Old Dark (The Last Dragon Lord Book 1) (2 page)

He tore into the man’s chest and mauled him, ripping out chunks of flesh and flinging them in every direction. He dug into the body until his claws reached soil, crushing the man’s bones in his vicious rampage.
 

Finally, nothing was left of the body but the man’s head. The eyes rolled upward and the mouth was frozen in an expression that looked like the beginning of a curse.
 

“I’ll not pray over you,” Dark said. And then fear struck him, his heart swelling in his chest as he thought about the gravity of the assassination attempt.
 

Assassins were nothing new. He had dealt with many of them. But never a conspiracy, and never someone clever enough to trick him with strange magic. This conspiracy would strike again, and he had no idea where or when it would come.
 

He had the strong urge to talk to his father. The old dragon would know what to do. He always did in situations like this.
 

A dull gold sparkle in the dirt caught his eye.

It was a golden, winged bracelet. It must have been around the man’s wrist. He picked it up. A rune was etched into it. Dark recognized it from the western continent, but couldn’t decipher what it meant. Elves were skilled metalworkers—he needed to remember that.
 

He tilted his head at the dead man and grinned.

“I’ll uncover your plans soon enough.”

He took the bracelet and the dead man’s head in his claws and flew away.

II

Dark’s family palace was built from rock and bone, and it stood in the middle of a valley ringed by mountains. His mother had dragged rocks from rivers and coasts into the valley, fashioning them into towers; his father had brought magic down from his mountain aquifer and used it to hollow out the rocks into a space where they could live. The bone, which glistened smoothly here and there amidst the rock, was from their opponents.
 

 
As Dark approached from the sky, he marveled at the palace’s architecture. The grounds mirrored the world map, with five towers that converged to look like a sleeping dragon. The garden on the west wing resembled the family’s ancestral bog from above, a kidney-shaped pool between the towers of rock and bone.
 

Dark had not lived his whole life in the palace. He and his parents were from the bogs, but he had quickly learned to appreciate the perks of opulence.

Below, a wave of flames flickered in the dead grass of the valley—candles and their waxy signatures.

People. An entire flood of them. Humans. Some elves.
 

News of the assassination attempt would have spread across the region by now, and this crowd was the first of many who would come to prove their loyalty.
 

As it should have been.

The crowd sang, and their voices echoed through the valley.

Smile for us, old dragon lord,

For the world may soon stop spinning.

Shadow’s flame is you, old lord,

And this dead world needs your kindling.
 

Dark grinned. There was nothing like hearing his own poetry from the lips of the weak.
 

For how many years had they sung his praises?

Over two hundred, he thought, but when you were a dragon as old as he was—one who had seen one thousand and five hundred springs—the years blended together. He had lived so long that they called him Old Dark.
 

Dark roared, and the wave of flames blinked.
 

The people were kneeling.

The wind was in his favor. He spread his wings so that the air billowed against them, and he drifted downward toward the palace.

The vigil stretched for half a mile, two thousand people with carts of gold, coins, jewelry, and cows so plump they could hardly walk.
 

Dragons flew around the area. They towered over the crowd with ten-foot wingspans, breathing smoke from their nostrils. They grabbed the cows with their claws and carried them over the palace gates to the slaughter tower. The cows’ lowing was almost louder than the chanting.
 

Other dragons grabbed the carts of gold and hauled them toward the palace gates, where a long, serpentine dragon was counting the treasure, piece by piece. The dragon nodded to Dark.

Dark nodded back. He flew in low, his wings nearly scratching the heads of the people. He heard whimpers as he passed, the sound of humans on their best behavior. Then he crested into the sky and said as loudly as he could: “Your tribute is noted, my children. Give me but one more prayer, and then return to your villages and enjoy the rest of your evening.”

The crowd started another song as Dark steered for the palace.

Norwyn was waiting for him when he landed on the western tower. He was Dark’s advisor, born on the same moon as Dark. They had fought in the Magic Wars together.
 

Norwyn’s family was a band of Keepers that dwelled in the glaciers, protectors of the northern aquifer, an isolated group with a strong sense of right and wrong who kept their riches to themselves, a rare trait in a world where ostentation was everything.
 

Norwyn was as tall as Dark, but not quite as muscular. He had snow-white scales and eyes like moonstones. His wings, when outstretched, were marked with gradients of blue that reminded Dark of a glacier sliding down a mountain.
 

Dark rolled the dead assassin’s head across the stone floor, and the white dragon’s eyes widened as it struck his foot. As was his custom, Norwyn stared at the head for several moments before making up his mind. Then his face smoothed into its normal stoic shape.
 

“Looks like I don’t need to ask if the hunt was successful.”

“I found him in the bog,” Dark said.

“The bog? That’s a strange place to flee.”

Norwyn kicked the head off the side of the balcony. The bloody visage clearly disturbed him. “More villages will be arriving throughout the night to pay respects. They’re spooked and afraid of how you’re going to retaliate. I’ve never seen so many cows in my life.”

“Fine.”
 

Dark didn’t want to think about food. He was thinking about revenge. He passed Norwyn and entered the cool darkness of the palace. Norwyn followed, and they wound through a cavernous tunnel. Torches burned on the walls, crackling slowly and throwing ashes into the air as they passed.

“There’s a conspiracy brewing, Norwyn.”

 
“I figured as much. That attack was well organized.”

Dark remembered the bracelet; he had wrapped it around one of his claws. He stopped, lifted his foot, and then tossed the bracelet to Norwyn.
 

The white dragon scrutinized the piece of jewelry.

“It’s elven,” Norwyn said, cocking an eye. “This variety of gold is from here on the western continent.”

“And the rune on the back?”

Norwyn turned the bracelet over and studied the rune. The scrawling lines confused him. “This I haven’t seen, My Lord. I’ll look into it.”

“Thank you. That’s it for now.”

“No, that’s not it.”

Dark stopped. “What happened?”

The white dragon chose his words carefully. He started to speak, then paused, considering something.
 

Dark hated when Norwyn didn’t get to the point. He wondered how he had put up with his diffidence for so long. “Out with it!” he barked.

Norwyn sighed. “The magic they used on that deer carcass—I know where it came from. We found a dead dragon on the eastern continent. A mountain dragon.”

No wonder Norwyn had treaded carefully. The thought of dragons dying at the hands of elves angered Dark. His legs shook with rage.
 

“A Keeper?”

Norwyn nodded. “Someone tapped into her aquifer and stole magic from it. I don’t know how much they took, but the dragon had been dead for days when the scouts found her. Whatever magic they had left after the attack on your life has probably been distributed among the continents already. Knowing elves, they’re using it for technology. And given the recent attack, I expect that there will be more of the same, now that they’ve gotten bold. We have to be careful. No more journeys into the bog alone. You have to travel with an entourage now. Speaking of which, where’s Toad?”

Toad was Dark’s bodyguard, an enormous green dragon that usually followed him everywhere. Dark had flown off without telling the big dragon, and he was probably searching for Dark right now.

“I did not have time to wait for Toad,” he said.

Dark’s rage subsided and he felt a twinge of remorse, then pushed it out of his mind to remember later.
 

 
“After what happened to Fyrldr, and almost to you, you must be more careful.” Norwyn said.

Dark winced at the memory, still fresh in his mind: the red dragon lying on the ground, his eyes with a far away gaze, his tongue sticking out, green from poison.

Dark tried to calm himself and focused on the needs of the moment. “Arrange a funeral. And erect a temple in the dragon’s name. I’ll be there.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

The tunnel opened into the gardens. Norwyn stopped, and Dark left him standing in the shadows.

“Is that all?” Dark asked, not turning back.
 

“For now. There’s always more.”

Dark continued into the gardens. “That’s all I can stand for one night.”

III

A cool night breeze blew through the gardens. Dark stepped onto the muddy soil, and the smell of peat was heavy in the air.
 

His parents had magicked the gardens so well that they were indistinguishable from the bog at home. Even the trees, broken and slanted, and the water, murky with bioluminescent moss floating on the surface, were the same.
 

He knew his parents would be in their favorite corner.
 

He walked, thinking about what he was going to do. How he was going to crush the conspirators.
 

He’d hold them between his claws. He’d play with them just as he’d played with the elven assassin. He would crush all of their bones.
 

But first, he had to find out who the conspirators were.
 

Were they from the western continent? He thought he had dominated every village and town. Maybe he wasn’t thorough enough. His examples weren’t harsh enough. His graciousness, his love for those who pledged their allegiance to him, not benevolent enough.
 

He was not accustomed to such self-doubt, but the fear crept back into his heart. The trees circled overhead and the crickets’ buzzing grew louder, as if they were inside his ears.
 

He tried to summon anger, the rage of the centuries of ancestors that came before him. He wanted to breathe fire all over his fear. But he couldn’t move.
 

His heart beat faster. The insects grew even louder. The mud and his tracks beneath him seemed to open up like a grave ready to swallow him.
 

He wouldn’t let himself imagine it: his body in the ground while the world kept spinning.
 

Someone, somewhere, had decided that their life, however small, was worth more than his—the dragon lord, the god of the world. They were after his power.
 

His claws should have dug into the ground. His head should have twisted toward the moon and erupted in a bone-shaking roar.
 

But the fear had exhausted his rage, and all he could do was drop into the mud and say a prayer.
 

“I pray that the skies speak to me, that my foes flee from me, and that I may walk in your favor.”

There was never any response from the heavens. But slowly, the shaking subsided and he could think more clearly.
 

He needed to talk to his father.
 

He found his father in a clearing, lying in the moonlight at the edge of a kidney-shaped pond. On the trees, the dark moss glowed a sickly green, and remnants of his father’s smoky breath hung in the air.

“I knew it wouldn’t take long for you to get here.”

His father, Alsatius Dark I, was a black dragon like Dark, but older. One thousand years older. He had a wrinkled, scaly face and scars all over his body from the many wars he had fought in. Black dragons were rare, and his father was taller and broader than most Keeper dragons. In his younger days, his size and majesty had rendered even the most fearless warriors speechless, his wings blocking out the sun when he descended from the sky, his mouth aglow with fire. But now the old dragon was beginning to shrivel, and he walked with a limp.
 

Alsatius smiled and turned in Dark’s direction; his hearing had heightened since his blindness. Dark tried not to think about the gelid lumps that had once been his father’s eyes, cloudy orbs that were caving in on themselves, irises gouged out by magic. A tattered blindfold covered his father’s cursed eyes, and protected them some, but Dark knew the magic was still there, working its way deeper. Alsatius’s joints cracked as he tried to stand, and Dark slid to his side before he could rise any farther.