“A name,” Gunther said, the words a low crackle in the smoky air. “A location. The man who gave the order for Oakhaven. For this.”

  The village elder, a wiry man named Erric with soot in his beard, glanced at the two Council mages. The shield-mage, a woman named Hectra with hollow eyes from maintaining her barrier for hours, merely shook her head. The grizzled mage, Varek, hawked and spat into the mud.

  “Mercenaries don’t carry writs of command, girl,” Varek grumbled. “They carry steel and greed.”

  Sihar stepped forward, her bow still in her hand. “They talked. Before they died. They weren’t just paid in coin. They were promised lands. Northlands. Cleared of people.” She looked at the druid, an old woman whose hair was woven with river-reeds. “You hear things on the wind, don’t you? In the roots of the trees.”

  The druid, Niamh, stared at the body of a dead mercenary. Her fingers twitched. “The stones are angry. The river is sick with blood-iron.” She lifted her milky gaze to Gunther. “The command came from Stonekeep. Not a whisper. A shout. The man who sits there now is not the man who was born there.”

  Varek stiffened. “Garvin? Lord Garvin holds Stonekeep. A pompous ass, but his taxes were always fair.”

  “Was,” Niamh repeated. “The stone of his hall remembers a different boot-step. A heavier tread. A mind that tastes of cinder and spoiled wine.”

  Gunther felt the pieces click. A minor lord, turned. A puppet. A convenient knife. Stonekeep was three days’ hard ride west, nestled where the low mountains began. A nexus of trade roads. A perfect place to muster men, to send them north and east without drawing the direct gaze of the distant capital.

  “We’re going,” Gunther said, turning to Hectra and Varek. “Can you hold here?”

  Hectra’s voice was dry as old parchment. “The shield will hold. Or it will break. But we will be here.”

  Varek eyed Gunther’s sword, Sihar’s bow. “Two of you? Against a keep? You’re not messengers. You’re corpses in waiting.”

  “We’re not marching on the gates,” Sihar said, a ghost of her old, sharp smile touching her lips. “We’re hunting a commander. Cut off the head, the arms go limp.”

  Gunther was already moving towards the paddock where their tired horses were kept. “We need to be gone before any survivors report back. Now.”

  They rode through the night, pushing the horses along deer trails that ran parallel to the main western road. The forest was a black cavern, the only sounds the labored breath of their mounts, the creak of leather, and the distant, unsettling cry of a night-hawk. Gunther’s mind was a forge, hammering the plan into shape.

  Stonekeep. She’d seen it once, as a girl. A squat, formidable lump of grey granite built into the shoulder of a mountain, commanding the pass. The walls were thick, the gatehouse a brute. A direct assault was suicide. But Niamh’s words echoed: The man who sits there now is not the man who was born there. Usurpation. That meant division. Fear. Loyalties bought or broken.

  “We need to get inside,” she said, her voice cutting the predawn chill.

  Sihar nodded, scanning the treeline. “Mercenaries from the keep attacked Riverbend. Some may have run back. We find one. We take his colors, his story.”

  “And if they’ve sealed the keep?”

  “Then we find another way. A midden chute. A drainage culvert. Every stone pile has a crack.”

  By midday, they reached the foothills. They hobbled the horses in a dense thicket, covering them with brush. On foot, they climbed a rocky outcrop that gave a view of the valley below.

  Stonekeep dominated the narrow pass. Smoke rose from within its walls. The banners hanging from the gatehouse were wrong Lord Garvin’s sigil was a white stag on a green field. These were a sickly yellow, emblazoned with a crude, black serpent coiled around a sword.

  “Subtle,” Sihar muttered, nocking an arrow out of habit.

  The road to the keep’s main gate was busy. Carts laden with sacks and barrels trundled in. Small groups of armed men, not in uniform livery but in mismatched leathers and mail, patrolled the perimeter. They moved with the swagger of men who’d recently been paid.

  “They’re stocking for a siege. Or for feeding an army,” Gunther observed. “Look at the drivers. Scared.”

  They watched for an hour, marking patterns. A patrol of three men left the eastern postern gate every two hours, walking a circuit along the tree line at the base of the mountain. It was lazy, routine.

  “That’s our way in,” Sihar said.

  They slid down the back of the outcrop and melted into the forest, circling to intercept the patrol’s route. The air smelled of pine and damp earth. They found a spot where the path narrowed between two mossy boulders. Gunther drew her sword, the runes along the fuller glinting dully. Sihar perched on a low branch, arrow drawn.

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  They didn’t have to wait long. The crunch of boots, the low grumble of bored conversation.

  “…told me the next payout comes when the northern villages are ash. Easy coin.”

  “Easy? Did you see what those mages did to Bor’s crew at Riverbend? I heard it was lightning that cooked men inside their armor.”

  “Rumors. We’ve got the dragons on our side. What’s a few spark-throwers against that?”

  The three men rounded the bend. Gunther moved.

  She was a blur of worn leather and grey steel. Her first cut took the lead mercenary in the throat before the man could cry out. The second man turned, fumbling for his axe. Sihar’s arrow punched through his eye socket with a wet thock. The third man froze, his sword half-drawn, his face a mask of shock.

  Gunther had her blade at the man’s neck before he could blink. “Not a sound.”

  The man, young and pockmarked, let his sword fall. “Please. I just carry supplies.”

  “You carry the stain,” Gunther said, her voice icy. “The commander at Stonekeep. The one flying the serpent banner. Name.”

  “R-Rennick,” the man stammered. “Lord Rennick. He came with… with shadows. Killed Lord Garvin in his own hall. The guards who stayed loyal… they were fed to the thing in the dungeon.”

  “What thing?”

  “I don’t know! A beast. It… it hums. It makes your teeth ache. He keeps it down there.”

  Sihar dropped from the tree, silent as a cat. She stripped the cloak and tunic from the dead axeman. “Size is close enough. You.” She pointed at the prisoner. “The postern gate. Who’s on duty? What’s the word?”

  Under the threat of Gunther’s sword, the man spilled everything: the watch captain’s name (Borin), the current password (“Cinder-fall”), the rotation. The postern was used for the patrols and waste disposal. The guards hated the duty because of the smell from the midden heap below the chute.

  An hour later, two figures in scavenged, blood-smeared leathers approached the eastern postern gate of Stonekeep. One walked with a slight hunch, the other kept a hand near a stolen short sword. They stank of sweat and violence. Gunther had smeared dirt and soot on her face. Sihar had her hair stuffed under a filthy cap.

  The gate was a small iron-banded door set within the larger wall. A bored-looking guard with a crossbow leaned in the alcove above.

  “Halt,” a voice called from a slit in the door. “Name and word.”

  “Kellig and Tor,” Gunther growled, pitching her voice rougher. “Back from the tree-line circuit. Word is Cinder-fall.”

  A moment of silence. Bolts scraped back. The small door swung inward.

  The guard inside, a bald man with a boil on his neck, wrinkled his nose. “Hell’s breath, what died on you?”

  “You try crawling through gorse after Riverbend went sour,” Sihar muttered, shouldering past him.

  They were in a narrow, dimly lit passage that ran along the inner wall. The stench was profound rotten food, waste, and beneath it, a sharp, acrid tang like hot metal and ozone.

  “The new master’s got the alchemists working day and night,” the guard said, nodding down the passage. “Down the stairs, through the undercroft. Smells worse than the middens. Report to Borin in the guard room if you saw anything.”

  They grunted and moved off, following the passage. The deeper they went, the stronger the strange smell became. The walls changed from rough-hewn stone to older, blacker basalt blocks. These were the original foundations.

  Sounds echoed up from below: a rhythmic, metallic clang… clang… clang, and beneath it, a low, sub-audible vibration that set Gunther’s molars on edge. The thing in the dungeon.

  They passed an archway leading to what looked like a storage room. Barrels were stacked high. Gunther peeked in. Not wine or grain. Black, granular powder filled to the brim. One barrel was open. She dipped a finger, sniffed. Saltpeter. Charcoal. Sulfur.

  “Gods,” she breathed. “They’re making dragon-fire. Mountains of it.”

  Sihar’s eyes were wide. “Enough to burn a kingdom.”

  The clanging stopped. A new sound replaced it: a voice, sharp and commanding, laced with impatience. It came from a stairwell leading further down.

  “…insufficient yield! The Accord requires a hundredweight per beast before the moon turns! Double the furnaces! Burn the slackers if you must!”

  Gunther met Sihar’s eyes. She drew her runed sword. The hum in the air intensified, a pressure against the skin.

  They descended the stairs, the acrid stench becoming a physical burn in the throat. The stairwell opened onto a gallery overlooking a vast, natural cavern that had been incorporated into the keep’s deepest level.

  Below, a scene from a madman’s vision unfolded.

  Furnaces blazed, manned by shirtless, soot-blackened men who looked more like ghosts. They shoveled the black powder mixture into clay pots, which other workers sealed with wax. The cavern floor was a maze of tables where alchemists in stained robes distilled fluids over crystal flames. And in the center of it all, pulsing with a sickly inner light, was the source of the hum.

  It was an egg.

  But no egg of flesh and shell. This was a grotesque, crystalline ovoid the size of a wagon, glowing with a sullen, volcanic light. Veins of molten gold and crackling purple energy swam beneath its translucent surface. It sat on a stone pedestal carved with runes that made Gunther’s head ache to look at. It thrummed, and with every pulse, the air wavered, and the alchemists’ flames danced higher.

  Standing before it, hands clasped behind his back, was a man in robes of yellow and black. The prisoner had named the commander Rennick, but this figure was clearly the true power the one the prisoner called “the master.” He was tall, gaunt, with hair the color of ashes and eyes that reflected the egg’s malignant glow.

  “The dragon-fire is merely the kindling,” he was saying to a cowering underling. “The Primordial Egg is the spark. When the Great Ones return, they will wake the fire in the blood of their lesser kin. The dragons will not just burn villages. They will burn the world clean. And from the cinders, a new, pure order will rise. No more mediocre lives. No more drains on our glory.”

  Gunther’s grip tightened on her sword. This was it. The source of the local evil. Not just a puppet, but a true believer. A priest of annihilation.

  She looked at Sihar. Sihar already had an arrow drawn, aimed not at the robed figure, but at the nearest barrel of black powder twenty feet below them.

  “The egg,” Gunther mouthed.

  Sihar shook her head slightly. The egg was magic. It might be immune to fire. But the powder…

  The robed figure turned, as if sensing their gaze. His eyes, pits of reflected hell-light, found them in the shadows of the gallery.

  “Intruders.”

  The word was a whip-crack. Guards stationed at the cavern doors snapped to attention. Alchemists looked up.

  Gunther didn’t hesitate. “Now!”

  Sihar’s arrow flew. It struck the open barrel with a spark of steel on iron.

  The world turned white, then orange, then deafening.