by Cyn Bagley
The dwarf sighed, left him to lean against a cart and went to talk to the rest of the dwarfs. Under the mutter and the dark looks thrown at him, he knew his fate was being decided.
Then two of the dwarfs broke away from the pack and pointed spears at him while a dwarf bound his hands. Apparently one of their magical traits was to spot liars. He sighed. The dwarf who had tied him pulled him along.
He was hoping that they’d ask more questions because the longer they interrogated him, then it would be harder for them to find Kayla. It was the least he could do after blowing her cover. He wasn’t completely helpless. He could make little sparks and he had an undine who needed him for some nefarious purpose. If they left him alone for even a moment, he would escape.
The last thought made him feel cheerful. He almost whistled as he walked behind his captors, except that if he whistled, one of them would assume he was getting a spell ready. He tried not to laugh. He really did.
The dwarfs gave him sideways looks as he began to laugh. He laughed and laughed and laughed. He fell and rolled on the ground. A dwarf tried to poke him with a spear, but he was hysterical by this time. When he could barely breathe, he was helped to his feet. His eyes were filled with tears and his nose with snot. One of the dwarfs pulled out a handkerchief, wiped his eyes, and made him blow his nose. This was so ridiculous that he almost laughed again. When the dwarf who had been holding his rope glared at him, he sucked in the next laugh.
Michael was pulled by the dwarf at a fast speed, his hands bound in front of him. Even with the cold against his skin and the tears frozen on his face, he felt light. He almost skipped.
The dwarfs muttered behind him. They didn’t know what to do with this madman. He kept his head high and whistled.
Chapter Seventeen
North Forest
Elita and Kayla
Elita dragged the dark around them as they slipped through the trees and away. She felt a little sadness as they left Michael to be bait for the search party of dwarfs. Kayla was the most important of the three of them. She needed to have a life away from magic.
When Elita had lived in the mountains, she had seen the dwarfs become more estranged from the human world. About a hundred years into her life, the dwarfs finally quit warring with the dragons and became allies. It had been good for both sides, except for a small group of dwarfs who had been ensorcelled by the Old Ones. The Old Ones had changed the basic nature of the dwarfs—creative, hardworking, and miners—to a darker purpose.
The ensorcelled ones made mechanical wonders to capture a world for their masters.
She ran away from home when an Old One took over her family. One dwarf followed her. This one had a blacksmith bloodline that was coveted by the dwarfs and the dragons. They had a child and she hid that child, Kayla, from the dwarf world. And knew, that the village full of family and friends, whose main purpose was to keep Kayla safe and give her a normal life, were all dead.
The dwarfs hadn’t found Kayla, scion of the blacksmith line, because the line gave only male blacksmiths until Kayla. They were always male. So when they felt a small sniff of her magic, they believed their noses had been deceived.
Kayla was special in more ways than one. A male dragon could bond with her.
Her father had died in the mage wars. Elita still mourned the dwarf that followed her when she saw the dangers. They had spent a short time in dwarf years—a mere twenty years. Still he had given her a child. Elita had a fierce need to protect Kayla, even if it meant deceiving her allies.
Elita wasn’t completely cruel. She prayed to the gods of the wood that Michael would be safe as she hurried with Kayla into the darkness. The two of them were stronger than the human, so they could travel faster. They heard the hounds and then heard them turn away. Yes, her ruse had worked.
The clouds covering the setting moon parted. The sun was rising and her light filled Elita with hope. They would escape once again. Kayla would be free and not bound like her father.
Elita and Kayla walked miles and miles until they found a tumbled-down barn. There was a partial roof on it and the owls were winging in to sleep in the rafters. They found some hay that wasn’t completely rotted, which they made into a bed. They huddled together and slept.
Elita woke to a kick to the gut. She looked up and there was a scowling big man…farmer she supposed…because he had a pitchfork in one hand. “You didn’t pay to sleep here.” He kicked her again.
She rolled away from him and was prepared to kick back when he dropped the tines against her daughter’s neck. Elita blinked. The man had some training.
Since force was not going to work in this situation, she tried wiles, “What can I do for you, good sir?” She let a whine creep into her voice.
The man kicked her again. “You will pay for your night here through coin or work.” Then he looked at Kayla. There was a sneer on his face. “She can work in the house.”
Elita was not going to let this man get his hands on her girl. But instead of kicking the man in the balls—she said, “Let me work in the kitchen. I can cook real well.” She added “sir” on to the end of it like an insult. He either didn’t understand the insult or ignored it. He pointed to the door with his chin.
Elita took hold of Kayla’s hand and dragged Kayla with her. At this point she would not let that man separate them. She knew how this could end. They would work, then eat, then sleep. The man would wake them with a kick again and they would do it all over again. Kayla would become the man’s special friend. Elita could not let that happen.
At the first opportunity, they had to leave. They were not chained yet.
The house was as rundown as the barn. He must have decided that Elita was a cunning one because he sat at the kitchen table and watched her clean the pots and pans, dishes and utensils, that must have been left in the sink and on the table for ages. Obviously there wasn’t a woman in this house. A woman wouldn’t put up with the dirt and grime.
She sent Kayla out to see if she could find any eggs. There had been some chickens scratching in the dirt in front of the house. To keep the man from following Kayla, she talked to him. “So, how old is this house?”
“I found it,” he said. He smiled with sharp yellow teeth. She ignored his answer and smile, and then cleared off a space in front of him. She wondered who the original owners were. The man’s answer made her even more suspicious, but she didn’t show it and continued to clean.
Soon Kayla was back with a few eggs. She gave Kayla a broom to clean the parlor and then started cooking scrambled eggs. She found an onion in the bin. It was old and wrinkled, but she was able to chop it. She put it on a cast iron pan with a little butter that she found in the ice box. This time the smell of the cooking food kept the man in the kitchen.
She plopped the bowl filled with the eggs in front of the man. He dug in and ate like a wild animal. He acted like he hadn’t eaten in awhile. Once he was done, he smiled at her.
Elita shivered. The teeth in his mouth looked like they had been filed down. The look in his eyes was not warm. It was as if he were checking her fat content to see how good she would taste.
When he left to work in the fields, she grabbed Kayla and they searched the house from top to bottom. There were rooms filled with jewels and rooms filled with dresses. The stink from one of the rooms was of rot and maggots. As they went from room to room, Elita had a sinking feeling that in their rush to run away from the dwarfs they had been caught in a worse trap.
This man was a cannibal, and possibly an ogre.
***
When Elita sent Kayla for eggs, Kayla knew that her mother also wanted her to check the area and look for escape routes. The only time they had lived a stable life was their time in the village. They had lost all their friends and some family when the Draugr attacked, killing and eating so many of them.
When the bowmen shot arrows into the Draugr, the arrows broke in his skin. He laughed as they tried using swords to slice through him, but he just k
ept coming. His skin healed quickly as he rushed through them, tearing them apart, limb from limb. Kayla had nightmares of that night filled with blood and the Draugr’s eyes. When the men shoved torches into his face, the creature seemed afraid for a moment.
Even so, he pushed his arm through the flame and tore off the arm of the warrior who had used fire against him.
There was an unholy light in the Draugr’s eyes that still made her stomach churn. She reached under a brush and pulled out an egg. As she searched the property for eggs, she saw stones with inscriptions on the four corners of the property. She sniffed. No, the Draugr had a particular smell. This man was large, tall and had a cursed personality, but he was not a Draugr. He wasn’t a dragon either. There was a certain musk that she associated with dragon.
Michael had carried that scent on him. She had told her mother, and that had been the deciding factor in leaving him alone in the woods, although he had smelled of a very young dragon. She hadn’t been brave enough to ask about the smell. Plus he was to be her teacher of magic.
It hadn’t gone so well. She smiled. Since that fireball incident, she had felt the magic curl in her stomach. It comforted her. Her mother had warned her for years that one day the magic would come for her. At the same time she would have to fight a dragon for her freedom.
She hadn’t known it would feel like this. Like a warmth curled in her belly. It made her feel strong and less of a child. It would be there if she needed it. There would come a time when she would be a protector and not a child who needed protection.
After surveying the property, she hurried back with the eggs. With the man in the kitchen, she wasn’t able to tell her mother about the stones. The warmth in her belly hissed and watched the man like snake watches a dangerous enemy. The fire recognized this man as a predator. When her mother gave her a broom and sent her to the parlor, she turned her head away from the man.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see his shape change. He was tall, taller than anyone she knew. There was a smell of earth and rot. She vigorously dusted the bookcase. The dust flew, and she sneezed. It settled down. It would take a lot of time to get this into shape. As she cleaned she became engrossed in the dusting. It was as if the more she dusted, the more she wanted to dust. She kept dusting the bookcase until her mother grabbed her arm.
“Something is not right.” Her mother looked at the tiny spot she had dusted. There was fear in her face. She followed her mother through the house. After opening the last room she remembered the wards she saw on the property.
“I need to show you something,” she said to her mother.
It felt better to be outside than in that maggoty house. When Kayla was at the house, she could see black and purple tendrils reach for them. She describe them to her mother.
“Are they outside the house?” asked Elita. Kayla looked around at the property. There were some in the wards around the property, but most of the spells were centered on the house.
They reached the stone, right where she remembered it. Elita knelt down and looked. The lines were mostly straight, carved in staves. Then out loud Elita said the words on the stone. A fence appeared and enclosed the entire property. It shimmered.
Kayla heard the roar of the man-creature. Her mother placed a drop of blood on the stone, and Kayla could hear the beat of the man’s footsteps as he ran toward them. When he burst from behind the house, Kayla saw his real form for the first time.
An Ogre. His face was slightly deformed, and his teeth were filed down. He was wearing a dirty loincloth around his nether regions. His face had stripes of mud down it. The sight was so fierce, so unsettling, that Kayla froze in place.
Her mother grabbed her by the shoulders and thrust her through the small hole that appeared in the fence. Her mother’s blood had made a small opening. She turned around to help pull her mother through. But it was too late. The giant grabbed Elita. He pulled a leg off her mother and crunched on it.
Her mother screamed, “Kayla, run, run… get away.”
Kayla tried to rush back into the hole, but it closed and she could not get through to save her mother. She searched for something to throw to her mother. But already the blood squirting from her various wounds was so rapid that Elita’s natural healing couldn’t overcome the blood loss. The giant grinned and pulled off Elita’s arm.
He stared at Kayla, watching her torment as he ate her mother’s arm. He grinned at her tears, then ripped Elita’s other leg off and bit into it. The blood rolled down his mouth and lips and plunged down his naked chest. He made obscene noises.
Kayla vomited next to the fence, but she couldn’t pull her eyes away. She froze there, knowing that there was nothing she could do. Nothing at all.
The more he ate of her mother’s flesh, the larger he became. His chest filled out. Kayla screamed in terrible rage and threw a fireball at the fence, but it bounced and hit the tops of the trees near her. She didn’t notice the fire that started behind her as she threw fireball after fireball.
Tears ran down her face as her rage consumed her. She watched the light die in her mother’s eyes until she was just a piece of meat. The ogre ate and stomped and enjoyed the fresh blood and flesh. But he enjoyed Kayla’s suffering more.
Kayla vowed that she would kill the ogre. She would find a way to make it pay before she killed it. But she would kill it. She walked through the burning forest that raged around her. Not one flame licked her flesh. The animals ran before her as she screamed and cried. The pain was fierce. She wanted to burn down the world.
It was then that the dwarfs found her. They had had experience with this insanity. They spread fire retardant on her and the forest. It wasn’t that they cared whether human settlements burned down. No, this was the forest that supplied the dragon and the dwarf settlement.
Some of the dwarfs stayed to get the fire under control. With Kayla unconscious they would get her to the dragon. She had been untrained for too long. It wouldn’t have happened, one of the dwarfs muttered, if she had been trained like other blacksmiths. Still she was on her way home without too much physical damage. Emotionally…well, they would find out soon.
Chapter Eighteen
Dragon Cave
Michael Ordson
Michael followed the dwarfs into a high-ceilinged cavern. In the middle was a large round nest. When he looked closer he saw that the threads were made of fine gold with jewels twisted in the thread. Each stone was worth a king’s ransom and there was enough gold to buy several countries. The entire nest sparkled and glowed. It slowly dawned on him that he was gazing at a dragon’s nest.
He tried to stand still, but his muscles wouldn’t listen. He was in a dragon’s den. The trembling wouldn’t stop and one of the dwarfs grabbed his arm to steady him. This was not in the lore. Dwarfs and dragons were were not allies. But the dwarfs and the nest told him that his knowledge was totally wrong.
The dwarf who grabbed his arm patted his back, then backed away from him. Oh damn, he was being left to the dragon.
Past the golden nest was an arched doorway big enough for a large dragon. He wanted to escape, but his hands were still bound. And where would he go? The dwarfs knew this mountain--every crevice, crack, and tunnel. He would be caught quickly and would still have to face the dragon.
He gazed through the archway as he heard thump, thump thump, thump. The suspense was killing him. It wasn’t a matter of if this were the dragon, but how big was it? And would the dragon burn him to ashes?
Thump, thump thump, thump. The dragon was heavy and shook the passageway. Under the sound, he heard voices. At first he thought he was hallucinating. One of the voices was higher pitched than the other. He almost recognized it. But why would Hilda be here? She was on her way to the capital to warn the king of Lord Barton.
The dragon ambled into the cavern on four legs. It was looking down at a human woman. It was Hilda. He felt shock and couldn’t say anything when she ran up to him and gave him a big hug. “Michael,” she took o
ff the bindings around his arms. “Why are you here?”
He gaped like a fish for a few moments and there was nothing he could say. Why was he here? “Ah…”
“He was with the blacksmith.” The voice was melodious. While Hilda was untying his bonds, the dragon had changed into a beautiful woman. That was also not in the lore.
What little he knew about dragons was that they could fly, they could blow fire, and that they had to be magical to fly. He had thought that maybe they were more like birds. Bird bones were hollow.
Still, no one knew exactly how they could fly. When the occasional dragon had fallen on the field of battle, the dragons had cremated their own right there. No one had ever dissected one of them.
So the beasts had telepathy. Well, they were magic, so that wasn’t surprising…that they could change into human form. The thought gave him a shock. For a moment he felt shame at comparing dragons to beasts.
He was friends with Davi. Davi was a dragon and conscious. So maybe other dragons were not the ravening beasts that he remembered from the stories.
The worst stories about dragons came from the battlefield Hilda’s retired mercenaries would talk about the damage one dragon could do with a rain of fire. The soldiers and mercenaries feared dragons for good reason. Plus during the last war some dragons and black mages had fought together against the kingdom.
What if those dragons had been captured and compelled. Now that he knew dragons could truly change to human shape, he could see how they could be captured. Plus, some of those dragons could have been the dead. The battle mages were known to compel the dead to fight even after they had died on the battlefield.
The thought made him shiver.