Deirdre looked at her mother in surprise. The princess was startled to find the queen's eyes boring into her own, flashing with an emerald intensity that the young woman found unsettling. Immediately Deirdre cast her eyes down to the floor, her face flushing. She felt guilty, as though she had been caught doing something wrong.
As softly as she had entered, Robyn left the room. Deirdre, standing in the center of the dim library, looked after her mother and wondered.
The expanse of ice stretched to the encircling horizon, and for uncountable leagues beyond. Windswept, so bleak it was almost featureless, the glaciers and snowpack would have glared beneath rays of bright sunlight. But so far north did they lie that even now, in late spring, the sun was a pale sphere climbing through a shallow arc, never moving far from the southern limits of view.
Winds moaned, breathing frost across snowdrifts and jagged shards of ice. No other sound disturbed this region; no wolves howled, no birds cried, nor seals barked, for the glacial waste was utterly devoid of life.
Then one day, after eternal seasons of lifeless chill, something moved. It began as a patch of ice buckled, sending shivers across the face of whiteness. Cracks appeared, and light snow puffed away, flying from niches and crannies where it had escaped from the wind.
Then a great sheet of the surface pitched into the air, toppling to the side, crashing into a million pieces. Below, a vast chasm lay revealed, and in the depths of that chasm, a presence stirred.
Gotha moved for the first time in more than two centuries. Talos the Destroyer had summoned him to his task and imbued the dracolich with the strength to free himself from the crushing tons of ice.
The creature that emerged from the depths of the glacier resembled only superficially the powerful wyrm that had come here more than two hundred years before. The scales, blood-red chips of plate as hard as bone, still coated the serpentine crimson body. Yet now, as the monster moved, many of those scales cracked and fell away, revealing flesh that had long since frozen and organs that had ceased to serve any purpose, for the dragon was now a being of the undead.
The huge wings unfurled, and they, too, cracked and splintered, grown brittle from the long generations of frozen inactivity. When they finally reached their full span, they looked more like spiderwebs than wings, for most of their leathery surface had broken away.
Yet, when Gotha pressed them downward, he flew, borne aloft by a dark power that transcended the mere pressure of wing surface against air. He sprang into the air and gained altitude slowly, driving the great limbs against the wind and feeling the air pass through the shattered membranes. And then he knew: It was the power of his undeath that supported him, the might of Talos coursing through the corrupt body.
At the thought of that capriciously malevolent deity, Gotha raised his head and uttered a bellow of rage. His hatred, having festered for centuries, now spewed forth, and all of it exploded toward that hated presence, the whispering voice in his brain that he had known as Talos the Destroyer.
Yet now, as he flew, Gotha sensed the god's will, a compulsion that came into his mind. He struggled to resist, but he could not. The vow he had made so long ago still bound him. He would do the task toward which Talos compelled him.
Deep in the dragon's mind, however, hatred and resentment seethed, building into a volatile compulsion for vengeance. Someday, somehow, the dracolich would strike out at the god who had betrayed him, but having passed so many centuries already, he would remain patient.
After hours of flight, the ice fell behind, breaking into a fringe of alabaster chips bobbing in the storm-tossed waters of the northernmost oceans. The vista below evolved from the unending, still, and lifeless white of the icecap to the constantly pitching and heaving surface of gray water, flecked with foaming whitecaps. For long hours, the monster passed no island, no settlement, human or otherwise, in its great southward flight.
The seascape below held no fear for the dracolich. Indeed, Gotha felt as though he could fly forever. But he also knew that he would not have to.
The first spots of rock showed as little more than bald crowns thrusting up between the waves like desperate swimmers struggling for air. When the gray water rose, it often buried these tiny bits of land, too small, really, to be called islands. Nevertheless, these rocks were important, for they confirmed to Gotha that he followed the right course.
Indeed, shortly afterward, the dracolich saw larger rocks, some with patches of green showing on narrow shelves perched high on steep shoulders, out of reach of the grasping brine.
The Korinn Archipelago.
The name entered the creature's mind unbidden, and again he felt the hateful presence of Talos. But Gotha couldn't resist the compulsion in his master's instructions. His vow, made in good faith to the god more than two centuries ago, bound him to obey until he had performed the task commanded by Talos.
On some of these islets, Gotha saw houses, with chimneys that puffed smoke into the air and fields speckled with white dots-sheep! Every fiber of the great monster's being urged him to swoop down to ravage these settlements, destroying the houses, slaying the humans, and devouring the sheep.
But such was not the will of Talos, and reluctantly the flying creature veered away. It suited his master's will that Gotha remain undiscovered by the island's inhabitants. Now the dracolich swerved to the west, once again over gray open water.
Something disturbed the water's surface, arrogantly carving a course through the tossing waves, leaving a foaming wake in its path. A single tall mast stood in the center of the sleek, narrow vessel, and from that mast a proud sail billowed. A long, slender hull trailed from an elegantly curved figurehead of a blond-haired goddess. The sleek craft flew over the sea, running before the full power of the wind.
Here Gotha could fulfill his master's command and also slake his expanded thirst for blood, for he knew there would be no survivors to report his presence.
Diving, the dracolich swooped toward the ship. He saw humans scurrying about in the shallow hull, heard their screams and even saw them raise bows and swords and axes, mere stinging annoyances to the monstrous apparition that settled toward the stern of the vessel.
Gotha's wings expanded, and the dracolich settled his rear legs on the transom, feeling the ship rock and groan under the massive weight. Two brawny warriors wearing horned helms sprang at the creature's momentarily exposed belly.
The beast slashed out with a single forepaw, pitching the shredded remains of the two northmen over the side as bait for sharks … or worse. Massive jaws gaped, and Gotha belched a searing cloud of fire straight into the bulging pocket of the longship's sail.
The canvas flared briefly and then collapsed, still flaming, onto the sailors crowded amidships. But these men of the north now rushed at the horrific thing that pressed the stern of their vessel into the brine. Gray water roared over the gunwales, each wave carrying the craft a little lower in the heaving swells.
Gotha met the attackers with his foreclaws, ripping their heads away or tearing open great wounds in their chests and bellies. The hull filled with blood and water as more and more corpses joined their fellows among the planks along the keel. Flames, meanwhile, coursed down the mast and spread through the forequarters of the vessel, hissing upward and greedily consuming the seasoned timbers that held the ship together.
More of the fierce northmen hacked at the monster that threatened their ship. One veteran succeeded in reaching the beast, driving a gleaming battle-axe against the decaying chest, but the axe bit against one of the exposed ribs, and the keen blade shattered into a thousand shards. Gaping jaws closed about the head and torso of the axeman, lifting him from the hull. His exposed legs kicked madly for a second, until the monster bit down. The severed limbs toppled into the sea.