Key of Living Fire (The Sword of the Dragon) (29 page)

“ ‘Woe to you, city of darkness that lies in the heart of this fallen world. Woe to the people that live in your streets. For many and wicked are the spirits that seek you out. The possessors come that cannot be cast out. They come for your wives and your daughters. They seek not pleasure but pain. Fallen, fallen is the house of God in the midst of the darkness. But when a child cries and the new Lord Warrior hears, then salvation comes for you. Run, run he must and will, to the window of heaven, to open and shed light on this dark, fallen world. Unbind the soul held within the prism. Break and scatter the pieces thereof, that the spirits shall release and be gone forever. Blessed is he that comes in the righteous indignation of his Creator, for he sheds the light of truth from one Lord Warrior upon another.’ ”

Ilfedo raised his eyebrows, and Everett laughed in a nervous sort of way. “I know. You’re thinking coincidence, or was Brunster Thadius Oldwell truly not dead.”

“The prophecy is a puzzle until proven true or false. Yet, what do you think that last phrase means?”

“I have long wondered, cousin. But who am I to understand the prophecy beyond its words? Perhaps the answers can be found in the observatory.”

“Regardless, this bears looking into. I cannot leave until I know the people will be safe in my absence.” Ilfedo waved toward the street. “Show me the place.”

Everett stroked his beard, frowning. “If your greatest concern stands on that sentiment, then what do you plan to do about the black beasts? They will surely return.”

Ilfedo shook his head. “To what are you referring?” As soon as he asked the question, he remembered Seivar’s dance with the Dewobins. The Nuvitor had said something about a battle between black brutes and humans.

“You have been with us this long and no one has told you about the creatures?” Everett’s mouth hung open, and it was his turn to shake his head. “I thought the city council would have informed you.” He put his hand on the back of Ilfedo’s shoulder and led him down the street, toward the farthest corner of the dimly lit city.

Everett told him of six-legged creatures that lived in the tunnels and caverns nearby. They breathed vapor and fire like Vectra’s Megatraths, but these had black hides. Ilfedo could only reason that he was very close to the underground Megatrath realm. It was possible, he reasoned, that, like humanity, the Megatraths were divided into various skin colors, or races.

“The army of Dresdyn is in the midst of a small war with the brutes,” Everett said as they passed a red house with green shutters and turned down a narrow street. “Bromstead returned from the tunnel defenses only a few days ago, yet he had been gone for a month. The bulk of our military force is guarding several tunnels in that direction.” He pointed to the far wall of the cavern, the opposite direction from which Ilfedo had come, and thus Ilfedo deduced he was pointing southwest. “I’m not well informed when it comes to soldiers’ dealings,” Everett continued. “Yet I hear things from members of my congregation. The Tresk family has two sons gone in the tunnels. They had a third son, but he died last year in battle. They say the fight has not gone in our favor, but they have reason to hope that it may change; the brutes have not ventured this way for several weeks now, which is most unusual.”

As they passed a gray home with white trim, fronted by a porch, the door opened and a young man hobbled out on a cane. He wore pink trousers, and a pink shirt was visible between the folds of his brilliant yellow sweater. Seeming not to notice Ilfedo and Everett as they walked by, the young man patted a book in the crook of his arm and dropped into a swing seat at the porch’s far end. Laying his cane across his knees, he pushed on the floor with his leg, rocking the swing. Then he opened the book with great care and fingered several hundred pages through before smiling to himself, licking his lips, and holding the page before his eyes. His peg leg slid back and forth over the porch.
Rit-a-tat, rit-a-tat, thud! Rit-a-tat, rit-a-tat, thud!

Slowing his steps, Ilfedo listened to the steady rhythm of the engrossed reader’s peg leg and the creak of the swing’s chains. “Do you know him?”

Everett looked at the porch and nodded with a big grin. “Him I know well! That is Ardius, and, as he would say, he teaches history and literature and math at High Glory Academy. Or, as it is commonly known, his house. But his academy is well reputed. He teaches around thirty children.”

“Did he lose his leg in the war?”

Everett laughed and slapped his thigh. “Ardius? Go into battle? No, my good cousin, he came into the world with one leg. There is hardly an iron muscle in his body, save for his eyes, I suppose, and his brain . . . if one can call that a muscle. Ardius is an avid follower of the prophets’ works, and he’s often brought very strong debates into my parish. He believes most prophets are false, yet the few he accepts he ardently defends, for he knows the whole of their writings, I believe, by heart.”

Guiding Ilfedo to the end of the street and turning another corner, Everett said, “Among your new subjects there is no one whom you should trust more than Ardius, and also whose trust you will need to work as hard to earn.”

At the end of the road, a row of shabby homes and businesses rose into view . . . with one very unique, very large building rising out of their midst. The sword thrummed against his leg, and he glanced at the sword of the dragon, still sheathed. He sensed a thick, growing evil somewhere ahead. Something strong, something elusive, that connected through the sword. He grasped for it, yet . . . yet it remained illusive.
It wanders, stumbles, drunken and bidden against its will. It hates and wants to kill. Too long has it been alone. These walls of stone and wood are a prison and a home to its infested soul.

The building before which Ilfedo now stood was dissimilar to all other structures in the wooden city. Its round base was about eighty feet in diameter, and the walls stood half as high. It sat nestled at the base of a very high cliff, and its roof was adorned in white and beige square tiles. Its pitch was steep, rising to an arrow point some thirty feet higher than the walls.

Perhaps the most curious sight, however, was the mighty metal gears. They were slightly taller than he. The core of each gear had been carved from a dark wood, but an iron band had been wrapped around each, much in the same way that iron forms the outer ring on wagon wheels. To the outer bands had been fixed bronze blocks the size of a man’s head. These teeth fitted between the teeth of each succeeding gear all around the building. From the orange discoloration on the gears’ shafts, where they pierced the building, Ilfedo could see that the contraption had been out of use for a long, long time.

Everett shifted from one foot to the other, staring down the length of his beard at a dead Dewobin on the dirt street. He dropped to his knees. “Be glad I’m not an atheist.” He folded his hands and closed his eyes. “I will remain here and pray that you succeed.”

Ilfedo walked down the winding path to the observatory doors, standing before them in the silence until the Nuvitor shrieked, diving, and landed on his shoulder. “Wait out here, my friend.” Ilfedo stroked the bird’s chest and set it on a post sticking out of the ground. He would rather venture in alone, at first.

As he drew his sword and reached for the door latch, a low rumble filled the building. He grasped the latch, then lifted it and pulled. The door, some twelve feet high, squealed on its hinges and opened barely enough to allow him to squeeze through the opening and into the hazy, dim room beyond.

Dust clouded the air, falling from the arched ceiling rafters. He brushed the dust from his shoulders and sneezed into his elbow. The air felt warmer in here, humid almost. The Living Fire played over his body unimpeded as he scrutinized the walls of the small oval room; he half expected a series of portraits that would spawn the demonic creatures he’d found in the house.

But here the walls were devoid of furnishings and color. Also, his armor shed light, and his sword blazed without dimming. He strode to a smaller door at the far end of the room—the only other door—and opened it.

Something was different about this building.

The room that he gazed into was circular and enormous. Its walls extended to the full size of the building as seen from the exterior. And the cathedral ceiling was fully exposed between rows of tree-thick beams crisscrossing some thirty feet above him. Cobwebs in abundance overflowed the rafters and draped onto the machinery below. Twin rows of enormous gears, like those outside, flanked a broad aisle leading to the room’s far end. A faint glow emanated from a yellow panel on the floor, and a series of weights on chains filled the wall behind it. Beneath the motionless weights was an assortment of levers, both large and small. The levers had been built into a hammered iron box. As he stepped down to the floor, his aura reflected off the iron box, blushing it a shade of violet.

“Troubled sleep. I always have it. Leave me, nightmares. Let me die.”
The words entered his mind from a troubled consciousness, probing, as if reaching out to Ilfedo’s.

Ilfedo stooped behind the gears. He peered between them, wondering where the voice in his head had come from. But all he could see were cobwebs and some gears strewn across the floor. He might have tried burning the cobwebs with his sword, so as to see with greater clarity; however, such a fire could easily spread to the walls. If this contraption could bring light into the cavern, he would need to preserve it, not burn it.

“Ho, weary one! At last, having entered my abode, how do you find it?”
A thud sounded from behind, and Ilfedo heard the unknown voice again in his mind.
“Too long alone and hungry.”

Who are you?
Ilfedo thought.

The building answered back with the haunting summons of a tomb. Yet somewhere in the shadows piercing eyes were watching. He could feel their penetrating stare—but not as if they looked at Ilfedo the man. It gazed under his skin, spirit to soul.

Standing and closing his eyes, Ilfedo demanded more fire from the sword. Out the flames poured, turning him into a pillar of bright fire. “Come forth!” he commanded. “I know you are watching. I can feel it and—” He angled his consciousness into the sword of the dragon and raised the sword out of his hand. He could see himself standing there, from the perspective of the sword’s blade. He looked steady and focused.
Good. Whatever is in here will see me as a greater threat.

He hovered the point of the sword over his head, then flipped it so the blade aimed at the roof. Being inside of the sword in this manner was like being in a crystal with four facets, those facets being the four angles of the shiny blade. He could see better from in here than was possible with his physical eyes—at least in such a dim setting. And above him on the creaking rafters he spotted his quarry, a bulky black thing that moved with the speed of a snake to another corner and then let itself to the floor below.

Withdrawing his mind from the sword, Ilfedo flexed his sword arm. He glanced to the left over the mass of confusing gears. The creature had let itself down over there.

Bounding forward, Ilfedo landed on a gear with one foot and vaulted the rest of them. He rolled onto the floor on the opposite side, nicking his cheek on a loose gear in the process and pushing his helmet off to one side. He stood and shifted the helm so it sat straight upon his head again.

Before he could lower his hand from the helm, a claw scraped along his breastplate and attempted to carve a circle over his heart. The armor was not even scratched.

The face of a Megatrath penetrated the shadows . . . a black face layered in glossy armor plating. Its egg-white eyes regarded him without fear.
“The power of Living Fire is in your blade, foreigner. Otherwise this claw should have cut open your heart and you would now be dead.”

You are a Megatrath.

The creature stepped sideways, and knife-blade spikes along its back glistened in the playing firelight. Judging by its size, Ilfedo surmised it was half grown.