Juliet McKenna - Northern Storm

Kheda was close enough to see the dragon lashing with its blue tongue at the nets draped over its long face. The ropes tangled around its neck and forequarters were breaking and crumbling away as it clawed its way free. It had a dead body pinned beneath the other forepaw, its talons embedded in the man’s back, the corpse already half-buried beneath the hail.

Kheda grabbed at a twisted cord tangled in the spines above the dragon’s brow and hung on it with all his weight, levelling his sword. The dragon’s head darted down towards him, blue tongue seeking him like a serpent. Bracing himself as best he could, with all the strength he could muster, Kheda thrust the blade deep into the creature’s glowing eye. The sapphire orb shattered like crystal. Burning white fluid oozed along the sword, etching the steel like acid. Kheda held tight to the hilt and thrust again, leaning in with all his might, twisting the blade ever deeper. The burning whiteness ate away the sword’s guard and hissed against the fine chain mail of Kheda’s gauntlets. He held his ground as long as he dared then sprang away, tearing off his gloves and tossing them to the ground where they steamed with an acrid metallic stink. The dragon’s head slumped to the ground, long neck limp. The beast writhed in agony, convulsions rippling through its body to prompt shouts of alarm far away in the mist. Its long blue tongue curled around its muzzle, tentatively licking at its mined eye. A tormented moan escaped it, wretched and pitiful. ‘My lord?’ It was Beyau, offering Kheda a sword in a hand bloodied by rope burns and blackened by cold.

Kheda looked at the dragon. The creature was now motionless.

‘Wait.’ He gave head and foreclaws a wide berth as he skirted warily around it, to get a clear sight of its unwounded eye.

The glow of white fire in the sapphire depths was growing fainter. Kheda watched it fade to little more than a candle flame. The hailstones began to melt. The incandescence shrank to a mere pinprick. The fog dissolved to no more than a frail memory, misty around the treetops.

The men around him were exclaiming in relief or giving way to grief as they saw their fallen comrades. Kheda kept his attention fixed on the dragon’s eye. The light finally died and a warm breeze rolled up the valley.

‘Is it dead?’ Zicre looked at Kheda for confirmation, hugging an arm wrenched bodily out of its shoulder socket. Fearful faces all around begged for the same reassurance.

Kheda walked forward and laid a hand on the creature’s muzzle. The twilight-blue scales were cold but not with the burning chill of magic. No breath issued from the wide nostrils and the lolling blue tongue didn’t so much as twitch when he pushed it with a tentative foot. He looked again at the creature’s unwounded eye, now dull and clouded beneath a drooping eyelid. ‘Yes.’

Someone raised a shaky cheer of celebration and others soon joined in. Men pressed close all around Kheda, shoving at the dead dragon as if they needed to touch it to convince themselves it was truly defeated.

‘My lord?’ Mezai looked to Kheda for permission, his knife poised over one of the spines behind the dragon’s neck. Kheda nodded and watched the shipmaster dig out the needle-sharp scale. ‘How’s this for a talisman, my lord?’ Mezai grinned, exultant. ‘The Gossamer Shark won’t go down like the Mist DoveV

A group of huntsmen began disentangling the corpse of their friend from the dragon’s dead foreclaws, ripping out the talons for their own prize as they did so. Out of the corner of his eye, Kheda saw a troop of Chazen warriors set about hacking off the spiked tip of the dragon’s tail, brushing aside the dead flies and carrion beetles that the sudden cold had killed. Emboldened, others used the ropes to scramble up the creature’s sides, intent on digging their knives into the wounds already splitting its hide. The mountain hollow grew loud with congratulation, speculation and the heady joking of men who’d half-expected to die instead of see victory. The youth Ridu’s hysterical laughter rang out at some inane jest. Kheda smiled wordlessly and walked away. Men who had fled the fearful fog in the first place or broken beneath the murderous hailstorm emerged from the trees, shamefaced. Some looked hopefully to Kheda for permission to claim their share of the fallen creature’s teeth and scales. Others fell to their knees, faces in the dirt, begging for his forgiveness. He ignored them all.

‘My lord?’ Beyau caught up with the warlord, face anxious.

‘Don’t you want to claim a trophy?’ Kheda gestured back towards the plundered corpse. ‘Before the day warms up enough to start it stinking?’

‘There’s fewer dead than I feared, my lord,’ Beyau said stoutly.

‘Still too many for comfort.’ Kheda slowed reluctantly, seeing that Beyau was limping painfully. This creature would have died without their blood being shed. Didn’t I just bring these men to a meaningless death?

‘They made the choices that brought them to such a fate, my lord.’ Beyau’s face twisted with emotion. ‘And this is a victory for Chazen over magic and malice, at last.’

‘And a victory must be bought at a price if it is to have any lasting value.’ Kheda tried to keep the desolation out of his voice. He stared down at the ground for a moment, before lifting his eyes to the trees and the sky now clearing above them. ‘I want a tower of silence built on the beach,’ he said slowly. ‘Two, if needs be. The men who died here died for the whole domain. Let’s hope that gives some value to their families’ losses. And those who lived through this slaughter must remember those who didn’t, when they’re praised as heroes the length and breadth of these islands. See to it, Beyau.’

Still wracked with a chill that the hot sun couldn’t warm away, Kheda turned his back on the butchery of the dead dragon and began walking towards the coast. His sword scabbards hung empty in his belt. He realised he didn’t know if it had been his blade or Dev’s that had finally killed the beast. He decided it really didn’t matter.

The beach on Boal was a long bank of pale sand crowned with low tangles of midar. Violet flowers glowed among the long glossy leaves outspread to welcome the rains. Ragged furrows in the sand showed where the horn-backed turtles had crawled up the beach under cover of night to dig their nests and lay their eggs.

Kheda walked carefully down to the water’s edge to stroll along the firm, wet sand. Every now and then an adventurous ripple nudged at his toes. He looked down to see his feet still bruised where someone had trampled them in the chaos of the cloud dragon’s death. His face was still scabbed from the hail’s assault.

But everything is healing. Everyone is healing. And the families of those that died are honoured for the sake of those who fell fighting for Chazen’s future.

He looked along the gentle curve of the shore to the far headland where a solitary pinnacle of shaped white stone rose from a grove of nut palms.

I suppose it makes sense for Itrac to visit this particular tower of silence. Boal is where they were first attacked by the wild men and their magic, her and Chazen Saril and Olkai Chazen. I wonder what she will see in her dreams. Will echoes from those peaceful days offer her hope for an untroubled future? Or will any guidance from the past be lost in the chaos of recent events?

There’s not much I can do about that. But I can rid this domain of the last distortion of magic.

He walked towards Velindre, who was sitting some distance down the beach. Still dressed in her guise of zamorin scholar, she was leaning back on her hands with her long legs outstretched as she stared up into the sky, intent on the clouds scudding up from the south. A breeze tousled her fine blonde hair, now grown to a softness that nevertheless did little to threaten her imposture. The lines in her face were carved deeper than before, skin burned by sun and wind taut over her angular features.