Twilight of the Dragons (16 page)

“
Look, Your Highness
!”

And King Yoon looked. And King Yoon
saw.

It leapt from the Tower of the Moon. There came a mammoth beat of wings, and the black dragon soared, banked, and dropped with infinite grace. Fire roared out, and several buildings went up with walls of raging fire, sending fireflies sparkling up into the heavens, as others were smashed apart by the huge, whipping tail.

Yoon blinked.

The dragon had gone.

“Did I just see that?” he said, tongue darting in and out. “Or was it, you know, part of the noises. The things I've been seeing. Like, mud-orcs and elf-rats.” He squinted again, shading his eyes, scanning the horizon.

Nothing.

“It's real,” growled Zandbar.

And suddenly the dragon was there, looming up from a narrow street, wings knocking bricks from walls, tail snapping rafters and disintegrating roofs in great striking sweeps. It lifted its head, and the dragon roared, and flames blasted the sky. The tail crashed against the corner of the palace, and pieces of white stone were smashed free, and came raining down, amidst pebbles and stone dust.

A fist-sized stone bounced from Yoon's head.

“Ow!”

And another from his shoulder.

He clutched it, and rapidly retreated to the shadows of the arched doorway. Yoon was frowning now. “A dragon? In
my
city! But… but I didn't give it permission!”

“I have a feeling,” snarled Zandbar, “that this creature needs no permission. And I also feel, Highness, that if we don't do something quickly then the Chaos Halls are going to break loose. Permission to assemble the City Guard. And I
mean
, the City Guard.”

“Granted. Oh yes.” Yoon was dreamy again. He smiled at Zandbar, swaying, as if he was a weak-limbed branch on the breeze.

“Yes?” snapped Zandbar, with efficient military bearing.

“Summon Chanduquar,” he said. “I'm going to get cleaned up.”

K
ing Yoon led the way
, with the small, wizened figure of Chanduquar following closely behind. Then came Zandbar, erect, carrying a hefty pike, and they were followed by another twenty pikemen, all hardened veterans, all aware that where they travelled now was not the safest of places in the city.

The tunnel led steeply down. It had a high, arched ceiling of skilfully placed stones, many of them huge and terrifying – if one were to fall it would crush many men under its sheer weight. The walls were smooth, almost polished, the very finest black granite. The cobbles beneath their feet were damp and slippery, and polished by centuries of use.

“I hate it down here,” grumbled Chanduquar, who was renowned for his brash and aggressive behaviour, his constant complaints, and the disrespectful way he spoke to the king. Yoon would have happily had him skewered on a pike, but he was just too valuable an asset.

Yoon glanced back. He studied Chanduquar for a moment. This small, skinny man, with skin the colour of ebony. He wore a short length of black cloth covering his genitals, and black boots, but little else – unless you counted the hundred or so piercings which adorned his scrawny body. He had an over-large skull, yellowed eyes from decades of alcohol abuse, and his lips were tattooed with a delicate script rumoured to facilitate his spells and focus on magick.

“Stop moaning,” said Yoon, dropping into the sort of talk he knew Chanduquar understood.

“Well, it's true. It's a miserable and grim bastard place, even more miserable than the main streets of your city, ha!” He grinned, showing small neat teeth.

“Well, we'll get the job done, then you can get out of here, little man.”

“Of course we can, fat king.”

Yoon stared at him.
I could have you executed in the blink of an eye,
he thought, sourly.
I could have your skin peeled off, your toenails ripped out, hot pokers shoved up your tight little arsehole; I could have your nipples and your nose cut off, which would make an awful mess when you fucking sneezed… I could cut off your fingers one at a time, giving you a day between each snipping to really savour the pain and the proposed disability… I could have your spinal discs crushed with a sledgehammer, one at a time, as I pinned down your head with my boot and sang songs about happiness and wine
…

Yoon took a deep breath.

He calmed himself.

No. Not now.

He looked at the little man, the little thorn in his ego, the spear through the skull plate of his narcissism, and yet, bizarrely, also one of his most important tools; his greatest
weapon.

Not yet,
he told himself, and turned away, and continued to march deep
deep
down into the bowels beneath the palace.

D
uring the journey
, there had been several trembles in the stone, felt even this deep.

“What's happening above?” asked Yoon, after a while.

Zandbar fixed him with a glass stare. “I don't know, Your Highness. But, from extensive reading in the Great Rokroth Library, I believe dragons can cause quite a lot of damage.”

“I'll show it fucking damage,” growled Yoon, and for once, and this didn't happen often, Zandbar actually found some respect for the King of Vagandrak. He might be – occasionally – as insane as a Keekum smoker after three bowls, but on occasion he could show quite an amazing set of balls.

As they got closer to the location, to what Yoon had discretely referred to as “The Cells”, so a noise started to come to them. It erupted from the deep interior. It consisted of banging, and scratching sounds – like steel against stone. Screeches, long and high-pitched. Thuds. Crumbling sounds. Battering sounds.

Yoon and Zandbar exchanged glances. Chanduquar seemed nonplussed.

The heavily armed soldiers, on the other hand, were visibly twitchy. Several were wiping sweating palms on uniforms, and a few kept dropping pike heads as if expecting some sudden frontal assault.

Tension was running high.

They came to a door. It was big. And, suspiciously, it was not like the usual oak portals they had crossed. This was iron. And when Yoon produced a thick key from around his neck, and inserted it into a well-oiled silent lock, the door swung open revealing the portal to be extremely thick. Thicker than any human or dwarf prisoner could ever expect. Thick enough to make any person entering wonder about the contents of this eerie prison chamber.

Zandbar stopped on the threshold.

Yoon stopped, also, and turned. He smiled, but the smile did not spread to his eyes.

“Have you been doing what I think you've been doing?” said Zandbar.

“And what do you think I've been doing?” said Yoon, voice a croon, without any splinter of fear.

“You've been collecting splice. Rounding up the rogue ones. The ones that got away after Orlana was… ” He was going to say killed, but knew it was probably not exactly accurate. In all reality, the Horse Lady had probably been banished to an eternity in the Chaos Halls, alongside the sorcerer Morkagoth. Zandbar shivered with intuition.

“I confess,” said Yoon, examining his brightly polished fingernails, “that I do have a certain fondness for the creatures of Orlana the Changer. There is in them a certain… primitive violence. And also an essence of corruptness, of metamorphosis, to which I am greatly attracted.”

“King Yoon, they are the demon blendings of man and horse. They're fucking
evil!
In what way could you possibly be attracted?”

“I am attracted to their decadence,” growled Yoon, and licked his lips. “Now let us move on.”

They came into a long, low chamber. Huge iron posts had been fitted at intervals, each the size of an oak tree trunk. These formed the cornerstones of the prison cells. Between each post was a wall of iron, several feet thick and set on massive, broad wheels dropped in grooves which had been carved through stone.

Beyond, in the cells, came various snarls and crashes. There also came the clanking of huge chains.

“You there,” said Yoon, pointing to one guard. “Go and pull that lever.” He gestured to a huge iron staff, inserted into the wall alongside many others.

The guard stared, helplessly.

“But, but what will happen when I do?”

“If you do not, your head shall suddenly detach from your body,” said King Yoon with a grin, but it was a toothy grin, like an exhumed skull, not the happy smile of a reigning monarch.

The guard stumbled forward, and he suddenly seemed less than threatening, and more like a child charged with a dangerous task.

He looked around.

Everybody stared at him, tense with apprehension.

Beyond the steel wall, something raged.

He pulled the lever, and leapt back as if something might jump out and snap off his head. It was an amazing intuition, for the creature that was revealed was nothing less than an abomination.

It was part horse. Part man. But there, any likeness to either of the host creatures ended.

The
splice,
one of Orlana the Changer's
special creatures, special pets, special killers,
was bigger than a horse, although of different proportions. It was vast, uneven, stocky, with bulging lumps of muscle distending from its torso, seemingly at random – as if flesh and bone had been broken in places and forced back together again under a blind surgeon's scalpel. It was a rich black, glossy, like the finest stallion, and yet the uneven skin was patched with horse hair in segments, as if it had suffered burns from a fire. It hobbled forward on four legs, but the front left did not touch the ground, for it was too short, and bent forwards at a deviant angle giving the creature an irregular, if terrifying, gait.

The beast suddenly leapt, screaming in a high-pitched voice like that of a woman, although without any discernible clarity of words.

There was a clanging and clanking, and the splice was yanked backwards at the end-trajectory of its leap by the thigh-thick chain which restrained it.

Yoon stepped forward. He was panting.

Everybody
else stepped backwards.

“Kneel!” he commanded, and licked his lips in nervous pleasure, as he admired the heavily muscled body, thick horse legs with twisted, iron hooves, uneven chest, up to the head, the great misshapen head that was too large to be right, too twisted and elongated to be living. The head was a broken horse skull, long and pointed, but with the mouth pulled back, jacked open way too far, showing huge yellowed fangs oozing blood and pus and saliva. The eyes were uneven on the head, one green, one blood red and nearly double the size, and from the top of the bent skull curved a jagged horn, easily the length of a short sword and fashioned from yellowed bone.

The splice observed Yoon, and its lips quivered, black and yellow against fangs which could rip his head clean off.

Yoon moved forward.

Zandbar hissed, “
Nooo
!”

Yoon was within the perimeter of the chain now, which lay slack on the floor. The splice looked down at its tether, then up again at Yoon, eyes bulging, throat gulping, as if this vast, distorted creature was starved of oxygen.

It knew. It realised.

It could snap Yoon like a twig.

“Sit down,” said Yoon, and his voice was gentle, almost a song, which surprised both Zandbar and Chanduquar. They had never heard Yoon utter such words. Even more surprisingly, the great, tufted monster obeyed and dropped to its front knees, then its rear haunches collapsed, and the head came up, quivering, eyes searching, and it fixed on Yoon and the head tilted, and it…

smiled.

“It's fucking
smiling
,” said Zandbar, through gritted teeth.

“Shut up,” said Chanduquar.

“What happens next?”

“If the splice gets pissed at something, we're all fucking dead.”

Zandbar nodded, eyes saucer-wide.

“Undo the chains,” said Yoon, eyes fixed on those differing orbs of the splice. And he moved ever forward, within lunging distance now, and he reached out and gently touched the creature. The splice's great, uneven head tilted to one side, and it started to… croon. It was a sickening sound, like the death rattle from a wounded horse, and it made all present shiver, hairs standing up on forearms and necks, and Yoon was gazing into those eyes like a
lover.

A guard moved to another set of levers and pulleys, and very slowly, pulled one. The chains on the splice went slack, and now,
now
the creature really could kill if it so chose. But it didn't. It allowed King Yoon to slowly run his hand up its snout, past ridges of broken and mended bone, past tufts of sprouting hair, over ridges and corrugations of burned flesh. And all it did was croon, and blink, the great red eye filled with blood as it gazed adoringly at Yoon.

“What the fuck is going on?” whispered Zandbar from the corner of his mouth. His skin was crawling. His mind was flitting. Every primeval sense he had screamed at him to get the fuck out of the chamber before the splice launched at him and tore him limb from limb.

“It trusts him,” said Chanduquar, voice quavering.

Zandbar looked at the wizened, alcoholic old magick man, the priest, shaman, whatever the hell he was. His eyebrows lifted a little. “
Really
?” he said.

Chanduquar met his gaze, and gave a tiny shrug. “Maybe the human part of it
remembers.
Maybe it can recollect trust, and affection, and love. Look closely, soldier man, really fucking
look
at the beast.”

And Zandbar looked. The splice, the huge, quivering, disjointed, amalgamated mass of man and horse and whatever demon had decided to jump into the pot, something so ugly – by human perception – that it could never win any genetic design awards, it was
enjoying
Yoon's attention; savouring his touch.

“He commands it,” said Zandbar, in awe.

Yoon turned, and all present were shocked to see the expression on his face. For it was indeed a look of love, and they realised King Yoon was not just some mad king, some playful puppet, some dangerous tyrant; no, he truly
was
insane, and he
was
connected in some way to this splice.