Raymond E. Feist
A Crown Imperilled
PROLOGUE
Awakenings
Mighty dragons raced through the skies.
Hurricane-force winds struck his face, yet the rider sat confidently astride the neck of his scaled ebony mount; his to command by will alone. Arcane arts kept him firmly in place, and exultation energized every fibre of his being as the Dragon Host rode out in search of conquest.
Never in the long history of the Valheru had the entire Dragon Host risen united.
The entire Host, save one. Dark emotions turned quickly to rage. The white-and-gold rider was absent. Ashen-Shugar: the only dissenter within the Host.
But the absence of the father-brother did not signify. The Valheru had answered his call, and Draken-Korin had taken his rightful place as leader of the Dragon Host.
He watched mad energies race through the skies above the dragon riders, flashing colours of blinding brilliance as energy vortexes and tears in the fabric of space and time exploded into spectrums invisible to mortal eyes, but perfectly clear to his Valheru vision.
His vision shifted; memories fading as others resurfaced. The cavern, once the Lord of the Tigers’ seat of power, was dark. That didn’t concern him since his vision was far sharper than any mortal’s, but he missed the warmth of torches and … Where were his servants?
He tried to lift his left arm and pain tore through his shoulder. He had not felt pain like this since …
Images cascaded through his mind as he relived the memories of ages past.
He felt his first breath and heard a contemptuous mother curse him as her servants carried him away. Elven slaves brought him newborn to a clearing in the warm, damp forest, and without any tenderness left him on top of a large rock. To live or die by his own strength.
He remembered extending his infant senses, a primitive assessment of danger and threat; he felt no sense of fear, only compelling need. His instincts emerged at need, drawing upon ancestral memories shared since the dawn of creation. The forest was deep, and he sensed predators on every side. The most dangerous, now receding, were of his own race.
Valheru.
A pack of golden jackals sniffed the air, seeking the source of the tempting hint of birthing blood, their heads up and their senses alert. They had left their den as the sun set in the west, to hunt.
The child felt them move closer, the scent of his birth summoning his death. He reached out and sent a blast of hate and anger at the troop.
The jackals stopped, and cringed. Then, ears flattened, they continue to skulk towards the architect of the mental assault, hunger outweighing their fear.
Another presence … nearby. He reached out and instantly recognized the massive predator. But this time instead of danger he discovered contentment there, a warm, nurturing feeling that felt alien, but also compelling. He reached out once more and formed a simple command.
The tigress leapt to her feet, ignoring the plaintive mewing of her cubs, and bounded down the hill towards the tiny thing that coerced her.
The jackals approached the exposed infant cautiously, knowing that it possessed dangerous abilities, yet driven by the need to feast. Then another scent arrived on the wind and they halted.
The massive tiger charged into the clearing next to the infant and roared a challenge.
The baby might be an unknown threat, but the tiger was all too familiar to the pack hunters, and to be avoided at all costs. Turning tail, the jackals ran, opting to survive and hunt elsewhere.
The tigress lowered her head with a snarl, but the thought emanating from the infant was clear:
A mortal child would have perished had it been seized and lifted in the tiger’s mouth, but he was not a mortal infant; he was Valheru, and his small body was far from delicate.
The great cat returned to her den and deposited the infant next to her own pair of cubs, barely three days old, and still mewing with their eyes closed. She lay down on her side to let them nurse, and watched as the man-thing reached out and gripped her fur. Somehow, it managed to pull itself to her teat where it began to nurse alongside her young.
His eyes opened and he struggled to breathe. ‘I’m dying,’ he whispered to no one.
He felt feverish and his entire body was in agony. He could no longer feel the separate pain of his wound, for he was consumed by a throbbing, burning ache. Every particle of him hovered at the brink of death, for only at the edge could the transformation be completed. He tried to move and couldn’t. Just opening his eyes was a trial. He let them close. Death lingered seconds away, beckoning him with promises of relief and rest.
Something else called to him now: the dreams. He knew the dreams contained madness, but they were vivid and compelling, filling him with a sense of triumph and power. And as much as he longed for relief and rest, the consciousness within the dream was growing in strength, singing of power and control, lust and conquest, blood and victory.
The man who had once been Braden of Shamata felt his will fading.
He remembered joining a band of mercenaries in the Vale of Dreams, and sailing across the Endless Sea to distant lands, where weapons smuggling was a hundred times more lucrative than at home. One last caravan and he’d have enough gold to retire. He’d return to the Vale as a man of means, find a talented, young apprentice weapon-smith and make him a partner. No one knew more about weapons running than a Vale mercenary! He would sell to both sides of the Vale, and run his goods all the way from the foothills of the Grey Towers in the north, to reach the dark elves and goblins, to the Confederacy in the south …
His ambitions faded as that old identity gave way to one that was more powerful, more commanding.
The mercenary’s faint memories seemed so petty: now he could remember what it felt like to command his dragon, to destroy his enemies, to mate with his own kind when the breeding frenzy seized him. Now he knew he was one of the paramount beings on this world.
He was Valheru! He had no choice. He turned away from death and embraced the dream.
Tomas awoke, his body bathed in perspiration, his heart pounding. He blinked in confusion for a moment, before recognizing his surroundings. The body lying next to him stirred, then his wife returned to her slumber. Rising slowly, he moved to the large window carved out of the trunk of the massive tree that held their quarters. The soft, ever-present glow of Elvandar entered the bedchamber as he drew aside the curtain and gazed upon the forest that had been his home for most of his long life.
The sheen of that glow made of his body a study in shadows and highlights. Muscles still tight beneath youthful skin marred only by a few battle scars, Tomas’s appearance had remained unchanged for more than a century. Even when unarmed he was among the most dangerous beings on this world, for his power was far greater than physical strength: it came from the dark energies that lived at the heart of a race vanished centuries ago. The Valheru.
A soft hand touched his back, familiar; affectionate. The Elf Queen spoke softly, ‘What is it, my love?’
Tomas’s blue eyes continued to stare into the glow of Elvandar, where most of his wife’s subjects lay asleep. Softly he replied, ‘It was a dream. Nothing more.’
She leaned against his back, her cheek resting on his shoulder. ‘You are troubled.’
