: Go to the beach. Get 9 buckets black sand and 2 buckets white sand. White sand from a cave on the northern shore.

  “It can wait,” I said. I reached for the bottle in Elrond’s hands, but he pulled it away. “First tell me what the four cures are.”

  “Fine, professor,” I said. I sat up as if I were in a classroom. “I could use water magic to ease the symptoms or fire magic to speed up my metabolism. I could use air magic to function at a normal level, despite the headache, or I could use earth magic to simply ignore the hangover.”

  “Very good. And what can a skilled wizard do?”

  “A skilled wizard can blend all of the different cures until the hangover is completely gone. Do I get a gold star?”

  “No, but you get a drink,” he said, and filled my glass. “Drink up, now. I’m sure your master told you not to dawdle.”

  “Valandil said, Don’t take forever this time, lad, I have to finish the wall for the council. Lad! If I were human I’d be a village elder now.”

  “But you’re not human, be thankful.”

  “I’ll be thankful after this drink,” I said. I took a swallow. “An apprentice has rights, you know. He has me doing things like a common servant and he knows I’d rather be working for the city. I’m a decent mage and I know the nine weapons. I could join the watch or the royal guard, or even run missions for the council.”

  Elrond was polishing a glass, as bartenders are wont to do. “I see it differently. Master Valandil has been teaching you about humility through these meaningless tasks. You know what he says: Before wisdom, chop wood and carry water.”

  “After wisdom, chop wood and carry water,” I finished. “Crazy old man. Wonder if he got it off a postcard.”

  “Master Angrod, you will soon be a journeyman, with the right to choose your own path—whether it is to adventure with the wood elves or return to a noble’s life in the north. In the meantime, respecting your mentor is the least you could be doing.”

  I slammed my glass down. “Collecting sand to transmogrify is not what I wanted to be doing. Elrond, I haven’t seen my home since my aunt died. In forty-five years I have not felt proper snow beneath my feet or breathed air that didn’t stink of fish. I miss my best friend Dinendal. Do you know, I think I saw him on the way here. But it couldn’t have been him.”

  “Mm-hmm,” he said. He went to the back room and came out with something, which he placed on the bar. “Here you go.”

  I stared. “What’s that?”

  “The mulberry wine your master ordered. Don’t you remember why you came in last night?”

  I looked at the list. On the other side was, 1 small keg Elrond’s finest. “Oh yes. I told him it was my treat.”

  Elrond’s Commonwealth was one of the finest alehouses in Drystone, but Elrond was also famous for his mulberry, blueberry, and gooseberry wines. Small wonder, since he had been royal winemaker when the city had a king. That was nine hundred years ago, but it was still his pri
vilege to take the best berries from the royal garden.

  That place, like the royal palace, was lovingly maintained. I wondered briefly about a city that would behead its ruler and topple his statues, yet keep his house and tend his berry orchards.

  I looked at the barrel of wine. Elrond made the best wine in the city, but—

  “It’s got corners,” I said.

  “Have you never seen a square barrel before?”

  “I… but… why?”

  He rubbed his hands. “I have a friend who’s just full of ideas. Made it out of oak staves, gives the wine more contact with the wood. Gives it a nice spicy flavor too. What’s more, the little spigot makes it so convenient. There’s a deposit, by the way.”

  “Wine in a box?” I said. “It’ll never catch on.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  I had an existential moment, which often happens at Elrond’s. “Can’t argue with elves, even if you are one yourself,” I said. “Is it strong and sweet? He likes his wine after dinner, and I need him in a generous mood.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And yes. You know, if you weren’t a noble you probably couldn’t afford all that wine.”

  “If I weren’t a noble, I’d be home,” I said. “And there’s the tragedy.”

  “Are you planning something? The last time you bought Master Valandil wine, you went hunting for wyverns. You were banned from leaving the city after he found out.” He leaned close and smiled his bartender’s smile, which declared, You can trust me. I’m brother to all drinking beings. “You are planning something, aren’t you?”

  “Now, now,” I said, picking up the keg. “The past week was murder—each and every one of the masters tested me hard.”

  “That can’t have been so bad. I’ve heard you’re one of the best apprentices. What is it now? Running away to live with the humans? Or going off to the forest to see naked wood elves?”

  “It’s nearly dawn,” I said hoisting the keg onto my shoulder. “I can only hope today will be better. Although knowing Valandil, he’ll have me assisting him all day. To the crows with architecture!” I spun on my heel and walked to the door.

  —only to have the door swing wide. It hit me in the nose and knocked the wine out of my hand.