Old Dark (The Last Dragon Lord Book 1) (20 page)

“Answer your Lord, girl!”

“You have been asleep.”

“Of course I have. And I demand that you return me to my palace and advise me where Fenroot is located so that I may disembowel him.”

Miri shook her head. From her eyes, he could tell that she did not understand everything he said. He repeated it again, slower, with particular emphasis on the words “palace,” “Fenroot,” and “disembowel.”

“Your palace is no more. It was destroyed after the attack on your life. I am sorry.”

His thoughts rushed to his parents. How could he have forgotten about their wellbeing? A knot caught in his throat.
 

“My parents! Where are they? Father! Mother!” He screamed as loud as he could, hoping to hear their familiar roar.
 

“They are dead.”

Dark shrank back into the cell. He could not cry, for his eyes were sore and swollen, and he would not show weakness.
 

“You lie.”

“What do you remember?”

“I was betrayed.”

“Where?”

“In the woods. Outside an elven village.”

“By whom?”

“Fenroot. And Moss.”

He remembered Norwyn. What a mess all of this was! His heart pulsed rapidly as he thought of his friend.

“Norwyn!” he cried. “Old friend, where are you?”

“Norwyn is not here,” Miri said.

“Where am I?”

Miri had pulled out a notebook and had been scribbling something with a metal pen as he spoke. He couldn’t read all the writing, but some of the words were familiar:
 

Vitals
 

Memory
 

Speaking

Appearance
 

“What are you writing?”

“I am studying you.”

Dark roared. “I demand answers, girl!”

“You have been asleep for one thousand years.”

Silence. Then Dark laughed. His laughter took both the woman and the man off guard.
 

“No. I demand that you tell me the truth, not more lies.”

Miri put the strange black piece of metal to her ear again. A few moments later, two men wheeled in a large screen, at least ten feet tall. They pressed an array of colored indentations on a panel in front and it blinked to life.
 

Living images streamed across the screen, as if they were right there, close enough to touch. The colors and sound made his head hurt. Dark could not comprehend what he saw: humans, dragons, and elves moving together in a tall village that stretched for miles. The buildings were made of metal with faces of glass.
 

“Lord Alsatius Dark,” Miri said, smiling. “Welcome to the future.”

XXVIII

Miri stepped back as Old Dark snapped at his cage. The dragon broke a tooth, and it bounced across the floor.
 

“What do you mean I’m in the future?” he yelled.
 

“A lot has changed since your reign,” Miri said. “But some things are the same. That is why we can understand each other.”

This had been, to date, the most exciting day of her career. How many scholars got to interview their favorite historical figures? She resisted the urge to bury her head in her notebook and comment on Dark’s every move. She regretted that she hadn’t set up a camera to record the encounter.
 

“If this place is the future, then I am its lord,” Dark said.
 

“No. There are no more dragon lords.”

The words hit Dark like an attack. He was out of breath from snapping at the cage, and the exchange was draining him of all the energy he had regained after eating.
 

He’s not what he used to be,
Miri told herself.
 

Old Dark must have been fearsome in the days of his reign. A big black dragon with a massive wingspan. If you saw those wings flapping in the sky late at night, you were in trouble.
 

Now, he was the equivalent of an old man. He had missing teeth, dry scales, one of his wings was broken, and he only had one eye.
 

She couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. She wanted to help him recover. But in the back of her mind, all of her research told her,
Be careful. He’s not your typical dragon.

“If this is the future, I demand more proof,” Dark said.
 

Miri walked over to the television screen and turned up the volume. Footage of Governor Grimoire streamed across the screen.
 

“That is our governor.”

Dark regarded her statement. “A governor ... as in, one who governs? He’s your elder, then.”

The term “elder” made Miri shudder. Elves no longer arranged their society like that. The word made her think of mass suicides and mounds and mounds of bodies.
 

“He
is
an elder, but not in the sense that you’re thinking.”

“Hmm.”

The governor shook hands and stood on a platform giving a speech, gesturing bombastically.
 

“He looks like an elder to me.”

“Elves no longer live in villages,” Miri said. “Fifty years after your curse, they gathered in big numbers. They now live in cities.”

“Which are?”

“Really really big villages.”

“So that explains the large metal and glass huts.”

“They’re called high-rises. Or skyscrapers. But yes. The early cities were comprised of huts. Elves evolved over time. They created new tools and learned from humans how to build stronger buildings.”

“You refer to elves as ‘they.’ You, too, are elven, are you not?”

“I have elven blood, yes, but my mother was a human.”

Dark gasped. Then he laughed. “Oh, this is something. Elves lying with humans. Never in my reign did I imagine that. If you have human blood, how in the world do you use magic then, girl?”

The sarcasm in his voice irked her. She didn’t know if he actually believed her.
 

“I can cast magic,” she said. “But if I have children, they may not be able to. Soon, within the next few decades, no one will be able to use magic.”

“As it should be,” Dark said, scowling.
 

“Do you believe what I am telling you, or are you testing me?” Miri asked.
 

Dragon tactics. Sometimes you had to be unpredictably blunt.
 

She had taught Dragon Communication 101 for ten years. You had to approach them like you approached a wild animal: with compassion. But unlike the case with most animals, you also had to have the willingness to do harm. Otherwise they wouldn’t take you seriously.
 

Old Dark grinned. “You, my dear, understand dragons far more than any elven woman I’ve ever met.”

“Am I wasting my time trying to help you?”

“Your mythology,” Dark said, “is interesting.”

“It’s not mythology.”

“Anything that does not revolve around me is mythology.”

“The world no longer revolves around you.”

“Then tell me who is in charge of this so-called future.”

How was she going to explain the concept of democracy? Sometimes
she
didn’t even understand it.
 

“No one in particular is in charge. Everyone lives according to a set of laws. We have leaders, but they aren’t lords.”

Dark laughed again. “What kind of society doesn’t thrive on power? Force! That is the only language you elves understand. And what of dragons? Why haven’t they sorted you out?”

Miri frowned. “Dragons are not the same as they used to be.”

“I demand that you stop being cryptic.”

“They no longer wield control of magic.”

Dark blew smoke from his nostrils.
 

“Explain yourself or I will send you and your friend into flames.”

He was bluffing. Dragons could breathe fire, but to do so in such close quarters would mean his own death, too. He wouldn’t be able to escape from the cage if he set the place on fire. He didn’t strike her as a suicidal soul, no matter how angry he was.
 

“You wouldn’t dare burn me,” she said, taking one step closer to the cage.
 

At her words, the smoke wafting from his nose stopped. And then a fist-sized flame leapt into his mouth from his throat, and he blew it in her face. The flame stopped just inches in front of her, and she felt the volcano-like warmth, as if someone had brought a furnace next to her face and then turned it off quickly.
 

Her face tingled and she wanted to feel it to make sure she was okay, but she held her ground and never took her eyes off Dark.
 

“That is a cruel thing to do to the woman who is helping you.”

“I don’t need your cursed help!”

“Then I’ll be quiet and you can keep wondering what happened to the rest of your race. Good luck figuring it out from your cage. Come on, Earl.”

Earl gave her a look so as to say “you’re not serious,” but Miri about-faced, slung her purse over her arm and strode to the door.
 

Earl’s heavy, labored footsteps sounded behind her.
 

“Uh, Miss, are you sure—”

Miri shushed him.
 

She walked two hundred feet to a pair of double doors, and had her fingers wrapped around the handle when Dark called out to her.
 

“Oh oh, aren’t you a fiery one, my girl? Return to me.”

“Under one condition!” Miri shouted, not looking back.
 

“I am the only one with the authority to set conditions.”

“You didn’t let me finish.”

Dark chuckled.
 

“Are you listening?”

“I
am
listening, dear.”

Miri said nothing.
 

“Were you going to speak?” Dark asked.
 

“I don’t answer to ‘dear.’ I’m not your subject, and if you think you can treat me like one, I’ll make sure you get nothing else to eat.”

Dark chuckled again. His low-pitched laugh was sarcastic, sinister, and it unsettled her. However hurt he was, his legendary manipulation tactics were still at their height.
 

“I will tell you everything I know as long as you tell me everything
you
know,” Miri said.
 

A long pause.
 

“What could you possibly want to know about me that isn’t already exalted to the heavens?”

“That’s for me to decide, not you.”

Another long pause.
 

She pushed on the handle, and a metal clicking reverberated throughout the open factory floor.
 

“Goodbye, Mr. Dark.”

She had one foot out the door when the dragon yelled for her.
 

“Return. I accept your terms.”

“Really?” Miri said, trying to project disbelief.

“Yes. I give you my word. Now, return and tell me what happened to my race before I set this place on fire. I deserve to know.”

Miri turned around and walked back to the cage, grinning.

XXIX

Lucan stood on a platform in front of two thousand people with a microphone in his hand.
 

He was in a cathedral with a tall, sloping ceiling. A massive pipe organ took up the entire wall behind him, and the air smelled like wax and burned-out candles.
 

The crowd, who had been quiet since he took the stage, hung on his every word.
 

He’d had a hard time reading them at first. Not because they were in a church that just four years ago had supported the governor, but because his head reeled from his meeting with Ennius. The dragon had hit him hard, and he couldn’t see straight for an hour afterward.
 

The crowd rustled, and his head spun again.
 

Whispers spread through the mass of people like electricity.
 

Push through it,
Lucan told himself.
Don’t let a dragon throw you off.

He leaned against a podium and gestured at a poster:

LUCAN FOR GOVERNOR

He pointed at the sign. “You guys rock.”

The people cheered and waved their hands at him.
 

“I just met with the governor.”

A few boos surged through the crowd. He’d expected that. Celesse had even written it into his speech:
 

Pause for boos.
 

“What, that’s all the booing I get?” he asked. “Let’s try that again. I just met with the governor...”

The crowd booed again, and people stomped so hard they shook the pews.
 

He pretended to be surprised. “That’s more like it. You guys want to know what we talked about?”

The crowd begged him.

“Yes!”

“Tell us!”

Lucan waited for the suspense and grinned. “Not a whole lot, actually.”

He unfolded a sheet of paper and held it up. “I had planned on talking about my Magic Conservation plan with him. He keeps talking about how I don’t have any plans, and when I give him one, he ignores it. All he talked about instead was himself. Can you believe that? I hope you do. Because you all deserve better than that.

“Governor Grimoire—my uncle—talks a lot of crap, but you know what he
hasn’t
mentioned? Our environmental crisis. Everyone in this room will be affected by it. It should be the topic of this election, but except for me, the other candidates are ignoring it.”

He slid a grimoire out of his pocket and activated a wheel. It let out cool, pink waves that emanated throughout the church.
 

“What you see here will soon no longer be possible. Your kids, my kids, and the children of the future won’t be able to use magic. This entire city is going to crumble like a sand castle in the rain. I thought our civilization was about making each generation better off than the last. Doesn’t seem that way to me.”

He turned off the grimoire and paced around the stage as a small pocket of the crowd near the stage clapped.
 

“Thirty years ago, a group of elven elders got together and talked about the crisis. They knew that one day, someone like me would be on a stage talking to you like this. They heard about studies that showed the aquifer was shrinking at an alarming rate. The very energy that was powering our society, that was so plentiful ages ago, was in danger of vanishing forever. These were great men and women. They were forward-thinkers. They knew that the rampant magic casting could not last. So they did something about it. They locked a hundred of the greatest scientists, engineers, and politicians of their generation into a room and didn’t let them out until they figured out a solution. My uncle was among those men. So was my father. Their solution was a good one, but it was temporary: Abstraction.