Page 195 of Of Empires and Dust

Lyrin was right. Calen did seem different. Colder, harsher, more distant. He’d not spoken a word more than he’d had to before entering the city, and now he walked in silence, entirely focused on the western tower.

It seemed every time Arden laid eyes on his brother, the young man had changed and grown. He was barely recognisable from the boy of sixteen summers Arden had left in The Glade. That boy had been sweet and gentle, if a little headstrong. He’d looked to Arden for everything, never straying too far.

Arden remembered on his fifteenth summer, Calen had helped their mam make him an apple and blackberry tart, but Calen had mistaken salt for sugar. Calen had only been eleven at the time, and he’d stared up at Arden, expectation in his young eyes, a beaming smile spread across his face, the last of his baby teeth having been knocked out when he fell from a tree the week prior.

The image of Calen’s gap tooth smile caused Arden to laugh. He’d eaten three slices of that tart while Calen had watched and refused to take a slice for himself because the tart wasn’t for him. It was only when Freis had tasted a piece and her eyes had bulged that she’d asked Calen to help her with the washing and gestured for Arden to get rid of the tart’s remains.

Arden had vomited not fifty feet from the house, right into Tach Edwin’s roses. He’d not had the heart to tell Calen.

Calen was a man now, and that broad toothy smile was rarer than gold. He was a man weighed down by the things boys did not have to know. There came a point, Arden had realised, where all children discovered the darkness in people, where they saw what living things were willing to do to each other. That point was the death of innocence. He’d hoped to keep Calen ignorant for a little longer, to shield him, but the gods had other plans. He’d tried to do the same for Ella, but she’d always been too sharp, always noticed things more quickly than others. She’d understood the world long before Arden had hoped she would.

That sweet boy still existed somewhere in his brother, he was sure of it. But it was somewhere deep, somewhere in the darkness.

Even in ruins,the western hatchery tower still rose some two hundred feet, deep gouges raked all through the stone. After the centuries, the sand had stained the white walls a pale brown, scorch marks still visible where the lightning had struck. The top was shattered and broken, while the courtyard surrounding its base was a mix of rubble, sand, and bones.

Slabs of stone twice the size of Calen jutted from the ground, skeletons and armour peeking through the sand that cradled them.

A massive skull, five times as high as Calen was tall, rested near the tower’s base, a crack splitting the bone around the right eye. The body was nowhere in sight. Here and there enormous ribcages and a variety of enormous bones lay strewn about, discoloured by the many centuries in the sand.

A wave of sorrow flooded him, pushing from Valerys’s mind to his. The dragon circled overhead but saw the devastation through Calen’s eyes.

Calen took a few steps forward and brushed his boot across the sand, exposing a small piece of The Order’s sigil that had been inlaid in black stone. The centre of the sigil was no more. A crater, half-filled with sand, sat in its place.

Thump.

Calen’s vision blurred, and that same sound – the beating heart of Ilnaen – hammered in his mind.

The world shifted again, and Calen was staring down at the same sigil, but this time it gleamed with orange-red light, blood smeared across its polished surface. Calen lifted his gaze to see fires blazing around him as Uraks, humans, elves, and Jotnar hacked each other to pieces.

Everywhere he looked, steel sliced through flesh and blood sprayed. The roar of the flames and the clang of clashing steel dulled the screams and howls. Calen had seen battle, many times now, and he always thought it was chaos. But he’d been wrong.Thiswas chaos. There was no rhyme nor reason to the killing, no purpose, just slaughter.

Elves in golden armour butchered each other without prejudice while Uraks drove black steel through anything that moved. Even warriors in the white plate that Calen recognised as The Order Highguard carved each other apart. On the left side of the yard, two Jotnar fought back to back against a clutch of Battlemages with glowing red gemstones hanging around their necks.

A shriek rang out above as a bolt of lightning slammed into a dragon’s flank in a brilliant flash. The creature tumbled through the sky, one wing streaking flames, trying in vain to recover its flight. The air shivered with a scream, and a large dragon withdull purple scales slammed into the other and smashed it into the side of the tower.

Chunks of stone came loose, crashing into the ground around Calen, crushing bodies in bursts of gore and bone.

The larger dragon ripped the other away from the tower’s wall, talons sinking into its soft underbelly as jaws wrapped around its neck. The two dragons spiralled downwards, scales cracking and shattering, blood raining down over the fighting below.

A terrible cracking sound was followed by a roar, and the larger dragon ripped its foe’s head clean from its neck, leaving both parts to crash to the ground at the base of the tower. Even then, the larger dragon had taken too many wounds and was falling too fast. It twisted and splayed its wings, then smashed into the side of a tall white structure at the edge of the yard. The creature crushed three score beneath it. Sixty lives snuffed out in an instant.

Calen looked back towards the base of the tower, finding himself staring into the open red eye of the smaller dragon’s severed head. The left eye stared straight at Calen, lifeless and empty. The right eye was a gaping wound of blood and gore. The creature’s tongue lolled out through its jagged teeth, blood dripping from the end.

As he stared slack-jawed into the creature’s only remaining eye, the red iris flecked with gold, the world blinked.

The flames were gone. The fighting ceased. The screaming silenced. He was back in the sand-covered yard at the foot of the tower, staring into the empty sockets of the dragon skull.

“What did you see?” Haem stood to Calen’s left, his helmet gone, nothing but concern in his eyes. Before Ella had arrived at Aravell, Calen had told his brother of the visions. He’d not quite explained everything – mostly because he didn’t understand everything himself – but he’d told Haem of the things he’d seen.Told him of Vyldrar and of what he’d seen when he’d grasped Queen Uthrían’s arm. He’d even told him of how he’d relived that night in The Glade, when Kallinvar had granted Haem the Sigil.

“The same thing I’ve seen since the moment I set eyes on this place.” Calen tilted his head sideways, staring at the dragon skull, seeing the lifeless red eye, the pale pink scales, and the blood flowing over the stone. “I saw death. Pointless death.”

Calen crossed the yard, navigating the field of bones and rocks, his gaze combing the sand.

“Do you have any idea what it is we might be looking for?” Kallinvar asked, matching Calen step for step, his gaze searching the yard.

Calen shook his head. “All I know is what’s in Alvira’s letter. This is the place Alvira and Eluna first met. Whatever she hid, she hid it here.”

Kallinvar gave a short nod, then gestured to Ruon and Arlena, issuing commands. In Calen’s periphery, the knights spread across the yard, turning over everything they could find, their polished green plate stark against the brown sand.

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