Servant of the Crown

by Duncan M. Hamilton

  That tidbit would have been a bit more help a few minutes ago, Gill thought. Still, he couldn’t have executed his lunge any faster, and even in his prime it would have been a decent strike. As pleasing as it was to realise his form was coming back with ever greater consistency, it didn’t answer the question of where the demon had gone. The only comforting thought, as he stared into the darkness beyond Solène’s magical light, was that the Venori would likely go for Pharadon first. Not a particularly noble thought, but an attempt to feed might keep the creature still long enough for Gill to cut it down. Somehow, he doubted Pharadon would be open to the idea of being used as bait.

  “Keep your eyes peeled,” Gill said. If the demons could all move like that, he knew they might be in trouble.

  Gill’s skin tingled and his body felt as though it were held in a vise. He had thought he had known true terror walking into the first dragon’s cave, but this was worse. He wondered if his association with Pharadon had tempered those memories, and made dragons less a matter of nightmare. Perhaps it was simply that there were different levels of fear, and that once a danger had passed, the emotional experience inevitably faded. His first battle had been the most frightening thing imaginable—he had thrown up on his way to muster—but the first dragon had made that seem like a mild concern.

  Now, he struggled to remember what all that fuss was about. What was an army of men, or a single dragon, compared to a horde of hungering demons? How do I get myself into these situations? Gill wondered. Are the gods punishing me for past hubris? It was difficult to get past the notion of divine intervention, though Gill had long since lost his faith. How could any man be as unfortunate as he, or have the world attempt to kill him so many times, if some great force was not behind it all? Might the powers of magic be conspiring against him?

  There was still no sight or sound of the creature. Gill wasn’t fool enough to think that he had frightened it off. Most likely it had gone to get its friends, or worse, was watching him at that very moment from an unseen vantage point. The thought sent a shiver across Gill’s skin.

  “We should push on,” he said. They were either going on or turning around, and he knew the latter wasn’t an option. He started to inch forward again, his body tense at the thought of the Venori flying out of the darkness at him.

  CHAPTER

  33

  As he edged farther and farther into the mountain, the madness of what they were trying to achieve struck him. Even if they made it to the Cups, could they really expect to get back out again? It was true that he wasn’t constrained by the usual limits of what he could achieve with his sword, that Solène’s magic would be equally important, if not more so. But still.…

  He heard Pharadon and Solène talking quietly behind him, and realised what his role there really was. Just as in the days of the Empire, the union of mage and banneret had happened once more. Gill—technically the most skilled swordsman of his generation—was there, Telastrian sword in hand, all to make sure Solène had the time she needed to shape the magic that would get them through this experience alive. No doubt that was the topic of the conversation behind him.

  Gill had to admit he felt a little emasculated. He’d always been the one looked to when the impossible needed to be achieved. His renaissance over the past weeks had let him imagine that he could be that man once again, but now he realised that was unlikely. Magic was the future, one way or the other, and his kind would only ever serve as an adjunct to that, as had been the case in the distant past. He had struggled enough to find a place in the world he knew—how would he fare now? Still, he thought, I might not make it out of here alive. Always a silver lining.…

  Solène’s light reached only so far down the craggy passageway; beyond that lurked the Venori. He wished they’d come out, so he could at least kill some of them. He always felt better after getting the first splash of blood on his blade. Confirming that he could kill one of these demons would go a long way to settling his nerves. Until he did, they would continue to seem invincible.

  While his footsteps echoed sharply off the rough rock sides of the passageway, the whispering between Solène and Pharadon seemed very distant. Even though Solène continued to create magical lights every time he moved from the embrace of the previous one, it felt as though the darkness was closing in around him. He heard what sounded like a laugh ahead, a warm sound, full of kindness and joy. It was a laugh he had heard before. He squinted into the blackness beyond the magic light.

  “Auroré?” he muttered. The joy of hearing something he valued above all else flooded through him, overwhelming the part of his mind that screamed this was impossible. Gill quickened his pace.

  No sooner had he stepped beyond the range of Solène’s last light than he saw movement, a flash of a shape moving away from him. But something remained—its scent. He knew the smell. It was a perfume, made by a single parfumier in Mirabay. Gill had bought Auroré a bottle on her birthday each year. He breathed deeply, drawing the scent into his lungs. How long had it been since he had smelled it? There was no way she could be here. She was dead. But the sound? The smell?

  “Gill? What are you doing here?”

  The rational part of Gill’s brain told him that Solène had spoken, but everything else said it was Auroré. It was her voice. There was no mistaking it.

  “Auroré?”

  “I’m here, Gill. I’ve been waiting for you for so long. We’ve been waiting for you. Our son is here.”

  My son? Gill’s heart raced. This couldn’t be happening, but there was so much he had seen with his own eyes over the past few weeks that couldn’t be happening. Yet it had happened. Magic. Dragons. Demons. Now Auroré? His son?

  A light bloomed farther down the tunnel and he hurried toward it, only barely aware of Pharadon and Solène behind him. The light grew as he progressed, a warm, welcoming glow that spoke of an open fire with a pot of inviting broth hanging over it. And there she was. There was indeed a fire, with a cauldron hanging over it. Auroré sat beside the blaze on a small stool, cradling a newborn boy on her lap.

  “Gill,” she said, looking up and smiling in that way that made Gill’s heart melt. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  “How? What?” Gill said. The boy should be older, he thought, but with magic, there could be many reasons for his appearance. Auroré, too, did not appear to have aged. Gill felt shamed. Time had not been kind to him, and although he had trimmed some of the bulk at his waist, his hair showed traces of grey, and the years he’d spent at the bottom of a bottle had lined his face. What would she think of him now? What would she think of the man he had become, so far removed from the one she had fallen in love with?

  “I’m so glad you’re finally here,” she said. She placed the child in a crib beside her stool—a crib that Gill would have sworn was not there a moment earlier. More magic. She smiled a smile that would make a starving man forget about food, and opened her arms. “My love, I’d lost hope that you’d find us.”

  Gill returned her smile, as his heart filled with a warmth it had not known in so long. Perhaps the gods were not punishing him for hubris after all? He lowered his sword, walked forward, and surrendered himself to her embrace.

  * * *

  “Gill! Get back,” Solène shouted. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  He had rushed ahead, forcing her and Pharadon to run to catch up. When they came upon him, he was standing in the middle of a small chamber. Solène cast a light just in time to see Gill, as though in a trance, lower his sword and walk forward as one of the Venori emerged from the shadows. Guillot walked straight into its arms. The creature lowered him to the ground and knelt over him.

  “What’s he doing?” Solène said.

  “The demon must have bewitched him,” Pharadon said. “The magic I spoke of. Now is the time to use it. Quickly.”

  Solène felt a flash of panic, and wished that Pharadon retained his great abilities while in human form. Everyone was relying on her now. As the
y had when she’d helped first rescue, then cure, the king. She had never considered the responsibility that magic might bring with it. She had always thought of it as a terrible burden, and it still was—it was only the nature of that burden that had changed.

  She furrowed her brow as she concentrated. She had sworn she would never again use magic to kill, but this seemed different. She silently mouthed the words that would focus her thoughts and saw a lance of blue energy shoot across the small chamber. It struck the Venori in the chest, blasting it against the far wall, and leaving a large hole in the creature where its approximation of a heart usually resided.

  Gill lay senseless on the chamber’s floor. After checking to make sure the Venori was dead, Solène knelt beside Gill. His eyes were open, staring into the distance, and he seemed completely unaware she was there. There was an expression of deep contentment on his face.

  “What did it do to him?” she said.

  Pharadon knelt beside her. “This is what I spoke of. It enraptured him.”

  “Will he recover?”

  “Most likely, but this type of magic is anathema to me. I do not know how it works.”

  Solène gently slapped Gill’s cheek. “Gill? Can you hear me?”

  He mumbled and stirred, but his eyes and mind were still far away.

  “What can we do for him?” she said.

  “All magic fades. I don’t expect this will last long. Its intent is only to stun the victim long enough for the Venori to feed.”

  “Well, we can’t wait. What if more of those things come? We have to do something to get him on his feet again.”

  “A mild shock, perhaps?”

  “A what?”

  “Flush him with a small amount of the Fount. That should revive him.”

  “How much?” Solène said, not sure she liked the idea but unable to come up with any alternatives.

  Pharadon shrugged. “I do not know how much will be needed for a human.”

  “What happens if I use too much?”

  “The same as always happens when too much of the Fount passes through a living thing.”

  “Burnout,” Solène said under her breath. “Wonderful.”

  She did her best to imagine how much would send a tingle across her skin, and focussed that thought on Gill. Indecision was as likely to get them killed as making the wrong decision. He jerked awake.

  “Auroré?”

  As he searched about him, the look of happiness on his face faded. “What happened?”

  “The demon did that enrapturing thing to you,” Solène said.

  What was left of the smile on Gill’s face disappeared completely. “That sounds about right,” he said. “Where is it?”

  “I killed it,” Solène said, gesturing to the creature’s corpse by the rock wall.

  “At least we know they can die,” Gill said.

  “We should continue on as soon as you’re ready,” Pharadon said.

  CHAPTER

  34

  Gill hauled himself to his feet, cast a glance at the Venori corpse lying at the side of the chamber, and shuddered. A moment before, he had thought it was his long-dead wife. Auroré’s smell was still in his nose, the sound of her voice in his ears; the sensation of her touch lingered on his skin. How could he have been so utterly fooled? How could he have allowed it? And how had the Venori known so much about him? Above all, the most frightening thing was how much he wanted to be back in that state.

  The pain of her death was fresh in his heart, making it difficult to think of anything else. She had been so real. Every detail. At what point had reality blended into illusion? That was concerning—there was no clear transition. No point he could identify as the moment he had walked from the real world into one the demon had created. If he couldn’t tell when that was, how could he prevent it from happening again?

  The only consolation was the visible evidence that they could be killed. He would have preferred to be the one who had done the killing, but a dead demon was better than a live one. Gill gave the body one final look before moving toward the passage leading deeper into the mountain.

  “I’m ready,” he said. He didn’t believe what he said and wondered if his companions did. Surely they were as concerned as he was by what had happened. “Wait,” he said, second-guessing himself. “The enrapture thing. Is there anything you can do to stop it happening again?”

  Solène blanched. He’d seen the same reaction from her before—it was the one she had every time she was asked to try a new piece of magic that might have a negative impact on someone. Gill wondered if she’d ever get over it, but knew she was still haunted by the first time she had killed. She’d done it to save him from the Prince Bishop’s men, but the justification didn’t seem enough for her. Some people never got over that kind of thing. Those with good souls. Gill wondered what that said about him.

  She and Pharadon entered into a heated discussion, which continued for some time. At last they both started to nod and Solène turned to Gill.

  “I think I have a way to allow you to see what’s born of magic, and what’s not,” Solène said. “Hopefully it will work.”

  “Hopefully,” Gill said, doing his best to muster some enthusiasm.

  Solène muttered some words and Gill waited to feel different, but when he realised she was done, and he didn’t, made his best effort to appear emboldened. She cast a globe of light in the passageway and Gill started down it, determined to claim the next kill.

  He had not gone far before another creature peeked out of the darkness. For a moment it appeared stunned by Solène’s light, but it adapted quickly and continued to approach, albeit more cautiously. Gill took his guard and advanced slowly. The demon regarded him with hungry curiosity for a moment. Suddenly it became covered with a coruscating blue light. Magical energy. It was a beautiful thing to see, and Gill realised what it meant—the Venori was trying to use its tricks on him again. Whatever Solène had done to him, it had worked.

  Gill began to lower his sword, aping an expression of stupefaction. The Venori moved forward, lips pulling back to reveal pointed, elongated canine teeth. It thought it had Gill in its spell. Gill burst into motion. If the creature was surprised, it didn’t have the time to show it. Gill had run it through the chest, pulled his blade clear, and taken its head from its shoulders in the blink of an eye. The body teetered on its feet, then collapsed to the ground.

  There were two more Venori right behind it. Perhaps realising that their friend’s trick hadn’t worked, they split to opposite sides of the passageway, moving so quickly that they were in new positions before Gill could blink. His only advantage was that in such narrow confines, even their unnatural speed couldn’t take them far from his blade.

  He slashed left and right, attacks intended to do nothing more than harry, but the Telastrian steel blade made contact on both sides, yielding glancing cuts. The howls of pain the creatures let out suggested far more serious injury. They recoiled from him, smoke billowing from the wounds.

  They were focussed on their agony, and Gill had never been one to pass up a good opportunity. He skewered each one through the heart, then took their heads. As he watched the second one tumble down the passageway, he started to think they might make it out of the mountain alive. Perhaps even with what they’d come for.

  “Are there many more of these things?” Gill said, as he stepped over the bodies.

  “Some,” Pharadon said. “I’m not sure how many. All this rock makes it more difficult to tell. Particularly when my powers are weakened.”

  Gill cast Solène a glance; she shrugged. One way or the other, there were four fewer than when they arrived. Would their intelligence overcome their hunger? Might the deaths of four of their kind persuade the rest to scurry deeper into the mountain and leave them in peace?

  They continued moving farther into the mountain for what seemed like an age. Gill couldn’t work out how many times they had spiralled around, only that there was a gentle left-hand turn to th
e passageway as it dropped.

  Down and down they went, into places that had probably never before been touched by light. Were it not for Gill’s presence, he reckoned they still wouldn’t be—Solène and Pharadon would be able to use their magical tricks to see in the dark.

  * * *

  “Eat it, you dumb beast,” Ysabeau said. She stood, arms akimbo, staring into the cage. The golden dragon stared back at her with mournful eyes, completely ignoring the cow carcass that Ysabeau’s men had lowered into the cage. There was nothing wrong with it—the cow had been slaughtered only that morning—but the dragon didn’t show even the slightest interest.

  “That cow would feed a family for a week,” Ysabeau said. She felt foolish barking at the creature, but some instinct within her said that it might understand at least the sentiment of what she was saying, if the great chunk of raw meat wasn’t enough.

  She was starting to become concerned. If they couldn’t get the dragon to eat, it was going to die. Already she could see the outline of its ribs on its flank, its scaled hide stretched across its skeleton. Her father was gambling heavily on the effect that the dragon would have—the boost to his reputation and the distraction of seeing what could only be called a wonder of the world. If it died, he would blame someone, and that would be her. There were no other targets.

  How could she get it to eat? There was no way she was going to climb into the cage and force-feed it and she doubted if any of her men would follow an order to. They were due to open the exhibit the following morning, and no one was going to be amazed by a lethargic, half-starved creature curled up in its cage.

  Feeding it and livening it up were her pressing problems, but they weren’t the ones that concerned her the most. Looking into the dragon’s deep blue eyes told Ysabeau all she needed to know of its torment. She kept reminding herself that given the chance, this creature would slaughter livestock, raze villages to the ground, and kill scores of men, women, and children. Looking at it, though, that was hard to believe, and the memory of the other dragon at the temple—the one who spoke and changed into human form—made her wonder how much they really knew about dragons.