Prologue
A WHITE CASTLE ONCE STOOD in the forest, with spires that soared to the lower floors of heaven and dungeons that stretched ever downward, or so the legend went, to brush the very chimney stacks of hell. To the villagers who prospered in its shadow, the castle encompassed the entire expanse of earthly life. Its mausoleums housed the bones of ancient lords, its throne bore up their beloved queen, and its crib cradled their tiny, treasured princess.
But then, the world grew dark.
Slowly at first. With small things, things that scuttled and slithered. In the treetops, nocnica danced on their spider legs and looked for humans to strangle. In the rivers, rusalki circled unsuspecting swimmers, whispering in their ears before they dragged them under. In the castle grounds, three hundred nawia glided across the lawn and left the smell of frost and rotting flesh. And within the castle itself, psotniki stumped across the marble floors, chuckling softly as they plucked the eyes out of sleeping nobles.
And then, gliding over the treetops, came a Golden Dragon.
They said, afterward, that its wings blocked out the sun. Formed of gold, it was like nothing they had ever seen. Some said it was the most beautiful, the most heavenly of monsters. Its claws were glass. Its teeth were crystals. Its eyes were so dark that in them, they said, was held the ruin of worlds.
With sunlight glancing off wings of gold, the Dragon took the castle spire in its claws. It ripped. It tore. The villagers came out from under their doorways and shielded their eyes. They watched as gold and fire blazed on the threshold of heaven. They watched, realizing too late what they saw, as in that topmost chamber, the Dragon devoured the young queen and her daughter. Too late the knights drew their swords. Too late they charged up the spiraled stairs. Too late they paused in the dim stone hallways and heard, far above them, the echo of glass claws on stone as the Dragon launched itself from the white walls. It flew east across the forest. And there, in the Moving Mountains, it made its roost and awaited the onslaught of knights.
And they came.
Heartbroken and furious, the king gathered his knights. Banners flying and swords chiming, they galloped down the drawbridge and through the dark woods.
One by one, they were picked off among the twisted trees. Many survived, only to be lost among the unforgiving Mountains. And of those who remained—those who conquered the Mountains, who eked out the hidden trails, who scaled its peaks, who outwitted its monsters—those who were battle-hardened, or brave, or talented—those last, doomed souls were crushed in golden jaws.
Below, the trees grew thicker. The villagers mourned. In a bid for the vacant throne, the more ambitious nobles put on old-fashioned armor and rode out to face the dragon and prove their worth. Not a single one of them returned.
The kings of other lands arrived. Some brought gold and silver. Some wielded chipped blades and rode scarred warhorses. Some employed magicians and soothsayers and made offerings to the saints of dragon slayers and kings. And when those kings were dead the armies came. Led by drummers and trumpeters, black-coated soldiers rode in military formation, sabers rattling and rifles primed. In all, within ten years of the Golden Dragon’s attack, ten thousand warriors crossed the borders into the forest. They were professionals, they were aristocrats, they were the civilized and the elite and they were men and women already living legends of their own.
They were not enough.
Ten thousand souls went into that forest, and ten thousand souls were lost.
In the end, the cleverest and the bravest were the people who fled. The ones who took what they could carry and ran and never looked back. The ones who abandoned fortune and birth and everything familiar and left the kingdom to the Dragon.
Of course, some stayed behind, and the dark things found them. For in the wake of the Dragon, these things grew braver.
Evil wrapped itself around the little village. Evil walked the crumbling streets, evil lurked between stuccoed buildings. It looked down from the rafters with glowing eyes. It rattled its claws in the corners. It strangled the villagers in their beds. It dragged them to the depths of rivers. It snatched them up on quiet roads. It beckoned from shadowed eaves. Evil sang to them in the dark, candles burning, nights eternal.
In time, the forest darkened. Its borders closed. For a long time, there was no hope.
And then, from the darkness, rose a queen.
1
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,” BEGAN PROFESSOR Damian Bieleć, “we live among legends.”
He paused, bracing his hands on the sides of the lectern.
“For we have lived through the fall of Kamieńa. We have lived through the advent of the Golden Dragon. And in the midst of both these tragedies”—Damian Bieleć’s voice fell to a carefully crafted whisper—“we have seen—nay, we have borne witness to—the last of the Wolf-Lords.”
A thrill ran through the auditorium. Shining heads bent toward one another. Their owners ignored the tight collars digging into throats as they murmured their admiration for a brilliant speaker, their interest in a fascinating subject. The air rustled with low voices, and Damian Bieleć waited before proceeding.
In the back of the auditorium, leaning against the doorframe, Lukasz put his hands in his pockets.
Outside, it was June. Outside, children were laughing, parents were scolding, and carriages were clattering. The streets were filled with fire breathers and ice-cream vendors. Outside, the world was a riot of summer and sales, of bartering and bickering. Miasto was the greatest city in the world, and it was at its peak. But in here, in this moment, no one cared about the outside.
Because in here, in this ageless dim, legends were being told.
“For a thousand years, the Wolf-Lords did not leave the Moving Mountains,” Professor Bieleć went on. He inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring, as if he could actually smell the cold shale and hot smoke of that lost world. Then he said: “Until seventeen years ago.”
Another pause.
“Until the Golden Dragon.”
His listeners were on edge. Lukasz could feel it. He could also see it, betrayed in the glances cast over shoulders, in the subtle twitches of those elegant faces. It was half fear, half hope. Maybe they had even come for the same reason as Lukasz had: Not just to listen to fairy tales, not just to learn of the Wolf-Lords. But to see for themselves whether the gossip rags were true.
Whether there really was, somewhere in these hallowed halls, an Apofys dragon on the loose.
“For ten centuries,” Bieleć was saying, “the Wolf-Lords lived in isolation and in a state of barbarism that we can only imagine. They carved out niches among the shifting rocks and weathered the tides of those Mountains. They hunted dragons and made blood pacts with wolves.”
Somewhere near the front of the auditorium, a projector rattled to life. A map of Welona loomed, with the ocean to the north and Miasto—where they were now—marked by a star in the south. To the northeast, a black stain marked the kingdom of Kamieńa. And still farther east, beyond the forest, a line of crosshatching represented the vast, legendary Moving Mountains. A Dragon, rendered in golden ink, wrapped golden claws around forest and mountain.
There were sounds of awe from the audience.
“Because seventeen years ago, the Golden Dragon attacked the kingdom of Kamieńa,” recounted Professor Bieleć. “And shortly thereafter, the Wolf-Lords left the Moving Mountains. Were they pushed out by the dragon, which had claimed their ancestral home as its roost? Or were these dragon slayers as foolish as the king of Kamieńa, and were they, too, killed in its pursuit?”