Master of Dragons Read online

  The dragon’s back arched. Like all her kind, she was massive – many times the height of the figures that stood before her. Her shadow fell across them, throwing down an acrid pall of hot air and embers.

  Imladrik gazed up at her. She was magnificent. Though only half the size of the great Draukhain, she still bled that mix of raw potency and feral energy that was the truest mark of the dragon-breed. Her hide glistened as if new-forged metal. Her enormous heart, still sluggish from her long slumber, began to pulse more firmly.

  Thoriol took a step closer, his blade raised. Imladrik could sense his trepidation. Every fibre of his being longed to help him, to ease the passage between them, but this was something Thoriol had to do for himself.

  The stirring of a hot-blood, a Sun Dragon, was a rare thing, and such spirits were hard to tame. Though they couldn’t match the sheer power of the Star Dragons or the cool splendour of the Moon Dragons, they brought a wildness and vivacity that thrilled the heart of any true Caledorian. This one was young, perhaps no more than a few centuries. Imladrik could sense her fearlessness, her savagery.

  At that instant, he knew her name: Terakhallia. The word burned on to his mind as if branded there.

  Our powers merged. One mind, one power.

  Thoriol’s mind-song continued. His voice became more powerful. Imladrik listened with pride. Terakhallia drew closer, taking cautious steps down the slope towards the young acolyte. Her great head lowered, bringing her jawline almost down to the level of Thoriol’s sword. For a moment the two of them stayed like that, locked in the mystical dragon-

  song, bound by a symphony as old as the winds of magic.

  One mind, one power.

  Then, without warning, Terakhallia belched a gout of ink-black smoke, coiled her tail, and pounced into the air. The downdraft was tremendous, knocking Thoriol to his knees and nearly sending Imladrik reeling.

  Thoriol cried aloud. The bond was cut.

  ‘Father!’ he gasped, instinctively, his blade clattering across the stones.

  Imladrik recovered himself and watched, grimly, as the serpentine form rippled up into the heavens. Terakhallia’s golden body flashed in the sunlight. Her blood-red wings flexed, propelling her upwards like an arrow leaving the bowstring. It was over so quickly. Once aloft, a dragon moved as fast as a stormfront, thrusting powerfully on wings the size of a hawkship’s sails.

  Imladrik felt his heart sink. For a moment longer he watched the Sun Dragon gain height. He had the power to call her back. If he chose, he could command her; alone of all the asur living, he could have summoned her back to earth.

  But that would have been unforgivable. He would not do it, not even for his son.

  Imladrik glanced at Thoriol. As he did so, catching the boy’s anguish, he felt a pang of remorse.

  ‘Why?’ asked Thoriol, standing up again with difficulty. ‘What did I do wrong?’

  Imladrik shook his head. ‘Nothing, lad. They are wild spirits. Some answer, some do not. It has always been that way.’

  Thoriol’s face creased with misery. The exertion of the dragonsong was considerable; he looked suddenly drained, his shoulders slumped, his blade discarded. ‘I knew it,’ he muttered. ‘It was too soon.’

  Imladrik went over to him. He knew the pain of a severed link, of a bond that was not completed. ‘There will be others, son. Do not…’

  ‘You knew!’ cried Thoriol, his eyes wide with anger. ‘You knew. Why did you even bring me?’

  Imladrik halted. ‘Nothing is certain. Dragons are not tame.’

  ‘Neither am I.’

  Thoriol pushed past Imladrik, ignoring his lost sword and limping down the slope, away from the cavern entrance.

  ‘There are others!’ Imladrik called after him.

  Thoriol kept on walking. Imladrik watched him go.

  Was he too young? he asked himself. Did I push him too fast?

  He went over to the sword and picked it up. The steel at its tip was scorched from Terakhallia’s fiery breath. The Sun Dragon was long gone, free on the mountain air. She would not return for many days, and when she did her soul would be even wilder, even harder to bond with.

  Imladrik felt failure press on him. Perhaps their spirits had been misaligned. Perhaps the boy needed more time. Perhaps he himself was to blame.

  He tried not to let himself consider the alternative, the possibility that burned away in his mind like a torturer’s blade: that Thoriol did not have the gift, that unless the fates granted Imladrik and Yethanial another child, mastery of dragons would die with him and the House of Tor Caled would never produce a rider again.

  I could not live with that.

  Moving slowly, his heart heavy, Imladrik began to walk. He would have to hurry to catch Thoriol; when the boy’s temper cooled, they would talk, discuss what had happened, learn from it.

  Even as he thought it, though, he knew that the failure would change everything. Something new was needed, and he had no idea what it would be.

  Imladrik shook his head, pushing against the ashen wind and picking up his pace. His mood of exhilaration had been doused; the descent to Kor Evril would be harder than the climb.

  Chapter Five

  Drutheira stared out at the sun setting over the Arluii. Neither of the others had spoken to her since the grim trek down from the gorge, not even Ashniel. Occasionally she had caught them looking sidelong at her, but the accusatory gazes had quickly fallen away. They were still scared of her. Sullen, but scared.

  Now, crouched around a meagre fire and with the wind snatching at their robes, the questions came haltingly.

  ‘You’re sure you finished it?’ asked Malchior.

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ snapped Drutheira.

  ‘But Hreth–’ started Ashniel.

  ‘It wasn’t Hreth. Khaine’s blood, even you could see that.’

  ‘Kaitar,’ said Malchior.

  ‘Yes. Or whatever was inside Kaitar. And we banished them both.’

  Drutheira found it hard to concentrate. Her mind kept going back to the final glimpse of Sevekai as he sailed over the edge. The Hreth-thing had been little more than a grasping bundle of ashes by then, but Sevekai had been alive.

  She shouldn’t have cared, and didn’t know why she did. They had shared a bed together, of course, but Drutheira had shared the beds of many druchii and not mourned their deaths a jot. Their relationship had been neither close nor deep; they had been thrown together by their orders, both refugees in the grime of Elthin Arvan seeking a way home, so she should have cared as little for Sevekai’s death as she had for all the other many deaths she had either caused or witnessed.

  Perhaps it was the fatigue. She felt like she had been crawling across the wastelands forever, hunted by both dawi and asur, forced to creep into mountain hollows and make temporary homes in the trackless forest like any common bandit. Even the simple task of getting back to Naggaroth had proven beyond her. For the first time in centuries, she felt vulnerable.

  Are we still capable of loyalty? she mused, watching the sun sink lazily towards the western horizon. Do we even remember what it is? Could we go back?

  She knew the answer to that even as she asked the question. They had all made their choices a long time ago; she certainly had. Sevekai had been so young – he’d had no knowledge of the Ulthuan that had been, the one that she had fought alongside Malekith for mastery of. He could never have known how deep the wounds ran; he had not lived long enough to learn to hate purely, not like she had.

  For a long time hatred had been enough to drive her onwards: hatred of the asur, hatred and contempt for the dawi, hatred of those in Naggaroth who had plotted and connived to see her exiled to the wretched east in pursuit of a mission of thankless drudgery. Now, perhaps, the energy of that hatred had dissipated a little.

  I am exhausted, she admitted to herself at last. U
nless I find a way to leave this place, to recover my spirit and find fresh purpose, I will die here.

  ‘So what of Kaitar, then?’ came Ashniel’s voice again, breaking Drutheira’s moody thoughts. ‘Still you tell us nothing.’

  Drutheira glared at her. The three of them sat on blunt stones in a rocky clearing. The fire burned fitfully in the centre of the circle, guttering as the mountain wind pulled at it. Mountain peaks, darkening in the dusk, stretched away in every direction. The Arluii range was big, and they were still a long way from reaching its margins.

  ‘What do you think he was?’ asked Drutheira.

  ‘Daemon-kind,’ said Malchior firmly.

  ‘How astute,’ said Drutheira acidly.

  ‘But why?’ asked Ashniel. ‘Kaitar was with Sevekai for years. He followed orders, he killed when told to. Can you be sure?’

  ‘You saw it leap. It was a shell. As was Hreth.’ She poked at the fire with her boot. ‘Banished, not killed. You never truly kill them.’

  Malchior kept looking at her, a steady glare. ‘How long did you know?’

  ‘A while. Sevekai guessed it too.’ Drutheira suppressed a glower. Malchior was a thug, not half as clever as he supposed, and explaining herself to the two of them was tiresome. ‘But none of my arts would divine it. For as long as the orders from Malekith were in force I couldn’t move against him, but it has been over a year now since I was able to commune. Time to test Kaitar’s mettle, I thought.’

  Ashniel snorted. ‘Test it?’

  ‘If he had been druchii the dragon would not have harmed him. Up until then, believe me, I was not certain.’

  ‘So it was all for him,’ said Malchior. ‘The dragon in the dark.’

  ‘I’ve been hunting that dragon for thirty years. An opportunity presented itself: skin two slaves with one knife.’

  The dragon still shadowed them. She had not yet attempted to ride it – it was too soon. Its spirit was wild and frenzied, damaged like a cur beaten too often by its owner. The only thing stopping it from killing them all was the bond of magic placed on it hundreds of years ago.

  Urislakh, it had once been called; the Bloodfang. The black dragon still answered to that name, though only grudgingly, as if unwilling to remember what it had been in earlier ages.

  She didn’t know where it was at that moment. Possibly aloft and out of sight, possibly curled up in some dank crevasse hissing out its misery. The beast would come back when Drutheira summoned it – her leash was long, but it was still a leash.

  Ashniel still looked pensive. ‘So what does it mean?’ Her frail, almost fey features were lit red by the firelight, exposing the hollowness of her cheeks. The rose-cheeked bloom she had once worn when in the carefree courts of ancient Nagarythe had long since left her. ‘Was Kaitar one of Malekith’s creatures?’

  Drutheira shook her head. ‘Daemons serve their own kind. We have been duped.’

  She let the words sink in. It was a shameful admission. No greater crime existed in Naggaroth than to be made a fool of, to be deceived by a lesser race; and of course, to the druchii, every race was a lesser race.

  ‘But for what?’ asked Malchior, speaking slowly as his mind worked. ‘What was its purpose?’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Drutheira impatiently. ‘Maybe it was watching us. Maybe it was whispering everything we did to its dark masters. Maybe it was bored by an eternity of madness. You should have asked it before we killed it. Perhaps it would have told you.’

  Malchior flushed. ‘Don’t jest.’

  Drutheira sneered at him. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. We have already been made fools enough.’

  ‘So you care not.’

  ‘Of course I care!’ she shouted. The firelight flickered as her sudden movement guttered the flames. She collected herself. ‘It still lives, somewhere. We have lost four of our number. The asur and the dawi will kill us when they find us. That is it. That is the situation. Of course I care.’

  Neither Ashniel nor Malchior replied to that. Ashniel chewed her lower lip, thinking hard; Malchior stared moodily into the fire. Drutheira watched them scornfully. Their minds worked so sluggishly.

  ‘Then what do we do?’ asked Ashniel eventually.

  Drutheira sighed. The sun had nearly set. Shadows had spread across the clearing and the air had become chill. She felt weary to her bones. ‘What we have been trying to do: get back to Naggaroth. I cannot commune, so we must get to the coast. Malekith must be told that he has daemons amongst his servants.’

  Malchior looked up at her, his eyes bright with a sudden idea. ‘We have a steed.’

  ‘It will not bear us all,’ Drutheira said. She watched the last sliver of sunlight drain away in the west. In advance of the moons rising, the world looked empty and drenched in gloom. ‘In any case, I did not raise the beast merely to test my suspicions of Kaitar. We have more than one enemy in Elthin Arvan.’

  Her eyes narrowed as she remembered her humiliation, years ago, at the hands of the asur mage on the scarlet dragon. The pain of it had never diminished. The long privation since then had only honed the sharp edge of her desire for vengeance.

  ‘We cannot leave yet,’ she said, her voice low. ‘Not until I find the bitch who wounded me.’

  She smiled in the dark. She could sense Bloodfang’s presence, out in the night, curled up in its own endless misery.

  ‘And we have a dragon of our own now,’ she breathed.

  Liandra heard the voice before she awoke. It echoed briefly in the space between waking and sleep – the blurred landscape where dreams played.

  Feleth-amina.

  She stirred, her mind sluggish, her body still locked in slumber. Then her eyes snapped open and her mind rushed into awareness. She had been dreaming of Ulthuan, of fields of wildflowers in the lee of the eastern Annulii, rustling in sunlit wind.

  Feleth-amina.

  Fire-child: that was what the dragons called her. The dragons always gave their riders new names. They found Eltharin, she was told, childish.

  Liandra pushed the sheets back. It was cold. Nights of Kor Vanaeth were always cold, even in the height of summer. Shivering, she reached for her robes and pulled them over her head. Then, barefoot, she shuffled across the stone floor of her chamber to the shuttered window.

  Feleth-amina.

  It was Vranesh’s mind-voice. Those playful, savage tones had been a part of Liandra’s life almost as long as she could remember. The two of them had been bonded for so long that she struggled to recall a time when the link had not been present.

  Where are you? she returned, fumbling with the shutter clasp.

  You know. Come now.

  Liandra opened the heavy wooden shutters, revealing a stone balcony beyond. Starlight threw a silver glaze across the squat, unfinished rooftops of Kor Vanaeth. Her tower was the tallest of those that still stood, though that was hardly saying much.

  Vranesh was perched on the edge of the railing, waiting for her. The sight was incongruous – Liandra half-expected the balustrade to collapse under the weight at any moment.

  I was asleep, she sang, still blurry.

  You were dreaming. I could see the images. Your dreams are like my dreams.

  Liandra rubbed her eyes and reached up to Vranesh’s shoulder. Familiar aromas of smoke and embers filled her nostrils.

  Do you dream? she sang.

  I have known sleep to last for centuries. I have had dreams longer than mortal lifetimes.

  Sleep to last for centuries, sang Liandra ruefully, settling into position and readying herself for Vranesh’s leap aloft. That would be nice.

  The dragon pounced. A sudden rush of cold wind banished the last of Liandra’s sluggishness. She drew in a long breath, then shivered. It would have been prudent to have worn a cloak.

  ‘So what is this?’ she said out loud, crouching low as Vranesh’s
wing beats powered the two of them higher. ‘Could it not have waited?’

  Below them, Kor Vanaeth began to slip away.

  It could have waited, but the mood was on me. You have not summoned me for an age, and I grow bored.

  Liandra winced. That was true enough. She had been over-occupied with the rebuilding for too long and, in the few quiet moments she had had to herself in the past few months, she had known it.

  Forgive me, she said, her mind-voice chastened.

  Vranesh belched a mushroom of flame from her nostrils and bucked in mid-air. The gesture was violent; it was what passed for a laugh. Forgive you? I do not forgive.

  Imladrik had told her that. Liandra remembered him explaining it to her, back when she had asked why the dragons suffered riders to take them into wars they had no part in.

  ‘They do not suffer us,’ he had said. ‘They have no masters, no obligations, no code of laws. They do what they do, and that is all that can be said of them. These things: blame, regret, servitude – they have no meaning to a dragon.’

  ‘What does have meaning to them?’ she had asked.

  She could still see his emerald eyes glittering as he answered. ‘Risk. Splendour. Extravagance. If you had lived for a thousand ages of the world, that is all you would care about, too.’

  I cannot remain here all night, she sang to Vranesh. I will freeze, even with your breath to warm me.

  Vranesh kept going higher, pulling into the thinner airs. You will be fine. I wish to show you something.

  The stars around them grew sharper. Wisps of cloud, little more than dark-blue gauzes, swept below. The landscape of Elthin Arvan stretched away towards all horizons, ink-black and brooding. Faint silver light picked out the mottled outlines of the forest – Loren Lacoi, the Great Wood. The trees seemed to extend across an infinite distance, throttling all else, choking anything that threatened their dominance.