“We have not tested its depth. There is a plateau on which we have made our camp. But in places it goes much deeper. That is not of our concern.”
We. Our. “I thought it was just you. Are you to say there are more of you?”
“Five,” he said. “And one prisoner.” He glared at the priest. “Now that you are here, we are six, Pagaloth. And the dragons.”
“The…” He turned to look into Marak’s craggy face, as bluff as the sheer rock wall across from them. “Dragons, my lord? There is more than one?”
“You heard what I said, Sir Pagaloth.” Marak turned his horse to the right. “This way.” He tugged the rope, getting the priest moving. “We’ll have to leave the horses at the top.”
A little further along they came to a small glade, just a short way back from the edge of the rift. Marak dismounted his horse and instructed Pagaloth to do the same. There were two others here already, munching on the soft grasses. A fence of vines had been drawn around the trees to pen them in, though they had some space to canter about if they wished. “Where did you get them?” Pagaloth asked.
“I found them wandering in the woods, not far from here. I thought we might make use of them, and so it has turned out. Flying is not always the best way.” He untied the rope that bound the fire priest to his horse, though left him fettered at the wrists. The man’s eyes were red and wild and bloodshot. Marak smiled at him. “I can’t have you falling on the way down, so will carry you. Try not to thrash too much.” He bound his legs to hold them tight, at the ankles and knees both, then ran another length of rope around the priest’s body, before lifting him onto his broad shoulders and looping the rope around his arms. He tied it all fast, securing the man, as he hissed and spat into his gag.
Below, Pagaloth heard a deep rumbling. He recognised the sound. “Garlath,” he said.
Marak dipped his chin. “I would summon him to carry us, but there’s nowhere here for him to land. And the climb is easy enough. I hope you have no fear of heights, Pagaloth.”
“None.”
Marak nodded, pleased to hear it. “Come. Use the roots and rocks as handholds. Follow me and you’ll be fine.”
The descent began nearby. The edge here had crumbled unevenly, creating a place where great ledges and rocky steps worked down toward the roiling fog. At the very top, a tree had tumbled over the lip, its twisting network of roots clinging on stubbornly, anchoring it to the wall. The branches made for a good way down to the first shelf, some ten metres below. Marak went first, the bark grinding beneath his boots, moving more deftly than one would think for such a large man as he lowered himself from branch to branch. Pagaloth followed, marking where he put his feet and hands.
When they reached the shelf, Marak went to its left side, showed Pagaloth the way down, and set off. Here the section was more steep, and they had to climb down handholds on the rock wall itself. At the bottom, a large chunk of rock thrust out of the wall like a spearhead, pointed and triangular. It sat in line with the fog, so close he could reach out and touch it, hanging strangely and uniformly in the air. Below, Pagaloth could hear the shriek of dragons, echoing through the chasm.
“The next part is hardest,” Lord Ulrik Marak said. “The mist makes it hard to see. Watch closely. Step where I step.”
Pagaloth nodded. Marak had not been wrong. Muffled screams moaned through the priest’s spit-soaked gag as he lay slung across Marak’s shoulders, staring down into oblivion. The dragonlord flicked a hand back, striking him in the side of the head. “Be silent, priest. I must concentrate.” He stopped for a moment, clinging to the wall, figuring out which of two footholds to choose. He reached out a leg to test one, but the wall gave way, stone tumbling and echoing. “It’ll be the other one, then,” Pagaloth heard him say. He did not seem overly concerned, and that gave the dragonknight faith.
All the same, he’d never been so frightened…not that he’d ever admit it. In these thick wet mists he could not tell whether the floor was a metre below him or ten or a hundred. It set his heart to pounding, a heavy pulse throbbing in his neck. He could feel the cold sweat on his palms, a chill running down his spine. One wrong move and he would tumble into the void, never knowing when the earth would rush up to meet him. “How far is it?” he heard himself say, trying to drive the fear from his voice.
Lord Marak did not deign to answer. And he didn’t need to. No sooner had Pagaloth asked the question than the mists melted away, just like that, and they landed on a rough rock shelf beneath the cloud of fog, floating now queerly above them.
Pagaloth looked up, then down, astonished. Beneath him, the cavern spread forth, in places falling to black pits, in others cast with great rocky shelves and ledges as large as market squares. On one, no more than sixty feet down, he saw a camp laid out. A fire burned at the heart of a ring of tents. There were some crates, boxes, bags here and there. Around the fire seats of stone had been arrayed. Pagaloth spied three figures there, a woman and two men, their voices rising in echoes. The woman wore a cloak in sky blue and ochre, split unevenly, two-thirds and one. The slim man who sat near her had a chequered cape on his back, greyish white and lime green. The third figure was large, round-shouldered, and garbed more plainly in boiled leather and an overcloak of undyed wool.
Upon several other ledges, dragons lay curled and sleeping on private roosts, a half dozen of them that he could see. A pair more were circling, stretching their wings and diving into the darkness below, only to burst up from somewhere else, screeching all the while. Those screeches sounded almost gleeful, playful to Pagaloth’s ears. On a great shelf overlooking all of them, Garlath the Grand had made his nest. He sat up, wings furled, eyes gleaming in the dimness, watching over it all. His scales were silver and blue.
Pagaloth was at a loss for words. “What…what is this place?” he managed to whisper.
“Home,” was Ulrik Marak’s reply. “For now.”
The final descent was simple enough, a zigzag back and forth across the rocks where a great heap of stone had tumbled from the rift wall, giving passage down to the camp. The figures around the fire spotted them coming, calling out their greetings and standing from their stones. Once they reached the shelf, Lord Marak slipped his arms through the loops and swung the fire priest down to the floor. He landed with a thump. “Found a replacement,” he said. “And another recruit.” He gestured to Pagaloth.
The three strangers looked at him…though not all were strangers, he realised, as soon as he came face to face with them. One he knew, the woman in ochre and blue. “Lady Kazaan,” he said, shocked to see her here. He recalled his courtesies and gave her a respectful bow. She was in her middle years, spare and lean, with black hair slashed with a strand of white on one side. Thin wrinkles spread from a set of hard lilac eyes, her mouth a puckered aperture in a thin and pointed jaw. Lady Adelle Kazaan was a known figure in Eldurath, rich and highborn, the head of her dragonhouse since the death of her husband in the war. He had been a rider of some repute, Pagaloth remembered. “We met once,” he told her. “I rode escort for you when you travelled to Videnia, to celebrate the summer festival.”
She peered at him. “I do not remember.”
“I was young, my lady. It was many years ago.”
“I see. And who are you?”
“Sir Pagaloth Kadosk,” he said. “Dragonknight.”
She knew the name. “Your uncle was Sir Lendroth.”
“He was, my lady. I squired for him in Eldurath, for a time. He taught me much of what I know.” And then he died, he thought. His uncle had ridden to war, along with his father and brothers and other uncles, and none of them had come home. Not long after, his mother had taken her own life, unable to bear the grief. The war killed her too, Pagaloth thought bitterly. He was all that remained of his family now.
It seemed to him that Lady Kazaan knew that story. It was rare, even among the tragedies of the war, for a man to lose so much. Her eyes showed a flash of sympathy, then hardened again. She looked at Marak. “Where did you find him?”
“South of here. He was being chased by a patrol.” He looked down at the fire priest, squirming on the floor in his hempen bounds. A kick to the midsection stilled his wriggling. “This one was with them. We killed the rest.”
The slim man in the chequered cape knelt down, taking the priest’s face in his grasp, turning his head toward him. He looked long and deep into his eyes. “Plenty of hate in there,” he mused. “Looks like he’s been in for some rough treatment.”
“He has fallen once or twice,” Marak explained.
The man stood up again. He looked at Pagaloth, smiling. He was about Pagaloth’s own age, perhaps a few years older, with eyes of burnished brown and thick waves of dense black hair cascading from his head. His jaw was peppered with patchy stubble. “My name is An’zon Graz. You have likely heard of my house, if not me.”
All of that was correct. House Graz, like House Kazaan, was another well-known family with a storied history and rich holdings. The name An’zon was not familiar to him, however. Most likely he was of a lesser branch, and a lesser son. “I have,” Pagaloth said, inclining his head.
“And this is Rhok.” An’zon gestured to the other man in the boiled leather jerkin and plain frayed cloak. He cut an imposing figure, broad in the chest and well endowed about the gut, heavy and tall. A braided beard hung off his rounded chin, trailing to his belt, tucked in beneath his girth, and there were many tattoos inked about his dark, angry eyes. Pagaloth had commanded many men like him in the past. He was of humble birth, but had fought in the last war, and taken many lives. Those tattoos told that story. As did the well-worn longsword he wore on his left hip, the savage dirk on his right. “Rhok joined us only two weeks ago,” An’zon Graz went on. “He was saved, same as you.”
Pagaloth was still missing a few pieces to this puzzle. Though much of it he was putting together. “You’re all riders,” he said. He had glimpsed the colours of the dragons as he climbed down the final section. One had been mottled in shades of white and lime green; the dragon of An’zon Graz. Another, larger, long-bodied and broad-winged, was plated in light blue scales along its right side and back, with ochre armour on its right. A match for the cloak that Dragonlady Adelle Kazaan wore. Neither were known Fireborn riders, and thus both would have been bonded to their beasts only recently. By Eldur, Pagaloth knew. Yet now they have turned against him…
“Guilty as charged,” An’zon Graz said, with a pleasant smile. He had a carefree way about him. “You have questions, that is clear. How much have you told him, Lord Marak?”
“Enough,” Marak said. He looked pointedly down at the priest; clearly, he preferred not to talk in front of him. “Rhok. Take him away to his cell.” His eyes lifted beyond the fire and ring of tents. There were some partings in the rock wall back there, openings leading to caves. A light flickered down one of them. “Is Angrar there?”
“With the other one,” Rhok confirmed. His voice was heavy and blunt.
