A fierce storm was lashing the besieged city of Falkenburg as I made my way through the palace at the heart of it, and even now its bitter rain would be blowing in through the shattered windows of the church and lashing the bodies of Cardinal Polsson and his bodyguards. The Cardinal, a servant of the Worm Lord, had died in my fire, never knowing that his cruel tortures had helped me remember who and what I was. I had left his smouldering corpse where it fell and raced across the city to rescue Tatyana from the paladins that he had corrupted with his foul magic, and had finally shared my secret with her.
Tatyana stopped fiddling with the buckles of the armour she’d just stripped from the guard I’d killed on my way to rescue her and gawped at me.
‘So you’re telling me that you’re a dragon?’
‘Yes.’ I stood as straight and tall as my currently human shaped body would allow me to.
‘An actual, fire-breathing dragon?’
‘It’s more like spittle, but yes,’ I said.
I was starting to think I had perhaps been too hasty in telling her the truth, but if I hadn’t, I think I might have taken to standing on the roof and bellowing it at the city. Some secrets begged to be told, at least once. Since I had shared my secret, she’d done little save stand in one place, trying to fasten the same buckle while looking like she was expecting to wake up at any moment.
She shook her head again. ‘No, no. It’s not possible.’
I plucked the buckle from her grasp and threaded the strap through as I had seen her do with the others. ‘I assure you that it is.’
She touched the bare skin of my arm, her hand as pale as bone against my ebon hide. ‘You can’t be him. The Dead Wind was just a legend, a song. A story that even my family had forgotten.’
I felt a prickly shiver of something run down my backbone as she said that long forgotten part of my name out loud. I was Stratus Firesky, the Dead Wind. The Destroyer. My memories had been fractured for too long, and reclaiming my name had woken a forgotten part of me. I felt the old fire kindle in my eyes and she gasped at the sight of it, dragging my attention back to the present.
I closed my eyes until I felt the tingle fade, then took a steadying breath. ‘My answer is not going to change if you insist on asking the same question. Now, I must find Fronsac. That wizard knows—’
‘Stratus, wait.’ She grasped my arm as I turned away.
I paused, my teeth clenched to hold back a sharp retort. She didn’t flinch from my gaze this time, but instead rubbed her hands together as if cold and shifted from foot to foot.
‘Please. Is that… was that true? What you showed me?’
I could hear her heart racing without even trying, and even as I thought about it I tasted the sour edge of fear in her scent. Perhaps I had been wrong to offer her that glimpse of my old self, my true self, but as with most humans, if she didn’t see something she wouldn’t believe it. And sometimes not even then, it seemed.
‘I would not lie to you,’ I said. I lied. ‘I am the Dead Wind.’
‘But—’ She gestured at me vaguely.
I bridled at the delay. Fronsac’s scent wasn’t getting any fresher, and the sooner I concluded my business with him the sooner I could be free of the city, and free away from roofs and walls and the rule of men.
‘Enough of this. You are not making any sense.’ She actually flinched as I stepped towards her, which I found hurtful given that I had just saved her life, and not for the first time. ‘Why is the truth harder to believe than that I am some infernal creation?’
‘I never believed that,’ she said.
I heard her heartbeat skip at that, a murmur that I may not have sensed had I not known the sound and feel of it so well.
‘You ask me not to lie, but then you do just that. That is not what friends do to each other, Tatyana Henkman.’ I didn’t put any power into saying her name, but I could feel the sorcery I had inadvertently embedded within her react to it nonetheless.
She opened her mouth to say something, but closed it and simply hugged her arms to her chest. The temptation to look into her mind was strong, but I resisted and simply folded my arms.
‘Tell me, what more would you have me say or do that would convince you?’
She didn’t say anything at first and simply stared at me as if seeing me for the first time.
‘Your wings,’ she blurted as I turned away. ‘Where are your wings? And your tail?’ She took a deep breath. ‘I can understand demons, there are lots of stories about them. But a dragon? It’s just not possible. I mean, how? I know it’s magic and all that, but you’re too small.’
A trio of servants who had stopped to stare at us quickly moved away as I looked in their direction, their excited whispers following them.
‘My wings are inside me.’ I held up a hand as she opened her mouth again. ‘The enchantment that binds me to this shape very nearly killed me when I set it upon myself. I will not waste your time, nor mine, trying to explain it, other than to say that my flesh remembers them, like a seed carries the memory of the mighty oak it will one day become.’
‘But why are you still a man?’ She gestured to me as if I wasn’t painfully aware of the body I was wearing.
I grimaced for that was a question I couldn’t yet answer. ‘It is not by choice. It is...’
Now she folded her arms. ‘Complicated?’
‘Yes,’ I said, with no little relief. ‘But now is not the time to try and explain it.’
Her brows creased in thought at this, and I took the moment to start walking again. I heard her start following again after a small pause. We walked in relative silence for some time, in so much that I could hear her muttering to herself but thankfully her questions seemed spent for now.
The traces of Fronsac’s magic were easier to follow than his scent, letting me spend more thought in mentally rehearsing how I would announce myself to him until Tatyana spoke again, breaking into my thoughts.
‘So how’re you going to handle this? I mean, will Fronsac know?’
‘Know what?’
She hurried forward until she was abreast with me. ‘That you’re a bloody dragon.’
‘No. Why would he?’
‘Well, he’s the best wizard we have, isn’t he?’ She waved her hands at me. ‘You’re the one with the magic singing rainbows. How do you tell if someone’s a wizard?’
I couldn’t help but smile at her description of the Songlines. I’d taken great care to explain how the currents of magic cradled the world but her attention span had clearly not been up to the task.
‘I can usually smell it on them, like a burned spice, or sense the gathering of their power.’ I slowed to save her from the undignified shuffle she was having to do to keep up with me. ‘To divine who and what I truly am he would need to do far more than he has so far. I do not doubt that he senses that there is something inhuman about me, but for now I expect he believes it to be a distortion from my sorcery.’
‘So are you going to tell him?’
The thought of a wizard, even a relatively friendly one like Fronsac knowing what I was sent an unpleasant shiver through me. The tortures that Navar Louw, my captor and the last wizard I had known, had visited upon me were not easily forgotten. His name was a curse to me now, and I felt my hands curling into fists at the mere thought of him. I had sworn to kill him, and thinking of the epically brutal ways in which I would do just that had become one of my favourite ways to fill the sadly rare moments I had to myself.
‘Stratus?’
‘What?’ Startled back to awareness, I barked the word at her. ‘Apologies. I do not have pleasant memories of wizards.’
The trail I had been following now led us along a passageway that ended in a small chamber with a wonderful pair of doors made almost entirely of coloured glass panels that together formed an attractive but somewhat bizarre picture of a man with a burning head sat upon a horse. I could see the shadows of at least half a dozen armed men milling around beyond the doors, and while they didn’t seem particularly agitated, I knew it wouldn’t take much to turn their primitive minds towards violence.
‘Hold on, Stratus.’ She pulled at my arm as I moved to open the doors. ‘Slow down. Why have you brought us here?’
I glanced at the room and at the silhouettes of the men and shrugged. It all looked the same to me. ‘Fronsac is somewhere close, just beyond those doors. I can smell him.’
‘That passage leads up to Jean’s private chambers. Those are his personal guards. They’ll not let anyone past them without an invitation from him.’
‘Not even you, the sworn sword of Prince Lucien?’
She snorted at that but didn’t say anything. She was frowning, which was a good sign because it meant she was thinking about something. I had no issue with forcing my way into his chambers if I needed to, but it would undoubtedly be easier if I didn’t need to burn my way into the Crown Prince’s chambers. He was decidedly pricklier about such things than his brother Lucien.
‘I’m going to try something,’ she said, tugging at her borrowed armour. ‘Don’t do anything. Just follow what I do.’
‘That would be doing something.’
‘Gods, not now, Stratus.’
With that, she pulled the glass doors open and stepped through into the passage. She’d taken barely taken a step before her way was blocked.
‘Hold please, milady,’ said one of the men. ‘Is Prince Jean expecting you?’
I stepped out into the passage and even though I was being peaceful, the guards reacted as if stung, recoiling away from me and laying their hands on their swords.
‘Calm down, gentlemen,’ Tatyana said with a smile, and for a few heartbeats it looked like it was going to work. What neither of us had considered was that somewhere in the maze of the palace behind us, the paladins who I had trapped in their dormitory while on my way to rescue Tatyana had eventually hacked their way through the door, and were now ringing every bell and sounding every horn they could lay their hands on.
The guards froze as the sonorous honk of the horns reached us. The one who’d spoken to Tatyana reacted first, stepping back from her and raising his hand.
‘I’m afraid you need to leave. No one comes in or out until I know what is going on,’ said the guard who had previously addressed her.
I leaned in close to Tatyana and covered her eyes with my hand. She gave a jolt at my touch, but I held her immobile against me and turned to the guard who had spoken.
‘My apologies,’ I said. ‘It’s neither personal nor permanent.’
He stared at me, his hand on his sword, and even I recognised the expression on his face as confusion. I closed my eyes and released the light spell I’d been holding. I hadn’t added any heat to it, and so fully expected their sight to return, but there was no point in taking chances with my own vision. The pulse of magic light manifested above my head, and blazed like a small, silent sun for a brief moment before blinking away into nothingness. I released Tatyana and she pushed herself away from me.
‘What did you do!’ Her voice trailed away as the guards began shouting and clutching at their faces. ‘God’s beard, I told you not to do anything!’
‘Your approach was being as useful as a goat’s ear.’
‘What?’
‘It’s an old expression. Come along,’ I said, pushing my way through the reeling guards.
One of them clutched at my leg but I shook him off easily enough. Fronsac’s scent strengthened once we were past the guards. Happily, he was quite close, and I gave Tatyana an encouraging smile as I knocked on the doors. The wizard opened them almost immediately, giving her no chance to protest.
‘I thought I felt your sorcery,’ he said. ‘Stars, what is going on here?’
‘Nothing serious,’ I said. ‘I found Tatyana.’
He watched the men in the passage for a few moments, then stepped aside. ‘So you did. Come in, quickly now.’
Jean’s chambers were far more spacious than Lucien’s had been, and not only because of the lack of cluttered tables. The main room was set with a number of chairs, each of which looked comfortable enough to sleep in, all arranged around a single long table set with bowls of fruit and bread and several bottles of wine. The starchy smell of men was predominant, but there were also far more pleasant undertones of sweet resins and flowers, which made it tolerable.
Jean was sat in the largest of the chairs, watching us with a goblet held in his ink-stained fingers and a great number of papers upon his lap. A pale, muscular man I did not recognise stood behind him, his hands resting on the bone handles of the two swords that hung from his belt.
‘Highness,’ Tatyana said from behind me. Her finger dug into my back and I inclined my head in a shallow bow, if only to stop her from an angry outburst.
‘Meneer Stratus,’ the prince said, setting his goblet down and nodding to Tatyana. ‘The mage was just talking about you.’ He cocked his head towards the doors and the muffled sound of the bells. ‘I would guess that a lot of people are talking about you at this moment, and I suspect not in such friendly tones.’
‘My prince, may I just—’ Fronsac began, but Jean raised his hand and the wizard fell silent.
‘No,’ Jean said. ‘I want him to tell me. To show me, as he did you.’
‘My prince, in the mildest of terms, that is most irregular.’
‘He has given you his word, has he not?’
I smiled as Fronsac glanced across at me. Prince Jean was proving to be far more interesting than my first impression of him had ever suggested. I had indeed given Fronsac my word that I would stand with them to destroy Navar Louw, the so called Worm Lord and my previous owner. It was a dangerous thing to offer a skilled wizard, but killing Navar was very much my first priority.
‘I gave my word with sincerity and am bound by it,’ I said to both of them. ‘And I do not think our enemies will wait while I tell the story.’
‘Time is something we all lack at this moment,’ agreed the prince.
The man with the swords watched me closely as I pulled a chair across and sat in front of the prince, who was watching me even more intently. His scent was spiced with something like fear, his heartbeat rising, and I wondered whether he could sense the otherness in me as Fronsac had. I’d have been a fool to think that the wizard wasn’t even now subtly scrutinising me for any clue as to what about me had changed, but I suspected that I would know the moment he discovered it.
I gave Jean an empty smile as I gathered my own thoughts. What secrets lurked in his head? If I knew them, would I regret giving my word to aid the descendants of the very men who had once set their armies against me and cost me my one love?
‘What do I do?’ asked Jean, pulling me back from my reverie as he laid the papers to one side.
‘Just look into my eyes.’
‘Can I blink?’ I smiled at the same question that Tatyana had asked me, and fought the urge to suggest that something terrible would happen if he did.
‘Of course.’ I spread my legs slightly and rested my elbows on my knees so that my face was level with his, then woke my sorcery. I could feel Fronsac’s magics swirling around us as he manipulated the sequence of wards he had set on Jean’s mind. I could feel them shifting like the pieces of a puzzle box, but the sequence was too complicated and swift for me to follow. I waited until I felt the pressure fade, then looked into Jean’s pale eyes.
There was some residual resistance from the wards, but these were easy enough to push past now. Jean shivered as our minds connected in a jumble of images and stray thoughts. That chaos lasted a brief moment before I exerted control and pulled him into my memories.
As I had with Fronsac, I let him see what I had seen, from my initial discovery of the enchanted corpses hidden beneath the sepulchre of St Tomas, then the battles Tatyana and I had fought against the dead in the dungeons, all the way to my confrontation with Cardinal Polsson, the corrupted leader of the Paladins that the city’s defences were relying on. Again, as with Fronsac, I made sure to omit the truth of who and what I was.
I could feel the wonder and anger that the truth of Polsson’s betrayal woke in Jean, and while he struggled to digest what I had shown him, I took the opportunity to peer into his mind as well, since it was doubtful that I would have another chance to do so again anytime soon. I would not have enough time to align my thoughts with his, so I had to settle for a more general approach, much as I had with Crow, the kind old tinker I had met on the road to Falkenburg. I would sift through these thoughts and memories later, when I had time alone.
I gently disengaged from his mind and let the connection fade before sitting back. Jean’s knuckles were white as he clung to the sides of the chair and shook his head.
‘That...’ He reached for his goblet with a shaking hand and gulped at the remaining wine. ‘That was unlike anything I have ever experienced.’ He glanced up at Fronsac, who was standing close by. ‘Is that what it is like to scry?’
‘No, my prince,’ answered Fronsac. ‘Scrying is less intimate, and more like the vision of a bird passing overhead.’
The prince took another gulp of his wine, then sat back and stared at me. We sat like that for some time, with me steadily eating my way through the nearest bowl of fruit and him peering at me, his fingers steepled under his fleshy chin. Fronsac seemed content to simply stand there, but Tatyana marked the time by pacing the length of the room and sighing loudly on every turn. It was something of a relief when Jean eventually lowered his hands and cleared his throat.
‘I want you to know that I appreciate everything you’ve done for us. I can’t even begin to understand the full extent of the damage that Polsson has inflicted, but I know it would have been far worse without you.’
I was about to thank him when I felt Tatyana’s heartbeat increase.
‘That gratitude aside, you leave me in a difficult position. We are at war, Meneer Stratus, and the laws of this Kingdom are quite clear. The Law demands your death.’
Tatyana simply gasped, but I was on my feet, my chair sliding backwards and my hands curling into fists.