Authors: Raymond E. Feist
A Crown Imperiled
A
CROWN
IMPERILED
BOOK TWO OF THE CHAOSWAR SAGA
R
AYMOND
E. F
EIST
This one’s for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels;
you know who you are.
Contents
Chapter Twenty-One - Destruction
M
IGHTY DRAGONS RACED THROUGH THE SKIES.
Hurricane-force winds struck his face, yet the rider sat confidently astride the neck of his scaled ebony mount; his to command by will alone. Arcane arts kept him firmly in place, and exultation energized every fibre of his being as the Dragon Host rode out in search of conquest.
Never in the long history of the Valheru had the entire Dragon Host risen united.
The entire Host, save one. Dark emotions turned quickly to rage. The white-and-gold rider was absent. Ashen-Shugar: the only dissenter within the Host.
But the absence of the father-brother did not signify. The Valheru had answered his call, and Draken-Korin had taken his rightful place as leader of the Dragon Host.
He watched mad energies race through the skies above the dragon riders, flashing colours of blinding brilliance as energy vortexes and tears in the fabric of space and time exploded into spectrums invisible to mortal eyes, but perfectly clear to his Valheru vision.
His vision shifted; memories fading as others resurfaced. The cavern, once the Lord of the Tigers’ seat of power, was dark. That didn’t concern him since his vision was far sharper than any mortal’s, but he missed the warmth of torches and . . . Where were his servants?
He tried to lift his left arm an pain tore through his shoulder. He had not felt pain like this since . . .
Images cascaded through his mind as he relived the memories of ages past.
He felt his first breath and heard a contemptuous mother curse him as her servants carried him away. Elven slaves brought him newborn to a clearing in the warm, damp forest, and without any tenderness left him on top of a large rock. To live or die by his own strength.
He remembered extending his infant senses, a primitive assessment of danger and threat; he felt no sense of fear, only compelling need. His instincts emerged at need, drawing upon ancestral memories shared since the dawn of creation. The forest was deep, and he sensed predators on every side. The most dangerous, now receding, were of his own race.
Valheru.
A pack of golden jackals sniffed the air, seeking the source of the tempting hint of birthing blood, their heads up and their senses alert. They had left their den as the sun set in the west, to hunt.
The child felt them move closer, the scent of his birth summoning his death. He reached out and sent a blast of hate and anger at the troop.
The jackals stopped, and cringed. Then, ears flattened, they continue to skulk towards the architect of the mental assault, hunger outweighing their fear.
Another presence . . . nearby. He reached out and instantly recognized the massive predator. But this time instead of danger he discovered contentment there, a warm, nurturing feeling that felt alien, but also compelling. He reached out once more and formed a simple command.
Come.
The tigress leapt to her feet, ignoring the plaintive mewing of her cubs, and bounded down the hill towards the tiny thing that coerced her.
The jackals approached the exposed infant cautiously, knowing that it possessed dangerous abilities, yet driven by the need to feast. Then another scent arrived on the wind and they halted.
The massive tiger charged into the clearing next to the infant and roared a challenge.
The baby might be an unknown threat, but the tiger was all too familiar to the pack hunters, and to be avoided at all costs. Turning tail, the jackals ran, opting to survive and hunt elsewhere.
The tigress lowered her head with a snarl, but the thought emanating from the infant was clear:
Protect me
.
A mortal child would have perished had it been seized and lifted in the tiger’s mouth, but he was not a mortal infant; he was Valheru, and his small body was far from delicate.
The great cat returned to her den and deposited the infant next to her own pair of cubs, barely three days old, and still mewing with their eyes closed. She lay down on her side to let them nurse, and watched as the man-thing reached out and gripped her fur. Somehow, it managed to pull itself to her teat where it began to nurse alongside her young.
His eyes opened and he struggled to breathe. ‘I’m dying,’ he whispered to no one.
You are being reborn,
came a distant voice.
He felt feverish and his entire body was in agony. He could no longer feel the separate pain of his wound, for he was consumed by a throbbing, burning ache. Every particle of him hovered at the brink of death, for only at the edge could the transformation be completed. He tried to move and couldn’t. Just opening his eyes was a trial. He let them close. Death lingered seconds away, beckoning him with promises of relief and rest.
Something else called to him now: the dreams. He knew the dreams contained madness, but they were vivid and compelling, filling him with a sense of triumph and power. And as much as he longed for relief and rest, the consciousness within the dream was growing in strength, singing of power and control, lust and conquest, blood and victory.
The man who had once been Braden of Shamata felt his will fading.
He remembered joining a band of mercenaries in the Vale of Dreams, and sailing across the Endless Sea to distant lands, where weapons smuggling was a hundred times more lucrative than at home. One last caravan and he’d have enough gold to retire. He’d return to the Vale as a man of means, find a talented, young apprentice weapon-smith and make him a partner. No one knew more about weapons running than a Vale mercenary! He would sell to both sides of the Vale, and run his goods all the way from the foothills of the Grey Towers in the north, to reach the dark elves and goblins, to the Confederacy in the south . . .
His ambitions faded as that old identity gave way to one that was more powerful, more commanding.
The mercenary’s faint memories seemed so petty: now he could remember what it felt like to command his dragon, to destroy his enemies, to mate with his own kind when the breeding frenzy seized him. Now he knew he was one of the paramount beings on this world.
He was Valheru! He had no choice. He turned away from death and embraced the dream.
It is not a dream,
whispered a distant voice that sounded like his own.
It is an awakening, Lord of the Tigers.
Tomas awoke, his body bathed in perspiration, his heart pounding. He blinked in confusion for a moment, before recognizing his surroundings. The body lying next to him stirred, then his wife returned to her slumber. Rising slowly, he moved to the large window carved out of the trunk of the massive tree that held their quarters. The soft, ever-present glow of Elvandar entered the bedchamber as he drew aside the curtain and gazed upon the forest that had been his home for most of his long life.
The sheen of that glow made of his body a study in shadows and highlights. Muscles still tight beneath youthful skin marred only by a few battle scars, Tomas’s appearance had remained unchanged for more than a century. Even when unarmed he was among the most dangerous beings on this world, for his power was far greater than physical strength: it came from the dark energies that lived at the heart of a race vanished centuries ago. The Valheru.
A soft hand touched his back, familiar; affectionate. The Elf Queen spoke softly, ‘What is it, my love?’
Tomas’s blue eyes continued to stare into the glow of Elvandar, where most of his wife’s subjects lay asleep. Softly he replied, ‘It was a dream. Nothing more.’
She leaned against his back, her cheek resting on his shoulder. ‘You are troubled.’
He said nothing for a moment, then repeated, ‘It was only a dream.’
Sighing slightly, she returned to the bed and slid back under the covers. ‘Sleep, Tomas,’ she said.
He could tell that she was already drifting back into slumber by the time he came back to the bed.
For a long time he remained silent, even as the sun rose in the east and the sky began to brighten. The dream had been unlike any he had known since that time of madness, when he had first donned the white-and-gold armour of a Dragon Lord. Tomas had wrestled for years with the internal struggle, as the human and Valheru within him strove for dominance. But once he had gained control, he had reclaimed his humanity and found love, both in the woman who slept next to him every night, and deep within his own heart and soul; and since then the dreams of madness had left him untroubled.
Until tonight.
Once again, he had flown on the back of the mighty Shuruga, greatest of the golden dragons, above the lost city of Sar-Sargoth. But this time he had seen his greatest enemy, astride the neck of a massive black dragon.
Draken-Korin.
S
HOUTS RANG ACROSS THE PLAZA.
Moredhel warriors gathered in the large square below the palace steps, ignoring the biting chill of the twilight wind off the mountains as they waved their fists and bellowed threats at their enemies. Clans that would otherwise be at sword-point observed the truce, content for the moment to exact revenge on some future day.
The city of Sar-Sargoth had been built hard against the foothills of the Great Northern Mountains. To the north of those mighty peaks stretched the vast icelands where summer never came. Even as spring presented herself to the rolling Plain of Isbandia to the south-west, winter lingered in Sar-Sargoth, only reluctantly releasing her icy grip. The stinging cold did nothing to alleviate the frustration of the assembled chieftains as they waited for those who had summoned them to council.
The rising volume of their simmering rage was enough to move the more cautious of the moredhel chieftains to note the closest escape route should frustration build to bloodshed. Too many old rivals had been forced together at this council, and for too long for the truce to last more than minutes.
Arkan of the Ardanien surveyed his surroundings, then nodded once towards a side street that he knew led straight to an old farm gate several blocks away. Arkan was the model of a moredhel chieftain, with strong, broad shoulders and a narrow waist. His dark brown hair was cut short at the front to ensure that his vision was never impaired, and left long to flow past his pointed ears, down to his shoulders. His dark eyes were set in an almost expressionless mask. Arkan’s reputation was impressive: he had shepherded his troubled clan through more than thirty perilous years. Despite having many rivals and sworn enemies, the Clan of the Ice Bears had grown under his leadership.
His companion returned his nod and glanced around to assess where trouble would most likely originate. Morgeth, Arkan’s self-appointed bodyguard, let his hand stray to the hilt of his sword. ‘Those damn southerners,’ he said at last to his chieftain.