He checked over his armour, which Pharadon had also returned to him. Like the Blade of the Morning Mist, it too was made of Telastrian steel and had once belonged to Valdamar. Though Gill and the legendary hero had apparently been similar in size and shape, the armour had pinched somewhat at first. Now it felt as though it had been made for him, perhaps because of the magical metal’s special properties.
“Time is something of an issue,” Pharadon said, pulling Gill back into the now.
“You’re going to have to tell me more about what you need us to do. You can’t expect Solène and me to rush into something without any idea of what we’re going to have to deal with.”
“I found more Cups,” Pharadon said.
Solène looked about nervously. “Best to keep that quiet,” she said. “Perhaps they’re best left where they are. Lost and forgotten.”
Pharadon shook his head. “They are the only way I have to enlighten the goldscale. She’s been brought to the city and placed in some sort of … menagerie. Time is running out.”
“How are you going to free her?” Solène said.
“I haven’t worked that out yet,” Pharadon said. “Enlightening her is the most pressing matter. If I manage that, I can worry about other matters.”
“Don’t you need to bring her to the temple to do that?” Solène said.
Pharadon shook his head. “I brought her to the Cup to get her away from the slayers, rather than bringing the Cup to her. With the Cup I can carry out the ceremony anywhere. Even a cage in the centre of Mirabay.”
“And these demons,” Gill said. “The Venori. What are they? Really?”
“They are as I said. Demons. They feed on the life energy of other creatures. My understanding was that they were destroyed in my youth, but it seems that the magic of the world has brought them back, just as it did me and the other dragons.”
“They’ve appeared in the same place the Cups were hidden?”
Pharadon shrugged again. “It’s possible the concentration of magical energy attracted them. It’s possible that it woke them. I really don’t know. The Venori are little more than stories to me, and to sense them was shocking.”
“Why do you need us? Can’t you incinerate them?”
“It’s not quite that easy,” Pharadon said.
He described what he had found, and Gill could see where the difficulty lay. He wasn’t at all enthusiastic about venturing into the shadowy bowels of a mountain, let alone a mountain filled with creatures that had given rise to human myths about demons. His life lately seemed to be about dealing with the worst creatures from childhood fairy tales. How had it come to this? At moments he wondered if he was dreaming it all—one of the wild and wicked dreams to be found at the bottom of a bottle of bad wine. He looked over at the mass grave that was still being filled, and he knew he was awake. No man dreamed of so much killing.
As unappealing as this task was, Gill owed Pharadon. Everyone, the king included, owed Pharadon, even if they didn’t realise it. The dragon had behaved honourably, had helped them rescue the king, then heal the king. Now it was time to repay that debt.
If the goldscale was caged in Mirabay, that was undoubtedly Amaury’s doing, and that was reason enough to interfere. Aside from Gill’s sense of obligation to Pharadon, he had an overriding sense of unanswered injustice in the way Amaury was treating the dragon, keeping it from its enlightened state.
“I’ll help,” Gill said. “I don’t speak for Solène, though.”
“Of course I’ll help,” Solène said. “I’m not sure what I can do, but I’ll help.”
“Thank you,” Pharadon said. “There isn’t much time, so we should get moving.”
“How far away is it? Will we get there and back in time?” Gill said.
Pharadon smiled. “It is quite far, but we will make it in plenty of time.”
“Let me tell the king I’m going to repay the debt he owes you, and I’ll be ready to leave,” Gill said.
Pharadon smiled. “Excellent. I hope you’re not afraid of heights.”
* * *
“Is that it?” the Prince Bishop said.
“Well, yes,” Ysabeau said. “So far, it is. But it’s quite a big development. We weren’t sure if it would ever wake. Now it’s opened its eyes. Who knows what will be next?”
“Has the enclosure been completed?”
“It has,” Ysabeau said. She didn’t add that the last of the welding had been completed only seconds before her father had arrived. All that mattered was that it was done, that every precaution anyone could come up with had been taken.
“You think it will hold?”
“Who knows,” Ysabeau said. “We’ve done everything we can. If we learn anything new, we can adapt as we go.”
“Good,” the Prince Bishop said. “I want to open to the public as soon as we can, so have your people clear up as quickly as possible.”
“Yes, Father.”
“Lord Protector,” he said, then blushed. “I’d prefer if you call me Lord Protector in public. It’s important that people get used to it.”
“Of course, Lord Protector,” she said.
“Keep me updated.” He frowned. “It looks thinner. Fatten it up.”
He didn’t wait for her to respond, instead turning on his heel and heading for his unmarked carriage, whisking his entourage of aides and guards along with him, leaving Ysabeau alone with the dragon. She looked again into the deep pools of the dragon’s eyes. Her father was right, the creature was thinner. Far thinner. She had been so busy with everything else that she hadn’t noticed.
Looking about, Ysabeau spotted her foreman coming back in; everyone had made themselves scarce while her father—the Lord Protector—was present. She couldn’t say she blamed them. There were rumours going about the city that the return of magic was all down to him, that he dabbled in the dark arts and could kill a man with a single withering stare. It was laughable, or at least it would have been, were it not for the fact that the rumour gave even Ysabeau pause for thought. What might he be capable of when he finally chose to test his powers?
One way or the other, he needed the distraction of the dragon. The clinics weren’t winning people over; the residents of Mirabay were refusing to eat food or drink water that they suspected had been touched by magic. In that, she was disappointed. The benefits were clear for all to see, they simply refused to accept them. You could lead a horse to water …
Those were her father’s problems. Managing this dragon and its enclosure were hers. She caught the foreman’s eye. He had proved competent in the preparatory works and she planned to keep him on to help her run things now that the construction was finished.
“Get me a side of beef,” she said, then frowned. Might the dragon dislike beef? “One of bacon too.”
“My Lady, there’s a shortage of meat in the ci—”
“Get them,” she said, “or it will be you and some of your men fulfilling that role in the cage. I don’t care what it takes or costs. This beast needs feeding, and feed it we will.”
She turned her back on him to show the conversation was over, and found her eyes locked on the dragon’s once more. Each time she did, it made her feel uncomfortable, but she hadn’t been able to work out why. She could see intelligence in the creature’s eyes, dancing like a nascent flame. It wasn’t just intelligence, though. There was something soulful about the beast. When Ysabeau looked into its eyes, she knew what they were doing was wrong, and felt ashamed.
She considered for a moment whether the creature was using magic to tug on her heartstrings, perhaps in an effort to convince her to set it free, but she knew her own mind, and heart, too well for that. She had done many questionable things in her life, but had always been able to rationalise it—she had never killed someone that didn’t have it coming. On this occasion, she was struggling. Not because she wasn’t creative enough, but because she knew what they were doing was unjustifiable. She reminded herself that these creatures had t
o be hunted down because of the death and devastation they had caused, but she knew also that her father’s expeditions had provoked them.
As she looked into those eyes, she struggled to see the savage creature of nightmares. She saw more intelligence than she saw when looking most people in the eye. And more pain.
CHAPTER
32
Gill hadn’t thought he was afraid of heights, but had really never had the opportunity to properly test it. When he was fighting the first dragon, he had been lifted up far higher than he had ever been before, but he had assumed the terror he’d felt rose from being locked in mortal struggle with a creature of nightmares. Now, dangling from one of Pharadon’s claws proved he did indeed have reservations when it came to great heights.
Solène, in Pharadon’s other foreclaw, seemed to be having the time of her life. Though she squinted to shield her eyes from the buffeting wind, her face was split by a toothy smile, and Gill couldn’t think of ever having seen her look so happy. Watching her, he did his best not to allow his gaze to drift down. He wasn’t sure how high they were, and wasn’t willing to study the ground long enough to make an estimate. All he could think about was what it would look like if he impacted—little left but a red splatter, he reckoned. Certainly not how he would choose to go out.
They surged through the air as Pharadon’s great wings beat with a powerful, steady rhythm. It was cold up that high; Gill’s eyes watered as the wind whistled past his face. He wondered which of the mountain peaks below contained the Cups, and more importantly, the Venori. He had borrowed some warmer clothes from the stores at Castandres, but they weren’t heavy enough to keep him entirely warm, and he worried his limbs would be frozen stiff by the time he encountered one of the demons.
Eventually Pharadon started down in a loose spiral that was centred over a peak capped with snow. He slowed and hovered above a ledge on the rock face, giving Gill and Solène time to realise he was about to release his grip. The drop to the ground was slight, and he had to do nothing more than bend his knees to absorb the impact.
With the humans safely on solid ground, Pharadon landed, his bulk filling most of the space. He immediately started to transform into a human, a process that always turned Gill’s stomach. Unwilling to watch, he turned his attention to the opening in the side of the mountain. Even Gill’s inexpert eye could see that it had once been much larger, that it had been almost completely sealed by a rockfall.
He approached and peered in. The light of day reached in for a few paces, but after that, the darkness was absolute, creating the kind of void that nightmares were made of. Even if Gill hadn’t known for a fact that there were demons somewhere in there, the darkness alone would have been enough to set his imagination racing. Every instinct he had screamed at him not to enter.
“I’m ready when you are,” Pharadon said.
Gill turned back, finding him in his now-familiar human form and appearing fully clothed. Gill drew his sword, Valdamar’s old blade, and felt a momentary concern that he might lose the magnificent weapon somewhere in the dark depths of the mountain. Still, there had been no real choice—he needed his best blade if he hoped to survive.
“There’s nothing to be gained by waiting any longer,” Gill said. He looked at Solène, whose face was impassive. He wondered if she was as terrified by the thought of going in there as he was. “You know where the Cups are?”
Pharadon nodded. “I can find my way to them. I need you to protect me until I can get them back out.”
“These creatures, do they use weapons?”
“I don’t believe so,” Pharadon said. “Your Telastrian blade should cause them fatal wounds, even if the blow itself would not normally have been mortal.”
That’s something, at least, Gill thought. “How do they behave?”
“They were said to swarm the creatures they seek to slay. The narrow passages in the mountain should be to our advantage, since they’ll only be able to come at us one or two at a time. But there is something else they do, a form of mind control that subdues a living victim so they can feed. Be wary of it.”
“Have they been here all this time? Waiting?”
Pharadon shrugged. “There’s more magic in the world now than I’ve ever known. There are many possibilities when magical energy is so strong. It’s possible that some of them went dormant all those years ago, and woke as I did, when the Fount grew so strong. Or, they may simply have come to be once more. All we can do is hope that there are not many, and that they will remain in this remote place.”
“If they don’t?” Gill said.
Pharadon shrugged. “Eliminating them will be left to your kind now.”
“How dangerous are they?”
“They slew nearly as many of my people as humans did. It took centuries for dragonkind to bring them under control and then eradicate them. That they are present at all is … chilling. When your people are done with your wars, turning your attention to the Venori would be a very good idea. Before they become too numerous and powerful to stop.”
Gill nodded slowly. It seemed there was always a fight for another day. “Is there anything else I need to know?”
“They are intelligent creatures, but their hunger will be stirred so deeply by my presence that they will be driven by that, rather than calculated thought.”
Wonderful, Gill thought. Intelligent creatures driven by insatiable hunger. He knew Pharadon was trying his best to paint a bright picture of the task ahead, but his words did little to ease Gill’s concerns.
Gesturing at darkness, he said, “Can you do anything about that, Solène?”
She nodded, then frowned for the briefest of moments. A great globe of light appeared several paces away, filling the passageway with light and making it appear marginally less foreboding. Gill could still see nothing but bare rock ahead. Pharadon seemed to be expecting Gill to take the lead, so, with a curt nod, he drew his sword, held it at the ready, and stepped into the tunnel.
The whistle of the chill breeze cut off instantly. Sheltered from its cold touch, he instantly started to feel warmer. Wondering if the light had anything to do with that, he held his hand out toward it but couldn’t feel any heat being given off.
He edged forward, his footfalls echoing, heartbeat thumping in his ears. A moment later Pharadon’s and Solène’s footfalls joined his. Another globe of light appeared farther down the tunnel. Gill was glad that he didn’t have to rely on Leverre’s short-lasting trick that allowed him to see in the dark. Creatures that dwelled under the ground were going to be far more comfortable in darkness than Gill ever would be, and he hoped that the globes of light would put them off. As it was, the light would certainly alert the creatures to their presence, although Pharadon seemed to think the demons were already aware of them.
The passage led down at a shallow angle. At first one side of it looked similar to the rock face above the ledge—rubble and dust—but it soon took on the look of a natural cavity in the mountain, with jagged edges. The roof was high above and the tunnel was wide enough for two people to walk side by side. Gill wasn’t sure if that was really a good thing—after all, the narrower the passage, the harder it would be for the Venori to swarm him.
It was difficult to gauge how far into the mountain they were getting, or how far they had descended. Gill was beginning to wonder how far they would have to go before they encountered signs of the Venori, when his query was answered.
* * *
The noise was indistinct at first, something Gill thought he might be imagining, but it grew steadily, coming from farther down the passageway where darkness still ruled.
“They’re getting close,” Pharadon said.
Gill was tempted to ask what he should do, but he supposed the answer was obvious—kill anything that came toward them. He paused for a moment to steel his nerves, and adjust his posture to as relaxed a fencer’s stance as he could muster. A moment later, he saw the first of them come out of the darkness.
At first Gill thought it was a man, albeit a pale, naked man—but the differences quickly made themselves clear. The creature was completely hairless and looked emaciated. It had pointed ears, sharp, elongated teeth, and eyes that emitted a faint red glow. So this is what a demon really looks like? Gill thought. He wondered how many more creatures from childhood tales he was destined to encounter before the year was out. He would have to get out of the tunnel alive first, of course, before he could enjoy that particular pleasure.
He was so caught up in the sight of his first demon that he allowed the creature to get perilously close. Solène urgently calling his name startled him out of his bemusement; he shifted his weight to balance more readily on his feet and started to study the way the Venori moved, rather than what it looked like. It seemed slow, weak; not at all what Gill had expected. When he judged it within range, he lunged, taking a great leaping step forward and extending his sword with as much speed as he could muster.
The blade met thin air. Instinct pulled him back into a more balanced, defensive pose, as his senses searched for the creature he had been certain he was about to skewer. His eyes and the tip of his sword tracked the same spot as he looked from side to side. The creature had either vanished, or moved so quickly that Gill hadn’t been able to see—one moment it was there; the next, it was gone. So much for it being weak and starving. Was it too much to hope that he had connected with it, and the Telastrian steel had done its job, banishing the demon back to whatever hell it had come from?
The sick feeling in the pit of Gill’s stomach said otherwise, and paying attention to that sensation born of instinct had saved his life on more than one occasion.
“Does anyone see it?” Gill said.
“No,” Solène said. “It was a blur. Then gone.”
“The Venori were known for their ability to move faster than the eye can follow,” Pharadon said.
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