Twilight of the Dragons (24 page)

Suddenly, the world around them seemed to fade. They were in the same place, but the features changed; a mist hung across the ground, but spreading out before them were orbs of cream, nestled in the mist, stretching away into the distance. Each one was a slightly different size and shape, many of them irregular; not one had any form of symmetry.

“What…” began Beetrax.

“Shhh…” came Lillith's gentle lullaby.

More noise, a series of sudden clatters and shouts. They turned, staring back at the stairwell, and from it, like drifting ghosts, spilled the hazy figures of three dwarves, sporting huge beards, fearsome scarred features, each carrying a massive battle axe stained with blood.

“Here!” bellowed one harshly, over his shoulder, and more dwarves spilled into the chamber, and they started kicking the cream orbs, creating a path, as yet more dwarves emerged. They were a rough-looking bunch, many of them wounded, some singed by fire. Many had lost eyes, blood dried on their faces in streamers, and several had lost limbs. They appeared as if they'd just emerged from some violent battle.

“This is it, lads. We have to destroy them all,” came one voice, a harsh, guttural sound without any hint of doubt.

They readied their axes, and looked at one another. There was a long pause, as if these dwarves were considering the significance of their actions. Then the lead dwarf, who'd led the way, approached a large oval egg – lifted his axe above his head, and brought it swiftly down. The egg shattered, and inside the embryo of a dragon was almost sliced in two. It squealed, a high-pitched screaming sound, shrill and painful to the ears, the body curling in upon itself, squirming in juices, and a second blow cut it in half, ending the noise. Flames flickered around the shell interior.

“Come on, lads!”

The spell was suddenly broken, and the dwarves waded in, axes rising and falling, boots stamping, crushing the skulls of released dragon chicks. A huge cacophony of squealing went up, but the dwarves were brutal, uncaring, battering and chopping. Yet more dwarves arrived, until they were a hundred-strong, and the ground was slippery with chopped dragon embryos and smashed shell oil… and with roars, the dwarves surged forward, smashing, breaking, slicing, killing…

The scene faded.

The heroes stared at one another, each sick to the stomach.

“It's a slaughter,” said Beetrax, eyes narrowed.

“I suppose they're getting their revenge,” said Dake, carefully. “And they couldn't let the eggs hatch. Or there'd be a thousand more dragons to fight. We were slaves to the dragons, remember, Trax?”

Beetrax turned on Lillith. “So these are the shells of the slaughtered? It makes me sick. They were babes.”

“… that would have grown up into killers,” said Lillith.

“You could say that about humans, as well,” snapped Beetrax.

Lillith turned her back on the group. “Follow me,” she said, and strode forward, each footstep a crackle reminding them of the carnage, the murder, the infanticide.

The others followed, reluctantly.

“What next?” muttered Beetrax, and he'd tumbled into a foul mood. Because of the vision of the dwarves, yes, whom he admittedly despised anyway, and now despised with a need for further murder, but also because of Lillith. Not only did she seem more cold, more distant, she also seemed to be on some secret mission, guided by magick, maybe
misguided
by magick, that she was not willing to share – and, more importantly, not even willing to share with him.

“I couldn't even guess,” muttered Dake.

“I bet it's unpleasant,” scowled Talon, looking down at each crunching footstep.

“I bet it's dangerous,” said Sakora, and they all nodded in agreement.

The chamber seemed to stretch off for an age, and before long they looked back, and the descending stairs had disappeared. Their means for escape had, temporarily, vanished.

“I feel,” said Talon, “that the longer we stay here, and the further we descend, the less chance we'll ever have of getting back up to the surface. Honestly, guys, I don't feel like I'll ever see the sunshine again. I don't feel like I'll ever smell the clean air again – just this fucking dwarf stink. And it stinks all right.”

Sakora moved close to him, and put her arm around his waist. “Hey, Tal,” she said, “you need to try and be more positive. We're going to do this thing. We may die trying, but Lillith is right – it's for the greater good.”

“You think there are more eggs that need destroying?” His voice seemed very small. “I don't know if I could do that.”

“Me neither,” rumbled Beetrax. “Give me an enemy before me any day of the week with a big battered axe, tattooed knuckles and obnoxious breath. But murdering the unborn? That's for men with stronger stomachs and weaker minds than me.”

The others nodded, wondering what Lillith was about to reveal – for in the vision, when they had
flown
with the image of the dragon, so they had seen fields of eggs, and these had not been smashed. Had they, by some miracle, survived?

Finally, a wall came into view. It was matte black, and stretched off to either side, disappearing distantly. It was a bizarre sensation. In this place far beneath the mountain, time seemed to have no meaning.

Lillith stopped, and the others gradually crunched up behind her.

“This is it,” she said.

“What is it?” asked Beetrax.

“A portal,” she said. “A secret place. When the dwarves invaded this sacred place of dragon eggs, laid by the Queen, Volak, over a period of several hundred years, they thought they had destroyed them all. But they never found the second chamber, because they were ignorant and uncouth, and unversed in the ways of Equiem magick.”

“So there
are
more dragon eggs?” said Beetrax, voice soft. “Listen, Lillith, we cannot destroy them.
I
cannot destroy them. I swear, I haven't got it in me.” He seemed to deflate. “I don't believe these creatures are evil; they were just
dominant
. Like us, now. To kill the unborn… it's just wrong, Lil.”

“Just follow. And watch,” said Lillith, and turned, and smiled at them. “We don't have to destroy the eggs, we just have to stop them hatching. These are two very different concepts.”

Lillith approached the wall, and placed both hands flat against it. She started to whisper, and her lips writhed, and once more her hands glowed. Slowly, silently, the great black wall started to slide away, accelerating as it flowed almost like a vertical liquid stream, to reveal…

A huge, soaring chamber, with a massive, smooth, domed ceiling, and walls covered with tiny intricate machines fashioned from gold and silver, all moving, tiny pistons and cogs, gears and spinning shafts, a hundred machines, a hundred
thousand
of them… and the floor dropped, it was a depression in the ground, and nestled in the vast space were eggs, dragon eggs, but these were different from the ones in the vision – whereas those had been a plain cream colour, these were different, these glittered and gave off a gentle glow, as if each egg was a covered in a tiny, complete covering of active
flame.

“The dwarves found the room where the bad eggs were stored,” said Lillith, and stepped across the threshold. The others followed, moving onto a slick, black, polished walkway which led all the way around the chamber. They looked back, and up, where thousands of tiny machines clicked and whirred and spun and pumped and twisted, like some vast array of clockwork, as if they stood inside the chamber of the world's largest, most complex clock.

“Bad eggs?” whispered Beetrax, for this room commanded reverence.

“Yes, the deformed, the broken, the twisted; those that could never live as dragons if they hatched. The dragons would never leave their greatest prize, these, their offspring, their future, for the dwarves to simply stumble across. No. There was the extra barrier only accessible by magick.”

Dake and Talon were frowning.

Sakora surveyed the sea of fire-glowing eggs. There must have been ten thousand. Ten thousand dragons waiting to hatch. A new empire. The next Blood Dragon Empire.

There came a gentle tremble, under their boots.

“Lillith?” said Sakora, and her eyes were wide in her freshly scarred face.

“Yes, my sweet?” Lillith smiled.

“I'm confused.
Why
exactly did you bring us here?
How
are we going to stop this thing from happening?”

“We didn't stop it happening,” said Lillith, and she smiled, and it was a smile that should never have belonged on Lillith's face, a smile like nothing Beetrax had ever seen before. He blinked, and a cold chill blew across his heart, and blew across his soul. “We have started the countdown,” she said. “The queens. They demand it.”

“What?” bellowed Beetrax, leaping forward but Lillith grinned, her eyes glittering black and filled with smoke, and both hands came together, a
clap,
and Beetrax, Sakora, Talon and Dake were smashed from their feet, hurled high into the air, out over the centre of the dragon-egg field to hang, suspended, spinning slowly, amidst the clockwork machinery and beneath a smooth, black, polished sky.

“What are you doing?” cried Sakora, as Jael padded alongside Lillith and knelt, petitely, at her feet.

Lillith's grin widened, and her eyes narrowed. “It was written. It is Equiem. Dragon Lore. It has to be this way.” She licked her lips, and dragon smoke oozed from her open mouth. “I'm hatching the dragon eggs,” she said, and her eyes glittered black, like the eyes of a dragon. Lillith was no longer in control. Something
older
had taken control of her mind.

V
al was pissed
.

Not pissed in the sense he'd had a keg full of ale, and was about to decorate the flagstones with his vomit. No. But pissed in the sense he was massively frustrated… because his true love was within reach, and yet he couldn't quite grasp her. Not yet, anyway.
But soon, my love
, he crooned to himself.
Soon.

As they moved through the mines, so Crayline kept tossing him odd looks. He did not like the looks, even less than he liked the huge array of weapons at her belt. It wasn't just her reputation for extreme violence that freaked him out a little, or more honestly, a
lot
, it was the stories he'd heard about her killing friends, murdering family, torturing employers. She was a cunt you did not trust. If anybody was going to stab you in the back with a serrated dagger covered in fatal poison, Crayline Hew was the bitch to do it.

It was the corpse that sent them in the right direction. Or rather, a series of three corpses. They were well hidden, obviously victims of a sudden skirmish down here in the tunnels. They had been hidden well, but not well enough. Crayline Hew found all three bodies; she seemed to have a particular knack for hunting out the tortured and the dead.

“They came this way,” she said, dark eyes narrowed.

“How do you know?”

“Trust me. I have done this sort of thing before.”

“Hunted people?”

“Hunted and
killed
people. Well. People. Elves. Dwarves. It's all the same barrel of twisted rotting flesh to me. I don't care what race you are. I don't care whether you subscribe to the Church of Hate or not.” Her eyes gleamed, dark and nasty. “All you cunts deserve to die.”

Val coughed. “Yes. Well. We are on a very specific mission here,” he said, the pitch of his voice just a little too high.

“Yes. You are,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means what it says. But we'll let that one go for now, shall we? I wouldn't like to embarrass you in front of the, ah, men.”

Val nodded, face pale, eyeing her weapons once more.

It took several more hours to reach the new dig, the new chamber, with the high domed ceiling and the spiral steps leading down. Val was happy to let Crayline Hew take the lead, mainly because he didn't know what the fuck was down there, but also because if the overlanders were waiting with primed crossbows, he was happy to let the bitch take three quarrels in the face, and to hell with it. He'd reached a point of tension where he didn't know whom he trusted least: Beetrax the Axeman, or Crayline Hew, his second in command.

As they descended, each dwarf with axe, sword and crossbow at the ready, licking dry lips, wondering what the fuck they were dropping down into, so the light softened, and increased, and within long languorous moments, like dreams through treacle, they found themselves in…

“Wyrmblood,” whispered Crayline, dark eyes shining.

They stood, surveying the incalculable wealth, a city built from tens of thousands of years of dragon rule. But… who knew? Maybe it had been here a million years. How long had the wyrms ruled the planet? How long had humans and dwarves been their slaves?

“We should split up,” said Val, taking charge and eyeing his group of hardy dwarves with a mixture of pride and open fear. Val was no warrior, no hard case; he was a Slave Warden, inadvertently propelled to the peak of his career without forethought or any real understanding of his duties. He'd been promoted above his natural ability, and then given a mission fit for a warrior. Val was proud of his accomplishments, but deep down, as all such people did, he really suspected he wasn't up for the fight. Deep down, he knew he couldn't do it, and it was only a twisted sense of pride that forced him to carry on. To step down, to step back, was unthinkable. He'd rather fall on his axe blade.

“In what way split up?” said Crayline, dark eyes locked on him.

Val shifted nervously under that unreadable gaze.

“This place is vast. We split into three groups and carry out a search.”

“These men, and women, about whom we speak. They are dangerous, no?”

“Yes.”

“So, better to hit them head on? With our full force?”

Val looked around, and swept out his arm. “But
look
at the size of this place! This is no normal city, Crayline. It could take us forever!”

“Well, you let me track, then,” she said, and smiled.

“You can track them?”

“How do you think we got this far?”

“Er. All right. So we all stay together?”

“That would seem the sensible option in terms of logistical firepower. And by that, I mean force of crossbow arms.”

“Of course, of course,” said Val, nodding, and scratching his chin, but secretly thinking
if, if I can pull this off, then Lillith will be mine once more, my woman, my lover, my slave, my hobby, for me to do with as I will. Mine, to have and to hold, to love and nurture, to fuck and abuse. And she will grow to love me, despite the pain. I know she will. I know she will learn to enjoy me.

Crayline knelt, and for long moments crawled about on the gold cobbles. Then her head came up, and she pointed. “This way,” she said, and looked back at Val. “You trust me, right?” She smiled again. The smile of a shark. The smile of a weasel.

“Of course,” said Val, and coughed, trying to hide his eyes.

“Follow me, then.”

And the group of hardened dwarves set off across Wyrmblood, following the scent of the bastard intruders, those who had no right to set foot in the Five Havens, those who should, at the very
sight
of Wyrmblood, have been executed on the spot.

Because this was the city mentioned by the Church of Hate.

Wyrmblood was cursed in the Scriptures of Hate.

Here, it was, that the Great Dwarf Lords had imprisoned Volak, Moraxx and Kranesh.

Here, it was, that the Great Dwarf Lords had found immortality.