Dragon's Fire Read online

  Dragon’s Fire

  Book Three In The Crown Of Blood Series

  Gwynn White

  4xOverland Ltd

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Afterword

  Also by Gwynn White

  Published by 4xOverland LTD

  Worcestershire, England

  www.4xoverland.com

  Publishing enquiries: [email protected]

  First published in 2016

  This book is the intellectual property of the copyright owners. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, including duplication, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Copyright © 2015 Gwynn White

  All rights reserved.

  To my daughter Erin, my creative sounding-board who unblocks my mind, allowing inspiration to flow.

  Chapter 1

  “Why does my father always come on my birthday? Every year, always on my birthday.” Knife in hand, Talon looked up from the trout he gutted, first at his mom and then at Uncle Tao.

  Neither of them caught his eye.

  He pushed on, regardless of their silence. “Do you think he does it on purpose to ruin the day? Because if he does, it’s working.”

  He wiped his bloody hands on his worn leather trousers.

  Mom ruffled Talon’s shoulder-length hair. “I’ve told you at least seven times already, and judging by the sun, it’s only about midday.”

  A gray-and-black falcon feather, braided into Talon’s dark hair, brushed his face. He blew it away and glared at her.

  That won him a smile. But too quickly, she turned away and started packing up her fishing gear.

  Most times, Mom’s smile was enough to make him back down when he was being antsy. She was beautiful. Or at least he thought so. He wished he looked like her, but he didn’t. Apart from his blue eyes—definitely hers—he was the spitting image of his father, Lukan. Same dark hair, same angular face, same blunt jaw.

  Talon hated his looks.

  He pushed the thought aside, preferring to think about all the questions Mom wasn’t answering—and hadn’t answered since he’d been old enough to ask them.

  Like why Lukan only ever came to see him on his birthday. Or why the three of them lived alone in the forest and never saw other people.

  It wasn’t possible that the three of them and his father were the only people in the world. Talon spoke two languages, for crying out loud, one called Chenayan and the other Norin. That must surely mean there were other people out there.

  Wherever there was. He knew nothing of the world beyond the forest.

  But every time he asked the question, Mom or Uncle Tao brushed it aside as if it weren’t important.

  He shook his head in anger.

  It was important. In fact, it was the most important thing in his world right now. He stared out at the surrounding trees. The forest was huge, stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction on this mountain range. Just here alone there was space enough for thousands of people. So why did they keep him so tightly controlled in such a small part of it?

  He was tired of secrets. Today was his sixteenth birthday, and it was time Mom and Uncle Tao stopped treating him like a child.

  He spoke to her back. “Mom, that’s not the answer I’m looking for, and you know it.”

  Uncle Tao quit reeling in his fishing line. He glanced up at the rays filtering through the canopy of trees above the stream. The sunlight made the pea-sized diamond embedded next to his right eye sparkle. “Talon, it’s getting late. If you want soup tonight, finish gutting that fish so we can go.”

  Talon’s stomach rumbled at the prospect of Mom’s fish soup. “One fish isn’t going to feed three of us.” He frowned in defiance at the thought of his father sharing his birthday treat with them. “Four of us.”

  He tossed a handful of entrails into the river with more force than necessary. Dark water splashed up, wetting his already grimy trousers. He didn’t care.

  Apart from the annual visit, his father also visited their cottage once a month. At those times, Uncle Tao always took him out fishing or hunting, leaving before Lukan arrived and only returning home when he had gone. Never once had Mom or Uncle Tao spoken about these visits, but Talon knew his father came. He had just never bothered enlightening them.

  Uncle Tao turned away, also busying himself with their fishing rods.

  Talon refused to be ignored. “My sixteenth birthday is supposed to be special, but it’s shaping up to be as horrible as last year. And it’s all his fault.”

  Mom picked up Talon’s knapsack. She tossed it over to him. It landed on the mossy ground at Talon’s feet.

  The silence was beginning to irritate him.

  As much as he loved Uncle Tao, he figured his uncle to be the easier target today. He speared Uncle Tao with an icy glare, something he knew from a lifetime of experience always intimidated his uncle a little. “You also never answer my questions.”

  But for the first time ever, Uncle Tao seemed impervious to his subtle intimidation.

  “You know as well as I do that isn’t true. Most times, you roll your eyes and speedily find something to do on the other side of the forest when I start answering your questions.”

  Talon resisted the urge to smile. In truth, Uncle Tao never lost an opportunity to teach him things, even when he wasn’t in the mood for learning.

  And that made his uncle’s refusal to speak about Lukan even more jarring.

  Talon decided to get to the point of this discussion. “Why does my father hate me so much?”

  Mom froze.

  Uncle Tao sucked in a deep breath.

  Keeping his face clear of expression, Talon waited.

  Mom turned warily to face him. “You tell me, Talon. Why do you think your father hates you? I mean, he has never harmed you or been rude to you.”

  She had the a
udacity to hedge!

  Talon clenched his jaw. “I just know.”

  “Not good enough, cub,” Uncle Tao added. “You know better than to make bold statements without backing them up with facts.”

  The trouble was, thanks to his family’s reticence to speak, he didn’t have the facts. He stooped to pick up his knife.

  “Maybe it’s just a feeling I get.” He made a show of cutting a reed from the bank. He shoved the reed through the fish’s gills to create a handle to carry it with.

  “What do you know about hate anyway, Talon?” Uncle Tao asked, surprising him. “You live here with your mom, who adores you. There are no other children or people around to be mean to you, and I guess you know I’m pretty fond of you, too.”

  Still working with contrived effort at his handle, Talon half-turned and grinned at Uncle Tao. “You adore me most of all.”

  “In your dreams. Now answer my question, cub.”

  Talon whirled to face Uncle Tao. “I feel it when he looks at me. Even if he’s smiling. It’s a . . . a terrible feeling. It makes my insides crawl, like—” He paused, hating to remind Uncle Tao of the only time his uncle had ever smacked Talon as a punishment, but he had to get his point across. “Like that slug I put salt on when I was a boy. He makes me cringe when he watches me. I hate it when he comes.”

  Uncle Tao’s eyes fluttered closed, and his mouth dropped. “Well, he doesn’t come very often.”

  Mom walked over and gave Talon a one-armed hug. “Uncle Tao and I asked him to bring you your own fiddle. A fitting gift for a talented young man. It will be something you can take into life with you.”

  His own fiddle! He had never dared dream of that possibility. He played Mom’s fiddle, but it wasn’t the same as owning his own instrument. But his father had never brought him a gift before, so it wasn’t wise to get his hopes up; his smile died on his lips.

  Still, he couldn’t resist asking, “If he’s in such a giving mood, do you think he’ll bring medicine for Thunder?”

  Thunder was getting old, and he dreaded the day he’d wake up to find his pet dead.

  “There’s no medicine for old age, Talon,” Mom replied.

  Deep down, he knew that, but Thunder didn’t venture out of the cottage much these days, and Talon couldn’t be with him all the time. If he couldn’t find a way to make Thunder live forever, he wished there were something he could do to keep Thunder happy all the rest of his days. “Maybe another dog to keep Thunder company when I’m not around?”

  Mom’s eyes drilled into him, and then her shoulders sagged. “Don’t count on it.”

  “I’m not. But—”

  “Talon, whatever happens tonight, rise above the situation. Don’t let him rile you. Be bigger than him.”

  Defiance rose like a waking giant in Talon’s chest. He narrowed his eyes and jutted out his chin. “I shouldn’t have to.”

  He expected a sharp retort from Mom—they were very similar, and they often knocked heads.

  She gently ran her fingers down his cheek instead. “I promise you, tonight, after he goes, I will answer every question you have ever had. Until then, please, just be . . . nice.”

  Nice.

  Did his mother have any idea how huge that request was?

  But she looked at him with such pleading that he shrugged.

  “Okay. I guess I can manage ‘nice’ if it gets me some answers.”

  “Deal.”

  Chapter 2

  Lukan rocked back on his heels. Like Lynx and Tao, he should have been on his way to the cottage for dinner. Instead he was hiding out, watching his two favorite people in the world on an elaborate array of informas in a replica of Felix’s lair, built in a new secret bunker under the palace.

  He was going to be late.

  As usual.

  “So they’re telling Nicholas”—whom Lynx and Tao insisted on calling Talon, that vile Norin name—“about the curse tonight. How to make the anticipation of a much-dreaded meal worse? And if they think I’m going to gift a traitor who hates me with anything but a speedy death for his birthday, then they’re all painfully deluded.”

  There was no one in the vast bunker to hear him murmur. A series of cogs clacked, turning a generator that opened and closed carefully concealed air vents. The vents kept the bunker pleasantly cool. Even more importantly, each vent was fitted with a scrubber to clean the air—a vital design feature if the bunker was to serve as the life raft Lukan intended it to be.

  Lynx’s infernal son was a figurehead who would inspire Axel’s army to destroy Lukan. Only a fool would allow a threat like Nicholas to fester unchallenged.

  Lukan had never considered himself a fool.

  Today would be the last birthday dinner he would ever have to attend. But even with an elaborate plan in place to rid himself of the cursed boy, something troubled him. He had tried once before to solve the Nicholas problem but had failed.

  His fingers kneaded a scar on his cheek.

  Days after Nicholas had been born, Lukan had gone to the cottage with Felix to embed a lesser version of the guardsmen’s mind-controlling ice crystal, without the combat enhancements, into the traitor. Completion of that simple act would have prevented the need for Lukan’s elaborate bunker.

  It wasn’t to be.

  Tao and Lynx had fought like demons to prevent them embedding the baby.

  Felix had finally used the ice-crystal shocker in Tao’s neck to incapacitate him.

  Lynx had fought on, slashing open Lukan’s face and side with a hunting knife. The only way to stop her would have been to kill her.

  Lukan had not been willing to lose her, any more than he could risk her realizing Felix’s receiver, which so effectively controlled Tao, had no effect on the impotent ice crystal in her neck. He needed her to believe it worked if he was ever to control her.

  Lukan and Felix had backed down.

  Nicholas remained untagged.

  Worse, the window of opportunity to embed that kind of mind-controlling ice crystal had closed when the bastard had learned to walk. Any attempt to embed it after that milestone would have killed him.

  Even though years had passed since that terrible day, thinking about it infuriated Lukan. He kicked the desk housing the console with his boot. The image of Lynx, Tao, and Nicholas in the forest jumped. He waited for it to settle.

  “Given the wording of Dmitri’s foul prophecy,” he said to the image of Nicholas, “I can do nothing about you while Axel lives.”

  Lukan scowled up at a flag of the Chenayan Dragon mounted on a wall in the lair.

  “For over sixteen years, Axel has defied us both.”

  Axel’s army of mercenaries had effectively kept Lukan out of the best Trevenese ice crystal chambers.

  “Scraps! That’s what Axel lets me have,” he shouted at the Dragon, as if the icon were at fault. “Diggings he doesn’t want to defend.”

  As expected from mute gods, the flag made no reply. He turned away.

  Those scraps produced an inferior quality of devices in quantities unsuitable for injecting the entire empire. Lukan had had to curtail his dreams, ending up merely embedding the Chenayans who lived in the Heartland. He still burned with humiliation every time he recalled telling the High Council of this failing.

  Rage—and fear—bubbled under his skin.

  Thanks to Axel, the bulk of Lukan’s subjects remained untagged and therefore potentially disloyal.

  He glared at Nicholas. The traitor had gathered up his belongings. Nicholas glanced at the oak tree hiding the camera on the banks of the river in its bark.

  Lukan cringed at the intensity of his son’s blue eyes. Just like Lynx’s.

  “My subjects could easily rally to his side.” He slumped against the wall. “I don’t want to harm anyone. But if Axel won’t let me tag every subject in the empire to enforce loyalty, then what choice do I have but to eradicate the potential traitors?” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Dmitri, when the history books are written, I ho
pe for . . . understanding.”

  He didn’t expect an answer. In fact, he didn’t want one.

  And anyway, why was he whining? The only person who would write the unfolding history of the world would be he, Lukan Avanov, the man his father claimed was too weak to rule.

  Lukan pulled himself up tall. He was no one’s weakling.

  After the failure to tag Nicholas, he had ordered Felix and his scientists to refine the crude poison King Chad had used with such efficacy in Treven into a more selective substance that would only affect humans. Why should the animal kingdom suffer for Axel’s treachery?

  Felix had not failed him. He had presented Lukan with a gas he could blanket the planet with, all triggered from an ice crystal embedded in Lukan’s own flesh.

  They called it Dragon’s Fire.

  Felix had supervised the building of a fleet of unmanned airships filled with the noxious vapor. Secreted in locations around the world, the craft lurked, waiting for Lukan’s signal to fly. Within a month, the airships will have drifted across the world, unleashing their blistering death to the four winds. A new Burning.

  A sly grin claimed Lukan’s face.

  There would be no army left for Nicholas to inspire.

  No one at all, for that matter, save for a select group of survivors, programmed with ice crystal to be loyal. Thanks to Lukan’s magnanimity, after the Burning, his chosen few would have the entire planet to call their own. He supposed others with access to bolt holes would also survive—if they reached sanctuary in time.

  “But Axel and the Pathfinder Alliance will be finished.” A hand wave at Nicholas. “And then I can kill you.”

  To clean up any surviving Pathfinder Alliance soldiers, Lukan had built a series of similar bunkers outside Cian, where ten thousand jasper-wearing guardsmen would hide. In a month, when the all clear sounded, Lukan would unleash them on those unwanted survivors.

  A similar bunker existed in Zakar Province, where Count Vasily, the only person other than Felix and Lukan privy to the plan, would escort a thousand scientists and engineers, along with their families, to safety. The grossly obese Vasily and his equally grotesque wife would also find sanctuary until the Burning was done.