The Dragonswarm (28 page)

"In you, perhaps—"

"Then look to me!" I said, throwing my hands up in frustration. "I'm using all the strength I have to make humanity stronger. Perhaps I save some farmers' lives. Perhaps I save a kingdom. Perhaps I save your soul. It's all the same. It all comes down to fighting off the madness and standing up for hope."

For a long time he only stared down at the black shard between his fingers, while blood pooled in his palm. At last he met my eyes again and licked his lips and said with a dry, thin voice. "I will try my best."

"Good." I nodded, and shook myself as if waking from a dream. I looked around and saw my army in the courtyard, busy at whatever tasks Caleb had given them, but every man in earshot watched us with surreptitious glances. I frowned and met the wizard's gaze.

"I did not mean to call you down in front of them," I said, my voice cast low.

"But it is good," he said. He swallowed hard, then raised a hand to touch the star-shaped scars on his throat. His eye snapped up to mine. "You have powers in your head that I have never even glanced, don't you?"

I shrugged and looked away, and the wizard gave a sigh. "I would have a moment."

"You can have a morning," I said. "Meet me after lunch. There will be work to do."

I felt him slip away. A moment later Caleb's shadow came to stand by mine, and I felt a bitter smile twist my mouth.

"None of that was planned," I said.

He nodded. "It was well done, and better today than tomorrow."

"But all the men heard—"

"Just a handful," Caleb said. "But with any luck they'll spread the story far and wide. And now they're firmly yours. His portals brought us clear of the king's forces, and you've secured the loyalty of his men." He clapped me on the back. "You've taken all you needed from him, in only days. Well done."

"It was not a ruse," I said. "It came of what you and I discussed last night, but I meant it for him. He can save himself if he will try."

"And if he won't?"

I closed my eyes. "I cannot keep a man on fear of execution. It would be a nobler thing by far to kill him clean and be done with it."

Caleb nodded again. "Good. I do agree. And now, I know we'd planned a council, but there is more to do than I had guessed. I'd be more use to you working with the men, if we're to have a reliable defense ready before nightfall."

"
Tonight
?"

"You'll be amazed what two thousand men can do, Daven. Even with this."

"Very well," I said, "but use your reason. They'll be useless to me if they don't get
some
rest."

His eyes glittered in a dark reminder, but he didn't say a word.

"I know, I should leave you to run the army. But we will need our strength in the days we have ahead."

"Of course, my lord." He clamped his teeth so tight the muscles on his jaw bulged out, but he dipped his chin in a shallow nod and slipped away to oversee the work.

And then, surrounded by nearly three thousand men, I found myself alone. The soldiers all had jobs to do, and my lieutenants both were hard at work trying to find some hope for a future in the rubble of long, slow devastation. I glanced in the direction Lareth had gone, and back across where Caleb stood in quiet conversation with a handful of his men. Then I turned to the soaring mound of stone at the heart of it all. The ruined tower.

I looked with my wizard's sight, tracing the shape of worked stone beneath a thousand years of detritus. Even after so much time and buried under layer after layer of accumulated nature, the shape of the artificial construct revealed itself.

A human will had exerted its authority upon the environment—not by sorcery or arcane force, perhaps, but by the strength of two hands and the vision in a desperate heart. Palmagnes had been built as a bulwark against a different tide of destruction, but the shape of it still burned beneath the dirt and creeping vines.

I waved a hand again as I had done before, as one might brush the dust and cobwebs from some relic long in storage, and soil and stone rolled back across the courtyard into two great heaps. More paving stones were revealed, but then a solid line, a crumbled step that stretched ten paces left and right, and then another step, and above the third a wide platform half a pace above the courtyard floor and thirty paces end to end.

Around me, soldiers hard at work stopped their tasks to watch, but I could barely notice them. My focus followed the clean, straight lines of human will beneath the jumbled piles of time and nature. I cleared the whole platform, and two or three paces of paving stones all around it on three sides to define the shape. The fourth side, the south, was a soaring spear of broken stone. The tower itself.

But there, too, I could see the shapes that were meant to be. What looked like solid stone as heavy as a mountain concealed its own tunnels, its own caves and caverns deep. I stood in silence for some time, measuring, exploring the weight of earth and the traces of structure, and then I pressed two hands together before me, caught my breath, and pulled the hands apart.

Stone creaked and groaned and set up a rumble like thunder, and then it flowed apart. I could not brush this stone aside, but I forced it back, folding its energy up and out into the great arched doorway that should have been.

After every gesture I waited, head cocked, and curiously tested the muscles of my back and legs, my arms and shoulders. I felt nothing. No twinge of pain, no sapping weakness. I pressed ahead.

There was clutter sprawled for paces and paces between the base of the fallen tower and what had once been the door in its wall. I stretched my will in a line straight ahead of me and forced the clutter aside or propped it up on its own energies, so that instead of a pace-thick doorway to the interior of a tower, I created a long, irregular tunnel into darkness. I kept it up, reaching past the remade doorway into what should have been a wide open chamber, forcing rubble back by strength of mind until at last I breached the inner darkness.

I felt it happen. One long sigh of life-warm, musty air rolled over me, and then it was done. I opened my eyes and looked deep into the darkness, and a smile touched my lips. I stepped forward into my lair.

Or, at least, I tried. Behind me, Lareth shouted, "Smoke and shadows, man! What are you doing?" Lareth had climbed the steps to the tower's wide porch and now he came to join trotting toward me, terror in his eyes. "Don't dare set foot in there!"

"It's safe," I said. "I made it safe."

"
That
?" Lareth asked. "It's not a building. It's not a manufactured thing. It's a pile of rocks."

"Can you see its energies?" I asked, genuinely curious. He frowned at me. He frowned at the fallen tower.

After a while he shook his head. "No. And that is odd enough. I can't see anything near here. It's blank right to—"

"Right to the walls that don't exist," I said. The thought turned up the corners of my mouth. "Come with me. I'll make it all make sense."

He caught my sleeve, nervous fear in his voice. "Can
you
see through the stone?"

I nodded and let my gaze drift up the ruined tower once again. I could see the remains of the fabled Tower of Days in the skeleton of this mound of rock. I could see the broken gaps of six floors at least, see where the pillars had been, and interior walls, and the great wide stairways climbing up the outer walls, the narrow spiral at its center like a spine.

I couldn't turn away. The heart of the tower pulled me like affinity. Deep down inside I felt a need to see this through. The dark vastness of the tower's interior cried out to me, and to my shame I knew precisely why.

A shudder shook me as I realized that
this
was what had dragged me ahead of my men, had filled my heart with hope. Not the journey's end, not the promise of some refuge, not the fortress or even the dream of rebuilding a tower out of legend. It was that vast and midnight cavern under stone.

I needed to go inside and take possession of my lair. It felt like home, and I had been too long away. Something like homesickness twisted behind my breastbone, a quiet ache that had lived there for so long I didn't even notice anymore. But now I was so close, it burned like ice.

Lareth must have seen it in my eyes, because he gave a weary sigh. "You're going to go in," he said. "No matter how I plead. But I could fetch your scary shadow—"

I threw a sidelong glance and half a smile. "Caleb couldn't stop me either."

"It's dangerous, you know?" Lareth asked, but there wasn't much hope in his voice.

I met his eye, shook my head, and left him standing there. The darkness swallowed me up and closed around me and pulled me to its heart. I'd gone ten full paces before Lareth cursed and came stumbling along behind me, nervous fear wheezing in his breath. He summoned a ball of green flame to light his way, but the vastness of the cavern overwhelmed its feeble light.

I needed no light at all. The cavern felt as comfortable, as familiar as my own skin. Lareth came close upon my heel, but I felt almost alone within the quiet chamber as I moved straight into its depth. My footsteps echoed, and the dead, still air washed around me like water. And there, at the center of what once had been a great hall eighty paces end-to-end, I found a dais six inches off the ground.

It held a throne.

The thing was made of gold and marble and silver. Not carved, not inlaid or chased or cast, but made all in one piece. It was like my Chaos blade, one artifact of perfect craftsmanship untouched by age. Lareth bumped against my back, then leaned aside, and then he gasped.

"Is that the FirstKing's throne?" he asked, incredulous.

I shook my head. I turned, and there before my worst retainer—a madman who had tried to kill me more than once—I took my throne. I closed my eyes and sighed, and felt the huge darkness around me gasp and sigh as though the tower itself were a great living thing. And on the exhale, it settled all around me, into me, and in the next moment my senses extended to the great hall's farthest corners.

With a little concentration I could feel the courtyard, too, feel the thousand little lives scurrying over sand and stone, setting tents and scavenging firewood and wondering if any of this was real. I found Caleb standing on the porch just outside the tower's entrance, peering down the tunnel I had made. Worry wrinkled his brow.

My eyes snapped open, and I met Lareth's startled gaze. "It's mine," I said. "This place is mine. Now let us make it strong."

After a moment, Lareth's voice quavered in the darkness. "Could we just give it light?"

Still drunk on the feeling of home, I nearly borrowed Chaos to make a flame. I stopped myself just short and forced the stain of offered power back into the depths of my awareness, then turned my eyes to Lareth.

"You trained under Seriphenes," I said.

He frowned above his green flame, but after a heartbeat he nodded.

"He had a test," I said. "He asked me to make light."

The wizard's jaw dropped. "Well...well, yes...."

"Show me," I said.

He shook his head. "That relies on the memory of shape," he said. "It needs a lingering power, an occasional flare of torchlight or sunlight to recall. This place...."

"This place has you scared?"

"It doesn't you?" He trembled and craned his neck, staring into the empty darkness. "Can't you feel the weight of it? It's like a blindfold, like manacles, like...." He shuddered again, top to toe. "It is like being buried alive."

I didn't meet his gaze. Instead I looked around, because I did not understand at all. "Can you still not see the shapes of energy?" I asked. "I...I feel at home here. I cannot say it more clearly, but even apart from that I need only look at the lines of power—"

"I see no lines of power," he said. "That is what I mean. This place is blind to me. It's black and empty; it drags at my eyes and leaves me feeling hollowed out and helpless." He dropped his head. "Please, my lord. Let us go from here."

"Would it help to know
why
, at least?"

He met my eyes for a fraction of a heartbeat, then looked away. "I think I know," he said. "That is how a dragon looks."

"Calm your heart. There are no dragons here."

His eye flicked up to mine again, and he held it this time. He released a heavy breath. "Are there not, my lord?"

I smiled. It tasted sad and bitter, but it was a smile. "I am not a dragon, Lareth. Not exactly."

"Not exactly," he said wryly. "But it was not so hard to face you when you let me hide from reason."

"You'll grow used to it in time," I said. "I'm not a dragon, but there are similarities. This place will be my lair. That army is my brood. And you. And Caleb."

He straightened his shoulders and focused on something far off. His voice took on the lecturing-hall tone. "And yet...you're
not
a dragon. I have seen your power. There is eerie Chaos there—"

"But lifeblood, too," I said. "And some small amount of wizardry. And everything I've taken from the men who call me lord."

He nodded at that, a new curiosity in his eyes. "You can blaze like a bonfire," he said. "But how do you use it?"

I opened my mouth to answer him honestly, but then I hesitated. He had shown no sign of madness, not since he had met at the tower's mouth, but this man was not my friend. This, though...this was something I needed to discuss, and no one else I had could help me here.

At last I shrugged and told him openly, "I don't know. I don't know how to use it. I grow less tired, I think. I do not thirst, perhaps? But what is that? The power around my soul seems so much stronger than that."

"It is," he said. "And I have seen you use it. On the steps outside the tower. I watched you waved aside these tons of earth—"

"No," I cut him off. "No, that's a power I received from the dragon blood. I can reshape the raw reality with will."

"But there's a cost," the wizard said. "There always is a cost. In mind or in body, in power or in precious stones. There always is a cost."

"It used to make me tired," I said, as I had told Caleb the night before. "But that has changed."