Throne of Dragons

“All the bridges, your majesty?” the knight asked. “If your daughter has passed to the south, and we are to recover her…”

The king in Godwin knew that he should order all of the bridges destroyed. That this might be the point of Ravin’s plan, forcing him to leave at least one route an army could cross. Even so, the father in him could not even contemplate that. He could not abandon his daughter like that, or his son, because Godwin had no doubt about how far Rodry would go to recover Lenore.

“You are right, my friend,” he said. “Let one bridge stand, one of the minor ones, so that Ravin can’t march an army across unless it’s two by two, but all others are to fall. If this is the precursor to an invasion, we will force Ravin to come to us where he cannot use his whole army.”

That was one part of this that struck Godwin as strange: Ravin was reputed to be a ruthless and cunning king, who had to know how strong the defenses of the bridges were. The North had been safe from the South for generations thanks to the Slate’s roaring rapids, and how easy it was to just collapse a bridge beneath an invading force. What did he hope to achieve by doing this now?

“Perhaps he hopes to lure us to the attack,” Godwin mused. It was the only thing that made sense.

“What’s that, your majesty?” Sir Lars asked.

Godwin shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, just go. Sir Twell!”

The knight was there, assisting with the preparations, ensuring that all was planned well. Godwin would have expected nothing less. Sir Ursus was beside him, lifting the heaviest of the supplies.

“You and Ursus ride to the Spur. Tell the knights there that there is to be war, and bring them south. We will show Ravin our true strength.”

“As you command, my king,” the knight said, sweeping a bow and then mounting a horse. How long would it take him and Sir Ursus to bring the other knights? Days, at least. If Ravin did come in force, could they hold until then if they could not collapse the bridge? Would they be able to get Lenore back before anything worse happened?

So many thoughts were swirling around in Godwin’s head then. He had forgotten what the build up to conflict felt like, forgotten all the ways that doubts could creep in. Still, at least he had one way to deal with that. Stalking off across the courtyard, he set off in the direction of his wizard’s tower.

Of course, he did not get there before Master Grey found him. He was waiting at the second turn of a corridor within the castle, standing there before a statue of one of Godwin’s ancestors as if studying it.

“Why are you not out there, helping me prepare for war?” Godwin demanded.

The magus continued to stare at the statue for a moment or two. “Do you know the story of King Lorus?”

“What?” Godwin demanded.

“Your great-great-great grandfather, I believe.”

“I know who the man was,” Godwin snapped. Why did Master Grey always bring up irrelevancies at times like this? “What about him?”

“He was a man who fought seven times against enemies to the south, allowing them across the bridges so that he could face them,” the sorcerer said. “He won each time, and yet, when hot summers brought droughts, he could do nothing.”

“What are you saying? That Ravin will find a way to affect the weather?” Godwin asked.

The sorcerer gave him one of those looks he seemed to do so well, which said that the king had misunderstood him, or would never manage to see all that he saw, or both.

“I am saying that, sometimes, the conflict we think is important is the smallest of things, compared to all the world might throw our way.”

“The South stealing my daughter is not unimportant,” Godwin snapped back. “Lenore is in danger, and Ravin… he wouldn’t have done this if he didn’t plan to be waiting.”

“That is one possibility,” Master Grey agreed, or was it agreement? It was hard to tell with the man. If he hadn’t done so much to assist the kingdom over the years…

“Why didn’t you see this coming?” Godwin demanded. “You’re supposed to be the one who can unpick the future. Why didn’t you tell me that my daughter was in danger?”

The sorcerer raised his shoulders in a shrug. “My focus was… elsewhere.”

“Then bring it back to where it should be!” Godwin roared at him, and he wasn’t sure if he’d ever shouted at his magus like that before. “Read your auguries, look at your stars. Do your job, while my daughter is in danger.”

If the sorcerer was perturbed by the outburst, he gave no sign of it, but then, he never gave any sign of what he was truly thinking. There were days when Godwin wondered if he was a charlatan, and others when it seemed as if the man might have more power than anyone else alive.

“Not anyone,” Master Grey murmured, and that made Godwin pause.

“What did you say?”

The sorcerer seemed to catch himself.

“You wish me to look at the future for you, my king? Very well.”

He crouched there, in the hallway, squatting the way a beggar might have in spite of his robes of pristine white and gold. He took a pouch from his belt, drawing out what seemed to be a scattering of knucklebones. To Godwin’s surprise, the sorcerer spat on them, quick and sharp. He threw them onto the floor, the rattle of it filling the space. He then took a knife, pricking at his thumb to let a single bead of blood form. Godwin hadn’t been entirely sure that Master Grey possessed blood at all. That bead fell onto the knucklebones.

The sorcerer seemed to stare at them for a long time.

“Tell me,” Godwin said. “Tell me how to find Lenore.”

“I see what I see,” Master Grey said. “And I see an ending. A king must fall, and not. He must die so that things might shift.”

“You mean me,” Godwin said. “You think I’m to die? Tell me who does it. I’ll cut him down before he gets close.”

The sorcerer smiled thinly. “The hand that wields the blade is not the hand to kill you, King Godwin. We do not always die by the hand that we think…”

Anger rose up in Godwin then. “Damn you, sorcerer,” he snapped. “You and your prophecies. I ask you for help finding my daughter, and you give me my death.”

He strode back in the direction of the courtyard, then turned to call out over his shoulder.

“Well, I’ll surprise you yet. I’ll get Lenore back. I’ll beat Ravin. And anyone who comes at me with a blade will eat my steel!”

Grey was gone, of course. Only his words remained, ringing in Godwin’s ears.

“Not by the hand you think.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Erin rode hard back toward the Spur, ignoring the pain of the knife wound in her leg. She sat tall in the saddle, chain shirt shining, short spear slung across her back. There were still traces of blood in the short darkness of her hair, because there hadn’t been time to truly clean up in the aftermath of their fight against the Quiet Men, not when they needed to carry the news back to the fort.

Sir Til and Sir Fenir rode beside her. Fenir was as quiet as always, graying and brooding beneath thick eyebrows, the clink of his half plate the only sound as he rode. It was more of a surprise that Til was just as quiet, riding forward with a fixed determination, his expression drawn and pale.

“You can’t still be angry that I charged in back at the village,” Erin said. “After everything they’d done?”

“And if they’d killed us, no one would know,” Til said. “If we didn’t make it back, there would still have been Quiet Men there, waiting to strike. Now, hurry your riding. We’ve a warning to deliver.”

Erin knew all of that, understood the consequences, but still wasn’t about to let it go. The Quiet Men had murdered an entire village’s worth of people. They deserved to die. She could no more have walked away and left them in peace than she could have knelt before them and let them cut her throat.

“Leave her be,” Fenir said. “We need to focus on getting back.”

Erin heard Sir Til sigh. “True. And you did fight well. You’re getting good with that spear. You’ll need to be.”

Erin knew why: war was coming. The Quiet Men taking a village was just the start. If they’d done that here, how many other places had they done it? How many more enemies would be coming?

It didn’t matter. They would kill them, no matter how many there were.

It was a long ride back to the black, jutting rock of the Spur. By the time it came into view, Erin could feel the ache of her muscles, the pain of her carefully bound wound growing with the effort of riding. Erin ignored it, because she was not some sensitive princess who needed to stop because of a little pain. She was a warrior, and she would be a knight.

Eventually, the fortress rose up ahead of them, sticking out on a random jutting of glassy black rock left over from the wars that had divided the continents. Gray stone stood above it, the gates open now to welcome them back.

As Erin and the others rode in, horns blared in welcome, and knights stood to either side in welcoming lines, swords raised. Erin felt like a returning hero, welcomed back into the embrace of a group of warriors out of stories, each one as powerful a fighter as any she’d met.

Beyond those ranks, she was surprised to see that the knights were starting to gather in the main yard of the fort, moving with an urgency that she didn’t normally associate with their training. Commander Harr stood at the heart of it all, gray-haired and bearish, his authority obvious as he called out commands.

“Every man is to bring rations for a month. The king might think this will be over soon, but King Ravin is a dangerous foe.”

He turned as Erin and the others approached. Erin slid down from her horse, hiding her wince of pain as her feet hit the ground.

“You’re back, good, just in time,” he said. “Tell me how your patrol went.”

Erin tensed then. Sir Til had been clear that he disapproved of how she’d handled things back at the village. What if Commander Harr agreed? What if this was all that he needed in order to send her back to be married off to whoever her parents could find for her?

“We found a group of Quiet Men holed up in a village,” Sir Til said. “They’d taken the whole thing, killing the villagers.”

“Forming a base,” Fenir added, in his usual clipped style. “Ready for invasion.”

“That’s bad,” Commander Harr said. “We don’t have the men to spare now to go and fight them.”

“It’s dealt with,” Sir Til said, in a tone that made it clear how it had been dealt with. “We were able to defeat them.”

“The three of you?” Commander Harr asked. He looked impressed. “How many?”

“A dozen,” Sir Til said.

“A dozen, and you’re all whole.” He looked over at Erin. “How did our newest recruit do?”

Erin swallowed, certain that this would be the moment when she found herself dismissed from the Spur, sent home, forced to go back to a life of sewing and dances rather than being the warrior she wanted to be.

“She fought well,” Sir Til said. “She needs to learn to listen a little more, and to hold onto her spear better, but she killed her share, and more. She saved my life in the fight.”

“Saved the life of the great Sir Til?” Commander Harr said. He looked impressed, turning to Erin. He held out his hand for her to take, clasping her wrist in his. “I’m impressed, recruit, but not surprised. I’ve seen how well you can fight. You’ll need that, and soon.”

“Because of the threat we found?” Erin asked.

Commander Harr shook his head. His expression turned serious. “It’s more grave than that. We’ve had news from Royalsport. I have the men readying to march.”

Erin frowned at that. What had happened back home? She caught herself, stopping short at the thought of the palace as home. She waited, too many thoughts running through her mind of all the things that might have gone wrong there. Was her father all right? Was her mother?

“It’s Princess Lenore,” Commander Harr said. “She has been captured by King Ravin’s forces and taken south.”

Shock flooded through Erin at that. Of all her family, Lenore had seemed like the one who was least likely to be in danger. Rodry might charge into a fight, or Vars might be cruel to the wrong person. Nerra spent all her time in the woods unprotected, and obviously Erin herself sought out danger, but Lenore? It made no sense.

“We have to get her back,” Erin said. In that moment, the minor pain of her wound, or her tiredness from having ridden here from the village meant nothing. All that mattered was making sure that Lenore was all right.

“King Godwin has ordered our knights to join him in marching to secure a bridge for long enough to recover her,” Commander Harr said. “You—”

“I’m going with you,” Erin said, before he could command her to stay there, insist that she remain behind where it was safe.

Commander Harr nodded. “I had no plan to stop you. You’re one of us, Erin. I was going to order you to hurry to be ready. You’ll fight beside us, and together, we’ll secure the kingdom.”

“And get Lenore back,” Erin said. That was the part that mattered to her, more than the rest of it.

The commander nodded again. “You have to remember that it will have taken time for the messengers to get here. I’m sure that Sir Twell and Sir Ursus rode as fast as they could, but by now, your sister could be deep into the Southern Kingdom.”

“Then I’ll go into it and get her back,” Erin promised. “I’ll tear out King Ravin’s heart to do it, if I have to.”

She had heard the stories growing up, of brave knights questing to recover fair maidens, saving princesses from dangers beyond reckoning. At the time, Erin had always thought that those were stupid stories. She hadn’t understood why the princesses didn’t just save themselves, kill the monsters, and go home to people cheering their name. She certainly never planned to go around waiting for a knight to come.

Now though, she was the knight, in all but name. She was the one who would be riding to the rescue.

“Come with me,” Commander Harr said. He led the way to where armor and weapons were laid out, the knights moving among them as they selected what they needed. “I was going to leave this until you had finished proving yourself, but if it is to be war, I will not have it said that you were ill defended.”

He took pieces from the stacks, passing them to Erin. Although it looked as though he was grabbing things at random, each piece seemed perfectly sized to fit Erin, chosen with the precision of long practice. He passed her a breastplate, greaves, bracers… an outer skin of plate that fit over Erin’s chainmail like a glove, each piece shining and silvered.

The end result wasn’t quite the full plate armor the commander wore, but instead something more mobile, with patches of chain in between the plates designed to ward off the worst of blows. He passed Erin a buckler, which she slid onto her left forearm, the shield small enough that she could still manipulate her short spear easily. Last came a half-helm to protect her head, the design of a dragon chased atop it in gold. It was the most beautiful thing Erin had seen.

“How… how is all of this here to fit me?” she asked.

Commander Harr shrugged. “You think a commander wouldn’t seek out suitable protection for his troops?”

Erin didn’t know what to say. “Thank you. It’s… perfect.”

“If you want to thank me, stay safe in the battles to come. Now, young recruit, you need to tend to your horse. We’ve a lot of riding to do to reach the south.”

Erin nodded, running for her horse. She wouldn’t let the commander down. More than that, she wouldn’t let her sister down. She would help to save Lenore and beat back the Southern Kingdom’s attack, whatever it took, even if it cost her life.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The worst thing about being in chains in Lord Carrick’s dungeon… well, it was hard for Renard to pin it down to just one, really, although he’d had plenty of time to choose since they’d caught him trying to steal the gold Lord Carrick had taken from a wrecked ship bound for King Ravin. There was the strange abandonment of it, which meant that Renard probably looked even wilder than usual, red hair flying everywhere, beard crusted with mud and worse.

There were the occasional beatings, which had added a patina of bruises to his face, probably rendering his rugged good looks more rugged, but on average less… good.

“Yselle will not be happy with you!” he called out into the dark. “None of the women will be!”

Not that it made any difference. There was no answer.

The dark and the silence were definitely on the list. If he’d had his lute, Renard would have broken the silence with song, but he hadn’t, and in any case, his wrists were chained, chafing and restricting his movement. That was on the list of worst things as well. Then there was the part where he’d been sober for longer at a stretch than ever before in his life, the occasional presence of rats, the cold…

Oh, and the part where Lord Carrick would probably have him executed at some point. As worst parts went, that one had a certain… finality to it, although given the slow ways a man could be executed, there was no guarantee that a man couldn’t find worse things still before the end.

Oh well. It had to happen sometime.

That was the problem with Renard’s chosen profession: very few thieves got to retire comfortably at the end of it all. Those who didn’t end up swinging on nooses tended to be killed by whatever protections rich folk had set around their goods. It was almost, almost enough to make Renard wonder why he’d chosen to be a thief at all.

Idly, he started to go back over the choices that had led to this, but the trouble was that so few of them had really counted as choices at all. They’d just been… things he’d done, things that had seemed obvious at the time, or that he hadn’t been able to keep from doing because his fingers had been too itchy not to take a purse, or pick a lock, or climb a wall. Trying to make any of that sound like he’d actually made a decision about it would be far too much.

Even when it had come to trying to steal from Lord Carrick, it hadn’t been so much a decision as simply a need. Now, it seemed that he was going to die for it. At some point, when Renard had languished in his dungeon long enough, his lordship would take Renard out, try him, and decide on a suitably horrible way to kill him. All because Renard hadn’t been able to walk away from the thought of coin for the taking.

Renard checked his chains for what had to be the hundredth time, just in case they had developed a flaw that he could use. Annoyingly, they were still perfect, and even if he got them off, there was still a thick door, a dungeon full of guards, and the castle’s walls between him and freedom. How was a man meant to go about escaping in circumstances like that?

Renard was just settling into a nice solid round of despair when he heard the click of the lock. He braced himself, imagining that the guards had probably decided to give him another beating, but he still flinched when light streamed into the cell, harsh enough to make his eyes water after the darkness. It meant that the three figures who walked in were blurry at first.

Renard quickly found himself wishing that they had stayed that way. Instead, he was staring at three figures in dark, hooded robes, faces covered by elaborate masks that seemed to be the only individual things about their wearers. One wore a mask of interlocking greenery, another a mask with features so twisted that they seemed to hurt his eyes just looking at it. The third wore a blank white mask that gave no hint of emotion.

That was the one who spoke.

“Do you know who we are, Renard the thief?”

“Well, the masks and the robes are kind of a clue,” Renard said, keeping his tone light. This was a trick, it had to be.

“And now you think that this is false,” the man said. “Tell me, would even Lord Carrick impersonate us?”

Now Renard froze. He forced a smile even though inside, his heart was racing. It was true, no one would pretend to be this. These were the Hidden. It was said that they sought power in places most other men and women dared not even think about; that the earliest of them had been thrown out of the House of Scholars for research that should never have been attempted.

“You’re trying to hide your fear,” the one with the green mask said. By the voice, this one was a woman. “You think, if you’re flippant enough, the bad things of the world will skate by you.”

“Well, it’s worked out all right so far,” Renard said, jangling his chains for emphasis.

“It has left you waiting to die,” the one in the twisted mask said, his voice harsh, even guttural. His mask turned toward the one who wore the blank one. “Why seek a thief who has been caught?”

The blank faced one did not reply, but turned back to Renard. “Would you like to be free?”

Free. The word caught Renard’s attention, mostly because of the alternatives.

“And you could set me free?” he asked.

“We are here, aren’t we?” the blank-faced one said. “We walked in, and we could walk out again, with you. For a price.”

Of course there would be a price. People like this didn’t do anything for free. From what Renard had heard, they had all paid their own prices, to things beyond the twisting and turning of reality. What would they demand? Renard decided that another question was safer.

“What do you need stolen?”

They stared at him. At least, Renard assumed that they did. With the masks, it was hard to tell.

“You’ve walked into a castle owned by a powerful lord with a reputation for cruelty,” Renard said. “You’re offering to let me go. Now, either you really appreciate my lute playing, or…”

“Or we need a master thief,” the leader said, his blank mask providing no hint of his emotions. “Yes, we do.”

“All right,” Renard said. “Let’s start with this: do you three have names?”

The one in the blank mask hesitated, but then seemed to relent. “I am known as Void, and these are Verdant and Wrath. Our former names were given away. Such things have power.”

Renard was sure that they had all the power they could ever need. He’d heard about the Hidden.

“If you can walk in here,” Renard said, “why do you need me?”

Void stood there, looking from one to the other of his companions, as if trying to decide how much to say.

“To walk into a place of men is easy,” he said. “But the object we require for our… research is in a more difficult location.”

“What object, and where?” Renard asked. He said it reflexively, the way he might have with anyone who wanted him to steal for them. The fact that he was still in chains made no difference to that.

“Does it matter to you?” the one in the twisted flesh mask demanded.

But Void shrugged. “There is an amulet, locked away in a mausoleum above a volcano, protected in ways that suit your… skills. That amulet is said to give those who wear it power over dragons.”

“Dragons!” Renard said with a laugh, because who had seen dragons in years? “You must be joking. Is that what this is? Lord Carrick’s idea of a…”

He didn’t finish, because the woman in the mask of greenery leaned close to him. Verdant’s eyes… they seemed to start green, but then shifted to red, glowing from within with a fire that stole the breath out of him. Somehow, Renard suspected that this was one woman he wouldn’t be able to charm with a few well-chosen songs and compliments.

“We do not joke,” she said, as she moved back. “And we do not like having our time wasted.”

“Your time too,” Void said. “How long now until Lord Carrick drags you from here to your death?”

He had a point. Even so…

“No, thank you,” he said.

“What?” Wrath demanded, and he looked as though he might strike out at Renard in that moment.

“You think I haven’t heard rumors of the Hidden?” Renard asked. “I’ve sung enough songs in my time to hear those too.”

“They have written beautiful songs about us,” Verdant said. “But few true ones.”

Renard suspected that there was enough truth hidden away in those songs though; that the Hidden were collectors of power, to whom good and evil were irrelevant; that they could do things to a man that would imperil his very soul. Compared to all of that, even Lord Carrick didn’t seem so bad.

“There are things we could do to you if you refuse,” Void said.