The Dragon's War: The Dragonprince's Legacy, #3

1. Out of the Darkness

Iam the Dragonprince . I was the boy who went to war with the dragons. I destroyed a thousand swarms and saved a hundred thousand lives, but in the end, I learned the cruel truth.

There is no such thing as victory. There is no such thing as peace. There is always yet another war.

I LEFT MY FAMILY BEHIND. I left the safety of my home. Six years into the dragonswarm, I gathered up the most extraordinary force the world had ever seen—an army of dragonriders and their fearsome beasts—and left the Ardain to purge the monsters elsewhere in the world of man.

But somewhere above the Channel, when my adventure had only just begun, something happened. A storm came out of nowhere. Some impossible force tore me from the sky and hurled me into the sea.

I survived. Somehow. The cold, black water swallowed me down, crushing me in its depths, and in that moment, everything changed. A voice of death and thunder chased me into oblivion.

I WRITHED BENEATH A sea of crushing shadow, engulfed in total darkness, and faced an enemy I could not see. I trembled, reaching out with all my senses, grasping for something, anything that might aid me.

All I found were words. Distant, dreamy thoughts that tolled within my mind.

Our time of rest is nearly over.

Rest? What rest? All I could remember was pain and toil. And darkness.

We must wake once more. We must return to war.

Wake? Was this a dream? I closed my eyes and forced three calming breaths—the careful techniques that I had learned while yet a child—and something shifted inside my mind.

I ACHED. EVERY PART of me ached. And, yes, a darkness lay across my eyes. But I was not alone within the void. My other senses spoke to me. I heard the surf pounding against the shore. I smelled the stink of rotting fish. I felt the gentle breeze blistering on my fever-scorched flesh.

I panted through the pain—short, sharp bursts of that noxious air—and some distant memory flared bright within the darkness. A crimson thread within a midnight shadow. A dragon had tried to kill me.

Another memory. A wizard had tried to kill me. I ground my teeth and forced my mind to focus, and somehow found a face. Stringy, dirty blond hair. Blue eyes. Lareth. Travelworn, once-fine fur at his collar. And a simple, short blade in his hand. He’d bent down over me to slit my throat, but Master Seriphenes intervened. And now....

No. I blinked within the darkness, and nothing changed. But in my memory, I saw another face. The same man, but scoured and scarred by cruel time. And by my hand.

Lareth had not killed me. That was years gone. The dragon hadn’t killed me either. I survived the fall. I survived the darkness in the fisher’s hut. I survived the bonding of an elder legend.

I survived the dragonswarm.

I heaved a great, weary breath. And then another. Then I reached out once again, straining all my senses.

Our time of rest is nearly over.

There was something familiar in the words. Something bittersweet. Grief and gratitude like an aftertaste, but I could not catch the memory.

We must wake once more. We must return to war.

I curled my lips at the very thought of it. Return to war? I had not found a moment’s reprieve from it in six long years.

That thought came clear and strong, fierce as a forge fire, but the memories that should have backed it up were distant shadows. I closed my mind within the darkness and reached out for them, grasping with invisible hands.

I’D MADE A FORTRESS out of ruins. I’d made a faerie palace out of dust and rock. Lareth had been there, at my side. Never a good man. Never trustworthy. But useful and effective. He’d strung beads of arcane light like draping vines, to fill my great hall with eternal dawn.

Caleb had been there, too. He was a good man. And ten thousand refugees, spilling out of the cavernous hall and crowding around the base of the tower. Every man among them there to greet me, to cheer my victorious return.

I knew this memory. It gleamed like daylight, but it had an edge as sharp as sin. This was the day I had come home from Gath-upon-Brennes, sunburnt beneath the blaze of a southern afternoon, but still I carried that darkness in my heart.

I passed my loyal subjects by. Cheering, they made way for me. My fearsome Arrows came along at my heels, more than a dozen dragonriders fresh from the battlefield. They felt the victory. They answered the cheering crowds and called for more. This was our greatest triumph. We’d destroyed the seven broods that united against us, the last true threat in all of the Ardain, and my soldiers gloried in our grand accomplishment.

I ignored them all. My eyes were on the dais at the center of the hall, on the throne that Lareth had set up for me, in the very heart of the tower. Waiting for me there was Isabelle. Caleb at her right hand, Lareth at her left.

I wanted to break and run to her, to wrap her in my arms, but I was some kind of lord now. The Dragonprince. I had to show some dignity.

Pain stabbed through my mind, sharp and hot. That was no part of the memory. It was chastisement for the lie. Dignity never slowed my step. I wanted to run to my beloved, but I dreaded delivering my news. So I fell forward, serene and slow, like a feather on the breeze. Like a chicken trying to fly.

She took my hands in hers. Lareth spoke, but I did not hear him. Caleb held his tongue, and I suspected he’d already guessed the greatest part of it. But Isabelle was waiting. I stared into her eyes forever.

Our time of rest is nearly over.

I ripped my hand from Isabelle’s grasp, there in the memory, and slashed my right hand in a mindless fury. Chaos energy burst into form, answering my rage, darkness swelling within darkness, and shards of vicious light stabbed at me within the memory.

"Not yet." I screamed the thoughts into the darkness, and focused all my wits upon rebuilding the memory. That day was a sharp-edged thing, but it was all I could recall of light. "Not yet."

She’d closed her fingertips around mine. Her blue eyes sparkled with unshed tears. My hero. You’ve come home again.

I nodded, They are destroyed.

And the city?

I shook my head. It’s a crater three leagues wide. It’s ash and earth, and not a living thing for miles. We came too late. Gath-upon-Brennes is gone.

Caleb nodded and withdrew. Eighty thousand lives lost, and he never said a word. What was there to say? He’d count them up and make a plan to put things back together.

Lareth rattled out a whistle. I hated him for this moment. I fixed my eyes on Isabelle and drank her in. I froze that image in my mind and held it until the cracking lash of light and pain forced me to relent again, and memory resumed.

Lareth rattled out a whistle. A crater three leagues wide? Was that your doing, or the dragons’?

Again the chaos blade formed in my hand, unbidden. I felt it fever-hot within the endless darkness, but it was there in the memory as well. I’d nearly killed him then. The perfect razor edge swept up under his jaw, tracing the line of his throat, and lifted him up onto his toes. Sweat touched his forehead and terror flashed in his one good eye.

I don’t remember how I answered him. Even now. But I remember the rage that screamed at me to cut him down, and the burning cold fear that roared within me. I still don’t know the answer to the cruel question.

But I was not here for Lareth. This cruel adversary, this crushing darkness, had not surfaced this memory to torment me with the mad old wizard’s thoughtless jibe. It had brought me here for Isabelle’s next words.

We must wake once more. We must return to war.

I braced myself within the darkness. In the memory, I dropped the sword, and it dissolved to vapor before it touched the ground. I turned once more to Isabelle, and she licked her lips in uncertainty. It was as much admonishment as she felt I deserved. She licked her lips, then put the violence behind her.

She found a smile for me, and it sizzled like spring rain. She opened her mouth to tell me the news that would break my heart—

And then the memory was gone.

I roared into the darkness like a wounded beast. I gasped for breath and cried, You would deny me this? Her words.... There had been...hope. I grasped after the memory, but it was burned to cinder in the pressing darkness.

I closed my hands into fists and fell to my knees, but it was not an act of submission. I felt the darkness beneath me—hard as stone and cold as ice. I felt the darkness above, roiling madly like the belly of a tempest. I touched my forehead to the darkness waiting, my shoulders and my knees and my toes.

Then I opened my heart to it. I swallowed it in great gulps, enough to drown a man. Enough to drown even the foolish boy who’d survived that deadly drop into the ocean. I gathered the curling, cold darkness up into my belly. I filled myself with it, searing away the memories. Searing away the pain. Searing away that breath of hope. I clenched my body around the darkness. I drew it in until there was nothing else.

But then my own words came back to me, in another’s voice.

Not yet.

Clearer than it had been before. Stronger. Strident.

Our time of rest is nearly over. But you are not yet ready, Daven.

I opened my mouth within the darkness, and the shadows that filled me seemed to pour out like bile. I spoke within my mind. "Vechernyvetr?"

You’ve come far, little man. You will make us proud. But you have a moment left for comfort.

"Comfort? What comfort have I ever known? I trembled with the crushing force of the darkness still trapped within me. I am at the edge of annihilation." I could put no more words around the answer.

Comfort? It was the maddest thing I’d ever heard. But the dragon was a part of me. It comprehended my confusion, and deep in the back of my head, it laughed.

Oh, human. This is the easy part.

I WOKE TO SUNLIGHT searing a painful red even through closed eyelids. I woke to the pounding roar of ocean surf, and I could feel the brine dried hard in my shirt, still soaking my boots. My body ached.

But this was not another memory. I was bruised, but I was not broken. I took a breath and cast out wide with my wizard’s senses. Searching. Exploring. Feeling for any hint of home.

Home. Haven’s name, how my domain had spread. There’d been a time when home meant a rotten alley in the slums of the City. Later, just a basement room of bare earth walls, and I’d counted that a blessing.

But I had changed. The world had changed. I’d made my home in the ruins of the FirstKing’s stronghold. I’d rebuilt the Tower of Days, the fortress Palmagnes, and made it the heart of my resistance against the dragonswarm. And as my power had grown, as my armies strengthened and the number of my followers swelled, my home had grown as well.

It was an aspect of the dragonbond. I knew that much, even if I did not understand all of the details. If I’d been a dragon, if all of those refugees and dragonslayers were my brood, I’d have been by now the most powerful broodlord in the Ardain. The last broodlord in the Ardain. And my lair, my secure domain—my home—now stretched to every corner of the continent. I could close my eyes and feel the wild river Brennes crashing through its furious cataracts and rapids, or the placid Teel carving wide loops through the green fields around Tirah. I could feel the leaves trembling on the breeze in the Sorcerer’s Stand. From anywhere within my domain, I could feel any part of it, any living thing. Such was the power of a mighty broodlord, and I had become, perhaps, the mightiest in all the world.

But now I felt nothing.

My powers were not lost. I was lost. I could yet feel the world around me. But I could not feel a sprawling nation. There was the ancient, pounding power of the ocean. There were the quiet grains of sand, the sleeping earth above the dunes, the zephyr wind high above...but those senses reached scarcely farther than my eyes could see. They were the powers of any Academy-trained wizard, not the elemental strength of a dragon.

For half a decade now, I’d been that thing—the Dragonprince—carrying inside my head the sense of all my vast territory, of all my tens of thousands of gentle, cherished broodlings. And now they were gone. In the blink of an eye, I’d lost the sense of home that had driven me to wage an impossible war against the very dragonswarm.

They were all gone. Panic wrapped tight fingers around my ribcage and squeezed. Still stretched out on the sand, I raised an arm to shade my eyes, and tested yet another power. By will alone, I gathered up the essence of the sand beneath me, shaped it from long habit into a perfect rapier—forged not of sand, but of the soul of sand, the selfsame elemental Earth that made the heart of steel and obsidian and diamonds. No wizard of the Academy could do such a thing. Nor even could a dragonbonded soldier. To my knowledge, I alone in all the world could wield such power.

And as I opened my eyes, I saw it happen. Something like a mist the shade of midnight rose from the beach and coalesced around my hand. A hilt, a pointed guard, a long, lightly curved blade nearly the shape of a dragon’s fang, but it was balanced light as a feather with an edge as sharp as pure regret. I had my blade. I had my sorcery. Those things were not yet lost. That knowledge calmed my heart enough that I could rise. I cast my gaze along this unfamiliar shore, and searched my memory for some explanation.

A SHRILL HUNTING CRY tore me from my thoughts. High above, a shadow passed before the sun, flashing faster than any dragon I’d yet encountered. What nightmare had I found on this unfamiliar shore? I spun in place, looking inland for some place of refuge. The sandy beach stretched a bare dozen paces, and beyond that crouched a tangled wood, shrouded black despite the summer sun.

But there before me, blocking my retreat, waited a tiny army. A dozen men stood arrayed for battle—primitive men, as I had never seen throughout the realm. Their skin was ashen white, their eyes a searing gold, their scant clothing sewn of animal hides with iridescent feathers for decoration. They carried leather bucklers and short, sharp knives of stone. They held formation, pinning me against the surf, and one among them had come forward as if to meet me.

No matter how hostile their stances, how vicious the looks in their gold eyes, I felt no fear of these men. I had no desire to harm them, but my powers were more than match for them. No, my concern remained fixed on the beast that had screamed in the sky above. I held my position—stock still lest I provoke the tribesmen to attack—and looked out with my wizard’s sense again.

Lifeblood spun around me, thin and bright and hot. How had I missed it before? But, of course, I was too practiced in ignoring it. How long since I had been alone? There were always servants and soldiers, my guards and my lieutenants. Even on the hunt I always took a dozen Arrows with me. This small force had felt all too familiar.

And now again I put them from my mind. I turned my attention behind me, scanning for the elusive nothing-black of a dragon on the wing. Instead, I found again the hot flare of blood. A living beast, large as a lion and swift as a falcon stooping on its prey. Impossibly fast. And right behind me. It screamed in rage and fury, tearing the air with the sound, and then crashed into me. Hard.

Pain flared beneath my shoulder blades, twin agonies as mighty talons dug against my ribs. The force of the impact drove me down, face-first into the wet, packed sand. Clinging desperately to my wizard sight, I saw the forms of the tribesmen still waiting scant paces away, frozen in the face of this fearsome predator.

Years of habit snapped me into action, then. I’d never faced a beast like this before, but how many times had I brought my power to protect the weak, the helpless, in the face of living death? I reached out with my will, wrenching at the earth itself, and heaved a solid shell out of the earth, a bulwark to protect these men, even as I sought to strike against the beast.

I gathered wind to that effort—a stray breeze off the sea that I bent and focused, shaping it like a battering ram and adding to it just enough of earth—just a heartbeat before it struck—that it hit the monster on my back with a vicious thunderclap.

A dragon would have felt that blow. Even an Elder Legend might have flinched. The living thing fared no better. It tore away and tumbled down the beach a hundred paces. I cried out at the pain of its talons leaving, tears burning in my eyes, but I did not dare lay still. I caught two threads of air to drag me to my feet and sprinted down the shore to face my foe.

Blood stained the beach in spots, bright red against the dark wet sand. My blood. As I approached the beast, my eyes still blurred with pain and rage, I yet recognized a thing like I had never seen before. There were the talons—armored like an eagle’s, but longer than my arms and dripping with my blood. The beast itself was nearly large as a plow horse—large enough to stand against a younger dragon—but it was no dragon, as I knew. It was some animal, some predator. It wore hide instead of scales.

Hide...and feathers. As I closed in to finish it, the beast screamed again and heaved itself to its feet. It stalked toward me and spread two enormous, feathered wings. It reared onto hind legs like those of a lion, powerful haunches stretching as it rose to stand three paces high, those vicious talons on its feathered forelegs poised to tear me in two.

It was a beast both terrible and beautiful. I’d spent a lifetime warring with the armies of eternal chaos, and yet I’d never seen a thing like this. I had heard stories, but I had never imagined this.  This was a gryphon. I had imagined them exotic, interesting, but never half so powerful. Never half so deadly.

And still I felt no fear. I’d spent a lifetime warring against dragons, cunning and unstoppable. And this beast, however dangerous, however fast, however beautiful...it was no match for me. It reared to twice my height, poised to tear me in half, but I had never lost my sword.

I brought the blade around with practiced form. I lunged and drove its perfect point into the monster’s belly. Blood and ichor flowed. High over my head, the creature screamed one final time, now in agony.

The sound echoed behind me. No. A human voice cried out an agony its own. I turned and found one of the tribesmen. It was the same one who had come forward before. The stone shell I’d cast over his companions had somehow missed this one. Instead of running when I knocked the gryphon free, he’d clearly chased after me. My first thought was that he’d meant to lend aid, and of the great courage that act would have demanded. But then I saw his eyes. His golden eyes.

They were clenched tight in agony and grief. He crashed down to his knees, clutching one hand to his stomach and reaching out with the other. His fingers twisted in a claw, twitching now and then, as he looked blindly past me, stretching toward the gryphon even as it slumped to the wet sand behind me. The beast keened weakly, and the tribesman’s lips parted in answer.

I dropped my sword. It dissolved as it fell, dispersing into mist. I allowed the distant shell of stone to do the same, freeing the other tribesmen that I had trapped within its protective confines. I half expected them to charge me, bloodlust flinging them across the sands, but they went the other way. They broke and fled, disappearing into the tangled woods.

Behind me, the gryphon spasmed on the sand, and then went still.

I turned my full attention to the tribesman who had chased me. He lay prostrate now, arms stretched out toward the monster’s corpse. His whimpers punctuated the roll of the angry surf.

I took a deep breath and set to work repairing myself.

Earth and fire curled into a strand like twisting lifeblood and knit together the sinews of my back. Threads of air with just a touch of water made bandages to bind my tattered flesh. It was not the blessed healing of a Kind Father, but it would keep my guts inside me while my body healed.

I took another breath, testing my handiwork, and this one came more easily. This sorcery did nothing for the pain, but what was pain to me? How many times had I been broken in this war? How many ways had I been seared and sacrificed? I shoved the pain away, pinning it in a corner of my mind as I had once pinned the hostile rage of a bonded dragon. I walled off my own suffering and left it there to smolder.

And then at last I knelt before the wretched tribesman. His hidebound buckler lay abandoned twenty paces back. His clothes of hide had shed their iridescent feathers on the sand. He’d even dropped his stone at the last. It lay by my feet, round and heavy at one end, but flaked into a long, curved point on the other. I could too easily imagine the damage such a point could do. It was a man-made talon, after all.

I glanced back over my shoulder, resuming the wizard’s sight. The beast was dead now, its lifeblood snuffed out like a candle, its corpse scarcely recognizable against the soggy earth. But it had been a thing of beauty. And somehow, in ways I could not yet understand, it had been bonded to this man.

I touched the side of his head, gently as I could, and he raised blood-stained eyes to meet mine. He showed his teeth in an animal snarl, then spat some harsh invective in no language I had ever heard.

I’m sorry. I spoke with heartfelt sympathy. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.

I had seen this grief before. I’d felt it—both on my own, and through the distant bond of my sworn followers. This beast had tried to kill me. This man had tried to kill me, if his own bond worked anything like a dragon’s. But they were neither the first nor the worst, and I had stricken this one with a grief more lasting than a clean sword thrust.

He stared into my eyes, canines still bared, and spoke in my own tongue. Grace, he said, and for a moment I didn’t recognize the word. But then he shook his head and tried again. Mercy. Peace. He grabbed convulsively at the crude stone knife, then dropped it by my hand. Kill me, farmer. Mercy. Peace.

I covered his hands with mine and shook my head. I’m sorry. And I am no farmer, but I cannot grant you...peace.

His golden eyes grew wide, then he snarled once more and slammed his forehead on the sand. He howled in rage that turned in time to sobs and then at last to panting breaths. I pulled away a bit and spoke in gentle tones.

I know your pain. I have lost a friend like that before. And it will pass in time. You will be whole again.

He raised his head to look at me through dripping lashes. Then he pushed back on his heels, mimicking my stance, and considered me a while. He frowned. You have...flown? He made a gesture with his hands, like a bird on the wind.

Aye, I said, and chuckled. As I said, I am no farmer.

He didn’t smile, but he nodded, looking thoughtful. He took his feet and stared at me, waiting expectantly.

I retrieved his stone blade for him, and with a thread of wind I fetched his shield as well. He gave no real reaction to my sorcery, but showed some astonishment when I offered his weapon back. He took the stone, weighed it in his hand, and for a heartbeat darkness burned behind those golden eyes as they darted to my temple. But he stayed his hand. He clenched his fist around the stone as though he meant for it to shatter, but he didn’t strike. The moment passed, and I gave him back his shield.

Weary and defeated, he took it from me and turned to go. I almost let him leave. I would find no friend in this man; I had cut him much too deep. But I was far from home and frighteningly alone and—most astonishing of all—I had found on this strange shore another creature remarkable and rare. I’d found a thing like me—a bond, but not the dragonbond. In six long years and untold tragic sacrifices, we had learned some of the secrets of the dragonbond. But it was still a mystery for all the blood we’d shed. And I was still unique in all this world...in one way, at least. I needed shelter and some help to find my way, but most of all I hungered for some answers.

And so I followed him. I tried to ignore the damage done and spoke as plainly as I could. I beg your aid.

At my first words, he froze. I swallowed and pressed on. I beg some shelter for the night. Some...explanation.

He nodded once, then turned and headed for the trees.

EXPLANATION. THAT WAS my greatest need. Information. I did not know this place. I had grown too powerful in the Ardain. Too proud. In this place, I was but a man.

A sarcastic sneer turned my lip at the thought. Such pride. I was far more than just a man. I was a swordsman of no small skill. I was an apprentice of the Academy, able with a modest catalog of spells and cantrips I’d collected on the way. But more than that, I was a sorcerer. At a thought I could create a perfect blade. I could drape myself in threads of air and lash out with living fire.

But these things came at some cost. In the Ardain, I had tapped the strength of my bonded thralls—chief among them, the Elder Legend Pazyarev—but here, alone, I sapped my own body’s might to shape the elements. For all my years of training, even the mild feats of this grim morning had already taxed me. One chaos blade, one thin shield of earth, and a hundred threads of air. The fight, too, had sapped me, but that fatigue was hot and sharp and swiftly fading. The price I’d paid for my sorcery was old and deep and draining. I felt it in my legs and in my gut and throbbing in my head. I had the power to remake the world, but every little motion wore me down. I would need rest and nourishment to repair the damage I had done.

There was yet another way—a darker source of power I could draw upon. Raw and wild Chaos burned within my head, a gemstone passion paired against the weary weakness of my human form. In that well of power was magic enough to obliterate the fiercest foe. Fire enough to burn this world to cinders. It whispered to me every day, readily offered and overflowing. I had tasted from that well before, in my darkest desperation, and it had nearly unmade me. It was the birthright of the dragonswarm, and it had nearly turned me into a dragon.

Merely thinking of the dormant power seemed to wake it in my mind. It flared up bright and hot, tendrils of electric energy snaking down my arms and legs. I forced it back. I fought it down and contained it. My own frail body would have to serve my needs.

It was no easy task. The wet sand quickly gave way to the twisting forest, and my guide made no effort to accommodate me. He went where there were no paths, pressing through close underbrush and folding his body through the narrow gaps between ancient trunks. He leaped barefoot from stone to stone, and more than once ascended to the treetops to chase some precipitous trail among wobbling limbs and frail branches.

I felt an urge to clear a way, to summon up another blade or even elemental fire and carve a path through this tangled place, but the memory of Chaos fire and the price I’d have to pay were twin cautions that stayed my hand. Instead I summoned paltry threads of air to help me follow the fearless fellow among the trees, and otherwise I struggled through on my own.

2. Judgment

The Tali people were like nothing I had ever encountered. Their village grew in the heart of this dense jungle—not nestled in a quiet clearing, but crowded in between the giant trees and carved into the tangled undergrowth. They sheltered in tiny caves hacked from the base of thorn bushes and labored—crafting their primitive clothes and weapons—sitting cross-legged on mats woven of tough vines that they spread like picnic blankets atop those same bushes.

It was a