Whill of Agora: Book 02 - A Quest of Kings Read Online Free Page B

until the explosives set the building aflame in an instant.The man had given information that would see him dead anyway, and Dirk needed to make a statement, a little introduction of himself to the Brotherhood of the Red Dragon. What better way than to kill a thirteenth-level brother? He would climb the levels one by one and get to the top, and then he would find the Red Dragon, and through it, obtain that which tilted the scales in the coming power struggle. He would side with the winner; better yet, the winner would side with him.

CHAPTER THREE
    A People Divided
    A bram burst through the balcony doors. Annoyed, he packed his pipe and lit it with an Elven fire stone. Rhunis came and stood next to him, more annoyed and just as fatigued by the last three days’ politics. They had been round and round every topic and had gotten nowhere since the meeting had begun. In attendance were Abram and Rhunis; King Mathus of Eldalon; Arkthar, son of the fallen Fenious, and newly made king of Isladon, only twenty-two but tall and strong for his age; the Dwarf kings, Ky’Ell of the mountain kingdom Ky’Dren, which separated Eldalon from the rest of Agora, and King Du’Krell of the Elgar Mountains, the largest and richest Dwarf mountain kingdom—though all Dwarves conceded that Dy’Kore was and always would be
the
home of all Dwarves. Representing the Dwarves of the rebuilding kingdom of Ro’Sar or the Ebony Mountains was one of Roakore’s sons, Wrendar. The Elves had no representative, although it wasaccepted that Abram would know their mind on most topics and decisions.
    The Elves had not shared anything with the human kingdoms or the Dwarves, for fear that spies would know their mind. The Dark Elf Eadon had intercepted the fleet that had landed upon the shores of Isladon; he had laid in wait, and it had been disastrous. He and his Dragon-Hawk had laid waste to ten ships alone. There had been one or many spies during the last endeavor, so now the Elven policy was that they would not speak openly about the movements or plans of the Elven forces, but they would assist, with great force, any military action by either humans or Dwarves against Eadon and the Draggard.
    The mediator of the meeting was an elder from the small island nation of Eldon. He was a blind man of ninety-seven, but he had a mind sharper than a Dwarven axe. He was benign in all things, simply keeping order to the meeting and maintaining a ruling formed of pure logic. His name was Fracco.
    In the last six months since the battle for the reclamation of the Ro’Sar Mountains, where Elves, humans, and Dwarves had fought together and won, there had been many battles. Though they had won the day, many thousands of Draggard had escaped, and they had plagued all the lands of Agora ever since.
    Entire towns were destroyed, seemingly at random, in all the human kingdoms. The bounty for a single Draggard head was more than fifty pieces of silver,enough to feed most families for years. So far, ten thousand Draggard heads had been taken, but many remained.
    The Draggard Wars had dragged on for decades, and there had been countless battles, mostly upon the eastern seas or the fortress island of Fendora. Fendora had been lost and reclaimed half a dozen times. Always the Draggard came in waves and from only the east, until the weeks before the fall of the Ro’Sar Kingdom twenty years before. Until the invasion of Ro’Sar, the Dwarves had nothing to do with the Draggard Wars unless they were protecting their allies’ borders or their own.
    All of that had changed since the taking of Ro’Sar twenty years ago. Now, with the help of Abram and Rhunis and the legacy of Whill of Agora, a hero to all peoples and many Dwarves and Elves alike, the three races were beginning to work together, albeit slowly.
    The lines in the sand had been made and the enemy defined. Sides had been taken, oaths pledged. Humans and Elves and Dwarves had forgotten all their differences for the time being,