DRAGONFORGE.

Book Two of the Bitterwood Trilogy.

by James Maxey.

For Laura Herrmann

Behold, I have created the blacksmith who fans the coals into flame and forges the weapons of destruction.

I have created the waster to destroy.

Isaiah 54:16

CHAPTER ONE:.

THE SUBTLE ART OF FALLING.

1100 D.A. (Dragon Age), the 1st Year of the Reign of Shandrazel

GRAXEN SKIMMED ALONG the winding river, the tips of his wings teasing the water with each downbeat. The sunrise at his back cast a shadow dragon before him, a phantom companion that swooped and darted across the rippling current. The elms and maples along the riverbank had shed their leaves, papering the earth with rust and gold. In the crisp morning air, Graxen's breath billowed out in clouds that rushed back along his scaled body, forming a wispy trail. the winding river, the tips of his wings teasing the water with each downbeat. The sunrise at his back cast a shadow dragon before him, a phantom companion that swooped and darted across the rippling current. The elms and maples along the riverbank had shed their leaves, papering the earth with rust and gold. In the crisp morning air, Graxen's breath billowed out in clouds that rushed back along his scaled body, forming a wispy trail.

As Graxen journeyed west, the river grew rockier, with patches of white water. He welcomed a rare mirror-smooth stretch of river. He opened his toothy jaws and scooped up a quick gulp to refresh himself. He glided upward as he savored the icy drink, gazing down at the pink-white sky reflected on the still water. Graxen was a gray blur against this pastel backdrop. Unlike other sky-dragons, he lacked even a single blue scale. Some trick of birth had robbed his hide of the azure hue that other members of his species wore with pride. Graxen's body and wings were painted by nature in a palette drawn from storm clouds.

Graxen knew the area below him only from his study of maps. The river he followed meandered in a serpentine path among low mountains. Soon he would arrive at the dam, an imposing structure dating from ancient times. Beyond this, a body of water known as Talon Lake filled long, twisting valleys. His destination was the Nest, an island fortress just beyond the dam. Sometimes, on the edge of sleep, Graxen could see himself as a fledgling perched on the Nest's rocky sh.o.r.es. His earliest memory was of watching small fish dart about in a shallow pool as he waited for the biologians to take him away.

As an adult male sky-dragon, he was forbidden to return to the Nest. Only a select handful of males were invited to those hallowed sh.o.r.es. Graxen was forever excluded from those ranks by the color of his scales. Under other circ.u.mstances, he would have no chance of admittance. However, the world had changed in recent days. Graxen had a satchel slung over his shoulders, the long strap allowing the bag to hang near his hips. The contents of this satchel gave Graxen the courage to journey to a place where only his imagination had been allowed to travel.

As he tilted his wings to follow the river north toward the dam, his sharp eyes spotted dark shapes flitting high above. Valkyries, three of them. The dam was hidden by one more turn of the river, but Graxen calculated that the valkyries were circling above the structure. He wondered if they'd spotted him. His drab color against the stony river might provide some camouflage.

He negotiated the final bend and closed in on the dam, barely a mile distant. The dark shapes suddenly wheeled toward him. The valkyries were the guardians of the island, female sky-dragons trained from birth in the warrior's art. Save for his first year of life, Graxen had never seen a living female of his own species. He knew them only from books and sculpture. Now, they seemed like creatures of myth as they hurtled toward him, their silver helmets gleaming in the sun. The polished steel points of the long spears in their hind-talons twinkled like stars in the morning sky.

Graxen spotted a dry rock rising in the midst of the river, barely large enough for him to land on. A few other rocks jutted nearby, natural landing spots for this trio of guards. He could see a strategic advantage to having this encounter take place on land. He tilted his hind-claws forward and lifted his wings to drift to a landing. He raised his face toward the valkyries and held his empty fore-talons open to show he carried no weapon.

The valkyries closed fast. It didn't look as if they intended to land. Graxen held his ground. He was breaking no law by standing on this rock. The land outside the lake was the property of the sun-dragon king. He was as free to stand upon this stone as he was to stand by the fountains at the College of Spires.

He studied the lead valkyrie as she raced toward him. At first glance, the differences between a male and a female sky-dragon were trivial. Some primal layer of Graxen's brain, however, was busily cataloguing the subtleties that identified the valkyries as a member of the opposite s.e.x. Sky-dragons had heads that resembled goat skulls covered in scales, with a fringe of long feather-scales rising from the scalp and trailing down the neck. The leader's helmet concealed some of these scales, but those that showed were a deep sea-blue, with tips that trailed off into a pale white, a pattern unique to females. The leader was also slightly larger than a typical male. Male sky-dragons had wingspans averaging eighteen feet; the leader's wings easily stretched twenty. Her torso was chiseled from life in the sky, while most male sky-dragons possessed the softer bodies of scholars.

The valkyries unleashed powerful war cries, fierce primal shrieks that tightened Graxen's intestines. The leader aimed her spear to drive it into Graxen's chest. Graxen stood still as stone. He noticed that the leader had a large silver bell attached to her belt, the clapper covered with a leather hood. An alarm device to call reinforcements, no doubt. Five yards away, she lifted her neck and beat her wings. She zoomed over Graxen's head, the tip of her spear missing his face by no more than a foot. The wind of her wake washed across his cheek. He could smell a faint aura of blackberries.

The second valkyrie darted past, then the third, close enough that he could see his gray eyes reflected in the large silvered plates that studded her leather breast armor. A pair of iron manacles dangling from her thick belt threatened to clip his cheek. He tilted his head a fraction of an inch, allowing the chains to pa.s.s without touching. Graxen possessed a keen mind for s.p.a.ces and vectors. In contests of speed and reflexes he had no peer. Yet was he known as Graxen the Swift? Graxen the Nimble?

"Graxen the Gray!" the lead valkyrie shouted as she circled, coming to rest on the stone that jutted from the river before him. "Your kind has no business here! Begone!"

"I am a representative of the king," said Graxen, half-surprised she recognized him, half-fatalistically accepting it. As the only gray-scaled sky-dragon ever to survive birth, he had little hope of anonymity. "I come as a courier of important news. I'm charged with delivering this message to the matriarch herself."

A second valkyrie landed to his right. "We care nothing of your mission," she growled. "The king's domain ends at the lake's edge." Graxen noted this valkyrie was younger than her companions, perhaps still a teen. Despite the normal female advantage of size, Graxen judged himself taller.

"Fortunately, I haven't reached the lake's edge," said Graxen. "I ask that you read the scroll I carry before you judge the importance of my mission."

The third valkyrie, the one with the manacles on her belt, landed to his left. She was larger than her two companions and, to his eyes, more relaxed. The other two stood in stances that indicated they were prepared to defend themselves from a sudden attack by Graxen. This last valkyrie didn't look concerned.

He turned his attention back to the leader as she spoke once more. "If the message is important, give us the scroll and be gone. We will see it reaches the matriarch."

"The king would be disappointed if I failed to speak to with her personally."

"Would the king be disappointed if your body was discovered on the rocks downriver?" the young valkyrie to his right asked. "Perhaps he could take comfort in knowing that we found your satchel and delivered the scroll without you."

A silence fell as the valkyries allowed the implied threat to settle into Graxen's mind. Graxen studied the youngest valkyrie. Her eyes were full of scorn, with perhaps a touch of fear. She looked ready to run him through with the long spear she carried in her fore-talons. He turned back to the leader. Her face was a cool mask, impossible to read.

He tilted his head to study the final valkyrie. Her eyes were cold little slivers of copper. Graxen caught his breath as he noticed a slight discoloration against her cheek. A single scale of gray, the color of fresh-cut granite, sat below her left eye like a tear. The rest of her hide was flawless; she seemed sculpted from sapphire, her lean and well-muscled body sporting graceful lines and symmetry that rivaled the statues that adorned the College of Spires. This valkyrie continued to regard him with a look that approached boredom.

With one guard showing disinterest and another looking prepared to run him through, Graxen knew his best course of action was to win the leader over to his cause. He said, "As a commander, you are obviously a dragon of proven judgment. Perhaps you should examine the scroll yourself." Graxen reached into his satchel and produced the scroll. He stretched his wing across the watery gap to offer the message to the leader. Her fore-talon brushed his as she took the rolled parchment. This brief touch was his first adult contact with a female. He found the experience...unsatisfying.

The leader unrolled the scroll. She tilted her head and furrowed her brow, attempting to decipher its jagged calligraphy. The message had been scribed by Shandrazel, a sun-dragon. With talons twice the thickness of a sky-dragon's nimble digits, sun-dragons seldom earned praise for their penmanship.

"What does it say, Arifiel?" the youngest valkyrie asked, impatient.

"Quiet, Sparrow," said the dragon with the teardrop scale. Graxen guessed that Sparrow was a nickname. It was rare to encounter a dragon whose name corresponded to something in the physical world. All sky-dragons names were drawn from the Ballad of Belpantheron. The two-thousand-page poem was the oldest doc.u.ment verified to have been drafted by a dragon. Unfortunately, it was also a doc.u.ment that had defied ten centuries of scholarly attempts to decipher its mysterious language. Tradition held that it told the story of how the young race of dragons slew the older race of angels. Less poetically inclined scholars speculated that the work was schizophrenic babble granted sacred status by the pa.s.sage of time.

"It does say he is to be given safe pa.s.sage," Arifiel said, rotating the scroll to a thirty-degree angle as she puzzled out the script, "but, this isn't Albekizan's mark."

"Albekizan is no longer king," said Graxen. "He died at the hands of Bitterwood following an uprising of humans in the Free City. His scion, Shandrazel, charged me with this mission."

Arifiel tilted the scroll in the counterclockwise direction. "I guess that could be an 's.' That's probably an 'h' and an 'a.' Shandrazel is...plausible. However, all that's here is the order of safe pa.s.sage. I see no further message."

Graxen raised his fore-talon to tap his brow. "I have the message up here. It's too important to be entrusted to mere parchment. This is why you should provide me with an escort for the rest of the journey."

"I see," said Arifiel.

"Shall we grant him pa.s.sage then?" asked the teardrop valkyrie, still relaxed.

"No," said Arifiel. "Last I heard, Shandrazel was banished."

"Who cares if Shandrazel is king now?" Sparrow growled, directing her words toward Arifiel. "Male law ends at the lake's edge. Whatever transpires in the outside world is of no concern to us."

"True," said Arifiel, rolling the scroll back up. She eyed Graxen even more skeptically than before. "My gut tells me this is a trick. Desperate males try far more clever schemes to reach the Nest in the hope of mating."

"This is no scheme," said Graxen. "I'm marked by birth as one who will never breed. No female would ever submit to my touch."

"Desperate dragons will attempt to breed by force," said Arifiel.

"If I were here to resort to violence, why would I wish to journey into the heart of the Nest?" Graxen asked. "Wouldn't a desperate dragon attempt to ambush valkyries on patrol, away from the safety of the fortress?"

"Perhaps that's your plan," said Sparrow. "Perhaps you didn't expect to be outnumbered."

Graxen found Sparrow's tone grating. He felt that if she would only be quiet, he might have hope of convincing the Arifiel. He said, "Arifiel, do you always allow the dragons in your command to abuse guests so?"

He expected Arifiel to order Sparrow to silence herself. He didn't expect Sparrow's face to suddenly twist into a mask of rage as her muscles tensed, ready to strike with her spear.

"Abuse is all a freak like you deserves!" Sparrow shouted.

"Sparrow, halt!" barked Arifiel.

It was too late. Sparrow lunged. Graxen shifted his weight back on the rock, swinging his tail around for balance as he pulled his shoulders back. The spear pierced the air before him. The weapon was twice Sparrow's height. Graxen calculated that avoiding the thrust might lead to tragedy. Sparrow was off balance, falling forward. If she toppled, her spear would reach all the way to the valkyrie with the teardrop scale. Perhaps her armor would deflect the blow, but could he take that chance?

Graxen grabbed the shaft of the spear, using the full weight of his body to halt its forward path. He jerked the spear backward. Sparrow let go, her hind-talons skittering on the wet rock. Before she could spread her wings to steady herself, Graxen jabbed the b.u.t.t of the spear between her legs, tripping her. She landed in the water with an angry shriek.

Arifiel, perhaps mistaking his act of protection for an attack, released the scroll and readied her own weapon. Graxen dropped the spear, crouched, and then sprung into the air, whipping his tail forward to knock the falling letter upward before it hit the water. He grabbed the doc.u.ment in his hind-claws as he beat his wings, climbing into the sky with all his might.

"Stop!" Arifiel shouted, drawing back to throw her spear.

"Stop me," Graxen called back, climbing higher.

Arifiel grunted, hurling her weapon, but Graxen didn't bother to look down. The weapon had been designed for a thrusting attack, not for throwing. He was practically straight over her, fifty feet up. The anatomy of a sky-dragon's wings simply wouldn't allow the weapon to reach him. Seconds later, he heard the spear clatter against the rocks. He kept flapping, turning the fifty-foot gap into a hundred feet, two hundred, more.

He glanced down to see Arifiel and the dragon he thought of as Teardrop chasing after him. Teardrop proved as strong as she looked, and was leading Arifiel by several body lengths. Indeed, if she weren't slowed by her leather breastplate and heavy spear, Graxen had every reason to think she might have gotten close to him. After a minute, Graxen judged he was over a hundred yards above her, and half that distance again above Arifiel. Graxen grimaced as he saw that Arifiel was no longer chasing him. Instead she was drifting in a circle as she used a hind-talon to free the hood on her alarm bell.

Graxen folded his wings back and held his body straight, plunging toward Teardrop. It was time to show these valkyries what he knew of the subtle art of falling. Teardrop looked up, her eyes wide as he shot toward her. She drew her body back, raising the spear she carried in her hind-talons to catch Graxen.

As Graxen hurtled down, the wind felt like water. His feather-scales were a thousand tiny paddles with which he pushed the current, controlling the angle of his fall. At the last second, Graxen curved his tail in a gentle arc, steering away from a collision. Her spear point flashed past his eyes. For a lightning instant he glimpsed the valkyrie's face with its single scale of gray, then her long serpentine neck flickered past, then her armored torso, and then there was her belt. In his right hind-talon he held Shandrazel's letter of pa.s.sage. With his left, he s.n.a.t.c.hed the manacles, ripping free the metal hook that held them. The sudden jolt threw Teardrop into a spin. As she flapped her wings for balance, Graxen shifted his tail once more to delicately adjust his fall. Off to his side, on a parallel course, a bright gleam caught his eye-a spear point. Teardrop had dropped her weapon. The spear now fell toward Arifiel on a path that would run her through. He kicked out with the manacles and clipped the tip of the spear, knocking it into a path that would do no damage.

By now Graxen had reached terminal velocity, words that possessed a double meaning. He could fall no faster, but if he collided with Arifiel at this speed, it would kill them both. He opened his wings into twin parachutes, tilting his hind-talons down. He dropped the scroll and craned his neck to catch it in his teeth as it flew upward. In the s.p.a.ce of a heartbeat the distance between Arifiel and himself vanished as his hind-talons reached her left wing.

Graxen grabbed Arifiel's fore-talon, the three-clawed hand that sat at the middle joint of her wing. In a fluid motion, he snapped the first cuff of the manacle around her talon. The impact caused his body to flip, as his legs tarried at her wing while his head snaked downward. He reached out his fore-talons and grabbed her left hind-talon. She tried to kick him free.

Arifiel's sharp teeth sank into Graxen's thigh, but the awkward angle of her bite kept her from doing real damage. She growled and shook her head as they tumbled, free-falling a hundred feet in a blur of gray and blue. She opened her jaws, perhaps in search of a more vital body part. Graxen spread his wings and darted away, leaving Arifiel with her left wing manacled to her left leg.

For a sun-dragon, this would have been a death sentence. Fortunately, sky-dragons were masters of the air. Arifiel spread her free wing to its maximum capacity and pulled her body into a tight ball. She became a blue whirligig, descending toward the forest in a dizzying spiral. Her landing wouldn't be delicate, but she'd survive.

Graxen tossed away the bell he'd stolen from her belt, the leather hood once more covering the clapper. From the time he'd started his dive to the time he'd shackled Arifiel, no more than ten seconds had pa.s.sed.

Something fell past him, barely glimpsed from the corner of his eye. At first, he had difficulty identifying it as it tumbled. Then a silver disk flashed as it caught the sun. It was a valkyrie's empty breast plate. He looked over his shoulder to find Teardrop barely ten yards behind him. She'd shed her armor, even her helmet, leaving her groomed for speed. Her breast muscles moved like mighty machinery beneath her scales. Graxen's heart beat joyously. He always enjoyed a good race.

Graxen turned away from his pursuer and dove once more, aiming for the river. He pulled from his dive to skim along the surface. The spray from the whitewater moistened his face in welcome relief. If not for the letter in his teeth, he would have risked a quick drink. He banked toward the forest, the jagged tree trunks looming before him like a maze. Beating his wings for a further burst of speed he plunged into the woods. Flying above the treetops was one thing. Flying amid the branches of an unfamiliar forest was a feat most dragons would regard as suicide. His eyes tracked every limb and shadow as momentum carried him forward. He beat his wings to stay aloft in the gaps between the trees. The tips of his wings knocked away twigs and vines. A whirlwind of dry leaves followed in his wake.

Ahead, he spotted a bright patch on the forest floor-a clearing three times his body length. With a sharp, hard burst of energy he zoomed heavenward, flitting back above the trees. Only now did he allow himself to glance over his shoulder. He was certain the valkyrie had been stubborn enough to follow, even though her longer wings would have made the feat impossible. He hoped she hadn't injured herself too badly when she snared in the branches.

To his astonishment, she was still in flight, now many yards behind, about to reach the clearing. He watched, slack-jawed, as she found the open s.p.a.ce and rose back over the treetops, her gaze still fixed upon him.

Very well. If he couldn't outfly her, he'd have to cheat.

He banked in a sharp arc as he reached up with his hind-claws to the leather satchel. With a violent grunt, he yanked the bag so hard its strap snapped, freeing it. He darted back toward Teardrop with all the speed he could manage. His eyes locked on hers. Their paths would intersect in seconds. She showed no fear as the s.p.a.ce between them closed.

At the last possible instant, Teardrop lowered her head to dodge, pa.s.sing beneath his body. Graxen snapped the bag in his hind-talons, opening the satchel wide. With a satisfying shudder, the leather ripped from his claws as the makeshift hood slipped over her head.

He bent his whole body in the air, heading once more for the dam. He glanced back to find Teardrop whipping her head, trying to free the hood, obviously disoriented. Instinctively, she was climbing slowly, as any temporarily blinded dragon would do. Graxen was relieved she showed no sign of injury. The high-speed hooding had carried the risk of snapping her neck.

Leaving his last opponent far behind, Graxen raced toward the dam, rising quickly over its ma.s.sive stone wall. He found himself over the deep silver-blue waters of the mountain lake. The Nest, an impressive fortress of stone and steel, jutted from the waters like a racial memory. He knew this place in his blood. He'd been born within its walls. The air smelled like dreams as he breathed in great heaves through his nostrils.

There were dark shapes dashing all over the sky now. A dozen valkyries had spotted him. None were closer than half a mile. Unless there was another among them as swift as Teardrop, none could intercept him before he reached his goal. He darted upward as he reached the outer wall of the fortress, rising above the iron spikes that edged it. The Nest would be a bad place to fall. Every surface was covered with sharp metal shafts pointed skyward to discourage any males who might wish to land. Ahead, the central bell tower began to clang out an alarm. He heard a command shouted somewhere below: "Get clear! The gates are closing!" A rumble came from deep beneath the island as ancient gears slipped into service.

He aimed for the tallest spire of the fortress and a balcony that jutted from it. As he rose above the lip of the balcony, he saw the open door to the chamber beyond. A metal grate was sliding down to seal the room, like the jagged teeth of some great beast. He hoped that the marble floor beyond was as smooth as it looked. He flattened his body, slipping beneath the teeth. He slammed against the marble, sliding forward. He snaked his tail into the room as the grate clanged shut. He spun and pivoted as he slid, spreading his wings to lift himself back to his hind-talons, his sharp claws splayed out, desperate to halt his forward slide. He skidded to rest inches from the opposite wall.

He opened his jaw and let the scroll drop. He caught it with his fore-talon as he spun around. The scroll was damp with spittle. He held his wings in a gesture of surrender as countless valkyries rushed into the room, spears pointed toward him.

"Greetings," he said, in as calm a voice as he could muster. "I have a message from the king."

The valkyries drew into a half circle around him as he pressed his back against the cold stone wall.

"Your kind is forbidden here!" one growled.

"We should gut you where you stand!" snapped another.

"We should," said a firm voice at the back of the room. "But not yet."

Graxen looked over the wall of valkyries to see an aged sky-dragon, the weight of her body supported by a gnarled cane. Her body was stooped but her eyes were bright. Her face was lined with an aura of dignity that made her instantly recognizable. The matriarch!

"He's made it this far with his precious message," she said, her voice raspy with age, yet still firm with authority. "We shall allow him his say."

"Thank you, Matriarch," Graxen said. He cast his gaze over the guards. "I've been ordered speak to you privately. Would you dismiss your attendants?"

"Do you think we'll fall for this trickery?" a valkyrie snarled, jabbing her spear to within a whisker of Graxen's ribs.

"Lower your spears!" the matriarch commanded, drawing closer, studying Graxen with a cool gaze. "We've nothing to fear from this pathetic specimen. He's no more than an overly large carrier pigeon."

"I prefer to think of myself as an amba.s.sador for the new regime."

"Ah yes, the new regime. Rumors travel more swiftly than you, Graxen. I've already heard of Albekizan's death. Shandrazel is king."

"For now, yes," said Graxen.

"A strange choice of words," said the matriarch.

"An appropriate choice for strange times."