Chris Evans - A Darkness Forged in Fire

It was calling him again.

It was hungry.

Gwyn slid out of bed and moved smoothly across the cool marble floor of his bedchamber to the red oak door set in the stone wall at the opposite end of the room. He placed his right hand on the burnished brass doorknob and felt the vibrations of energy pulsing on the other side.

It was several moments before he turned the knob. When he did, he did so with a quick flick of his wrist and strode into the room as if greeting a hundred heads of lesser states, no matter that he wore nothing but the armor of self-righteous belief in his own powers.

The air in the room hit him with physical force, heavy with cold and something colder still. There were no lanterns or luminescent gems, and the only window was shuttered with iron bars, yet he saw clearly. The single object that stood in the center of the room was illuminated by a silvery light of its own making. It was the thing that had chased him in his dreams and would be heard.

The dragon table.

In his service to the Calahrian Empire, the Viceroy had amassed a large fortune in gems, paintings, amulets, and every kind of native bauble and finery that he'd wanted, but this was something else again. That it had been the previous Viceroy's spoke volumes, especially now that that elf was transformed from the dead into Her Emissary. Clearly, the table was far more than simple wood.

He watched it carefully. It stood silently, as all tables should, yet in his mind it cried out to him with thunderous force. Its leafy dragon head shimmered, the claws of its carved feet clutching the stone like meaty prey, and he had the unsettling feeling of prey being stalked.

"Enough!" he barked, and the voice in his head went still. He walked around the table, trailing a hand along its edges, feeling the depth of its need. Knowledge. It craved information the way he sought power.

"Knowledge is power," Her Emissary hissed.

To his credit, the Viceroy started only half as violently as he had the last time Her minion had paid him a visit. He composed himself as best he could, achingly aware of his nakedness, and turned to face the shadowy specter of his visitor.

"These parlor tricks of yours are growing thin," the Viceroy said, staring down his nose at the twisting shadows at the other end of the room. "You might try knocking one of these times."

"She grows impatient," Her Emissary replied.

The Viceroy felt his face flush and was surprised to realize anger was replacing fear. "I am not some ox to be led about by a nose ring. I am the Viceroy of the Greater Protectorate of Elfkyna."

"So was I."

The shadows that made up Her Emissary surged toward the table, snaking over and around it. A voice screamed in the Viceroy's head, sending him reeling into the cold stone wall.

"Stop it!" he yelled, clutching his temples as the scream rose to a crescendo then suddenly abated into a contented murmur. He took his hands away and shook his head. The shadows coalesced back into something resembling an elf, a black limb gently stroking the edge of the table. The room was still cold, and Gwyn was still scared, but something had changed.

" You will feed again soon, my ryk faur, " Her Emissary said.

The voice was jagged steel in his ear, yet there was a hint of something else. A lesser person would have understood immediately, but the Viceroy prided himself on being above the need for affection and other weaknesses.

"Your ryk faur?" he asked. "You were an elf of the Long Watch?"

"Fool! I am dyskara, I am one of Hers."

The Viceroy had not until that moment realized the Shadow Monarch's minions bonded with Wolf Oaks as well. Interesting …

"I don't understand; what happened?"

The shadowy form said nothing. He wondered if it hadn't heard him and was about to repeat the question when it turned its head toward him.

"She demands sacrifices for the good of all…"

The Viceroy himself had said something like that in countless negotiations on behalf of the Queen of Calahr, but only now did he realize how chilling those words could sound.

For a moment he considered turning from this path, aware that he was committing treason if he went any further. But was it really treason? As the ruler of the Calahrian Empire he would forge a mighty alliance with the Shadow Monarch, creating an unassailable force in the world. The things he could do with that power…

"She has nothing to fear from the Imperial Army. No aid will flow to Luuguth Jor to impede your work there."

"You make claims rashly, Viceroy."

The shadows that made up Her Emissary's shape bowed low over the table. The temperature in the room began to fall and soon the Viceroy was shivering.

"Unlike you, I have seen to it that nothing will interfere with my plans."

"Like me before you, you have failed to account for him."

"You're wrong there," the Viceroy said, shaking his head. "The Duke of Rakestraw has been bought off."

It wasn't laughter, but the sound that echoed off the walls had the feel of it, if laughter were thrown daggers.

"Feed it and see."

He was nonplussed. "What, just start bringing in elfkynan for it to kill? What will that do?"

"You do not yet understand its needs." There was a sudden scrabbling at the barred window. Her Emissary raised a jet-black shadow like an arm and pointed. The iron bars shot from their slots across the room like shrapnel, the metal ringing off the stone walls with terrific force. A moment later something brown and hairy hopped into the room, folding large membrane wings as it did so to fit through the window.

It was a dragon, but unlike any the Viceroy had seen before. Its body was too thick, its neck too short, and its wings too wide for it to be any of the species that populated this land. And then he understood. It wasn't that the dragon was out of place here; it was out of time. It had been created when brutal, primitive savagery had reigned.

That time was here again.

Her Emissary motioned the winged creature to it, and it obliged by hopping up onto the table. The Viceroy cringed, expecting the table to collapse under its weight, but the table held firm. The dragon opened its mouth and dropped a smaller bird onto the table. Leathery feathers shed over the top.

"This is how you feed it?" he asked, inching toward the window where warmer air now blew into the room.

"Watch." The shadows that made up Her Emissary reached out and entwined themselves around the sreex and began pulling the hapless creature apart. Wet, tearing sounds filled the room as blood and bits of flesh spattered the table. The dragon watched the process intently. After a few moments, a small cylinder lay in a pool of blood on the table, directly over the dragon's maw pictured there.

"What is that?" the Viceroy whispered.

Her Emissary ignored him, instead whisking away the carcass of the sreex onto the floor, when the dragon pounced on it at once, diving into the bloody mess and coming up with dripping chunks of flesh that it threw down its throat by flinging its head back and forth in short, choppy motions. The ceiling and walls near the feeding dragon turned progressively redder with each mouthful.

The Viceroy swallowed air and turned back to the table. The tube was open, revealing a thin strip of parchment.

"A message?" he asked, thankful there was reason behind the bloody nightmare he found himself in.

For an answer, inky tendrils unrolled the parchment and laid it flat on the table. As the dragon continued to feed, the Viceroy walked over to the table and looked down. The writing on the parchment was nothing more than sticks and dots.

"It's encoded," he said, feeling a sense of control over the situation for the first time that night. "I spent some time in the Black Room when I first started out in the Diplomatic Corps," he said. This thing before him had once worked for the Royal Cryptology Service breaking codes as well. He leaned forward for a closer look. "I recognize the pattern-it's a Linie cipher, really quite simple to break; I'm surprised you need my help for this."