Matrick blinked. “Did you say Akatung? As in the dragon Akatung?”
“The very same,” said Shadow. He leaned forward and scattered the seeds on the fire. They popped quietly and gave off a sweet-smelling smoke.
Moog frowned at that, but his thoughts were elsewhere. “I thought we killed him.”
“We only injured him,” Clay murmured. He remembered telling the same thing to Pip and his friends in the King’s Head what seemed like an age ago.
“I put Vellichor through his jaw,” said Gabriel.
“I cut him open pretty bad,” added Ganelon. “He was holding his guts in when he flew off.”
Shadow looked suitably impressed. “Well, his … guts, as you say … remained within, I’m afraid. He retreated to Teragoth, where he lairs in the bowels of the shrine to Tamarat.”
Sabbatha frowned. “But isn’t Teragoth within sight of Castia? Why haven’t they just killed him and taken back the keystone?”
“Because Akatung is immensely powerful,” said the claw-broker. “And they dare not risk his ire. Castia’s walls are high and strong and well defended—which is why neither the dragon, nor Lastleaf’s Horde, have breached them. But if provoked, Akatung would wreak havoc on their lesser settlements, and so they have an uneasy truce.”
Both of the ettin’s heads yawned at once. Clay caught a whiff of Dane’s fetid breath and pretended to scratch at something just under his nose. “Good night, Gregor,” Dane muttered.
“Night, Dane,” said his brother. They promptly fell asleep on their back, snoring into one another’s faces.
Gabriel looked off into the surrounding darkness. Shadows pooled in the hollows around his eyes. “So the keystone is part of Akatung’s hoard?”
The druin spread his hands. “Presumably. Few have seen a dragon’s hoard and lived to speak of it.”
Few indeed, thought Clay. He’d known someone who had. One of their old bards had signed on without telling them she’d stolen something precious from Akatung’s hoard. They found that part out the hard way, when the dragon came at them out of nowhere like a typhoon with scales. They’d managed to drive it off, mortally wounding it in the process. Or so they’d thought.
The bard had died, of course. As bards tended to do.
“It is evident, I suppose,” Shadow went on to say, “that if Lastleaf should manage to coerce the dragon into relinquishing Teragoth’s keystone …”
“He could put a Horde in the heart of Grandual before anyone could stop him,” finished Matrick. The ruins of Kaladar were within a day’s hard ride from Brycliffe Castle; Agria’s capital city would very probably be their first target.
“Tell me about Lastleaf,” said Gabriel to the druin. “When I met Vespian he was hunting his son. He said Lastleaf stole something from him. Something dangerous.”
Shadow pursed his lips. “Tamarat.”
Gabe paused. “The goddess?”
“The sword,” said the druin. “Named for the lost goddess of druinkind. And yes, Lastleaf took it from his father. He carries it still, in a bone-white scabbard upon his back.”
Clay remembered seeing the sword at Lindmoor, and again in the gorgon’s manse. Of the three blades borne by the druin, it was the only one Lastleaf had not yet drawn.
“What’s so special about this sword?” Clay asked, sharing a pointed look with Gabriel. “The Archon seemed pretty desperate to find it.”
Shadow was watching the fire. Its light wavered in his eyes, gleamed on his teeth as he spoke. “Vespian was, among other things, a powerful sorcerer, and an unparalleled craftsman. He created weapons of formidable power, most of them swords. You have met Lastleaf, I assume? You’ve seen the other blades on his back?”
“We have,” said Clay, who’d been curious about the druin’s trio of scabbards since the Council of Courts.
“One is called Scorn,” said the druin, “which the Archon fashioned for Lastleaf when he came of age. It is a … volatile weapon, capable of great destruction. The other is Madrigal, the singing sword, a gift from Vespian to the Exarch of Askatar.”
“And the Exarch of Askatar … gave it to him?” Matrick asked, though his tone suggested he knew better already.
“Her name was Nyro, though after the Dominion fell she was called Sourbrook. She was one of Vespian’s most capable scouts, and one day—this was several hundred years ago, mind you—she found what the Archon had sent her to look for. She tried to capture Lastleaf, but instead he killed her, and took her weapon for himself.”
Clay remembered that second blade, Madrigal, ringing like a bell when Lastleaf had drawn it in the Maxithon. He wondered how many other of the Archon’s weapons had survived the Dominion’s fall, and whether Ganelon’s axe wasn’t one of them.
Shadow reached up to scratch the back of one tall ear. “Vellichor, of course, remains his most remarkable creation. It was used, as you are no doubt aware, to shape a door through which the druins, my ancestors, escaped the ruin of their own realm.”
Clay had never known whether or not to believe that was true, though he could think of no better explanation for the world he so often glimpsed through the flat of Vellichor’s blade. He found himself unable to doubt it any longer.
“In this new world, however, we found ourselves afflicted by a most paradoxical curse: We were immortal, insofar as we could not die except by violence, and yet our mothers could give birth to but a single child. Our numbers began to dwindle. One by one we burned out, or were snuffed like candles in the wind, our entire race destined one day to flicker into smoke and disappear forever. But such, alas, is the fate of every fire.” The druin smiled sadly. “Consequently, druin children are especially precious, and so Vespian was overjoyed when his wife, Astra, announced she was with child. In time she gave birth to a daughter.”
“Hold up,” Sabbatha said. “Is Lastleaf not Vespian’s son? How could he have two children? Did he have two wives?”
Kit threw up his hands, exasperated. “Good luck telling a story around this one,” he said to Shadow. “Constant interruptions! No patience at all for dramatic exposition.”
The druin’s ears slanted sideways, thoughtful. “To be fair: She is mortal, while we are not. Her candle is burning down much quicker than ours.”
The ghoul put a finger to his bloodless lips, pondering. “Fair point,” he said.
“Go on,” urged the daeva, and when Kit shot her a glare she raised her hands. “What? You heard him! My candle’s burning and all that.”
Shadow went on. “Sadly, Astra perished shortly after giving birth to her daughter. It is rare among our kind, but not unheard-of. The Archon was beside himself, driven mad by grief, despairing of an eternity without his beloved wife by his side. And so in despair he did a thing—a terrible thing—that has shaped this realm forever after and may yet see it destroyed. He forged a final sword.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “Tamarat.”
“Not since Vellichor had Vespian invested such power into a weapon, and I believe he paid a dearer price in the making, for he was … changed afterward. Darker, as you will see. For this new blade’s purpose was singular, and singularly evil: If used to take the life of a druin—and only a druin—it could resurrect the woman for whom it had been made.”
“Bugger me beardless,” Moog hissed. “Necromancy!”
“Indeed,” said Shadow. “And in the grip of madness, resentful of what the child’s life had cost him—and perhaps, it must be said, to keep the nature of this abhorrent new weapon a secret—the Archon used the sword upon his infant daughter—”
“Liar!” Gabriel’s hand leapt instinctively to Vellichor’s hilt.
“Let him finish!” barked Ganelon.
Gabriel looked beseechingly toward Clay, who wished to hell he could unhear what he’d just heard about a druin he’d thought a noble man, could do nothing but shrug. “We should hear him out, Gabe.”