The Bones of the Earth (The Dark Age) Read online

  “The Legion is dead, isn’t it?” the monster replied. A long forked tongue flicked out and back into its mouth.

  “And how are we going to get back to the Hall?” Stanislaw demanded.

  “The kobolds will provide transportation. They should be here soon.” Stuhach turned toward the prisoners, and as the firelight flashed on its shoulder-belt and knife, Javor’s heart stopped for a full second. That’s my great-grandfather’s dagger! “Who are these three?”

  “Some sneaks we caught spying on us a few minutes ago, and there are four of them, you idiot,” Stanislaw sneered. “Can’t you count? One, two, three, four.”

  The monster peered at the prisoners, then stiffened in surprise. “Ah, yes.” It strode toward Javor. “This one is different.” Stuhach reached out a terrible claw. Javor held his breath. Every hair on his head and his body stood up straight, but his bonds were tight and he couldn’t move. To Javor’s surprise, instead of killing him, the monster casually slashed Javor’s tunic and cloak apart. His amulet swung free on its chain, glinting slightly in the firelight.

  What Javor could only guess was a horrible smile parted Stuhach’s mouth. “Ahhhh,” it hissed, and reached for the amulet. The monstrous paw closed around it, and right under his chin, Javor saw sparks and smoke. The monster’s eyes widened and a hiss turned into a gurgle and then a roar as it dropped the amulet and staggered back. Stuhach roared and screamed, which set its monstrous companions to roaring in distress. The warriors and the prisoner jumped out of its way as it stumbled all around the camp, flailing its arms in pain. Smoke came from its paw. Its forked tongue hung out of its jaws as it stepped right into the middle of a campfire and stayed there, oblivious to it. It doesn’t feel the fire, but my amulet burns it!

  Finally, Stuhach regained control of itself, but its right paw seemed to have shrunk. Javor couldn’t be certain in the dark, but it seemed blackened and shrivelled. The monster screamed something in a hellish language at its companions to shut them up, then pointed its good claw at Javor. “That one is dangerous!” it screamed. It took a step forward, inadvertently putting the fire completely out, but seemed unsure what to do. “Kill him!”

  “I’ll kill who I want, when I want,” said Stanislaw. “Now, you tell us how you plan to get to the mountains before the solstice.”

  The monster bared its teeth: they were all long and pointed, and there seemed to more of them than possible in even so large a mouth. “I told you to kill him. Do it now! And the rest—they know too much!”

  “We are not your servants. We went to rescue our King’s daughter, not to spill blood for demons of Hell.”

  The monster slashed its good paw at Stanislaw, so fast no one could even see it. Stanislaw opened his mouth and blood poured out, and then he slumped to the ground.

  “Chort!” Miro shrieked. Javor had never seen a man move as fast: he drew a long sword and swung it at Stuhach. The sword broke on the monster’s hide and Miro sprawled in the dirt. Stuhach lunged with snapping jaws at Miro, but Miro was too quick. He dove between the fiend’s legs, sprang to his feet, spun and drove the broken shard of his sword into the thing’s back. Uselessly: the broken blade slid off the scales. The thing hissed and slashed with its claws, but Miro rolled again out of the way.

  Ingund was screaming as pandemonium broke out. The monsters attacked the warriors, who responded with swords and spears. Unlike their leader, most of the fiends were susceptible to points and blades, but they had claws and teeth and tentacles. Man and monster screamed as they tore each other apart.

  The prisoners shrank back from the fighting, and Javor felt strong hands cutting the ropes. It was the warrior who had held a knife to Austinus. “Look out for yourselves,” he yelled, then disappeared again into the fray.

  The four looked for an escape from the madness. “It has my dagger!” said Javor as Malleus pulled them past the ruined wall.

  “Worry about that later,” Malleus said.

  Javor pulled away, looking for the monster with his dagger. “Javor, come here!” he heard Austinus call, but ignored him. He looked for Stuhach and found himself facing what seemed to be a ball of snakes with red eyes and long teeth. It raised itself above him and only then did Javor realize he had no weapons. The snake-thing struck out with one of its heads, but Javor heard a sound like a sudden wind, felt something clutch him around the sides and suddenly he was high above the tumult, wind in his ears.

  He realized he was screaming. He looked down and saw long, green claws around his body, gripping him firmly but not hurting him. He looked up and up and saw a long, long neck stretching above him, a neck that ended in a long, pointed head. He could see wide, black wings like a bat’s flapping over and over. He looked down again and saw that he was rising higher and higher.

  He had been rescued by a dragon.

  Chapter 31: A conversation with the dragon

  Javor looked down, but he couldn’t see the camp anymore, couldn’t tell what had happened to his friends.

  The dragon flew into the darkness and soon landed on a rocky outcrop that stuck out of a wooded hillside. When it released Javor, he was cold. His cloak was gone, his tunic shredded by Stuhach. In the moonlight, he could barely see the outlines of trees on the hillside.

  Why didn’t you warn me, Preyatel? he asked his amulet. He heard no response, but it did occur to him that, possibly, the dragon didn’t pose any danger to him—not now, anyway. It could have killed him easily, but instead had carried him far from enemies.

  It was the dragon from Ghastog’s mountain, the dragon he had confronted in the mountains in Dacia, the one that had taken his dagger. Has it grown again since then? It was long and sinuous, covered in dark scales that gleamed in the moonlight. It slowly lowered its great head to Javor’s level, and its yellow eyes seemed to hold…wisdom.

  “What do you want?” Javor demanded.

  The dragon did not make a sound. Instead, strange thoughts entered Javor’s mind. We must discuss many things.

  “Discuss! I need to help my friends!”

  Your friends are beyond your help.

  “Your friends are going to tear them limb from limb and eat them!”

  Those warriors are not cannibals, and by now they have joined forces with your friends.

  “I meant the monsters, you idiot!”

  Those are not my friends. That is what we must discuss.

  “I don’t care! I’m the only one who can help them!”

  Your friends will be safe. Their allies will protect them.

  Javor took a deep breath and looked into the dragon’s enormous yellow eyes. The pupil was wide and round, almost human. “All right, dragon. You’ve got me. But you can’t hurt me, and without my dagger, I can’t hurt you. Tell me what you want to tell me. But first, if those monsters aren’t your friends, why did you give them my dagger?”

  It is not your dagger. You have been appointed to carry it. And I did not give it to Stuhach. The dragon looked away into the black night. Its head drooped. They…took it from me.

  “How? You’re a … a dragon, for God’s sake!”

  The dragon’s neck sagged even lower until its snout was almost on the ground. Even its great black wings drooped. They surprised me. I was careless. I stopped to rest and drink by a river. I was tired. Your friend had stabbed me …

  “You burned his arm right off!”

  I regret that. Truly. I was merely defending myself. He hurt me.

  “I thought we couldn’t hurt you—nothing can penetrate your scales!”

  That is not quite true. Nothing man-made, nor human strength can hurt a full-grown dragon. But I am not quite full-grown yet, and my scales have not fully hardened, at least on my front. I was in mortal danger.

  “Why did you take my dagger in the first place?”

  It is not yours. You are merely the bearer. As was your ancestor, in his time. The dagger is very important. It was made not by humans, but by a member of an older race to protect this world. Now our worl
d’s survival is in jeopardy. The war could destroy it utterly.

  “What war?”

  The war between the gods.

  The dragon’s eye grew until Javor could see nothing else. He was in the dragon’s eye, and then he was the dragon, seeing what it saw.

  He looked down from an unimaginable height. He saw mountains, sharp under a yellow sun. Wide oceans tossed blue and white waves against rocky shores. Broad rivers crossed high plains and shallow valleys. Thick forests shone with leaves the bright green of spring.

  It was the beginning of the world. Some corner of Javor’s consciousness told him the dragon was telling him its story of creation, just as his parents, the Christians and the Gnostics had.

  Sun poured out its energy and life spread thick, green and changing across Earth’s surface and deep in her waters.

  Great forms rose out of the soil and the rock, shaking their earthy hides in joy under Sun’s warmth, ecstatically breathing in the clean air. No two were the same. They grew, lengthened, ate, roared, slept, defecated, mated. After a time longer than a human mind could grasp, they settled and merged back into the earth, not dying but becoming features of the world that gave rise to them.

  The first dragons. The bones of the earth.

  Javor felt as if he were flying, but he understood his vantage point was moving through time. The dragons changed, gave birth to more dragons that in turn rose and ate and mated, each one different from the rest.

  Javor rose until he could see the outlines of the continents and the shape of the Earth itself: a disk surrounded by water, no, a ball, blue and white and green and brown and grey, glistening and vibrant. The dragons moved across the continents, they were the continents that moved and shifted and reshaped. Mountains rose as the dragons stretched their backs and limbs.

  As Earth basked in Sun’s warmth, every kind of animal, insect and plant spread around the world. There were creatures whose beauty made Javor gasp, creatures so fearsome that his gut shrank, creatures that made his mind whirl.

  The dragons continued to grow and move. Oceans, continents, seas, lakes, rivers, mountains grew, shrank, moved, settled. Life changed. Javor saw horses, bears, cats and dogs—and soon, people. Men and women walked out of a forest and across the continents, built boats to cross the seas, planted farms and built cities.

  They worshipped the Earth and the Sun and the dragons they could not see but knew were there. They fought wars, saying that they were over differences in the way that they worshipped the Earth or the Sun, but Javor could see that the wars were really over food and water and so that kings could live in greater ease and splendour.

  Both the Christians and the Gnostics are wrong. The vision faded. Javor struggled to regain his orientation: he was on the rock with the dragon in front of him and the half-moon high in the sky. “So you are a part of Moist Mother Earth?”

  We all are.

  “Yes, but—you’re a mountain or something?”

  Those are the 400.

  “The 400?”

  The original dragons, the first race. There are 400 that make up the oceans, the mountains, everything that makes what you call the earth.

  “Four hundred. A nice round number. Sounds hard to believe.”

  The fact that you perceive it that way proves that it is a real number.

  “Ah.”

  My race has controlled the earth for longer than you can imagine, many, many times the length of time man has even been on the earth. As we dragons age, we become stronger and wiser. The original 400 control what you perceive as time and space. Their first-born generation inherited most of their power.

  The 400 ceded their influence over temporal events to the first generation. They are the guardians of the essential balance of form and motion, of energy and matter, of sky and sea and earth. They can change their shape and were the first to assume the shape you associate with “dragons.”

  The second generation took many forms. Javor, in his mind, saw flashes of different forms, some beautiful, others monstrous. Many were dragons, or like dragons.

  “Are monsters like Stuhach and Ghastog dragons, too?”

  Yes. Dragons have taken many forms, but each generation is a little weaker than its forebear. Some of the younger generations of dragons chose to take forms similar to man’s, but more beautiful. They lost the ability to change shape after that. Men began to call them gods and worshipped them. And they began to rule over men.

  “Why? Why do gods and dragons, with all their power and strength and so-called wisdom, why do they care if men worship them?”

  I do not know.

  “You know, you’re not much of a dragon. You don’t know anything, and you let a smaller monster take my dagger from you. What do you want from me, anyway?”

  You are the true bearer of the dagger, which was made from the bones of the earth. I will help you take it back.

  “So you took it from me, but now you’re going to help me get it back? Why should I trust you?”

  You have no choice but to trust me. I must stop Stuhach and Kriemhild from carrying out their plan.

  “What plan? Who is Kriemhild?”

  Kriemhild is the one you seek, the author of the misfortunes men and their civilizations have faced these past centuries.

  “The evil king? Is that a different name for Bayan?”

  No. Bayan is merely a pawn of the Gothic King Ingolf, who is himself a pawn of his Queen, Kriemhild.

  “A queen? I had no idea. What is her plan?”

  She will use the dagger to commit an act so heinous as to tip the balance in the war.

  “The war again. The war between the gods?”

  Yes. The solar gods—

  “Wait—sun gods? Are they dragons, too?”

  I am not certain. But they emanated from the sun, the energy half of the creative force of life. Many of your centuries ago, the solar gods began to unite, no, to merge. They continue to merge, willingly or by force, in order to dominate this world. The dragons of Mother Earth resist this domination. Now they fight a fearsome war.

  Man is the linchpin of the war. The sun god is winning the race for man’s worship. And he will use that to finally vanquish Earth. Kriemhild worships Earth, and she seeks to reverse Sky’s triumph.

  “How can this Kriemhild control the dragons?”

  She cannot. She has manipulated some of the lesser dragons to carry out her will by offering them something they want: the bones of the earth.

  “My dagger.”

  And the amulet, too. But Kriemhild has no real power, other than her ability to manipulate some of the energy of the world from time to time. She has used some of that energy to extend her own life unnaturally, and more to trick some of the lesser dragons into doing her will. Some of them do her bidding willingly.

  “So why do you want to stop her?”

  Because Kriemhild seeks to control the 400. Her very attempt to waken them would unleash forces that could destroy Earth and all life on it. The dagger is her key.

  “One more question: if the dagger is what’s so important, why did the monster Ghastog take my amulet after it killed my parents?”

  The amulet’s power hid the dagger from Ghastog for centuries. It knew the dagger was in a your area, but could never find it. When you separated the two, the amulet’s distress attracted the monster. Its path crossed yours, but Ghastog did not have the sensitivity to follow the dagger closely. It came to where the dagger had been for so long and found the amulet instead. I do not know why it took the amulet. Ghastog’s purpose was not the same as mine. There are more than two sides in this war.

  But your amulet is important. It, like the dagger, is one of the Three Companions.

  “That again. Theodor—I mean, Tiana—figured that out from reading the runes on the blade. What are the Three Companions?”

  Three artefacts made before the race of man was born: the dagger, made from the bones of an ancient dragon; the amulet, made from what you perceive as our scales; and
the third, the Eye of Knowledge, which appears to you as a large jewel or stone, and grants the holder answers he seeks. Kriemhild already has it, and if she holds the others as well, she will be unstoppable.

  My focus is the dagger. I was trying to take it from you in our first encounter on that mountain-side. We must stop Kriemhild and restore the dagger and the Eye to their rightful holders. Will you help me?

  “Will you help me get my dagger back?”

  Yes.

  “Then let’s go.”

  Chapter 32: Barbarians versus monsters

  Malleus could not believe how brave and stupid Javor could be. The boy tore out of his grasp and ran straight toward hell: barbarian warriors and monsters slaughtering each other in the middle of the night, back-lit by a rising half-moon.

  But his astonishment reached a new peak as he heard a loud rushing noise and a huge black shape dropped from the sky.

  “The dragon!” Tiana screamed behind him. It swept between them and Javor, grabbed him in its front claws and disappeared. Malleus, Tiana and Austinus could only gape after it. “Javor!” Tiana screamed and ran a few steps after it, but it was useless.

  Malleus pulled them to relative safety under some trees beyond the wall. They threw themselves into the darkest shadows. Malleus crept back on his belly to see what was happening.

  Miro, the thin warrior, was slashing off the heads of the snake-thing that had confronted Javor, but didn’t seem to be having much of an effect. Other warriors were cutting monsters apart and getting bitten, slashed and gashed. There were bodies everywhere.

  “It’s the man who freed us!” Tiana gasped. She pointed at the warrior who had caught Austinus. He was close to them, facing something that seemed to be nothing but a gigantic mouth on legs. Its jaws gaped open to show rows of teeth long as knives. It snapped at the warrior, who fell back and dropped his sword. He was helpless. The monster knew it and seemed to relish the moment.

  Malleus sprang forward, swept up the fallen sword and frantically slashed at the thing’s leg. Black blood spurted, but Malleus knew to dodge it. Its leg gone, the monster toppled sideways and snapped madly. A hideous whine came from its jaws. Malleus stabbed downward as hard as he could into what he thought might be its brain. The monster twitched, but the whining stopped. He yanked out the sword.