by J. R. Castle
Quinn could see the figure in front of them was a young woman, but it was hard to make out much of her features beneath the solid stone.
‘It’s going to work,’ Thea whispered beside him. ‘Trust me.’
Quinn did trust her. Her magic was more powerful than any he’d seen, except for Vayn’s. But turning stone to flesh didn’t seem possible.
‘I want you to concentrate,’ Thea said. She held out a taper in front of him. ‘I’m going to need Earth Dragon fire for this.’
He’d transformed into a dragon twice now, but this was something different. If he changed now, the fire he produced would fry Thea like an egg. Instead, he closed his eyes. He remembered the feel of the wind against his scales, the way his eyes could see every detail of the ground from high in the sky, the taste of the air and the vast strength in his wings. He gently blew on the taper.
‘That’s it,’ Thea whispered.
The taper burst into life with a white-hot flame – bright enough to illuminate the marsh around them.
Quinn backed away, letting Mother Onyx come forward to take his place. She was carrying an elaborately crafted, hollow metal ball on the end of a chain that she’d unearthed from her magic shop. Quinn could sense the magical power invested in it and could smell the incense stuffed inside.
Carefully, Thea placed the taper inside the metal ball and shut the clasp. Moments later, the incense caught alight, and a faint trickle of smoke emerged from the ball.
Together, Thea and Mother Onyx began to chant, and Quinn felt Thea’s powerful magic wrap around the ball. The spell kept building until Quinn felt it thrumming uncomfortably against his bones. At last, white smoke billowed out from it.
‘Is it done?’ Maria asked, sounding worried.
‘The magic and the incense in combination with the dragon flame should reverse the petrification,’ Thea said. ‘The principle is simple, but the power Vayn gave to the Stone Trolls was immense.’
She took the ball from Mother Onyx and waved it back and forth in front of the stone figure of the woman until wreaths of smoke spread around it. Quinn stared, waiting to see what would happen.
Slowly, the grey stone began to fade, at first faintly, but then more visibly. At last Quinn could see pale skin and dark hair emerging. The hard eyes softened and became bright. With a gasp, the woman sucked in air.
Maria leapt forward with a cry. ‘Anna!’ She grabbed her cousin and embraced her tightly.
‘Wh-what’s going on?’ Anna began, confused. ‘Where am I?’
Maria was laughing and crying at the same time, too happy to explain. ‘Where do I begin?’
Mother Onyx shook Thea’s shoulders. ‘You did it! Great magic skills!’
Thea smiled broadly and passed the gently smoking ball to the older woman. ‘As long as you keep this burning, you’ll be able to free the rest of the Stone Trolls’ victims.’
‘Thank you,’ Mother Onyx said. ‘You promised you would free us and bring back those who were lost, and you kept your promise. Now I can find my son. Keriss Island will not forget what any of you have done. I will make sure of it.’ She turned to Quinn and gave him a bow. ‘Keriss Island will stand behind you.’
Quinn cleared his throat awkwardly. He still wasn’t used to people treating him as anyone important.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Here.’ Mother Onyx pressed a small book into Thea’s hands. ‘This spell book has been in my family for generations. It’s far beyond my abilities, but I could never bring myself to sell it. Maybe it will help.’
Quinn pulled out his golden sword. Now he’d found out what had really happened to his parents, and recruited another Dragon Knight, it was time to get off the misty island.
He lifted the sword and peered into the blade. An image appeared, showing a gigantic, glittering golden dome, high up in the sky, with clouds racing swiftly past it.
‘That’s the Island of the Golden Sun,’ Ulric said, looking over Quinn’s shoulder.
Quinn reached down and picked up a backpack of supplies given to them by the townspeople. ‘Then that’s where we must go next …’
CHAPTER 1
THE GOLDEN SUN
The sun had sunk behind the mountains some time ago, but its afterglow still lit the western sky like the heat from a furnace. It seemed almost as if the distant Imperial Isle was on fire.
Quinn turned away and looked to the east. The dusk was spreading above scant pine trees and shadowed mountaintops. In less than an hour it would be fully dark. A rising wind ruffled his hair and stung his eyes. He shivered at its deep, cold bite and drew his cloak closer around him.
Winter had arrived sooner than expected. Out here, on the exposed mountainside, they were at the weather’s mercy. At least Ignus and Ulric had helped to get a campfire started before they set off to scout the area. That had been hours ago.
‘Remind me again why we’re up here instead of staying at an inn?’ grumbled Thea. She huddled even closer to the flames, her long red hair almost dangling in them.
‘Because of the amazing view,’ Quinn said jokingly, and sat down. Seeing her scowl, he added, ‘And because we’re staying out of the way of Black Guard patrols.’
‘What patrols? I haven’t seen a single Black Guard since we got here!’
‘Hmm,’ Quinn murmured. Thea was right; it had been suspiciously quiet lately on the Black Guard front. ‘Perhaps they’re all tucked up cosy in their barracks, eating and drinking their way through our taxes.’
‘Wishing you were still with them?’ Thea asked, with a half-smile.
‘Gods, no.’
The wind rose again, bringing a few dancing snowflakes with it. Quinn sucked air sharply through his teeth. ‘Whoever called this island “The Golden Sun” must have been off his head on fermented wartberries. It’s freezing!’
‘I think you’ll find that was the gods, Quinn. “A golden sun they set to the East of The Imperial Isle, and a silver moon to the West, that men might know their handiwork.” Book of Makings, chapter one, verse six.’
‘Never had you down for a religious type.’
Thea shrugged. ‘I’m not. But it makes for a nice story.’
‘Speaking of books, how are you getting on with the one Mother Onyx gave you?’
Thea brightened at once. She drew the slim black spell book from the folds of her clothes and held it open on her lap.
‘It’s going great! I’ve already mastered three of the major glyphs, and I’m nearly there with the Sassenava Incantation, though there’s this one tricky bit where you have to sort of hiccup, because it’s written in the Lost Speech of Eld and that’s how you pronounce …’ Her voice tailed off as Quinn held up a hand.
‘The short version?’ he asked.
‘I can do more stuff.’ Thea grinned. ‘How about you? How’s that dragonblood pumping?’
Quinn looked at the edges of his hand, where the light from the fire made his skin glow blood-red. That’s dragonblood in there. It still hardly seemed real.
In the last few weeks he’d learned things about himself that he could never have imagined. He had dragonblood – the ability to shift his form into that of a dragon. As if that weren’t enough, his dragonblood was royal. Quinn was the lost son of the Emperor and Empress.
His father, Emperor Marek, had been an Earth Dragon, giving him power over stones, minerals and metal. Quinn was sure he’d inherited the same power, and the way he’d melted a fearsome Stone Troll in the marshes on Keriss seemed to confirm it. He was capable of more, though, he knew it. So far he’d hardly had time to scratch the surface of his new powers.
‘We should practise,’ he told Thea. ‘It’ll kill some time while we wait for Ignus and Ulric.’
Thea glanced up at the thickening snowfall. ‘Good idea. Maybe it’ll take my mind off this filthy weather, too.’
Quinn rubbed his hands together until they tingled. Nearby was a boulder about the size of his head. That would do. He took a breath and began to
concentrate.
‘What are you doing?’ Thea asked.
‘Melting the rock!’
‘What for?’
‘Just watch,’ Quinn muttered through gritted teeth.
He felt dragonblood power radiate from him, building between his hands and lashing out towards the rock. Change, he willed it. Shift your form …
Thea looked on as the rock warped and flexed before them. It was solid granite, but Quinn moulded it with his mind as if it were soft clay. He stretched the sides to produce two crude wings, made a head bulge from the front and tweaked a beak into place, then added two stubby little legs.
‘It’s a bird!’ Thea laughed.
Quinn wiped sweat from his forehead. ‘There. Not bad for a first try, huh?’
‘Not bad at all. Now it’s my turn. Let’s see …’ Thea leafed through her spell book until she found a page filled with runes that looked to Quinn like thorns and claws. She held the book open with one hand and gestured with the other. ‘Verem, vita, aeolus!’
The stone bird twitched. Its beak snapped. It gave a single hoarse croak and beat its wings as if it was trying to fly.
Thea wrinkled her nose, unsatisfied, and muttered something. Suddenly, silently, the bird floated up into the air. Thea’s finger moved with it, as if joined by an invisible string.
Quinn clapped. ‘Come on, little guy! You can do it!’
‘I’m giving him some help,’ Thea laughed. She raised her arm and the bird, still flapping awkwardly, rose into the snowy night sky above them.
As they watched the stone bird fly, without warning, the sky lit up. A curtain of seething blue light tore across their view from one end to the other. The clouds overhead shrank back.
Quinn jumped to his feet. Thea gasped. Her concentration broke. The stone bird, suddenly motionless, fell like a brick to shatter on the ground below.
‘What is that?’ Quinn asked in astonishment.
‘The Seraphic Lights,’ Thea breathed. ‘Of course! This high in the mountains, you can see them clearly.’
Quinn looked in amazement at the rippling light show before them. He wasn’t sure if they were magical or natural or some weird combination of both. There was beauty in the uncanny light, but yet Quinn felt dread stealing up inside him. Something evil was at hand. He could feel it in the air.
‘Look!’ He pointed to where ragged dark holes were appearing in the misty light above them. No, not holes – eyes. Then a cruel slash of a mouth opened below. The image of a terrible face formed before them, hundreds of feet tall. A face he knew.
Quinn bared his teeth as a surge of hatred hit him. ‘Vayn!’
The gigantic face laughed, and the laughter thundered down the mountainside, shaking the powdery snow loose. Quinn stood his ground, glaring back at the image of the Emperor: the usurper, the tyrant, the man who had murdered his parents.
‘Little children, you are very far from home,’ Vayn gloated. ‘Do you think that your pitiful rebellion has a chance, now that you have released both Ulric and Ignus? Bravo. Two mighty Dragon Knights … a dullard and a rogue!’
Quinn drew a breath to shout defiance in Vayn’s face, but Thea gripped his arm. ‘Don’t make a sound,’ she hissed in his ear. ‘You’ll bring down an avalanche on top of us.’
Vayn’s features twisted, no longer mocking, but a demonic mask of fury. His voice rose to a shriek as he spoke. ‘Heed me now! Crawl back to where you came from, little worms, and hide. Persist, and I warn you, my agents are everywhere. I will find you, and when I do, I will hang your ragged corpses from the palace walls as a warning to dragonblood filth and those who follow them!’
The curtain of light suddenly collapsed and flickered out, as if Vayn’s rage was too much for it to bear.
Quinn and Thea stood, breathing hard, looking at one another.
‘For the record,’ said Thea with a nervous laugh, ‘we’re not going to take the “run away and hide” option, right?’
‘You can if you like,’ Quinn said. ‘I’m going to free the rest of the Dragon Knights. And we’re taking Vayn down.’ He grabbed another lump of wood and threw it into the fire, hard. A shower of sparks went up. ‘If that little show was meant to scare me, it didn’t work.’
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Copyright
First published in the UK in 2015
by Piccadilly Press
Northburgh House, 10 Northburgh Street,
London, EC1V 0AT
www.piccadillypress.co.uk
Text copyright © Hothouse Fiction Limited, 2015
with special thanks to Patrick Samphire
Map copyright © Prosper Devas, 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
The right of Hothouse Fiction Limited to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN: 978–1–84812–460–8
Also available as an ebook
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