49. Hope Anew
Chapter 49
Hope Anew
18 th Day of the Blood Moon
Ilnaen – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
The chamber behind the door was circular in shape, with walls that rose into a domed ceiling plated in gold with The Order’s symbol at its centre. The baldírlight glistened against that gold, illuminating the chamber to its fullest.
A soft blue light radiated from Jotnar runes carved into the ground around a raised stone platform in the middle of the chamber. A skeleton – much too large to be human – rested against the base of that platform, legs folded, arms hanging by its side, tattered clothes draped from fleshless bones. The sight dragged a sorrow-filled sigh from Calen’s lungs. It was Kollna. He knew it as well as he knew the sky was blue and the grass was green.
Calen closed his eyes for a second, clamping his teeth together and clenching his jaw. And as he opened them, his gaze fell on what was perched atop the platform: nine dragon eggs.
Settled dust had muted the sheen of the scales, but the eggs were unmistakable, easily the size of his head, scales overlapping from top to bottom.
Calen took a step, his heart pounding, and the world spun once more. Colours muddled and turned to blotches as they shifted around him, smearing like paint. When everything settled, he stood on the central platform of the vault’s first level. Lanterns burned, frantic chatter filled the air, and people darted all about him. Three Highguard stood at his side with satchels of eggs strapped to their backs.
A vicious crack sounded from the vault’s door, followed by a roaring explosion. Shards of stone and black glass ripped through the air, dust pluming.
Beside him, a sliver of obsidian as long as his forearm blurred past and lodged itself in a Drac?rdare’s throat, blood sluicing as the woman thrashed on the ground, twitching in her death throes.
Screams of agony echoed in the massive cavern, rocks still tumbling, the clink of black glass against stone dancing on the air like music. The crimson runes of Bloodmarked glowed through the settling dust, and the Uraks poured forth, black steel and claws tearing flesh and bone.
“Draleid Kollna.” One of the Highguard looked from Calen to the charging horde. “We must stand. Without us they?—”
“No.” The word was like acid on Calen’s tongue. The Drac?rdare were not warriors. They would die like babes to the Urak steel. And yet, he had no choice but to leave them. The eggs were more important. They were everything.
The world shifted, and Calen was charging up a stairwell, pushing past anyone in his way. Below, the Uraks swarmed through the vault, Fades and Bloodmarked among them.
A flash and Calen stood in the hidden chamber, torches blazing. He set the six eggs onto the platform beside the three already there. Eluna had never come for them. For a moment he feared what might have happened to her, but that thought died quickly. Eluna’s life meant little now. At least she had brought others to safety, wherever that may have been. With the runes set, these eggs would be safe here.
A call rang out from the corridor, and Calen turned to see the three Highguard fighting and dying as Uraks and a pair of Fades charged. Calen drew on all five elemental strands, a spear of white light forming in his hand.
The world blurred and twisted, and Calen found himself on the floor, his back resting against the stone platform, blood pouring from the two holes the Fades had poked in his side.
The door was closed. He had closed it. Beyond that, the glamour was set once more. The runes marked into the floor were ignited. He had done all he could, given all he had to give. Even if the Uraks destroyed every other egg in the city, these nine would be safe.
That was all he could do. That was everything. Instinctively, he reached for the touch of his soulkin’s mind. The feeling of emptiness cut into him. He had felt Tinua die, felt his soul break and shatter. The dragon had faced his end with as much courage as he had faced everything in life, protecting a clutch of fledglings as they fled the city. Protecting those who needed him. There was no greater cause.
“An honourable death,” Calen whispered, coughing, tasting blood in his mouth. The words were in Kollna’s voice. “I will be with you again soon, my heart of hearts.” In his last moments, Calen’s thoughts went to his young apprentice. He hoped Coren and Aldryn still drew breath. “Daughter of the sea. You are ready. Fly.”
The world shifted, and Calen found himself kneeling on the stone floor, once more seeing through his own eyes. Tears rolled down his cheeks. Staring at Kollna’s remains, he reached out to Valerys and pulled their minds so tightly together he could not tell where the dragon stopped and he began. Wind rolled over their scales and tears flowed from their eyes. They saw both Kollna and the broken city. Their heart bled as they stared at the ruins of everything that had been lost. At the blood that had been spilled, the lives taken, the bonds destroyed.
“Alura anis, Tinua ar Kollna, davitir un Luan,” Calen whispered. “Draleid n’aldryr, Rakina nai dauva. Du é alanín til ata ilynír abur er kerta.”
Rest now, Tinua and Kollna, daughter of Luan. Dragonbound by fire, Broken by death. You are called to make whole what is half.
As Calen stood, the knights waited silently, not a word passing between them. Both Kallinvar and Haem watched him, but the others turned their gazes elsewhere in the chamber.
Calen wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of his gauntlet. “She gave her life to bring these eggs here,” he whispered, explaining. “Gave her life to protect them.”
Calen stepped forwards and brushed the dust from the closest egg to reveal buttercream scales with streaks of green.
“Why?” Kallinvar moved to the other side of the platform, examining the eggs, his stare harsh and sceptical. “Why these eggs? And why here ? There were thousands of eggs in the city.”
Calen shook his head. “Not these eggs. Just any eggs she could save, any eggs she could carry. They would be safe here, hidden from the Uraks.”
“These must be the runes you spoke of in the letter.” Ruon knelt beside a glowing rune carved into the stone. “What are they for?”
“I don’t know runecraft.” Calen proceeded to brush the dust from a second egg, the light glinting a deep orange from the scales. “They were to protect this place – to protect the eggs.”
“There has to be more,” Kallinvar cut across, his tone sharp.
Calen looked up to see the man marching about the chamber. Kallinvar swept his hands across a desk Calen hadn’t even realised was there. Once Calen had seen Kollna and the eggs, he’d not looked about for anything more.
“Heart of Blood,” Kallinvar muttered, whipping through the pages of a journal that had rested on the desk. When Calen had met Kallinvar before, the man had seemed strong as iron, unshakable. But the man before him now was something else, erratic and frayed. He turned and gestured at the other knights. “Search everything.”
It was only then that Calen took the time to look about the rest of the room. Two swords hung on the far wall, sitting on either side of a suit of armour atop a polished wooden stand. The desk at which Kallinvar stood was one of two. Both were stacked with sticks of wax, journals, scrolls, and piles of parchment. Chests sat beneath the desks, heavy and wooden, inlaid with gold. The more he looked, the more he saw. This must have been where Alvira had kept everything of value to her… perhaps even the Archons before her.
“We take all of it with us. Nothing remains. Gildrick and the Watchers can sort through it. If the Heart of Blood is here, we will find it.”
“That’s not for you to decide.” Calen didn’t allow even a hint of hesitation in his voice. He needed to be firm here, needed to be strong. “These are the possessions of Alvira Serris. The last Archon of the Draleid. By rights, they belong to her people. You can’t just?—”
“With respect.” Kallinvar’s voice held no malice or venom. It was simply cold and steady. “Alvira is dead. She has no need for anything here.”
“That does not mean you can claim it as your own.”
“I wasn’t asking, Draleid.”
Calen took a step closer to Kallinvar, fighting his natural instinct to open himself to the Spark. “Neither was I.”
“We made a deal, Calen Bryer. We came here for the Heart of Blood, on your word. I will not leave empty handed.”
“And I left an army of souls to march in defence of my home while I honoured my promise and stood by you here.”
Kallinvar’s stare broke. He turned his head inwards towards his shoulder, eyes watching the floor. Quick as a snake, his head snapped back up. But he no longer looked at Calen. Instead, his gaze was fixed on the eggs. There was a hardness in the man’s eyes. He didn’t look himself. “What of the eggs?”
Kallinvar’s voice was barely a whisper.
“What of them?” Calen glanced at Haem. His brother stood with his back straight, body tense.
“What if they are the Heart of Blood? What if it is with those eggs that Fane brings Efialtír into the world?”
“No egg has hatched in four hundred years.”
“And yet everything has brought us here.” Kallinvar kept his gaze on the eggs as he moved closer, the light of the baldír gleaming in his eyes. “These runes are not marked for no reason. Perhaps they are a shield, but from what?”
Calen opened himself to the Spark, the purple glow of his eyes shimmering off the egg scales and the green plate of Kallinvar’s armour. “There is a line, Grandmaster. And you are close to crossing it.”
Calen stopped himself from unsheathing his sword. Even if he did believe he could best the man blade to blade – which he didn’t – the rest of the knights would see to it that he never left that chamber alive. He glanced at Haem again, seeing the hesitation in his brother’s eyes. What would Haem do, Calen wondered, if forced to make that choice?
“Is there truly a line, Draleid, when it comes to stopping Efialtír crossing into this world? Stopping the Shadow from consuming everything? From devouring? From obliterating?” Kallinvar looked to Calen. “Where is the line you draw to protect this world?”
Calen could hear Tarmon in the back of his mind, urging him to stay patient, to think with his head and not his heart. But so too could he feel Valerys’s fire raging. They could not allow any harm to come to the eggs. They would not. Whether the eggs would hatch or not.
“Thousands of broken eggs fill this city.” Calen didn’t raise his voice, didn’t shout or take a step closer to the Grandmaster, but he fed on the cold fire in Valerys’s veins. “I will not allow you to add any more. There is always a line. Always. The Fall itself was a line crossed with the best of intentions. Understand this – if you want these eggs, you will have to take them over my cold, dead body. But it will be one of your knights doing the taking, because you will be lying right next to me. I swear this by the bond.”
A brief silence passed in which Kallinvar stared back at Calen, none of the other knights speaking a word. Sister-Captain Arlena and the others had reached the chamber now, and Calen stood fourteen to one. It mattered little. He would do all he could to protect these eggs, and he would take as many with him as the gods allowed.
The light from his eyes and the runes of his armour burned bright, Valerys rumbling in the back of his mind. The dragon had alighted on what remained of the roof of a ruined building by the tower, his rage an unrelenting blaze. If Valerys were in Calen’s place, every knight would burn, their ashes would burn, their souls would burn.
Calen looked at Haem. His brother had come a step closer, positioning himself only a few feet away.
“Take everything else,” Calen said, his hands trembling as he tried to still the fury that raged within Valerys. “The notes, the chests, the journals, the armour. Everything. Take them. Have your Watchers go through everything piece by piece. Just return them when you’re done. Do that, Grandmaster Kallinvar, and we will all walk out of here with our heads. But the eggs go with me. That is the hill I will die on, and so will you.”
In the ruined city above, Valerys unleashed a defiant roar. Kallinvar had threatened the eggs, and he had meant it. Those were not words that would be easily struck from the dragon’s mind.
Kallinvar sucked in his cheeks and stared directly into Calen’s eyes for what felt like minutes. The other knights didn’t move an inch. Haem’s stare never left the Grandmaster.
“Very well.” Kallinvar held his gaze on Calen long after the words had left his lips.
The tension held as the man opened the Rift right there in the chamber and the knights carried through everything that wasn’t bolted down. Everything except for the eggs.
Haem just stood there in silence, watching. Every time his gaze met Calen’s, he looked away. But Calen didn’t.
When Calen began to place the eggs in the satchels he’d found beside Kollna’s body, Haem joined him, silently.
A sharp warning flared in the back of Calen’s mind from Valerys, and every hair on his body stood like needles.
“What?” Haem paused, a dust-covered egg in his hand, his eyes narrowing.
Calen stuffed the remaining eggs into the last satchel, caring little for delicacy. “Uraks,” he said, slinging the satchel over his shoulder. “They’re here.”
“In the city?” Kallinvar strode from across the room, urgency in his voice.
“In the tower.” The creatures must have moved through the city while Valerys was distracted by the eggs. But now the dragon could see them clear as day from the sky, hundreds pouring through the tower’s door.
“How did they?—”
“It doesn’t matter. They were waiting for us. There are too many, and we don’t have time.” Calen grabbed the last satchel from Haem and threw it around his neck with the other two. The weight pulled against him, pressing his armour down into his shoulders.
“There’s only one way in and out of here. You can’t travel through the Rift…” As Haem spoke, Calen could hear the realisation in his voice.
“There are ventilation tunnels somewhere on this level.” Calen remembered the tunnels from his vision through Mirk’s eyes. “Down the northern end. If I can get there, I can get to the surface.”
Kallinvar looked back at the Rift that floated behind him. For a moment, Calen thought the man would leave him for dead. “Go,” Kallinvar said, cracking his neck side to side. “We’ll hold them back while you get to the tunnels.”
“There are too many.”
“More for us to send to the void.”
Through Valerys’s eyes, Calen watched as the dragon folded his wings and dropped, the air whipping over his scales as a pressure built within him. With the rage of a burning sun, Valerys spewed fire from his jaws. Fire that turned sand to glass and melted steel and bone. Fire that ignited the air and incinerated everything it touched.
And when the flames cleared, the Uraks charged over the glass and ash.
Bolts of purple lightning tore upwards, and Valerys rolled, the light flashing past his eyes.
“There are mages.”
“Shamans or Fades.” Kallinvar gave a sharp nod. “Nothing we can’t handle. Go, now.”
As Calen made to leave, Kallinvar pressed his hand against Calen’s breastplate.
“When next I call, remember today.” He drew a sharp breath through his nostrils. “We want the same thing, Draleid.”
“Do we?”
“We want the ones we love to still be breathing when the next summer dawns. Thank you for trusting me.”
Calen sprinted down the corridor, his legs burning, the weight of the eggs and the armour taking their toll. He glanced over the low parapet to his left. Far below, on the first platform, green Soulblades flashed back and forth as Kallinvar, Haem, and the knights fought to keep the Uraks at bay – to buy Calen time. They would have to fall back through the Rift soon. Even they could not stand against such a tide.
As he moved, the light from the baldír seemed to dim for a moment before flickering back to life.
“Come on, come on…” He scanned the ceiling and walls, praying to Elyara he would find something that signalled the ventilation tunnels. His memories of Mirk’s vision were blurry.
There had to be an easier way of finding these tunnels. He stopped, shifting the satchels in their place and rolling his shoulders, muscles bunching and joints cracking. And then, just like that, Falmin’s voice whispered in his ear. “We call it the drift.”
Even in death Falmin was his ray of light in the darkness. And Calen was absolutely sure that if he ever met the man in Achyron’s halls, Falmin would remind Calen of that fact a thousand times over – and Calen would welcome it.
Calen pulled on threads of Air and Spirit. The world thundered around him, the roars and clash of steel below as crashing stars in his ears. He closed his eyes and twisted his threads, thinning and spreading them, allowing them to drift on the air. One by one he filtered out the other sounds, fading them into his periphery. Then he heard it: the low whistle of the wind, the gentle push of the current as it flowed into the vault from the city above. There were multiple sources. He chose the closest and ran.
In the city above, Valerys rained fire and fury down on the Uraks who remained outside the tower. He laid waste to anything that moved while arcs of lightning tore past him.
Two of the beasts leapt from the roof of a building. Valerys twisted and snatched one in his jaws, the other falling, the ground taking it. Valerys tossed the Urak upwards, then beat his wings, rose, and ripped the creature in half with a single bite, blood and innards spraying into the wind.
Don’t stop moving, Calen urged the dragon. He’d seen what the Fade’s lightning had done in Kingspass. Valerys roared back in defiance, his rage aimed not just at the Uraks but also at Calen. It was Calen’s choices that had once again separated them, once again left Valerys unable to protect his soulkin.
Calen reached a point in the corridor where the whistle of the wind split. One path led left along the open corridor, the other led right through an arched passage. He didn’t have time for decisions. He turned right.
He followed the passage for about fifty feet and found himself in a circular chamber with a statue of an elven woman at its centre. She wore smooth plate armour, her hands resting on the pommel of a sword that pressed into the stone at her feet.
Sand had piled up against the wall behind the statue, and spread across the floor. Above the sand, two enormous rectangular iron grates were set into the wall. Each was at least ten feet across and five feet high: the ventilation tunnels.
He moved past the statue and wove threads of Fire into the iron grate on the right, pulling the heat from the metal. He may never have been anything but a shadow of the blacksmith his father was, but Vars would have looked down on Calen in shame if he’d not remembered that cold forced metal to shrink. After this many centuries, he was sure the grates would be more than stiff.
He pulled two latches out of lock with the threads of Air, then sent the grate dropping into the sand with a thump . With a quick check of the eggs, Calen waded into the sand.
He gripped the ledge of the tunnel and started to pull himself up when a shiver crawled up his spine. Half a heartbeat later, the light from Calen’s baldír dimmed to a dying flame.
“Warden of Varyn.” The Fade’s voice was like rusted nails drawn across iron. “It was not you we expected to find in this place.”
Calen turned slowly, the Spark burning in his veins. The creature’s hair was white as bone, draped across a pale face with thin blue lips and eyes that pulled the courage from Calen’s bones. He couldn’t see past the Fade’s face, all light seeming to bend around it.
The creature must have been following them from the moment they’d entered the city. They’d led it straight to the eggs.
“Though it was only a matter of time. Your kind always comes back to the heart of your pain. All we ever need do is wait.” Its eyes flickered towards the satchels of eggs. “Interesting… I had thought we’d killed them all. That will have to be corrected.”
Calen slid the satchels from his shoulders, rested them in the sand, and drew his sword. There was no choice. He would have to fight. He let Valerys’s rage swallow his fear.
Black flames snaked from the Fade’s palm and took the shape of a long, two-handed greatsword. A níthral.
Calen dropped into Striking Dragon and surged forwards. Flickers of light-drinking black swirled outwards as the blades collided. Calen swung high, then twisted his neck back to avoid the creature’s counter, the heat from the black fire burning at his chin.
The Fade hissed as it swung, but Calen turned the blow left into the statue, the níthral digging into the stone. The black-fire blade dissipated in a wisp of smoke, and the Fade slammed into Calen, sending him sprawling backwards. The next strike must have been Blood Magic because before Calen could think, he was hurtling into the wall, the breath stampeding from his lungs and leaving him choking for air.
Gasping and staggering forwards, Calen pulled on threads of Earth and Air, pushing them into the Fade, picturing the creature’s bones snapping like twigs. But the Fade sliced through Calen’s threads with its own, a harsh laugh entering its throat. “I thought you’d be stronger.” The reformed black-fire blade trailed along the ground, smoke rising. “Pity.”
Valerys roared in the back of Calen’s mind as he tore through a Bloodmarked with his talons. The dragon pulled their minds together, settling Calen’s heart.
End this. Calen could feel Valerys’s intent in his blood. End it now.
Calen pulled Valerys’s mind into his, unleashed the dragon’s fury in his blood, and surged forwards. He flowed through the forms of svidarya, losing himself in the movements, steel colliding against black fire. As he did, he pulled on threads of Earth and Air and slammed them into the statue. An explosion of stone and dust plumed outwards, the statue shattering. The Fade tilted its head back, hissing.
The distraction was enough.
Calen brought his blade down and cleaved the creature’s arm just below the elbow, then opened the Fade’s belly with his backswing. Intestines tumbled out, dry and ragged, but not a drop of blood spilled.
Before the Fade could react, Calen drew on threads of Fire and Spirit, Valerys roaring in the back of his mind as he unleashed a pillar of fire. He dropped his sword, and the flames poured from his hand like a raging river, the Spark burning in his veins. He let out a roar that matched Valerys’s, threads of each elemental strand swirling around him, urging him to draw from them.
But even as the raging fire crashed down over the Fade, the flames parted, split by a force Calen could not see. Blood Magic.
“Warden of Varyn,” the creature hissed. “ Tssk, tssk, tssk.”
Threads of Fire and Spirit swirled about the creature, and it pushed back, black fire spewing from its hand.
The two pillars of fire crashed against one another, shadow and light battling. The Fade stared at him through the flames, those black, light-drinking eyes glaring into his soul.
The black fire pushed harder, and Calen’s body shook, the Spark searing within him, the drain sapping at his bones. In the city above, Valerys ripped Uraks to pieces, his rage swelling. The dragon roared, unyielding, defiant.
His soulkin would not be taken from him.
Valerys’s fury swallowed Calen whole, their shared soul igniting. And Calen did just as he had done in the Burnt Lands: he let go. The flames that poured from his hand redoubled, pure energy rippling through him, Valerys roaring. Threads of each elemental strand wrapped about him, pulling through his blood and his bones and his soul. They wove together, coiling and twisting, burning like a hundred suns.
Just as Tarast and Antala, just as Kollna and Tinua, they were one, completely and entirely. They were soulkin, and their fire would not be quelled.
The Fade staggered backwards, its black fire barely able to hold Calen in place. The fire that poured from Calen’s hand flickered, changing at its core. Orange-red flames yielded to those of a purple hue until the fire shone with the same light as Calen’s eyes.
The Spark burned in him like never before, strands of Air, Fire, Earth, Water, and Spirit forged into a single entity that burned with the rage of a dragon.
Calen roared, clenching his fingers into a fist by nothing more than instinct alone. The flames died, and in Calen’s hand was a sword wrought from purple light that rippled like fire. It was not simply a weapon, but a physical manifestation of his shared soul.
For a brief moment, the Fade looked at him with its mouth ajar. Then it lunged, black-fire blade forming in its fist. Calen met the swing in a burst of purple light and stared unflinchingly into the creature’s bottomless eyes. And there, in the depths of darkness, he saw something he’d least expected: fear.
Valerys roared in Calen’s mind, and Calen pushed forwards with all his strength, threads of Air and Spirit whirling around him. He caught the Fade’s black-fire blade twice more, and on the third he wrapped the fingers of his left hand around the creature’s wrist and drove his níthral through its already savaged gut.
The shriek that left the Fade’s throat was an otherworldly, blood chilling thing that threatened to rip Calen’s skin from his bones. Calen pulled his níthral free, and the Fade’s body hit the stone. The shadows retreated and the light of the baldír bloomed once again.
Calen stood there, panting, sweat dripping from his nose and brow. He stared down at the pulsing purple light of the sword in his fist. A níthral. A Soulblade. Therin had told him briefly of the legendary weapons, but Calen had only ever seen them in the hands of the Fades and the knights – and in his visions.
He stared at the monster’s pale, bloodless, face.
He’d just killed a Fade. Alone.
Valerys roared in his mind again, and the purple blade flickered from his palm.
Calen grabbed his sword from the ground, slid it into his scabbard, slung the egg satchels over his shoulder, and climbed into the ventilation tunnel.