The foul putrescence made him gag. He stumbled toward the inner door. His foot squashed something soft and oozing as he went. He didn’t look to see what it was. He opened the door and almost fell into the corridor, gasping, heedless if he was seen.
And he was seen. A single urgach, massive and sharp-clawed turned, five feet away from him. It grunted in disbelieving shock and opened its mouth to bellow an alarm—
And died. Darien straightened. His eyes receded back to blue. He lowered the arm he’d thrust forward at the urgach and took a deep breath. Power coursed through him, triumphant and exhilarating. He had never felt so strong. The urgach was gone; there was no sign it had ever even been there! He had obliterated it with one surge of his power.
He listened for the sound of footsteps. There were none. No alarm seemed to have been raised. It wouldn’t matter, Darien thought.
His fear had vanished. In its place was a rushing sensation of might. He had never known how strong he was: he had never been this strong. He was in his father’s fortress, the place of his own conception. The hearthstone, then, of his own red power.
He was a worthy son, an ally. Even an equal, perhaps. Bringing more than a Dwarvish dagger as a gift. He was bringing himself. In this place he could blast urgach to nothingness with a motion of his hand! How could his father not welcome him to his side in a time of war?
Darien closed his eyes, let his inner senses reach out, and found what he was looking for. Far above him there was a presence infinitely different from Darien’s awareness of urgach and svart alfar all through the fortress, a presence unlike any other. The aura of a god.
He found the stairway and began to climb. There was no fear in him now. There was power and a kind of joy. The sheath of the knife gleamed blue in his hand. The Circlet was dull and dead. His hand no longer went up to touch it, not since he’d killed the urgach.
He killed two more as he went up, exactly the same way, with the same completely effortless flexing of his hand, feeling the power course outward from his mind. He sensed how much more lay in reserve. Had he known about this, he thought, had he known how to tap into this power, he could have blasted the demon of the sacred grove into fragments all by himself. He wouldn’t have needed Lancelot or any other guardian his mother sent.
He didn’t even break stride at the thought of her. She was a long way off and had sent him away. Had sent him here. And here he was more than he had ever imagined he could be. He went up, tireless, climbing stairway after twisting stairway. He wanted to run, but he forced himself to go slowly, that he might come with dignity, bearing his gift, offering all he was. Even the green lights along the walls no longer seemed so cold or alien.
He was Darien dan Rakoth, returning home.
He knew exactly where he was going. As he climbed, the aura of his father’s power grew stronger with every stride. Then, at the turning of a stair, almost the last, Darien paused.
A rumbling tremor rolled northward along the earth, shaking the foundations of Starkadh. And a moment later there came a cry from above, a wordless snarl of balked desire, of soul-consuming rage. It was too great, too brutal a sound. It was worse than the laughter had been. Darien’s surging hope quailed before the hatred in that cry.
He stood still, gasping, fighting back the horror that rolled over him in waves. His power was still with him; he knew what had happened. The Dragon was dead. The fall of nothing else in Fionavar could have so shaken the earth. The trembling of the fortress walls went on for a long time.
Then it passed, and there was silence again, with a different texture to it. Darien stood rooted to the spot where he was, and a thought born of lonely hope bloomed in his mind: He will need me even more now! The Dragon is lost!