Dragonforge (6 page)

Jandra studied her face in the mirror. In her old life, when she’d looked into this same glass, she’d been staring at the face of a naïve and innocent girl. She’d been through so much since then. She’d nearly died. She’d felt her life slipping between her fingers in warm gushes. What’s more, she’d learned to kill. She’d heard the gurgling, wet gasping breaths of a dragon dying by her hands. She closed her eyes, and all the violence of the recent months washed through her mind. She’d learned to fight when she had no strength to fight. She’d learned to live for days in clothes caked and clotted with blood.

She opened her eyes—and found she was still looking into the face of a girl, but a girl who was no longer innocent. She lifted her chin and studied the thin pale line where her throat had been slit. She looked with sorrow at her shoulder-length hair—once it had hung the full length of her back. She’d been forced to cut it to disguise herself. She brushed away the fringe of hair across her scalp that concealed the metal band she had once worn as a tiara. This was a smaller version of Vendevorex’s skull cap, a device that allowed her to communicate with the unseen machines that floated by the millions in the air around her. She’d changed her hair to hide it when she’d been a fugitive.

She removed the tiara and placed it on the table.

There was no longer any need to hide who she was.

Indeed, now it was time to proudly announce to the world her true heritage.

She lifted Vendevorex’s skull cap and brought it to her brow. Her eyes were locked on their reflection. They were cool hazel circles, devoid of sorrow or joy or hope or fear. They were the same sorts of eyes through which Vendevorex had looked upon the world. She was the inheritor of Vendevorex’s power. And, she hoped, she was the inheritor of his wisdom and strength.

She lowered the skull cap onto her head, willing the metal to drape like cloth over the contours of her scalp. She closed her eyes to concentrate on the way the metal felt as it formed a helmet that matched her head and hers alone. Then, with a thought, she willed the malleable metal once more into solid silver.

She opened her eyes, expecting to find herself transformed. Instead, her mouth fell open as she let out a gasp. Behind her in the mirror, his golden eyes gleaming in the dim light of the room, stood Vendevorex.

Blasphet, the Murder God,
woke to the familiar blackness. Since the fiasco of the Free City, Blasphet had been locked in the lowest chamber of the dungeon, his wings, legs, neck, and tail shackled to the bedrock. A dragon with a less vital mind might have been driven mad in the timeless dark. Blasphet philosophically accepted his confinement as an opportunity to contemplate the error of his ways, free from normal distractions.

Unfortunately, Blasphet still had a few abnormal distractions. When Shandrazel had captured him, he’d known of Blasphet’s reputation for concealing poisoned needles and small tools among his feather-scales. He’d unceremoniously plucked Blasphet like an oversized chicken. Now his scales were growing back, with an itch surely unprecedented in all history. To lie in tomblike stillness and be aware of each new feather-scale seeping from its follicle, like a billion tiny insects burrowing from his hide… Was it possible his hatred of Shandrazel was even greater than his hatred of Albekizan?

Albekizan had been the central focus of his hatred for half a century. As those years passed, Blasphet had enjoyed a thousand enticing visions of how his brother might suffer. Over the years, his schemes had grown in complexity. Once, he’d imagined sawing off his brother’s limbs, then hooking his mouth to a tube and force feeding him for months until Albekizan was a bloated blob. Then he would starve his brother, melting off the fat, reducing him to little more than a skeletal torso draped in an enormous sheet of flesh. Finally, he would cut Albekizan open, breaking and rearranging his bones, wiring and pinning them into the shape of a throne. Blasphet would rein over the kingdom from the living throne of his brother, leisurely looking down upon the former king’s plaintive eyes, reveling in the despair he would find in them!

He sighed at the memory, and reminded himself that he was here to learn the error of his ways. His biggest error, he knew, was his need to torment his enemies rather than simply kill them.

For Shandrazel, there were no visions of elaborate torture thrones. He would simply close his jaws around the bastard and rip his throat out! The thought filled him with a warmth that defeated the chill of the bedrock.

Above, Blasphet heard the creak of a door. Once a day, guards would come to feed him gruel and muck up the pool of filth that Blasphet had excreted since their last visit. Blasphet hadn’t yet killed any of his guards, though he had thought of a dozen possible ways. Perhaps today he would indulge himself. A faint light seeped through the darkness. The acrid odor of an oil lamp reached his nostrils as the guards descended the stairs.

Something was different. Blasphet cocked his head to better to catch the guards’ footsteps. The sound was wrong. Whatever approached wasn’t as heavy as earth-dragons. Humans? Perhaps coming to take revenge? It seemed so unfair. Human genocide had been Albekizan’s vision; Blasphet had taken up the challenge only out of intellectual curiosity. He bore no hatred of mankind, as a whole. Humans had been the only species ever to grant him proper respect. Humans once worshipped him as a god—the Murder God. It hadn’t been hard to convince an army of assassins and spies of his divinity. Humans believed in gods with the same obvious certainty with which they believed in weather. It was simply in their nature. At the height of his power, before Albekizan had crushed the cult, Blasphet’s worshippers had numbered in the thousands.

Keys rattled in the lock of the iron door. Tendrils of light glowed around the edges of the frame. Slowly the door groaned open, pushed by a half dozen earth-dragons, their legs straining. A single earth-dragon should have been more than strong enough to open the heavy door.

Blasphet tilted his head to watch as the earth-dragons marched into the cell. Four more followed, carrying a man-sized bundle of canvas bound tightly with coils of rope. Silently, the earth-dragons advanced, rings of keys jangling in their fists. The six who had opened the door went to the shackles that held him. Without a word of explanation they crouched, slipped the keys into the locks, and turned them. Iron clattered on the stone floor as they pried the shackles loose, grunting with the effort—in the damp dungeon air, the shackles were already beginning to rust.

Blasphet had been staked to the floor on his back. His limbs felt weak, nearly paralyzed, but through sheer will he rolled to his side. The earth-dragons helped him to his belly, then stood back as Blasphet rose on trembling, unsteady legs. He stretched his wings, shaking them, loosening the damp grime that coated them.

As one, the earth-dragons knelt and lowered their tortoise-like heads until their brows touched the ground, their arms stretched before them in a position of prayer.

“You’re humans, aren’t you?” Blasphet asked, his voice raspy. His throat felt sore and raw where the shackle had been. “The motions of your bodies betray you.”

One guard rose, looking up at Blasphet with dark, cloudy eyes. Certainly, they looked liked earth-dragons, and smelled like them as well, but these eyes weren’t natural… they looked more like lifeless glass than a living organ of sight. The earth-dragon placed both hands upon his gray-green head, gave his skull a twist, and lifted it from his shoulders.

A human’s head was revealed where the dragon’s head had been. It was a young woman, her head shaved, a black tattoo of a serpent coiling above her right eye, writhing across her scalp, then snaking down her neck and shoulder. The other earth-dragons stood and removed their heads as well. Ten women, all in their teens, all with shaved heads. Even their eyebrows were missing.

“We are Sisters of the Serpent,” the first one said, bowing her head. She spoke in a soft, reverential tone. “We are your humble servants, O Murder God. I am Colobi, serpent of the first order. Our disguises were never meant to deceive you.”

“Of course,” said Blasphet, flexing his fore-talons, feeling the blood flowing into them with a pleasant tingle. “What’s in the bundle?”

“We knew you would be hungry for proper nourishment,” Colobi said. “We kidnapped Valandant, Kanst’s youngest.”

Blasphet nodded, his eyes wide with admiration. Kanst was dead now, but he had been Blasphet’s cousin, so Valandant was his own kin, albeit somewhat removed. Kanst had also been commander of Albekizan’s armies. His widow and family would still be well-guarded. These Sisters of the Serpents were promising. It pleased him that his worshipers showed such initiative and competence.

They carried the bundle forth. It struggled feebly. Valandant was only two years old, little bigger than the girls who carried him. Of all the dragon races, only sun-dragons formed family units. The death of a child this young, following so soon on the deaths of Kanst and Albekizan, would cause grief of unimaginable sharpness for all his family.

The humans unrolled the canvas. The young dragon struggled but his wings were pinned behind his back by an iron ring that pierced the skin just inside the wrist joint at the fore-talons. His legs were tied together by a thick cord of hemp, and his snout was shut by a similar cord. Valandant whipped his tail around wildly, causing the humans to jump back.

“Shhhhh,” Blasphet said, leaning over the frightened dragon. In the lamp light, Valandant’s red feather-scales glistened like blood. His wide eyes were damp with tears.

Suddenly, thirst ripped Blasphet from snout to belly. He opened his jaws wide, took Valandant’s slender neck between his teeth, then clamped down, piercing it. Hot salty gushes spilled across his tongue. The fragrant iron-tinged tang of blood filled his nose. He grabbed the still struggling dragon and lifted him over his head, upending him like a jug of wine. He drank from the now limp body, blood dribbling down his neck and falling in hot drops upon his belly until his thirst was quenched.

Blasphet tossed the emptied corpse aside. He rubbed in the blood that coated his scales with his fore-claws, luxuriating in its warmth. He looked at his blood-soaked claws. For a moment, the gore made it seem as if they had reverted to their natural red coloring. However, as he licked the blood away, he found his scales had once more grown in clear, leaving the black hide beneath showing through. Once he had speculated that it was lack of sunlight that leached the color from his scales. Now, he wondered if it wasn’t some long-term side effect of the poisons he’d ingested over the years. He was pleased with the look of his new scales—they were bristly, even spiky. It made his skin look angry.

The Sisters of the Serpent stared at him in awe. The fresh blood inside him burned like liquid fire in his belly. Murder God, they had called him. It had been too long since he’d heard the words from human lips.

“Your gift pleases me,” he said. Then, he randomly pointed to five of the sisters. “You will come with me. We shall go to my temple. I assume you’ve built a temple?”

“Of course, my lord,” said Colobi.

“You five,” he said, eying the others. “You won’t be coming home. I’ve hidden poisoned knives throughout the castle. I will tell you where to find them. Then, I want you to charge forth and kill as many creatures as you can, in celebration of my return. Dragons of all species, humans, horses, ox-dogs, rats… if it breathes, make it stop. Kill with no regard for your own safety. Kill until something kills you. If you kill everyone in the castle, kill each other. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, O Murder God,” the five said in unison, their eyes fixed upon him as if he were the most precious thing in the universe.

Chapter Four:

Laughter Spitting Blood

“Ven!” Jandra shouted,
spinning to face her mentor. “You’re alive!”

“No,” Vendevorex said. “I’m almost certainly dead.”

Jandra paused, confused. Vendevorex had died in her arms, it was true, but she couldn’t ignore the plain evidence of her eyes. Vendevorex was alive. His sky-blue chest expanded and contracted with each breath. His scales nearly shimmered. From the strong, sharp lines of his shoulders to the well-formed legs that held him with such balance and poise, Vendevorex was the picture of health.

She ran forward to embrace him, throwing her arms around him, then through him. His body fluttered like smoke.

She jumped back, her voice catching in her throat; some primitive part of her mind felt certain she was in the presence of a ghost. Quickly, the more rational part of her brain deduced the truth.

“You’re an illusion,” she said.

“Correct,” Vendevorex answered. “An interactive recording stored within the skull cap. I don’t know the circumstances of my demise, Jandra, but you are the only one with the proper training to have triggered my helmet when you donned it. The fact you’re seeing me shows that the helmet is functioning. As the device continues to adapt itself to your brain, you will discover it to be a much more powerful tool than your tiara. Unfortunately, this increased power comes with increased risks.”

Jandra raised her hands and ran her finger along the rim of the helmet where it rested against her forehead. More powerful? She’d always assumed that Ven’s skull cap and her tiara were equally functional. Were different capacities the reason Vendevorex’s abilities had seemed so advanced?

“Just as the helmet will adjust itself to better interface with your brain, it will adjust your brain to better interface with it. In the coming days, the helm will expand the range and sensitivity of your senses. You may find this disorienting. In time, you will adapt.”

Jandra held her breath, trying to discover if she could hear anything new or different. It didn’t seem so.

“The helmet provides an interface between your mind and the outer world, but your true abilities lie in the training and knowledge within you. The helmet will gently restructure your neural pathways to make them more efficient, allow you finer control over your memories. Most of this will happen as you sleep, but there may be some carry over into your waking life. This may result in hallucinations. Be careful… you may injure innocents by attacking threats that exist only in your imagination. Conversely, you may hesitate in the face of genuine danger. This effect will fade after a few years as your brain reaches its most efficient structure.”