Master of Dragons

Chapter Ten

Thoriol woke late. The sunlight hurt his eyes and he squinted against it, holding his hand up to the window. There were no drapes. He had no idea why.

He felt sick, as though the floor were pitching under him, and let slip a weak groan of wine-sickness.

He opened his eyes wider, getting used to the glare slowly. It was then that he realised the floor really was moving. For a few moments he had no idea what was happening. A stab of panic shot through his stomach.

Then he smelled salt, saw the narrow window in one wall of the chamber, and felt the rough planks of decking beneath him.

At sea, he realised, which made him scarcely less panicked. How, in the name of Isha…?

He pushed himself into a seated position, head hammering from the rush of blood. The wine-sickness at least was no illusion — he felt like vomiting.

So he did. He managed to get to the far corner of the tiny cabin before his guts rebelled, then retched for a long time, leaving a foul puddle of saliva-strung bile against the curved wall of the ship’s hull.

Finishing made him feel only a little better. His whole body felt shivery and feverish. He had a dim recollection of a female elf with silk-like hair offering him something, but he couldn’t remember what it was. It had smelled good, that he did recall.

Hands shaking, he clawed his way back to where he’d awoken. He’d slept in his robes, the same ones he’d worn coming down from the Dragonspine. He peered cautiously at the window again. The movement of the horizon made his nausea worse.

What day is this? How long have I been asleep?

He got to his feet, bracing uncertainly against the movement of the cabin around him. The space was barely big enough to house him and he cracked his head on the low roof. Cursing, he fumbled for the clasp on the door. After a few false starts, he managed to push it open, and staggered out into a larger space beyond.

Three figures turned to face him, all seated around a long table covered in charts. Leaf-shaped windows ran down the two sides of a larger cabin, each running with spray as the ship pitched.

‘Good morning,’ said one of them, looking at Thoriol with a smile.

Thoriol stared back at him. The elf had strangely familiar features: a scar on his right cheek and a blunt, tanned face. For a minute he was taken back to that evening in the House of Pleasure. How long ago was that? Last night?

‘Who are you?’ Thoriol managed to blurt out. He had to grasp the doorframe to keep from falling. ‘Where am I?’

The elf with the scar motioned to his companions, who rose silently and left the cabin by a door at the other end. Then Scar-face beckoned Thoriol to join him at the table.

‘Come,’ he said. His voice had an earthy quality, rich with the accent of Chrace. ‘You look like you could use a seat.’

In the absence of better options, Thoriol tottered over to the table, collapsed onto the bench and slumped to his elbows.

‘Who are you?’ he asked again, feeling like he might be sick a second time.

‘Baelian.’

Thoriol stared stupidly, wondering if that should mean something to him. ‘That all?’

Baelian shrugged. ‘What do you want to know? This is my ship. The archers aboard are my company. As are you, of course.’

‘As am I,’ Thoriol repeated. He felt thick-headed. Some of what Baelian said resonated faintly with him, as if he’d dreamed of it a long time ago. ‘I have no idea what has happened, but I warn you, sir, my father is-’

‘Yes, you explained all of that,’ said Baelian. ‘Do you not remember?’

Thoriol managed to summon up the energy for a cold look. ‘Obviously not.’

‘You had taken a lot of it. Your first time, perhaps? It can do that to the unwary.’

As Baelian spoke, some recollection began to filter back through Thoriol’s addled mind. The dream-philtre. The poppy.

‘How long have I been out?’ he asked nervously.

‘Three days.’

Thoriol felt dizzy. He stared at the rough grain of the wood, trying to latch on to something certain. ‘If you have taken me against my will,’ he said, as deliberately as he was able, ‘you will suffer for it.’

Baelian laughed. He pushed back, hands behind his head. ‘Do I look like the kind? This is what you wanted, lad. You may not remember it now, but you will.’

As Baelian spoke Thoriol began to have the horrible feeling that he had done something very rash. His memory began to come back in slivers — he recalled speaking to Baelian in the House, watching the scar with fascination in the light of the lanterns.

‘Why don’t you remind me?’ Thoriol suggested. ‘That might save some time.’

‘As you wish.’ Baelian reached across the table and rifled through some leaves of parchment before drawing one out. He pushed it across to Thoriol. ‘Your scroll of warrant. You signed it before we left Lothern.’

Thoriol stared at the sheet. It was covered with a dense screed of runes and had a wax seal at its base. Just above the seal he could see his own scrawled handwriting.

‘We spoke for a long time,’ explained Baelian. ‘You wanted to escape, I made you a proposal. You were very keen to take it up. It’ll all come back in time.’

‘What does this mean?’ Thoriol asked, struggling to decipher what he’d been given — the words seemed to swim before his eyes.

‘You are a member of my company of archers. You’ve had the training, you know how to use a longbow. The pay’s good, and in gold. You’ll get it, too: ask anyone. Nothing to worry about, lad. You wanted to escape, and this is your chance.’

Thoriol ran a shaking hand through his blond-grey hair. His nausea got worse with every revelation. Some of what Baelian told him resonated, some of it didn’t.

‘You took advantage,’ Thoriol accused, putting as much authority as he could into his voice. ‘I was not in my right mind. You have no hold over me.’

Baelian looked amused. ‘Is that right? That’s not what the parchment says.’

‘I had taken a… dream-philtre.’

‘A dream-philtre? I’m shocked. You know they’re prohibited?’

Thoriol looked up into Baelian’s eyes and saw the mockery there. ‘So that’s how this works.’

Baelian sighed. ‘Look, lad, this can be as easy or hard as you make it. You’re one of the company. You can’t change that, not until I release you, but you’re no slave. Like I say, you’ll be paid, you’ll be trained. The captains aren’t too picky about who serves these days, not with two wars running at once, so you’ll be fine. Anyway, I look after my own.’

Thoriol barely listened. Already thoughts of his father’s vengeance were running through his head. He guessed that this Baelian didn’t fully understand who he’d taken on; telling him again would do no good, as he’d surely not convince him now. A familiar voice of derision echoed through his head.

You are a failure. You have failed again. And this time you are on your own.

‘So where are we going?’ he asked. He had to plan, to think, to recover. He was of the House of Tor Caled, the lineage of the Dragontamer — something would turn up.

‘Where do you think? Where the fighting is.’

For a moment, Thoriol had a terrifying vision of Naggaroth — a land he had only heard about in hushed whispers. He knew that his father had campaigned in the seas off the frozen coasts, and there were rumours that asur raiding parties had penetrated the interior. Even before Baelian spoke again, though, he realised how stupid that idea was.

‘The colonies, lad,’ said Baelian. ‘A long way from Ulthuan. You should be happy — you can make a fine fortune in the east, and whatever you’re running away from back home won’t follow you out there.’

Thoriol nodded wearily. So that was that — a single night’s indiscretion, and he’d allowed himself to be hoodwinked into a stint in the wilderness. Once the ship made landfall he’d have to think hard on how to get out of it.

‘Tor Alessi?’ he asked, trying to picture how the next few weeks were likely to unfold.

‘Where else?’ said Baelian. ‘Or, as you’ll start to think of it soon, home.’

Thoriol smiled acidly. The stench of vomit was beginning to seep from his cabin, mirroring his mood. It was hard to think of a way in which he could have got things more badly wrong.

Of course, there was one silver lining; though by means he’d never have chosen, he was getting almost as far away from his father as possible.

That was something.

‘You will break!’ screamed Drutheira, slamming her staff on the rock at her feet.

Bloodfang reared up before her, forty feet in the air, its body snapping and twisting like a fish caught on a wire. Flames gusted and flickered, covering the black dragon in a nimbus of ash and light.

From her cliff-edge vantage high over the northern scarps of the Arluii, Drutheira could see its anguish — its jaws were twisted and torn, its eyes stared wildly. Every so often it would swoop down, flames licking at the corners of its mouth, ready to snap her up in a single bite.

She stood firm, staff raised and feet apart, knowing the creature could not break its magical bonds. Bloodfang would always pull out at the last moment, doubling back on its length, screaming with frustration and shooting back into the sky.

The beast’s misery radiated out in front of her, a pall of anguish that seemed to stain the air itself, the agony of a great and noble mind laid to waste by the slow arts of the Witch King. Though she knew little of dragon-lore, she understood well enough what a mighty feat it must have been to enslave one of the famed fire-drakes of Caledor.

She wondered what exactly must have been done to break its spirit. Had it been raised from an egg by Malekith and tortured from birth? Or had it somehow been lured into the Witch King’s clutches once full-grown and imprisoned in secret? She could not imagine what torments must have been applied, perhaps over decades, to turn what had been born as a creature of ecstatic fire into such a twisted, ruined horror.

Bloodfang’s wings were ragged and punched with holes. Some bore the marks of hooks or iron rings. Its scaly hide was dull, as if caked with soot. Only its eyes still flashed with intensity — they were a white-less silver, and were painful to gaze at for too long.

Black and silver: Malekith’s favourite colours. Truly, he had left his imprint heavily on the world.

‘Break!’ she commanded again.

Purple-edge lightning forked out from the tip of her staff, crackling around the hovering dragon and causing it to roar in fresh pain.

‘You know my voice now,’ hissed Drutheira, applying more power to the halo of dark energy dancing around her. ‘Resisting will only bring you more pain.’

Bloodfang screamed at her, flicking the barbed point of its tail within a few feet of her face. Pain was the only thing its ruined mind truly understood.

Drutheira withdrew the sorcerous lightning, freeing Bloodfang from the lash of it for a few moments.

‘Come, now,’ she said, her voice softer. ‘This can end. What remains for you, should you resist? You cannot go back to your kind now — they would rend you wing from wing. We are your guardians now. We are your protectors.’

That made Bloodfang scream again, though the strangled tone was different — almost a sob, albeit one generated from iron-cast lungs. Its wings beat a little less firmly; its body writhed with a little less frenzy. Its huge head, gnarled with tumours of black bone and horn, slumped lower.

Drutheira smiled. ‘That is better. We may yet come to understand one another. Come closer.’

Malchior and Ashniel were nearby — she could sense their sullen presence — but neither came out into the open, for they had neither the power nor the will for this work and did not wish to risk inflaming the dragon more than necessary.

It hates us, thought Drutheira as the battered creature sank a fraction further in the sky. It hates us, and needs us. Truly Malekith has excelled himself with this: he has taken our self-loathing and given it form.

She lowered her staff and the last of the lightning flickered away, dancing across the bare stone like scattered embers. Drutheira took a single step towards the dragon, which continued to descend even though its fear and anger had clearly not gone away.

‘Give in,’ Drutheira urged.

Despite herself, she couldn’t resist admiring the beast’s damaged magnificence. Up close its sheer size was daunting. It stank of charred flesh and old blood, every downdraft of its wings sending a charnel mixture of ancient kills to waft over her. The thought of enslaving such power was faintly ridiculous — the beast could slay her with a casual twitch of its talons.

But it wouldn’t. That was the genius of sorcery.

‘Give in,’ she breathed, watching the long neck bow in exhausted submission before her.

It came closer. She saw long trails of hot tears running down its cheeks and almost let slip a cry of joy. Her whole body tensed, ready for the most dangerous moment — Bloodfang’s will had been ground down further, but the spark of rebellion had not been entirely extinguished.

Just a little closer, she thought, inhaling deeply as the wings washed pungent air across her. A little… closer…

Bloodfang’s jaws reached the level of her shoulders. She snatched the staff up again and it blazed into purple-tinged life. The dragon tried to jerk away but it was too late — snaking curls of aethyric matter locked on to its neck, lashing fast like tentacles.

Drutheira launched herself into the air, leaping high and pulled upward by the crackling lines of force. The long whips of coruscation acted like grapple-lines, hauling her onto the creature’s bucking neck and over to the rider’s mount at the junction of its shoulders.

It all happened so quickly; before Bloodfang could lurch away from the cliff-edge Drutheira had straddled its nape. She planted her staff firmly, driving the spiked heel into the dragon’s flesh. It screamed again, snapping its body like an unbroken steer’s, trying to dislodge the goading presence on its back.

‘Ha!’ roared Drutheira, her eyes shining. She held her position, hanging on tight to the wing-sinews that jutted out on either side of her.

Bloodfang raced into the air, corkscrewing up into the heavens, screaming all the while in an incoherent mess of anguish. The wind raced past, pulling Drutheira’s white hair behind her and making her robes ripple wildly.

She grabbed the golden chain that ran from the dragon’s huge neck and yanked as hard as she could. Bloodfang’s collar jerked back, wrenching the drake’s head up and slowing its ascent.

Drutheira felt a hot surge of elation. The beast’s scent filled her nostrils; its agony filled her mind. She could almost hear the creature’s inner voice echoing in her own thoughts — a jumbled, maddened stream of half-thoughts and half-words.

‘You know your master!’ she cried, seizing the staff again with her right hand and twisting the spike in further.

Bloodfang roared in pain, but its spasms grew less violent. It came around, swinging back towards the cliff edge. Below them the land fell away in a steep drop towards the range’s northern fringes. Drutheira caught glimpses of huge swathes of land spreading out into the distance — tracts of forest bisected by the grey ribbon of a mighty river snaking west towards the sea. The view thrilled her. Never before had she seen so far. It felt like she was the queen of the earth.

Far below, she saw Ashniel and Malchior creep from their hiding places to stand and gawp at her. She laughed to see that — they looked tiny, like insects crawling across dirt.

‘And what do you say now?’ she cried, hoping her voice would carry over the continued bellowing from her enraged mount.

They said nothing. Perhaps they could not hear her, or perhaps they had nothing to say. Drutheira turned away from them, uncaring. She had the vindication she needed: the dragon had been broken again. It would take time to learn how to command it properly, to force it to fight again, to trust it to respond to her commands.

In the meantime, the ascent into the heavens continued to make her heart beat with elation. She yanked on the chain, forcing Bloodfang to climb higher. The mountains extended out below her, a rumpled landscape of broken granite and snow-streaked summits. The wind around her was as cold as Naggaroth, as pure as hate.

Unbreakable, she thought to herself, sensing the massive power undulating beneath her and already planning what she would do with it. Unstoppable.

Sevekai crouched low, feeling his boots sink into the soft earth. They had been badly worn by the months he had spent in the wilds — the leather had split along the soles, letting in water and irritating the sores that clustered on his feet.

He was still sick. His chest gave him spasms of pain every time he breathed and his left leg was badly swollen. Vision had only properly returned to one eye; the other wept constantly. He was famished, chilled, often delirious.

For all that, things had improved since his awakening at the base of the gorge. Water had been plentiful in that dank, sodden chasm, so his strength had returned in gradual slivers, eventually enabling him to drag himself down under the cover of the trees. Refusing to countenance even the possibility of dying, he had grimly pulled himself like a worm along the forest floor, sniffing out anything that looked remotely edible.

He had had some successes — a thicket of wild rythweed that he’d been able to chew on, followed by a collection of sour crab apples left rotting under wind-shaken boughs. He’d made some mistakes, too: an appealing clump of milk-white fungi bulging in the shadow of a rotting log had made his stomach turn and given him blinding headaches and two days of vomiting.

Still, with every tortured step he’d taken since then a little more of his native strength had returned. His ordeal had begun to feel almost like purification — his body had been driven down to a whipcord-lean frame of sinew. When he stooped to drink at a stream, he saw a sunken, cadaverous visage staring back at him from the water and only slowly recognised the reflection of his own face. Everything came to him vividly, as if the world had been scrubbed clean and somehow made more real.

When not travelling he slept for long periods, drained by even the most mundane tasks. When he slept his dreams were lurid. He saw Drutheira in them often, and imagined they were still together.

‘I am glad you survived, my love,’ she told him.

‘Where are you?’ he asked.

‘Far away,’ she said. ‘Keep moving. Keep walking.’

Sevekai did as his dreams commanded. Sometimes crawling, sometimes limping, he picked his way down from the gorge. The landscape of the Arluii never stopped being unforgiving: as soon as he negotiated one rock-filled defile he would be faced with a fresh wall of broken cliffs. Get around that, and he would have to plunge back into thick tangles of knotweed or negotiate treacherous, icy river-courses. A circlet of blunt peaks reared over him the whole time, vast and uncaring, cutting off the light of the sun and making his bones ache from the cold. He began to hate them.

Time passed in a strange way. He started to suspect he was sleeping for much longer than he ought to. Sometimes he would awaken and the world around him would look altered, as if too much time had passed, or sometimes not enough. Whenever he saw more clumps of mushrooms he ignored them; even his ever-present hunger did not make him desperate enough to risk more sickness.

Gradually, painfully, the severity of the mountains began to lessen. He staggered into a hinterland rising from a bare land of blasted grass and tumbled boulders. The wind moaned across them, snagging at the stone. He stumbled onwards, barely noticing which direction he was heading in, his feet falling in front of one another in a numb, automatic procession.

When he finally dropped to his knees he was faintly surprised to feel soft earth under his flesh, not rock. He lifted his head groggily and saw a hillside running away from him, fading eventually into a wide valley studded with scraggly vegetation. He twisted his neck to peer over his shoulder, back to where the outriders of the Arluii loomed up hugely against a darkening horizon.

Where am I? he asked himself, knowing that he had no means of answering.

He looked back down the slope. Ahead of him, a few hundred yards away, the scrub began to thicken into the tight foliage of Elthin Arvan’s forest country. The further he went, he knew, the thicker it would get. Elthin Arvan was covered in forest, a cloak of wizened and grasping branches.

Such landscape was all he knew of forests — few trees grew in Naggaroth, and he was too young to have witnessed the blessed glades of Avelorn. When Drutheira had scorned the ugliness of the east, Sevekai had seldom understood her; next to the icy wastes of home, Elthin Arvan was teeming with life. Something about the smell of it appealed to him — the mulchy, sedimentary tang that never left the air.

He curled his fingers into the earth, watching the black soil part between them.

I can barely remember Naggaroth. And if I could… He smiled grimly, making his swollen gums ache. Would I want to go back?

A sudden noise ripped him from his thoughts. He instantly adopted a defensive crouch, ignoring the protests from his tortured limbs. For a few moments, he couldn’t see what had made it.

He screwed his eyes tight, scanning the scrubland before him. His left hand reached down for the throwing dagger strapped to his boot. He hadn’t heard the sound of a single living thing since waking. The sensation was strangely unnerving. His heart raced; his hand trembled slightly.

Then it came again, from ahead of him and to the left, a hundred yards away, lodged amid the jumble of bushes and boulders — like a hoarse cough, but far lower and richer than a druchii’s voice.

Slowly, Sevekai crept towards the sound, keeping low, staring hard at the thicket of branches ahead. The lessons of his long training returned to him. His heart-rate slowed; his hands stilled.

Then he saw it: a stag, standing still amid a thicket of briars. It was young, its limbs slender and its flanks glossy. It looked directly at him, antlers half-lowered in challenge, nostrils flaring.

Sevekai froze. He could smell its musk and the scent made him salivate — it must have been weeks since he’d eaten more than berries. He clutched the hilt of his dagger tightly, preparing his muscles to throw.

Something nagged at him. Something was wrong. The stag just stood there, watching him. It should have bounded away, darting back into the cover of the trees.

Sevekai reached down gingerly and pulled a second dagger from his belt. A blade in each hand, he slunk a little closer, keeping as low and silent as possible.

He needn’t have bothered. The stag stayed where it was, perfectly aware of his presence. Two black, deeply liquid eyes regarded him steadily. Its ribcage shivered as it breathed.

What are you waiting for?

Sevekai paused. Everything felt disconnected, as if he was in a dream. He sniffed. He picked up no taint of Dhar, but then he hardly had Drutheira’s facility for sensing it.

A few more steps and he was into throwing range. He hesitated for a moment longer, perturbed by the creature’s lack of movement.

Something is wrong.

Then, sharp as a snake-strike, he threw. The first dagger went cartwheeling through the air before thunking heavily into the beast’s shoulder. The stag buckled, baying, and at last kicked free of the briars.

By then Sevekai was already moving. One hand loosed the second dagger, the other reached for a third. Every throw was perfectly aimed: one after the other, the long steel blades bit deep, carving through the beast’s hide.

The stag managed to stagger on for a few more yards before tripping over its buckling legs and collapsing heavily to the ground. Sevekai caught up with it, grabbing it by its shaggy nape and using the last of his blades to slit its throat. He pulled the knife across its flesh viciously and a jet of hot, wine-dark blood gushed out, drenching his clothes.

The smell of it intoxicated him. He grew dizzy, both from the exertion and from the thick, viscous musk enveloping him. He reeled, falling down against the animal’s heaving shoulders.

Blood splashed against his chin. Almost unconsciously, he sucked greedily on it. As soon as the hot liquor passed his lips he felt a sudden swell of energy. He plunged forwards, cupping his hands under the torrent and gulping more blood down.

The thick, earthy taste of it made his vision swim, but he kept going — it felt as if life were flowing into his limbs again, heating him, strengthening him. He drank and drank, tearing at the wound’s edge with his teeth, gnawing at the raw flesh in his famishment.

He did not stop until the flow had slowed to a dribble and the stag’s eyes had gone glassy. Then he pulled free, his hands shaking again, chin sticky with residue.

He felt nauseous. He sank down on his haunches and stared about him. The empty land gazed back, still scoured by the wind, still as broken and grey-edged as it had been. In the distance loomed the Arluii, a wall of solid darkness against the low sky. Behind him, the land fell away into the bosom of the gathering woodland.

It took a long time for his breathing to return to normal. Practical thoughts began to enter his head — to make a fire, to butcher the carcass, to preserve more for later, to clean the blades.

He did none of those things. He just sat, his face and hands as bloody as Khaine’s. Something like vitality had returned, though it was bitter and hard to absorb.

The blood of the land.

He didn’t know where those words came from. They entered his head unbidden, just as so much had entered his head unbidden since the fall.

Now you have drunk the blood of the land.

He began to shiver again, and wondered if some of the poison from his blades had got into the stag’s bloodstream. His stomach began to cramp, and he curled over, coiled up next to the corpse of the stag in a bizarrely tender embrace. A curtain of shadow fell across his eyes. The shaking got worse. He tried to still his teeth’s chattering, and failed.

So cold.

His eyes fluttered closed, his fists balled, his neck-cords strained. Cradled amid the limbs of the beast he had killed, Sevekai screamed. Then he screamed again.

It was hard to tell how long the screaming lasted. He nearly blacked out from it, but when the spasms finally eased he found he could lift his head. Lines of saliva hung, trembling, from his bloody chin.

Ahead of him, no more than ten paces distant, a crow was perched on a briar. It stared at him just as the stag had done, eerily unmoving.

Sevekai looked at it for a long time. Then, without quite knowing why, he held up his hand. The crow flapped across, alighting on his wrist and digging its talons in.

‘Well met, crow,’ said Sevekai, his voice cracked and hoarse. It sounded like someone else’s.

The crow nodded its sleek head. Then, unconcerned, it began to preen.

Sevekai got to his feet. His head was light but the worst of the blood-agony had passed. He stood for a while, looking down into the valley, holding the crow like a falconer holds his hunting-bird.

For the first time, perhaps, in many years, something like certainty descended over him.

‘It has changed,’ he said, surprising himself. ‘Blood of Khaine, everything has changed.’