Veil of the Dragon (Prophecy of the Evarun) by Tom Barczak Read Free Book Online Page A

forward until the nostrils of Magus’ beast flared only an arm’s width away from him. Rearing its head, it retreated without command from its master. Slowly, inexorably, the steed fell backward, matching each forward step that Aaron took. The Remnants held motionless beside them, the black shield wall paling as the mist deepened.
     
    Chaelus pressed down the fear and shame gnawing within him. Alone, Al-Aaron had saved him once more. Chaelus tightened his sword grip and followed, focusing on the light of the boy’s blade as Al-Aaron clambered up the crumbling slope, the glow obscuring the enemy around. The silver child’s face of the Dragon disappeared within its aura as Magus pulled away. 
     
    Yet still he felt him near. It was like the mingled clamor of insects, all of them calling to him, threatening him, seducing him. A single whisper turned at once into thousands. A thousand whispers, a legion, at once turned into one.
     
    Behind him, the roar of the river broke as something stood against its wake. Chaelus looked back. The river and its bank stood empty. The mist had perished. The defeated Remnant was gone. So too were Magus and the shield wall through which they had only just passed.
     
    Chaelus spun back to Al-Aaron, who waited, leaning exhausted against the base of the cliff. A narrow crevasse broke across its surface. Within its depth, a steep stair, carved from the heart of the rock itself, climbed high towards the summit above them.
     
    Chaelus stopped. “They’ve vanished.”
     
    Al-Aaron inclined his head. “They’re no further than they just were.”
     
    “Then tell me, how does flesh and bone disappear?”
     
    “It doesn’t. And you don’t listen. The Dragon has only taken itself back to which it came. The seed of the Dragon revealed. You would do well to heed my warnings. I don’t give them lightly. I only hope you didn’t summon them back to us.”
     
    Weighting himself against the cliff, Al-Aaron ascended into the depths of the crevasse. 
     
    Chaelus returned Sundengal to her scabbard.
     
    The promise of blue sky offered itself between forest and bleached stone above. Broken stones littered the steep and narrow stair. The steps leveled only slightly as it neared its summit, wrapping around the ruined base of a small tower rising out of the cliff and hidden from sight below. The watch towers had long since gone to ruin. Wildflowers and tall grasses grew amidst its scattered stones and within the small clearing about it.
     
    To the south, the Northern March fell away in gentle rolling waves to the majestic gray peaks of the Albanjan Mountains. Beneath their northern end, where forested hills climbed to meet them, unexpectedly, the white spire of the House of Malius presented itself as a distant glimmer of reflected sunshine a hundred leagues away, a wayward beacon against the shadow that consumed it, and all that Chaelus had left behind.
     
    To slay the Dragon and win his kingdom back, he thought. But it was his father’s kingdom, wasn’t it, and it was Baelus’ now. It was a kingdom he never wanted. So why did he do this?
     
    Because of blood spilt on fallen snow. He did this because he had killed his father. Because, in the end, it was not a whisper in the dark but he himself who had brought ruin down upon his father’s House. Perhaps, in some way, it would be his atonement.
     
    Around the little clearing, the woods pressed in but hesitated to consume it. At a place where the forest thinned, a marker stone lay toppled. The words inscribed upon it told the name of this place. It was in the lost language of the Evarun, unspoken since before the time of the Expulsion. Few men could read it.
     
     
     
     
     
    Hallas Barren.
     
     
     
     
     
    “The Gate of the Fallen,” Chaelus translated as he walked nearer. His voice trailed off. Beneath the marker’s shadow Al-Aaron lay crumpled, hidden amidst the tall grasses.
     
     
     
    ***
     
     
     
    “Al-Mariam,” said the