The Dragon's War: The Dragonprince's Legacy, #3, page 1
The Dragon's War
The Dragonprince's Legacy, Volume 3
Aaron Pogue
Published by Masked Fox Productions, 2017.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
THE DRAGON'S WAR
First edition. December 19, 2017.
Copyright © 2017 Aaron Pogue.
ISBN: 978-1386788294
Written by Aaron Pogue.
Also by Aaron Pogue
A Consortium of Worlds
A Consortium of Worlds No. 1
A Consortium of Worlds No. 2
A Dragonswarm Short Story
Remnant
From Embers
Auric's Valiants
Notes from a Thief
Auric and the Wolf
Ghost Targets
Surveillance
Expectation
Restraint
Camouflage
The Dragonprince's Arrows
A Darkness in the East
The Dragonprince's Legacy
Taming Fire
The Dragonswarm
The Dragon's War
The Dragonprince's Heir
Unstressed Syllables Presents
A Quick Guide to Draft2Digital: How to Publish a Book in the Digital Age
A Quick Guide to Books2Read: Discover the Best New Tool for Discovering the Best New Books
Standalone
The Arcade
Watch for more at Aaron Pogue’s site.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also By Aaron Pogue
Dedication
1. Out of the Darkness
2. Judgment
3. Among the Tali
4. Gryphonbond
5. The Farmer
6. The Hunter’s Help
7. The Town at the End of the Road
8. The Sheriff of Lotton
9. Across the Plains
10. Setting Snares
11. The Arrangement
12. The Road to Three Cities
13. Finding a Friend
14. The Manufactory
15. Grist for the Mills
16. Pazyarev
17. The Sinfulness of Man
18. The World Without
19. The Power Within
20. The Dragon’s War
Sign up for Aaron Pogue's Mailing List
Further Reading: The Dragonprince's Heir
Also By Aaron Pogue
About the Author
This one is for Isabelle, who has brought Daven back from darkness with her smile more than once.
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.
