Master of Dragons

Chapter Three

Liandra stood, shivering, in the hills above Kor Vanaeth. Her robes were heavy from rainwater and hung like dead weights.

She ran a grimy hand through her copper hair.

Mud, she thought grimly, gazing across her domain. Filth. Every year it gets dirtier. What in the name of Isha am I still doing here?

As the years had passed, it had become harder to answer that question. The colonies were a hard place to live in for one of her breeding. The landscape was heavy with sludge, an endless grind of snarled, twisted, muck-thick forest. Every-

thing was washed-out, mouldering, greying at the edges.

Stubbornness, she concluded, glowering at a rain-washed sky. I cannot bear to see them win.

She looked down at Kor Vanaeth’s walls, half a mile away. Some sections hadn’t been completely rebuilt, though years had passed since the dawi had razed it. It had been hard to attract artisans back, and harder still to secure the materials they needed. The stonewrights of Tor Alessi were busy with the city’s own immense defences and were loath to spare any of their fellowship for outlying fortresses.

Liandra began to walk, retracing her steps down the rain-slushed path into the valley. Her robe-hem dragged behind her, sodden.

When her father had founded Kor Vanaeth it had housed over thirty thousand souls. The streets had burst with life, spilling beyond the boundaries of the walls and into the forest.

Hard to remember that now. Fewer than five thousand had returned. Most had done so out of loyalty to Liandra’s father, though a few saw opportunities to advance themselves amid the rubble. Some dark-eyed souls had just suffered too much and wanted to take something back.

Twenty-five years. So much work, and so little to show for it. They were vulnerable still. If another army swept down the valley, even one half the size of the one that had destroyed them before, not a single stone would be left standing.

Liandra felt her fists clench. The movement was almost involuntary; she had caught herself doing it more and more often.

I am changing. This war is changing me.

Sometimes she awoke angry, fresh from vivid dreams of slaughter. Sometimes she awoke in tears with images of the slain crowding in her mind. And sometimes, more often than she liked, she awoke after dreaming of him.

The years had not dulled the loss. It was for the best that he had gone back to Ulthuan. He belonged amid its refined spires of ivory, just as she belonged in the wilds of the east, doused by the rain and up to her ankles in blood-rich filth.

‘My lady.’

Alviar’s voice made her start. She hadn’t seen him approach, trudging just as she had done up the steep hill-path from the valley. That was sloppy; her lack of sleep was beginning to take its toll.

‘What is it?’ she demanded, more sharply than she’d intended.

Her steward bowed in apology. ‘You asked me to tell you when we had word from Tor Alessi.’

‘And?’

‘Messengers are here. They bring greetings and news from the Lady Aelis. Do you wish me to summarise?’

‘If you please.’

‘Aelis agrees with you: now that Caledor has gone, the dawi will be quick to rally. She has tidings of new armies gathering in the mountains. She asks you to join her. She says she cannot promise to protect Kor Vanaeth when fighting resumes.’

Alviar was so dutiful. He spoke like a scribe reeling off trade accounts. Liandra had preferred Fendaril, but he, of course, was dead.

‘What of Salendor?’ she asked.

‘Lord Salendor is already at Tor Alessi, along with the Lords Caerwal and Gelthar. In the absence of the King, a war council has been formed. They call themselves the Council of Five.’

‘Those are four names, Alviar.’

‘They hope for yours to be added.’

‘Do they, now?’

‘Salendor in particular, they tell me,’ said Alviar.

‘Salendor is a brute,’ said Liandra. ‘He understands the dawi, though. He knows how to fight them. If he wants me to be there then I should perhaps consider it an honour.’ She pressed her lips together ruminatively. ‘Do you remember, Alviar, when Caledor left us?’

‘Clearly.’

‘He thought he’d won the war for us. I heard him say it. Now finish the task, he told us. I felt like laughing. No one would tell him the truth. He left for Ulthuan with no idea of what we face.’

‘I should say not.’

Liandra clasped her hands before her, pressing her chilled flesh against the rain-wet fabric of her robe. ‘We accomplished so much here. I cannot leave now. I was not here when the dawi came the first time, and that weighs on my heart.’

‘Shall I tell them that?’

Liandra shook her head slowly. ‘No. No, I will give it more thought. You offered them lodgings?’

‘Of course. As much comfort as we could make for them.’

Liandra breathed in deeply, looking around her, sucking in air that tasted of damp and rot. ‘So what would you do, Alviar?’

‘I would not presume to have an opinion.’

Liandra smiled. ‘None?’

‘You are a mage of the House of Athinol. You require the counsel of princes, not stewards.’

‘Princes may be fools, stewards may be wise. But you speak truth — I’ve been starved of equals ever since…’

She trailed off. It was still hard to say his name.

‘Enough,’ she said. ‘Return. Tell them they will have their answer soon.’

Alviar bowed and withdrew, retracing his steps down the shallow slope towards the city.

Liandra watched him go. When he was gone she resumed her vigil, alone at the summit, watching over the city of her father as the cold wind whipped at her robes.

Now finish the task, she mused.

Sevekai ghosted through the deep dark. His movements were silent. Years in the wilds of Elthin Arvan had only honed his already taut physique; his reactions had always been sharp, now they verged on the preternatural.

The others were still on his heels, just as they had been on every fruitless trail since leaving Naggaroth: Verigoth with his pallid skin and dewy eyes; Hreth and Latharek, the brutal twins, their glossy hair as slick as nightshade. The two sorceresses, Drutheira and Ashniel, prowled ahead, lighting the way with purple witch-light. Malchior, their counterpart, brought up the rear.

A whole party of assassins, gaunt from the wild, buried deep in the twisting heart of the Arluii. They were lean from hunger, their skin drawn tight over sharp bones. Elthin Arvan had not been kind to them. Why should it have been? After what they had done to it, a measure of hatred was richly deserved.

Only Kaitar looked untouched. Kaitar the enigma, Kaitar the cursed. Sevekai loathed him. There was something deeply wrong with Kaitar. His eyes were dull, his manner disquieting. None of the others liked Kaitar; he himself seemed to care little either way.

Sevekai avoided Kaitar’s gaze, just as he had done for all the years they had suffered one another’s company. It had been surprisingly easy to work with someone and barely exchange words. Their routine tasks — slitting throats, administering poisons, squeezing tender flesh — lent themselves to a cold, mute kind of pragmatism.

Now, though, after so long without word from the Witch King, Drutheira had taken matters in hand. It could not continue as it had been. They had done what was required of them and had now been forgotten. So she had taken them south, then up into the peaks, then down again, deep down, burrowing through cold, lost shafts of feldspar and granite. Sevekai could only guess how far they were underground now. He liked the chill of it, though. It cooled his limbs and made him feel languidly murderous.

‘Be still,’ whispered Drutheira from ahead.

The druchii froze. Her witch-light died away, plunging them into darkness.

Sevekai switched to a state of high awareness. Twin blades slipped soundlessly into his hands. He tensed, feeling the muscles of his arms tighten and the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

For a few moments, nothing changed. Then, from far away, from far down, he heard it — a long, low rumble, as if the mountain itself stirred. Then silence.

‘What is this, witch?’ whispered Kaitar. His voice gave away his uncertainty. That in itself was unusual; Sevekai had never heard him sound uncertain before.

‘I told you,’ replied Drutheira. ‘The weapon.’

‘The weapon,’ he repeated. ‘I asked you before what it was.’

Drutheira’s voice remained perfectly calm, perfectly poised. Sevekai had to hand it to her: she knew her craft. ‘Do you doubt me, Kaitar?’

Sevekai smiled wolfishly. He could just make out the ivory glow of her bleached-white hair. She was savagely beautiful, as cruel and fine as an ice-goad.

‘No more than you doubt me,’ said Kaitar. ‘Tell me what you know, or I go no further.’

‘Just what have you sensed down here, Kaitar?’ asked Drutheira, her voice intrigued. As she spoke, a soft blush of colour spun into the void, lighting up her alabaster cheek. ‘What worries you?’

‘You do not wish to provoke me.’

‘Nor you, me,’ she said, before relenting. ‘It is a relic, one that will cause the asur more pain than we have ever caused them. If that does not stir your curiosity then maybe you are in the wrong company.’

Sevekai saw Kaitar’s face flicker between doubts.

‘Maybe I am,’ Kaitar said, ‘but you could retrieve it yourself. There is no reason for me to be here.’

‘Why do we wait?’ hissed Malchior from the rear of the party, unable to hear what was being said. ‘We need to move.’

‘Yes we do, so do not be foolish!’ snapped Drutheira to Kaitar. ‘Without me to guide you, you’d stumble down here for days. I’d happily watch you starve but I need every blade for what’s to come. If you had doubts you should have voiced them on the surface.’

Kaitar hesitated. Still, the uncertainty; Sevekai enjoyed that.

‘So be it,’ Kaitar muttered at last, drawing a curved knife. ‘Take us down. But this blade will be at your back.’

‘And this one at yours,’ said Sevekai, shifting his weight just enough to prod the tip of a throwing dagger into Kaitar’s tunic.

Kaitar turned to glare at him. Sevekai shot him a frigid smile.

‘Watch your step,’ Sevekai warned. ‘The stone’s slippery.’

Slowly, deliberately, Kaitar sheathed his blade again.

‘Very good,’ said Drutheira mockingly. ‘Now, if we may?’ As she turned back down the tunnel Sevekai caught the look of capricious enjoyment she gifted him.

They crept onwards, going near-silently, treading with feline assuredness in the black. The tunnel wound ever deeper, switching back and plunging steeply. It became narrow, barely wide enough to take two abreast, clogged with stalagmites and glossy tapers of dripping rock.

A second rumble ground away in the depths, then faded. Sevekai’s heartbeat picked up. He knew something of what they sought, but not everything — Drutheira was miserly with information even with her allies. Kaitar said nothing further, but Sevekai could sense the tension in him. He kept his daggers to hand, poised for use. Slipping one between Kaitar’s shoulders would be no hardship — he just needed the faintest of excuses.

The air began to heat up. Sweat ran down Sevekai’s temples. He felt minuscule trembles in the rock as he walked, as if the entire underworld shivered in anticipation.

‘It lies in the chamber beyond,’ said Drutheira. ‘Go silently. Follow my lead.’

Then she set off, creeping through the pitch darkness.

The tunnel floor sloped downward steeply, then levelled out. Sevekai could sense the roof opening up. The floor became flatter, as if made level by mortal hands.

‘Go no further,’ said Drutheira, halting them. ‘This is the place. I think we may risk a little magic — the sight is worth it.

Her staff flared, throwing out a curtain of purple-blushed illumination. Sevekai shaded his eyes against the glare, then peered cautiously through his fingers.

They were on the lip of a vast, perfectly circular chasm. It must have been a hundred feet across, as dark and clotted as the maw of Mirai. A narrow ledge ran around the perimeter, barred by cracks and heaps of rubble. Other tunnel entrances were visible at intervals, leading off to Khaine-knew-where. The cavern roof soared away above them, lost in shadow.

One by one the druchii crept out onto the ledge, going warily. Latharek hung back, hugging the near wall, looking sickened by the precipitous drop.

‘Behold its chamber!’ cried Drutheira, sweeping her staff-tip around her and throwing light up the walls.

Huge pilasters loomed up over them, each one carved with immense runes of containment. Sevekai could sense the magic bleeding from them like a physical smell, sulphurous and metallic.

As soon as he saw the runes, Kaitar turned on Drutheira. ‘Dhar,’ he snarled, reaching for his blade.

Drutheira smiled wickedly. ‘What did you expect?’

Kaitar sniffed. It was an odd gesture — like a dog hunting the scent of its prey. His eyes suddenly widened. ‘No. Do not do this.’

Drutheira shrugged. ‘A little late, I fear.’

Her staff exploded with power, sending crackling lines of energy lashing out against the pilasters. The aethyr-force slammed into the runes, shattering them. A rumble like thunder welled up from the chasm depths, sending loose rubble clattering down the sides of the shaft.

Sevekai staggered, nearly losing his footing. Kaitar’s head snapped around. He looked terrified.

‘What do you fear, Kaitar?’ asked Drutheira, her violet eyes glittering with mirth. ‘No druchii fears Dhar.’

Kaitar’s face changed into something bestial. ‘Fool!’ he slurred. ‘You cannot control it!’

‘You have no idea what I can control,’ said Drutheira imperiously.

Kaitar went for her, lunging out with his blade. Latharek was closest. He tried to block Kaitar, ducking low to shoulder him off the ledge. Kaitar lashed around, grabbing Latharek and hurling him away. Off-balance, Latharek tumbled clear over the chasm edge, screaming as he plummeted.

Drutheira fled along the ledge, hurrying around to the far side of the chasm, her staff still blazing. More runes shattered, sending fragments spilling into the vault. The stone walls trembled again, rocked by something huge and muffled from far below.

‘You cannot stop this!’ cried Drutheira.

Kaitar went after her. Malchior attempted to seize him but Kaitar twisted away from his grip. Hreth darted at him next, blade in hand. For a moment Sevekai thought Hreth got a dagger to stick, but Kaitar somehow angled away at the last moment. They grappled on the edge of the ledge, blows flying furiously, before Kaitar punched his dagger into Hreth’s stomach and wrenched it free with a flourish.

Something terrible had happened to Kaitar — his eyes gleamed with unnatural light, his limbs moved with ferocious speed. He was demented, raving, slavering with fear and fury. Whatever Drutheira was doing had made him crazy.

Sevekai went for him, dagger in each hand. Kaitar parried with his blade, desperate to get past and go after Drutheira. In the flurry of jabs Sevekai managed to wound him, stabbing a dagger-point deep into his arm before pulling sharply away.

It should have stopped him. It should have severed tendons, sliced muscle. Kaitar merely grunted and rushed at him faster. Sevekai got his blade to block just as Verigoth came at Kaitar from behind, dropping a throttle-cord over his neck and yanking it tight.

Kaitar’s eyes bulged and his cheeks went purple. Verigoth dragged him back from the brink and for a moment Sevekai thought he’d pinned him. Then Kaitar’s hands flew over his shoulders and grabbed Verigoth by his armour. With a ferocious lurch, Kaitar doubled over and hurled Verigoth headfirst into the chasm.

That was impossible. That was madness. Verigoth was strong — the strongest of them all — and he’d been thrown overhead like a child.

By then Drutheira had reached the far side and begun destroying more runes. Kaitar’s gaze switched back and forth: Ashniel and Malchior blocked him from the left, Sevekai and the wounded Hreth from the right. He looked like a trapped animal.

Sevekai twirled his daggers in his hands and advanced again. Kaitar let slip a strangled growl and crouched down against the stone.

Then he leapt.

If any doubt remained that Kaitar was more than mortal, the leap quashed it. Sevekai could only watch as Kaitar flew high into the air, his limbs cartwheeling, propelled by some unnatural strength far out over the drop. He flew straight at Drutheira, his eyes blazing with anger, his arms outstretched to grasp her. She watched him come with a playful smile on her pale lips.

‘Impressive,’ she murmured.

But just as Kaitar reached midway, a column of fire thundered up from the depths, spearing out of the gloom and engulfing him in a gale of flame. He screamed — a horrific, otherworldly sound that rang round the chamber.

Sevekai dropped to his knees. The heat was incredible, pressing against his face like a vice. After the long trek in the dark, the sudden brilliance made his eyes sting.

Drutheira revelled in it. Her robes flapped about her.

‘This is the weapon!’ she crowed. ‘This is the weapon!’

Sevekai had no idea what she was talking about. He shrank back from the heat and the noise, just as all the others did.

An instant later the fires gusted out and something vast and dark surged up out of the chasm, rising on a tide of ruin, wreathed in oily smoke. With a twist and snap of immense jaws it ended Kaitar’s wretched screaming. A hard bang echoed around the vault, like a steel hammer falling on an anvil. Cracks shot across the walls and rubble rained down from above.

The creature kept rising, buoyed by an updraft as hot as a forge. Vast wings stretched out, bat-skin black and pierced with chains. Ophidian flesh snaked and coiled on itself in the flickering gloom.

‘You know me, creature!’ cried Drutheira. ‘You know what I am. Listen to me! The druchii have returned. Listen! We have come to reclaim what is ours.’

Sevekai looked on, unable to do anything but cower. A solid mass of curled, distorted black flesh loomed high up over them, hovering across the face of the chasm. Its hide glistened in the witch-light, reflecting from a thousand tight-woven scales. Ragged wings brushed against the shaft’s wall. He saw spines, curved teeth crowded along a jagged jawline and talons the length of an elf’s body. Gold chains, some broken, hung from an armoured torso, and iron runes had been branded and hammered into its flesh.

A dragon. A black dragon. One of Malekith’s own creations, as warped and ruined as anything to emerge from his embittered mind.

‘Your will is broken!’ shouted Drutheira, speaking in the tone of command she used when spellcasting. ‘Your mind is enslaved. You are ours, creature.’

The beast hissed at her, and flickers of blood-red flame danced across the void.

‘Do not resist!’ warned the sorceress. ‘You belong to the druchii. We never forget. We never release.’

That brought a sudden gush of flame and a roar that made the whole shaft shiver. Flames kept coming after that, guttering and snorting, breaking the murky darkness with a dull glow of crimson.

‘Serve me!’ commanded Drutheira, raising her staff fearlessly. ‘Serve me!’

The beast screamed back, but it did not attack. If it had chosen to it could have wiped her out just as it had consumed Kaitar. Its jaws opened and closed, revealing a long, lolling tongue the colour of burned iron. Its eyes — slits of silver — flashed furiously.

Sevekai saw the truth then: the powerful magicks that had cracked and twisted the creature’s mind still held. It would not attack. It writhed, snorted and flailed, but its fires stayed subdued.

Drutheira smiled savagely. ‘You know who your masters are. You sense us. You smell us.’

It screamed at her again, and echoes rang around the vault. Drutheira pointed the staff directly at it. ‘The wards are broken. When I call, you answer.’

The dragon’s wings thrashed, sending acrid air washing over the ledge. Its tail scythed, swishing in dumb frustration. Sevekai could only marvel at the imbalance: such a monster, held in check by a fragile, white-haired sorceress. Whatever magic had been used to crack the creature’s mind must have been of astounding strength.

‘Go!’ cried Drutheira, raising her arms. ‘Break out! Your will is mine! Your power is mine!’

The dragon coiled in on itself, writhing in a paroxysm of rage. Its eyes rolled, its jaws clamped shut.

Then it obeyed. With a clap of ebony wings it surged upwards, climbing fast. Sevekai saw then that the cavern had no roof — it was a shaft soaring upwards, carving through the heart of the mountain like an artery. The dragon ascended rapidly, lighting up the walls in a corona of red. The wind whistled in its wake, howling up out of the depths before falling, eventually, back into echoing silence.

Sevekai crept to the edge and risked a look down. He could barely make anything out, though the shaft stank of death. Hreth, lying next to him, gurgled weakly. His innards were visible between blood-drenched tatters of clothing.

Drutheira was breathing heavily and her pale cheeks were unusually flushed.

‘So what did you think?’ she asked, calling out to them over the gulf. ‘Magnificent, eh?’

Malchior scowled back, his expression dark. ‘You let it go.’

‘It’ll come when called. Unlike some, it is utterly faithful.’

Sevekai smiled wryly and got to his feet. Ashniel picked her way around the ledge toward Drutheira. ‘What now?’ she asked.

‘To the surface,’ the sorceress replied. ‘It will be waiting.’ As she spoke, the cavern shook again. The cracks that had opened after Kaitar’s death widened. ‘And we should hurry — this place is perilous now.’

Ashniel and Malchior hastened to follow her. Sevekai, following suit, felt the stone tremble under his feet.

‘Wait!’ called Hreth, dragging himself along the ledge. ‘Some help, brother?’

Sevekai glanced at him scornfully. Shameful enough to be defeated; bleating about it compounded the crime.

‘Sorry, brother,’ he replied coldly. ‘I think you would slow me down.’

More rumbles broke out, echoing dully from the depths. Sevekai broke into a jog, gliding surely across the uneven ledge surface. When he got to the tunnel entrance Malchior and Ashniel had already gone through, but Drutheira was waiting.

‘You planned it all?’ he asked her. ‘For Kaitar?’

Drutheira placed a finger on his lips. ‘Later, I promise. For now, trust me.’

Sevekai grinned. ‘Not an inch.’

More cracks opened up, snaking up the height of the chamber. A low growl welled up from the deeps, prising what remained of the pilasters from the rock walls.

‘We need to move,’ said Sevekai.

‘So we do.’

Drutheira slipped into the tunnel and hurried up the incline.

Sevekai took one last look at the chamber. Chunks of rock were beginning to fall freely, splitting from the mountain and tumbling into the shaft. Whether as a result of Drutheira’s magic or Kaitar’s violent death, the whole shaft was falling in on itself. Hreth still struggled on, stuck on his hands and knees as debris rained around him.

Sevekai couldn’t resist a wintry smile. It was always pleasant to witness the demise of a rival.

Then he turned on his heels and raced into the tunnel, following Drutheira back into the dark.