Of Flamewood and Dreams

On the 24th day past mid-summer harvest the king awoke with a pain in his side. Upon physical manipulation of the flesh, I did discover a swollen tenderness. Painful to the touch.

It put upon His Majesty a sour mood, and I dare not prescribe anything other than the sacrifice. Ailments have in recent years become impossible to persuade him to take naught but Nathair’s blessing to.

These past two-hundred-and-seventy-eight years have reflected a marked change in him. Impossible now to see the man who wept a year and a day for his firstborn.

It is a matter of luck we had a lad right of age. Just six days into his second year. I escorted him myself to the Flamewood, performed the blood-ritual.

I cannot understand why the king ailed still.

I did everything as is written in the Dorcha. The child was the heir. I saw Nathair take him with my own eyes. The body was broken in her jaw. The sacrifice was honoured. Why has she forsaken their bond?

In time His Majesty’s pain was cured through rigorous and regular bleeding. Still, the king will not be swayed from his insistence of another sacrifice. Though the boy was as like him as his own reflection, he insists he was not of his blood. The mother was put to the sword.

The next birthing is due to take place several moons hence. I pray the dragon Nathair recognises the royal line, for his Majesty’s wrath grows each moment he is denied her blessing.

Gutagh 278AR

The passage curved along the end of the scroll, signed off in a chaotic scrawl of spattered ink. It sprung back as Sera loosened her grip.

She had suspected dark magic was the secret to his long reign, but Dragon magic? A shiver chased all warmth from her skin.

The mage’s long, filthy nails curled in on each other, bound at the wrists. Greasy hair hung limp around his face, dipped low and smeared crimson.

“Who else knows about this?”

He said nothing.

She aimed a kick at his ribs, strong enough for the bone to crunch beneath her boot. He grunted and fell to his side, gritting through mottled teeth, “No one.”

Another kick.

“The king!”

“What of the women?”

“What women?”

“The mothers!”

“They know nothing!” His bony face flickered in the candlelight. “It would be cruel.”

A hallow laugh twisted painfully as it burst from her chest. “It’s not already?”

“Just a means to an end.”

“No,” she shook her head. “It is a means to stave off an end that should have been long ago.”

“No man is more qualified than he to lead; the king has three-hundred years wearing the crown!” He winced.

Pathetic.

Bending, she gripped his chin. “Where is the Dorcha?”

He wheezed a laugh, “I will not help you steal my work. You will kill me all the same.”

A smile pulled across her face, she leaned into the hard bitterness of it. “You will,” she said. “And I will raze the Kingdom of Arragh to the ground. I’ll free these lands from their tyrant. And I’ll kill you. But I’ll give you something in return.”

He glared at her and spat a bloody glob at her feet.

She smirked. “Come now,” she gestured to the many dozens of racks his scrolls were stacked on. “Don’t you want to know why your ritual failed? Does it not pester you?”

His eyes were wide, focused on her. He squinted without blinking. “You couldn’t possibly know. You’re just a servant.”

She smiled. He needed this. “I do.”

A heavy moment passed between them, tense and fragile as a scullery’s soap bubble. A cough left his chin wet and red, and she saw his face change in the whisper of that second. “Ebon Tower.”

“Where?” she asked quietly.

“Top room, in a chest of red oak. Now tell me!”

She heaved a long sigh and unsheathed a dagger from her waist. “Very well.” His eyes widened as she stepped around him. She grabbed a fistful of limp hair and pressed the blade to his throat. It bobbed in time with his quickening breath. “The reason it didn’t work was because I am his heir.”

One final gasp and she dropped him into the seeping scarlet of his own blood.

-*-

Ebon tower was impenetrable.

It claimed the central focus of Arragh’s castle, positioned directly north of the ward and encircled with battlements of dark stone. A stark white peppering of snowfall covered them this morning.

Behind the tower lay the thick forest of Flamewood where scorched wood twisted in crooked spirals, reaching toward the sky.

Sera had watched it from the servant’s quarters in the keep nightly for three moons. The trees had followed her into her dreams. They’d morphed themselves into pathways through the dark branches, pressing upon her an urgency to seek, to hunt. She awoke each morning with screaming muscles and chilly from the sweat drying on her skin.

And yet she was grateful.

They had replaced the other dreams. Dreams of frustration and longing, of gold and fire, of a strange feeling that grew from behind her breastbone and weaved itself through her veins. A tight tingling that left her aching and angry.

A chill wind cauterised those thoughts. She refocused. Ebon tower was well guarded. Two men clad in the gleaming armour of Arragh. Gilded armour for the Golden King.

An older woman walked stiffly up the front steps. She wore a similar uniform to Sera’s own, only black where Sera’s was grey – a midwife. She shared a brief exchange with the guards before they let her pass.

Sera squinted at her for a long moment before a hard knock had her spinning, and a severe looking man grumbled, “Get moving, girl.” She bit back the poison on her tongue and snuck another glance behind, but the woman was gone.

She’d seen her before. The same tightly formed greying bun and crooked amble passed her each day at the Western wall of the keep just before seventh bell.

Sera smiled to herself. Perhaps there was a way into the tower after all.

The dawn bell rang out, shattering her musings. She flew up the steps and into the kitchen, faster than the sleep she’d managed to squeeze into the night should allow.

The morning passed with her usual chores of washing and peeling vegetables before the whispers passed through the kitchen like a shiver from the first Autumn wind. It was the delivery boys of course, the first ones to break the insular bubble of the scullery. Their heated expulsion of the news was met with weary disbelief.

When the serving girls confirmed the same, the murmurings began in earnest.

“Adam’s just said he was slit right down the middle. Innards spilling out over the floor!”

“No! Hung up by his toes, he was!”

“Don’t be daft, you two! Poison’s what done him, seen it time and time again.”

Sera had to turn away before she asked exactly how many times Cotes had seen someone murdered by poison. To her annoyance the comment was lent credibility when a guard walked in just after noon and began a slow ramble through the kitchen that lasted the rest of the day. It forced a quiet hush over the cooks and cleaners alike.

It stayed like that until soon after sixth bell when, with her cracked skin stinging from scrubbing dishes, Sera left the kitchen. She glued her eyes to her shoes, a practice of submissiveness in the sombre crowd. Usually by quitting bell there would be a crackle of excitement in the air, people gossiping, perhaps even planning a round of blinds later.

Not today.

Instead, today was quiet. A cold sweat broke out over her back and neck, and she glanced nervously behind her. She broke away from the crowd to duck into an adjacent corridor, a shortcut she had discovered in her pursuit of the Mage. It had taken her three months to gain entry to his quarters, time she feared she couldn’t afford for the king.

She hadn’t quite considered the increased guard presence the murder would give rise to. A silly oversight she hated herself for.

Would that she could just force her way into his rooms and slip her knife into his sleeping chest, but she was yet to even see the man.

Still, it might have been fortuitous. Who knew how much of the dragon’s blessing lingered in him, what cunning or awareness it had granted him. What threat could she possibly hold against that darkness? Following the mage had been the correct starting point, his information had been invaluable, but she needed more.

She needed the Dorcha.

Clipped footsteps approached from behind, and she turned to see the old midwife approaching. As she caught sight of Sera, she stood rigid for a single moment before the rapid clip of her shoes against the stone thundered toward her.

Sera backed up, stumbled slightly when the woman grabbed her and shoved her into a small alcove in the wall.

“What are you doing here!”

Sera blanched as the woman reached up and tore the neck of her robes down. Sera pushed her back, shivering slightly at the cool air assaulting her flesh.

“I knew it.” The woman cursed. She pushed Sera against the wall. “And Gods, you’re the image of him. If he saw you-!”

“Stop!” Sera pushed back, and the midwife stumbled hard. “Sorr– look, I’m sorry,” she leaned forward and caught her arm.

She jerked it from Sera’s grasp. “What are you doing here? Fool!”

“You don’t even know me!”

“Don’t I?” She whispered, hand coming up to rest against Sera’s chest, where her birthmark curved into an uneven spiral. “Child of Arragh.”

Sera pulled back. She hadn’t considered anyone would still be here. She stared hard into the woman’s eyes, searching. But they were unlike her own, a blue to her brown. And unbidden a hope she’d been culling her whole life ran cold.

The woman chuckled, reading her thoughts. “No child, I’m not your mother.”

Sera swallowed hard. “Is– is…?”

The woman looked away, “No.” And said no more on it. “Nor will we be once he finds you.”

Sharp disappointment squeezed her lungs. “He won’t,” she said. The woman laughed frostily, and it settled wrong in Sera’s chest. She sneered at her, “Not unless you decide to tell him.”

“How dare you. I risked everything to get you out! You were supposed to be the end of it!”

“I am going to be the end of it!” This was her purpose. She felt it in her dreams, in her bones. “But,” she shook her head, “surely you know that? You told them I would be the end.”

Horror descended on the woman’s face. “That’s why you’re here?” She whispered. “You think I meant you to return and what? Kill the king?”

That was exactly what Sera thought. Her parents had raised her on stories of her sire: the Golden King. She’d known the guilt of rising taxes and pillages and plagues before she understood what they were, known the failure of her dynasty and the responsibility of her role.

“You?” The woman stepped back. “How could you possibly do anything against him?”

Words failed on her tongue. Had she misinterpreted everything her parents had ever told her? “You told them I would bring his end,” she repeated.

“Yes,” she spat, “by staying safe. Staying hidden. Not allowing his dragon to break your bloodline!”

Sera squinted.

“Stupid girl!” she spat. “Do you know how many of you I’ve delivered? How many I’ve watched be carried off to die?” The woman took a deep breath, pinched the bridge of her nose. “You just have to exist to break this curse. That’s all. Just deny his dragon a direct line to him. That’s how you are the end.”

“Just live?” Sera spat, a blaze erupting in her belly. “Just outlive that monster? How many more will die of starvation? How many in labour camps? My fam–” her voice broke, “my family died on the blades of raiders because of him!”

“His reckoning is in sight! You need to go, leave this pl–”

“No.”

“You must!”

Her face flushed, skin hot and prickling. “Of course! Why not sit back and watch me die like the rest? Seem to be happy enough doing that!”

The woman reared back.

Sera stayed silent for a breath before saying, “I need to get into the tower.”

Tears cresting onto her cheeks, the woman turned and walked away.

-*-

Pristine red carpet muffled her footsteps as she made her way back to her quarters. It was laid within the entire keep, not just the living quarters above. That surprised her when she first arrived. Bile rose in her throat in the face of such opulence. Why would a king care if a carpet was trampled on by a hundred people a thousand times a day? He had the common folk’s gold to replace them.

She was unmoored. Untethered to the reality her parents had murmured to her each night; their hopes and dreams. Heir to a gargantuan destiny.

She had misunderstood all this time.

The thought of her dead parents’ disappointment cracked her open. She kicked a scuff into the carpet and swore silently.

How small were those dreams in the face of his power? Just the cost of one hallway’s carpeting could clothe a village of children or feed a family for an entire year.

It was a disgusting thought to sit back and wait to outlive him. Who knew how long that could be, how many years more he’d live with the dragon blessing lingering in his veins.

How many more lives for his torment?

And still, she didn’t know how to get into the tower.

-*-

Sera woke up the next morning numb from the insidious thoughts dancing through her mind. Her eyes hung heavy in her head as she pulled her uniform on. She might have felt something the day before. Something akin to excitement, or maybe even fear. Now she was hollowed out, spent.

Until she walked across the courtyard.

An arm slipped between hers, tugging her toward the tower. “Walk,” the midwife commanded.

Sera said nothing, just let the woman lean heavily on her, slowing her pace in time with her limping left foot. They ascended the stairs slowly, the gilded guards watching them. Flutters burst in Sera’s belly. The guards closed ranks. “Name!”

“Audra,” the woman replied, and pinched Sera’s arm.

“Sera.”

“Purpose!”

“Midwife.”

They looked at Sera expectantly. It took a moment for her brain to kick into gear. “Midwife –training.”

“No.” The left guard grunted. “There is only one.”

“She must train.” Audra tried to push forward, but they blocked her again.

“One.”

“The king would not be pleased to find himself without a midwife.” Audra coughed wetly.

They looked toward each other. Shook their heads. “One.”

“Perhaps we should ask him then!” Audra spoke sharply. “Would you care to interrupt his breakfast?”

They looked unsure. Sera’s heart hammered against her ribs.

“The consort is due to give birth to his child within the next turn. Her care is delicate. Someone must be trained. If I were to take ill… Would you tell the king his heir perished because no one was trained in Samirath’s care?”

They frowned at each other. A stand-off. After a moment so tense it weighed like a sandbag on Sera’s shoulders, the left one ceded.

“Go.”

She didn’t ask her why as they walked. It was written across Audra’s face: barely held back tears and a quivering lip.

Sera’s stomach twisted uncomfortably, and she turned away.

Black carpet covered the floors, veering off into different corridors. Each looked the same as the one before it, decisively identical. The walls were barren, candles alone hung in sconces to light the spaces between windows. Sera shivered.

Audra tugged to her left and began to lead them down a narrow staircase.

“No, I need to get to the top room.”

Audra grunted and pulled. “Just follow me. Quickly.”

“I need to go up!”

“Shh!”

Sera sighed and began to turn.

Audra gripped her arm, pulling her down. “Stupid, stubborn girl.”

Sera jerked away, but Audra grabbed a fistful of her shirt and pulled her forward again. She slid down the rest of the steps to the floor.

Audra rushed forward faster than Sera thought possible on her bad leg and pinned her against a wall. “I’m trying to help you, girl! Again!” she gritted through clenched teeth. “Already made enough of a commotion. Just want to go strolling up to the archives, do you?” she scoffed.

“I– I–”

“Green as the fucking Spring,” Audra muttered. “You’ll need to go the back way.”

Sera swallowed an unkind response into her roiling belly.

Audra pulled a key from her vest and opened a heavy burnt oak door. It creaked open on rusty hinges. Sera followed her into the room, pausing when Audra held a single finger up to her lips.

Sera nodded and followed along as they moved swiftly across the room. It was windowless, a single bed and workstation its only furniture. Silver instruments glinted on the workstation. She trembled and turned away, instead focusing on the sleeping woman atop the bed. The sheet bulged around her middle.

Audra walked over to the workstation. “It’ll be her fourth.”

Sera grimaced. As she was about to reply a tumult outside the heavy oak door drove a spike of fear through her belly.

Audra swore lightly, passed a thin knife into Sera’s grip and rushed them forward. Audra reached through a small gap in the stone wall. She grunted and a sliver of stone broke loose on a hinge. Audra jammed her hand into the crack. Sera bent and pushed hers in. She scraped her nails against the stone, seeking purchase.

Together they pulled, opening it just enough for Sera to slip through. As she turned to help Audra, the woman pushed it closed with a resounding thump.

Muffled voices filtered through the wall. Men mostly, some she thought must be Audra. Then a moment of quiet and the sharp ring of steel being drawn. Sera gripped the small knife in her hand.

A woman screamed, and Sera backed up the scant few inches available. Boots pounded around the room. More screaming, more shouting. A wet thud. Sera’s skin prickled with the rush of blood as she stood frozen.

She couldn’t hear Audra anymore.

Had they just–

She had to move.

Carefully she slipped the knife into her waistband, and followed the cool stone with her fingers, inching forward through the tight passage. It was too dark, too silent for even a single misstep lest she be heard by the men on the other side of the wall.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Listened for even the slightest thump of her foot in the wrong place. Dared not even to breathe too loud.

She made terrible, slow progress, until her foot nudged a stone riser. She clenched her teeth and began to ascend.

As she climbed the sounds of the guards faded. Her heart began pounding for an entirely different reason; the steps were steep and winding, unforgiving in their lift. She lost her footing more than once.

Landings were dispersed along her way. Entryways to different floors, she assumed. She skirted along these ledges and felt for the next bump of stairs, until, after what felt like hours, there were no more. She was dripping with sweat, panting into her shirt. Her legs burned, and a low throb had begun in her skull, but she’d made it.

She was at the top of Ebon Tower.

This was her best chance. In this room were the answers on how to kill the Golden King.

She waited as minutes passed; face pressed against the cool stone. When no sounds were heard from inside, she pushed lightly against the door.

It didn’t budge.

“Fuck,” she whispered quietly, pressing against it more fully. Still no movement.

Fear gripped her as a clattering echoed from the tunnel below, followed by eager shouting.

She felt for a lever or a catch, running her fingertips along the rough stone.

Nothing.

Heavy footfalls accelerated up the steps.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she muttered, jamming her shoulder into the door again. It gave just the tiniest bit, and a flame of hope flickered to life.

She turned, braced one knee on the opposite wall and pushed as hard as she could, back against the frame. Spine stinging, she gave one final push and it opened just enough for her to wedge her body through.

On the other side she shoved until the door closed, much louder than she’d have liked. She looked around the room, searching by the light of the fireplace and heaved a nearby table against the door, pulling the carpets along with it.

Bookcases lined the walls of the room, each glinting in the firelight. There were desks and tables with different instruments: vials, pots, jars, paperweights.

It had a heady, overwhelming scent, as if the air itself stuck to the inside of her lungs. It stung her nose and made her eyes water.

For long minutes Sera moved around, pushing paper aside, searching desks and bookcases. She ripped blankets from furniture and lifted crates to peer under, until finally, with a relieved cry, she pulled a small chest from a dusty bookcase.

It was old, had a subtle shade of red, and was smaller even than her tender hope. She sniffed out a small laugh. This had to be it. She was fresh out of options; the sounds of muffled voices within the walls were growing stronger, perhaps just a floor below.

Upon the face of the chest was a rusted padlock. She did not have a key or time for it.

Sera grabbed a paperweight from the nearest desk. She smashed against the aged wood repeatedly, each time splintering more of the box. Her fingers caught between the wood and tore.

Grunting sounded in the passageway.

She raised the paperweight high above her head, smashed it into the chest once more.

The wood broke apart.

Relief flooded her and she reached into the jagged opening to withdraw a small book. The desk she had braced the door with began to screech from small movements as a guard pushed.

Sera moved quickly to the door on the other side of the room, pulling it open and slipping out just as the first man spilled in.

This room was far more comfortable, clearly designed for longer research. It was lit generously with candles and held overstuffed armchairs for reading. Had her heart not been trying to burst from her chest she’d have perhaps liked this room very much. As it was, she stood frozen, held there by a long blade digging into her chest.

King Arragh.

She swallowed hard and clenched her shaking hands.

He was handsome, aged a little from what she’d expected, but handsome. He was tall, no longer the bright blonde his portraits made him out to be, but a dirtier, greyer colour. And eyes that could have been her own sepia shone menacingly at her.

His hands did not quiver as the guards burst through and he raised his free one to them.

There was something else too, a recognition not just of appearance, but deeper. A feeling that bloomed behind her breastbone and spread like the rising tide, spreading further with each beat of her heart.

His face narrowed. Eyes flicked between hers.

Did he feel just as she did?

He moved the tip of his blade downward, effortlessly cutting a hole in her shirt and peeling it back to reveal her birthmark. She watched, stomach sinking, as a slow smile spread across his face.

“Home at last, I see.” He said quietly. His voice was like velvet.

“How– ” she stammered, cut off by his pleasant, tinkling laugh.

“Dragon dreams.” He swirled over her birthmark lightly with the sword. “A curious pattern. I knew there had to be another. Prayed every day you’d be taken by plague, die starving, or at the hand of another.”

She stiffened. He’d dreamed of her as she had him. He’d known what they meant.

Her lip trembled around the words, “Then why continue the sacrifice?”

He smiled, a sinister thing that lifted to his eyes. “Just in case.” He pushed forward with the sword, and she stepped back until her heel hit the cold stone wall. She clenched her teeth, determined not to give him the satisfaction of her fear. “Open it.”

Her hand clutched the book.

“Open it.” He dug the sword deeper. A trickle of blood ran down her chest.

She opened the book, turned it right side up and squinted, frowning. His booming laugh filled her ears and mind with static.

“You really thought this would be all you’d need? To defeat me? You really thought you could read drúinic?”

How fucking stupid could she have been. Audra was right. She should have turned back.

She braced herself, sucking in a sharp breath when he wrenched his arm back, and slammed the hilt into the side of her skull.

-*-

Her head throbbed. Her back stung. Her arms ached.

Swimming through the blood beating heavy in her ears was the sound of light chanting. She cracked her eyes open.

The dark canopy overhead and the light breeze pushing her hair from her face made it clear she was lying outside. A root dug into her spine. The Flamewood.

She twisted her head and saw the flickering light of a fire. King Arragh sat in front of it, arms outstretched, eyes closed.

Sera closed her eyes lighty. Her hands and feet were bound together. If she could wiggle over to a sharp rock or rea–

“Ahh,” the king murmured, “you’re awake.”

Shit.

“Just in time for the blood sacrifice.”

Sera struggled against her bindings. Arragh approached, laughing, twirling a long knife in his hand, and ripped her from the ground by her hair.

“You have caused me much aggravation, daughter.”

She twisted away from him as he dragged her closer to the fire. The dirt gave way under her boots, and she slipped, lurching forward.

“You know,” he grunted, struggling with her, “this is the first time I’ve done this myself. It was Gutagh’s role.”

She grunted, ripped her hands downward, wrenching his hand from her arm. He caught her again, gripping her tightly.

“But you know, it’s really not all that hard, perhaps I never needed him.” His eyes glinted in the firelight as he sliced a deep line below her collarbone in the same moment she jerked her tied hands upward, flashing the thin silver blade Audra had given her earlier along his belly. He screamed, and just as flecks of her own blood flew from his dagger into the flames, so did the silver blade.

“No!” he shrieked. “You idiot girl!” He kicked her in the stomach, and she fell onto her back, winded, laughing.

“You’re right, it wasn’t that hard.”

“Yours hit first,” he mumbled, transfixed on the flame as the ground began to tremble and a shrill roar sounded in the distance. He turned to face the dark forest, eyes searching wildly amongst the treeline.

She caught his receding footstep with her legs and kicked the back of his knee; he fell hard onto a rock and grunted.

He was on top of her in a flash, fists pumping into her stomach, face, chest, and then he was up, running for woods. A whoosh of flame stopped him. He fell to his knees once more.

“Hers hit first!” he shouted. “Hers went into the flame first!”

Sera struggled to her knees as the heavy weight of hot breath washed over her skin. She squeezed her eyes shut, gave a prayer to her Gods, and waited. This was it. Her end lingered in this forest.

The pleading whimpers of her deathmate met her ears in contrast to the low rumble that made her guts quiver.

She clenched her jaw, pushing her fears to the darkest corner of her mind. She took a breath and opened her eyes to meet the beast.

The iridescent scales shimmered beautifully in swirls, reflecting the firelight. Its slitted eyes focused solely on her. The world dropped away while Sera stared. She was stunning.

The heated breath on her face, the growling tremble in her chest, the whining pleads all diminished. Nothing else mattered but the magnificent creature before her.

And she was sick with it. Sick with the pull of desire and longing. She resisted the urge to reach out and make contact, growing stronger with each moment that pulsed between them. Just like in her dreams.

But she could not. She would not. Sera took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and prepared herself for the same fate her brothers and sisters had succumbed to for two hundred years.

The dragon reared up, the king begged, and Sera watched as the beast opened the hinge of her jaws and King Arragh was ensconced in a pyroclastic explosion. His wails echoed through the trees as he burned.

Nathair turned to her then, silent and watchful.

Sera stood, captivated in her gaze. As the seconds passed the pieces of her life began to lock into place, as though they were a jigsaw just waiting for Nathair’s direction. Her dream searching was finished. The pull of the Flamewood led here. The pain that seeped from behind her breastbone turned sweet and filled her completely.

She smiled and reached out with her bound hands. Nathair leaned into her touch.

The bloodline was clean for the new Dragon Queen.