Margaret Weis - Rage of the Dragon

She was still keeping fast hold of Wulfe, who was growing bored and starting to squirm. Aylaen bent down and whispered into his ear. “I need you to do something for me.”

Wulfe looked up suspiciously. “I’m not going to take a bath.”

Aylaen removed the necklace she had been wearing. Golden bands twined around the spiritbone forming the tail of a dragon. Golden wings spread from the bone with a golden chain attached to the tips of each of the wings. The head of the dragon reared up from the bone. Emeralds adorned the spiritbone, set above the head. Two smaller emeralds were embedded in the wings.

“What’s that?” Wulfe asked, eying it curiously.

“The spiritbone of one of the five Vektia dragons,” Aylaen replied.

“What’s a Vektia dragon?” Wulfe asked.

“You’ve heard Skylan and me talk about the Vektia dragons,” said Aylaen.

“You Uglies are always talking,” said Wulfe, shrugging. “Mostly your talk is boring and I don’t listen. Is it like our dragon?”

“You have to listen now,” said Aylaen sternly. “I’m going to depend on you and I need you to understand that this is important.”

Wulfe heaved a deep sigh. “I’m listening.”

Aylaen told him how Torval was roaming the universe and how he came upon this world, ruled by the great dragon, Ilyrion. How Torval wanted this world and he and the great dragon fought over it.

“The world didn’t belong to either of them,” Wulfe interrupted, scowling. “It belonged to the faeries. My mother told me so.”

“Just listen!” Aylaen said, exasperated. “We don’t have much time.”

Then, as concisely as she could, she told him the rest. How Torval killed the dragon, Ilyrion, but had come to admire his foe and honored her by placing the power of creation in five of her bones. Fearing that other roving gods might come to try to take the world, Torval gave the five bones to his consort, Vindrash, the dragon goddess, to hide away. She gave one each to four of the gods who had come to join them in ruling over the world. The fifth she gave to the Vindrasi, her chosen people.

For many thousands of years, the gods remained undisturbed, and then came the Gods of Raj and of Aelon, God of the New Dawn, to challenge them. They fought a great battle in heaven. The Old Gods were defeated and forced to retreat. One of their own, Desiria, the daughter of Sund, God of Farseeing, and Aylis, Goddess of the Sun, was slain in that battle.

“Sund grieved the loss of his child,” said Aylaen. “He looked into the future and saw only death and despair and to try to prevent that, he gave the spiritbone of the Vektia that was in his care to Aelon. When the ogres attacked, Aelon’s Warrior-Priests tried to use this spiritbone to stop them. Treia was a Bone Priestess and she summoned the Vektia dragon and ended up destroying a city.”

Aylaen gazed at the spiritbone, admiring its delicate beauty even as she trembled at its terrible power. Someone who knew the secret of the Five could tame the dragon’s destructive power: the only way to control the Vektia was to obtain all five spiritbones, summon all five dragons. If that could be achieved, the Old Gods would be able to use the power to drive out the interloper gods and retain rulership of the world.

How? Aylaen wondered, turning the spiritbone in her hand. What will happen when the Five come together?

She had no answer. All she had was one spiritbone, one given by the traitor god, Sund, to his enemy. The Vindrasi had lost their spiritbone, through fear, when the cowardly Chief of Chiefs, Horg, gave the spiritbone set in the Vektan Torque to the ogres in an effort to save his own skin.

Aylaen had one. They needed to find all five. They had been planning to sail to the ogre kingdom to take back their spiritbone. But that plan had gone sadly awry. Now they were drifting on a fog-bound sea, surrounded by their enemies, and the fate of her people and her gods was going to be in the hands of a fae child.

Wulfe was eleven years old or somewhere thereabouts. His hair was shaggy and uncombed; he wore whatever came to hand, which by now had mostly been reduced to rags and was unrecognizable. He was a fae child, if one believed his tale about being the grandson of the Faerie Queen. And he was a savage killer. In his man-beast form, he had murdered and dismembered two men. According to his story, he had been certain those men were going to kill him and he had decided to kill them first. Aylaen had watched him turn into a wolf. She had watched the fur sprout from his body, his teeth lengthen into fangs, his yellow eyes gleam.

“I listened to the story. Why are you staring at me like that?” Wulfe asked. “What do you want me to do?”

“You and I are going to hide this away,” said Aylaen. “But first I must ask you a question and you must tell me the truth. Did my sister kill Keeper?”

Wulfe flung up his arm. “You’re going to hit me!”

“I’m not going to hit you. Is it true?” Aylaen asked, giving him a little shake.

“Yes,” he said sullenly.

“How do you know?”

“I saw her do it. I was watching her,” said Wulfe. His eyes narrowed. “I always watch her.”

“Why?” Aylaen asked, startled.

“Because she hates me. She wants me dead. My daemons keep telling me to kill her, but I don’t listen to them. I know if I hurt her you would be mad at me.”

“Telling me my sister is a murderer makes me mad at you,” said Aylaen. “So you better not be lying.”

Wulfe wriggled in her grasp. She tightened her grip. “Tell me what you saw.”

“Treia was being nice to Keeper, asking him how he felt and if he was in pain and if there was anything she could do for him. She was nice to me once like that and she ended up hurting me.”

Wulfe shrugged. “He should have known better, for he didn’t trust her, either, but I guess he must have been groggy from being hit on the head. He told her the injury was nothing. He’d suffered a cracked skull more than once in the Para Dix. Treia went to that chest of hers where she keeps her stuff and mixed something in a cup and gave it to him and told him to drink it. She said it would ease the pain. He drank it and then he slumped over and I thought he was asleep. But then Skylan came down and said something to him and shook him and Keeper toppled over and Skylan said he was dead.”

“And how do you know my sister killed him?”

Wulfe shrugged his thin shoulders. “Because Keeper wasn’t dead until he drank whatever Treia gave him. Skylan knows what she did,” the boy added defensively. “Ask him.”

Aylaen touched the spiritbone with the tips of her fingers. She could feel the terrible power, a tingling vibration. Closing her eyes, she saw, not for the first time, the bodies in the river, the corpses littering the street, mothers wailing over dead children, husbands weeping over dead wives; families lying dead in the rubble of their homes: an entire city destroyed.

She opened her eyes to look at the boy shifting restlessly from one bare foot to the other.

Aylaen felt the muscles in her face stiffen, her mouth dry. Down below, she could hear the men swearing and shuffling about. They were trying to lift Keeper’s body. Skylan knew the truth about Treia. That’s why he hadn’t answered her. She didn’t have much time. She held out the spiritbone to the boy.

“You must hide this away. Put this in the same place where you hid the spiritbone for the Dragon Kahg.”

“You mean in the-”

“Stop!” Aylaen said harshly. “Don’t tell me. Hide it away now. Hide it quickly before the fog lifts.”

Wulfe eyed the necklace and put his hands behind his back. “I can’t. It will burn me. Maybe kill me.”

Aylaen had forgotten that the fey child could not-or would not-touch metal of any kind.