Dormancy, p.18
Dormancy, page 18
part #1 of Khrysaor's Name Series
“And?” Asked Brunhild.
“He’s not. Khrysaor showed me. Look… what did we learn from Pywel?” Koh asked.
“That he was a stuck-up brat,” Taliesin snorted. Then his face fell, and he paused. “… Nobles don’t really know what it’s like living outside their own world.”
“Our lives are shaped by the experiences we have as we grow,” Koh muttered. “It’s hard to understand the perspective others bring to us, because we can’t possibly fathom what it’s like to see through their eyes – to have seen through their eyes all our lives. Versa’s no exception. He’s suffered just as much as all the rest of us have. But he’s dealt with it different than all the rest of us, because he’s nobility.”
“… Like a child who doesn’t get their way, he’s used the power of Llamrei to lash out. Is that what you’re saying?” Taliesin asked.
“Something like it,” coughed Koh. He leaned back in bed. He breathed out, warmth in the air around his skin, his limbs still covered in plated scales. Heat radiated off him. “Wyrms – I don’t feel excellent, now.”
“Lie down, Koh,” said Taliesin. “We’ll get you care. Promise.”
Koh nodded, eyes slipping shut tiredly. He breathed in and out as he sunk into the sheets and pillows, his mess of black hair falling over his eyes and forehead, pointed ears underneath on either side tipped with red scale.
“We’ll return to Daven,” whispered Brunhild, leaning back away from Koh. She let go of his hand, then. On her palm a black symbol had emblazoned itself, a swirling medallion of Khrysaor. Taliesin’s palm had similarly been marked.
“What are we going to ask him? What will we tell him?” Asked Taliesin.
“That we woke Khrysaor. Shared the dragon’s power, and all. Then we’ll figure out a way to get the armies of Tero-Brun behind us, and meet this prince at Stoven Keep. But for now, we let Koh rest up until he feels strong enough to handle Khrysaor.”
“Who is it we’d have to see to convince them to support us?”
“Mairsile Blacke. She’s the queen of Tero-Brun in title.”
“Only in title?”
“Tero-Brun doesn’t operate itself like your typical monarchy. There’s no noble families, no absolute power. Mairsile can call meetings, can make trade decisions, and all that. But it’s the people who’ve got to vote. Has to be a majority rule.”
“Strange sort of government,” said Taliesin. “People can’t agree on anything.”
“Aye, they can’t. But we’re an army in a fortress, not a city with a king. If we must, then the captains take it into their hands, and Mairsile’s still only a piece of those negotiations.” Brunhild explained.
She stepped up and back, nodding toward the door for Taliesin to follow and slipping outside into the hall as Koh rested, his breaths falling into a shallow, even rhythm. Brunhild closed the door gently and looked down at her hand, flexing her fingers and watching the black brand move and change shape.
“… I understand that we told the dragon we’d share its power with Koh, but I’m afraid we’ve gotten ourselves into something much bigger than ourselves.”
“Imagine how Koh feels,” Taliesin scoffed. “Before just now, he was alone with it. Look, nothing’s changed yet. We’ve just given him our support. Our strength, I guess. He needs it, obviously. Aye?”
“… Aye. Good enough for me. Now let’s get ourselves moving. We’re wasting time the longer we spend dawdling around here.” Brunhild turned to go, looking back occasionally at the door.
When Koh awoke again, the sun’s light had turned again to street lamps, and the distant glow of fires on the mountainsides deeper in the gods’ lands. The quiet room had painted itself in melancholy blues, harsh shadows striking themselves across the grain of the wood and the sheets over his legs. Deep black scored across the cloth draped over him, valleys and canyons of shadow lay atop him.
At the bedside lounged a figure he remained unfamiliar with. A short, stout, bearded woman who leaned back in her chair, feet kicked up and ankles crossed on the bedside. She snored quietly with short breaths. A rounded, friendly face had been bestowed to this dwarven woman.
Koh cleared his throat and she sniffed, breaking her pattern of even breaths, one eye cracking open.
“Awake finally, are you?” She asked, a motherly sort of tone to her. She reminded him of Miss Banes in mannerism and voice. Kind and soft, but rugged with years of experience.
“Something to that effect yes, I think,” said Koh. The firelight made her skin glow a ghostly shade, the lines around her eyes deep and black with the darkness that fell into them.
“Who are you?” He asked.
“The Captain,” she said. “Or Tem, if you want.”
“… Tem, then.”
“Tem, then,” she affirmed with a chuckle, crossing her arms over her chest. She wore old leather gloves and a coat stained with years’ worth of soot and oil.
“Why have you come to see me?” He asked, perplexed.
“To see for myself the stowaway on my wagon. I had a sneaking suspicion I knew your blood, but I didn’t know until now. Though, you certainly take more after Volo than you do your mother, you know?” She laughed again, raising a hand to firmly pat her own arm.
“Do I?” Koh asked. He smiled slightly, showing teeth between his lips. “You knew them, then?”
“Knew Frigg,” the woman said, eyebrows raising.
“Tell me more about her, please,” he said.
“A little eager, are you?”
“I’ve journeyed all this way to find her home and the people who knew her. I hoped, maybe, that I could learn more about the god’s power. But so far, all I’ve found has been trouble.”
Silence filled the space between them. The quiet chirp of crickets and frogs that lived in the city gutters filtered in through the cracks of this old house. Tem clicked her tongue a time or two and a rush of air parted her lips.
“Frigg Pendragon, then,” she said.
“Yes. Please. Everything you knew.”
“Ha,” the dwarf exhaled. “I’m afraid chasing after your ancestors won’t do you much good. None of them awakened the dragon like you have. Frigg herself got dumped at the city gates when she was a babe. Scrappers picked her up as she cried. She traveled with us for years on and off. Scales all up and down her arms.”
“Father said she worked in the forges here,” said Koh, shaking his head. “He never mentioned a caravan.”
“Because your father didn’t like us much. We always swooped in and grabbed his old metalworks from the folks that bought them once upon a time. After they died or got tired of things they couldn’t sell off, they called the Scrappers, and we came and took those old pieces of junk off their hands, melted them down, and made them into something more useful.”
“So how did my mother meet him?”
“Well, she did work the forges for a bit. But not here in Tero-Brun. He saw her and fell in love the first time we passed through Berdrin. Was just a little dot on a map at the time no one knew the name of. So he pulled her from our wagon and begged her to teach him to make things we wouldn’t want to take. We stole his clientele, you see. She laughed and coyly accepted. Told us to come back in a month after she’d taught him how to make beautiful things. No more horseshoes and iron nails. It was armor and swords and great metal engravings, door knockers in the shape of lions and dragons and wolves.”
“And did you come back?” He asked.
“We did,” said Tem. “But by then the two of them were well and with child, and worse, in love. Frigg didn’t want to leave, she said.”
“You just left her there?”
“She was ill, Koh,” said Tem. “A disease none of us had a name for. But her skin burnt itself and peeled around her scales, and she coughed up black tar that pooled in her lungs and steamed when it hit the air. We couldn’t help her, even with the best alchemy any of us knew. All we could do was let her stay with Volo and live the rest of her life how she wanted.”
“… Khrysaor,” Koh muttered. “The dragon killed her.”
“Aye,” she said. “And it fled to you as a wee babe when her body finally got too weak to carry it any longer. She crumbled like ash under the dragon’s will, so it went into you. Least, that’s what I can only assume now, seeing you.”
“The wings make it a bit hard to deny the dragon’s blood,” he laughed weakly, hands folding over in his lap. Then he went quiet, orange and amber flecked eyes trailing down to the blankets over his reptilian legs. “So… you mean to say she had no home. That in coming here, I wasted all my time.”
“Not exactly.”
“What can I do, Tem? What can I possibly do here? I don’t have family to ask or records to consult that haven’t already been looked over by Taliesin and Brunhild.”
The woman chuckled again and uncrossed her arms. She lifted a hand to motion out the window.
“Your friends are going right now to ask for the armies of Tero-Brun to walk behind you, swords drawn in your name. They begged Khrysaor to share his power with them, too, so you didn’t bear it all on your own, and the dragon gave it to them. They’ve got the confidence of the fire and the blood of the red god in them now.”
“I have to go with them,” said Koh. “They can’t possibly convince… whoever it is they have to convince on their own. I’m the one who bears Khrysaor’s body, even if the god’s lent them his spirit.”
“You’ll need this, then,” said Tem.
From her pocket she fished out a small steel medallion and tossed it toward Koh. He caught it, fumbled with it a bit, and finally managed to hold it up enough to catch the light of the distant sulfur fires. Engraved into the steel lay a complex knot, twining around itself time and time again, over and under, around the outer ring. In the center engraved a symbol much like a brand.
“What is this?” He asked, holding up the medallion toward the dwarf.
“It’s the emblem of Glyn. Stole it off my old husband. Not that he needed it.” She laughed. “It’s a reminder to the city of Tero-Brun that Glyn built this city. They’re indebted to whoever holds Khrysaor’s power.”
“So this medallion is the key to getting them to listen, if they don’t at first?”
“Something to that effect, I think.” She said.
“… Thank you, captain,” said Koh. “I appreciate your help. Telling me the story of my mother, and giving me this… road to fixing things.”
“What are you gonna do, kiddo?”
“… I’ve been taking my companions for granted. I thought of them as people I’d pulled into this unwilling. That I was inconveniencing them. Now I see that I need them as much as they need me. They want to be looking out for me.”
He pushed the sheets from his reptilian legs and pulled them off the side of the bed. His toes splayed out across the cold wood floor and he spent a moment getting his bearings about him, testing the weight on his lame leg to be sure it wouldn’t give out. When he’d made sure it didn’t give, he reached to grasp his cloak and pull it over his shoulders. It fell neatly between his wings, draped behind him black as night and shining with the firelight.
“And?” The dwarven woman pried.
Koh drew in a deep breath.
“I’ve run all this time from Glyn. All my life, I’ve hid from that legacy. I hid my true name. Called myself Koh Volosson for fear of being merely likened to the man. But it’s his medallion, and his legacy I can use to gain the upper hand. His legacy is helping me, not holding me back.”
“You’re still no legendary king, boy.”
“I don’t need to be,” he said firmly. “I just need to help.”
“Where do you intend to go?” Asked Tem as the smith straightened his clothes and pinned the medallion to the collar of his cloak, checking himself once over in the mirror.
“To see the queen. To help Taliesin and Brunhild.” He resolved before turning back to the dwarf. “Where can I find them all?”
“Mairsile Blacke,” said Tem. “And she lives in a great stone house at the height of the mountain, carved deep into the stone just below the summit. The rocs perch there. Be careful they don’t try to eat you.”
“I’ll give it the utmost caution. Thank you, captain.”
With that, he turned to leave, stealing out into the hallway in a blur of red scale and wings, cloak billowing out behind him.
25
Wind pulled and bit at Koh as he left into the cold night air. Heat from the fires and the pits of the dormant mountain swept past him in great gusts. On the mountainsides in the distance he could see great blue flames licking into the air, visible only in the blackness of the night.
Street lamps flickered weakly as Koh passed, house lanterns lit as he walked by curious folk who peered out of their windows and doors, eager to see what strange creature marched through their streets, a billowing cloak behind him and great red armored wings stretched out from his back.
The occasional townsfolk grew much too curious, and driven by primal instinct, slipped out into the cold night, bundled up in wool pajamas and coats, following at a distance to see this strange, lumbering figure as it limped up the pathways and stairs that traveled up and further up the slope of the mountain. Nearly three kilometers from bottom to top, Koh walked, the crowd that followed ever-growing. He could not hear their mutterings through the wind whistling in his ears. His fingers gripped tighter to the medallion pinned to the front of his cloak. The chattering of children surrounded him and the bravest of them slipped up beside him with stick in hand, should they find him to be a monster. Some of them indistinctly mumbled about Glyn. He chuckled to himself at those comments.
Somewhere in the distance, a horn blew. A great, deep sound echoed off the mountainside. More lamps lit up in the night, porches illuminated in the night, and the streets soon filled with disgruntled folk all awoken by its call, save the fortunate few who could sleep through such a thing.
At one point a man stepped out in front of Koh, the face of whom the dragon could not see.
“Stop this ruckus! It’s the middle of the night, you fiend. Go back home and get in bed as you should!” He called, standing before him defiantly.
“It’s Glyn! Look!” The children called out in response to the man.
Koh reached out to pat the man’s shoulder firmly before passing by, giving him a gentle push out of the way. The elderly man moved aside with Koh’s touch, eyes catching the red scales that glinted in the firelight along his arms, the great armored wings that stretched out behind him, and the tail that waved with each step, covered in thick crimson plates.
Speechless, he and the others lining the streets fell in beside and behind Koh.
Eventually, tired and weary, the dragon reached the mountaintop. A great stone plaza stretched out before him, scored deep with years of battle practice. Sword lines and gouges left by bear and bird claws sored into the stone beneath his feet. As he stepped out onto the stone, the three at the other end fell silent in their discussions.
Brunhild and Taliesin looked up toward he and the crowd he’d drawn, still and speechless. Another woman, tall and muscular stood between them, hands on her hips and posture wide. She dressed in leather and polished armor plates trimmed in bear’s fur. A great long mane of hair flowed down her back, red as flame and tangled up with intricate braids, each tied at the end with a wooden bead that looked as old as the mountain itself.
“Koh Pendragon, I assume,” the woman called out to Koh. The empty night air whistled past as the onlookers spilled into the edges of the plaza, lining up to see what legends had stirred this night in their city.
“That would be myself!” Koh declared.
“And what have you come for, Pendragon?” the woman with the flaming hair asked boldly. Her voice itself shook the stone of the mountain. The great rocs perched high above on the stone forge behind her bowed their heads in reverence to her word.
“To call upon the rite of the kings before me and call Tero-Brun to arms!”
“And what right have you to invoke that promise?”
Each word spoken between the two rang out in the night like a challenge, and each response rose to meet it. A ruler to a ruler, a king to a queen, words laden with respect and with power exchanged across these ancient stones.
“The right of Khrysaor in my blood and in my bones! The dragon’s blessing itself!” He held out his hand to show the scales blooming across his skin.
“Do you, then, fancy yourself a savior?” she called back.
“No! I see myself a man the same as all the rest.”
“Then why bestow you our armies instead of any man the same as all the rest?”
“The life I have lived has led me here, and my experiences have shaped what I would use your armies for. I seek to end the suffering those who have never felt the common people’s pain inflict upon them. A prince rises in the east with the white dragon’s power, blind to the pleas of the farmer, the smith, the cooper, and the soldier! He seeks to rule, and I seek to deny it to him!”
Koh stepped forward into the center of the great stone slab. His clawed hands reached up to pull at the medallion around his neck. He unclasped it and let the cape fall from between his wings, then held it high above his head for all to see.
“I bear the crest of Glyn and Khrysaor, and call upon the debt of Tero-Brun to stand beside his spirit with swords drawn!”
“Hie thee to the call of the kings!” A voice echoed in the crowd, before an elderly dwarf marched out, a tome held high above him, the cover emblazoned with the same crest Koh held. The same emblem burned itself into the flesh of his companions. The symbol of Glyn – of interconnectedness. “Hie thee to their call, says the ancient laws of Tero-Brun! I’d caution you to listen, Mairsile.”
The dwarf laughed heartily and lowered the tome from above his head. Koh did not yet lower his medallion.
Mairsile looked between Koh and Daven, chin raised. Then she looked to the crowds that followed Koh up the mountain to this place.
“Do you, people of Tero-Brun, wish to follow Khrysaor and Pendragon into battle? In favor, say aye!” She pulled from her belt a handaxe engraved with great twining symbols, knots woven together the same way the medallion did, and held it high above her head.
