Cantos sat at a conspicuous table in the center of a broad tavern. A dark young woman with eyes and hair like cinnamon rubbed his neck. Martin sat next to him, drowning in his ale. His leg was wrapped with tight leathers around a splint of flat wood.

  “Not right, not right.” He muttered and took another swig.

  Cantos eyes were closed, and his head lolled left as the woman worked her deft fingers along his spine. His voice came heavy, as from a dream, “What’s not right, Martin.”

  “He near killed you. Shoulda slit him when we had the chance. Should pitch more coin behind the bounty?”

  Cantos opened his eyes and gave Martin a measured gaze, letting his head move to the massage.

  “Marty, you’ll soon piss your last coin away.” The woman’s voice was thick with disdain.

  Cantos glanced up at her and clicked his tongue, “Silence, woman, the men are talking.” Cantos eyed Martin up and down, then corrected himself, “A man is talking.”

  The woman dug her thumb deep into a point along Cantos’ neck, and his face twitched violently and a spark of pain fired at the base of his skull. He slapped backwards, catching the woman’s wrist and pulled her around in front of him. “Mara!” He spoke her name like a curse.

  She didn’t try to fight him, instead twisting her body and sitting on his lap, “Oh but, Cantos, deadly, dreary, dastardly, Cantos. I only spoke what you…” Her voice trailed as she glimpsed a man in the corner of the room behind Cantos.

  The man’s irises were pools of gold split through with a skein of shining red, and his sclera was dark as night. Those eyes burned into Mara’s eyes and she began to shake trying to pull back.

  Cantos held her wrist and said, “Woman, what are you?”

  Mara shrieked, her hands contorting, eyes locked on the stranger. Her back pushed over the table behind her tossing food. Martin tried to reach to rescue his tankard, leaping from his chair and missed it by a fraction, slipping from his chair face first onto the ground.

  The room was filled with patrons, adventurers, and revelers in myriad conversations. The scent of stale beer and overcooked meats and sweat mixed with a slight smoke. Conversations stopped as everyone turned to look at Mara.

  “Fool girl, shut it.” Cantos’ voice was a razor blade.

  The man in the corner clenched his jaw and flared his nostrils in disgust. He smiled a sharp-toothed grin and glared.

  Cantos pulled the woman hard, but she slipped to her knees closing her eyes and shouting, “let me go! HELP! LET ME GO!” Her body was filled with agonizing heat, and even with her eyes closed she could see the man’s eyes. Her ears hummed with a roar as of a great blaze all around her.

  Cantos cursed and released her. Mara fell back and scrambled to her feet, tripped over Martin, rolled, and burst out of the tavern running as if chased by hordes of ravenous wolves. Cantos raised an eyebrow and stood, turning around to look at the man seated in the corner. Martin groaned and teetered to a seated position rubbing his leg.

  The tavern was deathly quiet as the remaining patrons turned to look toward the corner. The man brooded broad in the low light. Raven black hair fell around the edges of his exposed chin, which revealed a scarred deep copper complexion. Beneath his cloak he wore dark scale armor the color of pitch accented with crimson sigils ghosted on the surface. He carried no weapon.

  “Who in all the hells are you?” Cantos said.

  The man leaned back in his chair and smiled broader as he shrugged.

  Cantos’ eye twitched, and he palmed a dirk seemingly from nowhere. “Clearly don’t know whose tavern this is. I asked you a question, stranger.”

  The man’s voice was a deep threat, “I am for the song.” He pointed toward the stage where an aging bard fumbled with his fiddle case, hands unsteady. The dark man leaned forward with his elbows on the table which creaked under the shifting weight. He tented his gauntleted hands as he looked to the stage.

  Cantos turned his head, and the rest of the tavern followed. “Not another one. Get you gone, Bard.” Cantos signaled to a larger man near the tavern entrance and flicked his head toward the stranger. Then he nodded the barkeep toward the stage. The crowd groaned and Cantos shouted at them, “my rules! Don’t like it leave.”

  The tough at the entrance grabbed a billy club from behind the open door and moved toward the man in the corner while the barkeep walked toward the stage.

  “Have you no sense of song? Your meagre lives made meaningful for mere moments in the melody.” The stranger’s voice carried a promise of fire.

  The barkeep reached the stage and ushered the bard down, who had just taken his position with his fiddle. The bard’s cloak was patchwork green and muddy brown that hinted autumn. His violin was made of solid silver. The bow was of gilded craft, and the spider threads of hair in it were the color of copper. He paused, looking back and forth between the barkeep and the stranger before he spoke, “shall I?”

  The barkeep, a short, medium man with a twisted nose almost whistled, “Not now. Boss wants you gone.”

  The dark stranger growled, “Sing us a song, skald. Sing it well.”

  Martin gathered the tense confusion of the crowd as he looked back and forth between stage and stranger. The rest of the eyes followed, save a few stragglers who snuck out into the night, only inklings less madly than Mara, driven by the twisted wisdom of fear.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Cantos moved toward the stranger as he spoke, dagger in hand, “Another word, and we’ll have you gutted. I speak for the Brood in this place. This is my house. The Snake’s Gullet is my pretty little portion of our kingless kingdom.”

  The stranger cocked his head. His smile did not fade even as the billy-club wielder, who had all the feral presence and size of a rambling gorilla, approached.

  Martin looked back to the stage where the barkeep stood right next to the old bard, still holding his fiddle, frozen like a statue.

  “C’mon now, elder. Boss says you gots ta go.”

  The old bard shook his head slowly, not taking his eyes of the stranger. “The woman had the right of it, friend.”

  Martin and the crowd looked back to the stranger.

  Cantos took another step forward, “Ain’t no king of the Brood, but I’m king of this little castle, see. And a king’s got rights.” He raised the knife and pointed it at the stranger.

  The dark man threw back his hood and raised his hands. The billy club tough stepped back a half-step. “A song, a song, is all a stranger seeks, long bereft of home and longer still from hope.” The voice was softer now, almost pleading as the stranger lowered his eyes toward the floor and seemed to see something that was not there.

  Martin glimpsed at the stage.

  The bard’s voice was low, “When the song begins, take as many as you can and flee.”

  The barkeep’s face twisted in puzzlement as the bard drew his golden bow across the copper strings and a pure note pierced the heavy air.

  Cantos pointed again with his dagger and gave the tough a nod before looking back to the stage, and yelling, “Oi! I said get him outta here!”

  The stranger’s eyes shot up, drawn by the sound. He shook his hair like a lion shakes its mane. The billy club rose and fell against the stranger’s skull with a dull percussion, but the stranger did not even flinch as he stepped forward shoving aside the table in front of him, spilling ale and food on the floor. The tough stared at the club, then rose and tried to strike again.

  Martin pointed and shouted, “Cantos!”

  Cantos shouted at the bard, “Stop the bleedin’ song!” Cantos turned his head and a black gauntleted hand crushed over his open mouth and around the back of his jaw.

  The bard still played and looked at the barkeep pointedly, “Go now!”

  The tough with the club struck down again and again against the stranger’s head and neck and shoulders. Each blow rebounded as if from a stone wall. The stranger moved as if the lightest breeze had brushed him, and lifted Cantos off his feet by his neck and jaw.

  Cantos scrambled against the arm as his neck popped and strained. He stabbed wildly but his blade might as well have been a child’s toy against the stranger’s armour. Martin’s eyes were stuck in stupid fascination as he watched the stranger pull Cantos in close and breathed a reddish mist into his face. The notes of the song dancing through the room gave a searing strangeness to the events as the bard began to sing to the percussion sounds of a billy club dropped, stampeding feet and disjointed cries.

  High high above the winter’s storms below,

  A princess highly born, a daughter of the snow,

  Is held hard and fast by one who won’t let go,

  A mighty beast is he, and mightier a foe.

  Cantos coughed, his eyes filling with tears. His breathing lurched like a broken axle, and he wheezed as he dropped the dirk from his failing fingers. Martin tilted his head, mouth lolling open as he rocked back and forth.

  A knight of nightmare song, who haunts and hunts

  Devours all, hailed as lord of all dragon kind,

  His scales are black as pitch,

  His teeth like razor swords,

  His breath a fog of ice, that rimes the waking world.

  His wings span the skies and terror they unfurl.

  Destroyer is his name, and tumult mad beyond.

  The stranger smiled at the lyrics and snapped his teeth together. The bard sang on, his voice gravely, eyeing the doors as the last of the people departed.

  A dragon’s eyes, a dragon’s fires, a dragon’s frost its true,

  A lady’s cries, a lady’s sighs, a lady’s heart to woo.

  Come one and all, come none so small

  Come you and you and you,

  Lest all thy life shall pass thee by in fear and tremors too.

  Cantos’ eyes bulged, and he clawed at his throat through the red-haze, mouth dripping with spittle. The stranger hissed a thin stream of fire that ignited the mist in a brief burst of blazing blue the engulfed Cantos’ skull with a manic cackle. White-hot terror produced a terrible sobriety on Martin who shook his head like a man slapped and clambered away dragging his useless leg behind him.

  As the stranger dropped Cantos in a smouldering heap and stepped toward the stage, the bard sang on, his voice cracking, fingers trembling the notes into strange discordance.

  The lovely bird he guards is bright as emerald stars

  Her hair a crown of rays, streaking out from mars

  She sits a gilded cage, longing for the sound

  Of honored savior come, of man of true renown.

  He played a stray note on the fiddle, stepping back as the stranger approached, and then stopped playing, losing the skein. “A, a , ap, apologies.” He breathed deep.

  The stranger came nearer the stage, ignoring the burning man behind him and the emptiness of the room. He spoke with an almost benevolent regality, “Go on, skald. The song smacks of sweet memory. Tell us how the tale travels.” He gathered a nearby chair and straddled it, leaning his arms across the chair back and setting his head on his forearms, golden shattered eyes pondering the bard.

  The bard gathered his breath and placed the fiddle back in the crook of his arm. There was a long pause before the bard closed his eyes and drew the bow back across the strings. A measure’s entrance passed and the words like steady soldiers marched.

  So be ye bold young man, or coward we shall see,

  Come try thy hand at strength, climb to thy mastery.

  By blade, by might, by magic come,

  By singles, groups, by armies try

  thy chance for fortune, for great love, for glory oh my son,

  For all the world or dust and ash, join the deadly dance.

  The stranger did not shift his gaze as the last notes of the vocals hung in the air and the bard played an extra measure of the tune in long-drawn sweeping on the strings. The final notes co-mingled beautiful in the heavy air accompanied by the growing cadence of spreading flames as smoke curled its eager fingers across the roof.

  The bard gulped and opened his eyes. The stranger’s rapturous smile spread across his face as he spoke and stood, “Ludok naa, Skald.”

  The bard bowed once, keeping his eyes on the stranger.

  The stranger clapped a few times in punctuated bursts, “Ludok naa! Your sovereign thanks you.” The stranger’s eyes glazed of a sudden and he blinked around at the fire. He rolled the word in his mouth a few times, “Sovereign, sovereign, sov…” He paused, looking down as he touched his lips.

  The bard stepped back, edging toward the stage exit.

  “Name!” The stranger shouted, looking up at the bard and finishing in a rush, “what is your name, skald?”

  The bard stopped and spoke as he bowed again, “Nikolaus, and it is my pleasure to play for?”

  The stranger opened his mouth to speak, the flame growing in around him, then shut it. He had a look like a man lost for a moment before his visage hardened and he replied in a growl, “Realgar. Remember it.” And he waved his hand at the bard who fled through the exit, leaping through a gap in the growing fire.

  Realgar surveyed the smoke and fire and mused to himself, “A sovereign needs servants.” With a guttural song he reached for the flame around Cantos’ body and they warmed to his will.

  #

  Mara’s legs yelled with hot rage as she sought to force the whole world behind her with each step. At a league distant from the town she collapsed on the side of the road. Behind her, the husk of Bevin Town was blackened shadows against a titanic inferno which raised a beacon of light bright enough to light the world around her in flickering malevolent light. A towering pillar of smoke rose to shroud the high summer moon in cloth of black.