Page 1 of Deadly Maiden (Dragons and Darkthings #1)

Rorsyd

I land violently, bloodily, skidding to a halt, my feet sputtering across carpet, bodies, and dirt.

I loom over the crib of the offspring of the two monsters that killed Orish. My towering shadow slowly shrinks to man-size, reluctant as it often is to accept my new form.

Around me the tent fabric flaps and flutters then stills.

Struck by anguish and anger, my claws drip with the gore of the babe’s protectors. My heart thuds with the echoes of exhaustion. The flight to this enemy camp took the last of my energy, and my wounds will have their due.

Sunlight paints the scene bright in stark contrast to my despair. I left red streaks on the canvas and a ragged hole in roof and sides. A sideways glance reveals the sprawled corpses of the guards, their faces in the dirt. The idiots thought to prevent me from entering.

I am undone, and what dragonshifter weeps at death?

What Orish suffered was not a mortal death.

Though it feels as if it happened barely seconds ago, an eternity describes the loss far better.

The memory is written in pain.

That battlefield…

It might have been a monumental celebration equipped with rocketing fireworks.

It was not.

The clouds were whispering past as we glided above the field of thousands milling below.

Sounds drift upward. The faint clangs from weapons. The cries. The spectacular eruptions of multi-colored etharum from mage wielders. The battle against the usurper is going well.

An immense summoning shakes the sky, and my vision turns into shivering jelly, a darkness composed of many spots pours upward. This summoning comes from a trifling pair of fae so far away they are sticklike, gesturing with their tiny arms. The cloud of darkthings batter at Orish like a swarm of insects, glueing to him, crawling inside his roaring mouth. His spew vomits a geyser of black that arches groundward yet mocks sense, for it reforms, coalesces, then forces its way through his teeth and back inside.

Horrified, I watch as it destroys him from within.

His wings frantically cup the air then stall.

The plummet and spin as the black binds him, wings trapped, a dark mist dissipating and peeling off in spidery shreds.

I beg for him to stop but he falls and falls, only a tiny piercing scream tells me he may still be conscious.

The boom as he hits earth, gores deep. The force throws aloft gyrating boulders and clods of fractured ground that darken the sky.

Tomblike cold spreads in my chest.

I swoop across and cry out, attempting to compel him to return to life, yet I know it is futile.

I dare not try to kill these spawned darkthings, but their creators? Yes.

I thunder to them, arrowing lower, finding the two on a small promontory waving toward the battle that teems with thousands of people trying to exterminate each other. Magik streams and swirls, purple, green, stark red…black. The etharum carves swathes of death through the combatants.

My roar summons dragon heat, and I belch a molten stream that rampages forth, my fire-breath colored with incandescent hues. Fried air boils at the edges.

Flames ripple over the pair, crisping them to eye-scalding brightness. Crackling red-and-orange creatures, writhing. Eyes taut, third transparent eyelid protecting them from the heat, I hover then circle them as they convulse. I eat their screams, pleased yet unsatisfied, for what can ever sate this wrongness they gifted?

I leave them to their deaths.

Orish lies, frozen forever, encased in a god-rotting, darkthing cocoon.

In the middle of the battlefield.

He is a monument that will decompose where he fell.

Dying is so wrong.

Thousands, tens of thousands of others die here, but I care naught for them. Or little for them. My grief unhinges my thoughts. They had but tiny lifespans ahead. Orish had forever.

And so, here I am, contemplating ending this child.

My own gore curls down the thick muscles of my thighs, swirls past my calves, writing the bloodiness of this day on my feet.

Vengeance brought me here to this crib.

I heave in a few breaths and surprise myself with a throat-tearing sob.

I am a fool. I weep at the stupidness, the unfairness, the everydayness of my friend’s death.

Everyone dies, if they are neither Aos Sin fae nor dragonshifter, nor enhanced by some nefarious use of etharum magik.

Immortality has its failings, and so I weep for Orish.

“Fuck this day.” I say it quietly, though as far as I am aware, there are none alive in the camp to hear me.

I should kill this babe. It is my only reason for being in this place.

As if to mirror my mood, the outer winds gust through and shake this large tent, sending dust howling, eddying, scattering the belongings of the necromancers. Clothing, hats, a small stuffed purple toy, pens and quills. A stand of umbrellas, coats, and hats topples with a crash.

Grinding my teeth, molars threatening to crack, fangs projecting further than they should in man-form, I shake my claws and partially manifest my wings. The tips smack the inside of the tent, making it expand then tilt. Perhaps I should simply collapse this shelter and leave the gurgling thing in the crib to suffocate.

Coward. I lift my hand, poise my sharp index claw near its throat. A major blood vessel, the carotid, lives there, beneath its skin. One swift motion and its throat will part. Or its head will detach from the neck if I accidentally slice too deep. I imagine the flood of red on the white cloth it lies upon. My claw twitches.

Then the small pink, plump, hairless … cute … thing kicks its legs beneath the mauve blankie and shoves a thumb in its mouth. It sucks on it, slobbering, mouth greedy for food. Its mother perhaps fed it on her breast. Even evil mothers must do this, I suppose.

Hunger is normal not evil.

I lean over and say provocative words.

“I know your evilness is within, lurking. Bite it. Bite your thumb! If blood appears at that small slobber-wet mouth I will cut you. You do not deserve to live!”

No blood appears. The skin about its little eyes squeezes, wrinkles, and it coos, making loud, lip-smacking sounds.

“Curse you. Turn red. Glow with sinister colors! Do something!” I finish the request with a growl.

Nothing happens. It remains cute and fragile.

My shoulders sag. The thing looks like a dumb, adorable baby. My anger does not suffice. I cannot do this.

Sighing, I move away, gasping as the gaping hole in my gut takes the moment as its own and cores me with a snaking agony. My spine has perhaps been touched. The wound feels frighteningly deep, as if part of me is gone.

The last vestiges of my dragon form shudder into nothingness. I raise my hands to watch as my claws retract into my fingers.

I should fly from this camp. I have no desire to kill anyone else I might encounter. I trudge outside, kicking away debris but carefully avoiding the pooled blood, brains, and intestines of the male and female guards.

I attempt to shift. Pain drowns my thoughts for a prolonged and wretched moment. I curl over, dropping, my knees thud into earth. I rise from the crouch then stagger onward, hunched over and panting.

The light-purple sky roils with smoke and the scent of well-fired flesh, of spent etharum, of distant screams and sobs. We won this battle, but I fail to care.

The kingdom is saved, yay. Or yay not. My bitterness makes me curl my lip in disgust.

The camp is not quite deserted. A few leftover enemy fae recoil at the sight of me. My grimace is not for them. I cup my side, pausing to gather my resolution. The wound that was large enough to shove a pony into when I was shifted to dragon is now only…

I glance at it. Big enough to stick a foot or two into. I will heal from this.

But…I will heal faster if I shift.

Tentatively, I try again to shift and fail, squeaking and gasping at this second malfunction. Blood has spurted from somewhere hidden within the cavity I now bear. What did this to me? The bearshifter’s spear? No. Darkthing? That mage with the staff that lit with green? Maybe. I was busy at the time with other matters.

Orish, mainly.

My wings have gone. I try for claws, and they pop forth, begrudgingly. Only these remain to remind me of my dragon. I should seek some boots. From atop a bedroll, I filch a pair that fit if I force the leather to obey.

It seems I must walk home. I rip a couple of holes ’tween the uppers and the soles to let my toes have relief.

Then I make a slow turn and face that tent where the baby of evil lies cooing to itself. It might still die. I hope so. I know with every fucking dragonshifter bone in my useless body, that baby will become a child of evil if allowed to turn into an adult.

All necromancers do.

If so…it will be my fault and mine alone.

I will watch the child, whether it be male or female. I will watch it for the first signs of anything at all sinful.

I vow this.

I raise my hand and point and speak the vow aloud.

“Whatever you become, I will be there to see it. I will not suffer the spawn of those monsters to live once you show what you truly are. Whatever. You. Are.

“I swear this on my honor. I swear it on the bones of my ancestors. On the flame that I burn the air with. On my wings and on my claws.”

I suck another breath, a cold, shaking, unshifted breath, and I sweep my blood-encrusted hair from my face. Luckily it is red anyway. At that, I stifle a laugh and stand straighter.

I speak more softly.

“When you show your evil form, pull dead things from their graves to lurch into malignant life, or cast death magik, I will end you.”

Vow dispensed with, I orient myself and begin my limping journey, away from the smoke and the cries. On foot, this will take days.

Once well and able to shift again, I should haul Orish to someplace he would have loved. A mountain peak perhaps? Near my aerie where my hoard resides. From there he can watch the world. This pleases me, and right now I need something good to hold onto.

“And I will watch you ,” I mutter as I exit the camp, thinking of that pinkish, fat-cheeked infant, as I head north. “I will return to terminate you, no matter how sweet you appear.”

“Fucking gurgling at me…”

Ahead, trees crowd the trail. The air would be nice?—

I try to shift and drop to one knee, punch the ground a few times to conquer the pain. Habit got me. Clutching my side, I groan then spit out some blood and the last words I will say for days, “Fuck all gurgling cute things!”

No more shifting until I am healed.

A small wren twitters at me as it flits by, before vanishing into the forest. I swear it was smiling. Even the birds mock me.

Oh. I halt. I need to track where the babe goes, if it lives to go anywhere at all. I rub my temple. Okay.

I will return and watch the tent. To see if it dies. I will not interfere, yet.

Sometimes, I forget to think.

The remains of King Madlin’s army might arrive first and kill it for me. So be it.

They do not.

After a short wait, a half an hour perhaps, a man comes and carries the child away in a body sling, along with a pack he hurriedly stuffs full of whatever he finds worthy of his usage. He has no mount, and I trail him for many days, staying beyond his ken, until he stops at a golem-master town that grinds past. He climbs aboard and stays there. The name of the town is Bollingham .

I follow him, climb the stairs, and hide in the alleyways. I can live without sustenance for a while, but I have some money with me. There is enough for food. The countryside creeps past until we near a static town where customers swarm aboard. Despite being a stranger, no one has asked me why I am here. That casual acceptance bothers me.

My kind are rare. Perhaps it is that. Few would recognize me for what I am when unshifted.

After a week, he somehow purchases a shop with a residence above it—with evil funds, naturally. Now I am assured they will stay. I leave for my aerie, still unshifting, unhealed.

I will return.

I start a diary. It will help to keep myself focused.

Year One

Being small and underdeveloped, the offspring did nothing much for a whole year except to eat and sleep. Trekking back and forth to the town is taxing. I will check once a year for alterations. Her rescuer—and it is her, for the child is a female—he seems to have some skill at blacksmithing. His shop has many customers. Sparky’s Smithery is the name painted above the doorway into the shop.

I sneaked in at night to look upon the dark progeny. It can crawl now but sleeps well, like any young thing.

I remain unhealed. I cannot shift, cannot fly.

Year Two

No change in it. The girl.

I discovered her name. Some urchins fled by the shop, and she waved at them with a chubby hand. One of them sang her name. Wyntre. The blacksmith came out and yelled at them to stop thieving.

It is good to have a name for my target. I can have it scratched on her gravestone.

My claws come when called. My wings, no. I can feel their existence within me. It hurts to try to shift.

As yet, there are no signs of dark necromancer dealings from this child.

I am perhaps assuming greater things of the average necromancer fae than I should. They will take time to mature.

It’s been three centuries since I was young.

Year Three

No change in Wyntre, except she is larger and can talk a lot. Nonsense mostly. The blacksmith has no female or male partner, which is unusual for a fae, whether shifter, mage or normal, though not for a dragonshifter. I am unsure if necromancers mate often. Sparky, or Landos, as is his real name, has no magik in him that I can discern.

Wyntre is also lacking in this respect. However, my research says necros use a converted form of etharum called netharum. An added N is the only difference. Whoever made up these terms seems lacking in imagination.

Will I be able to tell if she begins to do evil things?

Staring out the window the desk sits before does not help me decide this.

Some of the residents of Bollingham can wield magik. Though the stoneborn masters don’t use etharum. No one knows what they do use to perform their arcane rites that bring rock to life, creating golems.

Since rocks are a part of our world, Artreos, and since etharum comes from Artreos, the theory is that this is why our world hates them. It sounds like bollocks to me. The fae here use bollocks a lot as a swear word.

It has become arduous to go back and forth. It was wise to bring a substantial amount of gold coin with me to pay for whatever I might need.

I consider getting a job in Bollingham. A job … A curious word for doing something for money. I do most things for money but have never called it a job. Nevertheless a job would lessen my need to fetch hoard gold.

Year Four

No change in her. Or me. Jobs are boring.

Year Five.

And underpaid. I have enough at home to buy Bollingham a hundred times over. It is just annoying to drag it here.

I cannot shift, much. My head hurts when I do. Even my cock hurts when I try. Now that is a real pain. I don’t need to fuck, but it is nice when one does so. The fae here are always rutting.

I decide not to write that down and lower the quill.

I have managed stunted wings and transformation for a few seconds, but it hurt so fiercely I had to stop. Repeated tries do nothing.

I cannot move Orish.

They named the battle after him. It’s something. The war is now the War of the Chained King, the Usurper . I hear they have him chained near the palace in Tensorga. He sits on a rock escarpment on the seafront, getting his heart and other bits eaten nightly when the rancor crabs crawl onto his rock.

I guess drinking beer and watching baby necromancers is not that bad after all.

Thinking about how this has turned out…I pick up the quill to write some more.

No one else seems to have tracked the baby to here. I prefer that. This is my vow, my honor.

Year Five

Bored. Got another job. Gardening.

Fuck gardening. It’s a trivial hobby for the average unimaginative fae.

Perhaps I should kill her and be done with watching.

Year Six.

The pubs in Bollingham… okay there is only one, but it is good.

I have discovered a liking for beer.

Year Seven

If she is going evil, I wish she would simply commit to it!!!!

I hesitate, on the verge of crossing that out. I leave it be as evidence for next year to not be overwrought.

Year Eight

Should I cease doing this?

What else, though?

There is nothing else.

Wine here is also good.

Year Nine

The child, Wyntre, is nine, too, I think? She had a birthday party but I couldn’t see the cake. Children sang a song for her. She has friends. Is this how the lesser fae number years? Me, I have too many. I cannot count them all. Four hundred and twenty?

Damn. Spilled some lager on the page.

Will have to get more gold. Fuck all that climbing to my hoard. It’s dusty up there. The spiders are happy spinning webs. If anyone ever follows me, I could lose it. Or if they read this diary?

Note: Check for anyone following if I return to you know where.

Then I cross that out, tear out the page, burn it.

I reread the earlier diary entries to be sure I haven’t given away the location.

How careless I have been to allow this risk.

I have disgraced myself as a result of my consumption of alcohol. Is this depression I see before me in the shaking of my hand? I am above such petty mentality. I am not kin to minor and mortal fae.

I shall dispose of my bottles…or those of the lesser vintages.

Year Ten

Law enforcement for the Aos Sin is a fairly easy job for me. Obeying orders is the hardest part. I am big enough to throw around any fae and am immune, or poorly vulnerable, to most magic…barring darkthings. Fuck the darkthings, whatever those are. Only the golems carrying the town on their backs would outmatch me. The job takes me away from Bollingham, though the path the town takes often intersects with where I must be.

If I were not a dragonshifter, I’d be annoyed at how the law is biased toward the rich. A young fae stole a loaf of bread due to starvation. They are hanging him tomorrow.

I watched the hanging. I’ve killed but that was just…

The pay is not enough. Not for doing things like that.

Wyntre is still a young and magikless female child.

Every five years should be adequate?

Year Fifteen.

Nothing new. Just older. Though I am not, I admit, seeing all the minor details of her life.

Year Twenty.

Or in a month it will be twenty. The enforcer beat came close enough that I could check on her early in this mìos cycle. She has turned into a beautiful specimen of a fae female. Long blue hair, lithe body, and long legs… Non-shifters show their powers by this age, if they have any. Boys are sniffing about her.

She is prettier than most, this much I will give her.

This. Is. Stupid. Why am I doing this? For nothing?

Today, I saw her bandage a puppy’s leg to help heal an injury then kiss its head. This is not the dark necromancer sign I am looking for.

I stare at the page where I wrote those rambling words. The parchment is browning due to the book’s age. Foxing, this is called. Old books are worth a considerable amount if one collects the right ones.

I tried healers for myself and gained a nothing result.

I tried many things, crazy things. My one comfort is collecting.

I tap my quill on the page, leaving ink blots.

I have an underground cellar stocked full of rare vintage wines, one for every year going back a hundred years—round numbers are good. Also there are boutique beers.

I lift the quill from the page and close the book, sinking into my squeaking chair that no doubt intends to collapse under my weight when I least expect it…and into awareness of where I sit. Behind me is my owned living space of two rooms above the Tusked Woorak. This city, Langordin, is on Bollingham’s trade route and the location has been convenient.

My rooms are crammed full of selected books and magazines, choice weaponry from every kingdom, warrior art, and collectible statues of the Best Mages. On a higher shelf resides the urn of Orish’s ashes. They aren’t really ashes.

I had to scrape those off him with a knife. He has set solid, and the rain and weather barely erode his corpse.

The one thing I haven’t collected here is cats and coins. My True Hoard has those. Coins, not cats. Though I have considered cats, they are difficult to shelve.

I’m jarred into a memory of Orish.

The zigzag cracking of his hide, the bulging of his throat and eyes as the darkthings funnel into him. Red fissures glow impossibly black as he drops from the sky, spinning slowly. The silent scream in my head. Disbelief burrows in, ripping wounds in my mind.

Those injuries never healed any more than my gut wound.

I know how stupid and insane this is, sitting here hoarding stuff when I made that vow. It was a good, righteous vow, but resisting the hoard urge has proved difficult.

It is time for me to change. After twenty years, I have to accept that I am never shifting again. Or not properly. Not fully. How does an immortal live a life of tedium?

I’ll buy a wagonload of good beer and contemplate the sunset.

I’ll quit the enforcers and think.

I vowed on my wings and my flame to watch for the necromancer’s baby to turn and become something horrifying and in need of destruction. I possess neither, and she seems to be a dead end, and that’s not even a pun, sadly.

I, Rorsyd, am a dragonshifter with no wings and no flame. And no purpose.

My hoard is not enough.

I might be done.

Done with watching. Maybe done with everything. I’m not sure how an immortal kills himself, but I am good at research.

Only one thing keeps me here. Her. Of course it is her. I dedicated myself to this one being.

I admit I am deathly curious about where she is going with her life and what she truly is. How could I have been so wrong?

I’ll go and see her one last time when the twenty years are due to expire.

A Raven Rises

Three miles high in the Scarrok Mountains, near the beginning of a pale, winding trail that leads upward for another mile to the gates of the decaying Fortress of Slaedorth, a patch of dirt stirs. Pebbles roll aside.

The last rays of sunlight flicker and fade, leaving the edge of this path unseen, except for perhaps a grasshopper or two. Something lances from the dirt, flinging dots of it hither and thither.

A beak emerges then a head with a single eye visible. This eye glows red. The other eye is missing. The damage is obvious and merely a concavity filled with a crisscross of white scars. Feathers shake then flutter as the raven drags the whole of itself into the cool air.

It takes a breath, or seems to, and opens its beak wide. No air is drawn inward, however, for this raven is fully dead.

Dead twenty years.

Dead and awaiting the call of time and the maturity of one small but not insignificant maiden.

It fluffs its wings, losing a few feathers, shakes its head again, scratches the last of the dirt from one ear, then launches itself into the night sky.

It circles a few times, cawing loud enough to make animals in the vicinity dash for cover beneath the trees. It judges which direction is correct by an inner raven clock. No moon is showing. No stars are visible through the dense clouds. Its wing-flaps are weak but purposeful. Its course is north-eastward to a small, moving, golem-master town that bases its economy on trading with the places it passes through.

Though driven by relentless crawling golems, by stone leg and paw, by stone arm and paw, the town could never outrun the raven. This bird may be dead, but it has a goal that was scripted in its mind by its masters. The girl must know of her inheritance.

A legacy is due.

Once the raven is out of sight, there is movement at a lookout post constructed years before to allow observation of the fortress and the land it presides over. Bright lights blink from the top of a tower, signaling a message. Three men astride dark-colored mounts trot from the gateway beneath and onto the trail then gallop in the direction the undead bird has taken.

An hour later, after the departure of the raven and the riders, a second undead servant pushes himself from his shallow resting place, brushes the earth from his tattered clothes and dirty-white hair then plods down the trail, on a north-east heading.