The sun fell before him. The red trail of its dying light filled the sky, barely illuminating the ground at his feet. He could still see them, though … the countless bodies that blanketed the earth like ash.

Swords lay scattered. Torn, faded banners rose and fell weakly in the evening wind, their staves still propped against the bodies of their bearers. The glint was gone from their armor; their bright gold breastplates faded to shadow against the fallen sun. The twisted black dragons hung dully to their chests.

The crest of Midlan now lay dead with its army.

Argon was the sole survivor. He walked among the dead, his eyes fixed upon the jagged line between the crest of bodies and the reddened sky. His feet moved surely through the wastes. Steel and flesh parted around his legs like smoke: wisping away as he passed, coming back together behind him. Argon could not feel the breeze that stirred the banners, nor the faded warmth of the sun.

He knew the battle wasn’t over quite yet. He knew something was coming.

No sooner had this thought crossed his mind than the vision began to shake. The earth trembled violently, its quaking grew more fierce with every passing second. A mound of bodies rose into a hill as the shaking continued. It swelled, blistering until a column of fire spewed from its top.

Argon shielded his eyes against the bright yellow of the flames — flames that burned hotter than any he’d ever felt. He covered his face with his robes to keep the heat from singeing his flesh. Only when the fires abated did he dare to look.

A figure had appeared upon the hill of bodies. It stood in the charred bowl the fires had left behind and seemed to carry both the dawn and the night: its robes were the deepest black, its head wreathed in bright yellow flame. The figure stood silently — a wicked grin fixed upon its face.

“Turn back,” Argon cried.

He knew this specter’s name, heard it whispered among the many legends of Midlan. It was a wraith that traveled freely between the ruins of the past and the chaos of the Veil — a spirit known as the Firecrowned King.

Argon’s blood chilled when the specter turned its empty eyes upon him, but he raised his hands in defiance. “You have no business among the living!”

The Firecrowned King didn’t move. The pits of its eyes and its horrible grin stayed locked on Argon. Slowly, it reached inside its blackened robes.

Argon tensed, the beginning of a spell formed upon his lips. But it wasn’t a sword the Firecrowned King drew — it was a die. The die fell out from between the sharp tips of the specter’s fingers, spinning as it rolled towards Argon’s feet. He watched it clatter and clink over the dead, striking hard in places where he’d simply passed through.

At last, the die came to a stop before him. Argon studied it closely. His fists clenched at his side when he saw the die’s familiar weathered edges. Symbols covered its ivory skin. They moved constantly — swirling, drifting across the die’s many faces. But there was one symbol that shone clear.

It was carved into the face that’d landed upwards: an image scrawled in lines that shimmered like blood. There was only one die powerful enough to wake the dead, and Argon knew he had no hope against its will.

Defeat dragged him to his knees. Argon stared at the die’s painted message — an image of a tiny sword cleft in two — and
felt
its intentions before his mind had a chance to grasp them:

Change, great change — an act that would send tremors across the six regions … and render even the sword useless.

Dread filled his chest in an icy rush. When he looked up, he saw that the Firecrowned King watched him silently, grinning. “Please,” Argon whispered. “Please, for the sake of all the living, go back to the river. Forget your task — sleep in peace.”

The flames around the Firecrowned King’s head seemed to swell as it stood taller upon the hill of bodies. “Move aside,
Seer
.” It hissed the word mockingly; yellow light flared up behind its teeth. “I have been summoned.”

Two great, black wings erupted from the specter’s back. They unfurled, covering the sky in shadow and stirring the earth with a mighty wind. Swords, shields and bodies flew into the air as the wings rose skyward. When they snapped back down, the whole battlefield flew forward like a wave.

Argon was crushed beneath it.

*******

Something wet coated his lips. Argon raised his head slowly and tasted the wetness with the tip of his tongue. It was warm, slightly metallic.

Blood.

The red stream began at his nose, where something deep inside had ruptured. The pressure faded a bit as he woke; the blood stopped its trickling. He could feel the warmth begin cool, crusting onto his skin and among the strands of his long, gray beard.

Argon groaned aloud. He’d known something was about to break. He could feel trouble churning in the future, a changing of the tides. But he’d hoped with all the desperation of mankind that he’d been mistaken — surely Fate wouldn’t have intervened twice in one lifetime.

Now there was no doubting it. The darkening of his bowl was the first sign of her coming: the last vision he’d been able to draw up was of the boy in the Endless Plains — the boy from the mountains who had no future. Sending Eveningwing to his aid was the last help he’d been able to offer. After that, the waters had gone dark and his visions had abandoned him.

He’d thought perhaps that Fate was only punishing him for toying with the King, for protecting the mountain boy. But it turned out she had something worse in mind.

Visions were the second sign of her coming — not the visions he scried for himself, but otherworldly bursts rife with her will. Argon could do no more than weather them. He was tossed back and forth, sliding from the Veil and into the future like a cup upon a ship’s table. He had no power to rise, no strength to take the helm. He was Fate’s bonded servant. And when she summoned him, he had to answer.

Her visions hadn’t always troubled him. The last time he’d been summoned, Argon had sat in the quiet and allowed Fate’s will to come to him gently. Her words slid behind his eyes as softly as a dream.

But his body was not as strong as it’d once been. This last vision had struck with such force that he knew it would take days to recover. He was ragged on the inside and the out.

Argon’s eyes struggled to adjust to the dim light. The room should’ve been brighter. He’d lit candles and placed them all about his desk. They’d been part of a ward he’d cast to make certain he wouldn’t be disturbed. But as he looked around, he realized his spell had been undone: every flickering light was extinguished … save for one.

A single candle burned upon his desk, its flame barely illuminating the space before it. Faded letters lay softly across the thick, yellowed pages of a book — a book, Argon suddenly remembered, that he’d been trying desperately to read.

The Myth of Draegoth
was its title. It was a legend of how the first King came to be, how he’d tamed the Wildlands and turned them into the Kingdom. The words were simple enough for a child to read. Argon had waded through far thicker tomes with ease.

But there was something … strange, about this book. Cold air slid across the back of his neck — an air too cold for a spring evening. Perhaps the young mages had been right about this book, after all.

Perhaps it truly
was
cursed.

The chill had only made it halfway down his spine before Argon saw the dark puddle that stained one of the
Myth
’s pages. He’d collapsed upon the desk, and the blood from his nose had leaked out across the words.

He soaked the blood up with the sleeve of his robes, swearing under his breath. But the damage had already been done: a brownish stain now set behind the words. Its bleary edges faded them even more. Though Argon had to strain to read it, he thought he could still make the message out:

From the bonds of magic pure and earth’s most gleaming vein, the archmage did forge the King’s salvation: a protection called the Dragonsbane
.

No sooner had he finished reading than the flame of the last candle hissed and went out, as if a pair of invisible fingers had snuffed it.

Argon sat very still in the darkness left behind. He didn’t dare move; he didn’t dare breathe. Even his heart seemed to hush its beating. The flames and the shadows of Fate’s vision rose starkly before his eyes, alive in their fury. He could doubt no longer:

Something was coming.

Chapter 1

The Firecrowned King

King Crevan did not know the hour.

He blinked against the mist that filmed his eyes until his chamber walls came into focus. Red vines covered the stone in front of him. They seemed to grow as he watched: crawling across the bumps and chips, racing along the mortar lines. The vines moved strangely, though — growing
downward
instead of up. He wondered where they might be going.

Crevan followed the vines’ snaking path to the floor, where they ran into the body of a soldier.

It was a guard of Midlan, fully dressed in gold-tinged armor. His body was crumpled around the butt of a spear, his hands frozen in death — still grasping at the shaft that hung out of his chest. The twisting black dragon on his breastplate seemed to squirm in the firelight. It wriggled against the splintered wood, dancing with the flames.

Crevan watched as the vines crept towards the floor, finally coming to rest within the dark puddle that blossomed beneath the soldier’s chest. One by one, each branch of the tangle sank inside the puddle.

Now it was impossible to tell. Anybody who saw them would think these vines had grown
up
wards from the puddle, but they would be wrong. Crevan alone knew their secret. He’d been chosen, privileged to watch them bloom …

The vines changed suddenly: their twining skin turned green and sprouted heavy leaves. Moonlight burst from between the mortar lines — cold and ghostly pale. The wall’s heavy bricks hurtled backwards. They fell soundlessly onto the thick grass beyond where the moon scored them white. Hums rose from the markers, the whole earth trembled with the voices of the dead. They were calling for him, cursing him —

A breath rattled from Crevan’s chest as he fought the madness away. Slowly, the mist retreated to the edge of his vision. These weren’t vines: they were lines of blood. They hadn’t bloomed, but had erupted from the soldier’s chest. He’d come into Crevan’s chambers unannounced, bursting in with stomps and bellows. It was the soldier’s intrusion that’d caused the mist to rise …

He couldn’t remember what had happened after that.

The hearth fire was nearly burned out. Darkness was creeping in. Crevan had ordered the windows in his chambers to be sealed with stone and mortar. She was coming for him, coming to finish what she’d started. He wasn’t going to give her an easy way into the fortress. But with the windows sealed, the darkness was thick.

He didn’t want to be trapped among the shadows.

Crevan clawed his way to the door and shoved it open. Light from the hallway flooded in. The servants had added more sconces to the wall: now the many torches were spaced hardly a stone apart. Though it was drowned in fiery light, the hallway wasn’t safe enough. There were too many doors for her to hide behind, too many ways she might slip in. He had to get somewhere safe.

A large onyx dragon stood guard over his chambers. He pressed a spine of the dragon’s tail and stamped his feet impatiently as a wall slid to the side, revealing a narrow passageway.

It was only after the wall had closed behind him that Crevan allowed himself a steadying breath. Nobody else knew about these passages. Here, he could move safely.

Some of the tunnels were chamber-sized, some were hardly big enough to crawl through. They wound around the castle in unpredictable patterns. Crevan had spent years memorizing their twists and turns. He knew which paths to follow merely by glancing at the wear on their steps, or the coloring of their bricks. It wasn’t long before he’d made his way to the throne room.

He slammed the creaking door behind him and shoved the tapestry aside. The servants must’ve just come in: the torches were fresh and the hearth fire roared. There was nowhere for the shadows to hide.

A plate of food sat upon the mantle, but Crevan shoved it away. The silver plate clattered onto the floor; the hot meal the cook had prepared spilled across the stone. Crevan snatched the goblet that had sat behind the plate and downed half its fiery contents in two quick gulps, grimacing as the liquor steadied him.

Drinking took the edge from his madness. The guard in his chambers was only the most recent victim … Crevan had lost control before.

The great table in the middle of the room lay broken upon its side. Splintered stubs were all that remained of its legs; its top bore the deep gashes of Crevan’s sword. Nearly every chair in the room had been shattered — splintered against the walls or hacked to pieces. Only one seat remained, and he kept it planted beside the hearth.

Sometimes, when the red mist faded, he would sit in that chair and watch the flames do their work …

“Your Majesty. We finally meet.”

Crevan drew his sword and spun, leveling it at the hearth chair. When he saw the creature perched upon it, the blade nearly slipped from his grasp.

It was a
skeleton — a corpse. Its bones were blackened, as if the man the bones belonged to had been burned alive in a fire. The robes draped across its shoulders were scorched at the hems and so littered with holes that Crevan could see the curve of its spine peeking through the tears.

A skull set atop the spine, its face frozen in an unsettling grin. In place of its eyes were two hollow pits, so wide and deep that they seemed to be trying to swallow him. The crack between the skeleton’s ever-bared teeth glowed with the bright yellow warning of a furnace. Dancing tongues of flame sprouted from its forehead, temples, and across the base, ringing its skull in a burning crown.

“It’s you,” Crevan breathed, hardly daring to believe it. “The Firecrowned King.”

He knew the legend of the specter of Midlan well. It had begun during the reign of the second King — who claimed the ghost of the first King had appeared to him late in the night, robed in dusk and alive with flame. The specter charged the second King with a great task and in exchange, had offered him an eternal crown.

But he’d failed.

Every King since had sought an audience with the specter of Midlan. It became tradition for a new King to spend his coronation night alone, waiting in the throne room. If he was truly worthy of the eternal crown, the specter might appear and charge him with a task.
Those who went on the specter’s errands were often killed or gripped in madness. None had ever completed his task.

Crevan feared he was already mad. He downed the rest of his drink and shut his eyes tightly. But when he opened them, the specter was still grinning.

“I assure you I’m quite real, Your Majesty.” The Firecrowned King’s bare ribs expanded with its breath — cracking slightly to reveal the molten yellow of its marrow. “See?”

Crevan wasn’t fooled. “If you’re truly the Firecrowned King, why didn’t you appear to me on my coronation night?”

The specter twined the sharp tips of its fingers in the bed of its lap. “You hadn’t yet proved yourself,” it whispered.

Hadn’t yet proved himself? No King since the rise of the whisperers had managed what Crevan had done. This specter was a plague, a vision. He threw the goblet aside and raised his sword —

“Ah!”

Burning pain seared his flesh. He wrenched himself from the specter’s grasp and stumbled backwards. His arm stung as if he’d laid it among the coals. But when he rolled up his sleeve, he saw no wound.

“I know what you fear, Your Majesty. I know the question you whisper into the darkness. But you aren’t losing your mind … you’re mad with
rage
. And you should be,” the specter said, reclining in its chair. “Ultimate power should be yours. The entire Kingdom should kneel at your feet. But instead, a final enemy taints your crown. You’ll never be anything as long as she lives.”

Crevan clutched his wounded arm tightly and stepped back, inching towards the hidden door.
“Have you come here to mock me, specter?”

“Not quite,” it hissed. “The old Kings once conquered these lands with the help of their mages, and theirs was the only voice of rule. My master has been watching you closely since you took the throne. She knows you plan to return the Kings to their former glory. You’ve defeated the whisperers. You’ve bound the mages to your will. Thus far, you’ve managed to control your Kingdom with the help of your Sovereign Five …” its ghoulish head tilted, “but now
they’ve begun to fail you.”

Crevan knew what the Firecrowned King spoke of. Behind the veil of mist were the worried faces of his stewards. They were faded thoughts — memories made more distant by the anger that consumed him. But he could still hear bits of their panicked messages:

… merchants have overthrown Reginald … supplies from Lord Gilderick are running unusually late … Sahar’s shipment never arrived … no word from Titus …

The Firecrowned King cracked its bony neck, startling Crevan from his thoughts. “Yes, your throne is crumbling out from under you — while you fret over a single enemy. Such a weak King will never be worthy of my eternal crown.”

“The Dragongirl is no common enemy,” Crevan growled. “My army can’t stop her, my mages can’t find her — she’s even blinded my Seer! She is a beast without equal, and she’s sworn to kill me.” The dull tips of his fingers brushed involuntarily across his scar — the raised, jagged cut that sliced through his beard and stopped just short of his throat.

He’d been a fingertip from death.

“Without equal?” Tiny sparks flew from the jagged crack of its nostrils as the specter snorted. “Oh, now there’s where you’re quite wrong. For hidden in the maw of your fortress is a hunter even
she
will fear.”

Crevan forgot his pain. “What hunter? Where do I find it?”

The specter’s frozen grin suddenly became more menacing. “In the place you swore you’d never go again.”

Crevan sank back on his heels. His tongue was so dry he could scarcely form the words: “You mean …? No,” he growled when the Firecrowned King nodded. “There’s nothing in that chamber but curses and spirits. I won’t be lured to my death.”

“Death will take you eventually,
mortal
, whether I lure you to it or not. Mankind has but a dot of ink with which to leave its mark. A careful quill-stroke will surely fade, but a line pressed boldly may last an age.” The Firecrowned King spread its emaciated arms. “How will you die, Crevan?”

He didn’t get to answer.

The molten yellow lines of specter’s marrow swelled as the charred bones spread apart, expanding until they cracked. Rays of light shone through the ever-widening rifts in its skull. They flooded the room with heat that singed the hair on Crevan’s chin.

He threw an arm over his face as the specter exploded. A blast of flame and light knocked him backwards. The torches sputtered, the hearth fire choked and went out. Darkness swallowed the room.

Crevan lay paralyzed on the floor for hours after, covering his eyes against the many faces that watched him from the shadows.

BOOK: Dragonsbane (Book 3)

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