Boudain steepled his hands before his mouth, then let out a sigh. “What steps?”
“For the time being, I’d like to keep that to myself. Rest assured, I’ve consulted the ancient texts in the cathedral library and found a workable solution.”
“Some giant, dragon-killing ballista?”
Amaury laughed. “No, your Highness, nothing so crude. I hope you will be pleasantly surprised when I’m in a position to reveal what I’m working on.”
Amaury sat in the study of his town palace, overlooking the River Vosges and the twinkling lights of the old citadel on the island that sat at its centre. The Cathedral was hidden behind a packed cluster of buildings, only the tops of its two steeples visible, silhouetted against the stars. The Prince Bishop held an old document, one that could get a lesser man sent to the Intelligenciers’ dungeons. It might even be enough to get him sent there, should he be caught with it. Although the information it contained was little more than a story, it came from a time when magic had reigned supreme, and was thus considered as illegal as anything could be.
It recounted the early days of the Chevaliers of the Silver Circle. Amaury had wanted to count himself among their number ever since he first heard of them. They had been the doyens of bravery and chivalry in Mirabaya since the days of the Empire, until they were all but extinguished by a bad-tempered, young country nobleman. Admittedly, by that time, little about the Chevaliers held true to their original fame. They were a bunch of arrogant, debauched ingrates who lived off a fat royal pension and spent their days gambling, whoring, and causing trouble. Amaury’s ambition to be a Chevalier had been erased the first time he met one.
The Chevaliers originally formed in the later days of the Empire, to deal with a problem largely peculiar to what was then called the Imperial Province of Mirabensis. Dragons. Although at that time a dragon could be encountered in any mountainous part of the Empire, there seemed to be a higher concentration of them in the peaks in western Mirabensis. The emperor had come to the provincial capital and established the Silver Circle, formed of the bravest bannerets in the Empire. They had already been magically enhanced in any number of ways by the Imperial Magi during their initial training as bannerets, as all bannerets were in those days, but these select few received further boons to equip them to hunt down and slay dragons. They became both mage and swordsman, and over the course of the next few centuries slew every dragon in the Empire. Perhaps every dragon in the world. Except this one, it seemed.
Of course, it might all be legend. The document was irritatingly vague, and ever described things in the most general of ways. Many of the documents the Unified Church had rescued from the burning of the mages’ colleges had proven to be fantastical nonsense, and Amaury could easily imagine the arrogant Chevaliers embellishing their reputation. That he heeded the document at all was testimony to how concerned he was. He stood, leaving the parchment on his desk, and walked to the window. He tried to imagine what the citadel would look like with a dragon hovering above, blasting everything with flame, and shuddered. He had no great love for the citizenry, but if Mirabay and all its great buildings were reduced to ash, all he had worked so hard for, all his wealth, power, and influence, would count for nothing.
Returning to his desk, he looked at the document again. Each Chevalier, up to the present day, underwent a secret initiation ritual presided over by the incumbent Chevaliers. They had joked and laughed about it, always hinting at its mystical nature to others, but never elaborating. He thought it unlikely there was still anything magical about the ritual—the Intelligenciers would have dragged the Chevaliers off if there had been. However, as he was learning from the documents and the Spurriers’ experiments at the Priory, its headquarters in an old monastery in the north of the city, you didn’t necessarily need to know you were doing magic to do it. Words focussed the mind. Intent and desire focussed the mind. A focussed mind shaped magic.
Because of that, somehow, Guillot dal Villerauvais might now be the answer to his country’s problem. He was the last surviving Chevalier of the Silver Circle.
He had sent a man to fetch Gill as soon as Commander Leverre had returned with news of the dragon. It had been a knee-jerk reaction and the thought of their shared history gave him some concern. His hip ached when he thought on it. What troubles, he wondered, would Guillot dal Villerauvais bring him this time?
CHAPTER 6
Ever the enterprising one, Guillot solved his problem by siphoning off half a dozen bottles from the tanks in the fermenting hall on the edge of the village. The wine was weak and tasted terrible, but by the time he had drained the second bottle, it had chased away most of his demons. When it grew dark and Villerauvais quieted for the night, he was left with his memories and his thoughts—a poisonous combination. He slouched in an easy chair in his room by the window and looked out over his small village as he filled and drained glass after glass, pushing memories away and making thought difficult.
The night was clear; he could see the moon and the stars. The pale moonlight was blotted out for an instant, so briefly Guillot almost missed it. His heart began racing before his mind had absorbed what he’d seen. He stood and rushed to the back window, pressing himself against it to get the greatest field of vision. After a moment of searching, he spotted it, a great, unmistakable shape blotting out the stars as it moved lazily through the night sky.
Guillot watched it disappear, then sat. From the feeling in the pit of his stomach, he knew it was Philipe’s “shadow.” He suddenly felt very sober, and was not one bit grateful for the fact. It was the bottle. It had to be the bottle. There was something wrong with the fermenting tanks—mould, perhaps. That was the obvious answer.
No matter how hard he tried to convince himself, he knew that in the morning, there would be a knock at his door to tell him more livestock had been killed. As he drifted toward a troubled sleep, slouched in his chair, he prayed it would only be livestock.
The small farms made it easier for Alpheratz to feed. He did not have the stamina to go chasing through the mountains after ibex or chamois, but with sheep, goats, and cattle parcelled out in pens or small fields, the farms allowed Alpheratz to gorge without having to exert himself. He fed each night, then spent the morning gliding over the mountains, seeking out others of his kind. So far he had not even seen a hint of their presence, and he began to despair that what he had felt in his gut from the moment he woke was the truth. He was the last of his kind.
Only when he was exhausted—though his stamina grew each day—did he return to his peak to rest, forlorn. Each afternoon when he woke, he felt stronger than the day before, but still hollow at the thought that all those he knew and cared for were gone. He knew in his bones that they had all died violent deaths and consoled himself with the fact that it would not be long before he could start to exact revenge.
As he lay down at the mouth of his cavern, waiting for the night, he studied the valleys before him. In the distance, he could see the twinkling lights of another village, and wondered if he should visit there the next day. He knew the humans would eventually learn to hide their livestock from his nightly attacks and would eventually call their soldiers for help. One or two more trips to the village he had visited three previous times would clean it out completely. He would strip it bare, then destroy the human population and move on to the next village, satiating the hunger created by years and years of slumber. He smiled at the twinkling lights out on the horizon. The people who lit them had no idea what was coming.