Chris Wraight - Master of Dragons

They daunted her. The dark peaks glowered in the night, their flanks sheer and their shadows deep. She had never enjoyed spending time in those mountains — that was the dawi’s realm, and even before war had come it had felt hostile and strange. She looked hard, peering into the gloom. She began to see things stirring.

I see armies , she sang, slowly. As Vranesh swept across the heavens in broad, gliding arcs, she saw more and more. Huge armies. I see forges lit red, like wounds in the world. I see smoke, and fire, and the beating of iron hammers.

It was as if the entire range were alive, crawling like a hill of angry insects. Pillars of smog polluted the skies. The earth in the lightless valleys shook under the massed tread of ironshod boots.

Endless , Liandra sang, inflecting the harmonic with wonder. So many.

Vranesh swung around again. Now you see what your scouts have seen. You see why you are needed. The storm is coming. It will roll down from those mountains soon and it will tear towards the sea.

Liandra sighed. She understood why the dragon had shown her such things. Kor Vanaeth cannot stand , she sang.

I did not say that. But you should think on where your powers are best employed. You should see what choices await you.

Liandra’s mind-voice fell silent. She had always known that hard decisions would come again. Like water returning to the boil, she felt her ever-present anger rising to the surface.

They killed thousands at Kor Vanaeth , she sang bitterly.

They did. We both saw it.

Liandra clenched her fists, just as she always did. The gesture had become habitual. I wish for nothing but to see them burn.

The druchii first , sang Vranesh. Now the dawi. Can you really kill them all?

The night seemed to gather itself around her as the dragon soared. It toughened her resolve, helped her to see things clearly. Salendor was already preparing to march, to bring the war back to the stunted ones before they could seize the initiative. Perhaps he was right to.

I cannot , she sang savagely, feeling the lava-hot energy of the beast beneath her. But you can.

Sevekai awoke.

For a long period he didn’t try to move. The spirals of pain were too acute, too complete. More than one bone was broken, and he saw nothing from his left eye. A vague, numb gap existed where sensations from his limbs should have been.

At first he thought he might have been blinded. Then, much later, the sun rose and he saw that he had awoken during the night. Little enough of the sun’s warmth penetrated down to the gorge floor, though — the difference between night and day was no more than a dull, creeping shade of grey.

When he finally summoned up the effort to shift position, the agony nearly made him pass out. He tried three times to pull himself to his knees. He failed three times. Only on the fourth attempt, dizzy with the effort, did he drag himself into something like a huddled crouch.

He was terribly, horribly cold. The shade seemed eternal. The rocks around him were covered with thin sheens of globular moss. Moisture glistened in the underhangs, dripping quietly. When he shivered from the chill, fresh pricks of pain rushed up his spine.

Awareness came back to him in a series of mismatched recollections. He remembered a long trek into the mountains with the others. He remembered Drutheira’s black-lined eyes staring into his, the raids on trading caravans deep in the shadow of the woods and then the dull-faced visage of Kaitar.

Kaitar .

That name brought a shudder; he couldn’t quite remember why. Something had been wrong with Kaitar. Had he died? Had something terrible happened to all of them?

Sevekai’s forehead slumped, exhausted, back against the rock. He felt his lips press up against moss. Moisture ran into his mouth, pressed from thick green spores. It dribbled down his chin, and he sucked it up.

It was then that he realised just how thirsty he was. He pushed himself down further, ignoring flaring aches in his back and sides, hunting for more water.

Only when he had trawled through shallow puddles under low-hanging lichen and licked the dribbling channels from the tops of stones did he feel something of a sense of self-possession begin to return. He lay on his back, breathing shallowly.

He had fallen a long way. He could see that now, twisting his head and gazing up at the sheer sides of the gorge. A hundred feet? Two hundred? He should be dead. The rubble that had come down with him alone should have finished him off.

Sevekai smiled, though it cracked his lips and made them bleed. It was all so ludicrous.

Perhaps this is death , he thought. Perhaps I shall haunt this place for a thousand years.

He looked up again. As his senses became sharper, as his mind put itself back together again, his thoughts became less fanciful.

For fifty feet or so below the ruined ledge he’d fallen from, the rock ran straight down, a cliff of granite without break or handhold. Then, as it curved inwards towards the gorge’s floor, it began to choke up with a tangled mess of briars, scrub and hunched trees. Down in the primordial gloom, a mournful swathe of vegetation had taken hold, clinging on grimly in the perpetual twilight. It was dense and damp, overlapping and strangling itself in a blind attempt to claw upwards to the light.

For all its gnarly ugliness, that creeping canopy was what had saved him. As Sevekai gazed upward he could see the path he had taken down — crashing through the branches of a wizened, black-barked shrub before rolling down across a clump of thornweed and into the moss-covered jumble of rocks where he now found himself.

It was still unlikely. He should still have died.

He let his head fall back again. He could feel the heavy burden of unconsciousness creeping up on those parts of him that still gave him any sensation at all. Night would come again soon, and with it the piercing cold. He was alone, forgotten by those he had trekked up into the mountains with. He knew enough of the wilds to know that strange creatures would be quick to sniff out wounded prey in their midst. He was broken, he was frail, he was isolated.

A crooked smile broke out again, marring the severe lines of his thin face. He felt no fear. Part of him wondered whether the plummet had purged fear from him; if so, that would be some liberation.

I will not die in this place , he mouthed silently. He did not say the words to encourage himself; it was just a statement of belief. He knew it, as clearly as he knew that his body would recover and his strength would return. The scions of Naggaroth were made of hard stuff: forged in the ice, sleet and terror of the dark realm. It took a lot to kill one — you had to twist the dagger in deep, turning it tight until the blood ran black.

He had killed so many times, had ended so many lives, and yet Morai-Heg still failed to summon him to her underworld throne for reckoning.

Even as the light overhead died, sending Sevekai back into a dim-lit world of frost and pain, the smile did not leave his face.

I will not die in this place.

Yethanial looked up from her work, irritated. She had slipped with her last stroke, jabbing the tip of the quill across the vellum. The servant was well aware of his crime, and waited nervously.

‘I told you I was not to be disturbed,’ said Yethanial.

‘Yes, my lady, but he would not accept my word. He is highborn, and refuses to leave.’

Yethanial looked down at her work again. At times she wondered why she cared so much. No one other than her would ever read it.