The Ballads They Will Burn
Brightik Mortganssen is not strong, or fast, or handsome. In addition, he has to be, in Noor’s estimation, one of the stupidest men alive. Oh, he’s clever. He’s manipulative. He’s sly. But he is not smart in any of the ways that matter. He does not understand the things that are important. He knows nothing in his bones.
It really makes Noor wonder about the southerners. They made Brightik Mortganssen their King. They sing songs about Brightik in the taverns, around campfires, while toiling in the fields. King Brightik the brave, the noble, the wise. King Brightik who traveled alone to the ‘Wild North’, who lived with the people there, who learned their magic.
It was King Brightik who brought back a single book and a thousand memories. Powerful words, mystical chanting. The ‘Wild Book’ is on display now in the great library, a stone’s throw from the chapel. It is a symbol of Brightik’s bravery and, ultimately, his victory over the beasts that plagued his people.
In some of the darker corners of the city, there are people who murmur a single dark memory. They say the first time King Brightik tried his magic against the dragons, it didn’t go so well. At the first Hatching, there was one dragon’s egg and one knight, and when the knight and the dragon bonded, the knight went mad. But surely not, or why would they have ever tried again? Noor has spent many hours, drinking many tankards of ale, asking absolutely everyone absolutely everything they know about this ‘Hatching’ ceremony and she’s still not clear on exactly what Brightik has been doing all these years, but it sounds ludicrously like…
They’re marrying the dragons.
Noor isn’t sure if the southern people are so desperate to tame the dragons that any price at all is worth paying, or if Brightik didn’t explain the cost, or if Brightik himself doesn’t fully understand what he’s doing, but the Hatching ceremony certainly sounds like a twisted version of the northern marriage ceremony. They’re binding souls, man to beast. Such a bond would give you a certain amount of sway over your mate, yes, but if you share your soul with a beast, you cannot share it with a man.
Yet, the southerners love King Brightik for this ‘gift’ he has given them. As he walks through the market with his Queen, every last person at every last stall smiles as he passes. It is Noor alone who frowns. She has seen him a thousand times since she hiked down through the mountains, and yet it strikes her anew every time: how different he is now, how unfair it all is, the burn of injustice licking through her veins. When Brightik first came to the north, he was starving, and dirty, and cold. Noor’s tribe took him in, fed him, taught him magic. Noor’s sister loved him. Noor’s sister married him.
Brightik took the northerner’s magic and perverted it. He took their most sacred text and turned it into a curio. He took Noor’s sister’s heart and he broke it so badly that Kallan has long since rotted away to bones on a bare mountaintop somewhere. And Brightik Mortganssen? What consequences has he suffered for his actions? He married a princess. He has two sons. He walks through this market every Sunday and all of his subjects smile as he passes.
It is utterly unfair that Brightik Mortganssen should have such a life.
So, Noor is going to take it from him.
Tonight.
*****
Brightik was lazy not to check on his moss every so often. He was smart enough to grow the phosphorescent fuzz everywhere, but he didn’t keep an eye on it. It was easy enough then, after she got a position in the castle, for Noor to kill it, a patch here, a patch there. Now the servant’s stairwell lies in perfect darkness. Unfortunately for Brightik, all you need for this spell is a little darkness and a little water. Like, a bucket of suds spilled in the stairwell while Noor was cleaning earlier today. Like, a small spring-fed pool deep in the heart of a twisting cavern.
Noor uses a rushlight to pick her way down the cave’s labyrinthine passages, lights another while she undresses. Then, she snuffs out the little flame. She sits for a long moment in perfect, unbroken darkness. She breathes deep and slow and slides naked into the pool, coming to float on her back. The water is warm, and it doesn’t matter if her eyes are open or closed because there is nothing to see and, eventually, no way to feel any difference between water and skin, skin and air, air and dark, dark and cave. Everything becomes everything else, and everything is nothing.
Brightik is so stupid he thinks you have to sing the words of the northern spells.
You don’t even have to speak them.
For amateurs, speaking the words makes it easier to focus. But all you need to do is focus on the meaning of the words echoing deep into all the space you’ve emptied out inside yourself until you are a big, dark cave, too. Then the words, and only the words, only the spell, is the sole flame spearing through the dark. Noor’s soul is fire, and magic is fire, and all that is around her and inside her and down in the very core of the earth is dark, and empty, and open to possibility and the light of these flames. Noor thinks the words of the spell first, over and over again until they become only sounds, until they become only an endless echoing inside her, and then—
She is yanked suddenly beneath the water.
Gasping for air a moment later, she sits naked and dripping wet in the servants’ stairwell. Getting into the King’s solar from there is easy. They lock the door at the bottom of the stairs, not the one at the top.
Noor makes sure to close the door behind her so the stairwell is left in unbroken dark. It is not only the living who can travel through dark waters. Brightik’s cultivation of phosphorescent moss probably had more to do with fear a certain dead woman would come after him. The dead can only maintain their form close to the water, but from the bottom of the stairs to the top is certainly close enough, down a hallway maybe, a few floors away if the spirit is determined enough. If Noor’s sister wants to help Noor kill her pathetic ex-husband, Noor will not stand in her way.
The first thing Noor sees in the solar is a great, gilded sword hanging above the fireplace. It is the kind of sword an arrogant man would own, a boastful man no better than a brigand, but he has the gall to call himself ‘King,’ to let his people sing of his greatest crimes as his noblest deeds. Noor’s rage roars to a conflagration in her chest, and before she can really think it through, she has pulled the sword from the wall and padded silently to the bed. She runs King Brightik straight through the stomach. No hesitation, no wavering. She leans her full weight against the pommel so the blade slides through flesh, and then bedding, and then deep into the wood floor, pinning the King to his bed like a bug on a pin. Noor wants Brightik to stay right where he is. It will be the perfect place for him to watch while she—
The Queen is both faster and stronger than Noor anticipated.
She’s not much larger than Noor, but her arms are thick and corded, and Noor shivers at how solid they feel squeezed around her waist, flinging her off the bed. The Queen lands on top of her, trying to pin her down. Noor squirms. She gets her feet planted firmly on the floor and tries to push up, but the Queen counters, shifting her weight to stay balanced.
She’s had some combat training.
She’s a warrior, Noor realizes, just as much as she is a Queen.
It works to Noor’s advantage that she’s naked and wet. What ends up saving her from an embarrassingly hasty defeat is that she’s slippery, not strong. When the Queen leans forward to pin Noor’s shoulders more firmly, Noor pushes with all her strength against the wall behind her head and manages to slide through the Queen’s legs. She rises up behind Vrais, but she’s not fast enough to take the Queen while her back is turned.
Vrais scrambles to her feet. They circle each other, crouching low, stances wide. Noor grins, feeling feral. It pains her to think of hurting this woman, but what a treasure to lose! How terribly will it hurt Brightik to watch this glorious flame sputter out, to watch life leave this woman who is so utterly, fiercely full of it?
The Queen lunges for her, and Noor manages to slip beneath her guard and punch her in the face. Blood sprays from the Queen’s nose, and Brightik groans from the bed. Unfortunately for the Queen, she cares about King Brightik. She glances over at the bed, and that split second of distraction gives Noor her second opening. She lands another blow to the Queen’s left cheekbone and a third to the bottom of her proud, jutting chin, knocking the woman a step to the side and step backward. The Queen falls against a side table, and Noor leaps on her back while she’s still off balance. She slams Vrais’ forehead into the top of the bedside table.
It’s over.
The Queen is so dazed from the final blow that she’s blinking, staring blankly for a long moment on her knees. Noor has time to pull a sash from the bed’s canopy, twist the ends three times around her palms, and wrap the sash firmly around the Queen’s throat.
She pulls it tight.
This rouses the Queen, and she tries to stand, but Noor has all the advantages now, towering over her, pressing her knee firmly into the center of the other woman’s back, pressing the Queen’s body forward while pulling back on the sash around her throat. The Queen’s hands claw at the sash, and she wheezes in a horrible, helpless breath as her airway is compressed.
“Please!” King Brightik calls from his bed. “Vrais has done nothing!”
Noor feels her face nearly split with her smile. “This is for Kallan,” she tells him. She wants him to know.
Brightik stops struggling. Noor is not sure what she expects him to say, but it’s not, “Noor?”
That he would ask isn’t so odd. Noor looks very different than she did when she was nine, after all. But the tone is all wrong. Not just confusion but hope, happiness, heartbreak? Like he has been longing to see her all these years. Like he’s missed her. Like he ever gave one single damn about her.
Noor shakes her head. “You killed Kallan; I kill your Queen.”
“No, Noor…”
Noor growls because she doesn’t want to hear anything Brightik Mortganssen has to say. She pulls the sash tighter and feels the body beneath her wilt.
“Noor!”
Tighter.
“I am Kallan!”
*****
The silence seems to stretch forever. Noor’s hands are numb, but she’s vaguely aware of the sounds of heavy breathing beneath her, so she must have let go of the sash.
“What?”
One word. Whispered. Noor is confused for a moment because she didn’t feel her mouth open, didn’t feel herself taking a breath, didn’t feel the vibration of sound in her throat.
Oh. It’s Queen Vrais, pushing herself up onto her hands and knees, staring at the figure in the bed with fully as much surprise as Noor assumes is painted across her own features.
Actually, yeah, “What?” Noor knows it’s her own voice asking this time.
Brightik’s eyes are glazed with pain and fear and shiny with something else entirely, but he tries to take another breath, says, “I—” Whatever he was going to say, he’s cut off by the sound of dripping water just beyond the servants’ door. His eyes widen and he asks, “Noor, how did you get here?”
“I swam.”
Brightik—Kallan?—closes his eyes. “And did you leave the water—”
He’s cut off again, this time by the sound of maniacal giggling, dragging footsteps on the stairs. Then a deadpan voice calls out, a dead voice calls out, “Knock, knock!”
And, holy shit, because that sounds like Brightik’s voice. Is that possible?
But Brightik—Kallan—is gesturing Noor frantically over to the bed. “Get me up!” he—she—says.
The Queen tries to object. “Bright!” she calls the King. “If she pulls the sword free—”
“Noor!” interrupts Brightik. No. It’s Kallan. That is definitely Kallan’s voice. Noor has heard that angry, exasperated tone, just exactly that tone, ten thousand times. “Pull it free. Get me up. Right now!”
Noor was conditioned her whole childhood to listen to that voice. She loved that voice, worshiped that voice as others worship fire and magic and song. Her big sister was her whole world after their parents died, and she would kill or die for that voice. To find it again! After so long! But here, now, like this!
She doesn’t have time to grieve the circumstances or fear their fate.
She does as Kallan asks.
Kallan groans, but she holds back screaming, tears streaming down her—Brightik’s—face. She breathes for a frantic moment, shallow and fast, before she tries to sit up. Queen Vrais helps her to her feet once it’s clear she insists on standing. One hand searches blindly for the dark robe hung at the bottom of the bed and Kallan whimpers as she shoves her arms into the appropriate openings, ties the robe closed, and turns around just in time to face her twisted mirror image.
Brightik looks like he’s been rotting for ten years. The expression on his face matches the madness they could hear as he laughed himself hoarse on the stairs. He’s grinning, and when he opens his mouth, a beetle darts out from between his lips and scurries across his cheek.
“Hello, Wife,” he greets Kallan? Vrais? He corrects himself, “Wives.”
Kallan pushes Vrais and Noor behind her and shuffles them back towards the fireplace. Somehow she has wiped all traces of pain from Brightik’s living face. She doesn’t break Brightik’s fetid gaze as she kneels and reaches behind her for an ember from the edges of the fire. A pungent smoke rises from her skin as she draws frantic runes on the floor, faster, faster, as Brightik shuffles his dead, dragging steps across the room. It’s like he hits a wall when he reaches the runes. He falls back with a snarl before he starts giggling again.
“Now, now,” he chides. “You’ve had my body for a decade, Kallan.” He eyes Queen Vrais lasciviously and adds, “You look like you’ve been having quite a good time with it. But don’t you think it’s time you give it back?”
“No,” Kallan answers. “I don’t.”
She has the robe spread wide around her body, but Noor can see blood pooling on the floor beneath the fabric. Kallan is going to bleed out if they don’t do something to stop it. Noor is going to lose her sister all over again, with only ten bloody minutes of new memories.
Brightik’s dead smile grows wider as he muses, “Mmm… But not everyone is in your little ash circle, are they? I could walk a few doors down. Say ‘good morning’ to one of my sturdy little sons. Maybe a younger body would be better.”
Queen Vrais must be terribly, terribly confused by the whole situation, but she’s clear enough on this. “No!”
Vrais starts to step forward, but Kallan holds her back with a hand against her thigh. She stares at Brightik for a beat, Kallan’s emotions painted on Brightik’s living features: her anger, her resignation.
“If I leave the circle, you won’t hurt them?” she asks.
“Of course not,” Brightik says. “They’re my family.”
The mockery he makes of that second sentence is sickening.
But Kallan nods. “Okay.”
It’s too easy. Kallan must be as mad as Brightik to think this rotting soul will keep his word. Kallan doesn’t stand. She just reaches her hand out past the edges of the circle, beckoning Brightik closer.
So he won’t see all the blood.
She’s going to trap him in his dying body. He’ll be dead again in minutes. Right back where he came from. Kallan will be dead again, too, of course. Except this time, Noor killed her. Noor will have no one to blame but herself. No one to hate. No one to hunt. Noor and Vrais say the word in a pained chorus this time.
“No!”
But it’s too late. Brightik’s living hand has connected with Brightik’s dead hand and the rotting countenance disappears as King Brightik collapses in a pool of his own blood.
They have to let them go. They have to let them both go. Noor hates it, but she knows it in her bones, in her heart, in her bowels. She screams it, the sound pulled from all these places.
Queen Vrais won’t listen.
The shouting has brought the guards running into the room, and when they see Vrais, the bloody Brightik, and Noor, they lunge for the person they don’t recognize. Even as they’re dragging her from the room, Noor begs Vrais, “Leave him! Leave him! Please!”
Queen Vrais ignores her.
She presses the whole weight of her body down on the wound while she calls for the healer. Noor prays to, well, she doesn’t believe in any of the gods, but she prays to the power she knows is bound up in the earth. She prays to magic. She prays to whatever is the ultimate source and power and origin of magic:
Please let it be too late to save him.
The body laid out by the hearth now is not King Brightik.
Not the one they knew.
*****
The dungeon is full of phosphorescent moss. It’s growing on the walls and the floor. Even the metal bars glow blue. Noor sits in the dark that’s not quite dark enough and despairs. Days pass, then weeks, then months. She doesn’t know how long it is before the King deigns to pay her a visit. She just wishes it was longer. She knows as soon as she sees his face that Kallan is gone.
“Your Grace.” She sneers at Brightik, but oh, he is much better at sneering.
“Dear little Noor,” he mocks her. “My, how you’ve grown!”
“Well, it has been fifteen years.”
“Much too long,” Brightik agrees. “Which is why I’ve come to visit. Also, I’m hoping you’ll help me with a little problem I’m having.”
She hasn’t been properly fed in months. She’s covered in dirt and unmentionable filth and she hardly recognizes the sound of her own voice, rough from disuse. But there’s still strength in the fire-bright cave of her, deep down, regardless of what’s happening to the lands atop it. She has the strength of her spirit still, if not her arms. And she is absolutely certain that whatever help Brightik wants, she is unwilling to give it.
“I won’t,” she assures him.
He laughs. “You are going to help me, Noor. I have only a few more weeks until the Hatching. Somehow Kallan rewrote the bonding song so she could split the souls of the dragons in their eggs. That was smart. But then she split the souls of the novitiates the night before after some ridiculous speech explaining exactly what they’d be doing, binding themselves to dragons.”
That sounds like Kallan. Noor has heard all the stories about the dragons returning: crops burned, whole herds of livestock consumed, men, women, and children consumed just as though they were merely more sheep, more cattle. Some people would pay any price for peace, but it’s good Kallan made sure they understood what they were sacrificing.
“I’ve heard Kallan was working on a second book of magic. It’s somewhere in the library, and I will find it, Noor,” Brightik says. “But I might not find it before the Hatching. And if I can’t figure out how to split the novitiates’ souls…”
Everyone will know there’s something very wrong with their King. Noor grins. She’s not particularly pleased though, when Brightik’s smile is just as wide as her own.
“We’ll see who holds out longer,” he tells her. “You, with all that righteous indignation? Or me, with all the very creative torture techniques I’ve learned from ten years of dwelling in the dark waters? I’ve been able to see into nearly every dungeon in every land. I’ve seen the masters at work. I’ve seen men begging for death.”
“Who says I know how to modify the song?” Noor thinks she has a few ideas. It’s not particularly complicated if you understand the nuances. If you’ve actually studied with a Firebearer instead of spying through tent flaps to learn your craft. “Maybe Kallan is the only one who can answer your question. You should ask her.”
Brightik laughs. It is a hollow sound produced by a man who is more dead than alive, regardless of where his soul burns. “I suppose, if you can’t help me, we’ll have to postpone the Hatching this year. Perhaps the Queen is ill, and I worry by her bed. Perhaps one of my sons has passed, and I must mourn him. Perhaps there is cause to suspect the northerners are preparing for war, and I must march out with what men and dragons I have to meet with them, to burn their villages, to take from them whatever magic they have left so they can never use it against us again.”
They are all plausible excuses, and Noor has no doubt Brightik is more than capable of killing his wife, or children, or whole nations to get what he wants.
These are the men who become Kings:
Fools who don’t realize the cost, or fiends who are happy for others to pay it.
*****
“I don’t think my father was a good man,” the Queen says. It’s quiet, and her voice sounds unnaturally loud in the dark. “I don’t think he was a terrible one, but I don’t think he was a good one either.” Vrais looks around, though Noor isn’t sure if she’s seeing the dungeon as it is now or if she’s looking back into her memories. “One of the first things Bright did after my father died was close the dungeon. ‘There may be men in the world we cannot suffer to live,’ he said, ‘but if a King’s dungeon is full, maybe it is desperation driving their crimes. Maybe the fault lies with their King.’ He didn’t want to be that kind of King.”
She stares down at the floor for a moment, and Noor wonders if that’s the end of the story. But then she murmurs, “He outlawed torture, too. He said it’s not just punishment, and a man will say anything to make the pain stop, so it’s no good for learning the truth either.”
Noor finally understands where this is going. “Yet King Brightik has been spending an awful lot of time down here lately. Has my screaming disturbed your sleep?”
The Queen nods. She takes a deep breath, like she’s bracing for a blow. Finally, she admits, “Whoever he is now is not the man I married. The person I married wouldn’t do… any of this. Wouldn’t have whored their way all over town the past six months. Wouldn’t have said so many cruel things. I take my pains out at night sometimes to count them the way other people count their coins, but I just have so many now. So many ways he has made me feel small, and ugly, and stupid. There was never a cruel word before. I didn’t have any pains to count.”
Noor doesn’t know what to say. Her voice is raw anyway. She thinks she probably should be careful with her words, for she may only manage to speak but a few.
“Bright told me how he came to learn northern magic,” Vrais says. “It always bothered me that I felt like I knew this man, I loved this man, this was a good man, but the way he told that story… He didn’t try to gloss over his mistakes, but he didn’t seem to feel any regret for them either. I always thought that was at odds with the man I knew.” She swallows, but she is brave enough to ask, “That’s because I never knew Brightik Mortganssen at all, isn’t it? I knew Kallan?”
Noor is still saving her words, so she nods. Vrais already knows the answer anyway. She nods back, or to herself. It’s hard to tell. “Can you walk?” she asks Noor.
Noor honestly doesn’t know the answer, so she makes a cursory attempt and finds, “Yes. I think so.”
The Queen pushes against her own knees to stand, like she is suddenly very old and very sore. She pulls a key from one of the many intricate folds of fabric on her person. She opens the cell door.
“Let’s go then.”
*****
Noor wonders about it the whole weaving way out of the castle, the whole walk through the dark of the keep, the whole scurrying and scuttling around the outer walls, and across the field, and into the forest. It is almost a relief when the Queen stops and says, “Now that I have done you a favor, you will do one for me.”
That would explain her motivation.
“Depends on what it is,” Noor hedges. “But an exchange seems fair.”
“I want you to split my soul.”
Noor stumbles. It takes her a moment to realize, “You want a dragon?”
Of course Kallan never split this woman’s soul. Kallan wouldn’t have married Vrais if she didn’t love her. And if she loved Vrais, she wouldn’t want to split the woman’s soul. Certainly not so Vrais could be bound to a dragon.
“King Brightik has made it clear he wants to remake Mortagnn. He’s obsessed with his legacy. There won’t just be ballads of his deeds, but every ballad will tie back to him in some way. My sons and I are the only things standing in his way. The people see us and they remember there was a King before Brightik. There is a whole history before Brightik was even born. I think he means to do away with us.”
Noor wouldn’t be at all surprised. But, “There’s no guarantee a dragon would choose you,” she cautions. “Even if one did, it would hardly be enough to save you.”
“But it might be enough to help me escape. Or to get my sons safely away.”
“What would they do without you? They’re merely babes!”
“It would be a chance,” Vrais argues. “Any chance is better than none.”
Kallan wouldn’t want this, but Kallan is dead.
Queen Vrais’ shoulders sag with relief when Noor agrees. They make their way deeper into the forest, winding their way through ever-thicker trees. Noor stops them in a small clearing by a stream. The murmur of the water soothes her nerves.
The Queen was lumbering on their walk, broke every twig in her path, barreled through branches like a bull, but all of a sudden she seems full of grace, her outer robe dropping from her shoulders to pool at her feet, the woman, in startling white now, sinking to her knees. It’s like watching a spear of light break through the clouds and meet with the meadow. She looks up to Noor with moonlight on her face and she’s not beautiful exactly, but Noor can understand how Kallan could admire these features. There is such goodness in the solemn shape of Vrais’ lips, in the crooked bend to her nose after Noor broke it because Vrais was defending her King, in the slight flush on Vrais’ cheeks and the way she is clenching her jaw. She’s scared, but she’s brave. A steady soul. Like a deep, ancient river.
Noor asks her one more time, “Are you sure this is what you want?”
Vrais’ nod is minute, but she doesn’t hesitate. So Noor sings the song.
The Firebearer always performed the binding or, in this case, the breaking, more as a chant, but this is one time Noor feels singing is appropriate. It soothes the listener to hear a melody, to sense the natural progression of notes. To change the magic from binding to breaking, you need to know which words are which. You need to understand how the words go together, how certain words are bound to certain others. Some are bound eternally. Some are strong and solitary. You need to understand what you’re saying beyond and beneath the words themselves.
Vrais is crying quietly as Noor winds the song down to its natural conclusion. There is no need to move forward into the verses that would bind Vrais to her beloved because she has no beloved. If she’s lucky, or unlucky—Noor’s not sure which it would be—she will have a dragon. Still, the Queen whispers into the dirt, “Thank you.” Then, ominously, “I’m sorry, Noor.”
Brightik and two guards step through the trees before the Queen has even managed to stand. When she does, she sways, and Noor catches her instinctively. The Queen rests heavily against her a moment, and Noor feels her press something into her hand.
Vrais repeats, loud enough for Brightik and the guards to hear, “I’m sorry, Noor. I have to help my King.”
Brightik was listening. The Queen left a path through the woods even an idiot could follow and then the great King Brightik hid in the trees and listened to Noor sing the song of breaking, just like he hid outside a tent so many years ago in the north and listened to the Firebearer sing the song of binding. So he could steal their magic. So he could pervert it.
Brightik offers his Queen his arm, his shoulder to lean on. Likely, he thinks her chances of matching with a dragon are minimal and so worth the risk to split her soul to gain the song. He leads Vrais back into the trees while the guards step toward Noor with purpose, with eyes that are more empty than cruel. They’re just doing their duty, just following orders, but Noor will be just as dead, won’t she?
She looks down to see what Vrais pressed into her hand.
It’s a knife.
*****
The knife saved her.
She was supposed to be unarmed, after all, and when she fell to her knees to beg for mercy, no doubt she looked harmless. The guards got too close. Noor sliced one of them deeply in his inner thigh. She stabbed the other one in the groin. When he leaned down, clutching at himself, Noor stood and slit his throat.
In the week since, Noor has done little more than sleep, and eat, and think. She’s not sure if Vrais betrayed her, or Brightik, or both. She’s not sure she cares. The things she does know, and care about very much, are this:
Brightik is still alive.
Brightik will be at the Hatching ceremony this morning.
Brightik will be dead by the end of the ceremony, or Noor will.
All of the dragons’ eggs were brought to the chapel this year. Every man, woman, and child who can walk and stand to bear witness to Brightik’s greatness is packed into the chapel, spilling out into the square, shoulder-to-shoulder for a mile up the major roadways. The Hatching isn’t just an opportunity to kill Brightik, a moment he will be out in a crowd of far too many people with far too few guards. It is an opportunity to kill Brightik in front of all these people he has gathered to feed his hubris. To ensure the last great ballad sung about King Brightik is the one where a girl slices him from groin to larynx, and he bleeds out, squealing like a stuck pig.
Noor slips into the chapel through the bell tower. She has cut her hair short and she’s dressed in a shirt and trousers she acquired from a farmhand who wasn’t sufficiently wary while bathing. Brightik is sitting on a dais they’ve erected in front of the pulpit. He’s wearing his great, gilded sword. It’s so large the scabbard runs the length of his back like he’s got a spine made of gold. Far beneath him are three smaller thrones for the Queen and the princes. Vrais is resplendent in red. The princes wear black.
Brightik holds his hands aloft to signal for silence, and the crowd hushes. Yes, there were six Hatchings before, but this is the first time the ceremony is so grand. It used to be out in the field where the eggs grew. It used to be only the knights of the Order of the Dark Morning who were novitiates. This year, the King opened the opportunity to sons of men he favored, young men who distinguished themselves in battle or tourneys, boys too young to be bound forever to anything, but eager for fame, and fortune, and adventure. No one cares right now that Brightik raised taxes this year, that he’s been seen in every brothel in town, that he brawled with a man not a fortnight ago and had his guards behead that man when Brightik lost that brawl. They don’t care what kind of King Brightik is. They care what kind of King he appears to be. They care about the story he is telling.
Noor seethes as Brightik calls out in a deep, honeyed tone, “We are gathered here today to witness the joining of these knights with the dragons who will share their souls. We are here to celebrate the bravery of these men. We are here to rejoice in this union. We are here for the Hatching!”
The crowd cheers. The novitiates are dressed in golden robes. They approach the eggs in unison, and they kneel before them. Thirty boys kneeling before what must be a hundred eggs. Eggs in the pews where the choir sings. Eggs sitting on the windowsills. The larger eggs are sitting in the middle of the chancel because it’s the only place they fit. Some eggs are no bigger than a boy’s head. Others are taller than Brightik’s throne. One egg is so big that five men couldn’t spread their arms to embrace it.
The crowd falls silent, and the silence grows heavier and deeper with each moment that passes, until into this weighted silence, the eggs begin to crack, and creek, and groan. The dragons emerge wet and awkward as they fight to break free from their shells, as they fall onto the chancel floor. Some of them stumble to standing on two legs, while some of them have four. Some have such long, languid necks they can hardly control where their heads are swinging. Some have wings like bats, others like birds. They are every color Noor has ever seen, and a few she has no name for.
Thirty boys kneel and tremble, and thirty dragons crawl, and stagger, and fly to their mates. The boys embrace them. Most of the boys look happy, or at least proud, but a few wear expressions of appropriate horror when they realize what they’ve done, what their lives will be now. These are their most beloved. More than wife, more than lover, more than family. This is the fetid creature to which they have bound their souls.
Everyone is pressing closer to the chancel to see, so it’s natural that Noor would press closer too. It’s natural that she would twist and contort herself through the smallest openings, working her way closer and closer to the front. Brightik is speaking again, but the words aren’t important. He isn’t important, except that he should be dead. He will be dead as soon as Noor reaches the dais.
But then a crack like great thunder splits the air, so loud the chapel stones vibrate. Someone screams. There’s the general murmur of fearful animals as people crouch to the floor, turn so their backs are pressed against their fellows, look fearfully up to the chancel. There is another great cracking! And another!
It’s the giant egg Brightik so carefully placed so everyone could admire it. It was a show of Brightik’s strength as the King over these Keepers. The Keepers control the dragons, but Brightik controls the Keepers and look, just look, at this magnificent egg, this unfathomably large dragon that will someday meet its Keeper, and hatch, and belong to Brightik too, just like all the others!
But all thirty boys have already met their dragons. There are no boys left.
Noor is close enough by now to see the thought glowing in Brightik’s gaze: This dragon must be for him. His soul is still split from his marriage to Kallan. Perhaps it can be bound to a dragon now. Brightik certainly thinks so. It’s clear in the way his shoulders straighten, the way he smiles, the way he watches the giant dragon emerge from its giant egg.
This dragon is red. This dragon doesn’t stumble like the others. He rises immediately to his full height, standing on two back legs, his front limbs giant wings with wicked foreclaws, his head level with the second-floor balcony. Brightik holds his arms out as though to embrace this monstrous creature. The great red dragon leaps the distance across the chancel. He lands with one of those large back feet pressing King Brightik to the floor. Then, he turns his head, scanning the crowd, turning all the way around until—
He spots Queen Vrais.
Their eyes meet and Vrais walks calmly across the chancel with her hand outstretched to that great, red muzzle. Just as calmly, she reaches down with her free hand and pulls that stupid, gilded sword from the scabbard at Brightik’s back.
With one smooth stroke, she cuts off King Brightik’s head.
The red dragon roars.
*****
It’s pandemonium.
The red dragon’s roar is so loud the windows rattle. There are three thousand people in this chapel, and they are crushing each other trying to escape. The thirty boys with their thirty dragons are so stunned only half of them are moving at all, and half of those are running away. There are a few new Keepers trying to surround the red dragon, trying to reach the Queen. Two boys rush toward the princes, but the red dragon opens his mouth again and this time his roar is accompanied by flames. The bodies, Keepers and their dragons alike, fall crisply to the floor almost before the sound has stopped echoing.
Noor can see the head of the Order of the Dark Morning directing his knights, but there was only a ceremonial contingent of soldiers here. It’s not enough. The Queen is holding back two men and two dragons with only her great, gilded sword. Noor struggles to reach her, but it’s hard to push against the flow of bodies. It’s difficult to cut through Keepers with sabers when she only has the knife Vrais gave her a week ago.
She wonders why the red dragon isn’t helping his mate, but then she sees him kneeling beside the little princes, laying his head at their feet. Unfortunately, the boys are too scared to climb on. They hesitate too long. One of the Order closes in behind them, his dragon hissing where it’s perched on his shoulder, his sword raised above his head.
Noor throws her knife.
She hits him in the space between his helm and his gorget.
His little dragon is screeching now, spitting fire, but he’s small enough that Noor can reach down and grasp him firmly by the throat, digging her thumb and forefinger into the sides of his jaw to control the direction of the flames. She fights off a peasant grabbing for one of the princes, and heaves both boys onto the back of the red dragon. The dragon flaps his mighty wings and breaks through the chapel roof, flying away with the princes clutching at the ridges down his back.
Vrais has managed to fight her way to the back of the chancel, and Noor can see she’s angling herself towards the door to the vestry. Noor has no real quarrel with the Order itself. Brightik is dead. So she slips down a hallway, slides down a set of stairs, slithers through a back room, and opens the vestry door from the other side. She pulls Vrais through, and the two of them slam the door closed together.
“Clever,” Vrais compliments her. But there’s really no time for niceties.
Noor helps Vrais strip out of her regalia and throw on the underlayers of the vestments. They take turns climbing out the window and dropping down onto the street outside. Noor is still holding firmly to the screaming little dragon she stole, and Vrais finally realizes the noise isn’t part of the background chaos. Her eyes ask the question louder than words could.
“I had a thought,” Noor defends herself. “Perhaps you could show me to the royal archives before we leave?”
Vrais is smarter than Brightik ever was. There’s only a split second of hesitation before she chuffs and turns them down a tight alley leading to the library. Beyond the thick wooden doors, the usual silence of books and scholars is shattered by the wailing of injured men, the shouting of those who are angry and afraid, the hoarse screaming of the ones who have simply gone a little mad.
The two women push deeper into the echoing cavern of tomes. When they reach a second set of doors, elaborately carved with gleaming metal fastenings, Vrais stands back with an elaborate bow, gesturing Noor ahead of her. It’s beautiful. A stained glass skylight filters sunlight into the circular shelving in a hundred different shades, and the books are all bound in leather. Vrais pulls down one of these books and shakes loose a slip of paper hidden in the binding. Then she pulls another book from a lower shelf, a small and innocuous volume, and returns to Noor’s side.
“Kallan’s book?” Noor asks. Hidden in plain sight?
“Or a very boring ledger regarding wheat harvests, if you don’t sing to it first.”
Noor grins. The little dragon she’s been carrying around has finally quieted, but when Noor releases her tight grip on his jaw, he has a jolt of renewed strength, roaring as best he can and breathing fire in long, white-hot streaks, trying to turn his head to get to Noor, but content enough to rage at the world in general. Vrais opens enough volumes that there are a thousand unbound pages to act as tinder. By the time the little dragon has spent his strength, this dark little room is bright with flames.
“There will be no ballads that tell of Brightik Mortganssen,” the Queen muses.
Noor feels the righteous flames licking through her veins and lighting up her heart.
“We will burn them all.”
If you like this story, you can go back and read the prequel for free on this site (The Songs They Will Sing). This story was also published in an anthology - check out Untold Stories: An Anthology for other great writers too!
