Trail of the Black Wyrm - Chris Pierson Read online

  A statue she knew too well.

  A moan escaped Essana’s lips, and she fell painfully to her knees. Barreth had brought the statue to the castle of Coldhope, their home, several months ago. It was said to be an ancient relic from the lost empire of Aurim—worth a small fortune to the right people. They’d both hated the thing, but had kept it, hoping to sell it to sages in the city of Kristophan. They had hidden it beneath the castle, out of sight.

  Not long after, the elf had come. Shedara had been seeking the statue for months. She called it the Hooded One and told them its tale: hewn in the image of Maladar, a mad sorcerer-king who once ruled Aurim, it was said to house his spirit, trapped within. The Hooded One was dangerous beyond reckoning, and Shedara had come to see that it was destroyed. But before they could do anything about it, Barreth had been drawn away, to fight the Uigan barbarians as they crossed the straits of Tiderun. He rode out, giving the statue into Shedara’s keeping.

  Then Essana’s memories ended, and her nightmares began. The dragon had come for her. It and other fiends—little, shadowy creatures that killed with knives that spilled no blood—overran Coldhope. They brought her here. And they also brought the Hooded One.

  The dragon circled the pyramid … once, twice … then spread its wings and swooped down. It set down the statue, and dropped the other shape onto the altar. Looking closer, Essana saw it was an elf—small, naked save for a loincloth of woven leaves and a necklace of red and yellow stones. His face was painted with white lines, and his head was shaved, save for a tight, black knot of hair at the crown of his head. He was battered, blood leaking from his nose. He groaned, blinking, then saw the Brethren and cried out, trying to rise.

  He couldn’t: his legs wouldn’t work. The dragon had broken his back.

  The great wyrm settled on the far end of the roof, tucking in its wings and lowering its head. Its eyes fixed on Essana as the largest of the Brethren strode toward the altar. In his hand he held a long, sickle-bladed knife. Essana knew he was the one called the Slayer. The elf’s struggles grew more frantic.

  The Faceless turned toward the statue, and Essana saw that it had changed. When she’d last seen it, it had been shrouded; now, somehow, its stone cowl had fallen back to reveal a ruined, fleshless face, much like the Brethren’s. One of them, the Speaker, raised his hands to it and intoned in a deep, mellifluous voice.

  “Hail, the Faceless Emperor! Maladar an-Desh, lord of wizards, reaver of cities, sleeper within the stone!”

  “Hail, the Faceless!” echoed the Brethren.

  “We give you the blood of the innocent. Let his life sustain yours until the time of your return.”

  The elf’s shrieks were not in a language Essana knew, but she understood nonetheless. He called to his ancestors, to the gods. The Slayer seized the knot of his hair, jerked his head back, and with the practiced movement of a butcher, cut his throat.

  The cries ended in an awful drowning sound. The elf’s struggles ceased. Blood flowed thick. The Slayer put away his knife and produced a bowl, made from an empty skull. He held it under the killing wound until it was full to the brim. Then he walked to the Hooded One, raised it in salute, and poured the blood at the statue’s feet.

  “Blood for the Faceless!” he shouted.

  “Blood!” the Brethren repeated.

  The Master seized Essana by the shoulders, dragging her to her feet. Roughly he thrust her forward, toward the statue. She stumbled again, light-headed with shock.

  “Be careful!” said the Keeper. “The child must not be harmed.”

  The Master waved him off, then strode forward and hauled Essana up before the Hooded One. “Behold, sleeper!” he called. “Behold your vessel, and know your time is nigh. The child will come, as the Watcher proclaimed. The child will come, and be yours.”

  Essana looked up at the Master, horror robbing her of speech. He stared down at her, and though his face was incapable of emotion, his eyes burned with scorn. The last piece of the puzzle fell into place. She knew why the dragon had brought her here. Why they wanted her son.

  “Yes, my dear,” rasped the Master. “You see, don’t you? Maladar’s spirit stirs. It longs to quit its prison of stone. But it cannot. Not yet. He needs flesh to house him. The Faceless seeks a body.”

  Finally, it was too much. The sheer awfulness of it overwhelmed her. With a despairing sigh, Essana Forlo collapsed.

  Chapter

  1

  COLDHOPE, THE IMPERIAL LEAGUE

  The wind whipped in off the Tiderun, raising foamy caps on the surface of the water. It was a chill breeze, the first sign of the coming autumn. Gulls fought it, flapping hard to try to get out to sea but barely moving at all. No ships plied the waves. Surf exploded against the rocky shore, sending tall billows of spray streaming inland.

  Barreth Forlo faced the wind and the spray and cared about neither. He leaned against the rail of the balcony known as the Northwatch, the largest overlook of Coldhope Keep. This place had been his home, once, but it no longer felt like it. The castle had not fallen—was still intact, in truth. But it had been overthrown, by an enemy no walls could stop. They had come, in secret and in silence, and they had taken away all he had left to care for in this world.

  And he had no idea what to do about it.

  It was because of the statue, the damned Aurish statue. He cursed the day the Hooded One had fallen into his possession. He cursed Harlad, the pirate—dead now, with his crew, amid the isles of Mislaxa’s Necklace—who had given the artifact to him, as ransom for violating Coldhope’s waters. Most of all, though, he cursed himself, for not dumping the gods-be-cursed thing into the sea when he found out how evil it was. He’d been greedy—had seen only the gold the statue would bring among the scholars of the capital—and now he paid for his avarice.

  He beat his fist against the balustrade, skinned a knuckle, stuck a stinging finger in his mouth. The tang of blood washed over his tongue. He barely tasted it. He was lost in memory, reliving the days just past. It seemed a lifetime since he’d ridden out of Coldhope. He’d gone to fight the Uigan, a barbarian horde who had gathered under a mighty prince and ridden south for plunder. They had crossed the Tiderun—a shallow gap between their lands and his—when the three moons brought the tides so low that the waters fled. They were thousands strong. His men had numbered a few hundred. Not one of them had thought they had a chance.

  And yet, by a miracle, they had persevered. A mighty wave, conjured by magic, had come raging down the Run and swept most of the horde away. Though many good men had died in the fighting—including Forlo’s best friend, the minotaur Grath—the Imperial League’s defenders had prevailed. The Uigan were broken, and their leader, a warrior who could take the form of a steppe-tiger, was slain. Against all expectation, Forlo had hurried home from the battlefield victorious—only to find utter defeat awaiting him.

  It was clear to him now: the fight against the Uigan had been a ruse, nothing more—a distraction to pull Coldhope’s warriors away. When they were gone, the shadow-fiends had struck. Twisted, wicked creatures that once had been living kender, the shadows had overrun the keep, killed its few defenders, and taken three things beyond price:

  The statue. His wife. His unborn son.

  He’d returned six days ago, dust-caked and road-weary. He’d come on foot, his horse slain by the shadows upon the road. And he hadn’t come alone. He turned now, to look back over his shoulder.

  Hult stood still, watching him without seeming to. A youth of not yet twenty summers, he had been the Uigan prince’s protector. It had been his duty to avenge his fallen master on the battlefield. And yet, he had not done that duty. Forlo still didn’t know why. They didn’t speak each other’s language. But Hult hadn’t been far from him since that day, and he stayed close now, trying not to look directly at the sea. The water had devoured his people, on the verge of their greatest victory. Forlo could sense the boy’s fear, his hatred of the heaving waves. He understood; there were things he feare
d and hated too.

  Six days. He still didn’t know where his family was. Or where to begin looking.

  “I won’t learn anything here,” he muttered to himself. “I don’t know how I’ll find them again, but the answer isn’t in Coldhope.”

  Hult said nothing. He seldom did, and then only in the strange, harsh tongue of the Uigan. He simply stood, one hand on the hilt of his saber, the curved blade his people called a shuk. His tanned face betrayed no emotion. The lone braid he wore atop his head—the rest of his scalp was bald—flapped like a pennant in the wind.

  “We have to go,” Forlo insisted. “We’ve got to leave this castle. There are places we can seek help, people who can give us answers. Somewhere. We’ll find them. We must pick up the trail, somehow.”

  Hult said nothing. Forlo grunted, turned to cast one last look out to sea, then turned his back on the waters and strode down the Northwatch to an open doorway into the keep. Quietly, the Uigan followed.

  Coldhope was dark within, the shutters closed against the gale, except for one that banged ceaselessly, off in the servants’ wing. Forlo had lit only a handful of lamps and candles, keeping a lone fire on the hearth of the greatroom. Darkness gnawed at the vaulted ceiling; the banners and weapons and animal heads upon the halls stood dark and foreboding. Once, this had been a vibrant place, alive. Now it felt like a tomb. Forlo knew he could not spend a seventh day within its walls.

  For all the stillness and gloom, though, the greatroom wasn’t empty. A lone figure, a woman, sat at the far end of a long banquet table in its midst. She sat with her head bowed, an empty wine cup before her. There was something else, too: something on which she focused all her attention, so strongly she didn’t hear Forlo and Hult approach. Only when they were a few paces from her did Shedara of Armach look up.

  The elf was tired and haggard, her face so pale it looked almost blue. Streaks of white ran through her coppery hair, a strange sight in one whose people stayed young for centuries. Those marks were new, signs of struggle against darkness and despair. Shedara had been at Coldhope when the shadows came; they had cornered her in the master bedchamber, where she had tried in vain to keep them from grabbing Essana. She had barely slept since then. Now she met Forlo’s gaze, and her shoulders slumped. Dejected, she tossed the object she had been studying down onto the table. It landed with a thud, knocking the cup over.

  It was large and round, the size of a buckler, the color of polished obsidian. It was harder than iron, glistening in the firelight. A scale from the hide of a black dragon, the only token left from the raid on Coldhope. Shedara had barely let it out of her possession, these past six days: she was magi after all, and had spent all her energy trying to divine something—anything—about it.

  “I give up,” she said. “Dragons are magical creatures. I can’t see anything, no matter how hard I look.”

  Forlo nodded, reaching out to touch her shoulder. “Thank you for trying.”

  “There has to be something,” she said, shaking him off. She refused to be comforted. “Some way to find out where the statue went.”

  Forlo drew back as if she’d stung him. Anger flashed through him—how dare she worry first about the statue when his wife was missing?—but it quickly passed. Shedara’s people had sent her to find the Hooded One. She’d followed its trail halfway across Taladas, only to lose it. Of course it would be first in her thoughts.

  He heard a scrape and glanced back to see that Hult had drawn his shuk halfway out of its sheath. He shook his head, gesturing for the barbarian to back down. Not for the first time, he wondered why Hult chose to protect the man who had slain his master. The Uigan were certainly a strange folk.

  At the same time, Shedara had also pushed back from the table, reaching to her belt for one of her many knives. Now she, too, relaxed.

  “Tell him if he ever draws that sword the whole way, I’ll put a blade in his eye,” she muttered.

  “I could tell him you love him dearly and wish to wed him next Springrise,” Forlo said. “He’d understand it just as well.”

  Shedara chuckled, then laughed out loud. Hult’s face darkened, but he made no move, said no word. He simply glowered at the elf as she wiped a tear from her cheek. When she was done, she looked up at Forlo, her eyes narrowed.

  “We’re leaving, aren’t we?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Where are we bound?”

  Forlo shrugged. “First, we should find the soldiers who survived the battle. They should be done hunting down the last of the horde by now. After that … Kristophan, I think. We might find answers there. Or perhaps your people, in Armach-nesti, if they’ll have us.”

  She considered this. “It would be … difficult. Humans aren’t welcome in our woods. There are laws against their presence. But a lot’s changed, these past months, so maybe they’ll make an exception. Maybe. When do we leave?”

  “Today. As soon as we can.” Forlo glanced around, then shook his head. “I can’t look at this place anymore. I need a road beneath my feet.”

  “Suits me,” Shedara said. “I’m ready now, if we travel light. We don’t need to carry much.”

  Forlo nodded. “It’s settled, then. Let’s gather what we can carry from the pantries, and we’ll be gone before the sun starts to fall.”

  An hour later, they stepped out the front door of the manor into the courtyard. Forlo looked to the stables and felt a pang of regret: there had been a few old horses left at Coldhope, but the shadows had killed them too. They’d have to travel on foot, at least until they caught up with his men.

  The sky had turned gray, and a fine rain had begun to fall. The raindrops pinged on his helmet as he made his way across the bailey. With Hult’s help, he lifted the bar from the inside of the gates and pulled them open. Finally, swallowing, he turned and looked back at the keep. It looked cold, forlorn, dead. The last time he’d left Coldhope, he’d thought he would never see the place again … but he’d been wrong.

  This time, though, he was sure.

  “Forlo,” whispered Shedara on his left.

  He stiffened. Something in her voice wasn’t right. A tightness. A heartbeat later, he heard the ring of her daggers leaving their sheaths—and then the hiss of Hult drawing his saber. He whirled, clapping a hand to his sword.

  Beyond the gates stood a crowd of dark shapes … half a dozen at least. They were small, less than four feet from head to foot, and as insubstantial as mist. Blackness sloughed off them in waves, caught the wind, and writhed away. Each held two hooked blades, one in either hand. It was impossible, at this distance, to see their faces, aside from the glint of hungry, hateful eyes.

  Rage exploded inside Forlo at the sight of them: the shadow-fiends, the things that had been kender, once, but now were ruined, murderous monsters. They had taken his Essana, his Starlight. He jerked his blade from its scabbard.

  The sky had grown darker, taking on the color of slate. The rain fell in fat drops, turning the courtyard to mud. The three of them stared at the shadow-fiends. The shadow-fiends stared back. Time stretched.

  “What in Hith’s Cauldron are they doing?” Forlo growled. “Why are they still here?”

  “I think they’re after me,” Shedara replied. “Their masters must know that I used the statue, that I forced the Hooded One to summon the wave. The dragon probably told them.”

  Forlo’s lips pursed. “Then they may know where Essana is. We should try to take one alive. Question it.”

  “And how do you propose to do that, exactly?”

  He glanced at her, his mouth opening to reply, then realized he didn’t know. They could not be subdued, and they would never surrender. “Don’t you know any spells to capture them?” he asked.

  “No more than you do,” Shedara answered. “Let’s just concentrate on surviving, shall we?”

  Hult had been listening to their conversation, annoyance creasing his brow. Now he stepped forward, sword raised, and yelled something at the shadows.


  “Yagrut!”

  The word was in the Uigan tongue, so Forlo didn’t understand, but he got the idea. He’d been a soldier most of his life, and knew profanity when he heard it. So, apparently, did the shadows. They fell back at first, surprised by the barbarian’s challenge, then started creeping forward. Their blades twirled in their hands, weaving silently through the air.

  Six. Two each. Forlo thought they could handle those odds. He’d never seen Shedara fight, but she seemed to know what she was doing. And Hult was capable enough with his saber. Six shouldn’t be much of a problem.

  And then there were twelve.

  The second wave seemed to come out of nowhere, seeping out of the darkening rain curtain. They glided forward, just behind their fellows. A dozen, now.

  “Khot,” Forlo swore.

  Shedara nodded, her face grim. “Make a circle,” she murmured. “If those things outflank us, we’re dead.”

  We’re dead anyway was the first thought that came to Forlo’s mind. He thrust it aside, forced himself not to believe the worst. He couldn’t afford to fail now, not after all he’d been through. Not with what he still had to do.

  “Hurry,” Shedara said. The shadows were nearly upon them.

  Forlo grabbed Hult’s arm, pulled him to them. The barbarian looked confused, but only for a moment. Forlo and Shedara stood back-to-back, and he joined them. Together they formed a triangle in the mouth of the courtyard, blades extended before them. The creatures hesitated, studying this new tactic—but not for long.

  The first wave broke over the three of them, sweeping around on either side. Forlo, Shedara, and Hult met them with their blades, sword and shuk and knives slashing through the rain. Two of the creatures died in that first rush. A third parried Forlo’s sword with one of its sickles then snapped the second around, aiming for his eyes. Forlo jerked his head back, the wind of the weapon’s passing making him blink. His throat tightened: he had seen what those knives did when they struck flesh. There never was any blood from the wounds they cut—but they were more lethal than any mortal blade.