Roar, page 22
It wasn't even in sight! Thorm wondered for a moment why that was and then realised that the creature – born to fly – was inside a hallway to narrow for it to unfurl its wings. It was slower on foot. But he could still hear the rapid-fire thudding of its feet on the stone floors as it gave chase. It wasn't giving up.
Fortunately he was faster. And as it gave chase, he easily gained distance on it. But then unexpectedly he found himself on its tail as it chased him around the square corridor. He'd actually caught up to it! He could see it ahead of him, turning the corner. Luckily the beast had no idea that he was behind it. It seemed his pads were a lot quieter on the stone floor than its taloned feet and it clearly wasn't very smart as dragons went. Still, he realised, it was possible that at any moment it would give up the chase and turn around. He had to work out what to do about that before that happened.
Unfortunately his first thought was the wrong one. He sent a ray of cutting light into its back thinking he could simply kill it. Stupid! He cursed himself even as he released the magic. The beast had scales and breathed fire. Of course it was fireproof! His ray simply bounced off its scales and created a rainbow right in the hallway.
Thorm didn't have time to curse his stupidity for long as the dragon abruptly stopped and turned to face him. He was too busy running away – back the way he'd come.
Things suddenly became even more confused as someone came running out of one of the side rooms, weapon in hand, and spotted him.
Thorm charged him even as the man raised his pistol, leaping just as he fired. He felt the rush of air by his face as the lead ball streaked by him, just before his front legs found the man's face and he knocked him over. Thorm didn’t bother stopping. He just kept on running knowing what was chasing him. Seconds later he heard a blast of fire followed by the man’s screams. He didn't look back.
On completing the circuit of hallways Thorm came upon the remains of the man; a blackened lump of char. He tried not to look too closely at him as he sprinted past; trying once again to catch up on the baby dragon’s tail.
Then things became even more confused. Just as Thorm turned another corner in the hallway he spotted the dragon ahead of him about to turn the far corner just as a half-dressed guard came bolting out of the centre room and shouted.
Everyone froze; Thorm was at one end of the corridor, the baby dragon was at the other and the guard stood in the middle, momentarily paralysed in shock and fear.
Time started up again and the man pulled out his pistol ready to shoot, but clearly unsure whether he should shoot the lion or the dragon first. Simultaneously the dragon tried to make a hurried turn back toward Thorm and the man, though its movements were impeded by the narrowness of the hallway. Thorm being the quickest of the three had managed to turn around and was almost around the corner when he heard the lead ball smash into the stone wall behind him. The sound was followed by the roar of the dragon’s fire and the brief scream of the half-dressed guard, and he knew another man had died. At this rate, he thought as he ran down the hallway yet again, the damned dragon would take care of all the guards for him.
Of course even as he thought that he was proven immediately wrong as he heard the sound of gunfire. More guards had obviously woken up, and some of them had had enough time to grab their weapons. Clearly his spell of sleeping wind hadn't reached all the rooms or it had worn off.
The dragon was by then overcome with rage and it let out a powerful roar. Apparently it didn't like being shot at. Even as Thorm raced around the loop again he could hear fire billowing forth followed by the screams of yet more guards. Then just as he turned the corner to see the dragon up ahead, the beast decided to exit the loop and instead charged into the room the guards had just come out of. A heartbeat later the hallway was clear.
That was his chance Thorm realised! And he took it, racing down the stretch of hallway to the door the dragon had gone through and slamming it firmly shut behind it. And just like that the battle was over!
It sounded like the baby dragon was still continuing its rampage inside the room. He could hear more shooting and screaming coming from behind the door, but he knew that the guards had no hope. They would soon be dead. The only question was whether after it was over the dragon would be smart enough to know it was locked in a room and that to get out it would have to break or burn down the door. Somehow he doubted it. It hadn't been clever enough to realise that the hallway formed a giant square and that by running around it as it had, it had allowed its faster adversary – Thorm – to catch up on it. Not once had it appeared to consider just stopping in its tracks, turning around and waiting for him to appear.
Thorm backed off a little way and waited to see if the dragon tried to get out. That and to see if there were any other guards wandering the corridors. But nothing happened and after a minute or two spent watching Thorm was satisfied that either there were no more guards still breathing, or else they were smart enough to know better than to approach a dragon. The dragon meanwhile apparently wasn't interested in escaping his new prison. Thorm padded slowly back to the vault.
On the way he found himself wondering about the beast. It was obviously a guard beast. But how had someone got it into the vault in the first place? How did they feed it? And how did they open the door without getting cremated? Naturally he had no answers. And the only person who might have them, was Lord Aston. Thorm didn't intend to ask him!
Inside the vault Thorm discovered things he hadn’t expected to find. Things that began with how large it was. It was huge! But then it had had a baby dragon living in it – it would have to be. And the walls were lined with metal shelves loaded down with the Inquisitors' thievings. Of course there were the usual things like gold and silver. In fact there were several chests full of bits and pieces and shelves piled high with more treasures. Most of it he guessed had been stolen from the prisoners. The treasure hunters would have been happy. There were books there too, and he celebrated finding them.
What he didn’t expect to find in the vault were all the records. An entire wall of neatly filed records. Accounts of the prisoners who had been held in the various dungeons around the city, the tortures that had been used on them, and what the victims had eventually confessed to. All of them were neatly written out, signed and then properly filed away. He had to wonder why.
It was a chilling discovery. Particularly the fact that every horror inflicted upon these people had been so meticulously written down. What sort of person did it take to not only torture someone but then to note it down in such a clinical fashion? And why had they even bothered? Thorm quickly stopped reading the records, sickened by them.
He did however, find nearly a dozen books of spells and a few private journals of those who had been captured by the inquisitors among the rest. Some of them were wizards. It wasn't the haul he'd dreamed of finding. He'd hoped for hundreds of books with details of thousands of different spells. That had probably just been wishful thinking. Besides, he told himself as he left the building with his loot floating in the air behind him, a dozen or so books was still a dozen more than he'd had before. It was a start.
Most important of all though, he decided, was that he'd done it! He'd broken into one of the most secure buildings in the city and robbed it. And that was something that only a few short weeks before he would never have even considered doing. Raiding a butcher's shop or a book store in the middle of the night was one thing. This was something else. And without the spell of sleeping wind, he probably wouldn't have been able to do it.
Maybe too he realised as he reached the entrance to the sewers and looked back, he'd also covered his tracks. Because from the flames he could suddenly see lifting high into the sky it seemed that the baby dragon, if that was what it was, had decided to start burning everything down after all. If things went well, he suspected the Office of the Inquisition would be looking for a new building shortly. Because this one was about to become a pile of burnt rubble. There would be nothing left. They might also be a little short on gold and silver. And that was a good thing.
Meanwhile he had a dozen or so books to read, and two or three score prisoners had been released. It had been a successful robbery and he had got away completely unscathed. It wasn't often that he could say that. But most of all the Royal Enforcer had been dealt a blow. He'd lost his office. That made Thorm smile – as best he could.
Chapter Twenty One
When the Oracle came to him again, Thorm was briefly annoyed. He didn't want to talk to her. And after the last visit he'd thought she was done with him.
“What do you want?” Thorm asked her dourly.
“To revisit our discussion.”
“There’s nothing left to say.” He was still adamant on that. More so than before. Because he was beginning to see that there was nothing he could do that would guarantee that innocent people wouldn't be harmed. He didn't want people's deaths on his conscience. Not those who were innocent anyway. Learning magic on his own was difficult but it was still something that he could do safely on his own. Bargaining with her, given that he knew what she would ask for in return, wasn't safe. And it had turned out that even stealing it had been dangerous as well.
Even though he'd escaped the Office of the Inquisition without injury, and almost without leaving a trail back to him, the Eternal King had obviously determined that it had been an attack. And he'd decided that someone had to pay for what had happened. The several dozen corpses still swinging from the burnt out ruins of the Office of the Inquisition were proof that his actions had had consequences. Proof that his actions had led to a loss of lives. Innocent lives.
Some of the bodies were those of soldiers, hung he guessed because they had fallen asleep on duty. Some were escaped prisoners that had since been recaptured. And some were neither. Simply people who as far as he could tell had been rounded up and hung on suspicion. But all were dead because of him. Killed not cleanly in battle, but murdered. And all so he could learn a few new spells. It had left a bitter taste in his mouth.
Now the Oracle wanted to try to convince him to work for her and her friends? To openly work against the Eternal King in some sort of war? Of course he had to say no. Carrying out whatever tasks they wanted him to do would not only go badly for him, but also for others.
And he couldn't prevent it. That was the one thing he had learned from his time outside the city. That there was no way to predict what might happen when other people were involved. No way of stopping the innocent being harmed. There was only one person he could rely on and that was himself. He would fight if and when he absolutely had to. He would fight because he had no choice. But even then he would do everything he could to make sure that no innocents would be caught up in whatever followed.
“You haven't heard my offer.”
“It doesn't matter,” he told her tiredly, idly wondering how he could be tired when he was dreaming. “You're fighting a thousand year old war against a thousand year old King who can never be defeated. And whatever you want me to do is going to end up getting people killed. Innocent people.”
It was one thing to kill soldiers. He could do that. He had. And when those soldiers were running packs of trolls to hunt down and kill people, their deaths didn't trouble him greatly. They were bad people. He was simply defending people. But innocents? Hung from walls simply because he had freed them? When it was purely because he wanted to learn a new spell? That was something else.
“People are dying every day Thorm. Innocent people. And not fighting doesn't keep them alive.”
“Maybe.” Thorm admitted, knowing she was probably right. But at least they weren't dying because of him. “I still don't want to be a part of killing any more of them.”
“Something has happened.” The Oracle's tone changed abruptly. She almost sounded concerned. “Something that weighs heavily upon you. I hear it in your thoughts. Tell me.”
“Nothing’s happened,” he replied. “I've been reading, that's all.”
It was true. But much of what he'd been reading had disturbed him greatly. The dozen or so spell books he'd acquired had been useful. He'd read them all and was practising new spells every day. In fact one of the spells he had found was a genuine war spell. Something he would never have expected to find. But the book he’d taken it from had come from one of those who’d been incarcerated. Whoever he had been was surely long since dead – or worse.
Just thinking of it brought back the memories of the bodies swinging from ropes. The guilt and the shame. All of the journals he had read had been written by people just like him. People who had been ordinary in every way save for one – they had magic. People who like him had remained hidden until eventually, they had been caught. That was the part that got to him. He knew these people. He understood them almost as well as he understood himself.
Some had been more skilled in their magic than him. Some less. Some had been older and wiser than him. Others had been younger and maybe a little wilder. They had all had exactly the same hopes and dreams he had. All had known the same fear. And all of them had eventually been caught. How else could their private journals be in the Office of the Inquisition? They had all suffered the fate that he had spent his entire life avoiding. They had been caught, tortured and either now worked for the Eternal King or had been executed.
But that wasn't what kept him up at night. What spoiled his sleep and shattered his calm was the possibility that some of them had been part of the group of prisoners he had freed who had since been recaptured and now decorated the ruins of the Office of the Inquisition. He had no way of knowing whether some of those dead bodies now strung up along the ruined walls of the Office of the Inquisition had been the authors of the journals he'd read. If his actions had resulted in their deaths. How was he supposed to live with that? Worse, were he ever to find human form again, how could he face their families?
Eventually he gave in and decided to tell the Oracle what had happened. Perhaps she would be able to provide some words of comfort.
“I robbed the Office of the Inquisition. In doing so it got burnt down. And I freed some more prisoners.”
“You did what?” The Oracle sounded shocked.
“I told you, I robbed the Office of the Inquisition. Three days ago. Released the prisoners that were being held there. I did it so I could steal some of the books of magic they were holding in their vault. But in going to the vault I accidentally let out the baby dragon that was guarding it and the building was burnt to the ground.”
“Clearly you got away safely. And yet you carry a weight in your heart. Why is that? Tell me.” She grew firm.
Strangely it seemed to work. He didn't want to tell her any more than the bare bones of what he’d done. Certainly he didn’t want to share his feelings of guilt. But she was as near as he was ever going to get to finding a priest to hear his confession. And he had to clear his conscience. Somehow. So he told her. Hesitantly at first but as he continued, growing more certain in his words.
When he was finished the Oracle remained silent. It felt odd, not being able to see or hear her but still knowing she was there. He guessed she was thinking on his confession. Was she determining a proper penance for him? He didn't know if oracles did that. But he would have welcomed one if she imposed it. He would have welcomed anything that eased his mind.
When she finally spoke though there was no talk of penance.
“The wizards whose journals you read were not the first to be caught by the Eternal King's minions or to die in his dungeons. They will not be the last either. And despite your fear, you are possibly the only one of your kind who has a hope of escaping that fate.”
“I know. I'm good at hiding.” And that he kept telling himself, was not something to be ashamed of. Yet he did feel shame when he said it. He knew he should be doing something. Even if he didn't want to get involved in this war of hers, he should be doing something for those like him. They needed help.
“But you are beginning to understand that hiding is not enough. The guilt at leaving your fellow wizards to their fate gnaws at you. You want to help. But you believe that there is nothing you can do. That you are too small. And that whoever you try to help may well be killed.”
“Unfortunately while you may be right, there is little choice left for you. The wizards are dying. All of them. As are the fell witches and warlocks. The shaman, dreamers and apothecaries. As is everyone else who has even a trace of magic.”
“I know. The King is catching them and killing them if they don't bow to him.” That much everyone knew.
“No.” The Oracle contradicted him. “He is sacrificing them.”
“Sacrificing?” Thorm didn't understand that. But he didn't like the sound of it.
“A very long time ago a prideful and ambitious man made a deal with the lamaia. He wanted to be king. And he wanted to live forever. And he had something unique to offer. You see, he was an alchemist. Perhaps the last remnant of the ancients who walked the world. Or someone who came after but found their teachings. Some say he might have been of Hyperborea.”
