I can smell the forge, the heat, the metal, the wisps of charcoal smoke curling away on a sunny afternoon. How long has it been? Why now, in this wretched waste?
In the end, Luccan supposed it would always come to this. Strangers crossing paths on the road to destiny. Strange, how destiny looked a lot like a dusty back road, the sort of road where local nobles set up impromptu checkpoints whenever they got to squabbling. Then they had the whole business guarded by mere chaff, as though low-level footsoldiers could deter any true threat. But this was all beside the point. He glared up at the irritating young Seyzharel demon who hovered above, two-toned plumage and long blue overcoat all aswirl.
“Go away.”
The dragonish upstart did nothing of the sort. Instead, he folded his great leathern wings to his sides and dropped like a hailstone out of the sky. He made a rather overdramatic sort of landing, the sort of overblown display appreciated by the very young, of course cushioned by magic. The troublesome youngster kicked up a tremendous amount of dust with his theatrics, and surely he held his breath until it settled again. At least, he did not descend into a predictable fit of coughing. Still, this interruption would not stand.
Luccan huffed an irritated breath into his mask.
“C’mon, dusters,” the young dragon said, and the guards at the checkpoint—Hawk Clan, judging by their tattoos—stiffened. Any idiot could work out the insult from a winged demon to earthbound ones. Did this mere hatchling think himself so powerful that a dozen soldiers were nothing to him? An older dragon, one that had grown his secondary lungs, would have nothing to fear from their like, but this one? Luccan placed his age at about a century. Adult, but only just.
“Are you trying to pick a fight?” Females of this species were the more aggressive, weren’t they? Why would an underfed slip of a boy want to fight these Hawk soldiers?
The idiot child tossed his head, his long, two-toned hair flowing like the mane of a proud warhorse. All dragons are insufferable in their vanity. “So what if I am?” He grinned, showing the razor fangs of his kind. “Dusters can’t swipe me.”
The dialect seemed to have evolved since Luccan’s last visit to the Fourth Sphere, but he understood enough to feel a twinge of suspicion. The dragonling did indeed want to provoke an attack… though not necessarily from the guards. But why should he go out of his way to vex a stranger from another world? What could he possibly gain by encouraging proof that wings did not guarantee safety?
“You’d be surprised,” Luccan growled into his mask. A familiar warmth pulsed at his side, and his fingers flexed in response. No. This one was unworthy. Claws alone could shut the child’s arrogant mouth, should the need arise.
The Seyzharel youth’s gaze flicked downward, suddenly keen and hungry. His gangly frame had stilled, a predator sighting his prey. Surely one so young could not sense the great and terrible responsibility he carried…
Bah. Luccan had seen stranger matters than annoying savant children, and his time ran short. The prophecy would not wait. He started toward the roadblock again.
“Halt,” commanded a more hapless of the guards. Poor useless things. If their presence had bothered Luccan at all, he would have cut across the mossy fields rather than taking the road. He raised one cloth-muffled hand to push their crossed halberds aside.
“Tch,” said the annoying youth. “Let’s have us through, then.”
The Hawk demons went wooden, their eyes glazing over. They raised their weapons and allowed the travelers to pass through in silence.
“Interesting,” Luccan grumbled, and the irritation at his side shrugged shoulders and wings both.
“Nah, that’s a cheap trick. It’s easy to glamour those lot when I’m fresh fed. How ‘bout you? Not gonna fight ‘em?”
“Waste of time,” Luccan said, describing the guards and his unwanted companion both.
“Sure woulda been top.” The dragonling bounced along, his recent feeding clearly having given him more energy than he could contain. “I’m Ragheiyont. Howl off, yeah?”
He’s doing this on purpose. Luccan walked on in silence, waiting for a sentence constructed of words that actually belonged together. The hatchling lost patience quickly, as the very young often did, and he gave a noisy sigh.
“Your name, jo.”
Judging their distance from the checkpoint far enough, Luccan stopped and turned to face the youngster. Ragheiyont. He tugged his mask down, exposing the stripes on his cheeks. With malice, and no small amount of relish, he said, “Enluccashei d’Nel, Makesh Tiyorarem.”
Ragheiyont fumbled for the correct form of address for a title hundreds of years out of use. “Eternal… horrors in thy name?” he ventured, surprising Luccan.
“Close enough.” He resumed walking, but he had lost some of his urge to rebuke this irritating youngling. “What do you want?” But he knew. He saw the hunger in the little dragon’s blue eyes. How the noisy beastie knew enough to crave a taste of its power, though, that Luccan wanted to know.
“Where ya from?”
Luccan shook his head. This troublesome child thought to dodge the question? Then he believed he could steal it. “Not this Sphere,” he said, as cagey as Ragheiyont. The sharp, dragonish smile reappeared.
“Nah, none’s here have stripes. An’ you…” His tongue flicked out, moistening his lips. A slight flush colored his cheeks, as from a rising fever. Luccan drew back, more out of instinct than necessity. At his age, he had little to fear from this fledgling. A wistful expression crossed Ragheiyont’s face. “You’re a selfish one, yeah?” Dropping his gaze, he kicked at the hard packed earth of the road. Petulance. Lovely.
Luccan fought a growl rising in his chest. This was why he rarely visited the lower Spheres. The alien terrain he could tolerate. The lack of true forests bothered him, but not so much as he could not ignore it. The demons who dwelt there, on the other hand, they were insufferable. Deciding to ignore Ragheiyont, he fixed his gaze straight ahead. The road snaked around a berm ringed in green shoots, much like horsetail. They probably grew in a ditch. For a fleeting moment, Luccan imagined throwing Ragheiyont into it.
“Where ya headed?”
“To meet with destiny.” Luccan enjoyed the taste of the words, enjoyed the knowledge that soon, so very soon, he would be free of that troublesome prophecy.
“Nah,” said Ragheiyont, dismissive and rude and so terribly young. “You’re off ta rend someone.” When Luccan scowled, he shrugged again. “The artifact, jo. It knows, and it’s hungry.”
Impossible.
No, not impossible, but certainly improbable.
The thought had scarcely crossed Luccan’s mind when his hand shot out and seized the noisome youth by the scruff. “What is it?” he hissed, his voice coarse and wet. He gave Ragheiyont a shake. “What artifact do I carry?”
“I don’t know!” the dragonling wailed. “It’s old and it’s powerful and it craves carnage! I swear that’s all I can sense!”
The sunlight abruptly felt too bright, too hot. A sense of open space made Luccan bare his teeth at the suspiciously empty countryside. Where were the merchants, the tradesmen, the herders? Where were the ordinary folk going about their ordinary business? His ears flattened beneath his cowl, and his nostrils flared. Nothing stirred.
“Come,” he said. Giving Ragheiyont no choice in the matter, he dragged the squalling child off the road and through the reedy shoots that did, indeed, grow in a ditch. Ragheiyont’s wings flailed for purchase, and Luccan flexed his fingers. His claws eased forward. No. No, he need not cut the hatchling.
Ragheiyont protested all the way around the berm and through a stand of shrubs trying their best to grow into a thicket. He struggled, but these Seyzharel demons had grown lighter in recent years. Frail and willowy. Disgraceful. Their dragon ancestors would hang their heads in shame. And possibly eat their offspring.
Well out of sight of the road, Luccan threw Ragheiyont to the ground and planted a foot on his chest. “Talk,” he snarled. “It’s what you seem to be good at. Tell me how it is that a mere infant can sense Bel’s masterwork.”
“Bel?” Ragheiyont stopped squirming. “Swordsmith Bel?” He gave a weak chuckle. “Ya gotta stop believin’ in nesting tales, jo. Bel’s a myth.”
The smoke-and-steel scent of the smithy. The ring of the hammer falling in rhythmic blows, sharp and sweet and just the wrong pitch for his sensitive ears. Laughing in the sunlight with a friend who always smelled of charcoal.
Luccan scowled down at the fledgling. How dare he dredge up these memories. “Am I myth, child?”
“Ya seem real enough.” Ragheiyont dug his fingers into the soft, mossy grass, releasing a bit of its sweet scent. “I don’t much clip with the tales. Some great duster invented the art of blades, refined his craft until he created the ultimate sword, then what? Tossed the whole lot and rolled up in a hillside for a thousand year nap? That don’t track, jo.”
Ignorant child. “Three thousand years,” Luccan corrected through bared teeth. Or near enough to it. “He was betrayed, and this ‘artifact’ you crave is all I have left of my friend.”
Apparently impervious to Luccan’s wrath, Ragheiyont gazed up at him with wide blue eyes. “Ya don’t look that old, jo.”
“I have toppled dynasties, child, when I was young and intemperate like you.”
“When you didn’t have control of it?” Ragheiyont pressed, his jaunty demeanor abruptly gone. It. He might as well have spoken the blade’s name. Luccan leaned forward, letting more of his weight press down on Ragheiyont’s chest. The dragonling wheezed, but his expression remained stony. “How long did it master you?” he whispered. “How much carnage did you feed that thing?”
“You know nothing of carnage,” Luccan hissed.
“No?” Ragheiyont shook back his sleeve. Beneath the voluminous fabric, he wore a dagger strapped to his forearm. A cursed blade. Luccan could feel its hunger, mewling like a kitten, crying out for blood. He shook the sensation away. “It’s no masterwork, but my Wardbreaker is a mean, demanding little—”
“Enough.” Luccan stepped back. His gaze tracked the cursed dagger as the dragonling scrambled to stand. Over the long centuries, he had learned not to scoff in the face of serendipity. The hungry blade, and the annoying youngster who bore it, could prove useful to his errand. “You are my prisoner,” he said. “Do not attempt to flee, for I have methods of tracking that your unformed brain cannot hope to dream of.”
“You’d be surprised, jo.” Ragheiyont’s cocky grin reappeared as he dusted off his blue overcoat. Why did dragons favor shades of blue so much? “I dreamed a tree recently. Yeah, a proper tree, not…” He waved a hand toward the embarrassed thicket. “Y’know.” Luccan rolled his eyes, but Ragheiyont plunged onward, eager to describe his vision. “It musta been six stories high, like some sorta living tower, all soft bark an’ hard wood an’ feathery greens a’swayin’ in the breeze. And the smell—”
A chill ran through Luccan. “Smell?” he repeated, his voice sharp and terse. “Do you usually smell in your dreams?”
“Nah,” came Ragheiyont’s blithe reply. “But this tree, it smelled of smoke and amber and—”
“You don’t have friends, do you?”
Stung by the remark, Ragheiyont snapped his mouth shut. Luccan turned toward the north. Far in the distance, a bluish smear of mountains blurred the horizon. Ragheiyont fidgeted beside him, most likely weighing his odds of escape. The image of a tree—a cedar? Did he dare hope?—rose tall in Luccan’s mind, clouding his judgment. He gave the fledgling a forced smile. It felt waxy on his face.
“Come on. When I’ve concluded my business in this Sphere, we can go get that dagger of yours fixed up.”
A bold promise to make. He strode forward, and Ragheiyont loped along beside him, protesting all the while that there was nothing wrong with his cursed dagger.
Chaighan enjoyed heights, perhaps more than most demons of his kind. A former slave, he had once had his wings clipped by a jealous master. They were fully restored now, thanks to Enci’s skill as a healer. His horns, unfortunately, would take longer to grow back.
He perched in the shadows, his wings folded tight against his shoulders, silent reassurance that they existed. The other guards teased him for coming here during his off hours, taking so much of his precious free time to visit another of the castle’s defenses. He ignored them. How could he deny the voice that called to him?
The core of the wards pulsed just beyond the catwalk where he perched. An immense orb of pure energy, it safeguarded Castle Seyzharel against magical assault, and it gave early warning when enemies approached.
And it called to Chaighan.
When pressed, he would only say that he enjoyed the proximity of the magics. He never mentioned the whispers, not even to Enci. He never told anyone that the castle wards knew his name.
Who would have believed him?
Luccan sat with his back against the stalk of a sad excuse for a tree. Ragheiyont slept at last, his head pillowed on his arms, his wings covering his curled form. He looked peaceful, almost cute by the feeble light of the thumbnail moon, but Luccan sensed something off about him. Something unnatural. A darkness touched him, not so much as to make the youngling malicious, but perhaps enough to embroil him in the shadowy world where Luccan walked.
Perhaps enough to ensnare him in the prophecy.
Luccan shook his hood back. As the soft fabric fell away, the world of the nighttime burst in vibrant life upon his sensitive ears. They swiveled this way and that, tracking burrowing lobsters, following the flights of moth-bats. Sound flooded his world like a thousand vibrant colors never seen by the eye. For a moment, Luccan sat with his eyes closed, nearly overwhelmed with the foreign noises of this Sphere. He almost drowsed, lost in the cacophony and the music of it. Then, opening his eyes, he picked up his sword.
Ragheiyont stirred and mumbled in his sleep. His movements slow and silent, Luccan rested the weapon across his knees. Did the fledgling sense it, even now, even asleep? He watched, almost holding his breath until Ragheiyont settled into deep sleep once more.
With his thumb, Luccan eased his sword loose in its scabbard. The moment the feeble moonlight touched the blade, Ragheiyont gasped a name.
“Warbringer.”
Cat spirits don’t tend to make it past their first thousand years without learning never to call anything impossible, and Luccan had long outlived the rest of his tribe. He sat rigid, his spine held straight, eyes and ears fixed on the sleeping Seyzharel demon. Ragheiyont had settled into deeper sleep once more, leaving Luccan with altogether too many questions. Who was this young demon to him? How was his fate bound up in Bel’s tragedy? If they survived the next few days, could he save the poor kit from that cursed dagger of his? Should he even try? Luccan grimaced at the mere thought.
Winged creatures brought nothing but trouble.