“You were not brought here to discuss Tanthia or her brother.”
Blasphet shrugged, a movement that made his faded scales rustle like dry leaves. “What, pray tell, am I here to discuss? This seems an odd time for idle chatter. Don’t you have a funeral to attend?”
“It’s said that since you have resided in the dungeons, no rat has been seen there. In addition, many guards have been lost to a strange wasting sickness. You are responsible, no doubt.”
“Of course,” Blasphet said, his eyes twinkling. “There is a mold that grows on the stones of my cell that possesses the most intriguing properties. I use whatever test subjects are near in my experiments.”
“You find no difference between the life of a rat and the life of a dragon?”
“Mere anatomy. Life is life, no matter how it’s packaged. Every living thing burns with the same flame. It all may be extinguished with equal satisfaction.”
The king nodded his head, as if Blasphet had just said exactly what he wanted to hear.
“If it’s life you care to extinguish, and it matters not which form of life, we have much to discuss. I’ve brought you here to offer you freedom, should you accept my challenge.”
“Challenge?”
The king drew close to Blasphet, much closer than Metron thought wise, chains or no. Metron grew more alarmed for the safety of the king when he drew his face mere inches from Blasphet and said in a low, even voice, “Look at what you’ve done with your poisons. You’ve ended the lives of a few random dragons, some humans, a rat or two. Does it satisfy you? Or do you long for a greater task? Imagine not the death of an individual. Imagine the death of an entire species. Are even you capable of such a thing? Could even you slay every last human in my kingdom?”
Blasphet raised a manacled talon to scratch his chin. His lips drew back to reveal his yellow-gray teeth. “All humans? There are millions. The resources required would be enormous.”
“Everything I have would be at your disposal,” Albekizan said, his voice quieter, almost a seductive whisper. “My treasure, my armies are yours to command. In the matter of the elimination of the humans, you will possess all the powers of a king.”
“What do I care for the powers of a king?” Blasphet asked. “I was a god, once. Yet even for a god, the task is a daunting challenge.” Blasphet’s eyes ran along the map of the world as if sizing up its scale. “The humans would flee before a direct onslaught. The survivors would take up arms against us if we failed to kill all in one sweep. I’ve worked intimately with humans in the past. They can be most tenacious. The war could last for centuries.”
“I know this,” said Albekizan. “Which is why I’m consulting with you rather than Kanst.”
Kanst’s eyes narrowed at the slight.
“The key would be subtlety.” Blasphet’s voice fell to the same conspiratorial tone as the king’s. “Somehow draw them into a trap, kill them before they ever suspect danger…”
“Ah,” said Albekizan. “I see it in your eyes. This task interests you. Should you refuse me now, this will taunt you, torment you as you rot away in that cell.”
“Is this offer honest?” Blasphet asked. “You never were one for clever schemes, but I can’t believe you would trust me. What was that I was yelling at my trial? ‘I’ll kill you? I’ll kill you all?’ You remember that don’t you?”
“I don’t trust you, but I do understand you. If you desired, you could kill me right now. You’ve no doubt hidden several poisons on your body. Something you could spit, perhaps? Or some paste beneath a claw that could kill with the merest scratch?”
“Of course,” said Blasphet. “It may be that I’ve poisoned you already and it’s only a matter of time before you begin to bleed from every bodily orifice. That would be most satisfying. You, weeping tears of blood.”
“You haven’t poisoned me,” the king said with a confidence Metron didn’t feel was justified. “You’ll be no threat to me or my court because you dare not risk this opportunity. You’ll be free to murder on a grand scale without fear of punishment, indeed, with the guarantee of praise and respect. You were worshipped as a god, once. Now, you have the opportunity to enter history as the architect of the greatest single feat of the dragons. Your freedom to act will be your shackles.”
“Perhaps,” Blasphet said. “This does hold… promise. You know me better than I thought, it seems. Well played. I accept.”
“I knew you would,” Albekizan said, stepping back. “When we were growing up there was no dare you would not accept. Your will was thought to be even greater than my own. That’s why it surprised everyone when I bested you in the hunt.”
“Indeed, brother,” Blasphet replied. “Indeed.”
Zanzeroth touched down on a stony island in the middle of the mud-brown river. It had been too long since he’d spent time here; almost a century ago this spare, stony wasteland had been his only home. He’d not been born to the comfort of a king’s court. Or perhaps he had… He’d never known his true parents. He’d been left to fend for himself in the forest as a fledgling, and had survived on his own for a decade, living from the land, a wild thing, the only meat in his belly coming from prey he’d killed with his own claws. When he was ten he’d been captured by Albekizan’s father, Gloreziel, for the crime of poaching in the king’s forest. But rather than killing the young, feral dragon, the king had taken him under his wing and set himself to the task of civilizing the snarling brute Zanzeroth had been at the time.
The civilizing had taken, but not completely. Zanzeroth still felt most at home making his bed beneath an open sky. While he’d adapted to the nobles’ fashion of hunting and fighting with weapons, he still, while hunting alone, enjoyed the sensation of digging his bare claws into squealing, wriggling prey. And if there were any better pleasure in this world than laying on a warm rock with a full belly and licking drying blood from his talons, he had yet to experience it.
Having grown up in the king’s court and knowing Albekizan since he before he could even speak, Zanzeroth could claim to be the king’s oldest friend, though friend wasn’t the right word, perhaps. In Albekizan’s world, all other sentient beings were subjects, enemies, or prey. “Highly regarded lackey” was no doubt the most accurate label for Zanzeroth.
Zanzeroth found the familiar gap in a pile of mossy stone, lowered himself and thrust his head within. Any sane observer would have judged it impossible for the old dragon to squeeze his bulk into such a tiny hole, but Zanzeroth was practiced at the maneuver, knowing when to exhale, and when to push and twist and kick. In seconds he was through the gap and into the hidden, dank cave that was his true home.
In his youth the cave had felt enormous, a world of its own. Now Zanzeroth recognized that it was smaller than the smallest room in the palace, too small to stand straight in, barely thirty feet from front to back, and half again as wide. The place still had the familiar smell of decay. During the spring melt-off, the island often flooded; he remembered waking to rising water many times.
Around the room were ledges that always remained inches above the high-water mark. These ledges contained Zanzeroth’s treasures. He cast around the ledges, each item provoking memories. Here were the antlers of the largest buck he’d ever killed. The tusks of an enormous boar he’d killed on a hunt with Gloreziel had been gilded by the king and presented as a trophy. He found his old whip, thirty feet of braided leather. He remembered the summer he’d spent mastering it. In his prime, he could knock flies from the air.
But what he’d come here for was hidden behind a trio of human skulls. These had been leaders of the southern rebellion twenty years ago. Their tattooed, tanned hides now decorated the king’s own trophy room. Behind their skulls were the trophies of real value: their swords. Still gleaming and razor sharp despite decades in a damp hole, the swords had been made from a mysterious metal that never rusted. He’d kept the blades hidden from the king but did risk showing them once to Vendevorex. The wizard had declared that the blades weren’t magic, but were, in fact, remnants of the same civilization that had built the ghost roads, crafted from something called “stainless steel.” Despite the wizard’s explanation, Zanzeroth always felt there was something supernatural about the swords. A thousand-year-old blade shouldn’t have a mirrored finish. Zanzeroth studied himself in the narrow sliver of silver, his one good eye golden in the dim light seeping through the gaps in the rock above. He examined his torn cheek, his scaly hide stitched together by Gadreel with a horsehair thread. The wound was swollen and black with dried blood. It was going to be an interesting scar.