The Dark Lord's Handbook: Conquest Read online

Edwin had met Af a couple of times at meals, when everyone came together to eat mushrooms in whatever creative form had been dreamt up for the day. He was a slightly plump, cheerful fellow, who said little and laughed a lot. How he managed to get fat off mushrooms was a mystery. Edwin wondered if he was being held out on and that somewhere there may be a secret stock of food, perhaps meat, or anything with fat.

  “The funny, fat one?” asked Edwin. It seemed unlikely he could be of any help. Not that Edwin had any idea what help anyone could possibly offer him. His demons were his own.

  “Yes,” said Kezef. “The funny, fat one. He wasn’t always like that, you know. You’d be surprised.”

  “What about you? Can’t you help me?” Kezef could be infuriatingly calm, but at least Edwin knew him a little. It was hard enough to talk to anyone, and Kezef had earned some trust in the way he’d listened without condemning him. “In the main hall is the Book of the Dead. Should I read that?”

  “What do you know of death, besides how to bring it to people?”

  The question caught Edwin off guard. What was there to know about death except its result, the passing of life? The dead were dead. How they came to that point was many and varied and, in Edwin’s experience, often violent. It was the ultimate resort in resolving conflicts. It was final and unambiguous. “Death is death. What is there to know other than that?”

  “Do you believe in an afterlife?” asked Kezef.

  “Are you sure you’re not religious?”

  “We serve no gods here,” replied Kezef. “But …”

  Here we go, thought Edwin. He knew something was not quite right with this place. Everyone was too damn smug and content. They had to be part of some cult.

  “But there was a time when we did,” said Kezef. “Not now, though. I can see you don’t believe me. It’s true, once we served a god, long ago, but we turned from him. There’s not much we don’t know about death and all its forms. The Book of the Dead has whole chapters on inventive ways in which it can be brought, through the staples of plague and pestilence, war and famine, but also through accident, misfortune, the breaking of will, and suicide. Death comes in many ways and in many guises. You, Edwin, are clearly one of death’s great servants. You bring it with righteousness and conviction. You bring it for what you believe in, good and right. Zealotry, even. Conviction is, perhaps, the most pernicious of human qualities. When two men of conviction meet in disagreement, death is often in close attendance. The Book of the Dead has all this, and more—including one great secret few know.”

  “Yes?”

  While Kezef had been talking, he had kept his eyes firmly fixed on Edwin. With Edwin’s question, the gentle smile permanently fixed on Kezef’s face was lost. What was left was a countenance that made Edwin physically jerk backwards. The candles flickered and darkness crept into the corners of the room. The chill from outside seeped through the walls and Edwin clutched himself against the cold. Kezef now looked as old as the rock that surrounded them, and as hard.

  And then the smile was back. “In time, Edwin. Perhaps in time.”

  The light and warmth returned, but Edwin was still shaken. He had been right. Everything was not as it seemed. This was indeed a strange place. There was more to Kezef than a gentle old man with an infuriating, smug smile and wispy white hair. He was not sure of the depth of his knowledge, but he would find out. For now, Kezef could keep his secret. For now.

  Nuriel had been right. This place may well have what he sought. If this Book of the Dead was all it was said to be then it was a book he had to read. Death was his constant companion and he wanted to be rid of him. He wouldn’t know peace until he could keep the company of men without the overwhelming urge to end their lives when they committed some fault, however minor. It may also hold the secret of how he may defeat his nemesis. He thought his war with Morden was over, but maybe it wasn’t. Fate had brought him here to the place where he may learn all there was to know about death. If Morden could be killed, then the Book of the Dead may contain the means. He would wait and bide his time. He would be patient for once in his life and learn what these strange old men had to say. He would gain their trust, learn their secrets, and read their book. What happened next would depend on what he had learnt. Maybe he would kill them, maybe not. They may well be righteous and bring him the peace he sought. If they turned out to be servants of the Dark Lord, then they would be dealt with.

  “Now, shall we go and get some food?” suggested Kezef. “I think Hemah is doing a mushroom stroganoff.”

  Chapter 27 Birth

  There’s nothing quite as gratifying as a weapon of mass destruction.

  The Dark Lord’s Handbook

  The cavern hadn’t changed much since Morden was there last with his father. The air was warm and stank of bad eggs. Chunks of shattered rock were scattered around the eggs which, bar the odd chip, were otherwise intact. Morden eyed the roof suspiciously. The volcano had calmed from its eruption but still rumbled occasionally. It wouldn’t be good to get crushed by a roof collapse.

  Minor damage aside, the only other difference was that Lady Deathwing was with them. Her and the fifty or so human captives, who Lord Deathwing had said he needed as part of the hatching. When Morden probed him as to exactly why they were needed, Lord Deathwing had merely said the newborn dragons would need some immediate care and, there being so many, he needed the humans to fill the need. Morden thought it sounded a touch unpleasant. He had no idea what dragon births were like but he hoped they did not rival human births in how messy they were.

  Lady Deathwing was standing quietly next to her husband. Since Morden had bent her to his will, she had calmed down but remained resolutely human in her appearance. Her husband, on the other hand, had taken on his adamant skin while in human form. He was probably as nervous as Morden about being crushed. Morden thought it prudent and wished he had more than his robe to protect him. The dragon may have woken in him, but it was still sleepy most of the time and he still had not been able to assume a dragon form. A layer of dragon scales would have gone down well, given a rock could drop on him at any moment.

  Morden tried to tear himself away from contemplation of being crushed and back to the reason they were in the Cavern of Imminent Doom. It was incredible the roughly ovoid lumps of rock were dragon eggs. At the base, they were fused into the cavern floor. The outer surfaces were rough with streaks of colour—pale green, rusty copper, and glints of gold—and had crystalline growths on them. The ones towards the back of the cave were more heavily encrusted than the nearer ones. They looked so natural, it was hard to imagine in each was a black dragon waiting to be born. The only thing that gave them away as being something other than an odd formation, perhaps sprouted by the volcano itself, were the tops of each egg. Four fractures joined at the centre and made them resemble a rock-like flower with its bud closed. Morden supposed they could still be taken as a weird feature of a volcano but knowing, as he did, they were not, they were clearly egg-like to him.

  Lord Deathwing took Lady Deathwing’s hand and led her to the nearest egg. He brought her hand to the egg and let it rest there. All the while, he was whispering things to her Morden could not hear clearly. He had no idea how things were meant to proceed. His father had told him little other than for the egg to hatch, Lady Deathwing had to bathe it in her dragon fire. That would soften the rock to the point of almost being molten. The heat would warm the baby dragon and it would break out of its shell. Not that ‘baby’ was exactly the right word for what would emerge. Fully formed, it would not be helpless like a human child. All they would need to do to assume their full power was to grow.

  While Lord Deathwing looked after his wife, Morden marshalled the orcs and the captives into the cave. The orcs looked unconcerned, unlike the rag-clad humans, whose terror was clear. Most of that would be down to Morden and his aura. He had grown strong over the years to the point where, even without trying, he would terrify those around him. The orcs were from his personal guard an
d were used to it. If they were afraid, they hid it well. The humans were not so lucky. Even though they were all captive soldiers, used to the fear that came with battle, they were not used to being dragged into a volcano with a Dark Lord. They cowered and moved reluctantly. The orcs prodded them to one side of the cavern where there were no eggs and they were made to sit.

  Morden left them to it and went to join his father. Lady Deathwing was stroking the egg they were standing next to. It was about chest height to the three of them. His father had one arm around his wife and the other rested on the egg close to her hand.

  “Morden, feel this,” said his father.

  Morden stood to his father’s side and touched the egg. It felt, as it looked, like rock. Morden wondered why his father wanted him to touch the egg and then the sleepy dragon inside him opened an eye and he felt it. The egg was alive. The dragon within him could feel the dragon within the egg. And the dragon in the egg could feel him. He was startled. It was a strong mind. Not as strong as his own, or as strong as the Deathwings to his side, but strong nevertheless. It had been asleep and was now awake, and wanted out. Morden could feel its need and its hunger.

  “We must wake the others before they are birthed,” said Lord Deathwing. “Morden, will you take those on that side, while we wake these others?”

  Morden did as he was asked, moving to each egg in turn, laying his hand on each and, at first, feeling nothing, then the waking mind of the dragon within. He waited until the child was awake and eager before moving onto the next. By the time he was finished, he could sense the woken minds without the need to touch the eggs. There were so many. And the siblings could feel each other. It wasn’t specific thoughts, or direct communication, but more a sense that family was close.

  Morden joined his father and his wife back at the cave entrance. The captives were to one side, huddled on the ground, arms wrapped around their legs and heads bowed. Did they, too, sense what was happening here? When Morden felt the hunger of the young, he understood why his father had brought them. The dragonlings were hungry to be free and hungry to be fed. The firstborn amongst them had been dormant for centuries and were famished. Breastfeeding wasn’t going to cut it.

  Not that the unfortunate captives had anything to worry about if Lady Deathwing couldn’t hatch them, and she was showing no sign of doing so. Knowing his father as he did, Morden could see his father’s frustration levels rising. Whatever he was saying to try to get his wife to accept who, and what, she was, and what she must do, was not having the desired effect.

  “Father, a word.”

  Lord Deathwing left his wife, who remained trance-like, at one of the eggs and came to stand at his son’s side.

  “She thinks this is all a dream,” said Lord Deathwing. “None of this is real to her.”

  “And who can blame her?” said Morden. “She’s been dreaming for three years. This must be a nightmare. She may be bent to my will, but the dragon in her is confused. It thinks it is human.”

  “Try talking to her again?” suggested his father. “Let the dragon in you speak to her.”

  “That dragon is barely awake,” said Morden. “It too is confused. Even I don’t know what I am. How can I convince her she is something when I can’t even understand what I am? I don’t even know if I’m alive. I’m certainly not human.”

  Morden’s father looked shocked and Morden realised he had spoken out of turn. He was a Dark Lord. He was not meant to have such thoughts. He was beyond mortal concerns and existential angst. That was for weaker minds. He was stronger than that. It didn’t matter what he was. What mattered was he was a Dark Lord. He was the one who would issue forth and bring the world into a new age of dominion. He would set the orcs free, as he had promised, cast down the elite and the rich, and show the world they had nothing to fear anymore, except him.

  “You are a Deathwing, Morden. A Dark Lord. And my son. What else is there to know? Now please, go speak to my wife, get her to turn into a fucking dragon, and hatch these eggs before I get angry.”

  Morden did as he was told—not that he had to but because it was his father, whether he liked it or not, and that still counted for something. While his relationship to his father was clear, it was less so when it came to his father’s wife, Lady Deathwing. He certainly wasn’t going to call her mum—or any variant thereof. If she had a first name, he had no idea what it was. The same went for his father. With him, it was easy enough to call him father, or Lord Deathwing in the company of his generals, but all he had for Lady Deathwing was her title. It would have to do.

  Standing next to her, he didn’t know where to start. He rested his hand on the egg in front of them to feel the dragonling inside. It was awake and eager. It could feel them both and thought they were his parents. Morden felt the child in the egg thinking, ‘Mom. Dad. Get me the fuck out of here. I’m starving.’ Perhaps not so vulgar but definitely angry—Morden’s sense for the use of expletives when someone was angry came from years with Griselda. Not that it was going to happen now Griselda was gone, but Morden had on occasion wondered what their children would have been like. Probably feisty. A threat, almost certainly.

  The dragonlings in these eggs were not to know he wasn’t their father. The dragon in him could feel them, and they could feel the dragon. There was no sign Lady Deathwing felt the same connection.

  “Can you feel that?” asked Morden.

  Lady Deathwing looked at him sideways. “It’s alive. It thinks I am its mother.”

  “You are.”

  “There were these ducklings at Chancellor Penbury’s estate that thought a retriever was their mother. Their real mother had died and they were fostered on the dog. They accepted it, and the dog accepted them. It was cute. Ironic then that later the ducklings would be all grown up and shot for the chancellor’s table, and Mother would fetch them from the rushes. I wonder if she knew? I wonder how she felt. Poor dog.”

  “You are their mother. You are not human. You are a dragon.” Morden rested his hand on Lady Deathwing’s. The dragon inside him could now feel the dragonling in the egg, and the dragon that was Lady Deathwing. Its sleepy eyes were a bit more open with that feeling. Morden thought he felt something stir in Lady Deathwing.

  “I know,” said Lady Deathwing. “I think I have known for a while now. But I don’t want to be a dragon. I want to be human. I want to be left alone.”

  “Don’t you want to be a mother? To those poor little ducklings?”

  Morden could feel Lady Deathwing tense. The feelings must have transmitted into the egg and the dragonling was getting excited inside. Its mother was there. So close.

  “Yes,” said Lady Deathwing.

  The transformation was so quick Morden didn’t get out of the way fast enough and he was flung back, landing hard against the rock floor. Where Lady Deathwing had been standing a second ago, there was now a black dragon. Even with its wings folded at its side, it was huge. In all the times Morden had assumed his dragon-form, he had never been so large. The eggs didn’t seem so big now—Morden had wondered how anything could have birthed them, and his question was now answered. Lady Deathwing took a step backwards, away from the eggs, and raised her head to the ceiling. The crest that ran over the top of her head and down her back stood up as she let loose a roar that shook the cave, dislodging rock from the ceiling. Orcs, men, and Dark Lord dodged the falling rock, some more successfully than others. An orc guard got clipped and he hopped around clutching his foot. Two of the captives fared less well. One had his chest crushed, another his head smashed. The survivors hugged the wall.

  Lord Deathwing rushed to his son and dragged him to the nearest wall. All the while, Lady Deathwing roared and cast around the cave. She sniffed the eggs and, seemingly satisfied, snaked her head around searching. She caught sight of Lord Deathwing pulling Morden to his side. Morden managed to regain his composure as her head swung down on an impossibly long neck to hover a few feet above him. He was dwarfed by her size. If she were to open that
mouth and snap forward, he would be a mere morsel. Morden let his power flow before he became a dragon snack. Lady Deathwing’s head lowered to the ground.

  “My lord.”

  “My lady. You have children eager to be born.”

  “Thank you, my lord.” She raised her head and turned back to her ensconced young.

  “Typical,” said Lord Deathwing from behind his son.

  “What?”

  “The Dark Lord gets all the credit.”

  Lady Deathwing gave one more roar and then the fire came. It was liquid as it flowed from her and engulfed the eggs, like a storm-driven sea, swelling up and crashing down as she breathed. The heat was intense. The orcs and men pressed themselves as far away as they could, shielding their faces. Even his father took a step back. Lady Deathwing stood in her own fire, unharmed, breathing a constant stream of liquid flame. At first, the eggs seemed unaffected, but then a series of concussive cracks were accompanied by shards of rock and crystal exploding off the shells, which shattered against the sides of the cave. The orc guards raised their shields for protection and were unharmed, but their captives were not so lucky and a number dropped like sacks as they were struck. The rest fell to the floor of their own accord to avoid the missiles.

  Soon the eggs started to glow and visibly sag. They became putty-like and translucent as they glowed in the fire. Morden could see movement from within each and the eggs bulged, the dragonlings inside struggling to break free. It wasn’t long before the first claw broke the rock sack and a reptilian head broke through. The first scream of the newborn dragon was shrill and demanding. It pushed through the split in the egg, freeing itself, and spread its small wings. It cried once more and was joined by a second, and a third. Lady Deathwing warmed the eggs as her young broke free, spread their wings, and called to her. Sharp white teeth snapped in dragon maws. Some lashed out at their siblings in irritation.