Daniel Abraham - The Tyrant's Law

The chamber the dragon slept in was massive. Images and writing covered the walls. None of it was anything Marcus could make sense of, but it was familiar all the same. The way a child knew to back away from a precipice, Marcus knew those images. They had been burned into instinct that had lasted for all of human history, and he felt himself responding to them now. Red-black streaks showed where iron sconces had been in the walls, the metal rotting away over time until there was nothing of them left but a stain.

“Follow me,” Marcus said, and moved off slowly, walking the perimeter of the chamber. On the farther side, there was a small alcove with a cistern in it that looked as though it had been collecting mold and mist for centuries at the least. When they had completed their circuit of the room, Marcus sat as still as he could manage, watching the great ribcage until he was certain that the slow rise and fall wasn’t the product of his imagination. It was breathing. Marcus felt himself trembling.

“Well,” Marcus said, his voice low.

“Yes.”

“If you have any thoughts you’d like to share about this, I’d be open to hearing them.”

“When I was at the temple,” Kit said, “we were taught that the dragons were an abomination. That the goddess preceded everything, including time and the world, and that the dragons, in their pride, had tried to claim the world for themselves, taking it from her. The fall of the dragons was supposed to have been the last great struggle between the goddess and the dragons.”

“So the one thing we can be sure of is that whatever happened, it wasn’t that.”

“Yes,” Kit said, “and still, there may be some grain of truth to it. The dragons, at least, were real.”

“Some evidence for that, yes.”

“And there was a fall. And the priests of the spider goddess disliked the dragons. Possibly they even feared them.”

“So maybe that glorious bastard over there is the natural enemy of the spiders.”

“Probably.”

“Or maybe it’s more dangerous than they are, and our best plan would be to back quietly out the way we came in and never come back here.”

“That’s also possible,” Kit said. “But whatever we do, it would be best to do it before the tide comes in. I think the water will block our way out.”

“I’d rather that didn’t happen,” Marcus agreed. “All right, then. So the choice is we try to wake that thing up or we leave now and never come back.’

“Yes.”

“And do you see us walking away from this?”

Kit was silent for a moment, and when he spoke, his voice was thick with regret and dread.

“Honestly? No. I don’t.”

“Me neither,” Marcus said, and rose to his feet. The dragon shifted in its sleep, a slight rocking back and forth that made the whole chamber tremble a little bit. “Stay here, Kit. This is about to get interesting.”

Slowly, Marcus approached the dragon. Drawing closer made the scale of the thing clear. It was as tall as three men standing on each other’s shoulders, and when it uncurled, it might be as long at ten laid end to end. Marcus doubted it would be able to open its wings in the chamber. And now that he thought of it, he wasn’t entirely sure how the great bastard had gotten in here in the first place. Or how it would get out.

The light of his torch glowed back at him from the dusty scales as he walked to where the massive head was tucked under its wing. Once, the books said, the dragons had been the masters of the world, and all of humanity had been their slaves. And he was about to try to wake one up.

“I hope this is a good idea,” he muttered, then cleared his throat. “Um. Excuse me.”

The dragon didn’t stir. Marcus went closer, put his hand on the thing’s head. Its skull was the size of a horse, and there was a strange beauty to it that Marcus felt himself drawn to by instinct. When he touched the scales, they flexed under his fingers.

“Excuse me. You need to wake up now.”

He looked over his shoulder at Kit. The old actor held up his hands. It was fair enough. Kit hadn’t woken dragons before either. Marcus sighed, then took a deep breath and shouted.

“Hey! Nap time’s over! Wake the hell up!” He turned back toward Kit. “I don’t think this is going to be that simple. Do you think maybe there’s some sort of ritual or … I don’t know. A magic drum or something?”

Kit’s eyes went wide and he took an involuntary step back. Marcus felt his own blood turn cold. Slowly, he turned back to the dragon. It hadn’t moved, but the one vast eye was open. Marcus saw himself reflected in the vast amber depths of it. He wanted nothing more than to run. There was no sense of threat from the vast eye. No malice. Only a danger as deep and profound as religion.

The worst it can do is kill me , Marcus told himself, and there was more comfort in the thought than he’d expected.

“It’s time to wake up,” he said again.

The dragon’s expression shifted from annoyance to confusion with a powerful eloquence. It was as if Marcus had known dragons all his life and become intimate with the small cues of their emotions. The intimacy of it was unearned, and it disturbed Marcus to his bones.

“You need to wake up now.”

The noise was low, like the rumbling of distant thunder. The dragon’s vast body began to shift, and Marcus danced back, his hand reaching reflexively for his sword.

The dragon drew its head from under its vast wing and turned the near-physical weight of its attention on them both. When it spoke, its voice was perfectly clear and deeper than mountains. It was like hearing a great king’s orchestra strike a single complex chord, only the sound had a meaning besides its terrible beauty.

“Drakkis?” it said.

Entr’acte

Inys, Brother and Clutch-Mate to the Dragon Emperor

Before his eyes, Aastapal fell. The great perch-spires burned, and the library of stones shrieked in its pain. Morade’s soldiers held the sky to the south, ten thousand strong. Asteril’s cunning slave-run craft dove through the high air, daring to stand against the force of dragons. As he watched, one of the great mechanisms dove, its blades shining in the red light of the falling sun. It caught the wing of a soldier caste, and dragon and craft fell together, joined like lovers in their violence. Somewhere among the attackers, he could smell Morade.

“We must go,” Erex said, nuzzling his wing in an offer of comfort. Inys had met his lover on the feeding grounds there below them where the blood-corrupted slaves were slaughtering one another even now. “Inys, I smell him too. Your brother is coming. We can’t be here when he arrives.”

Inys raised his crest in acknowledgment, but couldn’t bring himself to speak. The empire was crumbling. Already Morade and Asteril had shattered the fifth orb. Old Sirrick was dead, her body fallen into the sea. She had been the wisest of them all, and the violence had bested her. What could they hope for now besides a short death?

“Inys,” Erex said again.

“I know,” Inys said. His heart thick with grief, he turned and launched himself toward the northern sky, leaving behind the burning city.

It had started as no more than the usual rivalry. Three clutch-mates vying for the emperor’s favor. Each of them had made their great works for presentation at the fire court. Asteril had spent decades laboring on his birds of living copper. Morade built his deep-water city and the holes in the ocean through which even the widest-winged could soar to reach it. Inys had composed a poem that linked the five levels of thought to the five fallen elements. It should have been only that. Inys had only thought what he’d done a prank. Mean-spirited, perhaps, but not outside the realm of etiquette. But as soon as the waters fell in on Morade’s great work, as soon as he saw the grief and rage in his clutch-mate’s eyes, he knew he had gone too far. And now Morade had as well, and innocent Asteril was gone, his scales dulled forever by the poisons he poured into the culling blades for the uncorrupt. Inys mourned his brother, but then he mourned everything now.