Chris Wraight - Master of Dragons

So Drutheira had known Kaitar was tainted. She’d kept the knowledge to herself, as close and devious as ever. Sevekai admired that. He admired her perfect calmness in the cause of deception, the effortless way she discarded those who blocked her path back to Naggaroth. He wondered whether the day would come when she tried to dispatch him, too. That would be an interesting challenge, a potentially enjoyable test. Drutheira was powerful, for sure, but he had tricks of his own, some of which he’d kept secret even from her.

He noticed light growing around him. The purple flickers of witch-fire died out, replaced by a thin grey film on the stone. They were jogging up steeply now, angled hard against the heavy press of heart-rock.

‘Stay close,’ warned Drutheira. ‘The dragon flies.’

The tunnel opened up around them. Sevekai caught sight of its entrance — a jagged-toothed mouth, opening out on to a screen of grey.

They ran for it, emerging into the pale light of an overcast day.

They were on another ledge, high on the shoulder of a narrow gorge. Vast, blunt peaks crowded around them with their heads lost in mist. The Arluii mountains were always bleak and rain-shrouded.

Sevekai leaned against the cliff at his back, catching his breath. The ledge was not wide — a few yards at its broadest. To his left it wound higher up, clinging to the gorge-wall like throttle-wire. To his right it snaked down steeply and headed into the gloom of the gorge. Straight ahead was a plunge into nothing. Fronds of mist coiled over the lip of the brink, gusting softly in the chill wind.

‘So where is it?’ demanded Malchior, turning on Drutheira with a face like murder.

Drutheira looked at him irritably. ‘Give it time.’

‘We had it in our power,’ Malchior insisted. ‘Down there. Why did you-’

Before he could finish, a thin cry of anguish rang out over the gorge. They all looked up.

Far up, part-masked by cloud, the black dragon was on the wing. It flew awkwardly, as if flexing muscles that had been cramped for too long.

Sevekai let slip a low whistle. ‘Ugly wretch,’ he said.

Drutheira laughed. ‘Ugly as the night. But it’s ours.’

The dragon circled high above them, unwilling to come closer, unable to draw further away. Its screeches were hard to listen to.

Ashniel gazed up at it with the rest of them. ‘So what now?’

‘This road leads east,’ said Drutheira. ‘It will take time to break the beast. But when we do-’

She didn’t hear the wheezing until too late. None of them did, not even Sevekai whose ears were as sharp as a Cold One’s.

He burst out of the tunnel mouth, limping and bleeding with a blade in hand. Sevekai whirled around first, seeing him go for Drutheira. For a moment he thought it was Kaitar, then he saw Hreth’s familiar expression of loathing. Left for dead, somehow he’d clawed his way back up to the surface.

Hreth leapt at Drutheira, who was standing on the lip of the ledge. Sevekai pounced instinctively, catching him in mid-leap. The two of them tumbled across the rock. Sevekai felt blood splash over him from Hreth’s open wounds.

‘Kill it!’ cried Drutheira, but he couldn’t twist free to see what she was doing. Hreth’s fingers gouged at him, scrabbling for his eyes. Sevekai arched his spine, shifting Hreth’s weight, ready to push him away.

He caught a brief glimpse of Hreth’s face rammed up close to his own. It was just like Kaitar’s had been — dull-eyed, hollow, staring. Sevekai suddenly felt a horrific pain in his chest, as if something were sucking his soul from his body.

A wave of purple fire smashed across him, hot as coals. Hreth flew away from him, shrieking just as Kaitar had done. He crashed into the cliff face, burning with witch-light, before springing back at Sevekai.

Sevekai dropped down and darted to one side, but Hreth grabbed his tunic and dragged him to the brink. Another bolt of witch-light slammed into Hreth, propelling him over. With a terrible lurch, Sevekai realised he was going over too.

He tried to jerk back, to shake Hreth off him, to reach for something to grab on to, but it was no good — a final aethyr-bolt blasted Hreth clear, dragging Sevekai along in his wake.

For a moment he felt himself suspended over nothing. He saw Hreth’s maddened grimace, felt the spittle flying into his eyes.

‘Sevekai!’ he heard someone cry — it might have been Drutheira.

Then everything fell away. He tumbled through the void, breaking clear of Hreth and plummeting alone. He had a brief, awful impression of rock racing by him in a blur of speed, the wind snatching at his tunic and a howling in his ears.

Something hit him on the side of the head, rocking it and sending blood-whirls shooting across his eyes. After that he knew no more.

The highlands above Kor Evril had the look of a land cursed. Cairns of ebony littered the steep mountainsides. Little grew. The winds, as hard and biting as any of the Annulii, moaned across an empty stonescape, stirring up ash-like soil and sending it skirling across stone.

Only those of the bloodline of Caledor had learned to appreciate the Dragonspine’s stark rawness. Fissures opened up along the flanks of the high places, sending noxious fumes spewing into an unspoiled sky. Foul aromas pooled in the shadows, gathering in mist-shrouded crevasses and lurking over filmy watercourses. The air could be hot against the skin or as frigid as death, depending on which way the capricious wind blew. It was a land of extremes, a battleground of elemental earth, harsh air and raging ocean.

Imladrik stood before the cavern’s wide mouth, breathing heavily. His cheeks were flushed from the climb into the Dragonspine, his body lined with sweat. A stench of burning metal rose up from the charred soil. Kor Evril was far below, miles away, down in the fertile lands to the south-east. It had taken two days to reach the cavern, a long, painful slog on foot.

Now at his destination, his eyes shone. He felt invigorated. The sensations, the smells, the incessant low rumble of steam and wind — they were the things he had been born to. Something in his blood responded to it — he had always felt the same way, ever since his father had taken him into the peaks as a child.

‘This is the forge of our House,’ the great Imrik had told him. ‘This is where we were tempered. As the sea is to Eataine and the forests are to Avelorn, the fire-mountains are to Caledor. Forget this truth, and we lose ourselves.’

Imladrik had taken the words to heart, returning to the Dragonspine whenever he could. Even during times of warfare he had made the pilgrimage, renewing himself, reciting afresh the arcane vows he had made so long ago.

A dragon rider was a restless soul, condemned to rove the passages of the air for as long as the bond existed between steed and rider; if he had a home on earth, a true home, then it was the Dragonspine.

‘Such a thing has not been seen for many years,’ Imladrik said. ‘We are honoured, Thoriol.’

Imladrik’s travelling companion stood close by. Thoriol tended to his mother in looks, with pale colouring and slender frame. Only his eyes were the same as his father’s — emerald, like summer grass.

Thoriol said nothing. He looked doubtful, standing dutifully beside his father, the collar of his robe turned up against the heat rolling down from the cavern entrance.

‘I remember my first summoning,’ said Imladrik, lost in the memory. ‘We tell ourselves that we choose them, but of course they choose us. We are like swifts to them, our lives flitting across the path of theirs.’ He smiled broadly. ‘But who can tell? Who really understands them? That is the majesty of them: they are an enigma, an impossibility.’