The Swords of Corium Read online

  Books by B. V. Larson

  HYBOREAN DRAGONS SERIES

  To Dream with the Dragons

  The Dragon-Child

  Of Shadows and Dragons

  The Swords of Corium

  The Sorcerer’s Bane

  The Dragon Wicked

  HAVEN SERIES

  Amber Magic

  Sky Magic

  Shadow Magic

  Dragon Magic

  Blood Magic

  OTHER BOOKS

  Swarm

  Extinction

  Mech

  Mech 2

  Shifting

  Velocity

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  The Swords of Corium

  (Hyborean Dragons #4)

  by

  B. V. Larson

  Copyright © 2011 by the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  From the Chronicles of the Black Sun:

  Seeking to rekindle the Sun over his lands, the newly-crowned King of Hyborea dared to dream with the Dragons. Therian found an interested—if not sympathetic—ally in Anduin the Black. He beseeched her for aid. The Dragon in turn charged King Therian with tasks to become her champion upon the Earth:

  “And then you must retrieve my children, as we agreed,” she said. She looked down upon King Therian’s companion, the barbarian rogue known as Gruum. “Also, young King, you must retrieve that which this jackal has stolen from you.”

  -1-

  Gruum and Therian returned to Corium with Nadja in the spring. It had been an arduous journey. Gruum reflected that an unfortunate number of people had died to get them back to the silver towers of Therian’s palace—some innocent and some not. They had lost the Innsmouth in Kem, the ship having been confiscated by unfriendly locals. Chased overland northward for a hundred leagues, they’d come to another pirate’s den named Port Thaup. There they were able to secure passage out onto the open sea. After a few deadly detours, they’d managed to reach the island kingdom of Hyborea. The final leg of the trip involved hiking across the ice shelf that now surrounded the island completely in the winter months. Arriving at last at the gates of Corium, Gruum was surprised to see little fanfare. None of the citizenry seemed glad to witness their grim King’s return.

  Gruum eyed the wretches that huddled inside the great walls of Corium as they passed through the portal. They were thin, even for Hyboreans. Their pale skins were ice-blue and they looked even colder than they usually did. Snow covered everything and everyone, as ubiquitous as sand coating a desert. Snow had to be shoveled over the walls and melted with unnatural fires every morning just so people could walk the streets unhindered.

  “What are you thinking, Gruum?” Nadja asked him. She sat upon their sole surviving pony. Her pale fingers were wrapped into the pony’s blond mane.

  Gruum startled. He led the pony by the bridle, and it puffed at him as he turned around to see the girl’s face. Gruum opened his mouth, but did not answer her immediately. He had been staring at the people as they passed through the lower districts, thinking how hopeless they looked. Not even the sight of their long lost King walking by lifted their dismal spirits. Therian walked ahead, talking to his guardsmen of events missed during the last year. The King appeared to be distracted and out of earshot, but Gruum knew better than to tell the girl his true thoughts.

  “I’m thinking of the fine, hot dinner we’ll have when we get to the palace,” he told Nadja, giving her a smile. He glanced down at her fingers, as he had a hundred times before on their long journey. The girl’s hands were pink and full of blood, despite the bitter cold. She never wore gloves, saying they irritated her. Gruum had never understood how she kept from freezing.

  “Hmph,” Nadja said, “Dinner? I’m not thinking of that at all. I’m thinking of the games father has told me of.”

  Gruum forced his smile to freeze on his face. He nodded encouragingly. Nadja was too young, in his opinion, to witness the blood sports the Hyboreans so reveled in. The games turned his stomach at times, especially when he felt sorry for those sentenced to participate for one minor infraction or another. He had to remind himself, not for the first time, that he was not Nadja’s father.

  Therian turned and glanced back at Gruum and the girl. His daughter responded by waggling her bare fingers at him. Then she shoved her hands back into the horse’s snow-crusted mane.

  Therian returned to his hushed conversation with the guardsmen. He did not acknowledge his daughter’s wave.

  -2-

  By nightfall they had reached the palace and Gruum headed down to the lowest levels of the south side. He paid two silver pieces and gratefully sank into his first hot bath in months. The tub itself was a natural one, a large, stone cavity filled with bubbling water. The cavity was almost big enough to swim within. Heated by infusions of sulfurous waters from deep beneath the earth, the baths of southern Corium were famed for their health-replenishing properties. Gruum didn’t know if they would heal his hurts, but the heat certainly felt good. It sank into his bones, which he believed had been permeated by frost all the way down to the marrow.

  Dozing in the pool, Gruum nodded off momentarily. He immediately began to dream.

  #

  Gruum met Yserth the Red Dragon. The Dragon was greater in size and even more terrifying of aspect than Anduin was, when she took her natural form. Gruum stood upon a flat, muddy strip of land that bubbled with heat. He suspected the heat came from a source not unlike that which warmed Corium’s baths.

  Looking up from the landscape, Gruum stared fixedly at the Dragon. Every red scale it wore was blackened by soot and many scales were large enough to serve a soldier as a kite shield. There were bony ridges around each of its huge orbits. The eyes within were yellow, with vertical slits for pupils. Gruum’s eyes met those of the Dragon, but he did not speak. The monster opened its mouth.

  “You dare return?” Yserth asked. “Where is my promised gift, tiny mote of meat and dust?”

  “I—I have none, lord Dragon,” Gruum managed to stammer out.

  Yserth’s great claws moved forward, causing a sound like the falling of boulders upon sand. One step, then a second. The Red Dragon now loomed over Gruum, blocking out the ruddy sun that baked this world.

  “How is it you slip in and out my realm so freely, when you are no sorcerer?” Yserth asked him.

  Gruum could not answer the huge creature, such was his fright.

  “It is not yet time for you to be here, traveler,” Yserth said. “In fact, I have grown weary of your visits. I will come to find you next time.”

  The Dragon dipped its great head with the jaws yawning wide. Hot breath swept over Gruum. There was no escape, no way out of the expanse of the mouth, nor of the hot, muddy flatlands.

  Gruum was swallowed alive.

  #

  Gruum awoke underwater. His eyes snapped open and bubbles streamed from his screaming mouth. Heat was everywhere; it had overcome him. He felt suffocated and sapped of strength. In his mind, he believed he really had been swallowed by the Red Dragon. To him, he endured his last seconds of life, waiting to drown in the hot acids of the monster’s vast belly.

  A hand plunged down suddenly, grabbing him by his dark locks. Gruum reached up and clutched at the hand that gripped his hair. He was hauled upward. He broke the surface and gasped.

  Choking and blinking, Gruum stared into the eyes of an old
Hyborean. He realized as his mind cleared that the face was a familiar one. It was Sir Tovus, the old knight he’d not seen for a year.

  Tovus released Gruum’s hair, wiped his hands on his blue livery and huffed. “You have to watch yourself in these bubbling pools, barbarian,” he said. “They have a seductive way about them for the exhausted man.”

  “I was dreaming,” Gruum said.

  “Indeed? What of?”

  Gruum shook his head. “An evil place.”

  Tovus nodded. “The pools are not a good spot for dreaming. You know these vents go down very deep into the earth, don’t you? Who knows what kind of foul creatures bathe in these same waters miles down from here?”

  Gruum climbed out of the pool weakly, rolling himself onto the flat stones that surrounded it. He gasped there, like a fish on a dry deck.

  Sir Tovus stood over him for a moment, then walked away without another word. Gruum did not take offense. Gruum knew the old knight had determined he would survive, and did not wish to embarrass him further by witnessing this moment of weakness. Tovus was only being polite, in the Hyborean way.

  Naked and cooling slowly, Gruum hugged the flagstones. In his mind’s eye, he still saw the Red Dragon’s mouth descending over him.

  -3-

  When Gruum had recovered and dressed, he went upstairs into the palace proper. There, he ate and drank to regain his strength. Was it his imagination, or did the servants eye him with new suspicions? Certainly, they took pains to serve his table without lingering. None spoke to him, not even a greeting.

  Disregarding these half-imagined slights, Gruum decided he must speak to Therian. He must tell him about his dreams of Yserth, as this was not the first time he’d met the Red Dragon while sleeping. He did not know what the dreams meant, nor if his master would be annoyed. But this last dream might have resulted in his death, so the secret needed to end.

  Marching down the cool, dimly lit halls of Corium, he came at last to the King’s high apartments. Therian dwelt in a suite apart from all the others with his daughter and her various… pets. Among other animals, Nadja had begged her father to allow her favorite pony to live in the suite with them. It was the very pony she had ridden across the ice shelf to Corium. In an odd gesture, which Gruum interpreted as spoiling the girl, Therian had allowed it.

  There were no guards posted at the King’s doors. Unlike most monarchs, Therian felt no need for them. In fact, if guards had been forced to stand watch through the long nights, Gruum thought they would have feared their King more than Therian feared an assassin.

  Gruum tapped at the heavy doors and thought to hear a stirring within. Could that be a hint of horse dung he caught with his nose? Gruum could only imagine the mess the servants were required to clean up each morn. They’d surely seen worse in the past, however, after one of the King’s… experiments.

  The door did not open, so Gruum tapped again. He put his ear to the door, but heard nothing. He shook his head in bewilderment. He should at least be able to hear the stamping of the horse on the tiles. So odd, that Therian would allow his daughter such a frivolity. Could he be a doting father blinded by his love for the girl? It seemed uncharacteristic.

  Finally, there came to his ear a tiny snick as the lock shifted. Gruum put his hand on the handle, and pushed. The door swung open silently.

  He took a single step inside. Seven flickering tapers lit the room. There were no windows, nor lanterns. He took a second step, peering toward the divan. He thought to see movement there.

  There was the King. He sat upon the divan, with one pale arm extended. A figure retreated from the spot beside Therian. It took Gruum a blinking moment to realize it was Nadja. She trotted off into the deepest shadows of the room, disappearing from sight.

  Gruum stepped forward and rubbed his fingers on his belt. He did not let them stray to the hilt of his saber, although that is where they yearned to go. He cleared his throat instead.

  “You have something to say, Gruum?” Therian asked sharply.

  Gruum looked around the room, but Nadja had vanished. It was dark and cold inside the apartments. The rich carpets were stained with unknown substances. Surely, all that liquid could not be the King’s blood…. Gruum thought it was better to pretend he’d noticed nothing odd about Nadja. In his experience, fathers were often overly-protective of their daughters. He thought instead of his original purpose in coming here.

  “I…” Gruum began, not sure how to start his tale of what had happened in the pools. “I went down to the baths, milord. The hot springs in Corium’s bedrock. Something odd happened to me there.”

  “Indeed?” Therian asked, seemingly disinterested. He dabbed at the exposed skin of his arm with a cloth. “Did you perhaps impregnate one of my staff?”

  “I have dreamed with the Dragons on my own, sire.”

  Therian suddenly gave Gruum his full attention. “I had no idea you thought to become a sorcerer in your own right.”

  “Oh no, milord!” Gruum protested.

  Therian laughed at his discomfiture, but his eyes were sharp and intense. “Tell me what she said.”

  “She?”

  “Did you not dream with my dark Lady, Anduin?”

  “No, sire. Each time that I’ve dreamt without you—without meaning to, I assure you—it has been with another. If there were any way I could avoid these dreams I would take a new path in a heartbeat.”

  Therian stared at him. “I can think of an easy way to end these errant dreams of yours.”

  Gruum swallowed. “In my dreams, I’ve met with—him.”

  Therian turned away, and appeared thoughtful. “As I heard the story, Sir Tovus pulled you out of a hot bath where you appeared to be drowning.”

  Gruum gaped like a fish.

  “Yes, yes, I’ve heard the report already,” Therian said in annoyance. “I’m not so disconnected from what happens in my own palace as you might believe.”

  “Of course not, milord.”

  Therian studied him, beginning to frown. “Heat. You have met with Yserth.”

  “Yes, milord,” Gruum said in a small voice. He gauged the King’s mood closely, but could not fathom it. Perhaps, by telling this tale he had forfeited his life, or perhaps Therian was only in the depths of thought.

  “Your candidness is refreshing as always, Gruum. Ever are you so intent on our goal you offer up your very soul for the taking. I’m impressed. Therefore, I will allow this act of apparent treachery to go by without ending your existence. Further, since you have been so forthcoming, I will be the same. I will confirm something for you about my own relationship with the Dragons, something which you have probably guessed by now.”

  “And what might that be, milord?” asked Gruum, relieved to hear the topic of his death slip out of the conversation.

  “I have lain with her—in our shared slumbers.”

  “You have done what?”

  “I am speaking of Anduin. Had you not suspected?”

  Gruum was dumbfounded. “No, milord. I saw you kiss her hand, but I…” he stopped talking and shook his head.

  “Is it such a shock? Anduin is lovely in her human form, is she not?”

  “Yes, lord—but she is not… human.”

  “Neither am I. At least, not entirely. But you make me curious. All this time, I have pursued a closeness with this creature. I would have thought my intentions and duties as Anduin’s Champion would have been clear.”

  “I just—I just never thought…” Gruum said, but he stopped himself. He wanted to say that he feared the Dragons. That he could no more have lain with one of them than he could have lain with a beast of the field. But he did not think such comments would be received well.

  “Mmmm,” Therian said, studying his face. “I would have thought this matter was clear. How do you think, after all, the Dragon-Child we met was originally conceived? It is Anduin’s offspring that walk our Earth with us, while she remains in her own small world.”

  “I understand.” />
  “No. I don’t believe you do. I will attempt to explain matters in terms more familiar. You are from the Steppes, are you not? Do they have lions on your plain?”

  “Yes lord, large ones with heavy manes.”

  “And do your people know much of these majestic creatures?” Therian asked, taking two steps closer. “Of their ways?”

  Gruum shrugged. “Our shamans tell us such lore in their stories.”

  “When a new male lion takes a pride of females, do you know what he does with the cubs of his defeated rival?”

  Gruum nodded slowly. “I see. You have been charged with slaying the young of Anduin’s previous… consort?”

  “Exactly.”

  Gruum suppressed a shudder. The Dragons were so different in their thoughts and deeds. They were almost unfathomable to a simple man of the Steppes. The more he learned of them and their ways, the more he wished he’d never dreamt with them in the first place.

  “May I take my leave now, milord?”

  “Yes, we will talk of these matters at a later time. Send in my servants, will you? I thirst.”

  “Of course, sire.”

  Gruum turned and walked to the doors again. Then he saw something—something which he would dream of later that night.

  He saw the horse. It was dead and lay upon its side. The carcass was on a carpet behind one leaf of the great doors, situated so that he had not seen it as he first entered. Its head was laid carefully upon a silk pillow. Its eyes were wide and staring. The tongue, gray-white in death, lolled out upon the pillow.

  Gruum eyed the horse for several seconds, but made no comment. Had Nadja supped upon her pet too deeply? He didn’t want to know.

  Gruum quietly closed the heavy doors behind him. He went to find the servants Therian had requested. When he found the maids, he did not tell them of the surprises that awaited—they would learn the details soon enough.