Master of Dragons

Chapter Nine

The time had come.

The wait had passed quickly by the reckoning of his people, but still every day spent in preparation and argument had seemed like an age. The mountain-realm was huge and sprawling, home to hundreds of holds, mines, bulwarks, citadels and quarries. It took time to reach them all, to pass on the news, to wait for anger to boil up within the deliberate minds of the dawi.

But now the time had come. Given enough of it to consider the wrong, given enough to reflect on it and compare it to the wrongs of the past, they became angry. They started muttering in the deep places, hammering away at the walls in unsettling rhythms. They chanted in the lightless halls and stoked the eternal fires of the forges. They smelted iron and beat gromril, they marched along the winding ways of the Ungdrin, they poured out onto the causeways of the great Karaks, their faces masked by helms, accompanied by the booming call of war-horns.

He had kindled a fire in the deep vaults. Then he had watched it grow, rippling out into every corner of the dawi empire until it became a roaring inferno. The Lords of the Dwarfs had been roused from their torpor. No dissenting voices had been raised, no old grudges had been unearthed, no rival claim to the leadership of this anger had emerged. They were united in slow, cold fury and the rock itself rang from their ironshod treads. A dozen armies already marched; more would follow.

The time had come.

First hundreds came, then thousands, then tens of thousands. His own host snaked along the ice-bitten road to Karaz-a-Karak and down towards the forest-lands of the elgi who had brought such hatred upon their own heads.

Morgrim Bargrum, kin of the High King, cousin to the slain Snorri Halfhand, the Uniter, the one they were already calling the Doom of the Elves, stood on a high spur of rock and watched his army grind its way west.

The sky above him was leaden and bloated with rain. Lightning flickered across the northern horizon, broken by the massive shoulders of far peaks. Dull light glinted from chainmail, from axes, from the tips of quarrels and from the iron of the great standard poles.

Morgrim rested on his axe-handle, his chin jutting and his beard spilling over his crossed hands. His bunched-muscle arms, each one tattooed and laced with scars, studs and iron rings, flexed in time with the tramp of boots. His heavy helm sat low on his brow, pocked with precious stones and draped with a curtain of fine mail.

Like all his kind, he was hard, angular, solid, immovable. The cross-hatch rune zhazad had been daubed on his forehead in his own blood, now dried a dark brown by the chill mountain wind. His eyes glittered darkly under the shadow of furrowed brows. His boots were planted firmly, locked against the stone as if one with it.

The host was immense. Not since the days of forgotten wars had so many of the dawi marched under one banner. Many of them had torn their beards, ripping hair from flesh in savage mockery of what had been done to the ambassadors in Ulthuan. Many more had painted their armour plates with blood, just as Morgrim had done. Dwarf blood was thick. It dried fast, cleaving to steel like lacquer. Even as the rain fell, coursing over hunched shoulders in runnels, those bloodstains remained vivid.

Morgrim watched his regiments creep down towards the lowlands. He watched the tight squares huddle together, ringed with shields and toothed with speartips. He watched grim formations of longbeards, roused from their lethargy by the anger he had birthed. They marched slowly, their grey eyes fixed unwaveringly on the horizon, their lips unmoving. He watched smaller formations of bulkier warriors covered from head to toe in thick plates of gromril, clanking like infernal machinery. He watched hammer-holders stride down the causeway, each one thronged around a great lord of battle. He watched heavy battle standards swinging among them, all adorned with the runic emblems of holds picked out in gold and bronze.

It was just one army of many. More would follow, gathered together in the booming halls of deep fastnesses and sent forth into an unsuspecting world.

All of this Morgrim watched in silence. It was not an army of containment, or of exploration, or of defence. It had no other purpose than destruction.

In my name, cousin, he mouthed silently. You will be avenged.

The time had come.

‘Tromm, lord,’ came a throaty voice at his shoulder. Morgrim did not need to turn to see who it was.

‘Tromm, Morek,’ he said, all the while watching the host march on. It would be many hours before the vanguard cleared the foothills, and many more hours before the rearguard passed his vantage. ‘Have you come to summon me down?’

‘Summon you? I would not dare.’

The Master Runesmith was far older than Morgrim. His beard was flecked with grey like the down of a hunting peregrine, and his eyes were sunk deep into leather-tough skin the colour of burnished copper. He carried an ancient runestaff topped with gromril and wore master-crafted armour of interlocking plates.

‘Look out on them,’ said Morgrim, his voice as gruff and spare as a drakk’s exhalation. ‘Look at what we have done, then tell me: what does your heart say?’

Morek did as he was bid. He cast his deep-set eyes over the slowly moving host. It looked like a river of molten iron creeping down the flank of the mountains. As the light began to fail and the shadows lengthened, the iron darkened.

‘It says that this thing cannot be stopped,’ Morek said. ‘It tells me Halfhand did not die in vain. He saw through the elgi — even his father did not see so clearly. They set this fate in motion, they shall bear the pain of it.’

Morgrim grunted. He could feel the dull thuds of a thousand footfalls, echoing up through the stone beneath his feet.

We have made the mountains tremble.

‘I did not want this,’ Morgrim said, his voice low and dark, as it had been ever since Snorri had died. ‘Let the records state that.’

‘They will.’

‘But now it is settled, I feel the blood of the ancients grow hot within me.’

‘As do we all.’

Morgrim bared his teeth — a tight, warlike grimace, one that made the lined skin of his face crack and flex. ‘My axe thirsts.’

Morek glanced at the blade. Its runes were inert. ‘It has not been proved yet.’

‘You made it. It will answer.’

Morek hawked a gobbet of spittle up and spat on the ground. ‘And Drogor?’

Morgrim’s expression briefly faltered. ‘What of him?’

‘Where is he? None have seen him for months.’

‘I care not.’ Morgrim found the mention of Drogor an irritant. He did not want to be reminded of that baleful presence, one that had hung around his cousin like the stench of carrion. There had always been something strange about Drogor, though it had been hard to say quite what it was. His eyes had been… dull.

‘He came from nowhere,’ said Morek. ‘Now he returns to nowhere, and no one, it seems, wishes to speak of it.’

‘I never liked him,’ said Morgrim dismissively. ‘Snorri listened too closely to him. Those who remain are pure.’

Morek pursed a pair of cracked lips. ‘That they are — for now. But beware: your armies will hold in one piece only as long as their anger remains. You must bind your thanes strongly until they can face the enemy. Even Gotrek struggled to control them, and while he remains grieving he cannot help you.’

‘Fear not,’ growled Morgrim, his slab-heavy face glowering under the sky. ‘They sought a leader, one who would deliver their axes to the elgi. With Snorri’s passing, that is all I live to do.’ His lips twisted into a half-snarl then, disfiguring features that had once been mild-tempered. ‘I will permit the elgi to leave these shores, if they choose the path of sense. But if they stay to fight, then I swear by Grimnir I will choke them all in their own thin blood.’

Morek nodded sagely.

‘That would be worth seeing,’ he said, his voice thick with relish.

Imladrik stood before the Council of Five. They regarded him with a mix of wariness and awe. At least, four of them did; the fifth didn’t lift her eyes from the floor.

‘So here we are together,’ said Aelis, clasping her hands. ‘At last.’

Imladrik regarded her coolly.

She thinks I should have made this Council my priority. Let her think away; the world has changed, and they will have to get used to it.

‘My apologies for the delay,’ he said. ‘You’ll understand I had many things to detain me.’

The chamber around them was deep in the Old City, down in the heart of the first colonists’ settlement. The stonework was more refined than in the Tower of Winds, the wood more cleanly carved, for it had been raised in a more carefree time when the thought of war between close allies would have been impossible to conceive.

‘You have kept us waiting, my lord,’ said Salendor. ‘We have armies garrisoned here, in Athel Maraya, in forward stations. All they need is orders.’

Imladrik knew he had to be careful around Salendor. The warrior was clearly itching for a fight and no doubt saw him as the one to deliver it. Imladrik could sense the brutality coiled within him, the eagerness to spill blood, and he could also sense the fine-honed mind, the moral clarity. Salendor was a serious proposition, but a dangerous one.

‘I know where our armies are,’ Imladrik said. ‘And they will wait a little longer for orders.’ He turned to Aelis. ‘The defences here are impressive. Everything you have done is impressive. I have not come to sweep it away and start again — I am here to work with you, not against you.’

‘That is good to hear,’ said Aelis. ‘We have not always had… wise governance out here.’

Imladrik just resisted the temptation, nagging away at him since he’d entered the chamber, to glance over at Liandra. She hovered, dressed in crimson as ever, on the edge of his vision. They had not spoken since his arrival. Though he would never have admitted it to anyone, that was the true reason he had put off meeting the Council — Yethanial’s words still burned in his memory.

‘There has been division between you,’ Imladrik said. ‘This cannot continue — we must speak with one voice.’

‘We have all we need,’ said Caerwal. ‘One choice remains: to meet them here, or march east and face them in the wilds.’

‘The judgement is a fine one,’ said Aelis.

Imladrik could sense Liandra’s mind-voice on the margins. He didn’t need to ask what side of the debate she was on. ‘Yes, it would be,’ he said, ‘were we committed to war.’

Silence followed that. Imladrik waited for his words to sink in.

‘My lord,’ started Salendor cautiously, ‘we have been at war for nearly thirty years.’

‘Hardly,’ said Imladrik calmly. ‘We have been shown only a tithe of their strength.’

Salendor looked perplexed. ‘These are the opening moves of the game. We are ready for what will come.’

‘We are ready?’ asked Imladrik. ‘You sound sure. I hope you are. I hope you remain sure when your woods begin to burn. I hope you remain sure when our people begin to die in earnest, and I hope you remain sure when the corpses are piled high between the ocean and Karaz-a-Karak.’

Salendor looked taken aback. Still Imladrik did not seek to catch Liandra’s eye.

‘This is a lull,’ Imladrik continued. ‘My brother’s victory wounded them, but we know it will not last. You gave me two choices, but I give you a third: pull back from the precipice. Close the wound. Talk to the dawi.’

Again, silence. When the next voice broke in, Imladrik had to work hard to keep his expression neutral.

‘They will not listen,’ said Liandra.

Her speech was just as he remembered it — hard-edged, louder than most, flavoured with the rough tones that spoke of a long time away from home. For a moment he could have been dragged back in time, to the long conversations they had shared while on the wing together, the tips of their steeds’ pinions nearly touching. He could have recalled how her mind-voice had sparred with his, approaching that strange intimacy that a dragon rider shared with his steed.

It was harder than he had expected, to hear that voice again.

‘You are sure?’ he asked, unwilling to contradict her directly. Not yet.

‘With respect, we have tried this,’ interjected Salendor, clearly making an effort to retain his temper. ‘They do not talk. They slaughter.’

Caerwal also looked unconvinced. ‘That is the truth. If you had been here during these last years-’

‘I have been in the colonies longer than any of you,’ said Imladrik firmly. ‘I founded Oeragor in the east before the towers of this city were raised, beside which thirty years away is nothing. You are free to dispute with me, Caerwal, but never presume that I know not of what I speak.’

Caerwal looked chastened, and fell quiet.

‘War may come,’ Imladrik went on. ‘It may be too late to prevent it, but I will try. That is my first order: keep the defences in order, but no armies will march. Messages will be sent to the dawi. Snorri Halfhand is dead, but I knew his cousin in happier times — if I understand anything of them, he will be the first to seek vengeance, and of all of them he was always the mildest.’

Salendor shook his head in frustration. ‘Your brother killed Halfhand. You know how they are — his rage will blind him now. The father, too.’

‘Perhaps,’ conceded Imladrik. ‘If so, it will be a mark against us, for Snorri was a noble warrior when I knew him. For that reason I will make the attempt. We must make the attempt: we cannot be as blind as them, for we are the children of Aenarion and the fates hold us to a higher standard.’

He saw Aelis looking at him doubtfully. None of the others spoke in support of him. He had not expected them to do so; this counsel was always going to be unpopular with those who had suffered most.

‘Then how will you achieve this?’ asked Liandra. The tone of her voice was strange. ‘The dawi kill any of us they come across, even under banners of truce. The rules of war have long since ceased to apply in Elthin Arvan.’

Imladrik turned to her. Her face was just as he remembered it — framed by a shock of copper hair, pale and vigorous, her blue eyes rich and glittering.

‘It will not be easy,’ he admitted, ‘but no paths are free of danger, and I will not believe their minds are fully closed, not yet, not until I have seen it with my own eyes. They were a proud people, one in which honour once dwelt.’

‘So you always counselled,’ replied Liandra, ‘even before the war started. Things change, though, my lord. People change.’

Imladrik held her gaze. ‘The core of them remains the same. That never alters.’

‘Does it not, my lord?’

‘It cannot.’

They looked at one another for a little longer. Imladrik thought she might speak to him directly, mind to mind, just as they had once done freely.

In the event, she said nothing, and her eyes fell away.

‘If this is the will of the Crown,’ said Aelis slowly, breaking the awkward silence, ‘then of course it shall be done, just as you command.’

Imladrik nodded. ‘Good. Then our business is concluded here. This is our last chance for peace, my lords; let us ensure it does not fail.’

‘And, despite all, if it should?’ asked Salendor sceptically.

‘Then, my Lord of Tor Achare, you shall have the slaughter you desire,’ said Imladrik wearily. ‘And when that is done, when the world lies in ashes around us, we can reflect at length on what follies may be committed by the wise, and what horror may be unleashed by those who once only worshipped beauty.’

After the Council had dispersed Imladrik made his way to his chambers. He had taken up residence in one of the smaller towers, pressed tight against the inner wall as it curved round towards the harbour. Its windows faced west, back across the seas to Ulthuan. The accommodation within was modest: a few rooms in the lower levels in which to receive guests, a couple more devoted to charts and ledgers, a private suite at the summit in which he slept and meditated.

Tor Alessi’s citizens treated him with a muted reverence. They parted to allow him passage along the narrow streets. Mothers brought their children out to witness his presence, as if that would confer some sort of protection on them. Soldiers bowed low; mages doffed their staffs.

He found the whole exercise ridiculous and irritating. His father, ever the consummate mythmaker, had appreciated deference, viewing it as an essential tool of kingship. His brother loved it for other reasons — it eased the constant doubt that nagged at his jealous soul. Imladrik, who had never wanted anything more than solitude and the clear air of black-flanked mountains, had come to hate it. In that, at least, he was of a mind with his wife.

Yethanial had been in his dreams ever since he had left Tor Vael. After their last meeting he had headed first to Lothern to take counsel from the commanders of the fleet, then to Caledor to summon his dragon riders. Only then, days later, had he embarked across the ocean at the head of the speartip of drakes.

In the days since then he had thrown himself into making sense of the sprawling web of armies committed to the defence of the asur territories. Communications in the wilds were difficult and estimates of the enemy strength, their movements and deployments, were confusing and contradictory. All that had kept him busy, which was good.

But if his days were full, his nights were empty. He would lie for hours on his shallow bunk, knowing sleep was far away, remembering Yethanial’s look of reproach. He would turn her words over in his mind endlessly, worrying at them, picking them apart. He had never felt more alone. Draukhain was no comfort; like all dragons, he found mortal attachments trivial.

They are a fortunate breed, Imladrik thought. To care only for freedom, to care nothing for confinement. As for us, we are nothing but the sum of our confinements.

Imladrik reached the doors to his tower. The guards bowed low long before they needed to.

‘My lord, tidings from Ulthuan,’ reported one of them, a tall Sea Guard officer with a competent, soldierly look. ‘Sent by swift dispatch from Cothique.’

Imladrik raised an eyebrow. ‘Very swift. What news?’

‘A single passenger. He awaits within. I checked his credentials.’

‘Very good. No disturbances, please.’

‘By your will.’

Imladrik passed inside and the doors locked closed behind him. Though he could not see them, he knew that archers had been stationed all around the tower. Units of spearmen were deployed nearby and a mage was on duty at all times in a neighbouring spire, all of them watching against attack. Centuries of warfare, open and clandestine, against the druchii had made the asur protective of their commanders.

His guest waited for him in the room beyond the entrance hall, lounging in a low chair by the fire. As soon as Imladrik entered he got to his feet, showing off a flurry of damask robes decorated with fabulously complicated images of serpents and seawyrms. His hair was straw-blond and arranged impeccably across slender shoulders. His face had a certain sharpness to it, but his smile came readily enough.

‘My Lord Imladrik,’ he said, bowing floridly.

Imladrik looked at him steadily. ‘You were sent from Ulthuan? Who sent you?’

‘I sent myself.’

Imladrik drew a seat up before the fire.

‘You had better explain.’

‘My name is Caradryel of the House of Reveniol, latterly in the service of Tor Caled. Though you will not remember it, we have met before. You did me the not insignificant service of saving my life when our ship was attacked by druchii. That placed me in your debt; since then, I have been searching for a way to repay it.’

Imladrik regarded Caradryel doubtfully. His speech was polished, but there was something… slippery about it.

‘Latterly, though, I was fortunate enough to be presented with a way to remedy matters,’ Caradryel went on. ‘I learned you had no counsellor. This is, you might say, my speciality. I have a facility for the arts of state — negotiation, diplomacy, persuasion and inveiglement. I flatter myself, but to my mind there really is none better. So there it is: in this, you have my service.’

Imladrik couldn’t suppress a twitching smile. Caradryel had front, that was certain.

‘Interesting,’ Imladrik said. ‘Perhaps you can tell me why I should prefer your service to my officials stationed here, all of whom have sworn oaths to the Crown and to my security?’

Caradryel shrugged. ‘They are competent enough, no doubt. Two things count against them. First, they are loyal to the Crown, not to you. I have no especial fondness for your royal brother, if I am truly honest, but have every personal reason to see you prosper. You might even say that it has become my vocation.’

‘And the second?’

Caradryel smiled. ‘None of them are as good as me. Not remotely.’

‘You are not short of confidence.’

‘Modesty is a waste of everyone’s time.’

‘I know someone who would agree with you,’ said Imladrik. ‘Myself, I have always thought it the mark of nobility.’

‘I make no claim to be noble. Far from it. Still, I am the best offer you’ll have out here.’

‘So you clearly believe.’

‘Perhaps you should ask how I got myself in here. Do you really think I had anything like the right credentials? Other supplicants have been waiting days for an audience and yet I arrived on the quayside yesterday evening with little more than the clothes on my back.’ He smiled to himself, drawing a few tattered leaves of parchment from his robes’ pocket. ‘Your guards are thorough and honest, but they need to check the provenance of official seals more carefully. Honestly, I could have been anyone.’

‘So you are a trickster,’ concluded Imladrik. ‘Tor Alessi has a thousand of them. Work quickly: your audience is drawing to its conclusion.’

Caradryel nodded to himself. ‘You dislike subterfuge. Easy enough, for someone who can walk into any chamber in Ulthuan he pleases, though it has its uses for the rest of us. Here, though: perhaps this will speak more eloquently on my behalf.’

Caradryel took one of the leaves of parchment and handed it over.

Only a few words had been written on it, in a clear, elegant hand that Imladrik recognised only too well.

Though we parted at odds, my thoughts remain with you. The bearer of this message comes with my blessing. He is boastful and tiresome, but will serve you. Y.

Imladrik looked at it long and hard. Though none but he would have known it, the Eltharin characters had been written in such a way as to conceal a second meaning amid the words, something that Yethanial had long delighted in doing. Trust him, the hidden text said, lost amongst the swirls and loops of the runic script.

‘Boastful and tiresome,’ said Caradryel ruefully. ‘I thought that a little harsh.’

‘She finds the company of most people tiresome,’ said Imladrik, reading the message again. ‘Do not take it personally.’

Seeing Yethanial’s calligraphy before him sharpened the sense of loss. He could imagine her, bent low over the writing desk, painstakingly drawing each character with the attention to propriety and order that characterised all her work. Beauty existed in everything she did — the kind of raw, bleak beauty that was prized in windswept Cothique.

‘We spoke at length before I set sail,’ said Caradryel. ‘She understood what I understand: that Tor Alessi is a den of wolves, ready to tear apart your plans as soon as you make them clear.’

‘My wife does not concern herself with statecraft.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Caradryel, ‘but she is a good judge of character. I approached her thinking I would persuade her easily; by the end, I was the one being examined. She is a formidable soul, if you will forgive me saying.’

‘She is. She always has been.’ Imladrik leaned back in his chair, feeling fatigue bite at his shoulders and wondering what to make of the figure before him. ‘If she had not vouched for you, all your honey-tongued words would have made little difference. But she did, and so you give me much to think on.’

Caradryel’s face become serious. ‘Think on it as much as you wish, my lord, but time is not on our side. I know what is happening here. I know that you wish to halt the war, but most in this city do not — they will work to frustrate you at every turn, even as they smile to your face and bow before you. You cannot fight them openly, because they will not contest you openly. Salendor is one; there may be others. If you truly wish to bend the city to your will, then we need to act now.’

‘I have done so. The orders have been issued.’

‘Ah, but will they be carried out?’

Imladrik smiled coldly. ‘Have a care, Caradryel. I am not some simpleton ripe to be lectured — I am your master. Remember that.’

‘Master?’ asked Caradryel, slyly. ‘So we do have an arrangement?’

‘Perhaps. Some tasks that need to be performed are difficult; I had not yet decided who to assign them to. One in particular might serve as a test: perform it well, and I will look on your application with favour. I need to contact someone. It must be done quietly, and it must be done quickly. It will be dangerous.’

‘Perfect,’ said Caradryel. ‘Who?’

‘His name is Morgrim Bargrum,’ said Imladrik. ‘He was a friend, once.’

‘A dwarf?’

‘If our scouts have it right, he is marching towards us even as we sit here. He will not be coming to talk.’

Caradryel smiled, though a little less assuredly. ‘A challenge, then. We will have to change his mind.’

‘To change a dwarf’s mind,’ Imladrik remarked dryly. ‘If you can achieve that, my friend, then I may start to believe your boasts.’