PROLOGUE

Dragon Seed

An absence sat within him, a void where his heart should beat.

Kalum knelt before a dark pool, watching hissing tears splatter a gut-twisting vision—Sister Fana suffocating him with a moist rag. He tasted damnation wet against his forked tongue, listened to the dull roar of a titanic sandstorm.

A lie! This cannot be.

He wrenched his gaze away from the scene, glared up at the Great Name, the Daemonic Potentate of the First of the Hundred Hells. The Great Dragon sat bound to the earth by massive chains, studying him with yellow eyes. Its ebony scales glittered like melted glass in the sparse light.

“Feast, man-thing,” it said for what seemed like the hundredth time. “Swallow mine seed.”

“I will not be fooled,” Kalum cried in an alien voice, a voice that was most definitely not his own; it was much too animalistic, much too primeval to be human. “I will not feat upon this filth. I will not become a tool. I will not increase the stain on my soul.”

“Then burn, man-thing!” the creature roared. “Burn and wail for all eternity, for thou art dead.”

“No—!” Kalum faltered as the ground trembled beneath him.

He threw his arms out, caught himself before he tumbled headfirst into the dark pool. He cringed from its surface, his nostrils clogged with the reek of fecal mounds festooned with rotten fish. Once again, the vision replayed itself, and he watched the Sophic Nun murder him with nary a word or change in expression.

An influx of passion coursed through him. He clawed at the ground beside the crevice filled with the Great Name’s evil seed, blinked boiling tears from his eyes, gasped and spat.

How? How could she have done this to him?

He pounded away at the ground with clawed fists. The surface of the dark pool trembled. Crimson orbs blinked up at him from its depths.

“Drink,” the Great Dragon whispered. “Live. Seek revenge. Bring glory to the Wearer of Nightmares.”

Yesss!

Kalum gnashed his fanged teeth. This would not go unpunished. His pride and honor demanded retribution! What was the world compared to these things?

He cupped a handful of the dark fluid with his monstrous hands, slurped it into his maw. He gagged, even as his entire being strummed in need. Half-mad with grief and hunger, he scooped handful after handful into his mouth. But it was not enough. He needed more!

The Great Name’s laughter rolled across Çorak’s twisted landscape.

Kalum dunked his head into the pool, swallowed and swallowed. His head grew dizzy with the putrid sweetness, and he felt himself fall forward. And even as he did so, he kept sucking in more and more of the Great Name’s seed, until he felt bloated, until he could handle no more.

He peered out at eternal darkness, sensed himself drift downward, always downward. A nub of fear cut through him, but it was a distant thing, a flash of lightning upon some distant horizon.

Slowly, the sense of his alien body faded from his mind, and he floated as consciousness wrapped in a bubble of comfort. His rage and hurt seemed a distant thing. Why would he want to execute his will at all?

He never thought dying would be so peaceful. An eternity of drifting through darkness was heaven compared to the hectic circumstance of his life.

“Are you sure he’s dead?” asked a voice.

“Quite sure, your Excellency,” another voice replied. “I checked twice; there’s no pulse.”

Footsteps, drawing nearer. “Hmm. I’ve been dreaming of this moment for days.”

Irritation knifed Kalum. Why could he not be left in peace? Why wouldn’t they go away?

“Your Excellency?” the second man stammered, as if flabbergasted.

“Don’t be such a dunce, Nell. Surely, you’ve heard how this filthy savage treated me? He might wear the black-and-gold, but he’s not one of us. I don’t care what the Worship says; this brute was never more than a wild animal. We are all the better for his death.”

An impression of something splattering against cold skin.

Rage, kindling anew. . . .

“I curse you, Kalum Sane,” the first voice whispered. “May you know an eternity of torm—”

Kalum jolted into full consciousness, carried upon clouds of searing rage. A figure jerked back from his face—Bishop Mangesh. He collapsed onto his fat rump, gaped like a landlocked fish.

“Impossible,” Kalum heard the doctor stammer as he glared down at Bishop Mangesh’s chubby face. “You had no pulse. I-I checked twice.”

Panting, Kalum threw aside his rumpled bedsheets and loosed a bestial growl. Bishop Mangesh released a girlish shriek and scampered out of the chamber, screaming, “Daemon. Daemon.”

Kalum turned his gaze toward the room’s other occupant. Nell closed his mouth and backed out of the room, his hands raised in supplication. He slammed the door shut after himself, cutting Kalum’s view of the hallway.

A coughing fit knocked Kalum onto his back, and for a time, all he could do was struggle to breathe. He avoided thoughts of what had happened in Çorak, kept his mind focused upon his rage, clung to it like a drowning man might a piece of flotsam.

Fana betrayed him. Fana killed him.

Fana must pay. . . .

His eyes came to rest upon his open wardrobe, stopped on his black-and-gold uniform. Yes, he decided. This travesty could not go unanswered. He would make the Cunt Whore pay!