Chapter 3: The Red Citadel

The Red Citadel had not been built by human hands. To any who looked upon it, the monumental scale of its edifice, the colossal stone blocks of its foundation, the sheer imposing scale of it, the high archways of every hallway within, all those things made it eminently clear that this was something older and greater than humankind. And indeed, it was. It had been built by giants, before the destruction of the First Men, when the gods still walked the face of the Earth.

The castle stood upon the bank of the river Garthanagil, and stood watch on all the traffic coming to and from the city of Garth, which stood just on the near side of the horizon, half a day’s journey by barge. From the air, it had the appearance of something like an egg, one end blunt and the other end extended, though the whole thing was lopsided where the castle abutted on the river. The main part of the castle was in the three courses of walls.

The first and outermost was merely an earthen rampart, high and steep enough that few men would dare to climb it, and so massive that not even the mightiest siege engine could hope to break it. The rampart sat directly against the river, such that there was not even a beach, and elsewhere was protected by the ditch which had been emptied to create it, which was itself also flooded by river-water to form a moat. In between the rampart and the second wall, near to the river on the side facing Garth, was the first ward. Once, it had been another part of the Red Citadel’s defenses, but whatever the giants had built there had long since vanished, replaced by a sort of makeshift village. Piles of small wooden structures stood in the outer ward, storehouses and servants’ quarters and stables and so on. Lindír was almost never allowed to set foot there, out of fear that he might be able to escape through only one layer of defenses. His most common impression of that place was from afar and at a great height, looking down on it from atop one of the inner walls.

The second and innermost walls were part of a single defensive unit, and so for most of their radius had nothing between them but the waters of the second moat. The concept, supposedly, was that any person standing atop the third wall would be able to both fire over the second, as well as at any person standing upon the battlements of the second, and in so doing hold the Red Citadel even if two of the three courses had been taken. Why the second wall, standing some twenty arms in height, was not sufficient, Lindír had no idea. There was one place where, due to a quirk of the terrain, the gap between the second and third walls was forced to widen into a small courtyard. This was the second ward. Here, the human inheritors of the Red Citadel had once again set about making additions, the black stone chapel, a secondary armory, and a few other minor structures.

The innermost wall was where the construction reached its greatest extent. It stood taller than fifteen men on each other’s shoulders, stones larger than Lindír himself fitting together purely by cleverness, without mortar. Huge towers jutted from the wall at regular intervals, each one seven huge floors in height and bristling with arrow slits and machicolations. So broad was the innermost wall that it needed not even be solid to provide a good defense; many of the structures of the greatest and innermost ward were built into the inside of the wall, and connected by corridors within it.

The inner ward was dominated by the castle keep, a cyclopean structure that boggled the mind to look upon, a massive stone cube set into the inner wall. There also lay the most important structures, the main armories, the treasury, the quarters of the King and Queen and their finest knights, the special storerooms held in reserve in case of siege, though no human force had ever taken the Red Citadel. And there, though hidden beneath a mound of earth, lay Lindír’s cell. 

There was sense to it. The third ward would be the last to fall, in the event of a truly monumental siege, and so held that which was to be the most securely protected. The persons of the royal family, for instance, and the things necessary for actually fighting. Lindír did not need to be protected. But the walls worked just as well to keep him in as to keep him out. So his home was placed in the absolute center of the Red Citadel, in order to keep the rest of the world safe from him.

And they would need to be kept safe, for Lindír continued to grow with each passing year. He far surpassed the size of the largest bear that had ever been seen, growing to become larger than an ox, and tall enough to have to look down at humans when he stood upright. His scales changed hue as he neared maturity, the scarlet color fading and darkening until they were very nearly black, at least on his back. 

The scales thickened and developed as well, forming layers of bony scutes, rougher than tree bark and harder than steel. Even on the belly, where his scales were softer and smaller, the plates formed a texture like smooth stone, hard and invulnerable. Except for one place. The patch of scaleless skin over Lindír’s heart grew with the rest of him. It was larger than a man’s head, and formed an odd spiral pattern, with the scales around its edge becoming oddly truncated and malformed. Sometimes they would begin to bite into the soft skin, forcing Lindír to bend his sinuous neck to his chest and bite them off before they caused an infection.

Lindír would sometimes gaze into the still waters of the castle moat and marvel at his own face. It was a sharp, beaklike face, with yellow eyes and dozens of teeth. With each passing year, the crown of horns upon his head grew longer and larger, hardening from mere nubs into a proper array of spikes.

He would often compare himself to the Red Citadel’s many cats. His hands were not like theirs, though his feet had a slightly similar shape. Nor did the castle cats have a long, slender tail, longer than the entire rest of their bodies put together, or a neck like a swan’s. But he could creep as they did with the soft pads of their feet, and bring himself low to the ground for stalking, or raise his chest high and show off the underside of his jaw when he was feeling imperious. Once, he even saw one sleeping much the way that he did, curled up into a disk. 

When he saw the way that cats hunted, lunging across his path to bite down upon a single passing rat, the fancy came upon him to attempt the same. Later, alone in his cell, he stood at one corner, crouched down, and fixed his gaze upon the far corner of the cell. Then he leapt. And when the leap proved to be disastrous, sending him sprawling onto his face, he leapt again. Then again. And yet again. Eventually, some instinct caught hold of him, and he opened his wings as he leapt. 

His wings had gone neglected all his life, though the huge keel muscles in his chest had kept pace with them regardless. But for a second or so in mid-leap, they were able to catch the air, and hold him aloft, stabilizing him at the same time. He soared so far that he very nearly struck the far wall, and this time his feet moved to catch him at the far end. It was by this technique that, for the first time, Lindír was able to escape from the supervision of his escort.

He was fourteen at the time. The plan came to him on a whim, and was executed the same day as it was conceived. As the knights led him back to his cell from the chapel, it was necessary for them to cross the drawbridge which covered the secondary inner moat. This time, he stopped midway across.

The knights were irritated, but made no effort to force him across. So he turned, staring at a point some distance away in the water, and crouched low to the ground. After a few seconds, he leapt. The knights had relaxed their grip on the chains which were meant to bind him, and so were caught off-guard by the sudden movement. Three knights, having unusually strong grips, were pulled fully off of the drawbridge and fell into the moat. The rest had the chains torn from their hands.

Lindír landed in the water some distance away, and almost immediately began to drown. Weighed down by iron chains and never having entered a body of water, Lindír thrashed and writhed about, searching for purchase. For several seconds, as water spilled down his throat, he wondered if he had just accidentally committed suicide. A suitably tragic way out, he supposed.

Once again his wings came in handy. This time, he spread them to their fullest extent, such that from wingtip to wingtip they nearly bridged the entire breadth of the moat. As with a man who clings to a fallen log, the wings provided stability, and saved Lindír from sinking into the water for but a few short seconds. In that window of time, he grew calm, and instinct took hold. He paddled against the water with all four limbs and began to move forward. His tail, being incredibly long and flexible, proved an even greater assistant in swimming.

While the knights ran off in a panic to inform the King of what had happened, Lindír took a full lap of the moat. Finding no hole or other breach, he returned to the drawbridge on the other side, and found the knights all gone. Lindír had no interest in seeking escape, not the least because there were many more knights guarding the first ward. Instead, he padded up the drawbridge and turned to the left, entering the warren of narrow passageways within the innermost wall.

The chains, still wrapped around him and secured with great iron rings, rattled and rang across the flagstones as Lindír explored the feeling of being unguarded. Once more, it felt as though the castle were entirely empty. Any who crossed his path soon fled, realizing that the dragon had been set free, fearing that he might use his freedom to consume them alive or burn them to cinders or any of the other things which dragons were wont to do. Lindír did not mind this. Being able to move as he wished, without the opinion of his knightly escort to be concerned with, was a reward in and of itself.

Lindír ate the contents of half-finished cooking pots in secondary kitchens, scratched himself against the sturdy roof supports of great storerooms, and for the first time laid eyes upon a human’s bedchamber. Eventually, though, something else caught his attention, or more specifically, his ear.

Most of the conversation he had heard in the castle was idle chit-chat, or else the curt instructions passing down from master to servant. Suddenly, though, he began to hear speech of a different kind. The language was formal and sophisticated, and it used words which Lindír had never been taught. The voice, the deep and rough tones of an older man, echoed through the stone hallways for some distance.

“The three primes can be arranged into a hierarchy, from most material to least. Salt, being the prime of the body, is the most base, having characteristics of gluttony and lust, arousing passion and selfishness. Sulfur, being the prime of the spirit, is the least base, and has characteristics of wisdom, clarity, and faith.”

Lindír slowed his movement yet more, until his feet were utterly silent. To minimize the sound of dragging chains, he took a few of them into his mouth, holding them off of the ground entirely. Whatever this strange behavior was, he wished to see it for himself.

“Different people are dominated by the three primes to a greater or lesser extent; and indeed, the three primes can be correlated with the three social classes. Salt with the common folk, quicksilver with the nobility, and sulfur with the clergy and philosophers. The great goal of all humanity is to rise beyond saline and argentous characters, refining ourselves into sulfurous beings.”

The voice, whatever it was, came from a room near the top of one of the towers. Lindír passed through spiral stairs and up inclined ramps, suddenly thankful that the doors of the Red Citadel had been sized for giants, not humans. It was an easy task to follow the source of the voice, as Lindír was keen of hearing and the voice very loud, and it was not long before Lindír stood directly outside of the room from which the voice originated.

“Other beings are also composed of the three primes, and dominated by them to varying degrees. Giants are primarily saline; Hellira and the Good Neighbors are primarily argentous, especially the latter. And… erm, dragons are sulfurous.”

Lindír very slowly nudged open the door with his snout, until at last he could see what lay within. It was a small room, by the standards of the castle, though to humans it might still have served well enough as a house for a poor family. There were only two within it. One, the speaker, was a portly man, entirely bald, clad in the robes, fur-lined boots, and floppy cap of a scholar. The other was a young man, his student, seated at a long bench and crouched over a pile of parchments, scribbling away at them with a quill pen. 

“Magic, as we know it, is the knowledgeable manipulation of the three primes, through willpower and technique. You must know pyromancy well; that is the manipulation of sulfur. Witchcraft and sorcery are the same, the manipulations of salt and quicksilver, respectively. There are many who consider magic to be a distraction from the true course of alchemy and religion, mere parlor tricks which pale in comparison to the pursuit of— O Gods, what is that thing?”

The scholar had seen Lindír. It was not difficult to see him, as he had stuck his entire head through the door by that point, and even at that age Lindír’s head was large enough for him to swallow one of the castle’s cats whole. The sage’s eyes bulged from his skull and he began to flee for the windows. But he did not make it more than two steps before he was overwhelmed, fainting and falling limply to the floor.

The student, meanwhile, acted with much greater alacrity. He leapt to his feet and spun about to face whatever his teacher had seen, drawing a sword from his hip as he did so. It was only then that Lindír realized whom he had intruded upon. 

He was of the same age as Lindír, fourteen, that awkward point in youth where one is not yet a man, but no longer a boy, either. He was tall for one of his age, already as tall and broad as most fully-grown men, but with much growing yet to do, as evidenced by the slender gawkiness of his limbs. His hair was a fierce red, and stuck out in poorly-groomed spikes. The fine tailoring and rich maroon and indigo, as well as the flawless shine of his sword, showed him to be of noble blood.

Finest of all, though, was the mask he bore upon his face. It was finely shaped, dark red wood that must have been imported at great expence, bearing the image of a man somewhat older than the one wearing it, bearded and mustached, with a stern expression. The only parts of the face below that could be seen were the scalp and a patch of pale skin around the eyes.

Only one inhabitant of the Red Citadel bore such a mask: Ásgeir Heimirrson, Lindír’s twin brother, heir to the throne.

“Brother,” Ásgeir said. “Why have you crawled up here from the pit? You have no business here.”

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“True. But I overheard your teacher’s lecture, and decided I wanted to join in,” Lindír licked his teeth. “I had to shed my escort to do it, of course.”

Ásgeir quickly glanced over his shoulder, to where the scholar’s unconscious body lay. “You will have no lecture. It will be a miracle if he has not injured his head and rendered himself an imbecile.”

Lindír pressed through the door of the room and stalked forward. Ásgeir, to his credit, did not retreat, but instead raised his sword until it pointed directly at Lindír’s face, and kept it fixed in that direction. 

“You were being taught… magic? Do you wish to become a mage?”

Ásgeir chuckled, and his mask distorted the noise into something eerie. “Perhaps. A mage, a knight, a warrior, and a king. It would be only fitting. But no; it is merely proper for a king to know much of the world, that he can rule wisely.”

“You are not a king,” Lindír hissed.

“I am not a king yet! But when father dies, someday, I will be.”

Lindír continued to pace back and forth. He was unsure why Ásgeir held his sword so; he was barely one-tenth the weight of his twin, and it was unclear to Lindír whether a blade such as that would even stand a chance of piercing his armor. Except, of course, for the weak spot over his heart.

“Unless I ate you now,” Lindír spat. “Finished what I started when we were children.”

“What? What gibberish do you speak of, dr—. Oh, yes. The mask.”

That was a story that Lindír had only had to be told once or twice. Of how, once, his parents had tried to keep him and Ásgeir together, raising them as human babies in adjacent cribs. That had ended when the infant Lindír had been overcome by hunger or rage and mauled his twin to the brink of death. Though Ásgeir had survived, his face had been left so mutilated that the boy had been forced to eat in his private chambers forever more.

“Yes. Or maybe I’ll just leave you like I did last time. Maybe you’ll have to wear a gauntlet for the rest of your life.”

“What are you trying to do? Frighten me? I’m not afraid of you anymore. You may have wounded me when we were children, but you will not win out against a squire. For seven years I’ve been training, you know that? And what have you been doing? Rotting in a pit of your own dung?”

Lindír hissed, a long and low sound that would have filled most men with terror. But not Ásgeir; he stood firm, neither advancing nor retreating, the sword aimed steadily at Lindír’s face. In truth, Lindír had had no intention of devouring his brother. But years of comparison, of regular reports as to Ásgeir’s astonishing progress in all fields of study and training, all of that had bred resentment. Lindír wanted to see his brother whimper and tremble in fear, just a little bit. Even in that he had been denied.

“I did not choose this!” Lindír roared.

“I did not choose to be the heir,” Ásgeir said. “Were it up to me, I would not be; I would be a knight, to fight and reave and slay wherever the scent of blood took me. But instead I shall rule this kingdom and rule it well, as is my fate.”

“What is my fate, then? To sit in a cell, passed down from king to king, until I die of sheer boredom?”

Ásgeir shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe you’ll make a decent siege weapon for me. Or a mount. You’re about horse-sized already. I could ride you into battle.”

“I hope you become infested by worms,” Lindír said. “Big ones, you wretched thing.”

“I’m not the wretched thing here, Lindír. That would be you. The cursed one, the failed experiment.”

Lindír began to stalk forward once more. He was not afraid of his brother’s sword, any more than his brother was afraid of him. There was a noise rising up the staircase, a continuous rumbling.

“I’m not cursed,” Lindír said. “I’m a dragon. I bring chaos. That is my birthright, just as much as kingship is yours.”

“You know even less of dragons than I do. I have read the stories, I have seen the bones, I know what a real dragon is!”

“Do not pretend to lecture me about my own kind!” Lindír roared, and the bellowing sound made the very stones shake. He ran his claws across the flagstones, sharpening them and leaving long scratches as he did. There were voices in the antechamber, yelling voices, but the roar of blood in his ear and fire in his gut drowned all of that out.

“Really? Tell me, brother, have you ever met another dragon? Spoken to one? Even seen one? Because unlike you, I have.”

Lindír hesitated. “You have?”

“I have. It was incredible. Nothing like you. You’ll be lucky if you can capture half of the power that beast had in a single claw.”

Lindír, in that moment, wished more than anything else to tear his brother to shreds, leave the kingdom without an heir. Even if Lindír died, his name would be written forever in the annals of the succession crisis to follow. Chaos and death would scar his mark into the very soil. But he could not. He could not. Ásgeir’s words sank deep into his heart, and some part of him knew them to be true, knew that he would never equal Sivnis, or any other dragon. No other dragon, after all, had a bare patch of scaleless skin over their heart.

Knights poured into the room, scores of them, clad in mail and padding, armed with great axes and long lances. Ásgeir finally lowered his blade, content in his victory. Lindír was placed back in chains and dragged away, his eyes smoldering with yellow-hot rage. He was not allowed to leave his cell for half a year after that. And all that time, Ásgeir’s words echoed in his thoughts, burned in his dreams. He would kill him, someday.

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