Song of Dragons: Chapter 1: Overture

I am Dennison Thorne and I am a tracker. My current prey was a man accused of a great number of crimes, all of which added up to him being a spy for the Empire of Mu. Apparently he’d been caught attempting to steal the Dragon’s Tear. Don’t let the name fool you. While the mural on the back wall of the great cathedral is beautiful, the Tear itself looks no different than any pebble you can find on the beach.

I’ve always suspected it was the world’s most successful scam. Honestly, if it was stolen, I don’t know how anyone would be able to tell the original from a rock someone pulled out of a stream. I’d been tracking Langson Hu for three months now and I had managed to cut him off from Mu at every turn. He’d attempted to board a ship to various destinations no less than four times and I’d caught up with him. Yet I still hadn’t caught the bastard. No one had ever evaded me so successfully.

I was getting closer now. These mountains have very high peaks like blades thrusting into the belly of the sky. The grass in the few meadows was jewel-bright green like in the spring. Mist hung thick above the valleys so they were a mystery to me. Sometimes things would fly up from the valleys and away into the sky, birds I'd never seen before or once something that could only be a griffin. I’d never seen one in flight before, only the miserable clipped-wing specimen that resided in the Royal Menagerie. I ducked behind a rock and hid until I couldn’t see them anymore lest I end up their next meal.

The griffins and the unusual birds were offered up as proof that Mu was an unnatural place; I didn’t buy it. The birds of my homeland and the birds to the south were very different so why not in the mountains? I got only glimpses of the other man in the distance but that was more than I’d gotten before.

The man was a fool if he thought he would find a pass in this part of the Barrier Mountains. On the other side of the mountains was a sheer drop off that stretched for many miles, impossible to scale. This formed the natural boundary between the kingdom of Ys and the Empire of Mu. A good thing, too, according to most of my countrymen; Mu was rumored to be ruled by either dragons or demons, depending upon who you asked. Ys being the home of the clergy of the ‘True God’ and of the Dragon Knights so it is only natural that we are in a perpetual state of war. I didn’t believe in either demons or dragons and always thought the rumors to be mere propaganda. They needed something to keep the populace sending their sons off to die to win a few more feet of farmland from the flood plain at the end of the Barrier Mountains.

I suspected my prey was making a desperate bid to reach Mu only because there was no other reason to run to these mountains. I hadn’t been certain at first that he was really a spy and had presumed him to be a simple unlucky thief. However, the simple fact that the man had evaded me so far did tend to point in that direction. I am the best damned hunter in Ys. I am good enough and rich enough I’d been plotting to run off across the sea to the tropics to spend the rest of my days being served fruit drinks in coconuts by beautiful natives in grass skirts.

But first I had to finish this job. My last job if all went well. Night fell and strange noises filled the air. Growls and snarls like huge beasts paced back and forth just outside the mouth of the small crevasse that I had wedged myself in to sleep. It took quite some time to sleep and when I did, I woke well before dawn. At first I thought it was the lack of sound that had pulled me awake, then I heard screaming. It could only be the fugitive. I had to bring back his head or something to prove I’d killed him. Griffins tended to carry their food back to the nest, which they guarded zealously, so that would be a problem. The moon was high and bright enough to turn the mountain to silver and shadow, allowing me to travel, if not quickly.

I silently cursed when I topped a rise and saw three griffins digging at a hole under a large rock. I couldn’t take on one griffin, much less three. I crept closer, wondering if I could manage to scare them off with some thrown rocks. I shook my head; it would take more than that. There was a dead bush down by my feet, the kind that would catch fire very easily, and I got an idea. I pulled out my fire stick. It was a cylinder about as long as my pinkie finger and half the width. The end unscrewed to reveal a long rod. A tiny ember sparked to life at the tip of the rod when I removed it from the cylinder. It had been quite expensive – magic always was – but it had proven itself invaluable many time. I lit the bush on fire.

The griffins fell silent the instant they smelled the smoke. I rushed down the rise at them, brandishing the bush, and they went into a panic. One came at me and I slapped the bush into its face and it reared back. Its feathers ignited, causing the beast to fall to the ground, ripping and tearing at itself. The griffin’s cries were piteous but at least it should keep everything else away for a while. The man I'd been tracking slowly came out from under the rock; it hadn't been big enough to fit his whole body in out of reach. Consequently, he had several wounds from the griffins. "Are you a tracker?" he demanded, voice rough from going so long without speaking to anyone. Most of the time I’d tracked him, we’d been in the countryside.

"No. I'm trying to get to Mu but I think the man I paid for a route lied." It wouldn't be the first time it had happened; every year, sheep herders had bones washing down into their pastures from the unfortunate. Why they thought they would find a better life in Mu, I don’t know. We introduced ourselves, both lying, and fell silent. I helped him down into a dry streambed where there was enough brush and dead wood gathered to make a fire. His wounds needed tending.

I saw how he kept his knife close and knew I’d likely be wounded or killed unless I could get him to drop his guard. I wasn't about to risk myself this close to my goal. He looked me over carefully. I knew what he was seeing, a tall man with a broad build. I had long scraggly dark blond hair that could use a wash from the many days on the road. I had quite a bit of growth on my cheeks but I was sure you could still tell I usually wore only a goatee and mustache. My eyes were bright blue and when I smiled, there was a dimple in my cheek. My nose is slightly hooked and I’m glad. Without that, I’d be pretty; where I grew up, pretty was not a good thing for a man to be. I looked too much like my mother.

The fugitive was smaller than me but certainly not a small man. His muscles were hard and lean under golden skin and had probably been very smooth before he’d had to run. His eyes were shining black with a high slant over thick cheekbones, reminding me of a cat. He had a very small tattoo on his left cheek. His hair was blue-black and stood in a slight crest thanks to the headband he wore to keep it out of his face. Slanted eyes were one of the two most common features in the different lands and thus unremarkable, unlike my own coloring. You won’t find blue eyed, pale skinned, blond haired people except in the far Northwest of Ys, just as you wouldn’t find red-haired, green-eyed people except in the small island kingdom of Centref Gwaelod to the south, near the tropic archipelago.

Now that we had each other’s measure, I worked on his wounds, hoping he’d relax enough I could slide a blade between his ribs. “I smell sulfur. Is there a hot spring near here?” He was in no condition to run off so I checked. Sure enough, there was a small stream of almost boiling water. We moved the camp, such as it was, the small distance and cleaned ourselves up. Great God Below, it felt so damned good to be clean again, even if it was with only a small cupful of water at a time. We were smiling and laughing with one another by the time we’d both washed soap out of our hair. Hell, I even shaved and he washed out his clothes, hanging them by our new fire to dry. I followed his lead. We might smell a bit like sulfur but it would help keep the mosquitoes away when I headed below the bug-line.

That’s really the only excuse I have for what happened. I was rechecking a gash in his shoulder and had to brush a few strands of his hair out of my way. Our eyes met. Maybe it was the loneliness of the mountains. Maybe it was because we both knew once of us would die in the morning and we were feeling our mortality. I suppose it doesn’t matter. Our lips met and the next thing I knew, we were all over each other. It was a mistake. Such a big fucking mistake. The next morning, I woke to find a cold spot beside me.

I cursed loudly and didn’t bother to gather my things before I took off after him. With his leg wound, he couldn’t get far. I was right. Less than one hundred feet away, I caught up with him. He stood at the very edge of the mountain, staring down. “Look there.” He pointed at the fertile fields far below. "There it is. Mu. We are so close, I can feel the magic in every breath!"

I rolled my eyes. “Bullshit. There is no more magic in Mu than in Ys.” I was oddly disappointed to find he was superstitious. I’d heard the Muish – or Mules as my oh, so clever countrymen called them – believed strange things.

“You are wrong, tracker. The Barrier formed for a reason. Believe it. And now you’re too late. I will reach Mu.” He threw something at me, a small glass ball. It shattered at my feet and released a thick gas that instantly made me woozy. I hoped it wasn’t poison. He held his arms out and for a moment I’d swear his shadow was strangely contorted. He flung himself off the cliff and I scrambled forward; I’d never get my reward if I couldn’t get to his body. My vision was so blurry I couldn’t see more than a flash of light. I passed it off as the sun hitting his knife. I heard a ripping sound, unsurprising given what sharp rocks do to tender human bodies.

I woke with a pounding headache. If it was poison, I guess the wind had carried off too much of it for me to breathe a fatal dose. About twenty feet down was a ledge covered with a smear of drying blood. There were… chunks. I didn’t hold much hope for finding an identifiable bit but I climbed down anyway. It was as low as I could go before the cliff became too sheer. I kicked one weird scrap of skin and it rolled flat. My stomach turned and I lost last night’s rations over the side; it was his face. I supposed it had been scraped off by one of the many wicked-sharp rocks on the way down. It took some work but I tamped down my disgust and got it back up. I cured it with smoke from a fire; it only needed to last till I made it to the capitol.

It was a quick trip, thank God. I thought about him at least once a day, especially before i fell asleep. I blamed it on carrying the proof he was dead. I knew that was a lie.